Perk has STRONG message for Cavaliers after elimination 😬 ‘THEY WROTE THEMSELVES OFF!’ | NBA Today

Perk has STRONG message for Cavaliers after elimination 😬 ‘THEY WROTE THEMSELVES OFF!’ | NBA Today

The Indiana Pacers. This resurgent ascending franchise has punched their ticket to the Eastern Conference Finals. Gildas Alexander taking his time. High screen. Shot clock is down to six. Gildas Alexander on target. We start our show with a developing story. Warriors guard Stephen Curry. He was re-evaluated today and the team says that he is making progress in his hamstring recovery. He’s been cleared to participate in light onc court workout shooting drills as well. He will be re-evaluated again on Saturday. He was seen right here at shootound doing some drills this morning with a trainer. Of course, the Warriors have to win tonight to give Curry a chance to play again this season. We’ll have more on this later in the show. After making the conf Eastern Conference Finals last season, the Pacers, they started this season 16 and 18. But what a turnaround. Since January 1st, Indiana has had the fourth best record in the league, going 34 and4. But how did they make their second straight conference finals? Well, Danny Green, let’s dive into the highlight here because the Cleveland Cavaliers, they led by as many as 19 in this one. That was a race very quickly when Tyrese Hallebertton started getting hot. Yeah, he did. Hot it was. Hit five in that quarter. Five threes in the second quarter to get him back in this one. Once again, pulls up. By the way, those five threes are the most by a Pacers player in the playoffs in the last 25 seasons here. So, on to the third quarter we go. A big sequence here for Indiana. Trailing by eight. Donovan Mitchell. He steals it away. But watch Miles Turner here. Chases him down for the block. And then watch Nehard comes in for another block on Max Stre. Huge play. Perhaps a turning point in this game for Indiana. I thought that play was huge cuz, you know, we started the third quarter. I think that right there kind of got us going there in the third when we were we started slope. Um and then we just kind of rode the wave from there. And as you can see, Indiana outscored Cleveland 33 to6 to end the third quarter after that sequence from Turner and Nemhard there. So the fourth quarter here, four and a half to play. Indiana up four here. Hallebertton this time with the block. Then going coast to coast for the finish and one. Doing on both ends. He finished with 31 points, eight assists. Pacers take down the topseated Cavaliers. They move on to the Eastern Conference Finals once again. But the Cavaliers, their 64 wins are tied with the 2022 Suns for the third most by a team to fail to advance past the conference semis in NBA history. That trails only the 67 games won by the 16 Spurs and the 07 Mavs. After the game, Donovan Mitchell, he addressed another early exit here for Cleveland. Y’all going to write us the off, man. But we’ll be back when they let s city down, letting each other down. We’ll be back. So obviously this is a shock to the Cavaliers. Wendy, we kind of joke that you’re the Cavaliers corner here, but you’ve covered this team, followed this team more closely than most. What does this loss mean for the future of the Cavaliers? Are we to write them off the way that Donovan Mitchell is saying that maybe folks will? Yeah, there’s just no way that they could have seen this coming. Uh certainly they respected the Pacers as an opponent. They knew that the Pacers were going to be a difficult matchup for them in certain aspects of it, but they just were mentally taken out of this series. I mean, you can point, I suppose, to the fact that there was some injuries and definitely some of their star players weren’t at their best, but the Pacers got inside their head. They wore them down. Their strategy was really to apply pressure to the Cavs guards. And you know, the Cavs deal with that and deal with their undersized guards by just overwhelming the teams of offense. But in fact, the Pacers applied so much bullcourt pressure and so much uh ball pressure that it got them out of their offense, got them out of their flow. Malikica, at the end last night, the Cavs just stopped passing. And when you watch the Cavs during the season when they won 64 games, they were one of the best passing teams in the league. They basically reduced them to just sort of a shell of themselves. And so part of that’s on the Cavs, but a lot of it is owed to the the strong play and game plan of the Pacers. No, we we not the ones that that are going to write them off. They wrote them own they wrote them their own selves off, right? With the lack of physicality. This team was so soft. Like here’s the thing, right? This is why I’m looking at Donovan Mitchell. One, a Donovan Mitchell le team has never been to a conference finals. That’s number one. Number two, Donovan Mitchell is the reason that JB Bickerstaff got fired, right? Because JB Bickerstaff was so strict. JB Bicker Staff was trying to bring culture to that organization. And most importantly, JB Bickerstaff was trying to hold those guys accountable and bring out the dog in them, right? And that’s what they shied away from. They want to have they wanted to have fun. They wanted it to be peaches and cream. It is stressful going through the process of trying to win a NBA championship or even make it to the NBA finals. You lose sleep. You don’t eat. You ain’t talking to nobody. You walking in the practice facilities and you may not speak to your coach or teammates throughout the course of a series. You hate your coach at times because he’s on you so much about accountability. So now all of a sudden we’re here and I’m looking at the injuries and listen the last thing I ever want to do is question some injuries and DJ I’mma lead you off with this but I’m looking at an ankle injury. Okay, I’m looking at an ankle injury. You sit out game two, Evan Mobley and then you come back game three. Well, your ass could have played in game two. I’m looking at Donovan Mitchell last night letting the world know that oh I’m giving it all I’m I got. I’m fighting through it. I mean, I’m I’m beat up. I’m sore. We don’t see that same stuff from uh Anthony Edwards. You got to have a different type of mentality. You got to have a different type of heart, passion. Going to the NBA finals trying to compete for a championship is not fun. It’s stressful. I’m with you on that, Perk. And to talk about Wendy’s point, I think they did sleep on him, Wendy. I think they kind of took him lightly and it cost him two games. When Darius sat out, he expected his team to take care of business. They did it with Miami. This is not a Miami Heat team. Indiana faces a very good and you cannot take games off. If you’re able to play, you better get on that floor and get and figure out a way. Evan Mobley down 100 took a game. These are not teams you can sit out against. You have to play these games. This is the playoff. So, I’m with you perk. You got to find a way to get on the floor. If you can sit out just one game and come back, it’s a pain tolerance issue. So, if you can accept the pain tolerance and fight through it, you got to do it. You got to find a way to do that. And they didn’t do that. And I think they took him lightly, which put them in a hole and it made Donovan Mitchell very gassed and didn’t have the energy to play. You see those lacks of days plays that they had down the stretch. You cannot allow a guy to catch you, a big man to catch you in open break court and block your shot. These are just un plays that are just no sense of urgency and they kind of slept on them the first two games which put them in a hole. I think when a 64- win team loses in five games in the second round in the same fashion that they they lost a year ago, the hand ringing begins. But on this show, we’re always very clear. It’s not just what Cleveland didn’t do. It’s what Indiana did to Cleveland and they took it to Cleveland time and time again. Here’s what Tyrese Hallebertton had to say about returning to the Eastern Conference Finals. This is a special time. Uh, you know, back-to-back Eastern Conference Finals. Um, we’re not done. We still got, you know, a ways to go, but it’s a special feeling, man. And, you know, watching the lottery last night, I remember being at the being our representative at the lottery a couple years ago and, uh, not wanting to, you know, to go back. So, um it’s special, man. Uh this group is special. Um we’ve, you know, this has been built by many different, you know, moves. The Pacers have played with a massive chip on their shoulder the entire playoffs. And I’m I’m going to go ahead and say this perk, and I don’t know who they’re going to play. Is it going to be the Knicks or the Celtics? Certainly, it looks like it is going to be the Knicks. As of right now, I would not be surprised one bit if the Indiana Pacers are the team to make it to the conference finals. When you have six different guys averaging double figures, 50% overall and 40% from three. This is a deep team. This is a dangerous team. This is a healthy team. Do you think that they have enough? Because I do. Perk, absolutely. And whoever they face, and I believe it’s going to be the Knicks, that series is going seven. But Malikica, let’s not overlook the only guy over there on that roster on the sideline is the 65year-old and Rick Callout. Let’s talk about the beautiful job he’s done and being able to adjust to the new age of NBA players, right? Maximizing every single guy on that roster. We’re seeing Tyrese Hallebertton play the best basketball of his career right now. Miles Turner, we’re looking at uh OB to Nimhart, Aaron Nid. Like these guys are are maxing out for Rick Carlile at a high level on both ends of the floor. They play agenda-free basketball. They tough as nails defensively. I am completely sold on the Indiana Pacers. I slept on them all season long. But hat off to uh Rick Carlau for the excellent job cuz he’s been coaching this behind off. Yeah, they’re deep. They work incredibly hard in three of the four games in the Eastern Conference Finals last year. They were a shot or two away from taking down the Boston Celtics. Uh Brian, speaking of Boston, we know you have to to run, you have to go, you have to cover this team. We will see you on the show later this week. We appreciate it. Let’s get to who we wonder. Yeah, text him that bet. Don’t forget that, Brian. Thank you. Uh, speaking of bets, look at this. The Knicks, they went from the longest odds among teams remaining to win the Eastern Conference favorites after game four’s win. They’re now just minus 110 favorites, just ahead of the Pacers at plus 125. Here’s how the Knicks have skyrocketed to that top spot in oddsmakers eyes.

On NBA Today, Malika Andrews is joined by Brian Windhorst, Kendrick Perkins and Danny Green to break down what went wrong for the Cleveland Cavaliers before analyzing the cohesiveness of the Indiana Pacers after punching their ticket to back-to-back Eastern Conference Finals.

0:00 Steph Curry update
0:48 Pacers-Cavs highlights
2:58 Windy & Perk on Cavs’ collapse
6:13 Danny Green: Cavs had no sense of urgency
7:13 Tyrese Haliburton on returning to ECF
8:25 Rick Carlisle is maximizing the Pacers

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