The NBA Finals begins tonight and Hayes thinks the Nuggets have it in the bag

Not out of gold here today.

I am Hayes Permar filling in, but you bet. It's been a while since I've sat in this chair. I was a little worried that my key card might not work when I came in the door.

I heard that's a problem that's been going around. But it is my first time, I believe, sitting in this show with the Graham Hill producing, and I've heard you all over my radio airwaves, Graham. For better or for worse? For better, for sure, because I'm going to do the, when you're a host, you start taking credit for other things that happen that you aren't necessarily, don't deserve the credit for.

It's like when you're a coach, anybody that passes you through your program automatically becomes part of your coaching tree, right? I've got to say, you and I had lunch together a few months ago, and at that point, you had only produced maybe a little bit. You didn't know if you'd ever see me again. In the producer's chair. And then, you're doing prime time, you're doing afternoons, you're all over the place.

Quite the come up. And clearly, I think last time I was here, you were wearing college shirts. Now you're totally falling into radio slouch mode. You're wearing t-shirts of bands. Like, I don't care what people think of me when I walk in here. Yeah, there you go, right there.

I absolutely love it. So, it is always good to be here on the Adam Gold show. We're going to talk about where Adam Gold is. Where is Adam Gold? Because I don't want to know the answer. I want to try and maybe determine it.

I could probably check his Twitter feed and figure it out. But I know that there are two big events happening in the Triangle area. And I know folks are listening all over the state, but we are located here in Raleigh, North Carolina. There's two big, major, professional sporting events happening in the Triangle right now.

And Adam Gold could find both of them equally as compelling. I don't know if I said that right, sorry. But the Corn Fairy Tour used to be the Rex Open, now the UNC Health Championship going on at Raleigh Country Club this year.

Not up at Wakefield. So, an interesting twist there. And also, the Soccer Tournament. This is like a huge, big, international deal.

Obviously, we'll talk about why it's sort of quirky. It's not like, you know, nearly on the scale of obviously World Cup or Champions League and all that stuff. But there's involvement from players all over the world. And there will be interest, again, not at the level of a majors soccer event.

But this is the first of its kind, so we don't really know how interesting it will be. And I could see Adam Gold spending a full day, and maybe drinking a couple beers, at either one of those events. That is very plausible. It would also be plausible to find Adam Gold spending the morning at golf and the afternoon at soccer.

That sounds right up his alley. So, we will see. And then tomorrow, maybe he flips. Well, I don't even know if they're playing soccer in the morning.

So, we will see. My hope is, if I make enough stupid statements about these sporting events, that he is no doubt dissected on this show, and studied in person, and talked to the coordinators for, and can name players in the field. I love a good Corn Fairy Tour event. But to me, it's like minor league baseball. You're there for the love of the game, not because you know every player on the roster, right? It's different from golf.

Not Gold. He can tell you which Corn Fairy guys we're probably going to see on the PGA Tour next year. He can tell you who the actual good players are, and who the kind of just so-so players are at the soccer tournament.

I cannot. I am here because I try and keep things light, and have a good time when Adam Gold's not here. Keep you plugged in a little bit. Try and give you the headlines of the day, and things like that, and have some fun.

And so that's what we will do as we get things out of the gate. Let's start with some real live, actual sports happening tonight. The NBA Finals, Miami Heat, in Denver, in the elevation, taking on the Denver Nuggets. Now, if you listen to Vegas, if you listen to almost anyone, this is a blowout.

The Denver Nuggets have been rolling through pretty good teams. The Miami Heat have obviously been underdogs the entire playoffs, so they're comfortable in this position. But it's like, people are like, nah, I don't think the Miami Heat can pull it off. And they do, and they're like, nah, I don't think they can. Nah. But this time we really mean it though.

I do not think they can pull it off. Nikola Jokic, I know we've been seeing a lot more heat. By we, I mean the casual fan, right? East Coast has been playing a lot more basketball because the Nuggets have been sweeping people and haven't played in like ten days. Meanwhile, the Miami Heat played what became a pretty compelling series against the Boston Celtics. So we feel like we know the Heat better. We're like, nah, I can see Jimmy Butler doing what needs to get done.

Stealing Game 1, getting a split there, getting a split back in Miami. All of a sudden we're down to a three game series. Anything can happen? No.

It is not going to happen. We'll talk to Brian Geister a little bit later. I'm sure he can give me some reasons why the Heat are going to do work. Do okay, and I'm sure Jimmy Butler does have pride enough to put a team on his back and take a game or two.

However, a couple things. One, the Nuggets are just straight up better. They got more, better, bigger players than the Miami Heat do. Without Tyler Herro, although I don't know, I should be paying more attention to this. Tyler Herro, there was talk that maybe he could be back if the Finals are played, but I haven't heard anything. I thought I heard that he was warming up before Game 7 the other night. Obviously he didn't play, but he was just out in the court pregame warming up.

Just trying to get back into the rhythm and things. So we'll see. The Miami Heat might want to take a page from the Carolina Hurricanes and not insert him back into the playbook.

My good friend Josh Goodson will join us a little bit later. He said, not to divert into the Hurricanes here, but there was something about the Hurricanes just played a really good series without Thabo Terevinen. Now obviously, on paper, you know that Thabo Terevinen, where he fits in your hierarchy of players, and that being the case, you put him back in the lineup, right? But there's something about playoffs, like when you get on a hot goalie, if you got a team in a lineup that's working, maybe you don't put Thabo Terevinen in. So maybe the Miami Heat, even if Tyler Herro is ready, you kind of leave him as a bench player, work him in slowly, and then maybe he almost becomes like a mid-series addition if they get it to where it becomes your security deposit.

Yes, exactly. But coming back and putting him right in to whatever his role was beforehand, nah, I think you roll with the guys that have been rolling right now. But yeah, so if you have not been paying attention or you haven't had a chance to see the Nuggets, and I won't pretend like I've seen them as much as Brian Geister, who we'll talk to later, but Jokic is just going to eat the Heat alive. Now that doesn't mean the Heat are going to do the exact same things they did against the Celtics. They effectively played zone defense many times. I'm a big fan of changing defenses. I feel like you've got to have man-to-man at your heart and your core, but I like switching up different looks and not letting a team get comfortable just doing the same thing against your man-to-man.

Love that. That ain't going to work against the Nuggets. Jokic will just destroy you. And then I also think he is going to destroy Bam Adebayo.

I really like Bam Adebayo. I think he's a great player. But A, I feel like we always think he's like 6'11 or 7 feet, and I feel like he's more like 6'9 with long arms, and he plays like a bigger dude than he is, and Jokic is going to expose that.

I can't say anything new about Jokic. He looks like the greatest YMCA player of all time because he doesn't jump, but he doesn't so much blow by you as much as he bodies by you because you've got to be up in his face. Anything inside the three-point line, and sometimes even the three-point line, he might just switch the shot if you're not in his face. If you're guarding him that close, and he's got you off balance with the shot fake, and then he's driven towards the hole, it's not that he blows by you like a quick guard might, but once he gets a shoulder in front of you, you can't catch back up to get in front of the dude. I think he's going to cause Bam Adebayo a lot of trouble. I think he's going to cause foul problems. Jimmy Butler is a great defender, right?

Certain big dudes, or big dudes like a Kevin Durant, who are big but they don't play like sinners, Jimmy Butler can sort of jump in and guard for a possession or two, right? He can't jump in and do anything against Jokic. I mean, he'll just absolutely get destroyed.

I think that he'd have no answers, and I'm totally ready to be proven wrong on that, so we'll see how it goes. But I'm with everybody who thinks it's going to be a blowout. I looked at the... To win the series, Miami Heat are plus 350, Nuggets are minus 460. So you put down a $500 bet on the Nuggets, and you're barely winning 100 bucks. That's how much they're favored. And in fact, I saw the odds for how many games will be in the series, and I won't give you the exact numbers, but basically the highest odds were it to be a five-game series, Vegas was putting the most weight on it being a five-game series. And then after that it was like a six-game series, then maybe a four, then maybe a seven.

But like, five-game series is what they're betting on. Shout out to Hayes Permore, he just did my Place My Bet segment right there for me. He just made my picks right there. I didn't say which one you picked, I just said what the odds were. We'll find out who you picked in the Place Your Bet segment. Which also, by the way, behind the curtain here, I'm the guest, so sometimes I gotta move things around. So just a heads up, we may have to switch some times around on Place Your Bet. Some line changes?

That's right. I love me a line change, I love me a blitz in the rundown. I'm inserting Tevo Taravaden into the lineup midstream here. I love how you also said we might not talk a lot about the Carolina Hurricanes.

And now it's never the first segment. Like I said, once I heard Rod Brind'Amour in the opener, I got sad. I know he talked to the media yesterday, and anytime he talks to the media he does a special talk to his boy Adam Gold. Adam Gold should have been selfless and said, why don't you talk to Hayes tomorrow? Rod loved to talk to me once a year. Rod said yesterday, bring me on and talk about other sports.

What are we doing? We could have had him on and talked about the North Wilkesburg race or anything. I might call Rod tomorrow, see if he's out at the soccer tournament. If Rod wants to talk other sports, we will get him on tomorrow. We can't have him on twice in one week.

And it's too soon, I'll just get sad again. Alright, for you actual sports fans here, let's let the sports people talk about it. This is the NBA Finals. Here's Nuggets head coach Mike Malone on how the team managed a 10-day layoff before playing again. We used the first couple of days to give our guys some rest, but I have to give our players a tremendous amount of credit. These guys, not knowing who we were playing until the other night, have been locked in, focused.

We really try to emphasize staying in shape, our conditioning, trying to keep a rhythm as best as possible without playing games, and just staying connected. And the last two days when we finally knew who we were going to play, our guys have even been that much more locked in. But you love to go right from sweeping the Lakers to playing game one.

That wasn't the case. And you can't change that, but working, staying together, and understanding that this is going to be the biggest challenge of our NBA lives starting tomorrow night, I think all of our guys are ready to go. To be clear, I think if both teams were at full strength, the Nuggets would wax the heat just like they're going to wax them anyway.

But in the rest vs. rust, rest wins for me in this scenario. Nuggets super healthy. There's nothing about them that suggests they'll come out sluggish. Heat banged up a little bit. Have some guys out. Jimmy Butler has sat a game in these playoffs, and he always looks like he might be dragging an ankle or something. So like, it's a cop-out answer to the people that are like, oh, I think the Heat are just banged up and they're going to run out of gas, right? No, I think I'm not copping out. I'm being a sports radio host guy. I think even if they were healthy, even if they wouldn't run out of gas, the Nuggets would still wax them.

But also, I think they might be running out of gas and not very healthy. I mean, how long ago was game seven? It was just what? Three nights ago? Yeah, three nights.

Something like that? Yeah. There's always that carryover effect of, it's either coming off the roller coaster high or winning a game like that. And think about the emotions that the Heat have gone through in that last series.

Yeah. I mean, they let it come down to the wire. There's got to be some, to me, and this might be another cop-out answer, there has to be something said about coming back down off that high. Or one, the scare of almost blowing a 3-0 lead series, winning game seven, and now, all right, it's a demo where we go. Yeah, we will see how it goes.

And then, yeah, again, throw in the altitude. That seems to always be a factor. All right, I want to play one cut from Eric Spoelstra because I want to hear this myself. He's going to describe how they're going to defend Jokic. Let's see what he's got. It is a challenge because, you know, he's arguably the best player on the planet. He's big. He does things different than any other center in the league. He can play a rugged physical game, but he also can play a finesse game. He really can set other guys up, and then if he needs to score 50 in a playoff game, he has also proven that he can do that. So there is no quote-unquote stopper for a guy like that, but we're going to rely on our fundamentals and who we are. We just try to make it tough on everybody and anybody, take guys a little bit out of their comfort zone, take away some of the easy things that they're accustomed to getting.

But ultimately, it's going to come down to competition. Even if he plays a great game, we've got to figure it out. He's going to bring a competitive spirit, and there are going to be games where he plays a game, and putting his fingerprints on it, and we still have to find a way to win the game at the end. In the first series, they played in Minnesota, and Rudy Gobert is like first team, all defense. Like one of the best defensive centers in the game.

They had nothing for him. And then they beat, who did they beat in the second round? I can't even remember. Oh, Phoenix. Phoenix.

Phoenix. And he took out DeAndre Ayton. We didn't even hear about DeAndre Ayton.

He ate him, spit out his bones. Then Anthony Davis. Anthony Davis looked healthy. Healthy Anthony Davis.

Anthony Davis was not a slouch in that series, and he had nothing to stop Jokic. I'm not surprised. I mean, I didn't expect Eric Spolster to say, well, here's exactly what we're going to do. We're going to double team him here.

I knew that. But he ain't stopping him. The guy is a machine on a mission right now.

Jokic, unstoppable. Other quick NBA news. Pistons hired head coach Monty Williams, recently fired from the Suns.

They paid him a bunch of money. If you care, that's cool. Next up, we're getting local as we talked about at the beginning. The soccer tournament going on at Wake Med Soccer Park. At one o'clock, we will talk to a player in the soccer tournament. Austin Deluz, a local legend, played at Wake Forest, played for the Carolina Railhawks, played for NCFC. He is, I don't know who the captain or the GM or the coach of the NCFC team representing at the soccer tournament is. But I'm declaring Austin Deluz a leader of that team.

I don't know what his official title is, other than player. So, I don't know if you've heard of the basketball tournament. Okay, it started, if you had asked me when the basketball tournament started, I would have been like, about five years ago. Ten years now they've been doing the basketball tournament. And it's kind of cool. Think of it, not format-wise, but think of it concept-wise as like, you know, we have the champions tour in golf.

We have people that are like, hey, you know what? There are names of people that are big enough that if they're playing golf, it doesn't have to be the Masters. I would still have to flip it on and see them. Like, back in the day, it was, you know, Jack, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Basically, the tour was created so that people could go watch Arnold Palmer some more, right? If Tiger Woods, he probably has too much pride to play champions tour, but like, if he ever played a champions tour event, it would be the highest attended champions tour event ever. Because people just want to see Tiger Woods play golf, right? An excuse to play him. He'll do more probably gimmicky stuff like the match on TNT.

Like, he could fill his town doing that. Think of it kind of like that, where in basketball, somebody said, hey, there's just a competition in the game, and then there are names of people big enough that a million people might flip on and play. So, oftentimes in the basketball tournament, it's alumni of a certain college. Like, dudes who used to play for Ohio State will get together and play. Dudes who used to play for, you know, another college will get together and play in the basketball tournament. And they try and make it splashy. It's a $1 million prize for the winner.

Nothing for second place. Now, in soccer, they modified it a little bit. It's basically six on six, and they call it seven on seven, but you got a goalie. So, six non-goalies running around on each team, which starts to look a little more like hockey, you know.

In a smaller field, a couple other changes, like substitutions are like line changes. You're just running it in play. And then, they've got this cool ending. It's an Elam ending for soccer. I won't go back and explain the Elam ending for basketball, but they've been using it in the basketball tournament. The concept is, a lot of times in sports, you see the team ahead try to just milk the clock, and the team behind all they can do is like foul, right? In soccer, you're milking the clock just by sitting there. In basketball, you're trying to run out the shot clock, take as long as possible, right? So, the Elam ending tries to avert that by making teams score points.

So, here's how it works. They're playing two 20-minute halves. So, like short games, short personnel, short field, not short physically like under six feet people, like just smaller number of people on each team. But at the end of the 20-minute halves, no matter what the score is, there's an extra time, right? And you are now playing to whatever one goal higher than the leading team is.

So, put it in play, right? My team's playing your team, Graham. You're up 3-1 at the end of the two halves.

We're winning. No matter what, we're still playing another period. And if you're winning 3-1, we played to your score plus one, so we're now playing to four. So, you're still likely going to win because you've earned that right because you're up 3-1 at the end of regular time. But, there's a chance if my team can put up three goals before you put up one, then all of a sudden, then we're the champs.

You still have to score a goal. That way, every game ends on a goal. There's not incentive for you to just sit on the ball at any time. You're either trying to increase your lead during the regular time to make it easier for you to win in extra time. Or, if it's extra time, you're trying to finish that thing off and not let the other team linger around and not get more tired playing more games. So, comparing it to hockey, it almost forces you to make the empty net goal.

Yes, you want to be taking empty nets. Obviously, if it were in hockey, then teams wouldn't be going empty net as much. It's an interesting way to see things.

I'm not always a fan of making every rule change, but I'm a fan of let's talk about it, let's discuss. And these type of tournaments are the perfect place to put in experimental stuff like that, especially when you're just trying to make it a TV product anyway. I believe the entire thing is streaming on Peacock, so you'll have to check it out. And last, of course, you're in the state of North Carolina. And unless you're like, you know, way far somewhere out west of Asheville, you're within like somewhere between a 20 minute and two hour, maybe two and a half hour drive of Cary, North Carolina.

You could go watch this thing live right now. And there's cool teams in there. Everybody's talking about Wrexham FC.

Apparently everybody loves them. There's a U.S. women's national team represented in there. Heather O'Reilly, a former Courage player. There's a team from West Ham, that's a big name. And then the group to watch for me is Group H, which has Charlotte FC representing the MLS team. Duke Sevens, which I imagine is former Duke soccer players. North Carolina FC, NCFC, that's who Austin Duluth plays for that we'll talk to in a little bit. And Raleigh Rebels FC, and I didn't look up who that was. And one of the cool things is, there's a former, there's a Clint Dempsey team that has like a couple of former national players.

There's a Demarcus Beasley team. So like, I don't, I don't know, nor do I have interest in singling out who the worst player is in this tournament. But it's kind of cool because you've got all range of players. You've got people who have literally been at the highest levels of soccer playing in the English Premier League and for their national teams.

And then you've got players who may have just played for their college team and are just in pretty good shape and they're going to kick around and maybe they'll pull off an upset. It's set up like regular World Cup style. There's eight groups of four. You play everybody in your group. The two best, the two teams that do the best in round robin advance to then a knockout play.

I think all today is the group play and then we go round of 16 starting tomorrow. I believe that is the case. Again, my goal during the show is to mess up some piece of information so bad that Adam Gold stops watching golf or watching soccer, whichever one he's doing, and calls in to correct me. We get Adam to call in to his own show when he's not hosting. That's a standard.

That's a standard. So, go check it out if you're in North Carolina. Check it out on Peacock Streaming if you want to. That is the soccer tournament. Next up, the Corn Fairy Tournament is in town as we mentioned at Rally Country Club. It's the UNC Health Championship, formerly the Rex Open. It also used to be at Wakefield. I think it's going back to Wakefield, but now it's at Rally Country Club. The last course ever designed by Donald Ross, which if you're a golf person, that's apparently like a huge deal, right? Donald Ross, big guy, did a lot down at Pinehurst, so cool you got that. Also, did you know the Rally Country Club was formed because the golfers at the Carolina Country Club thought their course was too easy. They said, no, no, no, no.

Our stuff is too easy. And they're like, we got to go make a harder course out of Rally Country Club. Now, here's my take on the Corn Fairy Tour at Rally Country Club. I have much respect for the golfers on that tour. They're all amazing golfers. It's crazy what a thin line it is between being a PGA Tour golfer and just below that, right?

All of these dudes are amazing golfers and would clown you and all your friends, even like teeing off from 50 yards behind you on whatever course you want, right? So this is no knock on them that I do not know all these players' names. Again, to me, it's like going to a minor league baseball game where, yes, some people buy season tickets and they love the team. Or if you're the Durham Bulls, it's AAA. You've got dudes that are like about to be in the major leagues or just stepping back from the major leagues for a little bit. It's more like name recognition, right? But for me, a minor league baseball is about going to the game, taking in the atmosphere, respect for the players who are putting on the game.

But you don't necessarily care who's on the roster when you walk in, especially if you're in another city. You're like, I just want to see a ballgame. I want to drink a beer with the sun. That's what the Corn Fairy Tour is to me. It's about sitting out there, watching some good golf, finding a cool spot, drinking a beer, having some friends, betting on who's going to be close to the hole for dollar bets or whatever it is. But here's the thing that would have me out there at Rally Country Club right now if I were not in here watching this. My boy Trey is a huge fan of this tour stop, formerly the Rex Open, now the UNC Health Championship.

And he's like always trying to get me to go. I would be there right now drinking a beer and watching Corn Fairy golf because golf has this over any other sport. I get that many of you may not play golf, but I can never stand in.

I can go play softball or baseball with my friends. I can never stand in a major league park and watch somebody throw 95 miles per hour at me and try to hit it. I cannot recreate that. I can't recreate getting guarded by Jimmy Butler or trying to guard Jimmy Butler. I can't drive a car 200 miles per hour, but I can't simulate what it's like to race in a NASCAR race. In golf, because you are playing the course, and yes there's pressure of other golfers and things that affect you, but nobody can play defense on you. And yes, I know these guys are teeing off from probably twice the distance that I am and it's different out of the tee box. But I've played rally country club and when somebody's lying 150 yards out on a green, I'm watching from a green, I'm looking at a shot that I have hit before.

Probably terribly. If I've played that course a dozen times, like if I've had this shot eight of those times, seven of them, I probably hit it terribly. It was in a worse position often before I hit it. But I've hit some decent shots out of that course, and golf is the one sport where you can watch a pro. The best is when they hit from a tough spot where you were and they do the same thing you do, where they like, you know, flub a chip and you're like, I've done that. I have been on that same hill in that long grass and I have flubbed that chip and this guy's an amazing golfer and he did it too.

It's not that you want the person to fail, it makes you feel not so bad when you did fail. But that is one thing that golf has over any other sport is the ability to look at the professionals and they are doing the exact same thing that you have done because you played that course. Now obviously when it's like Pebble Beach or Augusta, not many of us have played. But when it's the rally country club, there's a few people around here who have played that course and can look at a putt or look at a shot or look at a save and be like, that's tough. I've been there, that's an impressive shot. That's one of the cool things about golf.