Clippers and Thunder Tonight, we've got the pregame show six thirty. You're on
the radio station, The Salty a Adam Austlin will be behind the mic,
Salty. How are you? Why did you take that big side before getting
to me there? Like, oh, now I gotta get to Adam after
trying to fudge the numbers a minute ago, Fred, what's wrong with you?
There's nothing wrong with me, Adam. I'm just saying, you know,
it's nine games to go for the Clippers. I know you're very concerned.
Yeah, I am concerned. But I heard you were on one today,
so now I'm concerned about that too. And I just witnessed it with
how you treated Kevin exactly exactly. I just want to get the accurate numbers
from Kevin. That's it, since f and Win ratings rogan with accurate numbers,
Since when you cook the books all the time. You know what,
there's an old there's an old line in research. Tell the secret, Adam.
You give me a two, I'll give you four. It's pretty simple.
You can fix those numbers anyway you'll want them, all right, Adams,
let's go Paul George, Boy, that's a huge loss. And he's
basically done for the regular season. Could he come back to the playoffs.
We'll see, because earlier today I practiced, Terrence Man said he's in good
spirits and he's already started a rehab, so I would take that as a
good sign. Now they said reevaluation in two to three weeks. The playoffs
are about a little over three weeks away, so it's possible if he responds
fast enough. Who knows when the injury first occurred. The first thing I
thought of was Jannas Denna Coopo and the way he hyper extended his knee in
the twenty twenty one Eastern Conference Finals. I think that was at the end
of Game four. He missed a week now. He's the Greek freak for
a reason. And I don't know what their evaluation or diagnosis was and how
it compares to Paul George. Everybody's different, of course, but if you
were looking for a comp that was the guy. The problem is he's one
of the freakiest athletes of all time, and he had it when he was
twenty six. Paul George is older now at thirty two. Clippers just called
it a right knee sprain. We don't know which ligament, but earlier today
hearing that from Terrence Man was encouraging and look overall, with how horrific the
injury looked that night, I mean the two one three era flashed before my
eyes. I started to think it was just going to be defined by major
knee injuries, first to Kawhi Leonard, then to Paul George, and for
that to happen to someone who had been through so much with the compound fracture
back in twenty fourteen for Team USA, it was scary to see that.
So considering it doesn't look like it's season ending necessarily or that it could bleed
into next year and him not being able to go to start next season healthy,
I mean, that's huge. You just want to see him out there
healthy. He just had a three sixty dunk minutes before that happened, at
about the four minute mark of the fourth quarter, and it kind of reminded
me of you know, Kawhi Leonard had the huge dunk on Derrick Favors in
Game four in the twenty twenty one second round, right before he did his
knee. So there was a lot of curse talk post game, which I
don't love but people calling in talking about that the Clippers being snake bit and
they've had bad luck. But I don't believe in those things. And this
was good news, This was positive. This was uplifting to know that he's
reevaluated, reevaluated in two or three weeks. Yeah, and it's it's like
you, you are, You're rooting for them to be all in all healthy
for a change, to see exactly what they can do. Adam, I
think that's what everybody's been waiting for, and they haven't been that, and
then all of a sudden they get this with Paul George. But prior to
his injury, there was some inconsistency with their play anyway going forward, and
there were some concerns, weren't they. No, there's no doubt coming out
of the All Star break, you lose your first five with Russell Westbrook now
and you're trying to figure out rotations and lineups and guys playing new roles because
you brought in Russ and he's been pretty much playing thirty minutes a night.
There was an adjustment period there. Then they won four straight, then they
lost one one one, and then lost to Okac and that was a huge
loss. It was kind of overshadow of because the game ended up being secondary
before the health of Paul George and looking into that knee issue. But that
was a bad loss, especially the way it ended in that fourth quarter.
That was one of the worst endings to a game I've ever seen where Kawhi
Leonard doesn't even end up getting a shot off. There was some miscommunication.
It looked like between he and Marcus Morris. Did he want a screen?
Did he want Marcus just to clear out and take his man with him so
Kawhi could go one on one with Dorton have room to operate. It was
tough to tell, but they've underachieved for the most part this season because when
you look at it this way, Kawhi Leonard has played forty four games this
year. That's forty four more and he played all of last season Paul George
and I think is at fifty six. He only played a little over thirty
last year. And they're in danger of having a worst record at the end
of the season than they did last season, an entire year without Kawhi Leonard.
Now, they're fortunate that the West is down and they're still just a
half game back of the Phoenix Suns for the four season, but they've had
a lot not go their way. They've had some missteps along the way,
and they just haven't built up any consistency whatsoever. And with nine games remaining,
they have to find themselves. Now. It's there, the personnel is
there to be a very good defense, and they have shown flashes, but
there have been very few games this season where they put it together for forty
eight minutes. For example, Tuesday night against Okay See, they come out
like gangbusters, They're up eighteen to four, they go the last seven minutes
of the first quarter not making a fuel goal, and somehow they trail by
one after getting off to that hot of a start. And that has happened
a lot this year where teams more often than not are coming back on them.
When the Clippers used to be the team that responded when they faced adversity,
and nobody's had more twenty point comebacks than them over the last three seasons
during this era, so it's been a little strange to see. But they
have not built up enough consistency and that's the most concerning thing for me as
you head into the playoffs now, and it looks like you're gonna end the
last nine games likely without Paul George. You just gotta figure it out now
on the fly. You just gotta pay play the best players and hope they
respond out there. Hey, and we just real quick for him. Sorry,
we were talking about officiating in the Dallas It was the Dallas State game.
But then I was thinking about that, and I'm going back to to
the technical fouls that were given to Terence Man, Like, what do we
do as a player, How do you even know what you can do?
Say anything anymore? When you've got officials that are wearing their emotions so hard
on their sleeves, you can't say anything, You can't do anything. Been
strange over the last two or three weeks now it's like officials gone wild.
We expect that from Scott Foster and his reputation, but it kind of started
with him. He kicked out Scotty Barnes in a game with Toronto, and
nobody knew it had happened. Even the other officials are like, wait,
you just you just kicked him out of this one. And then you have
a game the other night where I thought, and it was about a four
minute mark of the second quarter, Kawhi gets a technical for arguing a call
that turned out or he turned out to be right about he was fouled on
that play. The official later apologized to him. The problem is the damage
was done because then Terrence Mann said something and he gets two technicals in the
span of three seconds. He's not a guy that's known to be hot headed.
Kawhi Leonard, that was the fourth technical he's ever had in his career.
These guys don't have reputations, so I thought they overreacted. I haven't
complained about the officials all season long, but I thought that was one of
the poorest officiated games of the season that I've seen with the Clippers involved.
There was a lane violation called, There was a double foul called. There
was that played by Dort where Paul George got called for an offensive foul after
crossing him over. Dort goes to the floor, kicks his legs out and
they called the foul on Paul George. It was absolutely the bizarre and speaking
of theazar, Mike Votello on Valley's Sports had a beautiful rant about it,
and I thought he spoke brilliant about the officials injecting themselves into the game,
overstepping their bounds, taking things too far, too personal. Because you look
at the pool report postgame reporters have a chance to talk with the officials about
some of these calls. They cited Kawhi Leonard clapping aggressively at the official in
his face. Well, clapping aggressively is already laughable. Now if you do
do it right in their face, that is grounds for a technical. The
problem is he was ten feet away. The videos there, it wasn't demonstrative,
it wasn't over the top. And then they said Terrence Man was aggressively
wagging his finger. It wasn't the middle finger. But Terrence Man gets the
second technical what looked to be him dropping an expletive after getting the first technical.
So he's upset after getting the first one and you kick him out right,
then things escalated far too quickly, far too fast. The only thing
I can say is there was some chirping going on early on in that ball
game by the Clippers. They didn't like some of the calls, and there
were some bad calls, and I think the rest were just trying to get
control of things and trying to nip it in the bud right there. But
in a game of that magnitude with two teams that close in the standings,
and it's still the first half of this one in Terrence Man just had a
great run in that second quarter with eight points, and you kick a guy
out. It was wild to see. It was too much. Nobody's coming
to the arena wearing a jersey with an official's name on the back, unless
you're me, because I do have a Lakers jersey with a six on it
for Game six Lakers Kings two thousand and two Western Conference Finals that says Dick
Bavette on the back because he basically played for the Lakers in that game.
But I'm crazy. Nobody else is going to a game wearing a jersey with
an official's name on the back. We're not there to see them. Let's
watch the players and see how things play out. Didn't it was Ben Taylor,
I believe the official Ben Taylor. They'd had so many complaints about him.
Fred van Fleet made some comments after a game that they have now basically
removed him. Yeah, yeah, from role of crew chief. I've never
heard that. Well, I never have seen something happen. At first,
I raised an eyebrow because I didn't see the play live, And I just
saw the tweet from Mark Cuban in that game between Dallas and the Golden State
Warriors last night, and I thought, oh, he's exaggerating properly. He's
probably going over the top. It went against the Dallas Mavericks, that they
had won the ball game, he'd be saying nothing, No, that play
is egregious for them to just give the ball to the Golden State Warriors when
there isn't a Dallas Maverick beyond half court to contest it. Obviously, they
had no idea that they had overturned the call during the time out saying it
was the Golden State Warriors ball and they just gave him a free two points
on the inbounds play in a game that was that tight down the stretch.
That can't happen. So that protest is very much warranted by Mark Cuban the
Dallas Mavericks. Yeah, but wouldn't you think at that point when you saw
that we talked about it earlier, somebody would have say, hey, wait,
somebody from Dallas wore on, wait a minute, stop or what are
the officials would have gone, hold on, do you guys do the lead
official take control. Yeah, that can't happen. Nobody knew what what the
situation was. Even the Golden State Warriors looked a little bit surprised, Like
looking around, gonna be any Dallas Mavericks here, We're just gonna get a
free bucket, Like you wanna talk about cherry picking. That was insane.
I've never seen anything like it. All right, before you get out of
here, Lakers nine games to go. Austin Reeves played well again last night.
You don't know anything about Lebron. Maybe he'll be back, maybe he
won't. He gave us the update at least on Twitter, Yeah, which
is we'll see I'm working out. I'm working out. Austin Reeves, though,
really has been a breath of fresh air for them this year. And
he's a restricted free agent. Don't you think they got to take care of
business with him before he goes out and starts to listening offers. He's gonna
get the bag. They're gonna learn from their mistake. Well, excuse me,
his name's up in my mind. Caruso Alex Caruz will go in to
Chicago, and it sounded like he just wanted them to match the offer they
didn't and they could have. That wasn't a situation where they would have lost
THHT because they chose Caruso. They could have kept both those guys. They
just had to dip into the luxury tax and they went on the cheap.
I don't think that's gonna happen again. With Austin Reeves and the way he's
been playing last ten games, getting eighteen per game, fifty six percent shooting,
and the Lakers post All Star Break without Lebron James eight and six,
They've they've been able to more than just tread water. They got a winning
record over their last fourteen games, and a lot of that is because Caruso
went for his career high eleven assists last night, just had the big thirty
five point career night. Scoring wise, he's been incredible. He got the
start. He's been one of my favorite players to watch. It's just funny
to see him out there all shooks and post games every night. He's doing
something that's a career high for himself and he's always surprised by it. So
it's a great story. It's great to see. But he's a bawler.
He's crossing guys over. He took Jannis and Dena Kompo Defensive Player of the
Year and crossed him into the next century like he's He's an unbelievable player.
For his ascension, it's been a revelation for the Lakers to have a guy
like that, And sometimes injuries open up opportunities for other players out there,
and you see what you have. So if you're looking for silver linings,
if you're a Clippers fan or a Lakers fan, sometimes that is the end
result. Somebody plays above their head for a while and you realize what you
have on this roster. Six thirty tonight pre game six thirty pre game Freddie
Clar's Countdown Salt t A Adam Asston Adam, thanks for hanging Maretta go Adam.
Glad you got that number of time right. Roy Sports