The Zach Lowe Show
Playoff Drama! NBA First-Round Action Heats Up With Rob Mahoney.
Mon, 28 Apr 2025
Zach is joined by Rob Mahoney to discuss a thrilling weekend of basketball. However, they must first start with the unfortunate Damian Lillard injury (1:01). Later, they dissect all the drama in the Wolves-Lakers series (21:30), as well as Clippers-Nuggets (47:21). They then head east to break down Pistons-Knicks (1:02:32) and Magic-Celtics (1:16:15). Finally, they close with thoughts on tonight’s pivotal Game 4 between the Rockets and Warriors in San Francisco (1:27:07). The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What happened to Damian Lillard's injury?
This isn't Kevin Durant. This isn't a dude who's seven feet tall who can just bank on. Worst case for me is I can just be like Dirk Nowitzki, old Dirk, just raining jump shots. We don't know 100% certainty. All the comments last night were pessimistic. We're going to get to the future and what it means, but just...
This is a guy both of us kind of our professional careers kind of overlap almost exactly with Damian Lillard's entry from Weber State into the NBA. I remember watching him at Summer League trying to pick apart his game, not pick apart, but like, oh, my gosh, something something's interesting here.
We all know, you know, there ain't too many players with two series winning walk off shots in the history of the NBA. I mean, just reaction, just gut reaction.
I think my gut reaction is kind of aligned with Dame's, which is after this injury happened, and he just sort of sat there with it. And, you know, is that resignation? Is that acceptance? I don't know what he's going through in that particular moment, but when a player like Damian Lillard goes down and kind of stays down, and particularly when he goes down grabbing the back of that ankle,
We all know what that means. We all know what he's reaching for. We all know what he is feeling in that moment in the sense that we have seen it before. I really hope, desperately hope that this is not it for Damian Lillard. But I want to be really clear that even if Damian Lillard comes back and plays NBA basketball again... this injury is going to define the end game of his career.
Like, we are rounding a bend of a kind, whether he plays another game or not. And that in itself sucks to say, and it sucks for Dame, obviously. It sucks for Bucs fans who have invested in this team and for this version of the Bucs, and certainly for the future of the Bucs, as you alluded to. We can talk about that. But ultimately, like, I am a regular season basketball enthusiast.
I have an incredible soft spot in my heart for the players who never quite make it to the mountaintop, but play the game on their terms with a distinct style. And if this is it for Dame, or more or less it for Dame, and we can save the full eulogizing for another day, but if this is kind of it,
There are worse ways to make a career than being an ice cold killer for more than a decade and a beloved star who staked his claim to a franchise, who made an incredible run for himself, who will go down as one of the greatest shooters to ever live and just one of the coolest guards and coolest players of his era. I fucking love watching Damian Lillard play basketball.
So from that perspective alone, I am bummed personally to not get to do that for at least the foreseeable future.
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Chapter 2: How did the Wolves-Lakers series unfold?
But like, that is a really, a really like, I'm watching it and I'm like, wait, I actually looked back in the middle of the game. Like, did I miss a sub or is he actually not subbed anybody? I'm like, oh my God. I mean, I would hope Tibbs took it as a personal attack.
Like, you can go further. You can go farther. You can do more. Can I play four guys the entire half and just play four on five? I also think, too, the other problem with that, and yeah, you're right, there is a desperation element, right? Like, there's a reason no other coach does this, at least until there's no going back, right?
Like, if you get deep enough in a series or deep enough in, of course, the NBA Finals, you do whatever you got to do. You play six guys if you have to. You play five guys if you have to.
uh nobody does it earlier than that in part because it runs you down and so when you see the wolves have just owned the fourth quarter in this series overall and especially owned the fourth quarter in this game not an accident based on the amount of burn that these guys have and also not an accident considering the only way that the lakers get by defensively with the personnel that they have is by flying around making high effort high intensity plays all the time
And they really have, I would say, five guys who can do that plus Luka. One of them is Jared Vanderbilt, who in this game did not seem super playable offensively for all of his limitations. And so you can't execute the system you want to run. And really the only one that is solvent for this version of the Lakers roster with Jackson Hayes out there.
Honestly, even sometimes with Gabe Vinson out there. You have this impossible conundrum because the roster is not built to be a roster. It is built to be an Anthony Davis team that then became a Luka Doncic team that will have to be rectified in the offseason. But in the meantime, I would say my hope would be you can just steal a couple of minutes. It doesn't have to be a lot.
You can still run these guys incredible minutes in the second half. just get LeBron one minute of rest going into a TV timeout.
Like lots of other coaches do this. You like, they do it with Curry. Like you get the, you get a minute, you get the TV timeout, you get back in the game. Um, also Jordan Goodwin can play. I think Jordan Goodwin can play a little bit more than he's playing. Yeah. Uh, Dan Wojcicki wrote a great piece about the Banshee culture.
That's a term they use to describe just the flying around defensive players that they've cultivated. And Goodwin is kind of the poster guy in the story. It's like, well, it's nice that they were Banshee, bought into Banshee culture. Now they can't get on the floor. Season actually matters. It's tough scenes. I will say,
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Chapter 3: What are the key takeaways from the Clippers-Nuggets series?
It's a roadmap for a team that is not coached by Tom Thibodeau. Like I think, I think that's straight up. And like, That's not to say he's a bad coach, but he's a coach who wants to defend, wants his team to defend in a very specific way. And that way is not necessarily switch and contain all the time, 100% as a fact of life.
I also think there's the issue where Orlando has laid out this blueprint, but how many teams really have the size to execute it? Because it's not just, can you stand up one through five defensively? It's, this is one of the biggest, most physical lineups in the league. And you've seen the psychological effects. Al Horford is mad about it. Al Horford. This is what I'm talking about.
Gentleman Al Horford is like wagging his, literally wagging his finger like, do not do that. That's not nice.
Al Horford is pissed. Jalen Brown, I think it's clearly like a little rattled and also got a little unbalanced in his game at times in a way that really benefited Orlando. Chris Hapsworth Zingas was clearly bothered by like all of these guys. And that's to say nothing about, you know, Jason Tatum's wrist injury or like all the banging that happens in a series like this.
What teams can execute that? I think there are elements of the Knicks roster that can do that. Cat can do it, but can he do it without fouling? Jalen Brunson is a physical guard, at least in terms of the way he creates space on offense, but not necessarily in that way defensively.
As you're saying this, it also strikes me like... Cat is not as nimble on his feet as Wendell Carter Jr., and Wendell Carter Jr. is not super nimble, but he's pretty nimble. And this scheme falls away if the contested layups are just dunks. And Jalen Brunson is not Corey Joseph in the sense that the Knicks need Jalen Brunson's offense on every single possession. The Magic don't
really need Corey Joseph to do anything except hit a couple open threes. So go ahead, exhaust yourself on defense. Jalen Brunson doesn't have that luxury. But it has been interesting. Other teams I'm sure are watching this happen to Boston. And I thought Boston in game four, and I think was Stan Van Gundy on the call, I think he was, was noting this.
They were busting out some more set plays, I think to get people moving. They were rolling to the rim more with Porzingis and Cornette. I think to try to get the magic to almost not think. Like, defend this like you normally would. There's a big guy rolling to the rim. What would you normally do?
I normally rotate inside, whereas when the game pauses and it becomes static, they can think and remember, like, oh, yeah, we're staying home. And I thought that was smart, but... I mean, look, Orlando made them earn that road win. I mean, this was a nice homestand for the Magic and encouraging in the sense of Wagner is fighting through whatever is going on with his jump shot.
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