 What's the word y'all? I hope y'all thinking the basketball gods every single night before you go to bed because we are getting extremely, and I mean extremely spoiled. Right now, what is there? Eight series going on? Cause there's four over here. There's eight series going on and at least seven out of the eight have been absolute bangers. You can make an argument that eight of the eight depending on the way you interpret the Warriors dominating the different nuggets so far. If you think of the pool party coming out thing is huge or Steph Curry coming off the vitz is cool or Iggy's Duncan's cool. You can make an argument that all eight of these series so far have been heat. And that's not always the case. Every single season it feels like there's two to three series we like. It's a yon fest. We waited for the next round for things to get interesting. Every single one this year is interesting one way or another. And in today, first game starts 12 o'clock central. I'm recording this at 1230 in the game. The last game just ended. We got 12 straight hours of great basketball. The average margin of victory today was four points. That is four straight games that was down to the wire and I am here for. It basically just tells me the next game at least two of these games gonna be blowouts. And I had a feeling that the Bulls might lose by 30 a game but hopefully that's not the case go Bulls. We're getting too spoiled, bro. We're getting too, too spoiled. So like I said, 12 hours worth of basketball today. So I did not watch every second of every minute. A lot of days of chains in the last two weeks. Two weeks ago, we had the same slate. I'm sitting in this chair for like 12. Oh, okay. I'll stand up and watch and try to do exercise. I don't just glue myself to this chair but I'm watching here in this room for 12 straight hours. Obviously priorities have changed. So I was not able to do that. I had to be a father shout to Avery, you know what I'm saying? Her one week birthday, is that a thing? She turned a week. And you know, we was trying to take care of the kid too. So I'm telling you to say that I didn't watch every single minute of every single game which means that some games is gonna be talked about way more than others. It's just the nature of the thing, bro. I can't watch all the basketball all the time. And I can see you making an argument that that means I'm watch as a content creator. My whole life used to be content, content, basketball, basketball. And if you can't do that no more Kenny, do what you gotta do. Let's start off with the Boston Celtics Brooklyn net series because even though this is a 3-0 series similar to the Warriors and the Denver Nuggets one, this has been a banger. The first game was a game with a layer from Jason Tatum. Game number two went down to the wire as well. And the game number three, we talking about a six point game. The Boston Celtics have been conventionally winning these games but we talking a couple of possesses could have changed the series completely. But if you would have told me, if you would have told me before the season started. No, forget that. If you would have told me a month into the year that we're gonna get to the point where the first round in the playoffs is gonna be Boston versus the Nets and the Boston Celtics will be up 3-0. I would have called you a liar straight up to your face because a month into the season the Brooklyn Nets would have number one seed and the Boston Celtics like a 500 team at best. And right now the things have completely flipped. And the things that make this series so incredible, something I've never seen before is Kevin Durant has put up multiple stinkers in one series back to back. Today's game, he attempted a total of 11 shots for 16 points. He had five turnovers, three files. And he said in this post game interview, I got the quotes, I'm not reading them verbatim. He's saying that he's overthinking. When in life as an NBA fan, have you heard or seen Kevin Durant overthink the game of basketball? This man, Kevin Durant has had the game so easy for him because he's a demigod on the court. He's just like, I'm better than you. I'm going to score you. I'm telling you, I'm going to shoot over you. You can't guard me, I'm going to score you. This Boston Celtics defense has Kevin Durant and all-time great, one of the greatest scores of all time, overthinking the game of basketball, y'all. Wow, think about that. He is overthinking, insanity, insanity. Now the discourse about Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irvin is going so far left in this series, it's kind of getting ridiculous. I'm not giving Kevin Durant or Kyrie Irvin any passes whatsoever because there's no way in the world where you should be down 3-0 right now and the people that are saying, oh, Ben Simmons is going to save them. You're a delusional as well. Ben Simmons might help. Do you think Ben Simmons is going to really have them win four straight games? Maybe I'm the delusional one. And listen, Ben Simmons, they play basketball in 10 months. And the last time we saw him play basketball, he passed up an open dunk on Trey Young. You think he about to save a series where the Boston Celtics are this locked in? Stop it, bro. This has been an all-time fail for the Brooklyn that's this season in general. You think about where it started and you think about the fact that James Harden, Kyrie Irvin, Kevin Durant were a toe away from being in the finals last season. They're like, we're going to run this back, man. And everybody had them as the overwhelming favorite to win the conference. And then James Harden said, ah, I won out. Kyrie Irvin didn't want to get a shot, so he's going to miss half of the home games. And then you get to this point, we are in the playoffs and you are one game away from being swept in the first round in sanity. The only person that came to play today was goddamn Bruce Brown. Bruce Brown was your best player in a playoff game followed by a old Blake Griffin. It's embarrassing. It's used, they should feel embarrassed because I watched every second of this game and it might have been a two-minute period where it felt like a home game for the Brooklyn Nets. This was TD Guard in 2.0. Jason Tatum was getting MVP chance. The only time when it felt like a Brooklyn Nets home game is when Blake Griffin came in and hit two threes. Everything else was pointing to the Boston Celtics way, insanity. I'm at a disbelief and I picked Boston to win this series. I think I said it's seven. I thought I said it's seven. Maybe I think I said seven. But the fact that this might end in a sweep is mind-blowing to me. E-Mai Udoka has coached circles and I mean circles and I mean circles around Steve Nash. This man, Jason Tatum, is what, 23? I don't know, he might still be 19. I don't know. This man takes so much pride in defense that he gave, hold on, how many points he ended up with? He gave them 39 of them things and still ended up getting six steals. Two games in a row had Kevin Durant and Alcatraz. This is a 23-ish year old guy here. This Boston Celtics team is amazing me more every single day. There's a graphic that's going around on Twitter and I can never really tell. This is the bad thing about social media. Sometimes it's hard to tell what tweet is a joke or what tweet is taking series. And you know, I would say probably 70% of the people that are spreading this graphic probably look at it as face value. I think, yep, that's facts. There's a graphic that goes around. There's like in 2018, LeBron beat this same Boston Celtics team in seven. You remember that series with Jason Tatum dunked on LeBron and flexed on him? LeBron did technically beat this team in 2018. And the graphic says, and Kevin Durant is one game away from being swept. How can we add them on the same tier? Ba-da-da-da-da-da. Are you serious? For the 70% that's looking at that as the, Jason Tatum was a rookie. Bro only had a little bit of chin hair. Jalen Brown had the juice cut steal. Jalen Brown was a year two player. Think about these things. This team might be the same as far as names go, but they're far from the same as talent go. Jason Tatum, depending on how the voters do it, is Joel and Eden and Yolkic on the first team. Who knows? Jason Tatum is an all NBA first team player on my ballot this year. Marcus Smart just won the god damn defensive player of the year. And Jay LeBron has been an all-star since they played in 2018. This is the same team on paper, but this is definitely not the same team. LeBron did not have this same roster, this same amount of talent when they went against each other in the conference finals in 2018. Stop it. And I love Brom, but it's not the same. This man, Jason, do you see what Jason Tatum is doing to Kevin Durant? Do you see what email you, Doka's not letting Kevin Durant get a single breath of air? Even if Kevin Durant is sitting in the corner and he doesn't touch the ball for a possession, they are face guarding him like he's Kevin Durant, which I would expect more teams to do, but this is the thing about Kevin Durant's career so far. And this is not a knock-off Kevin, because again, I think that the discourse about Kevin Durant is going so far to where should not be. Kevin Durant is an all-time great. He's arguably the greatest scorer we've ever seen. Of course, these last couple of games, you know, you know what I'm saying? I've been great. But throughout Kevin Durant's career, he's always had some people to take the pressure off of him, right? Russell Westbrook early on when they went to the finals and even James Harder coming off the bench, taking pressure away. Did he went to the Warriors, taking pressure away with Steph Curry and Clay Thompson? You couldn't double off KD because you doubling off KD is leaving an all-time shooter open. And now he does have a little bit of pressure taking off him in Ka, but Ka has to perform to the same capacity we know he can since game number one. And the Boston Celtics are like Bruce Brown. We might mess with him. We'll let him shoot every single shot. Seth Curry ain't even get an open looks, but like, you trust Gorin Drogic? We don't, we gonna let him do whatever the hell he want. We will not let Kevin beat us. We will not let Kai beat us. And they haven't, they haven't. This is such a wild predicament. Such a wild predicament. I am excited to see Ben Simmons play basketball again, but I don't expect him to do anything ridiculously crazy to sway this series. No team has ever come back 3-0. And the way this Boston Celtics team has looked, they not looking to change that. They don't want, they're not gonna be the first team to do that, y'all. These are three close games. So you could argue that the Brooklyn Nets could have won any of these, but they haven't. You know what I'm saying? You can say, ah, we could have won that one. Now it's a 1-0 series or even a 2-0 series. But once they get down to 3-0, you don't have any more margin of error. You don't. It only take a couple of possessions in the game of basketball for things to go. And Kevin ran attempting one total shot and the fourth quarter is unacceptable for KD. It just is, bro. I love K, bro. He's one of my most fun players to watch. But a game like this, one shot in the fourth quarter. This man, Blake, took more shots. Unacceptable. Where do the, if this series ends in four, I don't know what the hell the Brooklyn Nets do. Where the hell they go? I mean, having a full season of Ben Simmons could help them for next year. But right now, this has been a travesty, bro. Shout out to the Boston Celtics for taking care of business. They're one game away from being in the next round. And if they do it quick, I mean, they gonna have a little bit of rest because the next series that they might be going against Milwaukee or Chicago, but Milwaukee, they still got a couple more games to play at the bare minimum. So you gotta take a little bit more rest. Robert Williams can get completely healthy and now you got him ready to guard Yanis or help guard Yanis. Man, this has been a crazy series. But every, like I said, every single one of them has come down to the wire. But the Boston Celtics, again, you talk about those clutch numbers, they were completely skewed. They say, oh, Boston's the worst clutch team in the entire NBA. That was the first month of the season, y'all. This team is different. Jason Tatum is ice cold. And he ended up, he was the first player in NBA history. I loved Terry Pick Stats for show. He's the first player in NBA history with over 35.6 steals, six assists and five rebounds. He did that. Yep, he did that. All right, let's talk about the next game that was important to me. The Memphis Grizzlies lose another one, one point game. And you know what? What the hell was Anthony Edwards doing on the very last possession? Contestant Desmond Baines shot. Desmond Baines hit a three. And like, if I looked at that replay again, I would assume that Anthony Edwards was this close away from fouling a 90% free throw shooter and sent him to the line. But Desmond Baines did miss a free throw in the last couple of seconds of the game. So you might've missed another one. But still, why even contest? You're up by four. Let him shoot his three. You know what the time is going right now. You're only increasing the probability of a four point play. Why are you even contesting them? Anyway, the Timberwolves did their goddamn thing. Everything we wanted for car Anthony Towns, he did today. Not in bonehead foul trouble. He did have two. And I mean, him and Anthony Edwards had crucial turnovers down the stretch. They're actually super lucky that they didn't cost them that game. Because Car Anthony Towns had a turnover and Anthony Edwards had a turnover down the stretch. But Cat with a good 33 or 14. And you know what? Me and the homies had a bet. What are the chances that Car Anthony Towns come out awesome? Rah rah, man, last game was unacceptable for me. I'm about to come out here and try to go crazy. Or will he be a little bit more passive? And I put all my money on. He gonna try to score the first couple points of the game. And he did that. He came out extremely aggressive. He got to the last 17 free throw attempts because when you think about the other side of the, when you talk about the Memphis Grizzlies, they don't have a lot of options for him. And the one option they do have in Jiren Jackson, Jr., we go talk about, I'm heavily disappointed the way Jiren Jackson, Jr. has performed in this series. As a guy to hit him on my all defensive team, I'm annoyed with the way Jiren Jackson, Jr. has played so far. But Car Anthony Towns came out killing the game. If they want to win this series, they need Cat to average his 30. You need him to play like every game is your last. If you do that, you have a legitimate chance, okay? Anthony Edwards, the fact that he even played the second half or in this game is crazy because they damn near gave him a wheelchair to get him out the game. He was limping off the floor, carried off the floor and he came back running out the locker room like he was an edge with a money in the bank case. You know what I'm saying? He came back and he gave him a good performance. Patrick Bevel is really good on both sides of the floor today and though the Angelo Russell only shot 25%, he was very crucial to this win. So I'm gonna give him a lot of love. Jordan McLaughlin, a guy that I didn't even expect to ever get in minutes in the playoff series, huge 16 points and not miss from three and hit a couple big ones in that early fourth quarter. So shout to him, basically taking a minutes away from Malik Beasley who, when he was on the floor, he just didn't really do nothing. Yeah, this is a huge win. I mean, we're back to a 2-2 series, bro. This is legitimately anybody's series at this point. You know what I'm saying? I felt pretty confident picking Memphis before this series started, but here we are. 2-2 series and I would not be surprised if Minnesota pulled off the upset. On the other thing, like I said with Jeremy Jackson Jr., man, hold on. Here's his stats. Four games into the series. Bro is averaging 10 points per game and five fouls. This man can't stay on the floor because he can't stop fouling. He cannot stop fouling, yo. He's averaging 24 minutes per game. That's unacceptable from your second best player, your most impactful defensive player, 24 minutes a game. And then the big thing about him is that like, what do you have on the offense side of the ball? They always say, ah, he's a stretch five. You put him at the five position and he's gonna stress it. He's shooting at 28% from three. So he averaging 10 points per game. He at the first game, he has seven blocks, which is great. But since then, he hasn't really been protected in the rim. And in today's game, he got eight alive. Like I said, Cardi Tals got to the free throw line at will. So you put in Coach Taylor Jenkins in a situation where even though it was only three minutes, he had Stephen Adams on the floor. And what happened in the first possession? Stephen Adams on the floor. Cardi Tals were right at him and drew a foul. Jiren has to be better. Trip, you gots to be better because your team will not win this series if you can't play over 22 minutes. And then Ja, though he did an amazing job and I turned the ball over and finding his teammates, they are going at this man head when he's on defense, every single possession. Every single possession. I can live with you not shooting the ball well. It's gonna happen to the best players in the league. Listen, we just talked about Kevin Durant, right? It's gonna happen to the best players in the league. But you can't come out there and have a terrible offense performance scoring them. But again, he set his teammates up perfectly. You know what I'm saying? Desmond Bay had 34 points and a lot of those were assists from John Moran. For sure, I'm not discrediting him on his playmaking ability and able to control the game when he needed to. But he couldn't hit his shots. And on defense, they were trying to get the switch where he was the primary ball handler with every single possession. They was going to him every single possession and they would be as successful on a lot of those possessions. If Ja's not going crazy on off the side of the ball and he's getting hunted on defense, it's really tough for the team. It's extremely tough for the team. It got to the point where like the minutes of Ty's Jones being on the floor felt a little bit better. Obviously, I'm not saying that Ty's Jones is better than Ja because that would be malarkey. That would be foolish to say. But in those small spurts of having Ty's Jones on the floor and not Ja, it felt like the defense was a little bit better, little bit better. And then again, they're getting to the pain in the wheel because the guy that you're supposed to be having is a reprotector, a reprotector. It's a bad game. It's a bad game. But even with that said, they almost won it. They almost won it. So I don't know where I would go if I had to remake a prediction on this series. I have no idea which way I would go. But it has been interesting. Do I have any more nosy in this series? No, no, I don't. That's pretty much it. Shout out to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Next game we want to talk about is the Toronto Raptors preventing a sweep. Man, what a game. What a game, what a game, what a game. They changed up the trophy. Scotty Barnes got announced as the Ricky Adios out to Scotty. They changed up the trophy and a lot of people were saying it was probably just for the NBA 75. But I would be highly, highly upset for example, even Marcus Smart. Every single defensive player in history have this defensive player of the year award where there's a literal defender and it looked like he's locked in. And Marcus Smart got a little-ass crystal ball. You kidding me? I want the one that looks like defensive player of the year. Or if I'm Scotty Barnes, I want the Jerry West one that Lamello and Ben Simmons and all these players got not this little-ass crystal ball. Are you serious? But hey, the Toronto Raptors prevented a sweep, man, and in the game where very early on Fred Van Vleet got injured and a man ripped his jersey when he was walking off the floor because he knew whatever happened was the real thing. But we finally got a Pascal Sciacca performance. Congratulations to Pascal. Congratulations to Gary Trent Jr. And this is the thing, man, with Scotty Barnes' back-playing basketball, Ogean and Obi doesn't play good basketball anymore. I don't understand it, but Thaddeus Young was huge for them in there. So we haven't seen a Thaddeus Young perform like this with the goddamn Chicago Bulls a few seasons ago. A 13-point game, five assists, three steals, five rebounds. He was amazing in this one. Chris Boucher has been really good this entire series, since game one, he may have put up a snicker, but since then, he's been really good. I saw a lot of people tweeting at me from 76er fandom blaming the officiating and refereeing for this loss. And what I will say, and I swear to you, I am not exaggerating, every single fan base, there's this people in every single fan base, no matter the circumstances, if the favorite team loses, they swear that the refs was conspiring against them. It's not always, yeah, yeah, yeah, Foster's a dickhead and he's not great at his job. But I promise you, I promise you, the officiating was not the reason you lost the game. It could have been bad officiating, I get you that, but it's not the reason you lost the game. And it's weird coming from the 76er fan base or Joel and B, because bro, y'all get fouls. Today you did it, and a lot of that, Joel and B didn't have a good game, his hand is messed up, and it might be a problem once you get to round two, but he wasn't nearly as aggressive as trying to get to the basket or draw fouls as any other game in this series or any other game of the regular season two. So it was just mind blowing to me that my mentor's like, yeah man, we'll get them next time, but if the officiating was better, bro, this are my notes right here. The Toronto Raptors won the non-Joel and B minutes. What have they done? And the three losses, they've lost the Joel and B minutes. Next one, the Toronto Raptors forced you to turn the ball over and had halla points off turnovers, fast break points. That's different than game one, game two, and even game three. The next one said, nobody else came to play, but Tobias Harris. Joel and B ended up with a stat line of 21 points and he shot 40% from the field. James Harden was five of 17. Tyrese Maxey had his worst game in the playoffs. Danny Green missed five wide open threes. The officiator might have played a play but his miniscule compared to the other ones. I have never in my lifetime as a fan of an organization of the Chicago Bulls, I was gonna say at the Bears, but I'll be lying to you and say I was at the Bears. I have never been like, damn, the officiator screwed us over and that's why we lost this game. There's so many more factors than that. You turn the ball over at a rate that you had and turn the ball over up to this point in the series. It goes a long way. Joel and B is dealing with a torn ligament in his hand. He wasn't as aggressive. James Harden can't get past Malachi Flynn. That matters. The officiator might have been bad but stop playing with the, that's the reason we lost shit, bro. It blows my mind. And this goes to all 30 of the fan bases because like I said, even in this one, Minnesota Timbers fans like, man, we won this one, bro. The officiator almost cost us, bro. And it's crazy. I didn't get round to watching Utah Jazz Dallas much, bro. I saw the last five minutes of it, maybe. I was so close to pulling off a tweet, just the most cliche tweet of all time. Oh, it looked like the Mavericks or better without Luca, then it was a trade machine picture of me trading Luca to the Bulls for like some BS. So I have not watched this game. I did see the lob and I didn't, I didn't watch the game. So I don't know how true it is, but I think it was B ball breakdown that said that the lob was the first time Donovan Mitchell passed the Rudy Gobiart all game long. And I can't even be mad at the Dallas Mavericks for not guarding the lob because he doesn't throw the lob. You know what I'm saying? He just hasn't done it. Look at Donovan Mitchell. He had a bad game. I guess that's what people were telling me on Twitter, but he made the right play with the mad at the most. And I'm so upset with the last possession for the Dallas Mavericks, whatever though, we got a two, two series. And a game that felt like it should have been, again, I only watched the last couple of minutes, but watching this, it felt like it should have been won by Dallas to lose his game, might come back to bite you. I don't really, I don't really know. So my own game started at 12 o'clock again, bro. And you know what? My pops is coming over for the first time to watch a Bulls game with me. We're watching a Bulls game together for the first time in maybe four years, which is terrible to say aloud, but it's a fact. So all I hope is that the Bulls don't give us a BS game, because I would hate to have to kick pops out because I'm frustrated with the Bulls. And I don't want to see him have him see me like that. So Bulls, please fight hard at the bare minimum.