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Every one of these games, the postseason games, become absolutely critical to kind of, you know, just kind of buffing up his reputation a little bit. Right? Like, he's he's gonna go to the hall of fame. He's an all time great. I think he was on the 75th anniversary team. He's got the MVP. Like, all that's fine, but his post season resume has always been in question for good reason, and this is a great opportunity to change that. Raja, how do you prepare for a game or a series when you you don't have no idea if your star player is gonna be there on it or your best player is gonna be there on a night in, night out basis. Right? Like, the Clippers have had to have experience with doing that, but it still it doesn't it doesn't help that you've been planning all year. Oh, this guy Kawhi has been healthy all season. He's the healthy he's been healthiest he's been. And then all of a sudden, he goes down, and you have there's always and I don't know if there's a criticism for this, but there's always been this this air of mystery around Kawhi's injury that no one can ever explain or his his his availability that no one ever can explain. How do you prepare alongside that when as a teammate when you never know on a given day if he's gonna make it to a game? It's it's difficult. I think a few things, though, they are they're used to it, at least to some degree, so you've got experience in that space. Today's game lends itself to being able to kinda transition into playing without one of your stars more so than than yesteryear's game because there were more specialists maybe in in in our era. So if one of your primary ball handlers creators was out, that's that was there were less people on a roster that were gonna be able to assume those responsibilities. In today's game, you know, everyone pretty much, not everyone, but a lot of your roster can create. So organically, I think it's it's less of a problem, but especially on a team like the Clippers who have, you know, to Howard's point
Hey there, humanoids. It's the masked man, David Shoemaker. It's a new era in professional wrestling, and that means a new era here at the Ringer Wrestling wrestling show. Kaz here every Monday Thursday to hang out with me and my guy, Shue, on the masked man show. And Ben Crews here. Come kick it with me, Cal, and Brian on Tuesdays for Ringer Wrestling Worldwide, where we hit on the most interesting headlines and even react to some of masked man's and even your hottest takes. Don't tap out. Tap in to the Ringer Wrestling Show feed now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Worldwide? It's the Ringer NBA show presented by FanDuel. Take a shot at betting the NBA with FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook. Right now, you could check out the new and improved Parlay Hub. Filter by odds, sport, and bet type to easily find the most popular parlays and same game parlays all on one page. Plus, start betting on the Explore page and the Pulse and bet live sand game parlays for every NBA game. So download the app today and bet with FanDuel, official partner of the NBA. The ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit rgdashhelp.com to learn more about the resources and help lines available, and listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Must be 21 plus and present in select states? Gambling problem? Call 1 800 gambler or visit rgdashhelp.com. This episode is brought to you by NissanSUVs. It's good to stay up to date like I do with the NBA. You might catch me walking around the street. I'm listening to the Ringer NBA Show, or I might be online looking at the ringer.com, looking at some power rankings from Howard Beck, or, you know, I might listen to old episodes of Real Ones. And that's why the 2024 Nissan Rogue has Google built right into its 12.3 inch touchscreen infotainment system. With Google Maps Assistant, you can stay up to date on everything that's ahead without even needing to connect your phone.
To oh, man. It's 40,000 square feet a whole lot. Like, I'm just like, dog, what are we doing right now? Like, what are we doing? Who cares? Anyways, do you wanna talk, boy, or do you wanna do you wanna do No. I listen, man. I sometimes I have to Do you have any parting words for the warriors? Yeah. No. I don't. The whole week, though, I just wanna say the whole week, I've been I've been, I've been confrontationless. Like, it's been really it's been a good week for me. Right? Like and that's a weird space for me to be in, especially going into the weekend when I'm gonna have a lot of inner you know, like, a lot of exchanges with people. So I gotta sharpen these knives somewhere, dawg. Like, why I mean I understand. Start with you. I understand. The fuck. This is why I don't even believe this I don't even believe this beef when he said it. It's just because he's doing it with a smile on his face. Anyways, so speaking of beefs with the league, Jontay Porter has been, suspended has been banned for life, after an investigation revealed he had disclosed confidential information to betters limiting his participation in at least one game while he was with the Raptors and bet on the NBA games while he was in the g league in the g league. The NBA said in a release announcing Porter's ban that its investigation remains open and it is sharing information with the federal authorities. There's nothing more important than protecting the integrity of the game, competition for our fans, our teams, and everyone associated with the sport. That's what Adam commissioners Adam that's what NBA commissioner Adam Silver said. I Raja, I just have a lot of questions just in thoughts about this. We briefly talked about it a couple of weeks ago. But from the standpoint of in the locker room and as a teammate, And I know there are a lot of things that we do know and don't know about the lifestyle of NBA.
Showed his actual improvement. He is a much better player than he was in, say, 2019 when they lost to the Raptors in the 2nd round at the buzzer in game 7. So It's just an interesting Joel game and and and so much of the the the echoes of his entire career just showed themselves today. He's all those things, and he's 23, 15, and 5. Yep. Right? Didn't have a good game, but manages to fill up the box score every time. It definitely helped that Tyler Hero did a lot. This was a self destructive amount of Tyler Hero. 27 shots. In this game. And now Jimmy got hobbled in what was it the first quarter. I believe, I think, Kelly Uber, it seemed like he stepped on him when they were going down. It was it's really hard to see what happened, but it turns out Shamb's reported after the fact it might be an MCL injury. I feel like we're getting all sorts of flashbacks. Deja vu to last postseason. We had the Lakers last night. We had the Kings and warriors last night, and then now Jimmy getting hurt yet again. His team having to go on without him. I mean, well, he, I mean, he played but they did have to work around him for the most part. He technically played. He was in the corner a lot while Tyler Hero just dribbled the air of the ball. On the one hand, like, hero's gonna take his shots. On the other hand, I couldn't help but think, like, you know, this is why you go out and and try to get Dane because when Jimmy isn't activated isn't healthy and going, it'd be nice to turn to another superstar. Hero really had to play the part and he was not up for it. Well, and they did go out and get Terry Rosier, he couldn't play in this game because of a neck injury. Also heard. Jeez. Yeah. So then Jaime Hawquez is bringing the ball up the court. They're trying to do everything they can just to get people who can dribble on the floor. But the the real kind of vacuum in this game as far as that goes is what was Bam out of Bio doing? He keeps wasn't even given opportunities to create and given Joel's a lot of length even if relatively stationary to try to score over, but I would have loved to see him even get the chance to try a little more relative to some of these shots we got from Tyler Hero. Yeah. It's been a bank. Bam complaint going back to about 3 playoffs now is that he's not aggressive enough hunting his shots. I thought there was moments in last year's playoffs against Boston, even sometimes against Denver, where he
Is it is it for fodder? Like, why do we have that right now? Because I've seen watched these teams in a in a lot of stretches, and at this point, it seems like they are who they are. Like, I don't see them turning on a switch. I know Lakers have recent president, but they're a year older. They're they're they're instead of playing on the right side of the bracket, they might play against the Nuggets. Are we reaching too much right now when we talk about these types of scenarios and that, oh, yeah, this team is just this veteran team who has this generational talent is just gonna beat this other team just based on experience. I think the problem is that we've never seen this before, and in the sense that there's there's no there's no precedent for LeBron. There just isn't. And so, like, in a different era, LeBron's already retired. Steph is, you know, at 50% of what he was or something. Like, in a previous era, you're not still great enough in your mid to late thirties for us to consider anything. So they've held they've hung on long enough to the point where guys who are, like, it seems like half their age, in LeBron's case almost literally, are now leading new teams into the fold and into the playoffs. And so it it I don't I don't think we're giving LeBron or Steph or Kevin Durant too much credit. Like, these guys are still legitimately great. It's just they've hung on to a point where they're great and they're older, and they're dealing with a new wave of of young talent. And the and the the, cumulative effect of all that is what we now see in the West. Like, there's a reason that you've got 5 50 win teams and then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 more that are all 46 wins are up. And the and when you when we, speak dismissively about the Lakers or Warriors based on seeding, well, okay. But the Lakers won 47 games. The Warriors won 46. Like, those are
