April 29, 2025 • 42 mins
The playoffs are on fire, and Trysta’s here to break it all down.
She dives into the Bucks’ uncertain future after falling behind 3-1, the Lakers choking away Game 4, and two incredible battles: Clippers vs. Nuggets and Pistons vs. Knicks. Plus, the latest news from around the league and more!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On this episode of the Heat Check the first round
of the playoffs. They're cooking. We've got the tea for you.
We've got also some massive news. Damian Lillard goes down
with what they believe to be a torn achilles. We
talk about what that might mean for the end of
(00:22):
Giannis and Milwaukee, because that's pretty much where that's headed.
We can kind of know that if it is a
torn Achilles. We talk about the Los Angeles Lakers so
sad going down three to one to the Wolves. There
is now some panic in Lakerland. Cheer up though you
used to have Luca. The Pistons get absolutely screwed late
in the game against the Knicks. We also dig into
(00:44):
the Pacers and whether they actually have a shot against Cleveland.
Plus we get into some news from around the league.
So much to talk about. Wyatt dropped that motherfucking beat
that should be Rihanna. You're listening to the Hottest, the
Hottest be a podcast out here. I said what I said.
It's just up cut. Okay. So, first and foremost, remember
(01:13):
in October when we had Kamala and she it was
like I've got the heart of a tiger, and it
was like Beyonce and it was like the NFL and
it was this awesome World Series and everybody was like,
(01:34):
the NBA sucks now. The NBA's ratings are stinky, and
it's like, well, we do have a presidential election happening,
and there's lots of coverage on that. That's taking people's
heads away from I don't know, game two of the
regular season of the NBA. I don't know, We've got
like show hey o Taani fucking doing crazy ass shit. Yeah,
(01:59):
like that's probably more like it. But no, everybody's like,
this is the death of the NBA. The NBA sucks now,
Ratings suck. It's just a highlight culture. Everybody wants to
say mean things about players and that's why ratings are down.
These young kids, they don't want to watch games, They
just want to see TikTok. Well well, well, well, well well,
(02:23):
the NBA's opening playoff weekend shattered the records. All eight
game ones have averaged at least four point four million viewers,
seventeen percent increase from last year. That's the highest opening
weekend viewership in twenty five years. So to put that
(02:43):
into perspective, we haven't seen what we're seeing now since
before Michael Jordan was with the Washington Wizards, Adam Silver
he must be going on his little hop skipping a
jump around, talking on shows, being like, hey, you know,
he must be reveling in this, he must be loving this.
(03:06):
And he still keeps talking. Do you see him talking.
He's like, oh, yeah, I think we need to talk
about why people love the NBA more. I actually fucking agree.
I think that's really what makes me someone that you
should listen to around the NBA because I fucking love this.
I will sit in a summer league gym from noon
(03:27):
to ten pm in the Las Vegas sun watching bub
Carrington low lights. Anyway, We've got awesome games. Physicality has
been great. I know that people are saying that it's
turned into football. I kind of like that. We've got
people shooting still a million threes. We're hitting them too,
splash by splash. We have dramatic comebacks. We have last
(03:51):
second shots that we have to be reviewing for thirty
minutes to see when did his pinky last touch the
basketball and did the the buzzer go off? Yet we
have unexpected upsets and even in the games, even in
the series where it's a sweep. We've still had largely
outside of the Calves beaten that fucking Miami Heat ass
(04:15):
largely pretty competitive games. Even the game games between the
Thunder and the Memphis Grizzlies are pretty damn competitive. So
these are the things that captivate us parody in the
sport Stars, physicality, drama, it's all there. What also is
there as we continue to just get these injuries because
(04:36):
the whole football thing, we've got non contact injuries, and
we've got contact injuries. Obviously John Morant and Jimmy Butler
we know about them. They're contact based injuries. And now
we have another one. Probably we could have seen it coming,
given the fact that Dame Lillard was coming back from
deep vein thrombosis, which is a blood clot in his calf.
He rushed back to try to get back for the playoffs,
(04:57):
which I actually think is pretty remarkable. I think that
that's commendable and probably something that he felt inside himself
he needed to do for the Bucks to really see
what they had because last season and last playoffs, Giannis
was injured and now Dame has been gone for the
last month, so we don't really know what we have
(05:17):
for the Milwaukee Bucks. But now non contact in Game
four looks like Game towards Achilles, which is when he
strained his achilles twelve months ago. Same series, same game,
Game three, and then Game four, so it's not the
same game, different game, but right around the same time.
(05:38):
And now the Bucks go down. Well, of course, when
Damian Lillard gets injured, it was kind of going to
be just like Game one, which is an ass kicking
a demolishment. Now Bucks are down three to one, and
to that, I say, probably going to mark the end
of an era because the Bucks have put all their
(06:02):
chips in the pot for Yannis. Yannis has continued to
tell this organization, if you do not surround me with
winning players and I feel we are not competitive, I
will leave. And so that has forced the Bucks to
do things that maybe they wouldn't have otherwise done, aka
trading their best on ball defender on the perimeter, at
(06:23):
least for Damian Lillard, a guy who can score. And
what we thought was going to be this tremendous pick
and roll offense, this potent pick your poison situation that
you could not defend now was really just not what
we've seen. We've kind of seen he go, I go,
he go, I go. It's been okay. It's worked ish,
but not nearly to the extent of what we thought
(06:43):
it was going to be, probably because each player was
not who we thought that they were going to be,
which is committed to winning and with any circumstance, is
just that winning is what matters. No with Jannis, Giannis
doesn't want to be a screener. It's fucking Giannis onto Coo.
He's third in MVP voting. I don't want If I
(07:04):
was honest, I probably wouldn't want to screen fucking Damian
little leader either, Like I why not? Why would I
do that? He wants to ball in his hands. He
really wants to be a guard if we're if we're
being honest, he wants to cross fucking people up, go
behind the back, step back, three in your eyeball, and
then if you come to if you lay off of him,
(07:24):
he's gonna shoot the three and if you come too close,
he wants to yam and take your soul. That's what
Jannis wants to do. Jannis wants to be chet Holmgren.
Jannis wants to be Victor Webbin Yama, which would be
one hell of a fucking cousin Victor Anto Takombo. So
and Dame Dame probably doesn't want to do things that
he's supposed to do, which is the play defense. Besides
(07:46):
against Tyre's Halliburton, Dame has largely been not a great defender,
best Blazer in franchise history, a guy that wanted to
win no matter what. Wasn't willing to do everything it
took to win, but was willing to change teams to win,
which is where I think we are now with Giannis.
So what happens now? I think we're all kind of
(08:09):
like wondering the future. For the Bucks, it kind of
feels like they're headed for a breakup. It kind of
feels like it's over because you traded everything and everything
for Dame, and you traded a lot for Drew. So
those picks to the Pelicans, you still owe them. They
have not all come to roost yet. There's swaps here,
(08:33):
there's picks here, there's unprotected ones here in twenty eight
y oh, the Blazer's a first round pick unprotected, and
I think you get the worst of the picks with
the Wizards because you traded for Kyle Kuzma. There's just
a lot happening, and this team as a whole without Dame,
because Dame's going to now be out an entire year
(08:54):
at thirty four years old, which means you'll probably be
thirty six by the time he plays an NBA game. Yeah,
maybe not, but maybe, And so you're left without the
ability to rebuild. You're paying everybody a whole lot of
fucking money. You paying Kyle Kuzma twenty something million for
the next two years each, You're paying Brook Lopez a
lot of money. You're paying Bobby Portis a lot of money,
(09:18):
and you're not winning any games. So the question that
I have, I guess, is like, when does Giannis come
to this conclusion? Is he already there are there places
he wants to already go? Does it even matter where
he wants to go? It's fucking heartbreaking for the city
(09:38):
of Milwaukee. You got your ring and now you're probably
headed for the ice age. Really, because when I was
a kid, the Bucks were pretty much irrelevant. After the
Rayaliten era, you add Kareem and Oscar robertson, which I
don't think any fan of this podcast ever ever seen
with their two eyes, maybe but really not in the eighties,
(10:01):
you had some consistent playoff appearances, no finals appearances. In
the nineties, we had a very challenging era. Seven consecutive
that's my era. Seven consecutive losing seasons from ninety one
to ninety eight, that's my era. Then you get Ray Allen,
Glenn Robinson, Sam Cassell. You go to the Eastern Conference finals.
(10:23):
But that's kind of like what the Blazers were in
twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, Like you got some players, but
like nobody really thinks you're gonna win that title. And
then after you get Yannis, now we have this era.
Without Yannie, you're probably now largely an irrelevant team. And
that's probably the only thing, though, you can really do
to get back to any semblance of relevancy, because like,
(10:46):
who cares if you have and maybe maybe you do care,
maybe you do care, But if you have Yiannis and
you know, this team will never do anything besides maybe
be a first round exit, and brook Lopez is going
to retire and some and Kuzman's gonna languish, and maybe
you'll figure out a way to so you don't even
have second round picks. Maybe you signed some guys or
something is that enough? Is that enough for you to
(11:12):
just go and see Jannis on a random Tuesday. Maybe,
but you probably have to trade him, and he probably
wants to be traded. And that's a super pickle situation
because Jannis probably thinks his better situation is out there
and the teams are gonna be probably trading for your
honest might not be any good. They might be in
the beginning of their rebuild as well, like the Brooklyn Nets,
(11:34):
for example. The team I'd like to see because I'm messy,
the team i'd like to see Janis go to right
fucking now is the New York Knicks, because what we
know about the Knicks is that they have a ceiling.
That's all I'll say. They have a ceiling. They have
a coach with the ceiling, and I'm very curious to
(11:56):
see how Joannis and Brunson would function the kind It
feels like a little Dame Ish. Brunson likes the ball
in his hands. Johannis liked the ball in his hands,
so maybe not. I'm very sad. Though I'm sad for Dame,
I'm sad for the Bucks. As a Blazer fan, I
am kind of relishing at the same time, knowing that
(12:19):
this thing will not result in the title. That feels
like a little bit of like maybe a little too
early to say that, but I'm feeling that emotion as well.
But tough situation when you can't even beat the Pacers,
really and now we kind of go on and say,
we're about a game away from all of these rumors
(12:41):
starting to fluctuate and circulate. So, Dame, I hope you
get better. And to the Bucks front office and ownership,
it's a good thing you extended your GM John Horst
for another three years because he's got his work cut
out from Oh yeah, Also, the Game five is coming
(13:02):
on Tuesday, which we already know what's gonna happen. Decisions
will be made. Let's talk about these Lakers, a team
that was kind of like the Bucks for a while,
like just they've got their superstar, they've got another co star,
they don't have a lot of picks, we know they
probably can't do much. And then they get Luca somehow
(13:24):
someway right, and they have JJ Reddick, and JJ Redick
deservedly has gotten his flowers this season. He's navigated a
very rocky, tumultuous season to the point where maybe we
thought the Lakers would be a playing team again, and
then they find a way into being the third seed
in the West, could have even been the two seed
in the West, and they were at times, what JJ,
(13:48):
make it make sense? What are you doing? Baby? What
are you doing? Baby? He did something no coach has
ever done in at least twenty five years in a
playoff game. JJ played all five of his starters the
entire second half with no substitutions, none, not one, not
a single bench minute to be found. Couldn't find one
(14:10):
look out of the sea kitchen, not one, no, sir,
And in a must win game on the on the road,
the Lakers not only blew a twelve point fourth quarter lead,
they blew multiple double digit leads throughout that game. I
was listening to this on the radio, and the Lakers
broadcaster was incensed. He was like, I've never seen this
(14:32):
team blow four leads of this magnitude. They lose to
the Wolves one to sixteen, win thirteen, and now they
go back home in a must win game down three
to one. Make it make sense, JJ, I guess you're desperate.
I guess if I had to make it make sense,
it was like I feel I'm out of options and
(14:54):
I need to do something. Minnesota scored on their last
three possessions and held the Lakers to no scores. A
lot of people are blaming the fact that Lebron looked
cooked on JJ and wondering why JJ didn't go to
the bench and give him a little bit of a
I don't know, like a little minute before the TV
timeout kind of thing, like we know the TV timeouts
(15:17):
come in. She give him a blow for thirty forty
five seconds, pause and let them chill for five six minutes.
Team is up twelve in the fourth quarter. You must
have been scurred. This is what he said. No, it
wasn't planned. We just made the decision at halftime. Oh okay,
that's not a planned thing to play five guys in
the entire second half. We asked them at the beginning
of the fourth quarter. We told them we had two
(15:37):
extra timeouts. If you need a sub, let us know.
Those guys gave a lot. If you need a sub,
let us know what is that. If you need a sub,
let us know. You can't let players decide when they
come in and out the floor. What any more than
(15:57):
you can allow pitchers to decide when they're done on
the baseball mound. They're never gonna give you a straight answer.
They're gonna try to play all nine innings if they can.
No basketball players like except for me, maybe coach, coach,
I need a rest. I'm gassed. If it's crunch time,
you want to be out there playing with your team,
(16:18):
and then you're talking about superstars, ego stars. You think Luca,
by the way, can you imagine can you imagine the
headlines that will come out if Luca subbed himself out
in crunch time, he would be crushed in the media.
Lucas so fat, he needed to call himself out. He
(16:41):
needed What was that player that was like, yeah, I
think I need to There was a football player. It
was uh Anthony Richardson of the Indianapolis Colts. He sat
himself out and he didn't play for another few games.
There was some talk that they would trade his ass.
It was like, what do you mean sub yourself out?
(17:03):
This is why they got rid of player coaches. It's
your job to manage this. It's not your job to
delegate it to the people you're supposed to be managing.
Luca played forty six minutes two days removed from being
so sick he was questionable to play in Game three.
He's still not healed. Ruy's got the Kobe mask on.
(17:24):
He played forty one minutes Lebron James, how is he
still playing basketball? I don't know. He played forty six
minutes on top of forty one in Game three. Lebron
played the last thirty seven minutes and forty six seconds
of Game four. Luca played the last thirty three minutes
and forty nine. What are we talking about? Pundits are
(17:45):
obviously said, they're calling it malfeasons, they're calling it panicked
Magic Johnson. You know it's bad when Magic Johnson's tweeting
about your team in a negative way because you ssud
like great effort from the Lakers lose won sixteen, win thirteen.
Get him next time. No, he says, I don't know
(18:06):
if it was smart to play Lebron and Luca the
entire second half after only having one day of rest
between Games three and four. A stude observation. Magic we agree.
Aunt Edwards put up forty three. He had sixteen in
the fourth quarter, a lot of them against Lebron. He said,
I felt like they were pretty ghassed going down the stretch,
(18:28):
So I just kept trying to keep my foot on
the pedal and keep going. Remember, Anthony Edwards knows Father
time better than anyone, and knows how to exploit Father
Time better than anyone. He came into Phoenix and said,
don't worry about it playing Kevin Durant. They're all men.
(18:50):
We're gonna run him off the floor, That's what we're
gonna do. And we're gonna keep running down, down, down
until they can't go anymore. Why because they're fucking in
their thirties and I'm just barely able to drink. And
that's what he continues to do. Ant is fucking incredible,
by the way, I don't care what people say he's
the face of the league. I don't care. He's so
(19:12):
fun And I think the thing that people like about
him is that he's so problematic off the court and
you still love him. Do you know how good and
likable you have to be to do so many bad
things off the court that are so questionable morally, And
you're like, but I mean she probably was, you know, Like,
(19:37):
that's how good he is, that's how fun he is,
that's how charismatic he is. Like it's like Michael Jordan.
We look past the fact that Michael Jordan was a
womanizer because he was that guy. He was a star.
He lit up every room. You wanted to be in
the warmth of his aura. That's Anthony Edwards. Anthony Edwards
(19:58):
fucking got hood guys where in his basketball shoes with
Gene Shortz. That's how good Anthony Edwards is. The It's insane. Anyway,
he was. He was unstoppable. And give a little credit
to Chris Finch because Chris Finch kept his challenge in
his pocket even though he probably could have used it
(20:18):
when Luca needed. Luka got fouled erroneously and had three
free throws, and he kept it until second ten seconds
left when he went to the skywalker cam. I didn't
even know that was an angle that existed, and I
don't think anyone else, no one can remember ever seeing
this angle before. Anyway, he was falling down and looks
(20:42):
like Lakers were gonna have the ball inexplicably, well not inexplicably,
probably because JJ played all of his starters the entire
second half. He called the time out to give him
a little bit of a rest, and then in that
time out time, Chris Finch said, dude, do let's challenge
that baby. And it turns out that even in a
(21:04):
game that looked like like tackle football, Lebron James Aunt
Edwards's wrist just so when he was already falling and
there was a foul, and now instead of it being
Laker ball, it's Minnesota ball. And instead of them being
down one with the ball, now they're down one and
(21:25):
they have to foul. Fucking insane, So people are calling
it the conspiracy theory. They had no answers for Aunt,
they had no answers for this team. And also, Chris
French coached a masterful game nas Reid. He managed his
minutes because defensively Nas was brutal. Rudy Gobert wasn't playing
(21:46):
that much because defensively he was brutal. And Julius Randall
and all the role players were awesome when Aunt needed
to take the pressure off of himself and swing, swing, swing,
So Julius Randall needed a good playoff series and he's
gotten one. Congratulations. He's probably gonna maybe extend now or
get a new contract from the Wolves. When we thought
he was just a contract filler or just some sort
(22:08):
of trade making the money match situation, and now now
maybe he stays. So now we return to Crypto with
the Wolves on the verge of closing this thing out
in five. The Lakers, I think, are gonna pull out
all the stops. Maybe they'll play all the starters the
entire game. Maybe they'll never come out. If the bench
(22:29):
scores only six points though, it'll be one, two, three,
kN kun and we are in a summer of what
IF's out in LA. But really, like really fast before
we go, the Lakers aren't far far off. They're not.
They just need a center, and they need a three
and D wing, another guy that can play some defense
and shoot some corner threes. That's it. That's not that
(22:52):
hard to get. Those are not important expensive players. They're
important players, not expensive players. So get it together, Lap
this thing goes seven. But I also know it's probably not,
and I I kind of relish in the fact that
the Lakers are about to go home all right. Moving on,
you know what's getting spicy That Nick's Piston series is
(23:16):
fucking I don't know what that is. It's bulleyball. It's
like barely barely basketball. It's elbows to the face it's
elbows to the crotch, it's pushing you down, it's grabbing
your jersey, it's inside your shorts. It's crazy, it's a
rock fight. It's fucking I kind of love it though
(23:37):
in its own way. Bodies are always hitting the floor.
You've got TIBs yelling all the time. You got JB.
Bickerstaff showing why he got another job after he got
fired from the Calves. Like, it's just kind of this
squaring up thing, and it's kind of like Spider Man meme, right,
Like they're both similar in style of how they want
(23:59):
to play. Hey kind of operates like Brunson and he's
like a lot larger. So things got even more elevated.
In game four, Nick stole that one. And when I
say stole it, I don't mean they stole a game
on the road. I mean they stole the game and
everyone knows it. Everyone on the Knicks could barely contain
(24:22):
their glee at the press conferences. Josh Hart was in
the locker room. He's like, yeah, we probably did steal
that game, boosted it. People are very mad about it,
more on that reason than it was stolen. In a second,
just a fun game of basketball, even if it was
(24:42):
in great basketball. It was just up and down. You
didn't have any clue what was gonna happen. The Knicks
ran out to an eight point lead at half, then
they get their doors blown off in the third quarter.
They're down seven, ended up down ten. Going into the fourth,
they're down seven. They end up blasting the Knicks by
eight in the final quarter. The whole thing was just chaos.
(25:03):
A couple of things worth pointing out. I think the
Pistons should have already won this series. They have gotta
be killing themselves for squandering away Game one, Game three,
and game four. They should have won Game one, two, three,
(25:23):
four done. I don't know get I mean, it's just gross.
They had seventeen turnovers, the Knicks had ten. And it's
hard to win when you suck that bad from deep
because they shot twenty four percent from three. This team's
kind of like a better Orlando, you know what I mean,
Like Caid's kind of like if Orlando built a team
(25:46):
to be better in the playoffs, it would be this
version of the Pistons. They could have gotten Malik Beasley,
they could have gotten Tobias Harris, they could have gotten
Tim hardaway and they would be the Pistons. That's what
they would be, like a non three point shooting bully
ball defence your ass off one guy that you go
to in the stretch, that's huge. Can't fucking shoot a lick,
that's kay, that's Pallo. Great take. Anyway, the Knicks finally
(26:10):
got some Karl Anthony Towns minutes that were impactful. He
scored the team's last eight eight points and he had
the go ahead three, which was just ballsy, a step
back three with the end of the game, just swap
in your face. He was also really good on defense
during the stretch. Down the stretch. Sounds like the Knicks
culture has kind of got into his veins a little bit.
(26:31):
I loved him watching watching him try to like bark
at Tobias Harris like he was going to really do anything.
It just kind of like, okay, guy, like your Karl
Anthony Towns, you're just like spicy. But I think the
the Randolph and Cat trade actually worked out, which is cool.
Both players are thriving on their new teams, and both
teams are thriving, which is really cool. But people are
(26:53):
only talking about the final seconds of the game. Let
me set the scene. Detroit's down ninety four, ninety three.
That Karl Anthony Towns three pointer. They were up too.
Karl Anthony Towns hits the three, there's eleven seconds left,
They've got the ball. They get the ball into cad
He's wiggling free at the free throw line, clanks the
(27:13):
fourteen footer. Tim Hardaway Junior grabs the rebounds, so it's chaos.
Pulls back behind the arc to the left, Carter with
Josh Hart closing out. Crash body smack, ball goes nowhere
near the rim. Miles McBride pulls it down. No time left,
Nicks win. Where was the foul? Ref Pistons are going crazy.
J bicker Staff is insane. He's running out on the
(27:35):
floor with the fuck what's going on? Foul should have
been called Hardaway's foul shooting that three. Every game that's
a foul, except for this series, where literally the entire
fourth quarter was just You're watching seven eight possessions in
a row, and you're like, no fowls were called. Kaid's
(27:56):
getting hit in the face, Jalen's getting punched. What are
we doing here? So then they had the pool report
come out and they said there was contact on the shot,
there was the ref submitted it. Three shots should have
been called for Hardaway, who is an eighty six percent
free throw shooter, and that would have been almost certain
(28:17):
Pistons win. That's hard. That's hard if you're a fan
of the Pistons, which I don't. I mean, I think
it's a pretty bad name of a team. Honestly, I
just I get it, but I don't get it anyway.
It's impossible to settle a fan base down assuage them
when they've been fucked as badly as they were fucked
(28:39):
there in a very critical game at home, and like
to get no home cooking is crazy. The difference between
two to two and three to one is the largest
difference between going home. That's the difference. It's the it's
the oh, we're right in it, we're exactly the same,
and then we're fucked. We're fine, we have to dig
(29:00):
ourselves out of a hole. We're probably going home. And
I love this Pistons team. They're scrappy, they're fun. If
it wasn't for a bad five minute stretching Game one,
they probably and this horrible rough car, they're probably up
three to one. But you did have two chances to
win at home, and you fucking blew them both. So
go back to MSG and get one, and then go
(29:21):
back home and get one of those three chances at home.
You just need to win one at three and then
you've now got Game seven and who knows and who knows. Also,
Isaiah Stewart's supposed to be back for Game five. The
hostility is going to be there. He will kill someone,
the blood will be drawn no matter what, though, I
(29:41):
think the Pistons and the Pistons fan base are going
to be feeling salty about this Game four for a
long long time, to the levels that like Buffalo Bills
fans talk about these are the pieces of trauma that
play and play in your mind over and over when
you're eighty. So hopefully, actually hopefully the Pistons can come
back and win this series, all right. Moving on the
(30:06):
Clippers and Nuggets. What a series. Outside of the fact
that these games have all been largely competitive. Unless the
Rockets win tonight and tie the series to two, there's
only really one close series. That's the Clippers Nugget series.
And really, which is crazy is that that series feels
(30:27):
the least close of them all, which is nuts. This
thing should have been done already. The Clippers should have
swept the Nuggets, and yet it's two two. That's the
heart of a champion. That right there is why Yokich
is the MVP. This series has been so fucking fun.
Jokic has been awesome. He finds new ways to delight
(30:51):
and entertain. And even when Jokic, and we'll get to
this in a second, even when Yokich makes the worst
play of his life in a crucial moment while they're
melting down, somehow it turns into the best assist he's
ever made. We'll talk about that in a second. Kawhi
is playing better than any other individual player that I
(31:13):
think maybe is playing in the playoffs right now. These
two teams clearly don't like each other. Remember they played
each other in the bubble and they didn't like each
other then, And in fact, there was a three to
one situation going on in there too, so down to one,
the Nuggets put it all on the line so much
(31:35):
so that I was like, Oh, this isn't gonna be fun.
Nuggets are up twenty something points and all five starters.
David Adlman was like, Yeah, this bench is trash. I'm
gonna play everybody. Forty two forty three minutes, the bench
scored like four points, not like four points. They scored
exactly four points, which is less than the Lakers had
bench points. So everyone's killing JJ, but nobody's really talking
(31:58):
about David Alman, which really is a testament to the
fact that Michael Malone was correct that this freaking bench
is awful, especially Russ was in street clothes. But the
reason why is because the Nuggets won. They started the
fourth quarter, Nuggets did up twenty two. They had it
in hand, but I was watching the melt and I'm like,
(32:21):
they can't possibly come back in time, can they? And
it was like, no, Well, if there's no defense and
no friction or resistance, you can score eleven buckets in
four minutes, there's no problem. The Nuggets just stopped scoring,
they stopped defending. The Clippers were doing everything. All of
(32:42):
a sudden, Kawhi went on a heat check. All of
a sudden, we've got Bogie climbing over Jokic to steal
a ball from him of his rebound, and then an
up round layup. That's the best game I've ever seen
Bogie play in his life. We've got Zubach playing insane.
Harden has still been playing regular season Harden. It was
(33:06):
a thirty four to fourteen run, thirty four to fourteen run.
They had a lead ninety seven ninety six with a
minute left. It was incredible and Jokic, Jokic did his credit,
was getting fucked up by Zubox and he was losing
his mind. He's going on the baseline. The one that
really got me. He's on the baseline. He goes around,
(33:28):
tries to drive and they call it an offensive foul
on him. What on him? Zuboch fucking hooked him? And
then he does the same exact move to one possession
later they call it a defensive foul on Zubox. Anyway,
that one was an incredible Then there was another time
(33:48):
he goes against Zubox and he has to do the
spin pivot reverse pivot, gets fouled. They'll call it two points.
So the game was just back and forth and back
and forth and back and forth. At the end, Zubox
was incredible. Like I said, Yokic came down, made one
of those unstoppable twelve footers that he's famous for. He
goes up by two Zubox tipped a misshot with eight
(34:11):
seconds left to tie the game, and it all comes
down to Jokic. You've seen it a bunch. They call
it the Somber shuffle. He's drap so Kawhi shockingly decides
to blitz Jokic just perfectly double teams them, and Jokic
(34:32):
just looks like he kind of panics. What are you doing, Yokic?
Why are you going backwards? Why are you retreating? Why
aren't you trying to split the defense? Are you afraid
of whi? What's going on? Hey? Try to figure it out.
No steps back, clearly not gonna make the shot. As
soon as he went up, I knew this is bullshit. No,
you're gonna lose it overtime. This is fucked. Everyone stops breathing,
(34:55):
and then all of a sudden, Yokic airballs it. And
then you have to be there. You had to have
seen it in real time to believe what happened. Aaron Gordon,
who missed the dunk in Game three that cost the
Nuggets to game elevated under a second left on the airball,
grabbed the miss ball with two hands, dunked it simultaneously
(35:18):
with the clock turning red, no more time on the clock,
and all the clippers because it was in La, They're like, no, no,
he didn't have have time. No, No, crowd goes insane.
Only two people were unmoved, Kawhi and Yokic. Yolkish looked
like they lost put his hand on his head and
just walked away. He seemed pretty convinced the dunk was
(35:40):
no good. The replay crew dissected it like it was
a shipwreck with the lock Ness monster trapped inside. It
was so close. Even the announcers were like, I don't
think on this angle he got it. Oh, I think
on this angle, maybe he got it. It would have
been a tall order to overturn the shot that was
(36:01):
called good all the We got the skycam again. We
got the Luke skywalker cam and it was pretty clear
that Gordon's hands are off the ball with about one
hundredth of the second left on the hundred one hundredth
of a second left on the clock, maybe a thousandth
of a second, And like, also doesn't matter if his
(36:24):
hand is on it, if it's inside the cylinder. To me,
that kind of is like dicey, you know, his hands
inside because he dumped it. That's why his hands touching
the ball is because it's still going. I don't know,
my goodness. It was the first game winning walkoff Duncan
playoff history. I thought the valley oop was one, but
(36:47):
that happened also against the Clippers, by the way, and
had everything. That game was so awesome. I would watch
that game again live. I'd love six more of those
quiet twenty four, nine to two Yoakis was crazy, thirty
six twenty one. There's swings in momentum. It was a movie.
It was a movie, had everything that's good about playoff basketball.
There were no plays off. What a game? What did
(37:09):
I just fucking see? Cannot wait for Game five Tuesday
night time. For some news around the league. We begin
with Memphis, who got put to get bed by in
four games by OKC. John Morant claims that if he
didn't get hurt, the series would be two two because
he thinks that he figured them out. He could have
(37:32):
figured him out. I think maybe remember the grizzlieslaw a
thirty point lead when John went down with the hip injury,
fell apart, then gave the thunder everything that they had
in Game four without their star, lost one seventeen one
fifteen before going to Memphis, people had basically handed the
(37:54):
Thunder the title or at least the win in the series.
But Yoah probably is onto something. John might have been
onto something he said, I hadn't figured out going out
Game three. Not being able to play was frustrating because
that win right there could have made this totally different.
I felt like we would have been on the way
to OKAC series tie to to right now. Okay, See,
(38:17):
fans are pretty mad about those jaw comments. They believe
this is the best team in NBA history, and they
do not like John Morant and OKAC is out there
quietly slowly alienating fan bases one after another. Uh And
I think also what will be fun to monitor is
whether that's true making OKA see a half court offense?
(38:37):
Is that something you can exploit? That is the one
weakness and the one question that I have about them,
And I cannot wait to see how this unfolds. Moving
on a couple of small stories that we're covering, Kevin Garnett,
one of the OG's of the NBA, despite being pretty young,
is fed up with new generation of Hoopers. Me too.
He said this on the podcast The Ticket and the truth.
(38:59):
The younger generation doesn't want accountability, but to get better,
you've got to be told what you don't do well.
That's the only way to fix it. The whole idea
of coaching is lost. When you give somebody everything, they
stop listening, they stop growing. If I can't coach you,
what am I doing? I think he's talking about Trey Jung.
I do I think that's what he's talking about. Interesting question,
(39:21):
and I'll probably address it in the offseason. A lot
of things are changing because of NIL. If you're a
top earner in NIL basketball, you can make ten million
a year, four years, forty million. When you go to
the NBA and you have forty million, maybe more, how
much do you want to be coached? How much do
you want to be told you suck? Betch you fucking suck,
(39:44):
suck my dick, bitch. That's like what I feel like
these young I don't mean it, you know what I mean,
But that's kind of what I think my mentality would be.
If I'm twenty two, I've got forty million, and I've
got David Adelman as my coach or some guy I
do not respect, And I think that kind of makes
players uncoachable. Honestly, Andrew Wiggins never had dry because Andrew
(40:04):
Wiggins got rich and he was good enough and his
talent was high, and he never put the work in.
That's what people said about Karl Anthony Towns as well,
just skating on ability, not wanting to grind like Jimmy
Butler does. Not everybody wants to grind like Alex Crusoe.
Alex Crucier said this about the G League. A big
(40:25):
reason guys get stuck in the G League is they
don't realize the position they're trying out for. It's like
going to a job interview thinking you're gonna be the
CFO of the company and they're looking for someone to
clean the bathrooms. Listen, can't get a millionaire to clean
the bathroom if I'm somebody that's made forty million, and
they're like, Yo, just rebound the fucking ball. Don't don't ever,
(40:48):
don't ever put the ball on the floor. That's what
we don't want you to do. You can't fucking dribble, bitch,
You can't fucking you know what I mean. Finally, moving
on all NBA Center Andrew Boget had a wild interview
and dropped this gem, which is controversial and I'm not
sure if it's true, but I've never heard this tidbit before.
(41:10):
According to Andrew Boget, the Warriors almost traded Steph. Andrew
Bogett said it came down to choosing either Steph or
Monte Ellis. I was really close to someone that I
was doing treatment there with for my ankle. I was
already out for the season, and they were like, yeah,
it was either Monte or Steph, and we decided to
go with Monte based on health. So I was like,
(41:31):
all right, But then you look in hindsight, the Warriors
made this genius move to free up Steph Curry and
the whole narrative that follows it could have easily gone
the other way. It's a sliding Doornoe moment. They'll deny it,
but I know it for a fact. Can you imagine
how bad the Warriors would have getten bought and got
killed if Steph Curry would have turned into Steph Curry
and they traded him for Andrew Boget. Oh my goodness,
(41:53):
Steph and Milwaukee. Anyway, that's all the time. After this
episode of The Heat Check, come back Friday for new episode
and check out the feeds for past episodes which drop
like Stark players getting clipped under the basket. Do not
forget to follow the heat check all playoffs. That means download,
subscribe and tell your friends and follow us on TikTok
at this heat checking at Trista Creek on Twitter, Instagram
(42:15):
and threads met his new social media media platform. Thank
you to Wyatt, Thank you to y'all. Happy playoff season, folks.
We'll see you next time.
On this episode of the Heat Check the first round
of the playoffs. They're cooking. We've got the tea for you.
We've got also some massive news. Damian Lillard goes down
with what they believe to be a torn achilles. We
talk about what that might mean for the end of
(00:22):
Giannis and Milwaukee, because that's pretty much where that's headed.
We can kind of know that if it is a
torn Achilles. We talk about the Los Angeles Lakers so
sad going down three to one to the Wolves. There
is now some panic in Lakerland. Cheer up though you
used to have Luca. The Pistons get absolutely screwed late
in the game against the Knicks. We also dig into
(00:44):
the Pacers and whether they actually have a shot against Cleveland.
Plus we get into some news from around the league.
So much to talk about. Wyatt dropped that motherfucking beat
that should be Rihanna. You're listening to the Hottest, the
Hottest be a podcast out here. I said what I said.
It's just up cut. Okay. So, first and foremost, remember
(01:13):
in October when we had Kamala and she it was
like I've got the heart of a tiger, and it
was like Beyonce and it was like the NFL and
it was this awesome World Series and everybody was like,
(01:34):
the NBA sucks now. The NBA's ratings are stinky, and
it's like, well, we do have a presidential election happening,
and there's lots of coverage on that. That's taking people's
heads away from I don't know, game two of the
regular season of the NBA. I don't know, We've got
like show hey o Taani fucking doing crazy ass shit. Yeah,
(01:59):
like that's probably more like it. But no, everybody's like,
this is the death of the NBA. The NBA sucks now,
Ratings suck. It's just a highlight culture. Everybody wants to
say mean things about players and that's why ratings are down.
These young kids, they don't want to watch games, They
just want to see TikTok. Well well, well, well, well well,
(02:23):
the NBA's opening playoff weekend shattered the records. All eight
game ones have averaged at least four point four million viewers,
seventeen percent increase from last year. That's the highest opening
weekend viewership in twenty five years. So to put that
(02:43):
into perspective, we haven't seen what we're seeing now since
before Michael Jordan was with the Washington Wizards, Adam Silver
he must be going on his little hop skipping a
jump around, talking on shows, being like, hey, you know,
he must be reveling in this, he must be loving this.
(03:06):
And he still keeps talking. Do you see him talking.
He's like, oh, yeah, I think we need to talk
about why people love the NBA more. I actually fucking agree.
I think that's really what makes me someone that you
should listen to around the NBA because I fucking love this.
I will sit in a summer league gym from noon
(03:27):
to ten pm in the Las Vegas sun watching bub
Carrington low lights. Anyway, We've got awesome games. Physicality has
been great. I know that people are saying that it's
turned into football. I kind of like that. We've got
people shooting still a million threes. We're hitting them too,
splash by splash. We have dramatic comebacks. We have last
(03:51):
second shots that we have to be reviewing for thirty
minutes to see when did his pinky last touch the
basketball and did the the buzzer go off? Yet we
have unexpected upsets and even in the games, even in
the series where it's a sweep. We've still had largely
outside of the Calves beaten that fucking Miami Heat ass
(04:15):
largely pretty competitive games. Even the game games between the
Thunder and the Memphis Grizzlies are pretty damn competitive. So
these are the things that captivate us parody in the
sport Stars, physicality, drama, it's all there. What also is
there as we continue to just get these injuries because
(04:36):
the whole football thing, we've got non contact injuries, and
we've got contact injuries. Obviously John Morant and Jimmy Butler
we know about them. They're contact based injuries. And now
we have another one. Probably we could have seen it coming,
given the fact that Dame Lillard was coming back from
deep vein thrombosis, which is a blood clot in his calf.
He rushed back to try to get back for the playoffs,
(04:57):
which I actually think is pretty remarkable. I think that
that's commendable and probably something that he felt inside himself
he needed to do for the Bucks to really see
what they had because last season and last playoffs, Giannis
was injured and now Dame has been gone for the
last month, so we don't really know what we have
(05:17):
for the Milwaukee Bucks. But now non contact in Game
four looks like Game towards Achilles, which is when he
strained his achilles twelve months ago. Same series, same game,
Game three, and then Game four, so it's not the
same game, different game, but right around the same time.
(05:38):
And now the Bucks go down. Well, of course, when
Damian Lillard gets injured, it was kind of going to
be just like Game one, which is an ass kicking
a demolishment. Now Bucks are down three to one, and
to that, I say, probably going to mark the end
of an era because the Bucks have put all their
(06:02):
chips in the pot for Yannis. Yannis has continued to
tell this organization, if you do not surround me with
winning players and I feel we are not competitive, I
will leave. And so that has forced the Bucks to
do things that maybe they wouldn't have otherwise done, aka
trading their best on ball defender on the perimeter, at
(06:23):
least for Damian Lillard, a guy who can score. And
what we thought was going to be this tremendous pick
and roll offense, this potent pick your poison situation that
you could not defend now was really just not what
we've seen. We've kind of seen he go, I go,
he go, I go. It's been okay. It's worked ish,
but not nearly to the extent of what we thought
(06:43):
it was going to be, probably because each player was
not who we thought that they were going to be,
which is committed to winning and with any circumstance, is
just that winning is what matters. No with Jannis, Giannis
doesn't want to be a screener. It's fucking Giannis onto Coo.
He's third in MVP voting. I don't want If I
(07:04):
was honest, I probably wouldn't want to screen fucking Damian
little leader either, Like I why not? Why would I
do that? He wants to ball in his hands. He
really wants to be a guard if we're if we're
being honest, he wants to cross fucking people up, go
behind the back, step back, three in your eyeball, and
then if you come to if you lay off of him,
(07:24):
he's gonna shoot the three and if you come too close,
he wants to yam and take your soul. That's what
Jannis wants to do. Jannis wants to be chet Holmgren.
Jannis wants to be Victor Webbin Yama, which would be
one hell of a fucking cousin Victor Anto Takombo. So
and Dame Dame probably doesn't want to do things that
he's supposed to do, which is the play defense. Besides
(07:46):
against Tyre's Halliburton, Dame has largely been not a great defender,
best Blazer in franchise history, a guy that wanted to
win no matter what. Wasn't willing to do everything it
took to win, but was willing to change teams to win,
which is where I think we are now with Giannis.
So what happens now? I think we're all kind of
(08:09):
like wondering the future. For the Bucks, it kind of
feels like they're headed for a breakup. It kind of
feels like it's over because you traded everything and everything
for Dame, and you traded a lot for Drew. So
those picks to the Pelicans, you still owe them. They
have not all come to roost yet. There's swaps here,
(08:33):
there's picks here, there's unprotected ones here in twenty eight
y oh, the Blazer's a first round pick unprotected, and
I think you get the worst of the picks with
the Wizards because you traded for Kyle Kuzma. There's just
a lot happening, and this team as a whole without Dame,
because Dame's going to now be out an entire year
(08:54):
at thirty four years old, which means you'll probably be
thirty six by the time he plays an NBA game. Yeah,
maybe not, but maybe, And so you're left without the
ability to rebuild. You're paying everybody a whole lot of
fucking money. You paying Kyle Kuzma twenty something million for
the next two years each, You're paying Brook Lopez a
lot of money. You're paying Bobby Portis a lot of money,
(09:18):
and you're not winning any games. So the question that
I have, I guess, is like, when does Giannis come
to this conclusion? Is he already there are there places
he wants to already go? Does it even matter where
he wants to go? It's fucking heartbreaking for the city
(09:38):
of Milwaukee. You got your ring and now you're probably
headed for the ice age. Really, because when I was
a kid, the Bucks were pretty much irrelevant. After the
Rayaliten era, you add Kareem and Oscar robertson, which I
don't think any fan of this podcast ever ever seen
with their two eyes, maybe but really not in the eighties,
(10:01):
you had some consistent playoff appearances, no finals appearances. In
the nineties, we had a very challenging era. Seven consecutive
that's my era. Seven consecutive losing seasons from ninety one
to ninety eight, that's my era. Then you get Ray Allen,
Glenn Robinson, Sam Cassell. You go to the Eastern Conference finals.
(10:23):
But that's kind of like what the Blazers were in
twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, Like you got some players, but
like nobody really thinks you're gonna win that title. And
then after you get Yannis, now we have this era.
Without Yannie, you're probably now largely an irrelevant team. And
that's probably the only thing, though, you can really do
to get back to any semblance of relevancy, because like,
(10:46):
who cares if you have and maybe maybe you do care,
maybe you do care, But if you have Yiannis and
you know, this team will never do anything besides maybe
be a first round exit, and brook Lopez is going
to retire and some and Kuzman's gonna languish, and maybe
you'll figure out a way to so you don't even
have second round picks. Maybe you signed some guys or
something is that enough? Is that enough for you to
(11:12):
just go and see Jannis on a random Tuesday. Maybe,
but you probably have to trade him, and he probably
wants to be traded. And that's a super pickle situation
because Jannis probably thinks his better situation is out there
and the teams are gonna be probably trading for your
honest might not be any good. They might be in
the beginning of their rebuild as well, like the Brooklyn Nets,
(11:34):
for example. The team I'd like to see because I'm messy,
the team i'd like to see Janis go to right
fucking now is the New York Knicks, because what we
know about the Knicks is that they have a ceiling.
That's all I'll say. They have a ceiling. They have
a coach with the ceiling, and I'm very curious to
(11:56):
see how Joannis and Brunson would function the kind It
feels like a little Dame Ish. Brunson likes the ball
in his hands. Johannis liked the ball in his hands,
so maybe not. I'm very sad. Though I'm sad for Dame,
I'm sad for the Bucks. As a Blazer fan, I
am kind of relishing at the same time, knowing that
(12:19):
this thing will not result in the title. That feels
like a little bit of like maybe a little too
early to say that, but I'm feeling that emotion as well.
But tough situation when you can't even beat the Pacers,
really and now we kind of go on and say,
we're about a game away from all of these rumors
(12:41):
starting to fluctuate and circulate. So, Dame, I hope you
get better. And to the Bucks front office and ownership,
it's a good thing you extended your GM John Horst
for another three years because he's got his work cut
out from Oh yeah, Also, the Game five is coming
(13:02):
on Tuesday, which we already know what's gonna happen. Decisions
will be made. Let's talk about these Lakers, a team
that was kind of like the Bucks for a while,
like just they've got their superstar, they've got another co star,
they don't have a lot of picks, we know they
probably can't do much. And then they get Luca somehow
(13:24):
someway right, and they have JJ Reddick, and JJ Redick
deservedly has gotten his flowers this season. He's navigated a
very rocky, tumultuous season to the point where maybe we
thought the Lakers would be a playing team again, and
then they find a way into being the third seed
in the West, could have even been the two seed
in the West, and they were at times, what JJ,
(13:48):
make it make sense? What are you doing? Baby? What
are you doing? Baby? He did something no coach has
ever done in at least twenty five years in a
playoff game. JJ played all five of his starters the
entire second half with no substitutions, none, not one, not
a single bench minute to be found. Couldn't find one
(14:10):
look out of the sea kitchen, not one, no, sir,
And in a must win game on the on the road,
the Lakers not only blew a twelve point fourth quarter lead,
they blew multiple double digit leads throughout that game. I
was listening to this on the radio, and the Lakers
broadcaster was incensed. He was like, I've never seen this
(14:32):
team blow four leads of this magnitude. They lose to
the Wolves one to sixteen, win thirteen, and now they
go back home in a must win game down three
to one. Make it make sense, JJ, I guess you're desperate.
I guess if I had to make it make sense,
it was like I feel I'm out of options and
(14:54):
I need to do something. Minnesota scored on their last
three possessions and held the Lakers to no scores. A
lot of people are blaming the fact that Lebron looked
cooked on JJ and wondering why JJ didn't go to
the bench and give him a little bit of a
I don't know, like a little minute before the TV
timeout kind of thing, like we know the TV timeouts
(15:17):
come in. She give him a blow for thirty forty
five seconds, pause and let them chill for five six minutes.
Team is up twelve in the fourth quarter. You must
have been scurred. This is what he said. No, it
wasn't planned. We just made the decision at halftime. Oh okay,
that's not a planned thing to play five guys in
the entire second half. We asked them at the beginning
of the fourth quarter. We told them we had two
(15:37):
extra timeouts. If you need a sub, let us know.
Those guys gave a lot. If you need a sub,
let us know what is that. If you need a sub,
let us know. You can't let players decide when they
come in and out the floor. What any more than
(15:57):
you can allow pitchers to decide when they're done on
the baseball mound. They're never gonna give you a straight answer.
They're gonna try to play all nine innings if they can.
No basketball players like except for me, maybe coach, coach,
I need a rest. I'm gassed. If it's crunch time,
you want to be out there playing with your team,
(16:18):
and then you're talking about superstars, ego stars. You think Luca,
by the way, can you imagine can you imagine the
headlines that will come out if Luca subbed himself out
in crunch time, he would be crushed in the media.
Lucas so fat, he needed to call himself out. He
(16:41):
needed What was that player that was like, yeah, I
think I need to There was a football player. It
was uh Anthony Richardson of the Indianapolis Colts. He sat
himself out and he didn't play for another few games.
There was some talk that they would trade his ass.
It was like, what do you mean sub yourself out?
(17:03):
This is why they got rid of player coaches. It's
your job to manage this. It's not your job to
delegate it to the people you're supposed to be managing.
Luca played forty six minutes two days removed from being
so sick he was questionable to play in Game three.
He's still not healed. Ruy's got the Kobe mask on.
(17:24):
He played forty one minutes Lebron James, how is he
still playing basketball? I don't know. He played forty six
minutes on top of forty one in Game three. Lebron
played the last thirty seven minutes and forty six seconds
of Game four. Luca played the last thirty three minutes
and forty nine. What are we talking about? Pundits are
(17:45):
obviously said, they're calling it malfeasons, they're calling it panicked
Magic Johnson. You know it's bad when Magic Johnson's tweeting
about your team in a negative way because you ssud
like great effort from the Lakers lose won sixteen, win thirteen.
Get him next time. No, he says, I don't know
(18:06):
if it was smart to play Lebron and Luca the
entire second half after only having one day of rest
between Games three and four. A stude observation. Magic we agree.
Aunt Edwards put up forty three. He had sixteen in
the fourth quarter, a lot of them against Lebron. He said,
I felt like they were pretty ghassed going down the stretch,
(18:28):
So I just kept trying to keep my foot on
the pedal and keep going. Remember, Anthony Edwards knows Father
time better than anyone, and knows how to exploit Father
Time better than anyone. He came into Phoenix and said,
don't worry about it playing Kevin Durant. They're all men.
(18:50):
We're gonna run him off the floor, That's what we're
gonna do. And we're gonna keep running down, down, down
until they can't go anymore. Why because they're fucking in
their thirties and I'm just barely able to drink. And
that's what he continues to do. Ant is fucking incredible,
by the way, I don't care what people say he's
the face of the league. I don't care. He's so
(19:12):
fun And I think the thing that people like about
him is that he's so problematic off the court and
you still love him. Do you know how good and
likable you have to be to do so many bad
things off the court that are so questionable morally, And
you're like, but I mean she probably was, you know, Like,
(19:37):
that's how good he is, that's how fun he is,
that's how charismatic he is. Like it's like Michael Jordan.
We look past the fact that Michael Jordan was a
womanizer because he was that guy. He was a star.
He lit up every room. You wanted to be in
the warmth of his aura. That's Anthony Edwards. Anthony Edwards
(19:58):
fucking got hood guys where in his basketball shoes with
Gene Shortz. That's how good Anthony Edwards is. The It's insane. Anyway,
he was. He was unstoppable. And give a little credit
to Chris Finch because Chris Finch kept his challenge in
his pocket even though he probably could have used it
(20:18):
when Luca needed. Luka got fouled erroneously and had three
free throws, and he kept it until second ten seconds
left when he went to the skywalker cam. I didn't
even know that was an angle that existed, and I
don't think anyone else, no one can remember ever seeing
this angle before. Anyway, he was falling down and looks
(20:42):
like Lakers were gonna have the ball inexplicably, well not inexplicably,
probably because JJ played all of his starters the entire
second half. He called the time out to give him
a little bit of a rest, and then in that
time out time, Chris Finch said, dude, do let's challenge
that baby. And it turns out that even in a
(21:04):
game that looked like like tackle football, Lebron James Aunt
Edwards's wrist just so when he was already falling and
there was a foul, and now instead of it being
Laker ball, it's Minnesota ball. And instead of them being
down one with the ball, now they're down one and
(21:25):
they have to foul. Fucking insane, So people are calling
it the conspiracy theory. They had no answers for Aunt,
they had no answers for this team. And also, Chris
French coached a masterful game nas Reid. He managed his
minutes because defensively Nas was brutal. Rudy Gobert wasn't playing
(21:46):
that much because defensively he was brutal. And Julius Randall
and all the role players were awesome when Aunt needed
to take the pressure off of himself and swing, swing, swing,
So Julius Randall needed a good playoff series and he's
gotten one. Congratulations. He's probably gonna maybe extend now or
get a new contract from the Wolves. When we thought
he was just a contract filler or just some sort
(22:08):
of trade making the money match situation, and now now
maybe he stays. So now we return to Crypto with
the Wolves on the verge of closing this thing out
in five. The Lakers, I think, are gonna pull out
all the stops. Maybe they'll play all the starters the
entire game. Maybe they'll never come out. If the bench
(22:29):
scores only six points though, it'll be one, two, three,
kN kun and we are in a summer of what
IF's out in LA. But really, like really fast before
we go, the Lakers aren't far far off. They're not.
They just need a center, and they need a three
and D wing, another guy that can play some defense
and shoot some corner threes. That's it. That's not that
(22:52):
hard to get. Those are not important expensive players. They're
important players, not expensive players. So get it together, Lap
this thing goes seven. But I also know it's probably not,
and I I kind of relish in the fact that
the Lakers are about to go home all right. Moving on,
you know what's getting spicy That Nick's Piston series is
(23:16):
fucking I don't know what that is. It's bulleyball. It's
like barely barely basketball. It's elbows to the face it's
elbows to the crotch, it's pushing you down, it's grabbing
your jersey, it's inside your shorts. It's crazy, it's a
rock fight. It's fucking I kind of love it though
(23:37):
in its own way. Bodies are always hitting the floor.
You've got TIBs yelling all the time. You got JB.
Bickerstaff showing why he got another job after he got
fired from the Calves. Like, it's just kind of this
squaring up thing, and it's kind of like Spider Man meme, right,
Like they're both similar in style of how they want
(23:59):
to play. Hey kind of operates like Brunson and he's
like a lot larger. So things got even more elevated.
In game four, Nick stole that one. And when I
say stole it, I don't mean they stole a game
on the road. I mean they stole the game and
everyone knows it. Everyone on the Knicks could barely contain
(24:22):
their glee at the press conferences. Josh Hart was in
the locker room. He's like, yeah, we probably did steal
that game, boosted it. People are very mad about it,
more on that reason than it was stolen. In a second,
just a fun game of basketball, even if it was
(24:42):
in great basketball. It was just up and down. You
didn't have any clue what was gonna happen. The Knicks
ran out to an eight point lead at half, then
they get their doors blown off in the third quarter.
They're down seven, ended up down ten. Going into the fourth,
they're down seven. They end up blasting the Knicks by
eight in the final quarter. The whole thing was just chaos.
(25:03):
A couple of things worth pointing out. I think the
Pistons should have already won this series. They have gotta
be killing themselves for squandering away Game one, Game three,
and game four. They should have won Game one, two, three,
(25:23):
four done. I don't know get I mean, it's just gross.
They had seventeen turnovers, the Knicks had ten. And it's
hard to win when you suck that bad from deep
because they shot twenty four percent from three. This team's
kind of like a better Orlando, you know what I mean,
Like Caid's kind of like if Orlando built a team
(25:46):
to be better in the playoffs, it would be this
version of the Pistons. They could have gotten Malik Beasley,
they could have gotten Tobias Harris, they could have gotten
Tim hardaway and they would be the Pistons. That's what
they would be, like a non three point shooting bully
ball defence your ass off one guy that you go
to in the stretch, that's huge. Can't fucking shoot a lick,
that's kay, that's Pallo. Great take. Anyway, the Knicks finally
(26:10):
got some Karl Anthony Towns minutes that were impactful. He
scored the team's last eight eight points and he had
the go ahead three, which was just ballsy, a step
back three with the end of the game, just swap
in your face. He was also really good on defense
during the stretch. Down the stretch. Sounds like the Knicks
culture has kind of got into his veins a little bit.
(26:31):
I loved him watching watching him try to like bark
at Tobias Harris like he was going to really do anything.
It just kind of like, okay, guy, like your Karl
Anthony Towns, you're just like spicy. But I think the
the Randolph and Cat trade actually worked out, which is cool.
Both players are thriving on their new teams, and both
teams are thriving, which is really cool. But people are
(26:53):
only talking about the final seconds of the game. Let
me set the scene. Detroit's down ninety four, ninety three.
That Karl Anthony Towns three pointer. They were up too.
Karl Anthony Towns hits the three, there's eleven seconds left,
They've got the ball. They get the ball into cad
He's wiggling free at the free throw line, clanks the
(27:13):
fourteen footer. Tim Hardaway Junior grabs the rebounds, so it's chaos.
Pulls back behind the arc to the left, Carter with
Josh Hart closing out. Crash body smack, ball goes nowhere
near the rim. Miles McBride pulls it down. No time left,
Nicks win. Where was the foul? Ref Pistons are going crazy.
J bicker Staff is insane. He's running out on the
(27:35):
floor with the fuck what's going on? Foul should have
been called Hardaway's foul shooting that three. Every game that's
a foul, except for this series, where literally the entire
fourth quarter was just You're watching seven eight possessions in
a row, and you're like, no fowls were called. Kaid's
(27:56):
getting hit in the face, Jalen's getting punched. What are
we doing here? So then they had the pool report
come out and they said there was contact on the shot,
there was the ref submitted it. Three shots should have
been called for Hardaway, who is an eighty six percent
free throw shooter, and that would have been almost certain
(28:17):
Pistons win. That's hard. That's hard if you're a fan
of the Pistons, which I don't. I mean, I think
it's a pretty bad name of a team. Honestly, I
just I get it, but I don't get it anyway.
It's impossible to settle a fan base down assuage them
when they've been fucked as badly as they were fucked
(28:39):
there in a very critical game at home, and like
to get no home cooking is crazy. The difference between
two to two and three to one is the largest
difference between going home. That's the difference. It's the it's
the oh, we're right in it, we're exactly the same,
and then we're fucked. We're fine, we have to dig
(29:00):
ourselves out of a hole. We're probably going home. And
I love this Pistons team. They're scrappy, they're fun. If
it wasn't for a bad five minute stretching Game one,
they probably and this horrible rough car, they're probably up
three to one. But you did have two chances to
win at home, and you fucking blew them both. So
go back to MSG and get one, and then go
(29:21):
back home and get one of those three chances at home.
You just need to win one at three and then
you've now got Game seven and who knows and who knows. Also,
Isaiah Stewart's supposed to be back for Game five. The
hostility is going to be there. He will kill someone,
the blood will be drawn no matter what, though, I
(29:41):
think the Pistons and the Pistons fan base are going
to be feeling salty about this Game four for a
long long time, to the levels that like Buffalo Bills
fans talk about these are the pieces of trauma that
play and play in your mind over and over when
you're eighty. So hopefully, actually hopefully the Pistons can come
back and win this series, all right. Moving on the
(30:06):
Clippers and Nuggets. What a series. Outside of the fact
that these games have all been largely competitive. Unless the
Rockets win tonight and tie the series to two, there's
only really one close series. That's the Clippers Nugget series.
And really, which is crazy is that that series feels
(30:27):
the least close of them all, which is nuts. This
thing should have been done already. The Clippers should have
swept the Nuggets, and yet it's two two. That's the
heart of a champion. That right there is why Yokich
is the MVP. This series has been so fucking fun.
Jokic has been awesome. He finds new ways to delight
(30:51):
and entertain. And even when Jokic, and we'll get to
this in a second, even when Yokich makes the worst
play of his life in a crucial moment while they're
melting down, somehow it turns into the best assist he's
ever made. We'll talk about that in a second. Kawhi
is playing better than any other individual player that I
(31:13):
think maybe is playing in the playoffs right now. These
two teams clearly don't like each other. Remember they played
each other in the bubble and they didn't like each
other then, And in fact, there was a three to
one situation going on in there too, so down to one,
the Nuggets put it all on the line so much
(31:35):
so that I was like, Oh, this isn't gonna be fun.
Nuggets are up twenty something points and all five starters.
David Adlman was like, Yeah, this bench is trash. I'm
gonna play everybody. Forty two forty three minutes, the bench
scored like four points, not like four points. They scored
exactly four points, which is less than the Lakers had
bench points. So everyone's killing JJ, but nobody's really talking
(31:58):
about David Alman, which really is a testament to the
fact that Michael Malone was correct that this freaking bench
is awful, especially Russ was in street clothes. But the
reason why is because the Nuggets won. They started the
fourth quarter, Nuggets did up twenty two. They had it
in hand, but I was watching the melt and I'm like,
(32:21):
they can't possibly come back in time, can they? And
it was like, no, Well, if there's no defense and
no friction or resistance, you can score eleven buckets in
four minutes, there's no problem. The Nuggets just stopped scoring,
they stopped defending. The Clippers were doing everything. All of
(32:42):
a sudden, Kawhi went on a heat check. All of
a sudden, we've got Bogie climbing over Jokic to steal
a ball from him of his rebound, and then an
up round layup. That's the best game I've ever seen
Bogie play in his life. We've got Zubach playing insane.
Harden has still been playing regular season Harden. It was
(33:06):
a thirty four to fourteen run, thirty four to fourteen run.
They had a lead ninety seven ninety six with a
minute left. It was incredible and Jokic, Jokic did his credit,
was getting fucked up by Zubox and he was losing
his mind. He's going on the baseline. The one that
really got me. He's on the baseline. He goes around,
(33:28):
tries to drive and they call it an offensive foul
on him. What on him? Zuboch fucking hooked him? And
then he does the same exact move to one possession
later they call it a defensive foul on Zubox. Anyway,
that one was an incredible Then there was another time
(33:48):
he goes against Zubox and he has to do the
spin pivot reverse pivot, gets fouled. They'll call it two points.
So the game was just back and forth and back
and forth and back and forth. At the end, Zubox
was incredible. Like I said, Yokic came down, made one
of those unstoppable twelve footers that he's famous for. He
goes up by two Zubox tipped a misshot with eight
(34:11):
seconds left to tie the game, and it all comes
down to Jokic. You've seen it a bunch. They call
it the Somber shuffle. He's drap so Kawhi shockingly decides
to blitz Jokic just perfectly double teams them, and Jokic
(34:32):
just looks like he kind of panics. What are you doing, Yokic?
Why are you going backwards? Why are you retreating? Why
aren't you trying to split the defense? Are you afraid
of whi? What's going on? Hey? Try to figure it out.
No steps back, clearly not gonna make the shot. As
soon as he went up, I knew this is bullshit. No,
you're gonna lose it overtime. This is fucked. Everyone stops breathing,
(34:55):
and then all of a sudden, Yokic airballs it. And
then you have to be there. You had to have
seen it in real time to believe what happened. Aaron Gordon,
who missed the dunk in Game three that cost the
Nuggets to game elevated under a second left on the airball,
grabbed the miss ball with two hands, dunked it simultaneously
(35:18):
with the clock turning red, no more time on the clock,
and all the clippers because it was in La, They're like, no, no,
he didn't have have time. No, No, crowd goes insane.
Only two people were unmoved, Kawhi and Yokic. Yolkish looked
like they lost put his hand on his head and
just walked away. He seemed pretty convinced the dunk was
(35:40):
no good. The replay crew dissected it like it was
a shipwreck with the lock Ness monster trapped inside. It
was so close. Even the announcers were like, I don't
think on this angle he got it. Oh, I think
on this angle, maybe he got it. It would have
been a tall order to overturn the shot that was
(36:01):
called good all the We got the skycam again. We
got the Luke skywalker cam and it was pretty clear
that Gordon's hands are off the ball with about one
hundredth of the second left on the hundred one hundredth
of a second left on the clock, maybe a thousandth
of a second, And like, also doesn't matter if his
(36:24):
hand is on it, if it's inside the cylinder. To me,
that kind of is like dicey, you know, his hands
inside because he dumped it. That's why his hands touching
the ball is because it's still going. I don't know,
my goodness. It was the first game winning walkoff Duncan
playoff history. I thought the valley oop was one, but
(36:47):
that happened also against the Clippers, by the way, and
had everything. That game was so awesome. I would watch
that game again live. I'd love six more of those
quiet twenty four, nine to two Yoakis was crazy, thirty
six twenty one. There's swings in momentum. It was a movie.
It was a movie, had everything that's good about playoff basketball.
There were no plays off. What a game? What did
(37:09):
I just fucking see? Cannot wait for Game five Tuesday
night time. For some news around the league. We begin
with Memphis, who got put to get bed by in
four games by OKC. John Morant claims that if he
didn't get hurt, the series would be two two because
he thinks that he figured them out. He could have
(37:32):
figured him out. I think maybe remember the grizzlieslaw a
thirty point lead when John went down with the hip injury,
fell apart, then gave the thunder everything that they had
in Game four without their star, lost one seventeen one
fifteen before going to Memphis, people had basically handed the
(37:54):
Thunder the title or at least the win in the series.
But Yoah probably is onto something. John might have been
onto something he said, I hadn't figured out going out
Game three. Not being able to play was frustrating because
that win right there could have made this totally different.
I felt like we would have been on the way
to OKAC series tie to to right now. Okay, See,
(38:17):
fans are pretty mad about those jaw comments. They believe
this is the best team in NBA history, and they
do not like John Morant and OKAC is out there
quietly slowly alienating fan bases one after another. Uh And
I think also what will be fun to monitor is
whether that's true making OKA see a half court offense?
(38:37):
Is that something you can exploit? That is the one
weakness and the one question that I have about them,
And I cannot wait to see how this unfolds. Moving
on a couple of small stories that we're covering, Kevin Garnett,
one of the OG's of the NBA, despite being pretty young,
is fed up with new generation of Hoopers. Me too.
He said this on the podcast The Ticket and the truth.
(38:59):
The younger generation doesn't want accountability, but to get better,
you've got to be told what you don't do well.
That's the only way to fix it. The whole idea
of coaching is lost. When you give somebody everything, they
stop listening, they stop growing. If I can't coach you,
what am I doing? I think he's talking about Trey Jung.
I do I think that's what he's talking about. Interesting question,
(39:21):
and I'll probably address it in the offseason. A lot
of things are changing because of NIL. If you're a
top earner in NIL basketball, you can make ten million
a year, four years, forty million. When you go to
the NBA and you have forty million, maybe more, how
much do you want to be coached? How much do
you want to be told you suck? Betch you fucking suck,
(39:44):
suck my dick, bitch. That's like what I feel like
these young I don't mean it, you know what I mean,
But that's kind of what I think my mentality would be.
If I'm twenty two, I've got forty million, and I've
got David Adelman as my coach or some guy I
do not respect, And I think that kind of makes
players uncoachable. Honestly, Andrew Wiggins never had dry because Andrew
(40:04):
Wiggins got rich and he was good enough and his
talent was high, and he never put the work in.
That's what people said about Karl Anthony Towns as well,
just skating on ability, not wanting to grind like Jimmy
Butler does. Not everybody wants to grind like Alex Crusoe.
Alex Crucier said this about the G League. A big
(40:25):
reason guys get stuck in the G League is they
don't realize the position they're trying out for. It's like
going to a job interview thinking you're gonna be the
CFO of the company and they're looking for someone to
clean the bathrooms. Listen, can't get a millionaire to clean
the bathroom if I'm somebody that's made forty million, and
they're like, Yo, just rebound the fucking ball. Don't don't ever,
(40:48):
don't ever put the ball on the floor. That's what
we don't want you to do. You can't fucking dribble, bitch,
You can't fucking you know what I mean. Finally, moving
on all NBA Center Andrew Boget had a wild interview
and dropped this gem, which is controversial and I'm not
sure if it's true, but I've never heard this tidbit before.
(41:10):
According to Andrew Boget, the Warriors almost traded Steph. Andrew
Bogett said it came down to choosing either Steph or
Monte Ellis. I was really close to someone that I
was doing treatment there with for my ankle. I was
already out for the season, and they were like, yeah,
it was either Monte or Steph, and we decided to
go with Monte based on health. So I was like,
(41:31):
all right, But then you look in hindsight, the Warriors
made this genius move to free up Steph Curry and
the whole narrative that follows it could have easily gone
the other way. It's a sliding Doornoe moment. They'll deny it,
but I know it for a fact. Can you imagine
how bad the Warriors would have getten bought and got
killed if Steph Curry would have turned into Steph Curry
and they traded him for Andrew Boget. Oh my goodness,
(41:53):
Steph and Milwaukee. Anyway, that's all the time. After this
episode of The Heat Check, come back Friday for new episode
and check out the feeds for past episodes which drop
like Stark players getting clipped under the basket. Do not
forget to follow the heat check all playoffs. That means download,
subscribe and tell your friends and follow us on TikTok
at this heat checking at Trista Creek on Twitter, Instagram
(42:15):
and threads met his new social media media platform. Thank
you to Wyatt, Thank you to y'all. Happy playoff season, folks.
We'll see you next time.
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