The Shot Clock Pod - NBA 2024-25 Playoffs Finals TIED 3-3

13 Rules - Game 7 === Jose: [00:00:00] All right, it's time to talk basketball. I'm Jose Salviati Editor at thePeachBasket.net. He's Steve Purciello, a longtime educator, vice principal, high school basketball coach and athletic director. And this is the shot clock pod, the best 15 minutes of NBA random thoughts online anywhere I. This is your first time listening. Welcome. We're glad you found us. This podcast was born out of the content in Steve's 13 rules random MBA Thoughts articles which he publishes weekly. Steve and I have exactly 15 minutes to discuss what's on his mind around the MBA today. We'll discuss his latest 13 rules, random MBA thoughts article where he shares his thoughts on the eve of game seven. As we record this is the day that the tip is happening, but these were his thoughts. Yesterday on game seven and a few other things let's talk about it. Steve, are you ready? Ready. Let's do it. Clock is starting. All right. Let's talk about the finals first. You said in your article win or Lose that the Pacers acquitted themselves well, and that they would be remembered for [00:01:00] putting up a tough fight. And I agree with you. It's, I don't think anybody expected him to get this far. Nobody expected to. Expected them to be this good against the overwhelming favorite Oklahoma City Thunder. The key for them, you said, are the non stars stepping up. What do you mean by that? Steve: If you have A star, and I think I've said this before, if you have a star. You expect him to go out every night and give you 30 or 25 or whatever it is and do what he does real well. When you don't have a star, that means they don't do it every night. So the problem with it is what happens if none of them or if they all come up empty tonight? Then you've got a real problem. Even si Acum only scored 16 the other night. They didn't need it because they had so much from everybody else. But that tells you that these guys aren't bringing it every night. So you gotta hope. Now you've got a lot of guys capable of getting you 25, but you've gotta hope somebody has that night. That's a little [00:02:00] bit different than going into a game with Shea who you figure on a band night gonna take you 25 and he's probably gonna need to get more. So you're playing that. 'cause I've seen teams in a lot of sports have a bunch of guys that are just average and what they're doing is saying the quantity is going to bring us home, not the quality. This is a situation where the quantity, they go 10 deep, but the quantity's good, but the quality, again, it's not as good. And what I'll say to you is if you were to pick the best two guys on the court tonight, who would they be? I think they're Jose: both on OKC, I think, Steve: right? Jose: Yeah. Steve: Yeah. So that's why it, and so far throughout the playoffs, Indiana's been hitting it, hitting all the right notes. Guys have coming along and playing great games outta nowhere from Knee Smith against the Knicks to n Hard to, right on through the group. So they needed, they [00:03:00] need this one more time. Jose: Yeah. Lemme, let me ask you a question as a coach I've coached, but not at the level you've coached, but have you ever gone into a game or would you go into a game, let's say you're coaching the Pacers and say, listen, we know, to your point, Shay's gonna get his 25. Let 'em, let's focus on the other guys. Is that something you go into or do you always just focus on just stopping everybody? Steve: First of all, high school's a little bit different, so what we would try to do would try to figure out. How that great player scores their points. And then what we would work on is trying to take that away and by that I mean if we saw that if he goes left, he shoots a jumper and he goes he's going to the basket. We understand that defensively we would. Probably get some help coming from that side if he was, dribbling right, and so on and so forth. We would come up with some gimmicks. We've used a lot of gimmicks over the years when I coached, but you would have something in high [00:04:00] school. One player can win a game. It's not like the a. So you really went out and tried to stop that one player? Yeah. More so than anything else. So if you were the Pacers coach, would you just let Shaa go or would you work on stopping him? It, it seems like Shaa scores most of his points on the elbow area, in other words. On either side. So you know, which is an anomaly today, isn't it? It's unusual. So what you're thinking is how do we take that away? Do we drop a defender on both wings down? But then you're giving the three up, meaning taking, there's a second defender on each elbow or in the elbow area to take that away from him and force him to try to go to the basket. Problem with that is Indiana doesn't have a shop. Turner's fair but they don't. Great Shop Locker in case he does go to the basket. But Shaa, Shay's got so many different things he can do. He's difficult to stop. What I did see in the game. The other [00:05:00] night before it became a ball out was that I thought guys like Jalen Williams and he had a great game at the game before, but they were taking the ball and going one-on-one. And I kept saying to myself, you are forgetting your bread and butter. Yeah, Jalen Williams a good player. However, your bread and butter is Shea, and when you get into an iso, we got a problem. Yeah. The other thing I think that has to happen is Holmgren he's got he's got to shoot the ball as well as he can. He hasn't done it throughout this series. He's great going to the basket. He uses either hand and he's just a bunch of moves going to the basket, the spin move and all the other stuff. But if he's gonna shoot a three, he's just not been effective. He need, he needs to come up and make a few, because again, when you begin the. Begin to bring the defense out. You're gonna open up a lot of lanes for Shea for Jalen Williams, for all these people. And they're [00:06:00] not doing that real well. And you might see, and this is just a crazy thought, the best shooter on the team is Isaiah Joe for three. Yeah. You might see him play a little bit more. If they're struggling because they're, their three point production has not been good. Jose: Yeah. Alright, let's focus on the thunder now. Clearly they're the better team. You wrote that, but the better team doesn't always win. It's rare, we've seen it before. So the pressure's on them before game seven. All more, all the more so because it's at home. So what kind of pressure would they face if they lose a series? They were expected to win and lose it at home. Steve: I'm gonna show my age, which is pretty old, but in, in 1975 the Golden State Warriors might have been the San Francisco Warriors. Then they won this championship. They won somewhere in the forties, high forties in wins, and they weren't that good. And they also, is that Rick Barry team get to the finals? Yes. Rick Barry and Al Addles was the coach. They won and then they [00:07:00] played the Baltimore Bullets. The bullets won 60 games and the bullets had beaten Boston. It was pretty good in the playoffs to get there. The finals Golden State won four straight. Wow. Okay. I believe Casey Jones was the coach, but it didn't look good. And the bullets and that was the dark years of the NBA, but the bullets were not received well, but I'll give you one better example. The better example would be 1969. My favorite year in the NBA. That was the year Russell, his team came in fourth. The Allstar team was the Lakers. They had Wes Chamberlain and Baylor. Baylor was near the end, but they still had three great players, and Chamberlain was unstoppable in his day. Boston beat them well, will. Always had the reputation. Great. But a loser. Jerry West never lived that series down. He was the MVP of that series. The only time that's happened, losing team. And Baylor was near the end. And that was the famous where Wilt was hurt and. Wanted to come [00:08:00] back in and it, the result of it was this Butch van Bradoff, the coach got fired and there were a lot of, I'm not saying if they lose Deion, all will be fired or anything, but in other words, the repercussions were pretty strong. And if Oklahoma City can't win this. I don't know what repercussions there are. They'll probably just bring it back again and do it again. Oh sure. But suddenly their coach and some of the players get looked at in a different way, and that might mean a year or two there's changes made. Jose: Yeah. The one thing against the thunder, we, you and I talked about it all season long when they were dominating the regular season was. How are they gonna react when the spotlight is on? And it has never been brighter than tonight, right? So we'll see. We'll see what the team is made of tonight. I'm expecting, I'm hoping for a good game. I wanna see a really good game. Seven 'cause game seven's, they're not always great. But let's see how it plays out. All right. Let's move away [00:09:00] from the finals for a bit. There was a trade and I want your thoughts on the grizzlies and the magic trade, you called it. Interesting for both teams. What made it interesting? Was there a clear winner? Steve: Obviously the best player in the trade was Desmond Bain, so the winner would be Orlando. But yeah, let's look at from Memphis aside. Jaron Jackson is a really good player, is up for a big contract. He's got one more year on the contract and they wanna resign him. Memphis is not known to be going into the tax. They had to make some decisions. If they're gonna give him the money, jaw's getting the money what are we going to do? We have to either, go into the tax pretty deeply or we have to get rid of one. I think what they did was look at the situation. With Des, with the three of 'em at their best. They're not good enough to be in the Final four or whatever you wanna say. So what do you do? You, if you don't wanna spend money, then you gotta make some change and you've gotta start and try to maybe get a draft [00:10:00] picker two and they've gotta a bunch and maybe get it together because you need young talent that isn't expensive. So they had to do this or they wanted to do this for those reasons. And money is a major reason. Now, you look at Orlando first of all, they were 500 this year. Their two best players missed a heck of a lot of games, right? Yeah. When you saw them play Boston in the playoffs, their biggest problem was they couldn't shoot a three point shot. Boston terrible in the playoffs. So Boston. Tried to take away Ben car. He's great, and Wagner, and by doing that they were giving open threes and Orlando wasn't cashing in. The realization was they need a three point threat to make them better. I. They got one and they also get Jalen Suggs back who's their heart and soul. So those two players coming back, I look at it and this is crazy and it's a year away, but I look at them as one of the best two, two or three teams in the east [00:11:00] with Wow. I think there, I think Ben Carroll is just getting better. He is just. And I think Wagner's a great number two guy. Now you've got a guy and Bain is a good defender and people forget. Orlando is a very good defensive team and they got another pretty good defender. So everything is coming together. Maybe you're a year or two away 'cause of the youth of Ben Carroll and Wagner, but Right. They're good. They're real good. And Jalen Suggs just coming back, people don't understand how valuable he is to that team. So they're dangerous, real dangerous, Jose: nice. Always fun to see a team's evolution, right? And growth. And so we're starting to see that bubble up for the magic. I think that's exciting and has me excited for next season. All right, let's finish with this. And I hate to, I legitimately hate to do it, and forgive me for laughing. But I'm just gonna ask it 'cause you alluded to it in your article, and I'm just gonna come right out and just ask you the question, what was Tyler hero thinking? Steve: First thing he should have done is talk [00:12:00] to Pat Riley and ask Pat was there, will Chamberlain, did he score? But, Pat's his boss. But without going there. We all, when we go through our lives, there's a lot of people with beliefs that are, not mainstream. Sure. Let's say not mainstream. That's a nice way to put it. I think the smart thing is you keep your mouth shut and because when you do it and if you're saying something that maybe 2% of the population thinks 98% think, there's something going on here. So hero is for anybody can believe anything they want, but sometimes you gotta just, keep quiet about it and not really talk about it. And he's fortunate that basketball players are paid to score baskets. And play the game. Not to think, because, I don't know how he would've done in that world. Yeah, it's, and by the way, I can attest, because again, I'm old. I did watch TV that night when the men were on the moon. [00:13:00] Unless it was really staged, it was real, really done and one more piece to that, if it was staged, I think somewhere in the last 55, 56 years, somebody who was part of that staging would've said, we staged. You would think. Yeah. I'm just having trouble with some of the things he was thinking. Yeah. To each their own. Jose: For those who are unaware. Steve hinted at it by saying, please Google Tyler Hero before 1950, and if you have, you know what we're talking about if you haven't. Tyler hi. Recently was interviewed, asked about Wilts a hundred point game and effectively said he didn't believe it happened, and then he went on to talk about what else he didn't believe happened, including the moon landing and anything before. Anything before 1950, which is just, I don't know, man, comical, but I do think it's indicative of a situation we have today, right? To see it, believe it generation, right? If it didn't happen, if it wasn't recorded, and it's weird because today things that are recorded that are ai, that actually literally did not happen, but [00:14:00] people believe it and he's talking about something. I didn't see it. So to me, I don't believe it happened. Which is super problematic. And that's something I don't wanna get into 'cause this is, we gotta keep this lighthearted. This is a basketball podcast, but Tyler Hero said it and I don't know, I just think it's absolutely unbelievably shocking. I. You saw Will's hunter point, or no? You saw the moon landing? Yeah. Yeah. I'm Steve: pretty sure I did. Unless you know it was staged. It, you are right. You're totally right on all of it. I think people in today's world love the outrageous. Conspiracies. If you, we were to say right now that Kevin Durant got traded for a second round pick people. Wow. And so on. People love the outrageous and they like to think of the, and there's been things in our lives, in our history that are crazy. Sure. But it just it, like I said, somebody should have sat him down and just said, look, you believe that, that's fine. But understand, if you go out and talk about it, [00:15:00] you don't look good. You back about a year or two ago, and Kyrie Irving talked about flat Earth. And geez, and he's not a, he's a bright man, but somebody should have just said, Kyrie, you can believe that. But just, Jose: yeah. See Steve: it like just among your friends because it just, it doesn't make you look right. Jose: Wow, the things that come up unbelievable. But yeah, if you have not yet Googled it, please do. And make sure you read all of Steve's article. There are more thoughts that he had. We can't talk about all of 'em. You heard the buzz will go off. That's it. Thank you for listening. Thanks for watching. Make sure to read Steve's entire article. We'll link it wherever you are watching or listening to this today. Now, season's end tonight, so we will likely take some time off. I've got some things I'm dealing with, so I think a couple of weeks is probably appropriate, but please follow us on socials, bookmark the beach baskets.net. We will share our return date. We won't be gone long but we probably will take a little bit of a break here after the after game seven. Enjoy game seven tonight, [00:16:00] Steve and everyone watching listening, please consider subscribing, join us next week or whenever we are return again. Follow us on our socials and bookmark the peach basket net to know what that is to when to know when that is, rather so that you will not miss the next best 15 minutes of random NBA thoughts online. Thanks, Steve, take care.