Cook Out? (Hour 3)

Now the way we go, our number three of our radio program. That's right, Zach Kilb's show right here. But where else? CBS Sports Radio.

I just have a very simple question. Yes, this series is now 1-1. Yes, Miami needed to win last night.

They did that. But did momentum shift last night? Or are a lot of people still in the line of thinking that this is Denver series to lose? Because even though Miami, in a bizarre game where there was a bunch of good moments and bad moments, the start was really good for Miami. And then you looked out, you're like, oh, at halftime, it feels like Miami should be in more control of this game than Denver has that big third quarter.

They take the big lead going into the fourth. The Miami plays great for the first 10 minutes of the fourth quarter into the final two where Denver almost finds a way to get to overtime. There was a lot of, or almost get the game to overtime. There was a lot of ups and downs throughout that game last night.

And I could spin it both ways. Like I could look at what Miami did and say, man, Miami survived a 40 to 14 run by Denver. They won the game. That's a game that they felt like they should have won.

Then they should have lost and they found the way to win. And now you get back home court advantage. And also you have that Jimmy Butler play a great game. But then I could equally look at that and say, Denver's still a better team. Denver still has the better roster. I know the Heat fan could tell me, oh, but Zach, yeah, that's what you said about Boston or Zach. That's what you said about Milwaukee as well.

But we haven't seen Jamal Murray play a great game yet in this series as well. So there's one thing to win, but in the court of public opinion, did momentum really shift last night? Cause early on, when you get into like that third quarter and Denver's going to take control of the game, people are like, oh, the series is over. It's done. It's finished.

And I was like, huh? I understand that I picked Denver and I was beating five or six and ended up going with six, but you got to give some respect to the Miami Heat because you know that even if they're going to go out, they're not going to go down without a fight. But Hickey, I look at last night as a game where it's another moment where Miami impresses, but I still think the majority of people believe that Denver is going to win this series. And I would say that momentum probably won't really, really shift in terms of the people will start to think that Miami won the series. If Miami, the way that happens is if Miami goes down to their home court and they take both these games three and four, I don't think anyone believes that Miami's taken both games three and four. I think Miami's had to go up by two games in this series for everyone to jump on board and predict that Miami is going to win this series, because it does feel as if the majority of people, the overwhelming majority of people are going with Denver in this series.

Right. And again, that's a really nice one by the Heat last night and definitely now makes this a longer series than they most projected, but they don't like the Heat won their last year is going to Celtics because the Celtics consistently come up short consistently up and down and can't play basketball, even put two good games together. The Nuggets have been arguably maybe the most consistent team in the playoffs where yes, they had a lull yesterday.

But is that going to happen? Or is that expected to happen now two or three more times? No, the more talented team. Like I look at that game last night where look how much it took for Miami to win that game where yes, Miami goes in that great fourth quarter run and they're up by 10 or 11 points late in the fourth quarter and they still almost lost the game, you know, got the game to overtime. And if that game goes to overtime, you know what my mind was thinking? I love Jamal Murray, but when Jamal Murray missed the shot, I was like, yes, because I had Miami plus eight and a half. If that game got to overtime, it wouldn't shock me at all. If Denver just ran them out of the building in the, in the extra five minutes or so.

And that's the thing. It's like you watched the yesterday's game is like, was it more of the Heat winning it or the Nuggets losing it? I would probably argue yesterday was more than Nuggets losing it.

He made shots. I hate when people do that though. To their credit.

But if Denver was locked in, which is on them, but they were locked in, I think they win that game easily. Well, I think it's, it's easy. What happens here?

It's it's very simple. Bam needs to play great, which he has been through the first two games and in game one, Miami couldn't hit water. If they fell out of a boat, when you look at Struce and Duncan Robinson and you know, the, the names go on and on. Last night, Gabe Vincent was fantastic. He gave you that going off performance that you needed from Gabe Vincent. And then you got Duncan Robinson in the fourth quarter, catching fire.

That, that to me has, it's no secret. This Miami formula, you need one of either Bam or Jimmy Butler to play great. And then you need all these guys that are scrappy and tough and gritty as we call them to start to get hot and then make that contagious. And that's kind of what you got to see last night, where Struce went a little bit of a run, Gabe Vincent was really good. Bam out of bio went and was the best player for Miami. And then you had Duncan Robinson wake up in the fourth quarter.

That's the way that Miami wins these games. It's all these guys that you really don't expect things out of to fill in the blanks and you need one of your top dogs and either Jimmy Butler or Bam out of bio go off. But when you look at it, I still think Denver's going to win this series for a multitude of reasons, but I wonder if Bam's going to be able to keep this up. And we all know Bam in the last series up against Boston was phenomenal in the first few games.

And then as the series did progress, people were like, where the heck is Bam out of bio? You got to think Jimmy Butler's eventually going to play, but Jamal Murray has not played a great game yet in this series. And I really do believe that he was good in game one. I thought he was good last night early.

And then in the final two minutes, he started to show up and drain some shots. But I know Nicole Jokic is going to be the best player in this series. I know the Joker is always going to show up like a game last night, where even though he didn't have the most assists that he's ever had, because he only had four in the game, he still goes through 40 something points.

Like, you know, Joker is going to always have an impact on the game. That's why he's the best player in the NBA right now. But I'm still going in a league of dynamic duos. And let's be real, Denver doesn't have like this bad team. You know, Denver has a pretty damn good roster. And Michael Porter Jr. did nothing last night. Jamal Murray did not have his best game last night. I got to think eventually, just like how Miami shots did fall in game two, that eventually the rest of Denver is going to show up.

And could you say you're playing with fire? Malone blasted his team last night after the game, how it's the NBA Finals, and he thought their effort was atrocious, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just ultimately think that the Denver players that we've all relied on are consistently going to join Nicole Jokic in the party. And you said it earlier, I'll echo it again, Denver's been the most consistent team this postseason.

That was their first loss at home in this postseason. Not that you want it to happen last night, but if that's the way that it goes, I got to feel pretty good about Denver moving forward. And I'm real curious to see if we're going to see a different Denver team in Miami. Like will we see this Denver team that Mike Malone was furious at last night in game two, or will that be their wake up call?

Will that be their cup of coffee? Not that you should eat out of the NBA Finals. And this goes back to being a dominant Denver series where they take both games three and four. My gut tells me that this is going to be 2-2 heading back to Denver. And then I think Denver will win game five. And then I think they will end up winning game six. I would love for this to go seven. This has a shot to go seven. But I look at Miami and I see Miami getting two here.

And I'll ask this question. I know Jimmy Butler played okay down the stretch, but Jimmy Butler has not been the great Jimmy Butler really since that Knicks series. And I know he had the ankle injury, but we got to see Jimmy Butler take over a game or two in the NBA, probably two games. Jimmy's going to have to win two games by himself where he's that dominant Jimmy buckets, whatever you want to call him, whatever the kid's going on these days. He's got to be that Jimmy Butler where it's just out of this world where he's an absolute killer at least two times in the NBA Finals. As much as I love Jimmy Butler, I had not seen Jimmy Butler be that Jimmy Butler in the last two series really. And even yesterday at his credit, he had a big three in the fourth quarter and hit what I believe turned out to be one of the final shots of the game to again help secure the win.

But up to that point, he was non-existent. Especially in game one, he's very passive where he was not nearly as aggressive, was not the killer's kind of almost look to pass first or to shoot first. I think he's exhausted. He'd have put a lot on him and he's carried them especially in that Bucks series, like I said in the Knicks series as well. Really, I wouldn't even say in game one, two played really well against the Celtics, but it's been now five, six, seven games where that vintage early postseason Jimmy Butler has not come back yet.

And that's just a lot to ask to win three more games against the best team in the NBA when your star player is not performing at the level he should. And also, Jimmy Butler, we know he's as tough as tough could be. You wonder where that ankle's at.

And it's like, how much are you hiding the severity maybe of that ankle injury just because you're as tough as tough could be? And you know, nothing's going to drag Jimmy Butler off the court. We know that ankle's at a hundred percent, but how much is it actually impacting him not being able to be that absolute killer that this team thrives off of? I think the size too has given him a little tough love with Gordon, with Jokic. He's not getting to the rim as easily as he did against the Celtics.

That's for shorting against the Knicks, especially against the Bucks. And in this media world, I don't know what's true or not, but I saw Skip Bayless today said that you know, his father may not be in the best of health right now. So, you know, I want to have sympathy, obviously, if that is something that's happening right now. I don't know if it is or isn't and where Skip got that. But if that is true, what Skip is saying, it's like, you know, athletes do deal with real things as well.

So I hope everything is okay with his dad. But once again, I have no clue what to believe and what not to believe with Skip Bayless. You would hope Skip isn't making something like that up.

I would think that he's not. But did you actually hear that? And is that from a credible source or... And Skip has a crazy journalism background as we know it. I don't believe anything really Skip Bayless says.

I think everything he says is a grain of salt. But was that just something that someone heard or heard or heard? Like, I don't know what is true or not in that regard. Same.

So we won't pretend to confirm or know much about that. But what I will say is even with the Heat, you look at everything that went their way yesterday. You know, with J. Butler playing well, with Bam Adebayo playing well. When you get big... Like, when Gabe Vincent is your leading scorer and Duncan Robinson goes on his personal 10-0 run in the fourth quarter to bring him back. Like, a lot went well and you were still a missed three-pointer from Jamal Murray away from barely, you know, going overtime, maybe losing that game. It's like, Jokic, yes, went for 41 but was not the assist man that usually is. Like, there's a lot that went in a goaltending call that probably should have been called, that was not called. Like, Miami needed a lot in game two to go their way just to walk out with a three-point win.

I'll dub it down even more for you. Contavious Caldwell-Pope doesn't foul a guy twice behind from three. Just one time, yeah.

It could be a totally different game as well. Six free points on two awful fouls. And they were legit foul calls. Just, yeah, pure stupidity. Oh, on a side note, by the way, Mike Breen is phenomenal.

We all know that. It's tough for me to listen to Mark Jackson during this finals because he didn't vote for Nikola Jokic. Jeff Van Gundy, it feels like all he does is bitch.

And there were times where he's like, oh, I didn't see the foul last night, but I thought the foul was as clear as day. But my biggest problem so far with ESPN during these NBA Finals, that studio show is horrible. And I know NBA on TNT inside the NBA has the gold standard for studio shows, but it's almost as if you have a studio show that's just trying to navigate you in and out of breaks at halftime. Outside of Stephen A. Smith, no one does anything for me on that halftime show.

Greenberg is boring. And I know he's been in this business for a very long time. And he's a legend in the radio world, obviously.

And Get Up has been a very improving show from where it originally started. Jalen Rose never says anything for me. And really, I think he's just there, right? Because he's a former player. But what does he really add to the broadcast? And Wulban is phenomenal on PTI, obviously.

One of the legends. But he's kind of boring, too. I think they need to totally revamp that studio show where... Make the host like Scott Van Pelt. We know how much ESPN loves to put talent on there that does other things to justify paying them as much as they do. Like, Scott Van Pelt would be phenomenal before and afterwards for the studio show. I'd rather have Tim Leggler on there than Jalen Rose and Michael Wulban. Stephen A. Smith is entertaining.

I'm a fan of Stephen A. Smith. But they need to keep Stephen A. Smith and wipe everyone else out of that pre- and post-show. And it's terrible. Pre-game, halftime, post-game. That show is by far the worst halftime show in sports. Forget basketball. It is the worst halftime, post-game, pre-game show sports has to offer. It's terrible.

It gives you nothing. The halftime show is basically commercials of, hey, let's run a highlight. Sponsored by this. Come back. Another 10-minute break. Wow, what did you guys see in the first half? Generic take. Let's go to break. And also next to no, here's the second half. There's nothing.

And two other things. Can we get the big NBA Finals trophy, Larry O'Brien trophy back in the middle of court for the NBA Finals? Did you just make it look bigger? It looks like a regular basketball game last night. That always felt a little, I don't know. I don't mind the not big logo there. It's the Finals! Big stage!

Come on! Kind of felt weird. Know what you're playing for. And the other thing too. Now, I didn't really pay attention to this during the game. So correct me if I'm wrong, but I saw this tweet of the bottom line. It looks like it's just a regular season game where it says ESPN, Miami 9, Denver 14. It says the first quarter, then it says the time. Can you write on the bottom of the screen that it's the NBA Finals? If you would just tune in, you think it's a regular season game there.

I think the production of the product could be a little bit better. Do they have Super Bowl in the score bug of CBS and Fox? I don't know, to be honest. And if they do, I obviously did not notice.

That I won't kill them for. I don't really care about the score bug. It didn't feel like a big event last night. And that game was a great NBA Finals game. They could do certain things to enhance, get a better studio show, number one. Number two, put the big finals trophy in the middle of the court.

And if I'm right on this, because I did not notice it much throughout the game, just make a little note on the bottom line. NBA Finals with the logo. That's all you got to do. Nothing crazy. You would think this was like a G-League game last night or something like that.

Some league game. Well, I could do without the YouTube TV promos. Those are absurd and ridiculous. Scan the QR code here as we're doing the YouTube free throw, whatever the stupid thing is. That I feel like makes it feel JV. Well, it's them just taking money. No, I get it. But I mean, the Super Bowl, here's the first down sponsored by so-and-so.

That touchdown on the Super Bowl is brought to you by. Scan the QR code right now. We do that in radio all the time.

But I'm saying you want to talk about a big event. I need a YouTube TV QR code right now just in my face. I am so fascinated to see how Red Zone is going to be. Sunday tickets going to be on YouTube this year. I just wonder how many glitches there's going to be. Now, nothing was worse than how it was last year. The first three weeks of the season, you couldn't even log in and the system would overload and the games would always constantly buffer. I'm really curious what happens with YouTube here, because I forget which series it was, but in the NBA playoffs that YouTube just totally shut down during one of these playoff games. I think it was game one of the Heat Celtics, I believe, was the game. But it was definitely Heat Celtics series. You couldn't watch the last seven minutes of the game.

They better have a good first week. Are you a YouTube TV guy? No, cable guy.

Gotcha. So you didn't cut the cord. I thought you cut the cord for like half the year.

I mean, that's a good thing. I thought you cut the cord for like half the year. In the summertime I did. Summertime now you don't cut the cord right now this year? No, it's too much of a hassle to uncut the cord. Gotcha.

It's easy to cut. Then when you put it back together, it was a big hassle. Well, they hit you for 9,000 fees. And I missed the first weekend of college football because it was... Did you really? Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Very ridiculous. You didn't tell me that. You missed the first week. Well, I had to stream the games.

I watched it, but I had to stream it. Not week zero. I'm talking week one. Week one.

That's right. I got it back right in time. I got it like the Wednesday going into week one.

So basically going to Labor Day weekend. Penn State Purdue, right? That was a decent game. Well, that was on Thursday night.

So I was able to watch that. But it was... Or maybe it was even week two. And maybe it was even later than that, honestly.

I think it was Alabama, Texas, I believe. So that was week two. It was later on, but for whatever reason.

I think it was maybe in the first two weeks. They gave me some cockamamie, something with your account because we shut it down. Now we've got to reactivate it. It took forever. I had the equipment, but they couldn't... I was not able to turn it on. It took forever.

So I did not decide to do that process all over again. Oh, you're a big guy that's crushing the SEC, which I think is crazy for having eight conference games. And I'm looking at the Penn State schedule here from last year.

There were some cupcakes. Ohio, central Michigan, some other bad teams in the Big Ten. Auburn.

But I'm not declining. Every team has cupcakes. I'm not trying to sit here and tell you Penn State is the hardest schedule in college football. I think it's a big deal. Difference of one game means nothing.

Georgia, Oklahoma, or Georgia, Mercer. Would you rather see? That's the difference we're talking about. But for one game, it's not going to totally ruin it. And it's not always going to be Georgia and Oklahoma. So for one game, it's not the end of the world.

So in some cases, that's what you're missing out on. And that's frustrating. Well, yeah.

Show us the good games. Let's lose my mind. About it. I couldn't sleep Saturday night.

Or Friday night. I couldn't sleep. And I popped you on at like three in the morning. And there you were, bitching about that still.

Going crazy, losing your mind again. People were passionate. People were on my side. I forget what it was. You struggled with one caller. There was one. I don't even know what the caller was saying, to be fair.

I have to go back and listen to it. There was one caller. And I'm forgetting what he said in the moment. He was not making any sense. And you were like, what do you want me to even say here? You made me chuckle at about three o'clock in the morning. All right. That's what we're going for.

I don't think you intentionally tried to make me chuckle, but you made me chuckle. It was good stuff. Sometimes you throw your hands up and say, I got nothing. I know when you do those shows that late at night, you don't really remember much from those shows because you're in such a fog and a haze. But do you remember the call I'm talking about?

Yes and no. I do remember sitting there like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I totally forgot what it was about and what even we were talking about.

I think it was a caller from Georgia. But yes, I'm just like, at one point I'm just hung up. I don't know what we're doing. I don't know what he's even talking about.

So I got nothing. I'm just going to move on. And it's the Zach Gelb show on CBS Sports Radio. We'll come on back, talk a little Dalvin Cook next.

You're listening to the Zach Gelb show. There's certain parts of the show that you don't know about. There's certain players that you hear about that all throughout the off-season, this person's not expected to be on the team next year. And Hickey, two prominent names have been talked about a lot. And that's Joe Mixon, who's still with the Cincinnati Bengals. And I read somewhere today that now that that thinking has changed that he's going to be on the Bengals this year. And the other is Dalvin Cook. But it seems like ever since the season ended, Hickey, that the foregone conclusion was that Dalvin Cook would wind up with the Miami Dolphins this off-season.

And there was a deal I saw was reported near the draft that there was talks about a third round pick and that never ended up happening. And the more and more that this goes on with the Minnesota Vikings team, that now there's no more Aaron Rodgers, the NFC outside of Philadelphia and San Francisco being your two great teams. There's not a third team that everybody loves. Like Dallas is good, but they're not great. Minnesota is good, but not great. Detroit could be good, but not great. Seattle, good, but not great.

We go through this all day. But if maybe you are the third best team in the NFC, and who knows, maybe it's a surprise early on in the playoffs for a team like Philadelphia, the 49ers lose a game that they shouldn't lose. And the next thing you know, you could potentially be playing in an NFC title game with a trip to go to a Super Bowl.

You'll have a shot in that game. So it doesn't really make sense that if they didn't get good draft capital, I'm going to assume that you're not going to get better draft capital now, because there's probably an expectation around the league where teams are calling your bluff on whatever you're asking for. And if it was a three towards the draft or before the draft, it has to be north of that now. And Cook's still under contract for a little bit. But if you're Minnesota, you may as well just keep Dalvin Cook. Now, I know we all undervalue star running backs now. And a lot of teams that win, it's running back by committee and not a bell cow back.

And a lot of people like Alexander Madison, the Boise State product, who is there in Minnesota and has scored some touchdowns throughout the years. But I don't get why at this rate, Minnesota, if they can't get anything back or nothing substantial, it's not going to be with just outright release Dalvin Cook. Yeah, it makes no sense. It's not like you're going to lose him next year. It's not like they are pressed up against a salary cap or someone's got to be casualty. Like I said, it's almost just like, all right, we got to move off them for whatever reason.

Let's just go get them out now. For whatever reason, the trade with Miami before the draft did not go down. But I have no idea why Minnesota's operating like basically they're tanking. Fire sale, we got to give these players right. We cannot have these guys on our team next year when they are going for a Super Bowl.

Neither of us will say they're a Super Bowl contender, but that is their goal. Well, Zydarias Smith's okay. If you want to get rid of Zydarias Smith, that's fine. You could make a case that Zydarias Smith, throughout the season, he started off strong and then down the stretch, he was kind of declining.

And if you don't believe in him, fine, whatever. But when you look at Dalvin Cook, Dalvin Cook has been one of the more consistent backs of the NFL the last few years. When he is on the field, he's been phenomenal. The last four years, 1,135 yards, 1,557 yards, 1,159 yards, and last year, 1,173 yards.

That's just the last four years. And he's a touchdown. He scores a bunch of touchdowns. Had 16 total touchdowns in 2019, 20 in 2020, 9 in 2021, and then 11 in 2022.

So the guy's been putting up some good numbers, some really good numbers the last four years. If you're Minnesota, where now it's Rogers finally out of your division, you're like, oh, finally, even though you won the division last year, what message does that send to your locker room? If you just cut Dalvin Cook, you get rid of Thielen, Thielen's older, okay. You ended up drafted a wide receiver in the first round, you have Justin Jefferson, you have KJ Osborn, you made the move for TJ Hawkinson last year. I don't get why at this rate you would just outright release Dalvin Cook if they end up going down that road. Now look, next year when you're trying to give Justin Jefferson maybe a record setting extension, like I said, if you are trying to clear money because you know extension is coming, fine, but that's not happening this off season. So what's the point of giving him away or cutting him when you still have a free year to play with? He's under contract next year, so you could trade him. And even if they got the deal done with Justin Jefferson this off season, the extension won't kick in this off season. Right, so there's no, Minnesota's portraying there's an urgency or fire setting rid of Dalvin Cook. When in reality, if he's on the roster this year and you don't get anything back, there's literally no reason just to give him away or even cut him when you play him. Like I said, he's a production machine when he's helping.

You're trying to win right now. It doesn't make any sense why there's this almost panic of we can't have him on the team any longer, let's go. Where does he wind up by the way, if he get released? You would think it would be Miami. It wouldn't surprise you the Jets who have a lot of salary cap space end up giving him a nice little chunk of change on a one-year deal. Wouldn't shock me either.

I believe he's from the Miami area, so I will say Miami goes back home. It's a need where he would come in right away, be the RB one on a high octane offense. Would you imagine that team? If Tua could just stay healthy, look at the speed on that offense, the weapons on that offense with Tyreek, Jalen Waddle, Waddle like a penguin and then you could go add Dalvin Cook. Oh, that would be fun.

That would really be fun. That would be a very, very tough offense to slow down. Like you said, if they stay healthy, Dalvin Cook included, Tua included. The Jets could use them too. I know they have Breece Hall and Breece Hall's coming back from injury. They have 24, almost $25 million in cap space. If you're the Jets, you should be all in right here.

You got a window of two to three years maybe at most with Aaron Rodgers. Which surprising that reportedly they're already so quickly out on Deidre Hopkins. Well Salah, which it was weird, I heard him say this the other week. Robert Salah said, I know that there was stuff out there.

There was stuff out there with Odell Beckham. At one of these league meetings, you were basically pushing him into the corner and trying to make out with him. That's the way that it looked like. I don't know why these reports are out there.

I have no idea what I did to have these surface out of nowhere. You and Joe Douglas look like a bunch of fat kids in a candy store. The moment when Odell Beckham walked in, it makes no sense to me why you'd be interested in Odell, but not interested in DeAndre Hopkins. And I doubt that Aaron Rodgers is saying behind the scenes, we don't want DeAndre Hopkins. I don't know, did Garrett Wilson throw a fit behind the scenes or something like that?

I wouldn't think so. You think they're trying to win right now and whatever helps get them there would work. But outside of that, where else would Dalvin Cook potentially go? The Bears have a bunch of money. It's not going to be Green Bay. I was going to say Green Bay, but they have two running backs and Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon. So who's the team?

Lions, I know it's the vision. So that's if he gets cut, but the Lions invested in their running back room as well. Yeah.

Even though they got rid of Jamal Williams. It's you look around. Well, there's a reason why he hasn't got traded yet. Not a lot of interest. Right.

Potentially. And no one wants to pay whatever price you're asking. If it was just a third round pick though, that's not that crazy. It's really not.

It's not that crazy at all. So I would say the Dolphins, I would say the Jets. If the Eagles didn't go out there and trade for DeAndre Swift, I would have said that would be a Howie Roseman move written all over it, all over it. And I could Baltimore maybe get in, get in play. And they have JK Dobbins, but can he stay healthy?

You're looking around here. It's like, and also as the DeAndre Hopkins thing showed us, I know we could just throw out Buffalo and Kansas city, but they don't have a lot of salary cap space right now. Those two teams, they're both, you know, under $2 million left in salary cap space strapped against the cap.

Yeah, they are. So we'll see what happens. I'm actually, I don't know the more and more I think about this, I think Minnesota is going to keep them. I hope they do just from the sense of there's literally no reason to get rid of them right now.

There's no reason. And it's the same thing with Joe Mixon. Everyone thought he was definitely gone. And Joe Mixon saw that roster with Cincinnati team blows you in. They say, we'll give you a first round pick for Dalvin cook. Okay, fine. Not everyone's Indianapolis trying to go trade for Trent Richardson.

He was the number three overall pick at one time. I may have been fired up about that. Revers cannot confirm. You may, you may a hickey at the time. I'm actually afraid to look at my Twitter going back there.

I can only imagine, you know what? Ryan underscore hickey three. Let's see. Trent Richardson. I will never forget where I was when I learned the news. Go ahead. First ever Penn state walk-on tryout.

Actually, that's not true. Not the first ever. Probably the last, like the last tryout I ever went to. I tried to make my football career be like Rudy 2.0. Yeah. I finished the tryout, looked at my phone. Oh, notification culture trade for try Richardson.

Man, you make a lot of crappy Trent Richardson jokes. Really? That's what I'm looking at here. I already scrolled past some of them, but there was a few interesting news to me.

Hope they're funny. Yeah. Right. Ryan underscore hickey three.

A lot of your tweets come up. Oh, come on. Did, did a musk ruin this where I can't just search for hickey and Richardson. And that's the only thing that comes up here. Maybe do me a favor.

So maybe thank you, Elon. Yeah. All your tweets are coming up. Let's see top. Let's see if you got any good interaction here.

You got to do the latest. Nothing. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

It goes March, April, may. I don't even get Richardson. Oh, you know why you didn't type in Richardson?

No, I did. But Richardson as well, you, you've been tweeting like a whore when it comes to the name Richardson these people. Listen, do you see, I'll say not to get myself credit, but I'm about to get myself credit. A lot of people over the weekend, we're going crazy about one 22nd video of Anthony Richardson doing two drills and hitting two nets. You know how many tweets I had about that? Zero self control right here.

Not to brag, but I'm proud of myself. Ah, wonderful. There's one tweet I found.

And do you know this guy, Dan Cully or something like that? Yeah. It's a photo of Trent Richardson just getting to Indianapolis. He looked miserable and he said, Hey, Ryan, hickey, your boy looks really happy in this photo. That was it. That's all I could find that picture.

I can't believe the cults treated that out. He looks like someone who's like getting held against his own will to stand in front of that horse. Like you lied to a dog, but Oh, we're not going to get a vet. We're going to the park and all of a sudden you roll up in the vet parking lot and they know, hold on. This is not the park. That is terrible. I would have been miserable too.

If I got traded through Indianapolis, let's be real outside of St. Elmo's what the heck are you doing? Thank goodness. The social media team has improved their game from 2013. That is terrible.

Don't tweet anything at that point. I'm serious content to the cults, but out there, not pay, not players looking like they're held against their will. What's the name of the player that got popped for gambling today? Again, Isaiah Rogers. Maybe they have the gambling content this year for the Indianapolis Colts.

It's gonna have a lot of time in his hands. But come on back a little news brief. You're listening to the Zach Gelb show. Time for your daily news brief. We get you caught up on the rumors, reports and reconnaissance from the day in sports.

You can think around the auto parts where your car care needs guaranteed low prices and excellent customer service from the professional parts people at O'Reilly Auto Parts. Eric Spulcher gets annoyed about the perception surrounding how to guard Nicole Jokic. Hey coach, Ramona Shelburne, ESPN. This is probably oversimplifying things, but sometimes when teams play against Jokic, you turn them into a scorer, you turn them into a passer and he controls the game. He only had four assists. Yeah, that's ridiculous.

You know, it's just that's the untrained eye that says something like that. This guy's an incredible player. You know, twice in two seasons, he's been the best player on this planet. You can't just say, oh, make him a scorer. That's not how they play.

They have so many different actions that just get you compromised. We have to focus on what we do. You know, we try to do things the hard way and he requires you to do many things the hard way. And then he has our full respect.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, coach. So I think he was just annoyed because people think there's a simple way to guard Nicole Jokic. If anything, that question is kind of respectful to Nicole Jokic because everyone knows you can't stop him. And it's very tough to contain him. But you have to, as Brevin Knight said right earlier, try to take away one or one and a half of the things that he does is a great level.

That make it great, just make it okay. And Hickey, I kind of agree where if they're going to have a shot to win this series, you let him have his and take up time and you have him score and you try to contain everybody else. And they did that last night. You look at the starting lineup. Gordon had 12, that's a win. Murray had five, Michael Porter Jr. had five, big win. Jamal Murray had 18, win.

Contavious Caldwell-Pope had six, win. And you let Nicole Jokic go off for 41 and still look, the game still almost went into overtime. So there's no easy way clearly to defend Nicole Jokic.

So that was the case. The Nuggets wouldn't be in this spot, but it almost behooves Miami where a team that's built off effort and grit just goes all out against everybody else. And you let him kind of feast and eat, and you have to work on stopping everybody else and not allow him to be so lethal passing the basketball.

I get why it's not simple, but the question also stated, hey, I'm going to oversimplify this and the numbers bear out. When Nicole Jokic just score more than a passer, that's when the Nuggets are vulnerable to losing like we saw last night. And Ramona Shelburne's really good at her job. Maybe if she just would ask just without all the other stuff that goes into a question and we're all guilty of that. If you just raise your hand, you go, hey, Spoe, Nicole Jokic had 41 points and four assists. Is that the goal to allow him to score so many points and not have him kill you in other ways passing the basketball? Like, does that really change the answer? Probably not.

I'm just thinking of different ways that you kind of ask the question in that regards. Can't really win either way. Coach is going to be upset for whatever reason.

It's one of those maybe impossible situations. Let's go to Mike Malone on if they consider calling a time out on the last possession of the game, Jamal Murray ended up missing the shot. I think it's dependent upon the situation, you know, and their half court defense was giving us a lot of trouble in that fourth quarter, you know, and you take a time out, you let them get set, you let them review whatever play they think that we're going to run. And there's a great chance that we don't get a quality shot like Jamal got, which was online.

And from my perspective, looked like it had a great chance of going in. And we've seen Jamal make shots like that before. So some nights, yeah, I think, you know, we can take the time out. Other nights give our guys the freedom to get out and run. But with how well they were guarding in that quarter and how hard it was for us to generate great looks, I felt in that transition, we're gonna have the best chance to get the look that we wanted.

I'm surprised, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I am surprised today. How much people are making a big deal about him not calling a time out in that spot? First off, they're lining up for a shot to tie the game in a game where the way the fourth quarter played out, they should have been nowhere close to tying the game. And you have a chaos moment where the shot misses, they grabbed the rebound.

You got what, like 10 seconds or however many seconds left there was, and you're pushing the ball. And there's going to be a decision, do you foul because you're up by three or don't if you're Miami? And the broadcasters say like, Miami should foul, Miami should foul here. And Miami is such a well-prepared team and such a smart team, an intelligent team. You can even tell like they were thinking like what the heck that they were doing there.

You got a good look at it, it just didn't fall. I'm okay with them not taking a time out there. I actually thought it was the right decision, it just, the shot didn't go in. I'm 100% with you, especially when you're down by three, because it makes the defense of jobs easier. You can only defend half the court, you want to give them the rim, fine.

You know what three's going to beat you, all five guys in the perimeter, I'm with you. Mike Bellone crushes his team for their lack of effort in game two of the finals. Now let's talk about effort. I mean, this is NBA Finals and we're talking about effort. I love that.

That's a huge concern of mine. You know, and you guys probably thought I was just making up some storyline after game one when I said we didn't play well. We didn't play well. And tonight, you know, that the starting lineup to start the game is 10 to 2 Miami. Start the third quarter, they scored 11 points in two minutes and 10 seconds. And we just got, we had guys out there that were just, whether feeling sorry for themselves for not making shots, or thinking they can just turn it on or off.

This is not the preseason, this is not the regular season, this is the NBA Finals. And that to me is really, really perplexing, disappointing. And their effort was bad. At the end of the first quarter, I know it doesn't really show it on the scoreboard because they were only down by three points, but it didn't feel like that should have been a three-point game. And sure, they go into halftime and they end up having a lead, but then, and then, you know, they had a really good third quarter, but the fourth quarter, it just wasn't consistent throughout.

And that's a problem. They didn't have a consistent effort. Real quickly, Steve Kerr says he believes that he prioritized limiting Jamal Murray in game two.

Jeremiah Greenshell. You know, you mentioned them starting in love. That allowed Jimmy Butler to guard Murray. And to me, it was like, I don't, you know, I haven't talked to SPO or anything like that, but I can see them in their coaches meetings saying, Murray's the head of the snake. You know, not, not Jokic. Like, like if you just look at it, you go, well, Jokic is the head of the snake. When you play a team, you sort of realize, wait a second, like that guy's gonna, he's gonna dominate no matter what we do.

So we got, this is the head of the snake. And I think they just decided Murray's the guy we got to stop. So you start love, put Jimmy Butler on Murray, and then you saw like they were blitzing Murray quite a bit and really trying everything to take him out of the game. And there you go. I don't think Steve Kerr has an untrained eye, but that's pretty much the philosophy. You allow Jokic to get his and you try to take away everybody else. And you know how important Jamal Murray is to what the nuggets do.

Zach Gelb show CBS sports radio on-site off-site next. Mountain Dew Zero Sugar asks, ever wonder what it would be like to live in an alternate universe? Well, friends, welcome to the alternate universe of Mountain Dew Zero Sugar. Because even though it says zero sugar right there on the bottle, when you crack one open and try it, the taste is nothing less than outrageously delicious. Hey, transport yourself to an alternate universe with Mountain Dew Zero Sugar. Zero sugar all do. Quit your Thursday quality mark today where you can get two 20 ounce ice cold Mountain Dew's for only $3.50. Mountain Dew and quality mark do the Dew.