Andrew Schlecht and Alex Speers are joined by Anthony Slater to discuss the Western Conference Playoffs including the Warriors without Steph, what will happen to the Clippers and Rockets in the offseason, and if the Wolves are ready to win the West. Then they do a championship draft. Then they are joined by Jared Weiss to discuss the Celtics, what is wrong with the offense, and if they can adjust in time to beat the Knicks in this series. Then the boys play a fun edition of Andrew vs. the Beat, a trivia game where Andrew is pitted against a beat writer.Host: Andrew Schlecht and Alex SpeersWith: Jared Weiss and Anthony SlaterExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio/Video Editor: Gonzalo Torres Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What are the key takeaways from the Western Conference playoffs?
This is, this is what you get. at this point, like if you want to win, this is what you get, which is a, it's a tricky, very tricky situation.
By the way to, you know, to his defense, I'm not on, on the antics or the fouls or the technicals of this four titles. Obviously people can say cost them the 2016 title, whatever, and has aged way better than I ever predicted. I, I, he was third and defensive player of the year this year.
And again, like maybe people think he shouldn't have been, he was all defensive team member at, you know, in year 14 as a six foot five center. Yeah. Like he's still good. He's still really good. And this is how he's good. It's just comes with its side effects. It's it's they want him to get as close to the fence of the electrocution fence without getting electrocuted.
But he gets electrocuted a lot.
So, Anthony, you wrote a great article this week about the ways in which the Wolves and Warriors have been linked to each other. Going back to the 09 draft when then Wolves GM David Kahn drafted two point guards before Curry. who was drafted at number seven. One of the more interesting links is the 2020 draft.
And I was wondering for our listeners who haven't read the piece, could you recap the Warriors approach to that draft and what happened when they worked out Anthony Edwards?
Yeah. Anthony Edwards acts like it's like a career changing moment when he they went down to Atlanta. You guys remember 2020 draft, obviously the COVID draft where it was like, you know, if you can probably think about the situation, it's in Atlanta gym where you have to be spaced out. You're only allowed to have very select members of the organization.
There was Joe Lacob, Bob Myers and Steve Curry in masks, I can imagine. Right.
watching anthony edwards and his trainer workout right you're not bringing your guys and you're not bringing your workouts your assistant coaches it's just anthony edwards and his trainer while like from afar steve kerr and and their you know brain trust watches uh and anthony edwards the way steve kerr tells it he's like oh okay this is a long warm-up like he's just you know kind of getting the blood flowing like when is this workout going to start and after 15 minutes it was like we're
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Chapter 2: What went wrong for the Celtics against the Knicks?
Sorry, what number did you say again? Oh, number eight since it was 18. Number eight. He's not hearing me. Number eight.
There we go. So, Jared, there are three... Active players who are still playing in the NBA playoffs. They have played for Boston, but they are not currently playing for Boston. How many can you name? You get one point per correct answer. So active players still playing in the playoffs, played for Boston once upon a time, not currently playing for Boston.
All right, Tristan Thompson. That is correct. Aaron Neesmith.
Chapter 3: Can the Celtics adjust their offense in time?
That is correct. And then, no, he's not there anymore. Ooh, this is tricky. What's the last one? I'm drawing a blank on the last one now.
I don't know. I assume the buzzer's going off any second now. I can't think of who the last one is.
You got two points. Andrew, you have a chance to steal the other name.
Damn. I remembered now. Jared, I'll give it to you because it's super hard.
There's no chance Andrew's getting it. It's Javante Green. It is Javante Green. Yeah, I was not getting that. I was not getting that.
I just talked to Tristan and Javante Green together like two weeks ago, so I should have remembered that one.
Yeah, let's see. Actually, he's played... Let me see how many minutes. He's played 29 minutes so far in the playoffs for Cleveland. Okay, Andrew, board is yours. I will take number two. Question number two. The last home team to go down 0-2 in the playoffs and win the series was the 2021 LA Clippers. Kawhi and PG led the Clippers in minutes played that series.
Who played the third most minutes in that series for the Clippers? Oh my gosh. So 2021. I believe they were playing the Utah Jazz. Yeah. Or no, the Mavericks.
They were playing the Mavericks. Yeah. I... I think this is Paul George's fishing buddy, Reggie Jackson.
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Chapter 6: What are the potential changes for the Clippers and Rockets?
And if the Celtics are making some of those completely uncontested threes that they are creating in the fourth quarter, then we're looking at this completely differently.
You mentioned Tatum. Looking over his last three postseasons, he shot 32% from three in the 2023 playoffs, 28% from three in last year's playoffs, currently shooting 32% from three so far in this year's playoffs. Each of those playoffs runs, he's taken seven plus threes per game. What do you think the future is for his outside shot?
Is there a breaking point where he's just not consistent enough as an outside shooter where he has to change his shot profile, even though it's such a big part of the Celtics approach?
Yeah, so listen, I got a copy of the script for next year. And the very first line in the script, it says... Jason Tatum, playoff shooting percentage, 32.3%, 7.2 attempts per game. It's in the script, guys. There's nothing we can do about it. This is what's going to happen with Jason Tatum. He's going to shoot kind of mediocre from three in the postseason.
And there are probably some things he could change about that. He can maybe go away from ISO step-back culture, which is the only way I could describe it at this point, for three in a row. Maybe it's one of them. And if it goes down, you get another one. And maybe you don't try to shoot three in a row and you miss three of those.
I think that there are things that he can amend to his game in the postseason. But I also think maybe part of this is that the guy doesn't really rest during the regular season much. And they had to really force him to this year.
And so he probably also is just kind of wearing down a bit in the postseason because of how physical he plays in the playoffs and how hard he defends in the playoffs that he's it's going to affect the shooting. So maybe there's just more maintenance and load management that needs to be done over the course of the season.
And maybe that needs to be done during the post season as well, because, you know, like we were saying before, like the guy missed a shot that should be absolute cash for him at the end of that game. And it's like, We're seeing that we see that we saw that happen earlier in the year. Every single season, his shot kind of falls apart.
He fixes it halfway through the year, has a strong, stronger finish of the year. And maybe it's just kind of that cycle again. But I think that's just going to it's what it's going to be with JT. And that's the difference between JT and an MVP level player is just that like an MVP level player is probably going to hit 40 percent on those threes.
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