 What's the word y'all? Ladies and gentlemen, I gotta admit, man, the last 48 hours of the NBA world have been extremely exhausting for me. I'm talking about the stuff that's happening on the court, off the court, social media, all of it combined, it has me exhausted for the first time of my life with this being my job. I'm usually a dude that's live tweeting events like the Vintage James Harding game we got today or the Dallas Mavericks, Dora Finney Smith hitting every single shot. Those are events that I'm usually live tweeting, but this is not supposed to be a video that's ranting about social media because we wanna talk about the stuff that's actually don't happen on court. But I'm definitely gonna do a video soon talking about all the ins and outs of NBA social media because it's gone too far away from I think the intended purposes of these things. I started to enjoy basketball moving because I felt like so many people are not just enjoying the game of basketball, which is what we're supposed to do. It's so many legacy tarnishing. It's so much ranking. It's so much just overall toxicity in the community and it's just exhausting for me. So now I'm watching these games and I'm getting tweets like Kenny. No tweets about Dallas, no tweets about Philly. I'm actually just gonna talk to my community in these videos and let it be that, bro. That's how crazy we've gone, bro. And then sometimes I look at what's going on in 2022 and look at me being almost 26 years old and I'm trying to figure out, am I so out of touch? I realized, no, it's the children that are wrong. Either way, join the enjoy basketball community on Twitter. I haven't been as active as I probably should be, but we got some good conversations as overall basketball lovers over there. Hit the link in the description. Subscribe to the Enjoy Basketball newsletter and be looking out for the merch and stuff. I think it's a movement that needs to be really talked about and enjoying basketball don't mean that you can't have debate because debate is a big part of sports, but it's like, let's talk about these games, man. Let's talk about these games. I think we had two good games today. One way or another, the Dallas Mavericks tie up their series and the Philadelphia 76ers tie up their series. A series did not start until a role team wins and so far it's been home team, home team, home team, home team. There is a lot to be said about these games. Let's start off with the first game of the day, a game where Luka Doncha shot nine for 25, one for 10, from three, and they comfortably beat the number one seeded team in the league. The team that had dominated the entire regular season. Luka, I can't say a poor performance because his ability to make his teammates better and his ability to find his teammates elevates any, well, not any, but majority of bad shooting night. So I can't say he had a bad game, but he had a bad shooting performance. He won one for 10, from 10, from three, and they won pretty convincingly, man. You gotta give a lot of credit to Doreen Finney-Smith on the broadcast. They were talking about it was Mother's Day and they were telling the story of his family and his mom as she was still working at church, his chicken after he signed his first contract and she finally quit because he signed that extension. And now you're looking at that extension of you, Doreen Finney-Smith, you're like, damn, I could've got more than that. And you look at that extension of you, the Dallas Mavericks finish it. That's one of the best contracts in all the basketball. Like I said, when it comes to the playoffs, I love the chess match that is involved when it comes to these coaches. The first two games of the series, specifically in game number two, these Phoenix Sons hunted Luca Donchich. The entire fourth quarter was Chris Paul isolation Luca. It was Devon Booker isolation Luca. And now in the last two games, we haven't been able to see that. Actually, the hunted, the hunters have become the hunted. Chris Paul, they're trying to get him on switches. Devon Booker, they're trying to get him on switches and it has been successful. What have the Dallas Mavericks done differently to prevent Luca Donchich from getting hounded? Well, when they try to get that screen to get Luca Donchich to switch, they are doubling the ball handler. They're forcing the ball out of Chris Paul's hands. They're forcing the ball at Devon Booker's hands and they're not allowing Luca to get a lot of possesses where it's him in isolation. It's beautiful coaching for coach Jason Kidd. And like I mentioned a couple videos ago, I'm enjoying what he's doing because he is not afraid to make some changes in his rotation. Today, Frank Nielikina gave them almost nine minutes of really solid basketball. Yeah, he fouled a bit. That's what you expect from a dude like Frank Nielikina but he was hounding, you know what I'm saying? We talked about in game number three how Reggie Bullock had made Chris Paul's life a living hell. He did it again. And then Frank Nielikina helped us some more. And then now, even though, damn, I didn't realize that Spencer Dimmity shot three for 10. At one point in the second quarter, Spencer Dimmity went on the 8-0 run by himself. And in that same quarter, Davis Burr 10s had four straight threes. Now you're getting the people outside of Luca doing part of their job. And today they hit 23s, 45% from the three. But when it comes to Phoenix Man, Chris Paul has to be better. You know what? I'm done doing this thing. I come to these videos and I'll be like, I don't see a world where Chris Paul has another stinker. I don't see a world where Kevin Durant has another stinker. I don't see a world where the Miami Heat shoot 20% from three again. All of those things have happened. Chris Paul had a terrible game on his birthday. I was like, he might've had a lahim before the game. He's celebrating his birthday. Another stinker, the Miami Heat shot 20% from three a couple games last game and it shot like 15% today. Kevin Durant puts together the multiple bad games. Like I'm done saying it's unlike them to do it again because it seems like this playoffs, the unlikely thing is likely to happen. Chris Paul only being able to play 23 games, one of the biggest detriments to the scene. No infancy buts about it. And I know there are some Suns fans like, oh, it's heavily rigged against us. It's not rigged against you. Officiating in general is ass right now. And I'm not even a dude that like to talk about officiating. I did not watch this game thinking, I was one sided towards the Dallas Mavericks weight. I did not watch the Miami Heat lose their game and say it was one sided to Felix's weight. I think officiating is at an all-time low at the moment when it comes to playoffs at least. In the regular season, you know, you got bad umps, you got bad officiating, but now these are supposed to be the top 5% of refs going to these games and trying to call it as close as possible. And I'm a dude that's somewhat of a sympathetic when it comes to these referees because it is a hard job. You try to make split decisions in a game where everybody knows how to sell calls. Everybody knows how to sell calls. Even Jason Kidd in his post game interview talked about his team selling calls. We've learned from the best, talking about Chris Paul. You know what I'm saying? We've learned from one of the best when it comes to selling these calls. We learned from, so officiating is a hard thing, but one thing that happened in today's Slater Games, and yesterday's Slater Games specifically when it came to the Boston and Milwaukee game, there was no consistency with these calls. In the game of baseball, every single ump has its own little strike zone. You can tell very early on, oh, this ump is calling the strike zone high, okay? So this pitch that is usually a ball high, he's calling the strike, so let me adjust my own personal radar and say this is coming in as a strike because I know the ump is gonna call a strike. In the game of basketball, that's kind of the thing too. That's why you're here to say, it's like, oh, they letting them play out there. Oh, the whistle's kind of tight. In these games, there's no one way, one quarter they tight as hell, and then the next quarter, they letting them play. One minute, you can't touch a dude, and then the next minute, they throwing punches. There has been no consistency whatsoever. So I know there's some Suns fans like, oh man, that's six foul of Chris Paul. You don't call that. It was a foul, so I think you call it. You know what I'm saying? Maybe they hadn't called that call in the first two quarters. The first two quarters, maybe. But when you look at that replay, Chris Paul did foul him. It's unfortunate, and you expect Chris Paul to be the smartest player on the court, 99% of the time, in his last two games, he has not looked like that. For the first time, I've seen back-to-back games where Chris Paul has been uh, fuzzled. Confuzzled, confused. And I saw something on Reddit that Chris Paul has blown, I think it was four, two-0 leads when it comes to playoffs in his NBA career. I don't like that stat. I desperately do not like that stat. McHale Bridges, we needed you to have another game. They didn't. And then now DeAndre Aiden has not looked as dominant as you expect him to look in a series where the Dallas Mavericks is going small. And a lot of that is credited to the Dallas Mavericks. They're preventing him from getting deep into the paint. And DeAndre Aiden is normally a dude that is not a guy that gets deep into the paint. He's a long mid-ranked shooter. He's a finesse guy. He's a finesse guy. You know what I'm saying? He's not a physical dude. So they're preventing him from getting to the paint, which is where he probably should be. Like I said, Jason Kidd and them deserve a ton of credit on this one. But what I am seeing from the Phoenix Suns, if they want to get this thing back on track, let me go to my notes, because like I said, I'd be taking notes here. Oh, oh yeah, this is my notes. And this is a scary note if you're the Phoenix Suns fan, so maybe close your ears. They reminded me of the Utah Jazz on their Hope Defense. Yep. And game one and game two, they did a pretty good job of saying, we can let Luca drop 40, but we're not about to let nobody else get free. We're not about to leave Doreen Finney-Smith. We're not gonna leave these other players in the game three and game four. It seemed like they flipped the idea completely. They're like, we're gonna stop Luca and Luca is a very willing passer. Luca's gonna find Doreen Finney-Smith. Luca's gonna find Maxi Kleba. So I would recommend, and again, I'm not Monty Williams. He has 30.5 million times as basketball knowledge as I do, as much coaching as he's done. But as an outsider looking in, I would say Luca beat us and let's cling on to these shooters. Because right now, they're scorching hot and we saw them be scorching hot basically in the last series as well. So you know that they can win four games when they hit 23s or 20-ish threes. So they gotta figure it out, man. Shout out to the shooters over there because they doing their job. I gotta give a lot of credit to Jalen Brunson as well. It went from D-Book, calling them too small to him. Like going at book and like doing his best on it. You know what I'm saying? Same thing with Luca. They're hunting Chris Paul. They're hunting a Devin Booker and they're getting good success from it. And I need to see Monty Williams adjust his rotations like we saw the Dallas Mavericks adjust theirs. Right now, Cameron Payne is not giving them anything at all. And when he got into the game, I don't know if this is first shift or second shift in the first quarter, second quarter. It was three straight possessors where Luca was like, let me get Cameron Payne on my back and let me back him down and force him to call as a double team and I'm gonna kick it out for three. It happened over and over again. Now they didn't hit every single one of those threes, but it was just, that's a great scheme. He can't really guard anybody out there. Now, Kenny, what is the alternative? The alternative was maybe seeing what Aaron Holliday has in the tank for you. Now alternative number two, let Devin Booker run a lot of the point guard when Chris Paul missed a good amount of the games this season. Point D Book was a thing last season. Point D Book was a thing and it was a damn good thing. You know, we even saw it in the playoffs last year. Let De Book just control a second unit. Now you're probably asking a lot, but like, listen, you need two more wins in this series. You can't lose two more games. So you got to bring out some stuff that you might have done some time because this is something that they ain't prepared for either. So go ahead, do your thing, man. Bring them out, bring them out. Oh man, James Harden. This is the most James Harden-like game we've seen since James Harden pretty much got. I mean, I guess the first couple of games he got to Philly, he was really good as well, but the first time of the playoff run for them, we got like a whole snap James Harden game. And if we get at least something similar to this, whoa, look out because Philly looks dangerous. He ended up with 31 points, nine assists, seven rebounds. He had six threes and we got him yelling. And when James Harden is yelling, you know he on. And then I got it, I got him in. This is about as dominant as I've seen Joel and B.B. since he hurt his hand, which is another good sign. I think Bam on the bio did a pretty good job trying to force the ball out of his hands to try to deny the ball for Joel and B from getting it or deny Joel and B from getting the ball. But when he did get it, it was like barbecue chicken. You know what I'm saying? And that is, I'm telling you, bro, these two dudes can click at this level. Miami got to look out because I said, oh, they ended up hitting a couple threes late in the game. So they were shooting like 16% for a lot of this game. They ended up shooting 20 at the grand scheme, seven of 35, still terrible. But boy, oh boy, we got Danny Green, second game in a row where he was impactful with hitting the shots. And then we didn't get a terrible George Neane game. Hello, a little bit scary. Tyrese Maxie shot out of a cannon and they overall played amazing defense. And Miami should be, I don't know, a little bit worried, bro. Kyle Lowry, he ended up three for 10 from the field. I swear the times that he did get towards the basket, he passed out for a three every single time. And I understand three is greater than two. Mori ball, mori ball, mori ball. And you want to see your shooters get it going because well, right now we ain't been able to hit threes. But at some point you got to take, you got to take the easy one, bro. And that goes for the entire Miami Heat team. Jimmy Butler, second game in a row, he tried to put a backpack on. 40 points for him, six assists. He was just over the only player on the team that really showed up other than Bam. Again, other than Bam. Bam had a great performance after game number three, he gave us a stinker. He had a great performance. Everything after that, Tyler Hero couldn't get it going. Victor Ledipo could've get it going. We got 0 for six from three from Kyle Lowry, 0 for four from three from Gabe Vinson. And I'm so surprised at Spostra when you were having performances like this. Duncan Robinson has to be in so deep in the doghouse. It is crazy. My team was shooting 15 to 17% for the majority of this game. And I decided not to give Duncan Robinson a second, not to get Kayla Martin more than 10 seconds at the end of the game. You know, I can't, same thing as I said, Omani Williams. I can't tell Eric Spoketra had a coach because he knows way more than I do. But like at some point you got to give him a chance, right? You got it. That's a 90 million dollar contract. And listen, the defense won't suffer that much. I wouldn't expect it to suffer that much if Duncan is out there in the court or if Kayla Martin is out there in the court. And like I said, I'm done saying, I don't expect them to shoot this way again. I'm done saying that because we've seen that, hey, they can shoot that bad. So a lot of credit goes to the field after 76ers. Unfortunately, I only got to watch pretty much the second half of this one. And in the second half, I saw a lot of James Harden going crazy. So that's dope. But boy, oh boy, we got two series right now. And again, maybe not because the home team hasn't lost yet. But hey, I'm just saying, people are asking my opinion about this whole Jordan pool, Jama Rant stuff. And that was part of the stuff I was talking about at the beginning of the video. Where off the court stuff has me exhausted as well. I literally do not have an opinion. That my opinion is that I don't have one. I'm a person that can admit, like if I don't know anything about a situation, I don't need to just form an opinion. I personally didn't think it was a dirty move from Jordan pool, but I can understand why Jama Rant would feel that way when you look at that replay. But if you look at the other side, if you look at the other players that I'm jumping out at Clay Thompson, that look like a play that could have hurt his knee. You know what I'm saying? So I don't really have an opinion. It's unfortunate that he's listed as doubtful for game number four, because obviously he's been one of the reasons why they won their one game, or the reason why they won their one game here. But it's just so exhausting to see like the fan bases go back and forth, ah, name calling. And now you got a generation of fans that might dislike Jama Rant now or a generation of people that hate the Warriors because of this seemingly dirty play or whatever it may be. I don't know, man. It's getting rough out there. And that's why I said I just wanted to come out here and talk to y'all because again, I think we're building a community where I will say 97% of y'all have the same mindset as me as far as enjoying the game of basketball. Not everybody, which is fine. Everybody doesn't have to think the way I think. Actually, I prefer that everybody doesn't think the way I think, because what the hell would we be doing here? But yeah, man. Oh, another thing off the court. The Chris Paul, his family getting pushed or whatever the story is, unacceptable. Obviously that one fan does not account for the entire Dallas Maverick fan base the same way. No one fan account or no one person accounts for an entire group of people. It's never that way. But it's literally, it's unacceptable, bro. It's completely unacceptable. I don't understand the lack of boundaries when it comes to these things. And it's not even a professional sports to just the boundaries as human beings. I would never ever, you should never ever just put your hands on someone just because of who they are. You know what I'm saying? Even if it was like trash talk speaking to each other between the Paul family and this random fan, it should never get to the elevation of pushing or putting hands on anyone, especially someone's mother, bro. On Mother's Day? On Mother's Day? You're gonna push someone's mother on Mother's Day out of all of the days. It's not cool for 365, but especially not today. Especially not today. There has to be some type of boundaries. And I feel like since, and I don't know. So I think it might have been Kaia's Duncan that tweeted this and I could be, it might not have been him. That since the fans have been involved, they're back into the arenas. I feel like we've been getting so many instances of fans pushing the boundaries. At the end of the day, these hoopers are people and we're supposed to be there enjoying their product of the game of basketball and it shouldn't be much more than that. Dislike Chris Paul, you want, dislike any NBA player all you want. It should never get physical in any circumstance. It should not. Whether it's amongst each other, a Mavs fan versus a Suns fan should be thrown punches or you versus the family of a player that's playing. It's unacceptable, y'all, and we gotta be better. We gotta be better as fans. Actually, I don't know why I'm saying we because I know boundaries. Y'all gotta, that guy has to be better because it's unacceptable.