00:00The Rockets tonight, three and a half point dogs, three and a half point dogs in LA.
00:05LeBron James trying to continue his streak of never losing a series where he is on the team
00:13that's taking a 2-0 lead. So he's 24-0. When LeBron James has a 2-0 lead in a
00:18series,
00:19you can lock it up. Rockets are down 3-1. Boy, them winning that game on,
00:24what day is it today? Wednesday. They won on Sunday. Them winning that game makes Friday
00:30all the more painful. I'm not discovering plutonium or anything here. The difference
00:36between 3-1 and 2-2. If you just don't spit the bit on Friday night, you're in a 2
00:43-2 series right now.
00:44Yeah. So when it comes to the improbability of something happening, we've been blessed with
00:49multiple examples of this in the last few years where, hey, this century, only one team has ever
00:55come back from 0-3 to make the playoffs in the NFL. And it was the Houston Texans. And then
01:00it was the
01:00Houston Texans again. That's right. The Astros, with whichever, when they've gotten off to their
01:04slow starts and still made the playoffs, et cetera, et cetera. We've seen it happen. So every day,
01:10something that has never happened before happens. No matter how statistically improbable it has been.
01:17The fact that it's 3-1 makes it more statistically probable now than when it was 3-0. But, you
01:24know,
01:24if you just don't look too hard. And this is a Lakers team that also is battered down and beleaguered.
01:32And there's reasons to believe that it could very much come down to the wire a few more times.
01:39Yeah, yeah.
01:39So, there's my inspirational. There's my inspirational speech.
01:44Team on three.
01:45Put that in a speech, Shane Goon. You're welcome.
01:48That's right. So here was Jabari Smith yesterday after practice. He says the Rockets are clearly the
01:57better basketball team.
01:58You know, just stay with it. Be aggressive. Play free. You know, we're obviously the better team,
02:06I feel like. So just knowing that, being confident, trusting our work, and just telling us to be us.
02:12Why do you think you're the better team in this series?
02:14We? Us? I just feel like from top to bottom. You can say that's an opinion. You can say I'm
02:20biased,
02:20but I just think we're the better team.
02:21I would say they are, as currently constructed, you know, by that I mean no Luka and no Austin Reeves.
02:28We'll see. Reeves might play tonight. Luka won't. He's probably right from the standpoint of,
02:33hey, if you were on the playground and you had two captains that were picking teams,
02:38you know, the LeBron would probably be the only guy on this iteration of the Lakers that would
02:42be among the top five picks in that, especially if Kevin Durant were healthy. Now, as these teams,
02:48but Kevin Durant's not healthy. But if you did just a draft of these teams, LeBron's probably the
02:53only guy that goes in the top five. The next four guys are probably Shangoon, Jabari,
02:57Amen Thompson, maybe Tari Eason, you know, Reed Shepard, the good version of Reed. Yeah,
03:04maybe the one that knocks down threes, maybe that version of Reed Shepard, not the one that
03:07turns the ball over all the time. The thing that got people, we played that audio a little bit
03:11earlier. And I think the word obviously is what triggered people in, I didn't read any of the
03:18texts at the time, but I glanced at the text page while we were in headlines and they're like,
03:22Jabari is delusional. Why is he saying this? Jabari is stupid. Why is he doing this?
03:26Yeah, and I didn't caught that he had said obviously better before the question. I had
03:31only heard the question. So yeah, he offered that up before. It wasn't led into that. That
03:35was his statement. Obviously. You're down three to one. We're obviously the better team.
03:39The hell's so obvious about it. Duh. Yeah. That's right. He's bringing back a duh.
03:43A der. Yeah. So that was Jabari. That's on. They're obviously not the better team. And look,
03:53I mean, they might be the better team. We'll find out, but there's nothing obvious about them being
03:58the better team right now. Especially, especially when Durant has multiple different bone bruises
04:03in his lower body. Yeah. You know, I don't know. I'm going to be surprised if there's not a new
04:07bone bruise announced at some point. Something, man. He's getting bone bruises at the rate of one
04:12every three or four days. It's just a killer. Yeah. They're not obviously the better team right now.
04:17Nope. But they've got to be the better team for three straight games. They got to. Yeah.
04:21Including tonight. Nine o'clock tip tonight in LA. Get your sleep in. Get your sleep in tonight.
04:26Here is Brian Windhorst of ESPN on the tricky situation the Rockets will find themselves in
04:32if their season ends. Well, once their season ends, but especially if it ends tonight.
04:36The question Houston has to ask itself, even if Durant was playing brilliantly and was not having
04:43any issues in the locker room. And as far as the locker room goes, there's a lot of speculation
04:48about what's going on in the locker room. I don't know what's going on in there. There's speculation.
04:53What I can tell you on the court is he's not played his best basketball. But even if he had
04:57played his
04:57best basketball, this team was going to have a challenge to how to figure out how to deal with
05:03those monsters in the Western Conference without the ability to dramatically upgrade their roster.
05:09So what I'm what I'm saying to you is they may have had to look at trades no matter what
05:16happened
05:16in this season. Yeah.
05:19They may have had to look at trades no matter what happened in this season.
05:22Yeah. I don't know. That's a that's a little tricky just because I'd like no matter what
05:26happened would include. Yeah, they swept the Lakers and on they go off to the next one.
05:32But but what was going to happen? Yeah. When they face that next that next up. Yeah.
05:36The next one of those genuinely good best. Yeah. You got to get through OKC.
05:39and San Antonio to get to where this team thought they were going to be able to get to with
05:43Kevin
05:43Durant this year. And I just I don't see that happening. And that's the scary part, too.
05:47I mentioned this earlier, like the OKC and San Antonio are not these teams that have sort
05:52of gone all in with three aging stars. And that's why they won 62 games this year.
05:58Victor Wimbayama is in his early 20s. You know, Stefan Castle is in his early 20s.
06:03De'Aaron Fox is still a young player. That's the core of San Antonio.
06:08And they've done a good job of building around them like their their record without Victor
06:10Wimbayama this year is like 12 and six.
06:13Like that's still even without one of the top three or four players in the sport and the
06:17best defensive player in the sport. That's still a good basketball team.
06:21That team knows how to how to go win some basketball games even without Wimbayama.
06:24That's a scary notion. And OKC just has draft picks for for years and days.
06:29And so that's that's Raphael Stone's got his work cut out for him, if indeed he's going
06:35to be the one pushing the buttons and making these moves in the offseason, because there's
06:38there's not a lot of they haven't given themselves a lot of wiggle room barring a blow it up
06:43kind of trade. What's your what's your most likely path for them?
06:48Like, what do you expect? Not what you want, but what do you expect them to do in the offseason?
06:51Right. I expect them to run it back. Yeah, that's what I expect. I expect them to weather
06:56the storm, run it back. I don't I don't think Emeo Doka is getting fired, although this has
07:01not been Emeo Doka's best season by a long shot. I think some of it is they really like
07:06Fred Van Vliet. They really like Steven Adams. And they've just with all these contracts,
07:10they've just kind of put themselves in a spot where there's just the only way they can
07:14substantially change the makeup of the team is through a monster trade. And those monster
07:19trades are going to be for older guys. Like, I still don't know. My only appetite for
07:23Giannis is just because if they get knocked out tonight, it's something different. Like
07:26whatever they're doing right now is not working. But I expect them to run it back.
07:29Well, and I think that realistically, if a Durant trade were to happen, the best way to make
07:35that happen is to be committed to Durant until you're not there. It's going to have to be from
07:40somebody that comes a calling. You know, you're not going to go out there and shop Durant like
07:44last year. You know, the Suns, the Suns, if the Suns weren't so obviously in a position where they
07:49needed to trade Durant, Durant probably would have gone for more than what he did. So I almost just
07:55by committing to running it back, maybe at some point somebody comes along with a deal that just
08:00blows them away and makes a lot of sense. But you can't be eager for it. Yep. Because that's the
08:05getting whatever you can if you're actively trying to trade Durant. And if the big X factor is,
08:11okay, are we 100% convinced that Durant's cool with staying here? All of that. Because people
08:17are speculating all over the place on that right now. And I don't feel like, yeah. The body language
08:21reading that's going on right now is over the top. Without any actual evidence or something that
08:28Durant wants out of here, I can't sit here and say, well, it looks like he wants out of here.
08:33I just, I don't have a reason to really believe that right this moment. Yep.
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