NBA Round 1 Playoffs and First Morel Mushroom Finds of the Season on the Torg Stories Podcast

NBA Playoff Prompts for Podcast Episode Recorded Sunday, April 27, 2024:

1. Forget the prompts. Here’s what’s most on my mind to open the show: 

2. Fashion finds. This can be someone’s shoe you like, coach’s outfit good or bad, walking in to the game videos, whatever. Anything related to fashion. 

3. Your favorite to watch: (team, player, whatever…) 

• Knicks v Sixers. I rank the intensity level the highest. Embiid’s health problems (knee, Bell’s Palsy) and he seems like he is losing it. Intensity of both fan bases. Like watching Brunson. I learn stuff from Nick Nurse. A couple sets I diagrammed. 

4. Biggest surprise: how good Kyrie looks. 23 pts, 4-8 from 3 in win AND 31 pts, 10-18 from field in loss. (could have easily been how good Hardin looks too, especially in that game 1 win) 

• Also, I thought D’Angelo Russell was worse on offense than he has been. Yes 0-7 from 3 last game and 1-9 in game 1, but he’s at 32% from 3 for series and I thought it was worse. 
• Haliburton looked a lot better than I had heard. 

5. Biggest disappointment: The Suns offense or lack of it. No pg. Standing around. No apparent chemistry among the big 3. 
6. STATS! Click here to go to the Basketball Reference NBA playoff site. Give me a team stat that jumps out to you and an individual stat that jumps out to you. 
7. Team stat: 3 pointers made per 100 possessions: (1) Heat at 19.3 (2) Celtics at 18.7 big drop to (3) Sixers at 14.7 and worst SUNS at 9.0
8. Individual stat: same 3 pointers made (1) Josh Hart and Dame Lillard with 12 and (3 & 4) Maxey and Porter Jr with 11. ALSO Jamal Murray is 5-20 wonder if you could go under a few more of those ball screens and handoffs 
9. Looks like I was right…  Joel Embiid is healthy enough for Sixers to make a run. 37 ppg, 8.7 rebs, 5.3 assists, 37.5% from 3 38.7 MINS per game in 3 games 
10. I might have missed that one… Suns to win the series and not realizing how much I now think they need a point guard OR the offense is bad OR the players are unwilling to run offense and work together. 
11. Dumbest / most illogical thing you saw…  

• Pacers not fouling before Middleton hit the three to send to OT. 
• didn’t hurt them but the Nuggets challenged a foul call that went against them. It could have taken away some FTs but they ended up getting a goal tend added to their challenge. 

10. Three or so takes that we can circle back to in a week to see if you right or not…

• Take 1: Sixers come back and win the series vs Knicks 
• Take 2: The Heat find a way to win another game in the Celtics series. The Celtics will pull it out. 
• Take 3: The Lakers will lose this last game. 

11. What are you looking forward to before the next podcast? (which game, series, etc) 

• Continued Knicks / Sixers 
• More Haliburton. 
• Continued Clippers / Mavs 
• Does Embiid get a little bit healthier or are we seeing someone barely hanging on physically and will decline?

Discussion questions: 

1. Let’s say you were going to put together a 5 man team to try and beat the Nuggets in a 7 game season. Neither team could sub. Pick any 5 players from the NBA. You just can’t pick a Nugget. 

• Point guard: Luka. If not Luka…what if Giannis is the point? 
• Shooting guard: Paul George
• Wing: Tatum 
• Four: Anthony Davis 
• Center: Giannis 
• My strategy was to go big and be switch able. I want to be all set to switch that Murray and Jokic handoff. So that’s Giannis and Luka. Hmm…

2. Let’s say you wanted to give LeBron the best chance to win a title next year. You’re going to take LeBron from the Lakers and put him on any team except for the Nuggets. Where do you put him? 

• Need a center or two to win, right? Thunder don’t have the center. T-Wovles I’d rather have LeBron than Towns. Suns still wouldn’t have a center or a PG. 
• I settled on the East just to get him out of the West. There actually might not be a ton of playing time for LeBron on the Celtics? Okay, sure LeBron off the bench instead of Horford. They have some players who can move around position wise to accommodate LeBron. I don’t think he’d be happy with that. Plus, their center? I think LeBron on the Lakers is pretty much the Lakers (EmBiid becomes Davis) and they have Maxey, which the Lakers don’t have at all. So I decided I’d put LeBron on the Sixers. I do think it would be fun to see LeBron on the Warriors, an old guy team. 
• 2nd thought: Pacers? Big guards. Good defenders. Just one big? 

3. Read the challenge rule click here. What would be your challenge strategy, Anne? 

• Key part of challenge rule: Each team is entitled to one challenge to start the game. If that first challenge is successful, coaches will be rewarded with a second one, as of the 2023-24 season. Coaches cannot challenge a call in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter and last two minutes of any overtime.
• I want more than possession in the first 3 quarters. I want points in my favor or I want an important foul added or taken away to my advantage. I think if you’re after possession and then you don’t score, what did you get out of it? How many points per possession are you averaging? Around 1? Celtics led the league with 1.22 points per possession and Memphis was last with 1.06. 
• Just notice how little difference there is from top to bottom. 

4. If you were playing today, do you think you would wear anything beyond the issued uniform? Headband, sleeves, pads. 

• I must acknowledge I wore an oversized wristband because MJ did. And I did enjoy wiping sweat from my brow on it. I also wore one thin knee pad also because of Michael but also because I had a habit of sliding on the ride side of my knee going to the floor for balls and so I wore holes in that instead of on my knee. So acknowledging I was influenced… I might wear a leg or two. 

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