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This is the best of the herd with Colin cowherr on Fox Sports Radio.

Ah, here we go on a Monday in a world of real sports live in Los Angeles. This is the herd. Wherever you may be and however you may be listening Fox Sports Radio and right here on FS1.

One hour from now where Colin was right where Colin was wrong in the last couple of weeks last week specifically Joy Taylor is joining me.

So the NBA playoffs start today. Nernest we're ready to go. We've got sports NFL camps are underway. We'll be reporting on that baseball two Yankees on fire Red Sox are rebooting joy. How are you?

I'm great. I'm very excited for this week. Yeah, this is a good week. This is a good week. Let's, um, let's start with this. You know, in sports fans often think a win. It's all good. A loss. It's all bad. There are bad wins. There are times you lose a star player to an injury in a win or the win sort of unveils the truth about your team and how limited you are. I actually thought Portland winning Saturday. Was that a wake up call? Maybe I'm way too high on Portland. Let's be honest.

The Lakers mailed it in in this bubble and they're just sitting there veterans rested ready to go. Portland and Damien Lillard have played nine straight playoff level games. Damien's averaging 41 minutes a game. LeBron average 31 minutes a game. And now the two stars teams will meet starting tomorrow. Damien's played 112 more minutes than LeBron. That's almost three full games and all those fourth quarters have been incredibly playoff in the game.

They're really playoff in tents for Portland. The bubble has been really fun. And it really gave us three things. Number one, what did the bubble give us? It gave us a bunch of young stars and shows you the NBA's in good shape. Michael Porter, Jr.

Denver, John Morant in Memphis, Luca Donchitz in Dallas. The leagues got a unbelievable Yo Kitch in Denver. How many players 25, 24 and younger in this game? And they're all better. They're like quarterbacks in the NFL. They're all better sooner. They're ready to score and they're ready to play.

The first thing the bubble gave us is a glimpse of the future and it was really fun. The second thing it gave us is championship level teams. There's about four.

It gave you a hard game or two, but both number one seeds went three and five and Phoenix went, you know, eight, no. Milwaukee can't really find itself not even defensively where they're always good.

They played hard again. The Clippers and then just sort of dialed it back. The Clippers miss several guys. I still have no concerns for them. But what is their chemistry? Let's be honest. The second thing we saw in this bubble after all these energized young players was championship teams. There's no home court advantage. They just want to be healthy.

They just want to be ready to go and be healthy. And the third thing we saw in the bubble, one really good team showed up to Orlando. I'm not counting the, you know, the Phoenixes, one really good team played hard for nine straight games, Portland.

They really gave you everything and they had to and every game felt like a playoff game and Dame looks like the MVP of the bubble and Nerkich is a real player. But the other thing I saw Saturday afternoon. They're exhausted. They are shot.

I mean, now they get a couple of days off of the Lakers, but Nerkich looked shot the last three games. Dame, the energizer played really well, but at some level, this is a lousy defensive team on their good days.

I mean, mellows their best wing defender. I'm not joking at 36. He's their best wing defender. This I just don't know. Well, you got to revisit it. I know Portland one, but I sat and watched that game and I thought they can't close out Memphis.

I mean, they can't close out Memphis. They can't stop Memphis. So I thought I thought it was one of those good for Portland, but I looked all the minutes. Dame put in. I looked at Nerkich. I looked at their roster. I looked at how fatigued they looked. And I thought to myself, the Lakers are just sitting around waiting for Tuesday, hydrating, getting rested, Xbox.

Xbox, been there before. I'll have to revisit my prediction on this one. All right. So, you know, one of the things that I find, you know, tedious.

I think if you're confident in yourself, being right is not the be all. But if you have low self esteem, you know, you want to be right. Got to be right. Go to Twitter. It is an advertisement for low self esteem. I got to be right.

So Cleveland has low sport self esteem. They're kind of embarrassing. The Indians can't win a series. The calves without LeBron or a mess. And the browns are the laughing stock of the NFL. And so the city's got sort of, you know, low sport self esteem.

So last year they just kept fighting me and fighting me and fighting me. And I said, your GM talks too much. He got fired. I said, your coach is a bad hire. He's never been a high school head coach. He got fired. And I said, Baker's a mess. He looks fat. He's not focused. He's just he's a reach at number one. So I was right for all three. And Baker though. Now admitting he was a mess. Here's here's what he said about last year. Here's this first one now. He now admits.

Having success all through high school and in college and having that standard so high and then coming into. You know, just the past couple years have been a roller coaster of emotions and not nearly as much success as I'm used to. So I would say I lost myself, you know, not having that success, not not finding out what was working. I think I tried different ways of, you know, trying to have that success. And I didn't find it. So I lost myself in that. And I wouldn't able to be who I am for these guys on the team.

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