You thought we'd have eight days off before the NBA finals. You thought this was going to be easy for the Miami. He might still be easy. Who knows? No, the Boston Celtics, the most confusing team in the NBA go and into Miami I don't think I've ever seen a team do the thing where they let go of the rope in one game in a playoff series and that letting go of the rope takes them to within a game of elimination and turns the series into a blowout and come back the next game and fight with with grit and precision and calculation for their season. Usually like I thought back to 2019 Milwaukee, Boston when Boston won the first game and then it just kept on getting worse and worse and worse and worse and three one Milwaukee and you were like game five seems like it's going to be a Bucks rollover the way this is going and it was a Bucks rollover and this was not Mr. Goldsberry. How are you, sir? I am well. It's good to see you, Zach. I watched that game last night with with very just open mind. I didn't know what to expect and it turns out we got the outcome of like you said, Boston getting off the mat and making you my friend get on an Amtrak train and travel up the Eastern Coast to game five and let me tell you this. If you're on the quiet car, be quiet. The quiet car is called the quiet car. Keep your cell phone conversations to a minimum people. Yeah, just cell phone or cell phone. No cell phone talk on the I don't know what the hell the rules are. Look, I am a you will not hear a peep out of me unless I'm unless I'm asked a question by the Amtrak staffers. Anyway, before we get to Boston Miami and and whether this is already perilous for the eighth seeded Miami Heat who need I remind you had a negative point differential and were not a team that appeared to be building towards some late season crescendo salvaging a subpar regular season were a team that got shellacked by the Hawks in the playing game and was wheezing to an ignominious demise against the Chicago Bulls who probably are looking at all this and saying hey, should we give Vooch four years nine billion dollars? We're right there. We're right there on the doorstep. You're not right there on the doorstep before we get to all that. I wanted to start with just quickly Denver Nuggets fans, you know, I love the Nuggets, you know, I love Jokic. You know, I love watching them play. We're going to have so much time to talk about the Nuggets that it is only natural that we are using this time to talk about the greatest player in the world suggesting he might retire to what the hell is going to happen to Boston if they win or if they lose the series to or if they win the series, I guess to the heat in this improbable run, but I do want to just lead off with Mr. Goldsberry. The Nuggets are in the finals for the first time in the history of the NBA history of their franchise swept the Lakers each win more clutch and impressive than the last seemingly. I just want to get your quick reflections on watching this Nuggets team and what if anything you have found your brain thinking about now that they're in the finals. Well, small -market quote -unquote Western Conference teams have been disrespected for years in sports media and the general NBA discourse. So welcome aboard that train Denver. You are being overlooked, but you have international stars that tend to get overlooked as well. Welcome aboard that train, but Nikola Jokic does look like the best player in the world. I was not one of those people who is saying that I was always honest guy over the last few years and Jamal Murray. So the combination Zach, here's what I'd ask you the combination of Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic the best duo in postseason history since I don't know what the answer to that is, but that's where my brain has been going, but they got a 50 -40 -90 split on 30 points. That's what Jamal just did. And then obviously Jokic getting a triple -double with 30 points and doing everything. I don't know of a better one -two combination that I've seen in the postseason in a very long time. Well, I was going to say I might have to pump the brakes on your maybe cut the brakes, like veer you off into the sandbags on the side of the road that are there for runaway trucks because they got to win a title before I start, you know, Jordan Pippen, LeBron Wade, all the Warriors. I'm saying that's a long time ago. That's a long well the Warriors not a long time ago, but the other ones you mentioned I'm just that's where my brain is going. I'm starting to think like that with these two guys in this exact playoff run. Here's where my brain is going. The great thing about sports is you never know when you're going to learn something interesting about a team and I think back to the end of the 1718 regular season. It was a season that started off disappointingly for the Nuggets. They had signed Paul Millsap in free agency. They were all in on Jokic. It was Jamal Murray second season and the integration of Millsap was clunky to start with the offense wasn't flowing. They kind of just were in they were a 500 team for 70 games, but they were still mathematically in the race for number eight and they had made a big deal of like our goal is to make number eight and in the last let's say two weeks of the season. They essentially had to win out to have any chance at number eight and I think they won six or seven in a row to end that season a lot of them against good competition. They like they did not one two three Cancun. They did not have half an eye on their summer plans. They went all in one every game and forced the winner take all for the eighth seed season finale in Minnesota, which they lost in overtime to the Minnesota team that had Jimmy Butler on it and Jokic went bananas in that game and nearly carried them to a win and sometimes, you know, you have a tendency to look away at the end of the regular season even to a team that's like I have what chance do they really have at forcing this one game winner take all thing kind of like Phoenix in the bubble like what chance do they really have at trying to get into the playoffs? They're so far behind and you look at them and you're like oh there's a toughness here. There's a determination here. There's a will here that is interesting next year. Not only do they make the playoffs they get to the second round of the playoffs and they lose in game seven at home to Portland CJ McCollum carries the Blazers over to the finish line. Dame is totally gas Portland to their credit finds a way to win Heartbreaker for Denver. That's that's 1819 1920 bubble weird season bubble. Kind of like the Nuggets run to the conference finals kind of was a little bit dismissed like a lot of the runs in the bubbles were in the bubbles. The bubble were dismissed humiliated the Clippers in seven games coming back from 3 -1 had come back from 3 -1 against Utah in the first round and I think the double 3 -1 comeback is part of the reason that people didn't quite know what to make of that was like was that where those collapses by the other teams or they comebacks by Denver the first three or four games that Utah series like they couldn't get any stops were those more indicative of what the Nuggets were people kind of didn't know those were real to me like I remember writing a preview of game 7 of Clippers Nuggets and I knew that all of the discourse was about the Clippers and how disastrous this would be for the Clippers in the first year of Kawhi and PG to blow a 3 -1 lead when they were just loaded for bear that season and I made my preview about the Nuggets instead and about building from that game in 2018 against Minnesota to that game in game 7 and of course they obliterate the Clippers in game 7 flash forward to the next year out of the bubble in comes Aaron Gordon they look just utterly dominant Jamal Murray gets hurt at the end of the season and they go through this two -year waiting period and they're off over here to the side people kind of zones yokich MVP like that's awesome. Look, he's carrying these guys couple MVPs to their credit. They win around in 2020 to 2021 rather before losing to Phoenix in the second round in a sweep that was not great, but they want to playoff round so without without Murray. It's a big deal the next year. They lose to the Warriors in the first round the Warriors end up winning the title. They're off to the side.