00:00James Harden, Cavs lost.
00:03What do you think was going through James Harden's mind on the seventh straight possession?
00:09There he goes again.
00:10Like, you know, part of it is, I gotta give Brunson credit on three of those, alright?
00:17Two of them were these awkward leaning towards the baseline, high arching off the top of the glass.
00:24The issue was, though, there was no shot blocking now.
00:27You know, for three and a half quarters, they had done such a great job of funneling guys into the
00:33paint,
00:33and then there's either Allen or there's either Mobley.
00:36In this case, the way they got things spaced out, and you could tell the minute they would bring the
00:43ball,
00:43they would get a calf stop, they would come down, and I mean, the announcers were all over it.
00:47They're like, oh yeah, they're gonna bring Harden into the action.
00:49What you thought you would see, because Detroit did that at times with Cunningham,
00:54especially that game two that was in Detroit, when it was, and you mentioned this before the show, Owen,
00:59the dropping it off to Duren, like, they couldn't really solve that.
01:04But over the course of the series, you know, Cade wore down.
01:07The problem is, we've been playing so many games, and this is the tax of playing two game sevens.
01:12Listen, man, honestly, I swear to God.
01:13I swear to God.
01:15Like, I'd be disappointed if they were up by, like, seven, and you could tell that they were sucking air,
01:21man.
01:21I'm not even saying they weren't tired.
01:25It's not, like, I'll meet you part of the way.
01:27All right?
01:28I'll meet them part of the way.
01:29If they were up by seven, and it was just like, oh man, the wheels are starting to come off.
01:33They're sucking wind.
01:34They're reaching for something that ain't there anymore.
01:37I might, I could meet you somewhere.
01:39It's a 22-point lead.
01:41It's the Garden.
01:43And the ghost of Christmas past played into it, because that Christmas day game, they were up by, what, 17?
01:48Yeah.
01:48And no one really, I don't remember anybody talking about it on the broadcast.
01:51Like, dude, they were up by 17.
01:53And I'm with, like, my father-in-law, you know, I don't think he really likes football, but he'll watch,
01:58he doesn't look like he likes sports, and he'll watch, he loves basketball.
02:00He watches Cavs.
02:01He watches Guardians every day.
02:03And, like, we're all just sitting there, and I'm with somebody who actually watches the Cavs at a family event.
02:09I very rarely at family events with anybody who watches sports anymore, it seems.
02:13And it's just me and Axel.
02:15And then he's watching it, and we're just all sitting there, and Liz is like, it's time to eat?
02:18I'm like, I'm just sitting here watching this happen, and Tracy Morgan's whooping it up,
02:22and it just, that type of thing started to play in again.
02:26And I'm watching, going, I can't, there's no quarter.
02:28I can give you no quarter here.
02:30You're up by 22 points.
02:31Finish it off.
02:32Steal it.
02:33We are in here.
02:33We're playing Michael Stanley.
02:34We're going nuts.
02:36And it all just went away.
02:37It all went away after immediate timeout.
02:40Like, it started, like, there was one moment, like, ah, they can't do it again.
02:43They can't do it again.
02:44This is a different team.
02:45And, no, they weren't.
02:46They weren't.
02:47And, no, the series is not over.
02:49I'm not going to take it that far.
02:50I'm not going to do that.
02:51It's not going to happen.
02:52I got to see how they respond tomorrow.
02:54I have to see that.
02:55But because of their history, and because, yeah, there's not a lot of people watching regular season Cavs games.
03:01Let's just call it what it is, man.
03:03Because of their history, a lot of people are going to affix history to them that might not be warranted
03:08anymore.
03:09You know, the whole, like, the last time they played them in this arena, that arena, in the playoffs, yeah,
03:15they look soft.
03:16And I don't think they're soft anymore.
03:18Hell, I thought for three and a quarter of a game, three quarters and a quarter of a quarter, I
03:24thought they really physically took it to them.
03:27Yeah, I didn't think the toughness.
03:28Now, you could say mentally.
03:30Do you think they were mentally tough?
03:31I do think that, again, the Tacks of playing two seven-game series.
03:35How do you not call timeout?
03:36How do you not call timeout, Anthony?
03:37Any person who's ever seen basketball, ever seen a basketball, was Shaquille O'Neal and Charles Barkley after the game
03:44on Inside the NBA.
03:45If you listen to the warm-up show, they said they were begging the big screen, call a timeout.
03:51And he says he likes to save them?
03:52For what?
03:54Well, which one do you want to hear first?
03:56All of it for Cancun, apparently.
03:58Kenny was asked, why don't you call your timeouts?
04:00Yeah, well, I like to hold my timeouts.
04:02I mean, you know, I didn't want to have one timeout at the end of the game.
04:06One or two-point game, try to hold them, you know.
04:08Well, he had two.
04:10He had two timeouts left.
04:12So was he...
04:13Even when they brought the ball down in that last possession, he had two timeouts left.
04:17It ended up with Harden with the ball, behind the back pass, to Sam Merrill, who had a great look.
04:23And Mike Breen thought it went in.
04:24I'm going to ask you something that's going to come off dumb, but I have to question him.
04:28Because they blew a 22-point lead.
04:29Sure.
04:31Did he, like, manifest it in some way?
04:34Like, people like to, like, hey, envision yourself hitting the shot.
04:39Imagine yourself hitting the shot.
04:41Like, did he almost, like, will it into existence in his own way?
04:44Like, well, it's going to be a tight game.
04:46It's like, no, it's not.
04:46It's a 22-point lead.
04:48It's not going to be a tight game.
04:49And then it gets down to an 18-1 run.
04:52It's like, well, you're still up six.
04:53Now you're going to call timeout?
04:55Like, what are we doing here?
04:56Put the brakes on him, for the love of God.
04:58Like, James is letting him go by.
05:00I don't know.
05:00Maybe he is out of gas.
05:02Maybe you've got to do something differently.
05:03You're the head coach of the basketball team.
05:05See, that's the tough thing about it.
05:07So, I don't mean it's not the end of the series.
05:11But you don't call an effing timeout?
05:12You're right, though.
05:13Was that Final Destination stuff?
05:15Yeah.
05:15I mean, I just have to wonder, because it's nonsensical in our reaction as humans,
05:21not as hosts, but as humans, is to find some sort of reasoning
05:25in something that's unreasonable.
05:27Yeah, that was the – look, it was the famous tactic of Phil Jackson
05:31for so many years.
05:33Like, no, they're going to play through it.
05:34They're going to play through it.
05:35But that's when you have Kobe and Shaq, right?
05:37Like, that's when you have MJ and you have Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman.
05:41This team is not that team.
05:43This team, I think – and I tried to make a case why I thought they were on,
05:46you know, kind of even footing with the Knicks, talent-wise,
05:50going into this series, with the Knicks having home court advantage
05:52and the Knicks were playing out of their mind.
05:54That all went out the window for most of that game where that place was a morgue.
05:58I mean, St. Patrick's Cathedral was probably louder than that place was.
06:02It was so awesome.
06:03It was awesome.
06:04And remember, I asked Chris Maddox yesterday, like, doesn't that place get tight
06:07when all those people paid that kind of money when they're paying $1,000 to sit
06:11in the rafters?
06:13But in the end, that is where coaching comes in.
06:15Like, yeah, you're always going to say as a coach, well, I'm relying on my star players.
06:19Yeah, but one of your star players is 36.
06:21And the other, Donovan Mitchell, like, let's not act like there haven't been times
06:25in his playoff career where he's kind of run out of gas.
06:28This isn't Kobe Bryant.
06:29This isn't LeBron James.
06:30And I looked, Donovan Mitchell in the fourth quarter, one of four, right?
06:35Harden took six shots in the fourth quarter.
06:38And a lot of them were 9-1-1 balls, you know, towards the end of the shot.
06:43Like, Mobley threw it back to him with five seconds left.
06:45I'm like, well, why did they start doing an OHSA four corners offense?
06:49Yeah.
06:50Yeah, they were, like, milking the clock.
06:51Like, Kenny, are you afraid to win?
06:53Are you afraid to win?
06:53Like, what you were doing was working.
06:55And I know you can't just run and gun the entire game, but, man, it's just, we've been
06:58through this so many times already.
07:00And I thought that some of the stuff against Kenny over this last year has been a bit overblown.
07:05You know, when you fire a previous head coach, it's like, all right, you get to use these
07:09as mulligans, but at some point I've got to look at the players.
07:11But that was just all-time dumb last night.
07:14It really was.
07:14It doesn't make any sense.
07:15I hate to be so nasty about it, but I'm going to be.
07:18It was just all-time dumb.
07:19And it just sounded like there was no ownership out of Kenny out of it in the postgame.
07:24I mean, I listened to it last night because I couldn't, I listened to it in the warm-up
07:27show with Jeff Thomas today.
07:29There just seemed to be no ownership for your own boobery as a head coach of an NBA basketball
07:34team.
07:35That's what's so damn disheartening about it.
07:36I agree.
07:37So, like, I don't think James Harden was out there.
07:39I know he played like garbage down the stretch, but I don't think he was half-assing it.
07:43I do think he was out of gas.
07:44I think that some of those guys were out of gas.
07:46And that's why you call a timeout.
07:47That's why you call timeouts.
07:49That's why you do it.
07:50To settle them down.
07:51You know, and you're up by 12.
07:5312, hey, take the crowd back out of it.
07:54All right, let's give them some time to sit there and kind of calm down for a second while
07:59they take a commercial break.
08:01And then they can start to wave the, I don't think they have towels there, but they can
08:04start to whoop it up when they come back from break.
08:06But you've reset yourself and now you can get yourself going again.
08:09No, you just basically will it into existence and hold on to your timeouts until the very
08:13end.
08:14Chris Kaiser is going to join us today, executive VP of the Cavs.
08:17Where else would he rather be than right here in studio with us?
08:22It said on the list, it says, hey, round one fan giveaways.
08:25And I said, what game one at MSG?
08:27Oh my God.
08:28Is that the giveaway?
08:29So Chris Kaiser, poor Chris.
08:32And you guys are going to see him on the YouTube feed.
08:34It's like, you can't, I can't start screaming at that guy.
08:38He would have called timeout.
08:39Chris would have called timeout.
08:40He would have said, all right, let's pause.
08:41Let's think about this.
08:43You got to keep them.
08:45Jason Lloyd joins us at nine.
08:47What are we keeping them for?
08:48Trade them in later for prizes.
08:50What are we keeping them for?
08:51They should.
08:52I mean, if you're going to have them, you should get something out of the deal.
08:55Okay.
08:56We'll treat it like an art.
08:57It's like Discovery Zone.
08:58Like Dave and Buster's right now.
09:00Missed Discovery Zone.
09:02You think it'll help validate the parking at MSG?
09:05Where kids want to be.
09:06Yeah.
09:07I don't know.
09:08Jason Lloyd at nine.
09:09Obviously, I'm beside myself here.
09:13I don't want to ask if the series is over.
09:15The series isn't over.
09:16If you want to say it, fine.
09:17I'm not going to ask you if the series is over.
09:19But, you know, for the haters, we asked all the people to come out of the woodwork yesterday.
09:23Just real quick.
09:23We asked all the people to come out of the woodwork yesterday.
09:26We waved our pom-poms.
09:27We really did.
09:28We got worked up.
09:30Is this where I just asked the haters to come out?
09:32For all you guys who have been saying that we were full of it this entire time,
09:35I'll try to say it's one game,
09:37but when you lose a 22-point lead like that and you look like you basically willed yourself into that
09:42loss,
09:42I mean, you got what's coming to you and so do we.
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