Welcome in to the newest edition of the Justin Tom Sports Podcast.
I am your host, Justin Jackson.
In this week's episode, we'll be having an NBA Special Episode where we'll be reviewing
the Game 7s of the NBA Playoffs and previewing the Conference Finals.
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Welcome into the show.
I am excited to be here and we're recording this late into the night, 10.38 PM Central
Standard Time as I'm recording this currently.
But I wanted to give you guys a fairly instant reaction to the end of the NBA Conference
Semifinals in the NBA Second Round.
Nuggets T-Wolves went off 45-ish minutes ago, give or take.
And I wanted to give you guys a complete, like I said, my general reaction to it.
Obviously, last we got the Insta-Release show.
This is an instant reaction show.
So kind of still sticking on the instant path.
But kind of, I want to give you guys a more authentic feel into how I'm feeling right
this second without seeing any discourse, without seeing anything else.
This is just me off the dome, just spitting.
I barely have limited notes on my page.
Usually I have about a full page of notes, if not more.
I've got one quarter of a page.
So this is me just going off the dome.
Pretty much the only thing that's written down is to make sure I talk about all the
games kind of thing.
Because if I didn't have to mention Pacers' Nicks, I'd probably forget, right?
But speaking of Pacers' Nicks, we're going to jump right into that.
Congratulations to the Indiana Pacers as they defeat the Nicks in the Garden in a very
wild manner, actually.
The Pacers set multiple NBA Playoff records, multiple Game 7 records, including best shooting
percentage in a half, best shooting percentage in a game.
They shot like 67% for the game, 76% I believe for the first half.
All in all, and yet the Pacers stayed, not the Pacers, the Nicks, however, stayed tethered.
Thanks to Dantay DiVincenzo ultimately going for almost four, they can go for 38, nailing
like eight or so threes.
The Nicks were able to stay tethered for a vast majority of the game.
They weren't necessarily close, but they were always close enough that they could pull themselves
in.
I always felt like they could pull themselves into this and make this a real game and even
overtake it and bring the Garden back alive, especially with the Garden's energy.
Stephen A. Smith was there doing commentary.
Spike Lee was in the front row, of course, and all his Nicks regalia because they were,
you know what I'm saying, they remained tethered.
This is the best Nicks team they've had, God, since the Carmelo years.
So this is where people had the most hope in New York and et cetera.
Because even with the year that Trey Young came and shut the Garden down, that team wasn't
the team that was expected to go very far.
This team, people thought conference finals was where they would land and then, you know,
people say like, oh, we still a game in Boston, we're not supposed to win.
Maybe the Nicks are in the finals.
I mean, that's kind of the energy we had around this team.
And so the Nicks themselves just had to overcome too much.
And it's the injury guys or bad luck or I don't know, we'll talk about the tips in a
couple of minutes.
It was too much, right?
And you look at where they were even in this fight, even in this series.
He won his A finals.
I'm excited for the NBA finals.
I said a couple of times during the intros, we're like, we want to see finals, but during
these playoffs, where they even were, it's amazing they got this far.
They, you know, just I'm going to list the guy on the top of my head that I know are
Nick key contributors that aren't there due to injury.
Julius Randall, Mitchell Robinson, Boyan Bandanovic, Bogdan Bandanovic, one of the
Bandanovic's.
You had Josh Hart came into the game hobbled, OG Ananobe came into the game hobbled, and
Jalen Brunson as the final nail in the coffin, cracks his hand or fractures his hand or his
thumb or whatever.
As the final nail in the coffin, like they just had to overcome so very much to even
be in this position.
Because prior to tip off five of those things were in effect.
You didn't have Mitch Robinson, you didn't have Julius Randall, you didn't have the
Bandanovic, OG Ananobe could barely move and Josh Hart couldn't play his usual heart filled
self.
So you went into five of those things were in Brunson, of course, like I said, fractures
his thumb.
And so it raised a lot of questions.
People have a lot of different opinions, a lot of different questions, of course, on
Twitter or X or whatever.
A lot of stuff runs rampant.
One of the things that ran rampant was Tibbido, was Tibbs, because Tom Tibbido, he is notorious
for practicing hard, plays hard, he plays his high, his starters, plus his high bits
guys, heavy minutes.
It's not shocking on the first night of a back to back, everybody in the starting line
has to go 35 minutes or more.
Like it is what it is, right?
And I was talking about on Twitter that was saying that Tibbido kind of has a firing pattern
where Tibb goes in, changes the culture, builds them up, plays this guy heavy minutes to do
it, a couple of freak injuries.
The fans say if only, if only, if only, former players start talking about how he ran him
too hard, ran him too hard to the ground.
Player gets injured, fans get sick of it, running Tib out of town, Tibb get fired.
It's almost like he goes in, he's an amazing culture builder.
And then you make the playoffs in a year, or you make a little run in the playoffs in
a year, you probably shouldn't.
And then you lose, people do the injury.
And then people say, man, if only I could stay healthy.
And then the injuries keep going and you fire Tibs.
It's very Chicago-esque, kind of what happened in Chicago.
Because Derrick Rose is in the game, they were up 12 with three minutes left and Derrick
Rose is in the game, right?
Derrick Rose is not in the game, who knows how that series goes?
Who knows how Derrick Rose's career goes?
Time Tibb, I mean, Rose could be, you know, only 13, 14 in Chicago as the third greatest
bull ever, kind of thing.
Who knows, right?
And then you go into this playoffs.
Now Julius Randle, I think, was kind of a freak injury.
Same with OG and Anoby, same with Mitchell Robinson.
Josh Hart was a, he's been playing, I mean, there was multiple games this playoffs, Josh
Hart didn't come out of the game.
And so he runs his guys really, really hard, especially his top seven on serve rotation,
guys.
It's not a shock for him to go seven deep at any moment.
And so it wears.
His team traditionally wear down, his team traditionally have star injuries late, most
famously Derrick Rose.
But it happens at all his stops.
I believe he was in the temple was at one point before Chris Finch.
It happened there, right?
Like their top guys wore down and now he's in New York and they're doing the same thing,
right?
Randle again was a freak injury.
Mitchell Robinson, it was a freak injury, but like Hart wasn't wearing out an injury.
And Anoby, obviously as soon as he got to New York, he started getting like strains
and pools.
He went from, however, Toronto was practicing, which is probably a more standard NBA style
to how they play to what Tibbs does.
And he was strains and pools all over the place.
And then finally, like I said, Brunson fractures his hand again, one of those freak injury
moments.
But I mean, it's a narrative around Tibbs.
It's definitely there.
It's a narrative to where multiple people have spoken out about it.
It's not something that's hidden.
It's not something that's unknown in the NBA circles.
People talk.
And one of the things people are talking about is the fact that Tibbs teams, they're physical,
they're hard nose, they're hard to beat.
They'll fight you in a phone booth.
They'll fight you in the mud.
They'll fight you on the court.
They'll battle at the same time.
They're going to wear down and wear out.
And so that's something that he's going to potentially have to adjust.
But he's been coaching this way.
I said the Derrick Rose battles was in 2010, 2011.
He's been coaching this way since before that.
So it's going to be hard to retrain him in order to, hey, you got 15 guys on this roster,
use them sort of thing to try and limit the way his guys injury chance late in the season.
Jalen Brunson, congratulations to him.
I mean, he leaves the series with a fractured hand and he leaves it earlier than he wanted
to, but he was absolutely historic.
I mean, the amount of 40 point games he was putting up was Nick's history.
It was stuff that Bernard King would do an entire finals run.
He was doing it like seven or eight games.
So congratulations to Jalen Brunson.
It was absolutely insane to watch him play this playoffs.
This postseason, he's earned himself a mass contract.
He's earned himself to be the number one guy in New York.
He's earned himself for the heart of the New York faithful.
So kudos to him.
Kudos to the Nick's organization for taking that chance on Brunson, for going with the
tampering and giving him the money.
Dallas seemed to be hesitant on and going full fledged with him in order for him to be the
number one guy in New York.
Unquestioned number one guy to have a Julius Randall decision making the off season.
I don't even know what Randall's value is right now, especially coming off the injury,
the season ending shoulder injury.
So very curious to see what his value even is right now.
But I think that is their time to move off Julius Randall as they have their number one
guy in the building.
And then shout out Reggie Miller.
Right?
He was on TNT for some of these broadcasts in the arena.
Of course, Nick fans found him and Nick players found him and a lot of noise and John was
at Reggie Miller.
He just kind of sat there, laughed and took it because he did it in the 90s.
He's doing it now.
He enjoyed the series because they kind of brought him back to the battles that he dealt
with when it was Nick's and Pacers.
He was able to kind of have those moments of flashing back and enjoying himself to the
way that he has or truly couldn't since those prime Nick Pacers battles of the 90s.
I would say mid to late, but they battled all through the 90s.
But that was fun for Reggie.
That was fun for a lot of the Indiana Faithful too.
It was fun for the New York Faithful being able to jaw back and forth with Reggie Miller
was something they had done since the 90s.
And ultimately Reggie gets to last laugh because Indiana wins again behind a tall, light skinned
guy with a funky shot or the funky looking shot actually.
That wasn't the traditional elbow in tuck situation.
Reggie had his elbow out.
Tyrese Halliburton does whatever he does with his shot.
But ultimately the Pacers move on to play the Celtics.
But to the game of the night.
The game that everybody was looking forward to, Pacers and Knicks was like a prelim in
boxing.
Like yeah, the fight's probably cool.
It's got a lot of implications, but not like this one.
Timberwolves and Nuggets was everything you wanted more out of a series.
It was everything you wanted more out of a game seven.
But it did start off that way.
The Nuggets took a 15 point lead into the half.
No team has ever led by that much in game seven and lost.
At one point the Nuggets were up 20 points in the third quarter.
And then the Timberwolves ripped off an all time run.
And at one point they lead, they led the Nuggets by 10 points with three minutes left.
So a 30 point turnaround about a quarter and a half on the Nuggets home floor.
The Timberwolves ultimately do win the game, set multiple records as far as the comeback.
And they did it with Anthony Edwards shooting six of 24.
But he picked it up from the defensive end.
He himself said he had Jamal Murray in handcuffs when he was walking out of the arena.
He said he shot six of 24, was not his best, nearly his best performance, but he was helped
out a lot by Carl Anthony Townsend and Nas Reid.
Especially in that second half, Kat and Nas Reid really took over.
Reid had a big put back dunk.
Had a block on the Nuggets.
Neal was at three.
Kyle Anthony Townsend was hitting threes all night, hitting shots all night.
Was able to really impact the glass.
I believe he hit us with 23 and 12 if memory serves me correctly.
They were able to, those two biggits were really able to power through.
Because Rudy Gobert, as per usual, was getting destroyed by Jokic.
Anytime Jokic saw Gobert, he went into attack mode.
And so, that was something that Chris Finch had to make decisions on.
For instance, I can go there and went out with this six foul.
He brought in Nas Reid for a vast majority of it.
At one point, Kat in, Gobert was off the floor.
It was just Nas Reid in the game.
So that was great button pushing all night by Chris Finch.
And it was so dangerous that even going 6'24", he took constant attention.
Because of who he is and what he could do.
I mean, really and truly, he had a spurt in the third quarter to get like nine of his
points.
Because he could have very easily finished in single digits on two of 20 shooting the
ball.
I think he went four or five of one point.
So on two of 19 shooting the ball, it would have been an all time disaster of a loss.
An all time disaster of a game.
But when you win, no one really cares about your stats.
That's kind of what he's going to have.
He's going to have a no one's going to care about game.
Because 6'24 is downright awful.
But it's considering that four of the six, I believe, are dunks.
So that was something he has to clean up in time for game one against the Dallas Mavericks.
Again, we'll talk about that in a couple of minutes.
Nikola Jokic looked gassed in this game.
Absolutely gassed.
I gave credit to Timberwolves, credit to their defense.
The Nuggets were 0-1-12 this season, including the playoffs being under 100 points.
Six of them came against the Timberwolves.
So I don't know if they just figured them out.
I don't know what the situation was.
But they did their absolute best guarding the Nuggets.
Certain teams have matchups.
Certain teams have advantages where they just match up well.
It's a matchup based, sports is a matchup based.
It's hard raw talent just to win everything.
Usually you got to get the right matchup, the right break, whatever, in order to execute.
And I think that the Timberwolves just have that when it comes to the Denver Nuggets.
They just have the personnel.
They just have the scheme, the defensive scheme, whatever, to really affect the Denver Nuggets.
And so they did it again tonight.
In Yolkidge was gassed.
He played 47 or 48 minutes.
You only set for one minute and that one minute came in the first half.
And that kind of workload for anybody is hard.
But especially when you went to the finals last year, so you didn't get your usual offseason.
Come back this year, now you're in the second round, now you're in game seven, and just
on command you've got to play 47 minutes.
So that was hard.
Yolkidge was a little gassed.
He shot poorly from three point line all playoffs.
At one point he was 12 or 50.
I think he nailed his last couple to go 14 or 52, which is still downright awful.
But that is what the other's going through.
Jamal Murray, I think, was dealing with a lot of length.
Anthony Edwards, Jimmy Daniels, and the Calaxander Walker.
He was dealing with a lot of athletic wing length.
That is something that bothers most guards.
Most guards, especially the quicker variety, do not like to deal with length.
He was dealing with a lot of athletic wing length.
It bothered him.
Michael Porter Jr. had an off night.
The Nuggets had an off night shooting in general.
They were playing such elite defense, they were almost going to escape with it.
They were up 20, mid-third quarter.
And then the Timberwolves charged.
So kudos to Minnesota for keeping the fight.
And you know, congrats to Denver on trying to do something nobody had done in five years,
which was a champion to go to the NBA finals, or make it past the second round after they
won the title.
But I want to talk about something really quickly.
Then we're going to move into a preview of the conference finals.
Postgame interview is happening, right?
And Denver Nuggets postgame interview specifically.
And of course, head coach Mike Malone is up.
And a reporter asked what I believe was a good question, which was something along the
lines to the extent of how does this loss hurt extra knowing that you blew a 20 point
lead sort of thing.
So I'm going to get the clip and I'm just going to play it.
And I'm going to get the clip and I'm going to play it.
And that's, you know, I'll respond to that afterwards.
How hard is it just to absorb a loss like this after going ahead by 20?
Next question, man.
The season's over.
That's what's hard.
Fuck being a 20.
The season's over.
You don't understand that.
The season's over.
It's hard.
Stupid ass questions.
Okay, so I played that off of Twitter.
So the audio may be a little scratchy, but the reporter asked how does it feel to be
to how hard is it to take a loss like that of 20?
You can hear the question, but I'm sure you guys heard Michael Malone's answer pretty clearly.
The production's giving me a thumbs up that it came through well, so we're going to go
with it.
But then Michael Malone curses during his press conference, or excuse the language,
I'm sorry, I should have gave a language warning.
But he curses and calls the question stupid and etc.
It wasn't a dumb question at all.
What is he supposed to ask you?
How did he feel after losing?
No, he wanted context.
How does a loss hurt especially because you blew a 20 point lead?
You blew it.
Planting simple, you blew it.
And I'm sure he's going to put out a statement tomorrow apologizing, or a statement will
put out in his name apologizing, or whatever, whatever, whatever.
But this is the same Michael Malone that on the way up, nobody really cared about, right?
Certain coaches get attention on the way up because of how they do things.
Michael Malone wasn't that coach.
Denver wasn't that market.
So on the way up, no one cared and then he kind of came out of nowhere, but from relative
obscurity to beating the Lakers in the World's Conference Finals.
And his complaint to the media then was no one's asking this about us.
He was like, we come up here, my first four questions about the Lakers.
And even when they got to the finals, they were asked about the Lakers.
Oh man, so he ends up wearing a Who's Your Daddy shirt at the parade and all this different
stuff, trolling the Lakers and trolling the media and saying that they had their hardest
opponent with the Lakers.
Basically doing stuff to poke at the media and poke at the Lakers.
Come back this year, they beat the Lakers again.
They beat them in five.
Now it was, I mean, I said it at the time and I'll say it now.
Six plays change and the Lakers are up 32 heading the game.
It's in crypto.com arena and who knows how history is right now.
Maybe the Lakers are going to the West Conference Finals because basically they can battle with
the Timbwolves.
They actually enjoyed that Timbwolves matchup for the most part.
Cause LeBron, I mean Anthony Davis tortures cat Orgo Bear.
LeBron is too big for the wings of the Minnesota Timbwolves.
Like it would have depended on D-Lo making shots, but you know, they would have been
in the second round, right?
They battled Denver to a draw for the most part.
So they were going to be in that series very confident.
So they said, whatever, right?
But then they turned them back to my point, Chris, not Chris, Michael Malone coming back
and beat the Lakers, right?
And so you can say what you want.
You beat them in the regular season.
You know what I'm saying?
You got them in the playoffs again.
Like, Hey, you're on top of the world, right?
But then you lose.
You lose a three, two lead.
You lose three games in the same playoff series on your home floor.
That's hard to do.
You lose three games in a playoff season, your home floor, especially in an environment
with as much home courted advantage as the Nuggets.
And then you get asked to me a very legitimate question regarding that.
How does this loss feel with the added context of you blew a 20 point lead and you flip on
the reporter?
You know, you can't be the troll guy.
You can't be the, you know, the talk noise guy.
You can't be the guy who didn't have to show restraint during the conference and wearing
the t shirts and saying who's your daddy and all that stuff.
And then the reporter asked a question like that.
You flip out and curse the reporter out.
They call the question stupid.
It wasn't stupid.
You didn't like it.
So if I was Michael Malone, I'd fix yourself.
I know you're going to get a prep statement from someone.
Um, but if I was you, I would get your life together.
All right.
So we're going to take a quick break.
So this can be separated out.
Uh, but that's the thing.
What's quick break.
So we're going to come right back after a quick break.
Welcome back into the show.
And now we're going to discuss the conference finals.
We're going to start out East with the Boston Southern Indiana Pacers.
So the Celtics have crews so far to play off.
They've won two series and played a total of 10 games.
They've won both series and five.
Now they're dealing with a little bit of a Chris, that's poor Zingas injury.
Of course he didn't play a lot if at all in the Cav series.
And now he's expected to miss at least the first two games of the conference finals.
Um, but they should be able to handle Indiana.
That's not on the same level as the Celtics.
It's one of those situations where if the Celtics don't get it done this year, they're
never going to get it done.
You're never going to, you know what I'm saying?
Like it's so wide open.
You even going to Indiana and they're a little, they're a little nicked.
They're not beat up, but they're definitely nicked.
And so you go in and you're the boss in the Celtics, your first round of series.
Who the boss is Chicago.
I don't even remember.
They thrashed whoever it was quickly.
And then last, think about Chicago.
And then last round you get the Cavs and Donovan Mitchell misses the last two games with an
injury.
Um, it's just, you know, they were already an over mass cash scene.
Now the best player gets injured.
Um, it's now you go into the Pacers series again, you're the best team.
You're easily the better team, um, than Indiana Pacers, but that Pacers team can score, man.
I think they had something get unlocked in them dealing with the New York Knicks because
they hadn't really put up Pacers like numbers in a while offensively.
Um, and I was saying, cause I play our game, it slows down, it's more physical and the
rest call it stuff and the rotation is tighter and people are tired earlier, et cetera.
Um, but I just think that they didn't have the confidence or belief that they could do
it.
And then they played the math.
Um, I don't know, not the math.
They played the, um, I can't think of the next who are known for their defense, who
are known for their toughness, who are known for their scrappiness and they said, and they
hung a big number on them.
Um, injured or not, they don't care.
They hung a big number on them and they are, um, very excited to now, to me, I think they're
building their confidence, right?
So now they're going to go into this Boston Celtics series with a lot of confidence.
We just scored 140 points on the next, you know, we're ready to go.
We're ready to play.
Um, you guys are resting at home on your laurels.
We were figuring out our rhythm, getting our timing, getting our playoff ready to go and
we're four wins from the finals.
Right?
And so now everybody in this position is four wins from the finals.
And before I move on and give predictions, et cetera, I want to take a moment to talk
about like where we are as elite and look around people.
Seriously, like I know we've talked about the youth movement and that's been popular
in the new era and where we are and how we're getting there, but seriously, look around.
Like take a moment as an NBA fan, go into your NBA room in your mind and look around
the room.
Who's still in it?
Tadum's the old head.
But I think about that for a second.
Jason Tatum's the old head in the room and he's like 25.
He's just, we got Tatum so young because in his rookie season, he was game seven against
LeBron in the Eastern Conference Finals and LeBron didn't go game seven LeBron.
He's in the NBA finals as a rookie.
He's been in a couple of, he's been in two or three conference finals.
He's been in the NBA finals already.
Right?
And you know how much winning is so young, you almost, you don't know how old, you forget
how old he is.
And it's like 22.
Luca is younger than Tatum because Luca's class, you can train in class is the same.
And Halliburton is somewhere in the middle of that.
Like Tatum's the old head in the room.
We have the last, the last team of the final four to win a title is the Mavericks of 2011.
The symbols have never won, the Pacers have never won, Boston's last was 08 and then the
Mavericks last was 2011.
Like we're looking at no recent team champions.
I think the last major player that went out of anybody in this group is Kyrie Irving with
the Cavs in 2016.
Right?
So just look around and see where we are as a league.
We're officially in the new era.
Because if Jokic had won, Jokic kind of feels like the bridge player.
Kind of where he's not enough to be an old head.
He's not Steph LeBron, KD old head.
But at the same time, he wasn't Tatum, Luca, Halliburton young.
It was kind of, it was kind of in the middle of where Jokic would be.
And I could be thinking Jokic is way older than what he was.
The European guys, yeah, Jokic is almost 30.
So Jokic and Giannis are kind of in that same thing because Jokic is 29.
So Giannis and Jokic are kind of holding down that middle.
Winning in the three old heads, Steph, KD and LeBron.
And then the young guns are all over the place.
And so we're truly in a new era with Tatum being the old head.
Because if Tatum doesn't win, I think, I mean, if the Celtics don't win, the champions,
either 23 year old Luca or 22 year old Ant.
I mean, that's kind of where we're at.
And that's insane to me.
The fact that we're going to have a champion so young, someone's going to buck the trend.
Let's just take it.
Someone's going to buck the trend of, sorry, oh, Luca's 25.
Look at that.
So Luca's 25.
Well, how old is Tatum then?
This whole segment could be off.
It's not going to lie to you.
Tatum's 26.
OK.
So it's Tatum, then Luca, then Tyrese Halliburton, I would suppose.
I'm supposed Halliburton has to be next.
Yeah.
Tatum, then Luca, then Halliburton, then Ant.
So you're looking at a situation where Tatum doesn't win.
You're in a spot where now there's a new guy, right?
Because Ant's in the guy category.
When I think about guy, I think about like dogs, like men, like one of the face of the
league.
Tatum's in it.
Ant's in it.
Luca's in it.
Halliburton is not.
So if Halliburton beats Tatum, Halliburton has to get into that conversation because
he's going to be in the NBA final.
The NBA finals will be back in Indiana for the first time since Reggie Miller got him
in the ring, which would be insane.
I could just see Reggie Miller's face.
If I'm in the NBA, so when the title, Reggie Miller has to get a ring.
Just point that out there.
But just look around in the new era.
You know, Jokic was the last of the mid guard.
Not the old guard, not the new guard, but the mid guard.
Jokic was the last of that group.
Jokic kind of re-proved that it's hard to go to the finals back to back years.
LeBron went eight times in a row and spoiled everybody.
After Jokic, no one has won the title and gone past the second round in six years.
It's hard.
And so this new era is trying to take it over, but kudos to them for stepping up into the
plate.
A lot of people wondered how the league would do post-Bron.
It's going to dip.
It'll dip after Michael Jordan.
It's going to dip after LeBron.
Not a major dip, but it's going to dip a little bit.
And then it'll bounce back full-fledged with the guys that it has carrying the mantle next.
Anyway, back to the conference finals itself.
Boss vs. Indiana, I'm going to be honest with you.
I don't think it's going to be very long.
I got boss in six.
And I think that, you know, and I always tell you guys how I break down series.
I break down how many ways can you win.
Like in a perfect world, if you can only win one way, like you only use this card one time.
Like a spades hand, you got five, you got four, you got to get to four books in your
spades hand.
How many different ways can you do it?
Or if you have, if you, oh man, like if you're in your office and you got to file a cabinet,
like how many different ways, you can only file it one time in a shelf, how many different
ways can you do it?
You have to be able to do it four different ways, in my opinion, or at least three to
have a shot at winning the series.
Because the odds of something repeating of one thing repeating once, okay, fair.
The odds of two things repeating twice, less likely.
The odds of, you know what I'm saying, you start adding stuff to the odds of one thing
repeating three times in the series, super unlikely.
Right?
And so to me, you want at least four different ways to win, minimum three.
Got Boston winning this series fast because I got Tyrese Halliburton going crazy as one,
Swingalore, a shooting baloozer as two, and then a bad Boston game as three.
Right?
The Boston winning, the Boston winning could be a shooter's game, a bench game, a Tatum
game, a Tatum and Brown game, a bad Indiana night.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, so there's five ways to win three, I've got Boston in six.
I think Indiana gets a bad Boston game and a Halliburton game, and that's how they push
it to six.
But kudos to the Pacers for going this far.
Again, nobody thought they'd be this far.
They made it, and then the Boston Soliders head back to the NBA finals.
And then the West, oh the West.
The showdown that is the West, the battle in the frontier that is the NBA's Western
Conference.
It's almost over.
Our playoffs that we anticipated two, three, four weeks out, like man, the West is going
to be absolutely ridiculous to try and get out of and update.
It has been.
The second round game just went seven, right?
Dallas got free throws at the end of their game against Oklahoma City Thunder, or if
they were going seven.
PJ Orson just makes the two free throws he tried to make, he nailed it.
He intentionally missed the third, but like I said, or they're going to game seven.
The West has been a battle every single time.
I'm talking about the Laker series, man, with six plays a different throw.
They may have won four one, but they're definitely up three two going into game six.
And so absolutely great Western Conference playoffs.
And it comes down to this, it comes down to the Dallas Mavericks and the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The Timberwolves are one of the best teams all season.
Not shocking that they're there.
A little weird taking Timberwolves on the Western Conference finals, but they've earned
it at every single turn.
Like I said, outside of it being a little weird, they battle for it, right?
They went to war for it.
The Timberwolves look like I said, one of the best teams all year.
And then they faced the Dallas Mavericks, who was one of the, if not the hottest team
over the last month or so of the regular season.
They're beginning to figure their lineup out, beginning to figure their team out.
They are absolutely having a ball.
You see Kyrie and Luca playing off each other on the court, off the court.
They have a dream of love of each other.
Derek Lively and, can't think of his name right now, but Derek Dale Gaffer providing
great center of play down low.
They're going to have to be huge against the Timberwolves because the Timberwolves both
are one of the best.
Passive decision makers, my comment.
The best help side rotation defender, Rigo Bear.
A guy who's very capable of having guard like skills and making 5, 6, 3's in the game,
trying to get in the town, so on and so forth.
Of the Dallas Mavericks, right?
That's how they play, that's how they operate.
Minnesota Timberwolves man, Rudy Gobert and Anthony Edwards and Carl Anthony Towns and
Jamie Dangham and Carly Tender Walker.
They just keep coming in waves, Nas Reed it feels, because the Timberwolves are going
to try and win it off of injury.
But I have a prediction time along for the Dallas Mavericks and Minnesota Timberwolves.
I've got Mavs in 6.
Very controversial opinion, I told this to a couple of my friends and I was slandered.
But I have Mavs in 6.
I have an odd feeling that Mavs are going to win the NBA Championship.
I could be totally off by the time I see you guys again, it could be 3 of the Timberwolves,
I don't know.
But I do know that I'm going to go Mavs in 6 to win.
So Boston in 6 vs Indiana, Mavs in 6.
Similar thing, you kind of do the how many ways to win thing.
Like feasible ways to win.
Minnesota has a great game and a shooter's game.
That's it.
Oh and a bad Dallas game.
That's it.
The only ways they can win.
However Dallas can win with a Kyrie game, a Luka game, a shooter's game, a bad Boston
game.
They can just win an offensive overload game.
Dallas can win 5, 6, 7 different ways.
I give the advantage and I give them 4 games.
So Dallas has 4 games.
Dallas in 6 over Minnesota and of course Boston in 6.
I'm being nice, I thought about going in 5 over Indiana.
That is all I have for today.
Thank you for joining me on this shorter special episode of the Justin Time Sports Podcast,
Championship Round Preview.
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But I hope you guys have a great rest of your Monday.
For those of you who are at home on Monday, it is my wife's birthday so we'll sure have
a birthday there.
But I hope you guys have a great rest of your day.
This is your host, Justin Jackson signing out.