The Ringer NBA Show
Thunder Just One Win Away From an NBA Finals Appearance. Plus, Can the Knicks Reclaim Home Court? | Real Ones
Tue, 27 May 2025
Logan Murdock and Raja Bell start the pod by reminiscing about Allen Iverson's Philly days, and then they immediately shift to the Western Conference finals. The Oklahoma City Thunder have taken a commanding 3-1 lead in the WCF following a Game 4 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves Monday night. How has OKC taken Anthony Edwards out of his offensive game and forced the Wolves' role players to make plays? How has the physicality been in the WCF, and is SGA getting a more favorable whistle than others ? Karl Anthony-Towns had the performance of a lifetime, dropping 20 fourth-quarter points in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals to help the Knicks avoid an 0-3 record. Can the Knicks take Game 4 in Indy and reclaim home-court advantage? Plus, Podcast P is back with another clip The Real Ones had to discuss. (5:46): Thunder - Wolves Series (41:14): Fan Duel Ad Break (45:35): Knicks - Pacers (57:07): Pack Watch: Paul George The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Hit the mailbag! [email protected] Hosts: Logan Murdock and Raja Bell Producer/Audio: Clifford Augustin Video Producer: Victoria Valencia Social: Keith Fujimoto Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the key takeaways from the Thunder vs. Wolves series?
I don't like people asking me dumb shit, though.
Just generally speaking. You don't like when we ask you if you're good, if you're late, you don't like us calling you, motherfucker.
You weren't asking. Let's be clear. Just to clarify. You weren't asking if I was good. How are you doing today, man? You having any feelings that you need to talk through with anybody? You weren't asking me that. You were asking me if I was recording, to which I would say again, I don't like people asking me dumb shit.
Yo, we're recording this at 9-11 Pacific time in the morning. And the reason why we're doing this is because for five minutes, we just had Philly talk. I promised we're going to talk about OKC, Shea versus Ant, Knicks, Cat, all these things. But first off, we made a revelation. We found out some good news on the real ones, pre-pod meetings.
The TGI Fridays on City Ave in Philadelphia is still open, ladies and gentlemen. The famous TGI Fridays. Let me just quarterback this thing real quickly. Before the pod, about maybe 30 minutes before the pod,
um cliff sends me and victoria also shout out to victoria on the boards cliff or victoria on the video uh cliff on the board so cliff sends us a um on instagram this like philly like legends instagram and it's valent iverson and it's talking about like how i used to be shooting dice on the on the um On the corner, used to be at the TGI Fridays.
And among other things, the thing that I gravitated towards was the CGI Fridays on City Line. I don't know what City Line is, so I had to Google that. And turns out this TGI Fridays is still in business. And I was really, really happy about this. What is your favorite TGI Friday moment that you can share? Roger.
Me? No, no, no. You weren't invited to the TGI Friday parties? I wasn't a regular at TGI Fridays. The Iverson TGI Friday party?
I can't say that I was. I mean, I may have been at one or two, but that wasn't at my regular stop after a game. Okay. You didn't go after practice.
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Chapter 2: How did the Knicks perform in Game 4?
No, but he wasn't even forcing it, though. He was just distributing early. And J. Will, if my memory serves me correctly, and this was first quarter, but J. Will was making the first four or five shots of the game, right? And then what Shea did better than Ant was just not succumb to, oh, they're trying to take me away and I'm only going to be a facilitator.
Shea just kept checking his offense, right? Sporadically, boop, boop, until he hit one. You hit one and you're like, OK, here's here's a little wrinkle like now. Now he's cooking. And what Ant didn't. Ant didn't stay present as an offensive bucket in the way that he needed to.
He kind of gave up that, you know, that that's what that's what I'm mad at. He kind of gave up that part of his offensive repertoire. Right. He was just like, OK, they're doubling me. I'm going to just kick it and make the right basketball play.
Yeah, well, first of all, I mean, some of that has to do with, I mean, Lou Dort, is phenomenal when he's on him. There's no breathing room coming off any of those screens. And the few times that he did have breathing room, you know, Ant made a play, right? But like Lou Dort is connected. The screener's man, the defender that's guarding the screener is up and corralling the hell out of him.
They're just throwing a lot of bodies at him. And even when you got Kaysen on him and other people, like they did a really good job on him. What he doesn't have yet that Shea has is the ability to put somebody on his hip. Like that is an equalizer sometimes. Like Ant wants to play facing you off of that live dribble. And again, in a lot of those instances, he's up high on the court. Do you know?
Listen, we'll just geek out for a second. Do you know what I'd say? Like if you're playing a basketball game and you got a primary scorer and they're running a zone, do you know where you do not want that guy to be?
On the wings, on the wing side. Top of the key. Oh, I thought that was, I thought, I thought that was, I thought, oh, that's man to man, huh? You don't, man to man, if you're trying to double, the worst part to be is in the middle of the correct, right?
If you're going to double him, like it's hard to double if he's in the middle, right? But against a zone, like you don't want that guy, your best player all the time to be at the top of the key. Now, If you start him at the top of the key and then you run him through so he's getting to the wing or the baseline, that's fine.
But the reason you don't want him at the top of the key is because all eyes have their butts to the baseline and they're looking at him. So everyone is in a natural support position to help against the dude with the ball. You're theoretically your best player. That's where they have ant almost all the time.
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Chapter 3: What is the physicality level in the current playoffs?
You know what I mean? But you have to have a good feel for when you've got to give up a few of those touches and a few of those isos and a few of those monopolizing possessions to just get it up and get it moving and let other people get a taste.
Yeah. What did you think of the decision to bench Brunson for much of the second half by tips?
Well, he was in foul trouble. Yeah.
When did he come into, like, the one-minute mark? Or, like, with two minutes left in the game?
Well, at that point, you're coaching. I mean, you're coaching, man. Like, I don't think he benched him because he didn't like what he was doing. He sat him down because he was trying to protect him from the foul trouble. But once you're sitting there, if we are hooping, hooping, hooping, I mean, I'm riding that for a while. I owe it to everybody out there. You too, included.
You're on the team, right? So while you're still my best player and my best closer, I'm going to ride this wave until it crashes on the shore, right? And then we'll call that timeout, try to get you in the game or what have you. So I didn't have a problem with it. It would have been different had they said, he's having a bad night. We're going to just sit our star.
I don't think it didn't come about like that. So I was okay with it.
This seemed like a Roger Bell type game. The role players were fucking insane in this game for the Knicks. What was your favorite performance? And I'm going to give you three names. Yeah. I'm going to give you two and a half. OG, Josh Hart, or McBride in the first half?
Yeah, that's tough. McBride in the first half. McBride in the first half was... he was good. But I think ultimately for me, it's heart. And the reason being because he was asked to sit down to start a game. He was asked to play a different role. And I don't know that he was asked, but he was put in a situation to have to sacrifice for the betterment of the team.
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