Adam Auslund on with Roggin & Rodney

Adam Auslund joins Roggin & Rodney on AM570 to talk about Paul George's injury, the Clippers season, officials and Lakers.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Clippers and Thunder Tonight, we've gotthe pregame show six thirty. You're on
the radio station, The Salty aAdam Austlin will be behind the mic,
Salty. How are you? Whydid you take that big side before getting
to me there? Like, oh, now I gotta get to Adam after
trying to fudge the numbers a minuteago, Fred, what's wrong with you?
There's nothing wrong with me, Adam. I'm just saying, you know,

(00:20):
it's nine games to go for theClippers. I know you're very concerned.
Yeah, I am concerned. ButI heard you were on one today,
so now I'm concerned about that too. And I just witnessed it with
how you treated Kevin exactly exactly.I just want to get the accurate numbers
from Kevin. That's it, sincef and Win ratings rogan with accurate numbers,

(00:41):
Since when you cook the books allthe time. You know what,
there's an old there's an old linein research. Tell the secret, Adam.
You give me a two, I'llgive you four. It's pretty simple.
You can fix those numbers anyway you'llwant them, all right, Adams,
let's go Paul George, Boy,that's a huge loss. And he's
basically done for the regular season.Could he come back to the playoffs.

(01:02):
We'll see, because earlier today Ipracticed, Terrence Man said he's in good
spirits and he's already started a rehab, so I would take that as a
good sign. Now they said reevaluationin two to three weeks. The playoffs
are about a little over three weeksaway, so it's possible if he responds
fast enough. Who knows when theinjury first occurred. The first thing I

(01:22):
thought of was Jannas Denna Coopo andthe way he hyper extended his knee in
the twenty twenty one Eastern Conference Finals. I think that was at the end
of Game four. He missed aweek now. He's the Greek freak for
a reason. And I don't knowwhat their evaluation or diagnosis was and how
it compares to Paul George. Everybody'sdifferent, of course, but if you
were looking for a comp that wasthe guy. The problem is he's one

(01:45):
of the freakiest athletes of all time, and he had it when he was
twenty six. Paul George is oldernow at thirty two. Clippers just called
it a right knee sprain. Wedon't know which ligament, but earlier today
hearing that from Terrence Man was encouragingand look overall, with how horrific the
injury looked that night, I meanthe two one three era flashed before my

(02:05):
eyes. I started to think itwas just going to be defined by major
knee injuries, first to Kawhi Leonard, then to Paul George, and for
that to happen to someone who hadbeen through so much with the compound fracture
back in twenty fourteen for Team USA, it was scary to see that.
So considering it doesn't look like it'sseason ending necessarily or that it could bleed

(02:27):
into next year and him not beingable to go to start next season healthy,
I mean, that's huge. Youjust want to see him out there
healthy. He just had a threesixty dunk minutes before that happened, at
about the four minute mark of thefourth quarter, and it kind of reminded
me of you know, Kawhi Leonardhad the huge dunk on Derrick Favors in
Game four in the twenty twenty onesecond round, right before he did his

(02:50):
knee. So there was a lotof curse talk post game, which I
don't love but people calling in talkingabout that the Clippers being snake bit and
they've had bad luck. But Idon't believe in those things. And this
was good news, This was positive. This was uplifting to know that he's
reevaluated, reevaluated in two or threeweeks. Yeah, and it's it's like

(03:14):
you, you are, You're rootingfor them to be all in all healthy
for a change, to see exactlywhat they can do. Adam, I
think that's what everybody's been waiting for, and they haven't been that, and
then all of a sudden they getthis with Paul George. But prior to
his injury, there was some inconsistencywith their play anyway going forward, and
there were some concerns, weren't they. No, there's no doubt coming out

(03:37):
of the All Star break, youlose your first five with Russell Westbrook now
and you're trying to figure out rotationsand lineups and guys playing new roles because
you brought in Russ and he's beenpretty much playing thirty minutes a night.
There was an adjustment period there.Then they won four straight, then they
lost one one one, and thenlost to Okac and that was a huge

(03:57):
loss. It was kind of overshadowof because the game ended up being secondary
before the health of Paul George andlooking into that knee issue. But that
was a bad loss, especially theway it ended in that fourth quarter.
That was one of the worst endingsto a game I've ever seen where Kawhi
Leonard doesn't even end up getting ashot off. There was some miscommunication.
It looked like between he and MarcusMorris. Did he want a screen?

(04:20):
Did he want Marcus just to clearout and take his man with him so
Kawhi could go one on one withDorton have room to operate. It was
tough to tell, but they've underachievedfor the most part this season because when
you look at it this way,Kawhi Leonard has played forty four games this
year. That's forty four more andhe played all of last season Paul George
and I think is at fifty six. He only played a little over thirty

(04:44):
last year. And they're in dangerof having a worst record at the end
of the season than they did lastseason, an entire year without Kawhi Leonard.
Now, they're fortunate that the Westis down and they're still just a
half game back of the Phoenix Sunsfor the four season, but they've had
a lot not go their way.They've had some missteps along the way,
and they just haven't built up anyconsistency whatsoever. And with nine games remaining,

(05:09):
they have to find themselves. Now. It's there, the personnel is
there to be a very good defense, and they have shown flashes, but
there have been very few games thisseason where they put it together for forty
eight minutes. For example, Tuesdaynight against Okay See, they come out
like gangbusters, They're up eighteen tofour, they go the last seven minutes
of the first quarter not making afuel goal, and somehow they trail by

(05:30):
one after getting off to that hotof a start. And that has happened
a lot this year where teams moreoften than not are coming back on them.
When the Clippers used to be theteam that responded when they faced adversity,
and nobody's had more twenty point comebacksthan them over the last three seasons
during this era, so it's beena little strange to see. But they
have not built up enough consistency andthat's the most concerning thing for me as

(05:54):
you head into the playoffs now,and it looks like you're gonna end the
last nine games likely without Paul George. You just gotta figure it out now
on the fly. You just gottapay play the best players and hope they
respond out there. Hey, andwe just real quick for him. Sorry,
we were talking about officiating in theDallas It was the Dallas State game.
But then I was thinking about that, and I'm going back to to
the technical fouls that were given toTerence Man, Like, what do we

(06:18):
do as a player, How doyou even know what you can do?
Say anything anymore? When you've gotofficials that are wearing their emotions so hard
on their sleeves, you can't sayanything, You can't do anything. Been
strange over the last two or threeweeks now it's like officials gone wild.
We expect that from Scott Foster andhis reputation, but it kind of started

(06:40):
with him. He kicked out ScottyBarnes in a game with Toronto, and
nobody knew it had happened. Eventhe other officials are like, wait,
you just you just kicked him outof this one. And then you have
a game the other night where Ithought, and it was about a four
minute mark of the second quarter,Kawhi gets a technical for arguing a call

(07:00):
that turned out or he turned outto be right about he was fouled on
that play. The official later apologizedto him. The problem is the damage
was done because then Terrence Mann saidsomething and he gets two technicals in the
span of three seconds. He's nota guy that's known to be hot headed.
Kawhi Leonard, that was the fourthtechnical he's ever had in his career.

(07:21):
These guys don't have reputations, soI thought they overreacted. I haven't
complained about the officials all season long, but I thought that was one of
the poorest officiated games of the seasonthat I've seen with the Clippers involved.
There was a lane violation called,There was a double foul called. There
was that played by Dort where PaulGeorge got called for an offensive foul after

(07:43):
crossing him over. Dort goes tothe floor, kicks his legs out and
they called the foul on Paul George. It was absolutely the bizarre and speaking
of theazar, Mike Votello on Valley'sSports had a beautiful rant about it,
and I thought he spoke brilliant aboutthe officials injecting themselves into the game,
overstepping their bounds, taking things toofar, too personal. Because you look

(08:07):
at the pool report postgame reporters havea chance to talk with the officials about
some of these calls. They citedKawhi Leonard clapping aggressively at the official in
his face. Well, clapping aggressivelyis already laughable. Now if you do
do it right in their face,that is grounds for a technical. The
problem is he was ten feet away. The videos there, it wasn't demonstrative,

(08:31):
it wasn't over the top. Andthen they said Terrence Man was aggressively
wagging his finger. It wasn't themiddle finger. But Terrence Man gets the
second technical what looked to be himdropping an expletive after getting the first technical.
So he's upset after getting the firstone and you kick him out right,

(08:52):
then things escalated far too quickly,far too fast. The only thing
I can say is there was somechirping going on early on in that ball
game by the Clippers. They didn'tlike some of the calls, and there
were some bad calls, and Ithink the rest were just trying to get
control of things and trying to nipit in the bud right there. But
in a game of that magnitude withtwo teams that close in the standings,

(09:13):
and it's still the first half ofthis one in Terrence Man just had a
great run in that second quarter witheight points, and you kick a guy
out. It was wild to see. It was too much. Nobody's coming
to the arena wearing a jersey withan official's name on the back, unless
you're me, because I do havea Lakers jersey with a six on it
for Game six Lakers Kings two thousandand two Western Conference Finals that says Dick

(09:37):
Bavette on the back because he basicallyplayed for the Lakers in that game.
But I'm crazy. Nobody else isgoing to a game wearing a jersey with
an official's name on the back.We're not there to see them. Let's
watch the players and see how thingsplay out. Didn't it was Ben Taylor,
I believe the official Ben Taylor.They'd had so many complaints about him.
Fred van Fleet made some comments aftera game that they have now basically

(10:01):
removed him. Yeah, yeah,from role of crew chief. I've never
heard that. Well, I neverhave seen something happen. At first,
I raised an eyebrow because I didn'tsee the play live, And I just
saw the tweet from Mark Cuban inthat game between Dallas and the Golden State
Warriors last night, and I thought, oh, he's exaggerating properly. He's
probably going over the top. Itwent against the Dallas Mavericks, that they

(10:22):
had won the ball game, he'dbe saying nothing, No, that play
is egregious for them to just givethe ball to the Golden State Warriors when
there isn't a Dallas Maverick beyond halfcourt to contest it. Obviously, they
had no idea that they had overturnedthe call during the time out saying it
was the Golden State Warriors ball andthey just gave him a free two points

(10:45):
on the inbounds play in a gamethat was that tight down the stretch.
That can't happen. So that protestis very much warranted by Mark Cuban the
Dallas Mavericks. Yeah, but wouldn'tyou think at that point when you saw
that we talked about it earlier,somebody would have say, hey, wait,
somebody from Dallas wore on, waita minute, stop or what are
the officials would have gone, holdon, do you guys do the lead

(11:09):
official take control. Yeah, thatcan't happen. Nobody knew what what the
situation was. Even the Golden StateWarriors looked a little bit surprised, Like
looking around, gonna be any DallasMavericks here, We're just gonna get a
free bucket, Like you wanna talkabout cherry picking. That was insane.
I've never seen anything like it.All right, before you get out of
here, Lakers nine games to go. Austin Reeves played well again last night.

(11:31):
You don't know anything about Lebron.Maybe he'll be back, maybe he
won't. He gave us the updateat least on Twitter, Yeah, which
is we'll see I'm working out.I'm working out. Austin Reeves, though,
really has been a breath of freshair for them this year. And
he's a restricted free agent. Don'tyou think they got to take care of
business with him before he goes outand starts to listening offers. He's gonna
get the bag. They're gonna learnfrom their mistake. Well, excuse me,

(11:56):
his name's up in my mind.Caruso Alex Caruz will go in to
Chicago, and it sounded like hejust wanted them to match the offer they
didn't and they could have. Thatwasn't a situation where they would have lost
THHT because they chose Caruso. Theycould have kept both those guys. They
just had to dip into the luxurytax and they went on the cheap.

(12:16):
I don't think that's gonna happen again. With Austin Reeves and the way he's
been playing last ten games, gettingeighteen per game, fifty six percent shooting,
and the Lakers post All Star Breakwithout Lebron James eight and six,
They've they've been able to more thanjust tread water. They got a winning
record over their last fourteen games,and a lot of that is because Caruso

(12:37):
went for his career high eleven assistslast night, just had the big thirty
five point career night. Scoring wise, he's been incredible. He got the
start. He's been one of myfavorite players to watch. It's just funny
to see him out there all shooksand post games every night. He's doing
something that's a career high for himselfand he's always surprised by it. So

(12:58):
it's a great story. It's greatto see. But he's a bawler.
He's crossing guys over. He tookJannis and Dena Kompo Defensive Player of the
Year and crossed him into the nextcentury like he's He's an unbelievable player.
For his ascension, it's been arevelation for the Lakers to have a guy
like that, And sometimes injuries openup opportunities for other players out there,

(13:20):
and you see what you have.So if you're looking for silver linings,
if you're a Clippers fan or aLakers fan, sometimes that is the end
result. Somebody plays above their headfor a while and you realize what you
have on this roster. Six thirtytonight pre game six thirty pre game Freddie
Clar's Countdown Salt t A Adam AsstonAdam, thanks for hanging Maretta go Adam.
Glad you got that number of timeright. Roy Sports