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All right, everyone.

Welcome on to Hollinger and Duncan.

John and I are going to do the pod for about an hour or so,

and then we'll take your questions for about 20 minutes or so after that.

So let's get to work here, John, and I've been criticized for this.

We cover the NBA. I just can't help but kind of be pretty depressed about the state of these playoffs right now. So I was thinking about this the other day.

This could end up being the worst finals in NBA history, just in terms of the level of teams that

are playing and who's available

on the floor. And that's not to disparage the teams that made it to this point. I mean, it's a

tournament and injuries are part of it and they had to fight some tough battles to get to this

point and flags fly forever no matter what. But I think, you know, you're looking at a situation

where you could end up with like the sixth and ninth best records in the league playing in the finals, I think. And, you know,

and the sixth best team playing without its best player, right? So it's maybe not what we envisioned

when these playoffs started. I mean, I was expecting an absolute bloodbath, great battles, all that.

And we just didn't get that mostly because of these injuries in a little bit.

I mean, Philly, obviously, face planning didn't help.

But I think the injuries really just took a lot of the steam out of these playoffs.

Well, so this now, assuming Giannis misses his next game, which seems like probably a safe bet, as we record this right now, we haven't seen anything on that.

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