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00:00We want to get some thoughts on big picture stuff in the NBA.
00:04There's nobody better than a gentleman who has been covering the league for decades.
00:07And he's been with the LA Daily News, the New York Times, Bleacher Report, Sports Illustrated,
00:12now with The Ringer.
00:13And his podcast, Real Ones Podcast with Raja Bell.
00:18He is Mr. Howard Beck.
00:21And he joins us right now on the Wise Heart Right.
00:23We Make It Right.
00:24Call Kyle Wright Hotline.
00:25Howard?
00:26Cavs and Knicks.
00:28What do you think?
00:29Hey, Howard.
00:29That's something.
00:31Gentlemen, how are you?
00:33Quick just addendum on The Real Ones Podcast with my co-host, Logan Murdoch,
00:38and former Cavaliers front office member, Raja Bell.
00:42Very true.
00:43Well played.
00:43Well played.
00:45We should give him his due there.
00:48Yes, we certainly will.
00:50Yeah.
00:51So, yeah, I've got to admit, did not see this coming.
00:55Maybe a lot of Cavs fans did not either.
00:58I don't know how you guys felt about it, but, I mean, what a wild run.
01:03The Knicks have had their own journey.
01:04We can talk about that, too.
01:05But the Cavs, like, every couple weeks, does it just flip the storyline with these guys?
01:12And in this case, from Game 6 to Game 7, I admit, I thought that was it.
01:19Game 6, okay.
01:20Hey, you know, that was a nice run, but they're gone.
01:23That's it.
01:23You know, Game 7 in Detroit, and Pistons will clamp down, and that'll be that.
01:28And lo and behold, the Cavs kicked their butts all over the floor.
01:32That was a pretty embarrassing Game 7 for the Pistons.
01:35But, as I've been saying all along, with regard to the Pistons specifically, this is not, you know, to excuse
01:41anything for them.
01:42That was embarrassing.
01:43But it's very, very rare in this league that we see a team go from never won a playoff round
01:49to number one seed in 60 wins.
01:51It just doesn't happen very often unless you just added, like, I don't know, LeBron James to the roster in
01:55his prime.
01:56But a young team that had not actually won a playoff series yet suddenly as a number one seed, probably
02:02a little bit out in front of their skis, right?
02:03Like, not quite – they weren't quite ready for that position.
02:08But, you know, they've got a bright future.
02:10They'll make adjustments to their roster.
02:12And the Cavaliers, meanwhile, like, showed what you're supposed to do when you are the team that has James Harden
02:18and Donovan Mitchell and Devin Mobley,
02:20and you've got all the playoff experience in the world under you.
02:23And that's the way it should go.
02:25But the Cavs mess around just enough to, I think, make everybody lose faith long enough that you wonder if
02:32they're capable of it.
02:34That sounds exactly right.
02:35You feel the same way that I think Andy and I felt.
02:38We thought for sure they're going to win game six after what they did in game five.
02:42And then they were just so horrendous that you thought there's no way they're bouncing back.
02:46I was stunned more than anything, Howard, that Detroit, after showing up so well in game six and really being
02:54tenacious,
02:55just seemed to have nothing going, certainly offensively nor defensively, which is, you know, their calling card.
03:03Yeah, look, I know this is a little bit reductive, but I think it's also probably accurate where it regards
03:09the Pistons.
03:11When your calling card is, you know, essentially, to use the old Grizzlies term, grit and grind, right?
03:16When your calling card is, we don't have a lot offensively.
03:19We don't have a lot of weapons.
03:20We don't have a lot of offensive dynamism.
03:21We've got one guy who can really get his shot in Kate Cunningham and some other guys who on a
03:25given night are okay.
03:26But we're going to beat you up every night.
03:28We're going to take it to you on the boards.
03:30We're going to lock you down defensively.
03:31We're going to get out in transition, and then we'll rely on our star to bring it home every night.
03:38There's always a limit on that.
03:40And the limit is, do you run across a team with more offensive talent that you can't contain long enough
03:45and that you just can't score enough?
03:47And the Cavaliers themselves, to their credit, are good enough defensively
03:50that when you only have one real offensive weapon, yeah, like you just run out of options.
03:57And the defensive tenacity and the toughness and all the other things that we ascribe to the Pistons,
04:02all accurate and all earned, there's a limit on it.
04:05The deeper you get in the playoffs, the more talent you're going to come across in your opponent.
04:09That's the way this works.
04:11And so I think that was the natural feeling that was maybe built into the way they're constructed.
04:17But again, they're also really young, and I don't think we're going to ever see another Jalen Duren postseason like
04:23this one,
04:24or at least that series in particular where it just disappeared.
04:27I always say, like, in these situations, and who knows, maybe we'll find out in the days to come,
04:32when a guy of that caliber, and he's only 22, so maybe it's just other things,
04:36but when a guy of that caliber suddenly disappears in the playoffs,
04:40usually what happens is weeks later we find out, oh, they needed knee surgery the whole time
04:45and they just didn't disclose it, or something was going on, you know, I hope not,
04:49but in his personal life or whatever else.
04:52Sometimes there's something and we don't know about it until long after the fact.
04:55I hope it's none of those things.
04:56Maybe he just had a clunker, but there's still a lot of upside for that team.
05:01All right.
05:03When we look at the Cavaliers and we talk about Donovan Mitchell and we talk about James Harden,
05:09did knocking off the Pistons kind of, I know they're trying to rewrite their own playoff history here moving forward,
05:16but has this changed the way you may look at these guys,
05:20or what James Harden do you think is going to show up against the Knicks is the other question, too.
05:26I have no idea.
05:30It's funny because if we did the game you play where it's like, if you knew ahead of time that
05:34James Harden would,
05:34whatever he went, one for eight or something, in a game seven on the road,
05:39you would, 99 people out of 100 or 100 out of 100 would say, yeah, his team lost that game.
05:46You know, typical James Harden, yep, yeah, of course.
05:50But Donovan was incredible.
05:52Evan Mobley, like that's the Evan Mobley I think you guys have been waiting for,
05:55the whole league has been waiting for, for three, four years here.
05:57Yes, sir.
06:00And, you know, on a night like that, you think, well, if they can do this every night, right?
06:05If Evan Mobley does it every night, and we know Donovan's capable of that,
06:08and I think the way this team is constructed, I was just saying this to my editor like an hour
06:13or so ago,
06:14like this shouldn't be, we should not be doing referendums on James Harden anymore.
06:18He's 36, he'll be 37 in August.
06:22Like he's not the most important player on this team.
06:24He's super important, especially as a playmaker, orchestrator, all that, and sometimes as a scorer.
06:32But, you know, the narrators around James Harden and his postseason resume, they're all earned.
06:37It's there.
06:38It's unavoidable.
06:39It's in the record books.
06:40But it's not, this is not his burden to carry on this particular team at this particular time.
06:45So I kind of want to put him to the side and say, well, if they can just get great
06:50playmaking from James Harden,
06:52timely threes, draw a few fouls here and there, some of which may be questionable,
06:57like that should be enough if Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley are playing at their peak,
07:01and Jared Allen is playing at his peak, frankly.
07:05And if you're getting some timely Merrill threes, Strews threes, whatever it may be,
07:10like there's enough there that they should not rise and fall on James Harden.
07:15Howard Beck joining us from the ringer.
07:17Howard, when you worked in New York, you covered the New York Knicks.
07:21That team hasn't made the NBA Finals, if I'm correct, in a year that starts with a two.
07:26It was 1999 the last time.
07:28And they haven't won a title since 73.
07:31What does it mean in New York that the Knicks are in the Final Four?
07:36And how much heat might that team be feeling to make it further than this?
07:42So, I covered the Knicks from 2004 through 2013-ish, but I'm still in New York.
07:49And so, trust me, I can feel every tremor here, good, bad, and otherwise, with the Knicks.
07:55And the same way the Cavs put you guys through it, the Knicks have put their fans through it here.
07:59Knicks fans are elated.
08:00I was just texting with a buddy of mine who, he's now living down in North Carolina,
08:04but he's a hardcore Knicks fan going way back, grew up here.
08:09And they are, Knicks fans are elated, ecstatic, whatever other adjectives you want to put on it,
08:15because from the moment, like, the Sixers off the Celtics and the Knicks finally rolled the Hawks,
08:21like, Knicks fans are feeling it.
08:23Like, the path is clear there.
08:24I don't know if everybody was convinced of it when the playoffs started,
08:28but the Knicks are peaking at the right time, as the saying goes.
08:33And everybody else is just falling by the wayside.
08:36The top two seeds are gone.
08:38I don't think it's that, you know, the Knicks themselves wouldn't sleep on the Cavs,
08:42but they do have a track record against them that's pretty strong.
08:46And Knicks fans certainly are going to look at that and say, yeah, we've got this.
08:50This is it.
08:50Like, I think Knicks fans are already kind of jumping ahead to, yeah, first finals since 1999,
08:56when the Knicks lost to the Spurs.
09:00So that definitely seems to be on the table.
09:04It's funny because, you know, we're all prisoners of the moment.
09:07We all overreact, as we were just establishing with the whole Game 6-7 thing with Cavs Pistons.
09:12We all overreact to the most recent thing.
09:14And right now, the Knicks look absolutely dominant, right?
09:18They rolled the Hawks the last couple games of that series after being down 2-1 in that series.
09:22They absolutely humiliated the Philadelphia 76ers with a bunch of stars on that team.
09:28And so the Knicks have never looked stronger.
09:32And the Cavs coming off last night have never looked more ready for this.
09:37And, listen, as an, you know, objective observer who's just going to enjoy the games
09:42and write about some stuff as it goes along, this is perfect.
09:45This is awesome because I do think these two teams are both peaking at the right time.
09:50I'm definitely not sure what to make of either of them.
09:52I'm not sure if the Cavs are as good as they looked last night.
09:54I'm not sure if the Knicks are as good as they looked in crushing the Sixers
09:57or how much that was just the Philadelphia 76ers disintegrating before our eyes on their own accord.
10:02But that's why they play the games.
10:05Cavaliers keep going through all coaches tour here.
10:07They just knocked off J.B. Beckerstaff.
10:09They'll see Mike Brown now with the Knicks.
10:13I'm just curious your thoughts on the coaching matchup here
10:16because I thought it was interesting just reading stuff about the Knicks
10:19even before the playoffs start that Mike Brown was so on the hot seat.
10:23And let's be honest, Kenny Atkinson was on the hot seat too.
10:26I don't know where they both stand now because they've made it to the Final Four.
10:29But give me your breakdown of the coaching here.
10:33Yeah, fascinating journeys that both of these guys have gone.
10:37And I know them both pretty well from over the years.
10:39And, you know, Kenny I knew when he was an assistant under Mike D'Antoni with the Knicks
10:44back starting in like 2008.
10:48And, you know, Kenny got his first head coaching stint here in Brooklyn in my backyard.
10:53So, you know, and both of them, it's taken some time to get back to this point as head coaches.
10:59They both kind of, you know, got an internship.
11:04It sounds demeaning.
11:06But, like, they both had their time with the Warriors to kind of, you know,
11:11get a little bit more experience as an assistant before going back to head coaching.
11:15And, obviously, working with the team and Steve Kerr and getting to coach Steph Curry,
11:20where I think they both came out of that with quite a bit.
11:23And they were together there for the one year.
11:26And they were together.
11:26Yeah.
11:27And so, like, I think, like, I'm – both, as you guys know, these are both really good guys.
11:34Like, you can't root against Mike Brown or Kenny Atkinson.
11:40And how that plays out, what the chess match looks like, you know,
11:44a lot of that has so much more to do with who you have – you know, who your chess
11:47pieces are, right?
11:49But I think they're in a similar position where Mike Brown, the second they decided to fire Tom Thibodeau,
11:58it was – it's finals or bust or championship or bust because Tom Thibodeau rehabbed this entire franchise
12:04and got them to the conference finals and was fired after going to the conference finals for the first time
12:09in, you know, 20-something years for this franchise.
12:13So, there's definitely a lot of pressure on him.
12:16I think he's had a, you know, a challenging year in that he tried to kind of, you know, reinvigorate
12:23their offense,
12:24make it a little bit more dynamic, a little bit less Jalen Brunson-centric.
12:27And it was kind of fits and starts.
12:28But then we saw in this last series, Carl Anthony Towns is a playmaker like we've really never seen him
12:33deployed before.
12:34And that worked really well.
12:36Can they do that same thing against the Cavs?
12:39We'll see.
12:41And then, you know, on Kenny's side of it, not easy, I think.
12:47First of all, you know, J.B. Vickerstaff deserves a ton of credit for getting that team,
12:51just much like Thibodeau did here, getting that team back to respectability
12:55and figuring out how to integrate these guys.
12:58And then Kenny takes over and they take another leap forward.
13:01Then you swap out Garland for Harden, not the easiest person to incorporate historically.
13:08So I think they've both done a fantastic job in getting their teams here.
13:12And I don't think any of that was guaranteed.
13:14Howard Beck joining us from The Ringer.
13:16Howard, you have a story out now about a guy who's from here in Northeast Ohio,
13:21Daryl Morey, let go in Philadelphia as head coach of the 76ers,
13:25a guy who had a great run in Houston, has done some good things.
13:29Philadelphia is a team with a lot of talent.
13:32I thought, boy, if Embiid's healthy, you never know what could happen there.
13:37The way the East could shake out in the next couple of years, to me, is kind of fascinating.
13:42Howard, because there's so many teams that seem like they're pretty close
13:45and none that seem like they're the dominant team.
13:50Yeah, it's funny because when this season started, if you had asked me,
13:54and then I think we did all of our preseason stuff, like I thought Nixon Cavs, right?
13:59That was supposed to be because Tatum was out.
14:01The Pistons were too young, weren't ready.
14:04Sixers, you can't rely on them because Embiid's health, Paul George's health, whatever.
14:08This was supposed to be a Nixon Cavs year, and then it looked like it wasn't.
14:12And now here we are at the end.
14:14They're in the conference finals, not as the one and two seed, but as the three and four.
14:19The Sixers, so Daryl gets fired.
14:23Basically, I think it was largely because they got humiliated by the Knicks,
14:26and the Knicks fans took over their arena, and they just needed to do something.
14:30It's not that Daryl didn't make some mistakes there.
14:32He clearly did.
14:34I think there are clearly some moves that are worth arguing about.
14:39But I wrote this today.
14:42I said this on the podcast last week.
14:43The Sixers' biggest problem is not the front office.
14:46They have a Joel Embiid problem.
14:48And if Maury exacerbated that by extending him, sure, that's fine.
14:53But what team has ever told its recent MVP, its superstar, its franchise player,
14:59in his prime, no, we're not giving you the extension you're eligible for?
15:02It doesn't happen very often, if at all.
15:07Dixers are in a really interesting spot because it's exactly what you said.
15:12If Embiid's healthy for any stretch of the season, or especially the postseason,
15:16if he doesn't get appendicitis days before the playoffs, that team's super dangerous.
15:21Vijay Edgecombe was awesome as a rookie and is only getting better,
15:24and Maxey was fantastic.
15:26Paul George kind of found the fountain of youth for a little while there.
15:30You cannot write them off.
15:33And so, you know, when you guys are calling me again in October, if you do,
15:38and we're having this conversation.
15:39We'd be delighted.
15:40We will.
15:41As long as we're still here.
15:44All of us, for that matter.
15:47It's going to be really interesting because I think the Pistons,
15:50they'll find help this summer.
15:51They'll get Cade a running mate of some sort.
15:53They'll improve their shooting.
15:54So they're going to be back.
15:56Unless the Celtics do something rash and, like, trade Jalen Brown or something,
16:00the Celtics starting the season with the two Jays again and some additions,
16:04they're going to be formidable.
16:06The Knicks are going to be formidable.
16:07The Cavs will be there.
16:08And I don't think you can ever rule out the Sixers.
16:10The Hawks are on the rise.
16:13You know, it's going to be tough for the foreseeable future.
16:19It's just funny the way this season played out, where we are back to where we began,
16:22where it was like, oh, yeah, of course it's New York and Cleveland.
16:24So, Knicks or Cavs, who do you like?
16:29I was afraid you'd ask.
16:31Sorry.
16:33I think it's truly a coin flip.
16:35I think I would take the easy way out and say Knicks in seven.
16:40But I could see this going any direction.
16:42And truly, like, as somebody who's in this market, the Knicks look incredible right now.
16:47And it's hard to argue against them.
16:49But I also am leery of overreacting to a Hawks team that has never been in the playoffs
16:57and has no experience and really no, you know,
17:01they didn't really have a true, like, score there.
17:03It was like leaning on CJ McCollum too much.
17:05And then a Philadelphia team that just, you know,
17:08had just come off an incredible game seven, exhausted, at least not 100%.
17:13I don't know how much to read into the Knicks' dominant.
17:17But I think Knicks fans are ready to say, like, Knicks in five or six.
17:22I think they're the stronger team, but not by a lot.
17:25Howard, always appreciate your time.
17:27Thank you very much, buddy.
17:28And enjoy the series.
17:29It'll be a fun one either way.
17:31Thank you, Howard.
17:31I'm sorry, guys.
17:32My phone, my Bluetooth stole the signal while I was in the middle of talking.
17:37I didn't even realize.
17:38We caught it.
17:39It's okay.
17:40Thanks, Howard.
17:40Appreciate you talking about it.
17:42Thanks, Howard.
17:43Let's take care.
17:43Howard Beck, Real Ones Podcast with Raja Bell.
17:47Logan Murdoch.
17:48And, of course, does a phenomenal job of covering the NBA for the Ringer
17:52and has been an outstanding NBA writer for decades.
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