This is the Michael K show podcast. Listen live weekday afternoon starting at three on 98.7 ESPN in New York, the ESPN app, the two-minute app, or on your smart speaker.

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Western Conference Final begins tonight. Lakers against the Nuggets, Game 1. We'll have the game right here on 98.7 following Dan Grossa, starts at 8.30.

And obviously you could hear it on or watch it on ESPN and help in the call the game with Mark Jackson and Mike Breene is our good friend Jeff.

And Gandhi, he joins us now over the phone. Jeff, how you doing?

Doing well. How are you? We're doing very well.

Are you surprised the Lakers are in this spot playing team right down to the nub to get in? Are you surprised that they've ascended to this this level?

Yes, but when you look at their defensive numbers, you know, since the trade and since the restructuring of their roster, they were fourth in the regular season since the trade deadline defensively.

And they're the number one defensive team in the playoffs. And if they are able to keep that up, certainly they're going to be in the hunt to get to the finals and then win a championship.

We have two teams that were in the play in that have advanced here. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Well, I think what it does is it devalues the regular season. And I think what we need to work towards in the NBA is making the regular season more important, not less important.

And one of the things that I think should have happened in and would have happened in both conferences is when there is an upset, there is receding.

So instead of the warriors and the Lakers playing each other for one to advance at the six and seventh seed and Denver as the first seed and the Phoenix sons as the fourth seed, there should have been a receding.

So Denver plays the Lakers in the second round, the lower seed and Phoenix plays Golden State. Same thing in the Eastern conference.

It should have been Boston versus Miami in the second round and Philly versus the next. I think it's only fair to play and recede after an upset.

And I am really worried about our league and how everyone from the media, the players and now even what we're seeing with the firing of coaches that everything's just about the playoffs and regular season success means zero.

Now, I know, although you're a great broadcaster or coach at heart, so you mentioned the coaches, Monty Williams, Budenholzer, Doc Rivers, what are your thoughts on them being let go? I mean, these are good coaches.

Well, I think they were underselling their greatness, their great coaches. Mike Budenholzer, I think, won 70% of his games while in Milwaukee. They won a championship.

And I think Pete Newell, the great coach who had a huge impact even on the NBA, even though he coached in college.

He once said he thought the way you could assess or the way you should assess NBA coaching is in the regular season.

In the playoffs, so much goes to health, a bounce of the ball here or there. Do you have the best player or not?

Most things out of the control of a coach, whereas the regular season, not long-growing, you have to be really, really good to keep grinding through and figuring out ways to win.

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