Jared, how are you, man? I'm doing fine. How are you?
I'm excellent. I guess the biggest story outside of actually having an elimination last night was obviously that interaction between Giannis Atteracumpo and John Halliburton. So far, the NBA hasn't punished anybody. Do you think this is kind of a, hey, just make sure it doesn't happen again? Or do you think we're going to see a little punishment coming down for the Pacers? At least come down hard on fans who have interactions with players like this. I'm not sure I've seen them go so far as actually punishing a player's spot. I'm trying to remember what happened when Timorant got into it with the Lakers last year.
I can't remember off the top of my head, but I would imagine that whatever happened there, you might see something similar here. Well, Jared, when you talk about the future outside of Giannis having to fend off people's fathers, do you think Giannis' time in Milwaukee is done? If it was me and it was like guiding my career, I'd probably be like, hey, you know what, it's time to try to explore something different. It's hard to say, like, you spend so long in one place, you win a championship there, you stuck it out through what other people might have described as situations where you might want to move on. It's hard to begrudge him either choice here. If he decides, hey, you know what, I want to stick it out, I want to see if we can rebuild another championship level team around me, he has obviously earned the right to do that and anything more. And if he says, you know what, I put in 11, 12, 13, whatever it is at this point, years here, and we won a title, like, he's obviously earned the right to do that as well. It's hard to try to get inside the mind of this guy. Obviously, it's only even been a couple days since they lost and a couple more since they tore his Achilles.
I would imagine he's going to take a little while to sit down and figure it out. But you know, the Bucks, they got a decision to make to you know, you obviously don't want to move on from a player who is probably the best player in the history of the franchise. But it's also tough to see a way for them to sort of rebuild the team around him over the next couple years that doesn't take, you know, a multi year period. It's hard to see the move out there that has them come anywhere close to contention next season.
Jared Dubin is here with us from the Double Dribble podcast. If Giannis is to move on, do you think there's an existing team where he could kind of fit in or start a new that would make the most sense? I mean, nobody's got more assets than Oklahoma City, right? Like, it's hard to imagine anybody out there copying whatever offer that team to put together. You look at other teams with a lot of draft capital and young players like Houston, obviously, which has had a lot of struggles during this series against the Warriors creating offense. You put Giannis on that team, all of a sudden, the struggles creating offense aren't quite so difficult. I'm trying to think off the top of my head of teams that have a whole lot of assets.
Those are the two that come to mind at the forefront. Jared, you talk about the Oklahoma City Thunder, all of the assets that they have. They're currently awaiting the winner between the Denver Nuggets and the Clippers losing last night. And so now Denver has a 3-2 series lead. Who do you think is going to ultimately escape that series and take on the Oklahoma City Thunder? At this point, I would probably roll with Denver. I took the Nuggets in seven before the series and I cowardly switched to the Clippers even after game four.
I felt the same way about the series the whole time. The Clippers have these matchup advantages and they have the better team, but the Nuggets have Nikola Jokic and they have home court advantage. And now they only have to win one of the next two games, one of which will be at home and they have the best player in the series. It feels like the Nuggets at this point should find a way to advance and trusting the Clippers is never really something that you want to do either.
Jared, you talk about the Nuggets potentially advancing. Tonight, both the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Golden State Warriors, actually the Warriors are going to get started in a few minutes. The Warriors have a chance to eliminate the Rockets and the T-Wolves got a chance to get rid of the Lakers. Which team do you think has the best chance of actually turning things around from a 3-1? In terms of the series as a whole, I'd probably take the Lakers just because they have Luka Dosic and LeBron James. But I also don't feel quite as good about their chances of winning tonight, if that makes sense. I would put my trust in those two guys more to stage a 3-1 comeback than I would in the young guys and the Rockets just because they've been having so much trouble scoring in their series. But I do feel better about Minnesota on a game-to-game basis right now than I do about Golden State. We've seen these Warriors-Rockets games, each one of them has been extremely close. Whereas with the Timberwolves and the Lakers, it's felt like Minnesota has sort of taken control of the series and sort of controlled the pace of play and the style of play throughout the entire series and just happened to have come out on the wrong side of one of the four games so far.
Jared Dubin is here with us from the Double Dribble Podcast. When you take a look at whoever the Thunder might face next, who's their biggest challenger amongst the teams that are left? I mean it's hard to say anybody is a bigger challenger than Jokic.
He's the best player in the world and he is a problem that nobody can solve and he is the ultimate problem solver himself. That him going up against the best events in the league is I think what everybody wants to see. Going up against the best team in the league is what everybody wants to see. That would be obviously as much must-see TV as this Clippers-Nugget series has been. And then beyond that on the other side of the bracket, I kind of think it's Minnesota just because of the size and the length and the athleticism.
That seems like the one team that might have a chance to match Oklahoma City and those departments. Jared, all of that is going down in the Western Conference. Here at the East, we know that the Pacers knocking off the Bucs. They're going to take on the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Cavaliers haven't necessarily been able to just fully handle the Pacers. The Knicks and Pistons are beating the hell up on out of each other while the Celtics wait. Are we pretty much bound for a Cavaliers-Celtics matchup in the East?
I think so. It feels a little dismissive of the Pacers, but the Cavs have been just as much of a machine this season as Oklahoma City has, or pretty close to it at least. The way that offense works, it's unbelievable just watching them continuously make the right decision and make the extra pass every trip down the floor. You saw it even against the Heat team that has a pretty good defense. There was just no stopping Cleveland, even in two games with Darius Garland out. Indiana's defense over the second half of the year has been significantly better than it was early on in the season. We saw last year that the Pacers were able to turn it up a little bit defensively in the playoffs. Throughout this series against the Bucs, basically they were able to play pretty good defense except against Giannis. But it's a different animal when you come up against that Cleveland offense. I just feel better about that unit than any other unit in that series.
That's what sort of leads me to take them on. On the other side of the bracket, Boston is going to be the Knicks if that's the matchup. We've seen it throughout this season. Four games, three blowouts, and those games weren't even close. Even the one close game, it didn't really feel like the Knicks ever had it fully in control. Just to get to the next round, Detroit's got to win two in a row, including another one at the Garden. It doesn't feel like they have what it takes in terms of the actual talent on the court to put up with the Celtics either.
Jared Dubin here with us on the JR Support Brief Show. Who do you favor ultimately for the championship? Would it be the defending champs, the Celtics? I took the Thunder over the Celtics before the start of the season, and given what's happened over the course of 82 games and then another six or seven throughout these last couple weeks, I feel like I should just stick with what I have before the start of the season.
So I'll go with the Thunder. Jared, one team that we are no longer going to see this season, the Miami Heat, we saw them get the boot from the Cleveland Cavaliers. What changes could they make to stay in contention or do the Miami Heat have to rip things down?
They'll never rip things down as long as Pat Riley is in charge there. You know, him and Andy Ellsberg, they're always going to try to stay a move or two away from contention at worst, and it's really difficult to see what their moves are. A lot of it hinges on whether they pick up these non-guaranteed contracts for Terry Rozier and Duncan Robinson, because if they don't, all of a sudden their only real tradable pieces are Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro, who I would imagine are not going to be moved. And then Andrew Wiggins, and that seems more just like salary ballast, and all of a sudden they don't have a ton of assets that are super enticing for teams if they're trying to make that big move that leaves them back into contention. So I feel like they've got to pick up these salaries that are not great and sort of use those plus some smaller assets to get players that are a little bit better and try to slowly level their way up rather than making the one big move, because I don't think they're going to have the best offer for whoever's out there. Somebody's going to be able to top what they can put on the table.
Jared, final question for you. Tonight we talked about it. This could be the final game that we see this season for LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers. We saw them bring in Luka Doncic in February. At one point in time for a stretch, they were the best defense in the NBA following that trade. They brought in Mark Williams and then said no thank you with the physical. What could the Lakers do this offseason to continue to build off of what they did by bringing in Luka? I think that the Mark Williams direction was headed in the right direction at least. They got to get at least one or two pick and roll dive threats to play with Luka and to play with LeBron really. You've seen throughout their respective careers that the best way to build around them is essentially the same. Give them a big time dive threat on the pick and roll and then spot the rest of the court with shooters.
That's the best way to go. They're sort of halfway there right now. They have the guys that can play on the wing and the guys that can shoot, but they don't have the big man that can roll to the rim or protect the rim on the opposite side. That's kind of what's holding them back in this series.
For me, that would be the top thing to go get. Jared, we got plenty to get into. We got two games that are coming up. We're minutes away from the start of the Rockets and Warriors. We got the Timberwolves and Lakers. Is there anything else going on in the league that we should wait on or is it just all on the court? Man, I hope it's all on the court. That's what's interesting to me. We've seen throughout this playoffs so far.
That's interesting enough to captivate just about anybody's attention. Hey, no doubt about it. Hopefully no more dads jumping on the court as well, Jared.
Hopefully we're done with that too. Hey, Jared, tell everybody where we can follow all of your work, man. Yeah, thank you for having me.
First of all, I appreciate it. It's a double dribble podcast. Me and Mo Docchio is a former video coordinator for the Spurs, the Clippers, and the Australian men's national team.
We're doing that twice a week. And then I got my own website last night in basketball.com newsletter three times a week and a bunch of interesting stuff on video coming up there as well. Awesome. Jared, thank you so much for the insight. Enjoy all of the games. We'll catch you down the line, okay? Sounds great. Thanks for having me. Enjoy the games.
