Denver Nuggets take Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Miami Heat

It's the Adam Gold Show. It's Friday. It's after Memorial Day. So if you're smart, you should be leaving work at this time.

If you haven't already. Shouldn't have even gone to work today. Why are we working Fridays at all?

Certainly not in the summer in North Carolina with so many great things to do, including so many great sporting events to see. We got it all going on. You want soccer? We got it. You want golf? We got it. You want baseball?

We got it going on over at Winston-Salem with the number one overall seed in the tournament. What else we got? We got fishing? Is Big Rock coming up soon? I need Graham.

Graham, you're my Kinsta guy. I know you know when Big Rock is. Is it this weekend? No, no, no.

It's usually the last week in June, if I'm not mistaken. So we still got a little while to let the nostalgia build. We did have Josh Goodson on yesterday. I should have known he would have brought up Big Rock. But no, we've got it all going on here in the state.

We got its outdoor concert series. Graham's going to give us a review of Dead & Company last night. A little bit later in the show, I'm going to make you fill in the sentence. Not you personally, Graham, although I'll be happy to hear what you have to say.

But you, the listener, you, person driving around in your car. I want to know, it's not summer in North Carolina until blank, all right? All of these segments. Until the first time that your lower back and gluteus maximus area is swampy just from being outside. Like, you know, it's not North Carolina summer until.

Is it that first concert? We'll discuss what that is because it is a Friday in June and it is a great time to not be working. Kudos to anyone who is on their way to the beach or just out of town in general.

But specifically, if you're going out of your town, but to another North Carolina town, that's what we like to see. With all the sports going on, including the NBA finals, let's go ahead and jump this thing out of the game. I was trying to decide after I watched this game. I'm watching it for two reasons. One, it's the NBA finals. Two, I'm guest hosting a sports radio show the next day. There's not a ton to talk about because I don't feel like watching baseball.

It's minor league baseball sign me up, but nobody wants to hear me talk about minor league baseball. That's something that you like live and then forget about then go to another game the next night. But I was trying to decide was this an interesting game? Was what I just watched an interesting game because rarely was it a single-digit game.

Early on it was for stretches in the fourth quarter was a single-digit game. There was good basketball being played. As we said, Jokic, an absolute machine. We knew he was going to roll out a triple-double. He did roll out a triple-double. One of two players to debut in the NBA finals with a triple-double, Jason Kidd being the other one.

But the Nuggets winning 104-93 over the Heat. You know, what's the the Russell Crowe in Gladiator? Like are you not entertained? Like I I'm not sure if I was entertained. We saw about what we thought we'd saw, right? Maybe we didn't expect Aaron Gordon to come flying out of the gate with a lot of points.

I'll talk on that a little bit of what it meant for the series a little bit later. And then Jokic ended up with a if you heard he got a triple-double and you heard that Max Struce, Caleb Martin, and Duncan Robinson shot two for 16 from three. He'd be like, I bet the Nuggets won. And they did. But they didn't blow the Heat out. Like the lead never kept getting away. Maybe that Heat culture thing is real where they like weren't going to quit and even when things weren't going on and then you start to look at it, and you're like, I mean if they had it at some of those threes, it might have been a little bit closer.

It was not. The Nuggets won. It does make you feel like this is a five game series, not a sweep coming out of the gate. And again Jokic just did did a lot of passing, did a lot of Jokic things. Another interesting stat for the game, the Heat only shot two free throws. Now, you can go immediately to how do you play an NBA game and only get two free throws? Something must be wrong with the officiating. Or you can go to how do you play an NBA game, only get two free throws? Must be something wrong with the team.

Like what are you doing? I do think, I don't have the stats in front of me, in general from anecdotally watching them, Denver does a good job of not fouling. Not fouling is a smart move in basketball, right? Giving your team free free throws. Free free throws?

Did I just say that? Giving your team free points from the free throw line, not a smart strategy. Oftentimes good teams are good at not fouling, playing defense without fouling.

So I think that's possible to do. And the Heat have kind of become a jump shooting team. Now Bam Adebayo did sort of break out of what had been kind of an offensive slump.

He was missing like bunnies. Looks like it was in his head against the Celtics, but he got plenty of other things done that helped them in that series. But he did score 26 last night, but the Heat just just looked like even if things go their way, they're not quite the better team.

So I don't know, we'll see. Let's start in the audio front with Aaron Gordon, who scored a bunch of points. Have him talking about his role with the Nuggets.

I'm not here for the credit. I'm here for the wins. And playing with guys like the guys that are on this team is just a blessing. It's a beautiful opportunity to play with guys on the team that have so much talent, have so much skill, and have so much passion for the game of basketball. And you know, that's what I've always loved, you know, is to play the right way of basketball.

And we do that here. And it's just, I mean, I don't care if I scored 50 or zero, you know, as long as I'm helping impact the game and we're winning. I'm going to talk a lot about Aaron Gordon in the next segment.

So I will come back to that one as well. Let's hear Nikola Jokic himself talk about playing unselfish basketball, only taking 12 shots and a lot of free throws. That's how I learned to play basketball. And I think it's really nice to play when it's really hard to guard when you don't know who's going to attack and how to defend, you know, when everybody's moving, everybody's doing something.

So I think it's a really nice brand of basketball that we have. It also helps that it looks like Jamal Murray is moving from star to possibly superstar. He looks like he's going to be in that next wave of like unstoppable guards. Like I wouldn't be surprised to see like three 40 or 50 point games from Jamal Murray in a season coming up.

He just looks like a guy who'd get hot and be like, nah, I'm feeling it. And if Jokic keeps hitting me in spots, I will continue to knock down threes. But like he said, Aaron Gordon and Jokic are basically, when you hear them talk that way and you see their play reflecting what they're talking, that's a scary team. When they have talented players who really, you know, seem to be meshing well together, egos don't seem to be a problem.

They really don't seem to care who gets the credit and that's easy to say. But like that takes guys who, like Jamal Murray, who could score 50 points a night, realizing that he's better just going with the flow of offense and that there might be 50 point games, but that they are a more scary team when anybody can score at any time. So early on in that game was an impact play. You know, you always say like, oh, a dunk is just two points, right? But like some dunks are different than others. They're tone setters.

There's absolutely, there's tone setters, there's game changers. There's like, intimidate, like if your best player gets yammed on by the other dude or whatever, or your best defender all of a sudden gets yammed on by LeBron, like your team starts to be like, oh, maybe our guy can't handle this assignment that we thought he was going to be able to handle, right? There was one of those early in the game. Caleb Martin made a nice play and kind of got free and looked like he was going to make a layoff.

I thought he was going in. And Michael Porter came from the help side and smacked the ball off the glass and it was an emphatic one. And to me, the message that was sent was, hey dude, reminder, you are a role player, Caleb Martin. You're not scoring 20 a game on us and certainly not like 27 or whatever like you did in the third period. I don't, I'm not claiming that Caleb Martin got scared or intimidated or anything.

Watching that, it looked like he was reminded like, wait a minute. These are bigger dudes. These guys are playing a more physical brand of defense than the Celtics did.

And then to, you know, not saying that I'm right about that. But the stats sort of bore that out later when Martin wasn't nearly the guy. It looks like he's going back up against Kennedy Meeks when he's playing at, when he was playing at NC State. Yeah.

Try to see the connection. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Was there a big block from Kennedy Meeks or were you just saying it? No, I mean, I just, in general, I feel like during that time era, if there's a guy that Caleb Martin probably would have gotten his shot blocked against. It would be a Kennedy Meeks.

It'd be a Kennedy Meeks. But nah, it was, it was a block that registered one block in the stat column. But I felt like it was worth like six points in the impact that it had and just it early on was like, we're the better team. Now again, credit to the Heat for not going away.

I'm not betting on a sweep, but it's just tough to see where four wins will come for the Miami Heat. Other quick NBA news, the Celtics are bringing back their head coach Joe Missoula and Adam Silver has said they've concluded the investigation into John Moran. They don't want to bring it up anymore during the NBA Finals.

They're going to let it be basketball news only and then he will announce the punishment, presumably a suspension afterwards. Next up, the soccer tournament at Wake Med Soccer Park in Cary, but being watched around the world on streaming on Peacock, YouTube, Facebook, and other places. I actually got to watch part of our boy, Austin Deluce, NCFC playing the nightcap.

I think they were the last game out there against the Raleigh Rebels and it was cool. It goes to that, that I totally forgot. I told you guys about the rule. They're playing seven on seven soccer. So one goalie, six non-goalies, whatever you call the people that are running around the field are going against each other. Then and every game as we said as two 20-minute halves, but the game is not over at the end of the two 20-minute periods. I guess we shouldn't call them halves. At the end of that period, the score is set and the winning score is set at one more than whatever the leading person has.

So it's easy to just do examples. One team's leading 5-2 after the two halves, then you're playing to six. So that means the game ends on a goal, presumably the team that's winning 5-2 is more likely to get that sixth goal. But we saw a couple instances yesterday where teams up 3-1 or 4-2. It goes to the extra period and then all of a sudden it's 4-4 and it's anybody's game, right?

So it's fast paced, high action, decent amount of scoring compared to normal average soccer. But also in that extra time, every five minutes a player comes off. So just like in overtime hockey where they try and speed it up in the regular season by starting at four on four. Here they start the six on six with goalies. Then it goes down to, you know, five non-goalies, four non-goalies, three. And we got down to, at one point yesterday there was two on two, meaning a goalie and a field player versus a goalie and a field player. So like the goalies were having to dribble out. And you see a lot of that in general, goalies coming up to play.

That's high school soccer practice right there. How do you say that guy's name? Chris Zwandolowski, I always get it wrong.

Sure. He was a player for the U.S. National Team. Their goalie got hurt, so he had to go and play goal and he ended up scoring three goals as goalie.

It's crazy. That two on two game, the game ended on a goalie scoring. I guess it forces goalies to have to come out and almost play along with the essential midfielder, forward striker, whatever position player is left out there. And much like the power play in hockey or the extra skater when you put the goalie off, you have to calculate leaving your goal unguarded versus, well, when there's only six guys out here, an extra dude is a lot.

Like you can keep possession a lot more easily with an extra dude. Forces you to take the high risk, high reward. Yes. Literally, you're playing for a million bucks. Yes. You're playing for that dog pile and the money.

Yes. And we'll get to people who were definitely playing for that million bucks in just a second. Couple other observations, sorry, this is still about the soccer tournament, my bad. A couple other observations about the soccer tournament, NCFC almost went 2-0. They did take down Charlotte FC.

Nice work there, boys. But they, like I said, they lost to the rally rebels in a great match. So they will need to win today against the Devils 7, a Duke alumni group. That game will be at 2 o'clock.

We'll have all the blues at 1 o'clock. They got a win to advance to the knockout round. We want to see them do it.

All right. Another observation. I thought it was really cool that the US women's national team had a team in there.

It is cool, right? There's no other way to describe it. They got smoked. They got beat 12-0 and 5-0.

They gave up 17 goals. Now, these were females playing against males and I don't want to get into the whole like males competing against females and certainly not the next discussion that is super prevalent in sports today, but it was just striking when you see the two competitors next to each other on those teams and like the men's team playing against them would just keep possession at all times. Shout out to the US women's national team goalie.

She was just basically taking target practice at all times. And I know I said she gave up a lot of goals. She saved a ton of goals and just it was it was a it was an interesting to watch. I will be curious to see how they play that in the future.

It'd be kind of cool to see coed teams, but it was it was an odd bit of competition seeing the US women's national team playing these men's team. And then finally I do want to get to it. I don't want to overshadow the event. I think it's a super cool event.

I don't even realize this. We were pumping it up yesterday. You can still get out there for the afternoon session today. I believe there are still tickets after that on the regular ticket site that sucker is sold out cold.

So I maybe get on the resale sites or whatever and see if you get tickets to the soccer tournament, but I mean Chris Paul's around there walking around Chad Ochocinco Steve Nash again stars from past US men's and women's national team. So a lot of stars out there and again a lot of cool action, but there was a bit of controversy on the field Dallas United has withdrawn after an incident that went down yesterday in their match versus West Ham after they played the two periods. We told you then there is that target goal time where they play to get the actual winner and someone who was observing I was like trying to figure out what happened. So I was trying to ask I know a couple people who are down there covering it and I talked to several of them to get whatever stories I could and the general story I got was people watching the game, you know, they went they were taking their break and the break just started taking longer and longer to people like what's going on and people are looking on Twitter and there's nothing really there and people are listening to the broadcast and see if the TV guys know anything or if they've been told anything nothing going on they're guessing, you know based on the era that we've been in it's like could could somebody have been sick and they took a covid test last night.

Now it's come back and it's positive and they're you know, like what do you know what the questions that come to mind of natural things that could pause the game right now without any obvious thing. Well, it came out there was an accusation and there's been an investigation into a racial slur being thrown at somebody. I don't think we know the player who's being accused of saying it and I haven't seen anywhere of the accusation of what that slur is. So the result of it in the investigation before they announced their investigation Dallas United said in light of a shadow cast by an opposing players accusation during tonight's match the Dallas the Dallas United players unanimously decided to withdraw from the remainder of the competition our coaches and staff fully support the team's decision. We thank the tournament for the opportunity to compete and then not long after that the tournament released their own statement and won't read the whole thing but classic after conducting an investigation final moments. We have concluded that Dallas violated their code of conduct. So no, no one's really and I've tried to look for reports this morning on exactly what was said or what was being accused of said or what was concluded was said I do think sometimes there's a lot of different way these things can go right there's there's the black and white somebody said a term that we all know and society recognize is ugly and gross and that person is doing it in a mean spirit and they should not only be kicked out of that tournament but their team should have penalties against them and we need to think about whether or not they're playing sports then there's all kinds of nuanced things along the spectrum right so I'm not I'm not going to speak to what this person did or accused of doing when I don't exactly know what it is there's misunderstandings there's mishearings there's stuff that you know that you're egging someone on and you know you're doing it menacingly and so you know there's a racial component involved even if you didn't say certain words so that you can say no I only said this and this and but we all kind of know you were being a jerk so again without all the details I'm not going to weigh in on what what exactly was said and how it was handled except to say this I do think it was the right move by both parties the team that was being accused of saying hey maybe this is a misunderstanding and maybe this involves a bigger conversation than a black or white was this a racist or was this not a racist thing like it's usually not a black and white thing sometimes it is sometimes it is black and white and we should call it out when it is but it's when there's been an accusation and maybe somebody says I didn't say what the person said they heard but the person who heard it is hurt and that's what matters at a time right and I think in the competition of sport sometimes we have to do the bigger thing rather than try you can't you're never going to settle what somebody heard or what somebody said and the right thing is to err on the side of hear the person who is saying they were hurt right listen to that person and if you do that the right thing to do is to make this move it doesn't mean somebody is scarred for life or needs to be barred from the game there is nuance to it but in in my sense I think this is the right thing being done hopefully the rest of the tournament goes off smoothly and there aren't any incidents like this I will say for people who are there watching it we joked about putting the million dollars on the field and they're like you can tell some dudes know they are playing for money right there's plenty of people out there who would love to have the money and either either some don't need it because they've made money in professional soccer some could use the money but they may have a great job and then they're only playing for the fellowship and friendship or whatever and then there's some dudes out there for whom a 50,000 payday or however the million might be split up with their team could be a really big deal and that might be more than they're earning in a year and they're willing to push or you know push physically or try and push buttons mentally of someone in a way that some guys might be out there and not willing to go that far so it's an interesting mix we hope we see some great soccer the rest of the week next up the quick update on the unc health championship corn ferry tour stop at the rally country club kyle westmerlin and matt mccarty are your leaders after day one at minus seven obviously there's folks back out there some somebody may have passed him but those were your day one leaders so shout out to those guys again love watching the golf to me it's my minor league baseball love going to watch the the corn ferry tour but i don't have like a favorite player or anything i just love it's it's cool seeing top of a top of the level professional athletes play their sport uh is very cool that includes the golf next up which mentioned this yesterday the gambling bill that i said i didn't care about talking about anymore until it's passed by the governor well guess what i have one little thing that i do care about it's a piece of news we heard that the senate had made some tweaks so the question was will the house now want to make their own tweaks or contest those tweaks or will the house basically adopt the senate's version of the bill right and the house says we're going to adopt your version of the bill things will probably pass next week one of those tweaks i've come to learn because i got people over all over the city all over the state graham i have learned that for obvious reasons there's consternation about mixing gambling with college athletics more than there is professional athletics right and in fact some people wanted to make it where you can't even bet on college games i think smarter heads prevailed and it's like look college sport that's one of the reasons why college sports is basically professional sports right it's there's billion dollar tv contracts there's millions of people watching there's going to be millions of dollars gambled on it you can't have gambling without gambling on like college football and college basketball right but there have been rules in place try to set it where uh you know pnc arena for example tom dunnan has been very clear we will have gambling in pnc arena we will have a sports book in the arena and they plan to have one on site well some people didn't want the sports book to be open anytime near when a college basketball game is being played in pnc arena right so that was one provision that might have passed through but in these senate tweaks i believe i have it right where they have taken those restrictions off meaning i think now there may be yeah we'll see where the ncaa lands on this or other regulating bodies but as far as the law that will govern governed gambling in north carolina i believe the sports book that is in pnc arena and operating during carolina hurricanes games will be able to be open during nc state sporting events as well um so that's one of the the changes that uh that came there uh next up we do have the college world series underway today and that is important because north carolina teams are all over it we mentioned winston-salem one of the if not the only north carolina team that's actually hosting a regional as good as the teams are several of them just missed out on being super regional hosts campbell thought they might be might have gotten a raw deal because they're you know smaller school uh east carolina might have thought they could be a regional host but as we talked about yesterday maybe they're better taking it on the road for a little bit um we'll talk some about the college world series uh in our round table a little bit later and maybe with luke tocock but we've already got runs on the board virginia with four runs on the board and the bases loaded with one out against army virginia the seventh uh ranked team they're hosting a regional and in good shape to win their first game teams that we care about here in north carolina kicking it off at one o'clock here's one thing i don't like i realize that they're called regionals so if you got a bunch of teams in north carolina they all want to be close by so their fans can get there that means they all got to play like if we could spread all what was it eight ten teams how many teams we got in this thing is it ten eight eight we got eight teams in the college world series if we go to spread them out to all the different regionals then uh and they don't have to play each other then we got a better chance of more of them advancing right yeah come on josh get behind north carolina going to play we're up in indiana iowa iowa north carolina's playing iowa right state and indiana state and fortunately no other north carolina teams but kicking it off at one o'clock we've got nc state versus campbell again not cool that they have to play against each other i want to see them both advance to the to super regionals we'll see how that one goes all right then at one o'clock guess what we get it again unc wilmington versus duke this is in-state hate and i don't like it unc wilmington duke at one o'clock then next up for the in-state team charlotte actually takes on tennessee at six o'clock that's down there in the clemson regional and then wake forest at seven o'clock plays against george mason in winston-salem uh other east carolina plays at seven o'clock against oklahoma and north carolina as we said plays iowa at seven o'clock those are the eight north carolina teams all playing well we'll see how they do we got to get at least these four need to make super regionals right wake forest needs to make one because they can host get either unc or state than either campbell or uncw like just have a nice little sprinkling of acc smaller conference schools but i want i kind of want super regional at the beach that'd be sick that sounds fantastic i i don't know i i'm not up on my seating i feel like unc wilmington would probably be traveling but we'll see but i don't know um i don't know how it breaks out i want to speak into existence i'm gonna i'm gonna marinate that idea um and finally your national spelling bee champion is dev shaw who correctly spelled samophile can you spell well you you got on the screen that's not fair no i actually don't see where this is at all right can you spell samophile can have a word of origin uh it's an organism that lives in sandy areas can i have it can i use it in a sentence i'm doing the whole night hey hey look over in the sandy area there's a samophile s a wrong it starts with that i just wanted you to start spelling it wrong it's actually p s a m m o p h i l e uh he also spelled correctly on his way i won't make you do these because i can't pronounce these correctly much less spell them bathypatymeter sky sky store i sky store righteous and romac uh he also correctly answered the question i didn't know he had to do that uh the runner-up was charlotte walsh she incorrectly spelled davilly as davolic come on you can't do that charlotte come on but charlotte did correctly spell acumen sword and columbolus in route to the final again i'm sure i mispronounced all of those so congratulations to those kids thanks for being way smarter than i am we still need your um dead company review we'll get that a little bit later in the show maybe during halftime you give me your dead and company review from the concert last night graham hill producing the show um uh two bits of somewhat breaking news one because it just dropped and one because i'm a moron and meant to do it in the first segment but i'm a guest host and i get uh sidetracked because i don't do this regularly not as good as adam gold i'm just a fill-in guy okay uh the one piece of breaking news that just dropped is the phoenix sons are hiring frank vogel as their next head coach um that's interesting obviously because he'll have uh kevin durant um devin booker maybe chris paul i don't know we'll see if he's playing another season um d'andrea aton he'll have talented players but an interesting roster and we'll see how far he can take them the other period of news came just before the show um and it is not an athlete itself but a family of someone that we are all starting to consider family uh as he continues to make himself uh i've said this earlier i think rod brendan more is going to end up on the mount rushmore of north carolina sports alongside i don't know who else you put up there richard petty dean smith mike sishevsky michael jordan like that status i know i just said mount rushmore and then i named like five people but rod brendan more he i know he didn't come here with the whalers he didn't bring hockey to north carolina but darn if he didn't have a big hand in keeping it here um you just don't know what the fate of a southern hockey franchise will be like if you don't have the early success that the carolina hurricanes had in getting to the uh stand the cup finals in 2002 winning it in 2006 with obviously rod brendan more leading the way then when on top of that he would have been a memorable person he could have run it off into the sunset just like that if he never just as a player was his only relation he would be a super memorable person in north carolina sports history and certainly he's got his own nhl legacy but i can't speak to that as well as i can as a north carolinian and a longtime sports fan who grew up here but when he then returns to coach a team molds the team in his image not not as far as like everybody's got to play his style but like the work hard show up for work every day be excited be proud of this franchise this organization play for each other get the most out of yourself you know get the absolute most out of uk out of yourself as a player as you can and don't tolerate people who aren't going to play that way and he does it to the tune of five straight playoff appearances in his first five seasons that doesn't happen five straight first round series wins my man has never gone oh for one like oh and one in a playoff series he's got an above 500 record in series in the playoffs because he wins the first round every year that is hard to do that he has stamped himself and what that means to this area particularly you know i'm in the triangle i know people are listening for other places but this area particularly since they're our only pro sports franchise but also north carolina in general because they're our most successful professional sports franchise i could speak his praises all day which is why it is very easy to pass on how sad we are and how much we're thinking of rod brenda moore for the passing of his father the hurricane's released a statement about the passing of bob brenda moore on thursday night there isn't a person who met bob who will ever forgive him said don waddell bob was a wonderful husband father and grandfather who lit up every room he entered with passion humor and energy he kept working as a pipefitter in campbell river well into rod's nhcl career and it's clearly past that relentless work ethic down to his children um yes not only does rod brenda moore infuse all that on his team it's clear that he got it from somewhere very rarely do you see a combination of two things one super hyper competitive athlete dude right we see a lot of those a lot of those are in sports and a lot of them are very successful in sports because of that drive however paired with that is a pretty darn healthy dose of what is important in life and sometimes our most hyper super competitive athlete dudes can have wrecked personal lives or or have bad relationships with teammates or whatever it is or look back on their rings but they're thought of as jerks because they don't have that healthy balance of what matters in life and sometimes it could be true there might be dudes who could deal with they might be more successful if they were jerks for for lack of a better term right if they cared a little bit less about the important things in life um and so it's it's bad that sometimes sports could be that way the best in sports is when you can be a great person care about what's important in life and also be a hyper competitive dude and rod brenda moore seems to have a pretty good balance of both um and that doesn't come from nowhere right i'm sure it comes from his all his family not just his father i'm sure it comes from teammates and coaches that he's learned from but uh but a lot of that has to come from from his father um so our thoughts with the entire brenda moore family and uh thanks for giving us a great son man um that uh again sorry i did not get to that earlier in the show i'm a moron filling host who can't handle throwing something in last minute like i should be able to so i was going with my you know stupid less meaningful sports takes before that speaking of stupid non-meaningful sports takes uh let me pivot strictly to what i said strictly is that what i meant to say let me pivot swiftly uh to the mba finals last night and what i thought was significant about aaron gordon going off in the first quarter against uh the miami heap i played pick up basketball i still do to this day uh graham and i played it my whole life i really got decent at basketball later in my high school career i grew another inch or two and then really after i dropped out of college i started playing at the y a bunch we joke about jokic being a ymca basketball player but you really do learn the game from like you learn from losing to dudes that can't run as fast as you and can't jump as high as you can because i'm like 20 years old and they're 45 or 50 and you're like how are these guys beating me and you learn the right way to play the game you keep moving um you know you play defense hard all these things when to call and when not to call a charge and foul yep yep well you know how to play the game you know and there's a self-awareness on the court too you get thrown together on a team i think one of my skills is being able to quickly look around and be like who's the best player on this team right now and that person usually you're talking about offense right there's a defense consideration too but like who on offense should be getting the majority of the shots and i do not think i'm that person i rarely am but i think one of my skills is i have a pretty good idea of who that person is based on how they play and who's guarding them right so when i play pickup basketball i'm looking around and be like i'm trying to get it to that dude sometimes more specifically i'm trying to tell that dude to get in the post and i'm getting it to him or i'm telling that dude to get in that spot where i've seen him hit shots and i'm trying to give him the ball there right usually now nowadays i play a lot of four on four because we're playing on outdoor courts a little bit smaller but back in the day when you would go into you know woolen gym over in chapel hill or the ymca on hillsborough street and be playing five on five basketball i would look around and try and figure out where i fit on the team right and if i was my team's best player this is in you know this is ymca basketball this isn't there's a couple people played high school ball there may be a former college player out there in every game but it's just pretty good players playing smart heady ball if i'm the best player on my team my team is in trouble like we're probably not going to be good there if you get five other people there's going to be a best player on that team who's probably significantly better than i am particularly on offense i do think i make for it some with smart play and defense but just mostly looking at all diving for the loose balls if i'm number yes hustle plays i'm all about it i'm our team's number one player slash offensive weapon we're probably in trouble now there's times i'll look at my team and be like wow i am the number one player and in those games i may shoot a lot there's plenty of games where i'm like yoking to the first quarter i do not care about shooting i would love to get it to the one dude who scores the most and have him shoot all our shots you're feeling that you're filling the game out you're facilitating the best way to win if i look around and i'm the second best player on our team i'm like we might be starting from an underdog position we're not going to get creamed i've got a player who's better than i am i'm going to be setting them up to score you know if we get to where i think i'm the third best player on our team i'm starting to feel good about our team's chances if there are two dudes who can offensively get things done better than i can i know i'm smart enough on offense to get those two dudes the ball and if and if i'm wide open yeah maybe i'll make your team's holding down the court for a little bit you guys aren't leaving yes you guys aren't walking we're not going a little bit aaron gordon i watched aaron gordon play live early in his career when he was the best player for orlando and he wanted to be the number one guy and he thought he was the best player on the team and here's the thing about it he is a really really really really good nba player and there might be teams bad enough where he could be the number one player but i think aaron gordon is smart enough to not say i'm the best player in the league but he's smart enough to say if i'm the best player on my team my team might not be that good but if i'm the third best player on our team we're a darn good team and that's what he is right now and for out of the gate it looked like the other team knew the two best players were jokic and murray and they had to shut them down but at the third best player matchup and if you want to say miami heat has kind of a big two too right jimmy butler and bam out of bio now you can i would take the nuggets big two over the the heats two but those are two solid players jimmy butler bam out of bio right who's the best who's the third best player the heater rolling out there it was caleb martin in the last series but that's kind of to the point i'm not knocking caleb martin but if you go look at the career of caleb martin it is not what he did against the celtics it is a role player status right is it taylor hero when he comes back i mean it might be taylor hero but even then if you don't know how 100 he's going to be yes but i'm still taking aaron gordon as the third best player in the matchup and especially because some people might say that michael porter is the is the nuggets third best player so at the either aaron gordon or michael porter is the third or fourth best player and either one of those dudes is significantly better than the third or fourth best player than the miami heat right now and so i think aaron gordon is like me where if he's on an mba team and he's the best player he looks around he says our team may not be great and the orlando magic weren't he looks around and there's two players offensively better than him he could say we're going to be a pretty good team and that's a great way for him to contribute but i i could score because you're worried about the two players better than me on the team but monnie jones used to say this all the time or still does say this all the time because he talks about sports still to win an mba championship a lot of times you need players with superstar skill who are just doing role player things like andre iguodala was the best player on the team for a few years and that team maybe he carried it far enough to i can't remember exactly what the 76ers did under him i thought they were okay but i don't remember them ever threatening for a title but when he went to the warriors and became the third best offensive option after the splash brothers then he knew we're a good team if i'm a number three or four guy um rashid wallace was a superstar skill player who played a role player position for the pistons so they could be very very good and that's what aaron gordon is doing right now aaron gordon has superstar mba skills and he is channeling that through a role player position which means they are getting a really really really good excuse me role player and that's why i think the nuggets are the better team and they're going to win this series and i'm sure the experience factor helps too right like gordon's been in the year gordon's gordon's been in the league for a while now it's almost like and i love to relate this job this industry to the sport itself it's almost like if i had to host the show tomorrow i'd say this show is not gonna be all that great sure just because i'm coming up on one year of just working here at the fan just as a producer now if it's me and somebody else co-hosting i might say all right you know there's somebody for example if it was you and me hayes has been in the industry a lot more than i have i just have to pretty much do what i'm doing now just bouncing my ideas off what you put out there now if i'm producing and it's two other people that i have i feel good about the show yeah yeah the hosts are doing their thing i'm doing their thing i'm getting everybody lined up that's kind of the way i see it in this situation so i think aaron gordon i don't know exactly what he'll continue to do the rest of the series but just the fact that he can look over and say i'm gonna be better than their third best player and we got a really good chance to win that that's how i feel when i'm the third best player on the pickup basketball court