Thinking basketball podcast.

My name is Ben.

Welcome back to the 2026 NBA finals.

Cody, we made it all the way after a classic Western Conference playoff series.

The Thunder fall to the spurs in seven games, San Antonio,

one of the youngest teams to ever make the NBA finals, still not quite as young as our

1977 Portland Trailblazers, led by Bill Walton and Maurice Lucas and Bob Gross. Can you

make an argument that Bob Gross was the second best player

on that team? Also Lionel Hollins and many others. But yes, yes, you're going to make the Bob

Gross argument? No, I think that's a good, that's a really interesting call. That seems like a

really nice little deep dive we could do in the offseason, right? We could be like, who is

secretly the second best player on each of these championship teams,

except it's only the 77 Blazers that we talk about.

It's a good excuse to talk about the 77 Blazers.

That was a great Western Conference Finals.

One of the things we were chatting about that I have to pick your brain on as we start

here is was where does that rank amongst the Western Conference

Finals of the 21st century?

We have the 2018 seven game classic

between the Warriors and Chris Paul's hamstring

and the Rockets 27 threes in a row.

We have the 2016 Western Conference Finals, the Warriors down 3-1.

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