 What's the word y'all? I cannot believe I'm filming this video and I'm smiling because my team is living to see another day. I'm gonna be honest with you. And at first court I completely accepted the fact that the season was over. I watched this team for 82 games and I've seen them go down that big in the first half and not have a lot of fight to come back and win a game. They did it today. Oh boy, they did it today. And we're looking forward to Miami on Friday, but the only problem with that is our best player is not coming to Miami with us, man. Demarda Rose's daughter has to go back to school and she was one of the main reasons why we won tonight, man. So I'm a little bit scared because we need that screaming in the background. Now for real, overall it was just a very weird experience because we all were watching this game and we heard the screams in the background, but nobody knew exactly who it was coming from. It reminded me of, and if you watched baseball during the WBC, it reminded me of the first game with the WBC. There was this guy and I think he was representing Cuba where he was in the back with a blow horn for the entire game. And all the Twitter was like, somebody kick that man out. And that's what it felt like until we found out that as Demarda Rose was gone and they're like, there's a literal 0% chance to get kicked out of the game. Demarda Rose, the all-time leader, scored a French side system. Nah. People say, oh, she was a civilian, then maybe it don't matter. First of all, no, I don't think you would because it's a sporting event. People are yelling and screaming all the time, but because it's against your team, you think that that person had been kicked out? Either way, she was very, very critical in today's win. And Pascal Siakam came to the podium afterwards and he mentioned that he didn't even recognize that that was going on. And that's probably some truth. I'm assuming that because there's so much going on within the game that these players don't even think about the outside noise, but whether they heard it or not, they shot 50% from the free throw line and they should have won this game. This is an epic kid laugh for the Toronto Raptors. There's no way around it. They were up by 19 points. If you're just looking at the box score without looking at the final score, this is a game that you win. And I'll explain why. Now, neither these two teams are good three-point shooting teams. That's a fact. But in this game, the Toronto Raptors made four more threes on better efficiency. Again, they attempted 14, 14 more free throws. They got eight more offensive boards, 14 more boards in general. They won the assist battle and they lost by four points. Usually, this big of discrepancy on the free throw shooting and on the glass is enough to tell you what team won if you can't look at the final score, but they melted down. They did. Zach Levin and third quarter turned into Michael Jeffrey. And I'm just feeling good because I didn't have a lot of hope. It's a funny thing because the playing is basically two fan bases that have been put through the ringer. Well, I've watched all 82 games of the Bulls this season. Toronto Raptors fans has watched all 82 games of their favorite team. They're telling me that the Bulls are going to win because their team is trash. I'm telling them that the Raptors are going to win because our teams are trash. And it's just two fan bases that are like done with their favorite team, but still rooting for them going against each other. And the reason why I wasn't very optimistic about my team is not just because, again, I've watched them 82 times and I've seen that in a lot of cases, they don't come out with a lot of fight. DeMarco Rose has struggled against the Raptors all season long. In some of those games, Zach Levin didn't play at all. And I think that mattered. You know, Zach Levin, of course, again, almost had 40 tonight. But DeMarco Rose and Ed struggled. And the games that we played against them, they had the size and the rebounding to win majority of those games. And again, they did that today. They beat us on offensive glass. They beat us on the defensive glass. And I just thought with the length and athleticism across the board, that they were going to win this. And in the first quarter, this is how it is to be a Bulls fan. And I'm sure some of y'all can relate with y'all favorite teams. We're like, you watched the first half of the first quarter about your team. And because it's not going good, you kind of detach yourself from the results. You know what I'm saying? I was already thinking about, okay, what does offseason look like for us, man? Because let's be real. I was making videos about the Bulls making trades this February. They made no trades whatsoever. So I'm thinking about this offseason, like, okay, how can we make some money here? Do we trade this player there? And then in the second half, again, Zach Levin really turned it up. And I was happy to see, even though Patrick Williams ended with only 10 points and 33% shooting, I think he was critical today. And again, the shots were not falling, but the defense was there. And I feel like this was a better, this is so stupid to say because he ended with 10 points or 33% shooting. But his feel in this game felt very, and I mean, very, very impactful. Me and the guys on our podcast put together all NBA and all of the awards, whatever. And I think all of us at Alice Caruso on the first team, I remember looking through some comments and they're like, what are y'all talking about? Alice Caruso first team, if you watch this game, you recognize all of that. Yeah, it's going, he's always going to get a couple of fouls. And you're like, come on, Alex. But like, for the most part, he was all over the place. And that's saying something because in the very early in this game, Pascal Siakam was giving him the work. The Bulls are a small team. I mean, they started to Martin Rosen, he's the four, but like they're a small team. Martin Rosen was, is a shooting guard in most cases, but the way the NBA is going, he can slad over to the forward in occasions. Alice Caruso had the Pascal Siakam assignment and Pascal was giving that man the work. But eventually we figured it out. And that's not something Billy has done notoriously, you know, making adjustments at halftime and the team having the fight. And maybe it is that the back is against the wall. If we do not win this game, then we do not play another game until October next year or October in a couple of months. I'm just happy that we won. Now, what happens on Friday against Miami? I don't know. But even if we win that one, what happens against the Bucks? We know what's going to happen. But it's cool to roof your favorite team. Even if you know that the outcome is going to be losing. You know, we know at 90% of us, 95% of us are going to walk out this season with an error on our record. At the end, it's going to end in an error. Most of some of y'all already got that. But it's about the time you have. And I was really, really having a lot of fun down the stretch in this game. So shout out to the Marta Brosnan and his family for coming out and helping us win. And Friday should be fun, bro. Friday should be fun. Jimmy Butler always try to get his little revenge against Chicago after they trade him away. And they don't look good either. So it's about to be another battle of two fan bases looking at each other saying, our team sucks. Y'all got this. No, our team sucks. Y'all got this. And we'll see what team ultimately ends up winning. I will say so far, the playing has been an absolute success. Every single one of these games has been down to the wire. Some of them, of course, way uglier than others. But we got OKC versus the Pelicans. And yeah, we could spend a lot of time talking about the Toronto Raptors and what their office is like considering it feels like there's a ceiling on where they are right now. Or we can't talk about the Pelicans and Zion and all of this stuff now that their season is over. But we'll say those for another video. I would rather just talk about this individual game before getting into offseason stuff and team building and things like that. Of course, another back and forth game, back and forth game. The Pelicans had a lot of momentum when they decided to finally give Yonah's valence to Mr. Ball. But unfortunately, he gets injured. Like, he gets injured and they have to send him for the majority of the rest of the fourth quarter. And they finally put him back in the game. And immediately he gets one more bucket. I mean, it ended up with 18 rebounds. And I just keep thinking to myself, if the Thunder win against the Timberwolves, I'm not rooting for anybody. But I do want to say my enjoyment factor when watching the Thunder is up here and with the Wolves is like down here. I'm beyond a switcher. Who would I rather see in the playoff series versus the Nuggets? I have an idea as far as the enjoyment factor. But again, I see Big Val end up with 16 and 18. I'm like, what is Yonah's going to do to this team if they see each other? And at least the Timberwolves have some big bodies to throw at Yonah's, even if some of them aren't great defenders or some of them aren't as great a defender as they used to be. I'm already looking too far ahead. Let's stick to this series or this game. I don't want to put it on one person because obviously no one person loses a basketball game. I down the stretch in the last two games, whether it been the last game of the regular season against the Timberwolves to put the Pelicans in this spot. In this game, down the stretch season, McCullum had been pretty dread for what he's lost. Tough floater down the stretch, heavily contested. It's one of those shots that if it goes in, you don't care that it was a bad shot, but since it missed, it's like, why did we do this? Why did we not get a better opportunity? Especially because Brandon Ingram was starting to find things. Once he fouled on that last shot with Ludoar was contesting. I don't know. The last two minute report will probably tell you a little something deeper than what I can know. But it felt like down the stretch CJ wasn't as impactful or as good as we know he normally can be. Again, we've seen him in these high-leveraged games before. Game seven versus the Denver Nuggets a few years ago when he was the best player on the court. On court ahead, David Lillard and Nicola Jokic on it, you know what I'm saying? But then his last two games were the most important games of the entire season. And down the stretch, he just didn't look good. And was it him slipping or was it the her pass? I don't really know, but overall it was a very anticlimactic ending to this back and forth game where it ends in that turnover off the end bound. I mean, the previous play where it's a full court heave to Brandon Ingram and he catches and shoots. I mean, that's stuff that coaches dream about when they throw in the full court heaves. You know what I'm saying? And they have another opportunity to go tie it up or win the game and they go out of bounds. I'm like, again, I'm neutral in here, but I want to see more craziness. I'm like, oh, no. Again, probably the second best story of the season, only behind the Sacramento Kings being damn good. Is this is this Thunder team, man? I had always said the youngest team involved, but I forgot that Eric Gordon got traded away from the Houston Rockets. So the Houston Rockets at the end of the season technically had the youngest team in basketball, but the OKC Thunder are there as well. And here they are one game away from having to play off birth again. This is going to be a tough game, I think, just like this one was. But to foreshade to have the lowest amount of first half points of the season and still end up with his occasional 31 in some time. Bro, in that third quarter, there was tough bucket after tough bucket after tough bucket. I'm like, man, there's no way he could keep going. And then in the last 30 seconds of the game, he is his leaner going away from the basket to basically like ridiculous, bro. Seven points in the first quarter. You know, the defense was there on both sides. You know what I'm saying? Lou Dorre, again, he had 20 in the first half. He mentioned his names. My fault, Lou. 20 in the first half, good defense around the way. And the Herb Jones, like this was a battle that was for me as a nerd and a defensive guy to see Lou Dorre and to see Herb both have crazy assignments. This was something I was looking forward to and neither of them disappointed, at least on the defensive side. But offense, great offense is going to win. So eventually Brandon Negro got it going. And eventually St. Alexander got it going. And it's like, like in a lot of these cases, Lou and Herb are playing good D. But the offense is just going to do it. So he ends up having his game and hitting big shots. But like, Giddy, man, Giddy on our pot a little while ago, we were trying to redraft that draft. And I was making a case for Giddy to go even higher than where he was drafted in real life. Because even though he doesn't do this on a nightly basis, obviously if he was after the 30 points, we've been talking about just getting a lot more. But this is the type of performances I think he can have more regularly throughout the course of his career. And I really enjoy him watching him because he's at his own pace. And there are there are few people in the NBA that can get it done at the speed that he does. But you have people like James Harden, where if he's in gear one, he's hard to stop. If he's a gear two, he's hard to stop. But if he's in gear three, he's super hard to stop. This man Giddy has one gear. And if he can refine on that gear and make it perfect, I'm just, I'm just saying it's not going to be many people that can stop. He got to the basket a lot this game. Of course, the pass is always going to be there. I mean, this is something he's been doing. That's one of the main reasons he got drafted that high. But he's just getting better and better and better with time. Though our boy Jay Dove didn't have a great game, he had one bucket in this one. It might have been early fourth quarter. Like a screen came. He split the double team on the screen with a little like, threw the ball in front of him, went between the screen and get it. And then with a tough lay on the left, like, come on, bro. Basket, tough basket after tough basket. And he was hooping in D-Rose once. Oh, classics. I had a pair of those in high school. Classics. Now, if you got a wider foot, they're going to hurt you a little bit. But if you got a narrow foot, classics, bro. Any of them in the yellow colorway. This was a great game, bro. I'm a little bit afraid about the next playing games because I don't think they're going to live up to this level of intensity and this level of greatness. But if they do, again, Adam Silver, bro. Adam Silver did it again. Because the play-in has, every season had given us a few good games. Every game they had nothing to do with the Charlotte Hornets has been a good game in the play-in. And it's continued to be the case. So let me know what you think about these games. Who do you got? OKC versus Minnesota. Chicago versus Miami. And yeah, maybe tomorrow we'll talk about the future of some of these teams that got 11.