 What's the word y'all? Game five, the Andrew Wiggins game. I cannot wait for 10 years in the future. And I'm talking about the Andrew Wiggins. Every time we got, you gotta flash the three. Andrew Wiggins game five, bro. If I would've told you, we're gonna be game five of the NBA finals. Let's go two years ago. Two years ago, if I would've walked up to you on the street and say, hey, we gonna be in 2022, the Warriors gonna be in the NBA finals and we're gonna have a game where Steph Curry hit zero threes. The first game in 1300 days by the way, where he hit zero threes and Wiggins was gonna be the best player on the court that also had Clay Thompson, that also had Jace Tatum, that also had Jalen Brown. You would've laughed at me. Andrew Wiggins was announced as an All-Star started back in February and I laughed at it. I said there's no way in hell he deserved to be an All-Star. And Wiggins has made me eat those words. Part of doing what I do is being able to accept when you were wrong. And Wiggins has made me look foolish and I'm happy for him. The way his career completely turned around is amazing and this is a testament to hard work and being in the right scenario in the right situation. He was an amazing rookie and then he started to be an empty stats, empty calories guy. Will he ever be able to defend? Remember that part of Wiggins? You remember a couple years to his career it was like he got all the tools, all the intangibles to be an elite level defender but he don't care enough. We're in the NBA finals and Bro has consistently do five games, had Jace Tatum in a stranglehold. Jace Tatum in a stranglehold and today 26 points in a game where Steph Curry struggled heavily. Come on man. Last game he had he set a career high in rebounds because well, we're starting auto-porter and we don't really have that great of a rebound as in our team. Somebody can do it. I guess it'll be me. Wiggins, we're from this dude that seemed like he was all about his buckets and nothing else to be in the dirty work. I'ma do everything our team needs guys. Think about Wiggins three, four years ago. He would have games where he had 20 points, one rebound and one assist. You're like, Wiggins, what the? If you ain't scoring you're not contributing. That has completely flipped on his heads and I'm looking forward. Listen, everybody knows with the conversations about to be on undisputed, on first take, on whatever talk show thing tomorrow morning right as this video is dropping. Is Andrew Wiggins the finals MVP? I'm not accepting that. There's no way we're about to discredit Steph Curry. Listen, I know he didn't have a good game today but we not about to act like game four then happy. We not gonna act like before today he wasn't averaging 34 points per game on an extreme amount of efficiency. You feel me? He had one done, bro, he had one done. And they still won that game, you feel me? So far through five games Steph Curry is the finals MVP. That's all I'm saying. And I know tomorrow that's all people gonna talk about. And Wiggins deserves, if we're doing a hierarchy no matter the team, who's second in MVP? It's Wiggins, but he's second. You feel me? Be sure to subscribe to my newsletter The Enjoy Basketball Newsletter. We are so very close to 30,000 subscribers. It's crazy to say, it's completely free. You just sign up, you get emails Monday, Wednesday, Friday, some of the best sports writers that we can find, you know, give their takes and talk about all things basketball, the Enjoy Basketball Newsletter. And if you're already subscribed be sure to be checking your emails on Monday, Wednesday, Friday so you don't miss out on content. Like when we had that merch drop last week or two weeks ago, whenever the hell it was, I'm already forgetting. The people that were subscribed to the newsletter knew the exact date and time before everybody. I'm just saying, drop number two was coming around the corner faster than even I anticipated. So you need to be subscribed to the newsletter. Again, it is free and it is just content, content, content. It is just step one of this thing that we're building and I want you to be in on the ground floor. So subscribe to the Enjoy Basketball Newsletter. Link is in the description. Anyway, let's get back to it. Andrew Wiggins, what again? No, no, no, let's talk about some of the other things too. Because this was not solely the Andrew Wiggins thing. Andrew Wiggins had an amazing game but you also saw some of the other step up. And if you watch our podcast, that is the Through the Wire podcast. Here I am just plugging everything. Through the Wire podcast, we're very close to 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. So if you're interested, we publish on Tuesdays and we publish on Saturdays. Either way, in that, you know, sometimes I try to give people different content, right? So you like, Kenny, why would I subscribe to your podcast channel when I hear all your NBA takes here? I give more over there. That's all I'm saying. And in the last podcast, which was Saturday, I was like, the only thing I'm a little bit afraid of if I'm a go to say Warriors fan is that every single game, Steph Curry had to be a supernova version of himself for us to win these games, for us to be in these games. And I was saying that it's unlikely that he continues if we're in the entire series. So what he was doing was amazing, right? It's like, this is one of the reasons why he's one of the greatest of all time. But still, even the greatest of all times end up having duds. And I was like, I don't know what happens when he has a dud. Is somebody gonna step up? Clay Thompson had been the best version of himself. Wiggas was doing his thing, but you know what I'm saying? Jerry McGreen was a negative through the first four games. If he had a dud, what the hell is gonna happen? And what we found out is other people step up. And Wiggas again, with his 26, Gary Payton, the second, got all the minutes we won. I sat at the end of the game for, he had 90 minutes and I was like, Steve Kerr, please play him more. 15 points from the guy. My shooter guard slash center, is what we always like to call. You feel me? He had a couple of ducky and tight possesses. We were like, he's six three. Yes. And then who else was it? Jordan Poo hit the half-core heave. Hey, when you hit a half-core heave, it's like raps. That's all the momentum, especially when you look at that third quarter, it wasn't the avalanche that we normally see from the Warriors. It was the other way around where the Boston Celtics come out with eight straight May threes. You're like, damn, what's happening? And then for Jordan Poo to come out and hit that last shot was big for the momentum. It was big for the crowd. And that's the second time he did a shot like that. You know what I'm saying? Shout out to him. But very early on I was impressed with the way Jerry McGreen came out. You know what I'm saying? He backed up a lot of his talk, right? Through the first four games, like I said, pretty much a net negative. He had been, I want to say bad on defense because he's Draymond Green. He wasn't the guy that was the front runner for the defensive player through the first half of the season before he got injured. The other team was looking at him and like licking their lips. Jalen Brown, though he was making a lot of tough shots through the first couple of games of the series, he was really going at Draymond after game number two because game number two was when they switched the rotation. And today he came out aggressive. He scored four easy points right off rip. He was out there passing, he was rebounding and the overall stat line looked like eight points, six assists, eight rebounds, a really good game from Draymond Green. Even though, you know what I'm saying? It's Draymond Green. So you got some antics where he's getting into the face of the opposing team. He ends up fouling out the first player since like 2000 they said to foul out of three NBA finals games. Hey, it's part of Draymond Green's brand at this point, fouling the hell out. But again, a good performance from him as well. And in my mind, there's only a few things that can beat this Boston Celtics team. It took a supernova performance from Steph Curry in game number four and then Wiggins having an out of body experience considering the complete game that he's given up. But the one thing that was consistent in every single one of their losses is that they've been shooting themselves in the foot every chance they get. There's a stat that has been going around for the beginning of this game. They showed it two times on the broadcast that when they're, when they have 15 plus turnovers they don't win. Guess how many turnovers they had today? 18. Guess what the opposing team had? Six. Turning the ball over 18 times to your opponent, six is not gonna win you some games. It's not gonna win you any game. Not gonna win you majority of the games. There's no way. And that's been the one consistent thing for all of the, pretty much all the Boston Celtics' losses through the last four months of basketball. I was like, when they're shooting themselves in the foot they will not, they will not win. There's only a few things that can beat them and themselves is one of those things. There was the second quarter. And I think it was Bezos that made the tweet. But I was thinking the same thing. They got into, they got the words into early foul trouble. They were in the bonus for like eight minutes left in the second quarter. And you would think when you get that you would get to the basket a little bit more because that's what, that's what got you to this position. We get to the second quarter. There's like five straight possessors where there's nothing but three pointers. And though they finally made one, it's like, man, let's go back to what was working. Let's get it downhill and doing some of these things. They just didn't, they didn't do that today. And it's just unfortunate, you know what I'm saying? I think a game like this showed the age or the lack of experience from some of their top guys. They had a game where Steph Curry gave them a dud. This is a game you need to win. This is a game you definitely need to win because I don't know out of the last two games and maybe you last one game if you're gonna get another performance like this from Steph Curry. You needed this game. Especially since like three out of four game, the winner of game five wins the series three out of four times. There was a stat that was going on on the NBA PA's Twitter. Or actually it's a little bit less. And it's like 73%. Either way, you get what I'm saying. Winning game five is extremely important. That's in the NBA finals. Now the silver lining for the Boston Celtics that earlier in this playoff run, they were down three, two to the, to the box. And that's where you got that crazy performance from Jason Tatum where he gave him like 40 some points and they got to game seven and they blew him out. So the series is not over, but I could tell it's a little demoralized and losing this game where you had great defense on Steph Curry. Let's not even say they had great defense. I'm being honest with you, Steph Curry missed a ton of wide open shots, you know what I'm saying? But listen, you prevented him from dropping another 40 piece, which is an improvement. And you still did not win. It's got to hurt. And listen, he may was going for it, man. He understood the importance of the game five. We got Jason Tatum playing 44 minutes. Jaylen Brown played 44 minutes. 40 minutes for Marcus Smart. They were legitimately running like a six, seven man rotation for the majority of this game because they understood the magnitude that is game five. They get one more home game and you got to go back into that chase center that was as loud as ever and try to steal one. It's one game at a time at this point. There is no tomorrow. That's the mindset you got to have. There is no tomorrow. This next game, which is on Thursday, which I like. They give them some time to travel and kind of settle down so the product that we get is not terrible. There is no game, there's no game after that. You have that mindset going to game number six, like this is a win or go home situation. When I'm looking at this, right? I'm looking at the box score right now. I'm gonna read something. There's only two people in this game out of the six man rotation that they, seven man rotation that they ran that had more assistant turnovers. It was Al Horford. Nope, I'm sorry. It was Robert Williams. Robin Williams should never have a turnover. So yeah, he had two assist, zero turnovers. And then Derek White had three assist, zero turnovers. Jason Tatum, four assist, four turnovers. Al Horford, one assist to two turnovers. Four assist to five turnovers for Jaylen Brown. You got two to four for Marcus Smart. And then Grant Williams, who's not even got to have the ball that many times, won the two. Again, shooting themselves in the foot every chance they got. I mean, but if you just look at that third quarter, you would have thought, oh snap, it didn't really matter. And then we get to the fourth. And then it did. He also left 10 points at the line. I don't know if I mentioned that earlier. You have to be able to make your free throws, bro. You have to. And you lose by 10, you left 10 at the free throw line, asking the team to shoot 100% from the free throw line. It's unrealistic. But you give yourself away by the chance to the fact that you don't have to play Luke Cornette any minutes. You know, if you hit six mortals, free throws, you know what I'm saying? Shoot 60% better from the free throw line. Is that too much to ask for? It shouldn't be because you guys are NBA players and some of the best. And that's why you're in this position. But leaving 10 at the line is insane. They got 31 attempts. I didn't even realize it was that many. They got 31 attempts. And I was getting tweets about, like, Kenny, what do you think about the officiating, yada, yada, yada? I'm so done. I'm not, listen, unless it is something super egregious, and I mean super egregious in game six or game seven, I will not be referencing the officiating because we all agree that it's ass. What more do you want me to say from that? It's bad. You know, even Mark Jackson on the call was saying that, hey, eventually you got to step up from yourself. And that was after the Marcus Smart technical foul in the third or early fourth quarter. Agreed, but like this is what the referees have been doing. You know what I'm saying? I don't think we have the conversation of how we fix it in the middle of the NBA finals. And honestly, I don't know what the answer is. So if we're going to next season, how do we make officiating better? I don't know. Holding them accountable would be dope, though. Say the same thing about Umsen and the MLB. If you're missing calls, I'm not saying dock the pay, but there's got to be something. You know, we're the NBA Finals. So these are the however many refs are in a rotation that the NBA has decided. These are the best that we have. And it's bad still. I'm just saying. You feel me? I'm just saying. So I don't know, dock the pay. So that would be crazy. But I mean, NBA players get docked pays when they do stuff bad, right? You get ejected. That's what 25 Gs or this. That's five Gs for talking explicitly to interviews, you know, so I won't go to that scale because referees aren't making that much money compared to the NBA players. But you give them saying there has to be something. There has to be something. Dang, I hate to even talk about this considering how excited I was to see Al Horford in the NBA Finals since game one. You know what I'm saying? Do I need to say anything more? I'm not. I didn't expect him to average 20 for the series. They'll be unrealistic. We're still talking about Al Horford here. But in the first three, three series, three series, I feel like I saw his impact way more than I'm seeing in this series. And maybe that is because his role is just slightly different since the opposing team is going ultra small in a lot of the cases. I don't really know what's preventing Al Horford. But again, I don't need him to drop 20 today. He shot 50 percent from the field and had nine rebounds, nine points. But he hasn't had the impact that he's had that made him one of the reasons why they got to this point. Al Horford, going into this series, was real life like having people had a conversation. Like, hmm, what type of money is 30 something you are Al Horford going to make? You know what I'm saying? And now we look at this finals past game one, you're like, oh, what is Al Horford out there doing? You know? Again, I don't need him to average 20 or put up 20. But I check my phone. I check my phone for 30 seconds. Y'all really about the Pustus, Andrew, Andre Igodala, Andrew Wiggins thing. God damn it, y'all. We got to be better. We got to be better. Do you not understand that before tonight, Steph Curry was averaging 34 on 50 percent shooting 49 percent from three and gave them 43 points in a must win game four? Do we, are we forgetting that? I know reasons he buys is a real thing and I understand it. I'm a victim of it too. But not to this extent. Listen, I've loved the game that Wiggins has played this series. The defense on Tatum has been amazing. The offense tonight in a couple of games throughout the series has been amazing. But y'all, it's right in front of you. I think we have this thing where we just try to negate the obvious. It's right there, y'all. They still got to win more, one more game. They still got to win more game. But like, it's right there. And in my personal opinion, in order for Wiggins to win finals MVP in game six, he got to go off of 40 and Steph got to have 15 and go another game with no threes. Even if it's that, I still believe that the voters might still give it to Steph Curry because he didn't get the Iggy one. And then Katie got the other two. And the fact that even at this point is Steph Curry a ton. You know what I'm saying? So it might be that good old, here, here, you deserve one early. Here, just take this one. Kind of, never mind. I was gonna say something hella disrespectful, but I know this person has a bunch of stands on Twitter and stands scaring me. I'm not, I stand scaring me. But there was an MVP in recent NBA history that felt like him, take it. Dang, I was complaining about stuff. Even though it wasn't him, it was like his fans. I'll leave it at that. Let me know what you think. Steph Curry's the fighters of VP so far. Great, we on the same page.