All right, welcome to Good Take, everybody.

West Goldberg here with Mike Shear, the author of Basketball Poetry on Substack.

We've got a ton to get to on today's show.

We're going to break down last night's game as the Knicks go up to over the Sixers.

And Spurs, even their series against Timberwolves, then we're going to get into our good

takes before we end the show by giving our three-point checklist to fix the Denver Nuggets in one off season. But first, good take is part of the Real GM Radio Network, and we are coming to you every Thursday with the best takes that we've cooked up throughout the week. Remember to subscribe and make sure that you check out all the other great shows that we have on the Real GM Radio feed by subscribing wherever you get podcasts.

Also check us out on YouTube where you can watch the full episodes and clips of some of

our best segments. We are on the road to a thousand subscribers on our newly relaunched YouTube

channel. So any support very much appreciated. And a special thanks to everybody.

Tune in live here on Thursday morning going live 10.30 Eastern. We appreciate all of you

who are hanging out with us. But before we get to our takes, Mike, let's start with that

last night's games. Nick Sixers, no Joel Embed for the Sixers, who was ruled out with hip

and ankle injuries, but this game still ended up being close in the end. It also kind of felt like this was the game the Sixers needed to win, right? Like if they were going to win this series, it felt like they had to get this one. The Knicks missed 19 of their 26 threes. Carl Anthony Towns got into early foul trouble, which limited him to just 27 minutes, which to me is one of the biggest factors in this series. And Kat, a little bit of foul trouble these first couple of games. Mitchell Robinson didn't play for the Knicks because of an illness, so they didn't have their bigs for a lot of this game. There was just like a lot of the Knicks going small with OG at the five,

some Ariel Huck-Porty minutes in a playoff game, which wasn't ideal for New York. Very few. Yeah. And yet the Sixers could not find a way, despite all of that, to get Tyrese Max here, really any of their other guards going. because Joel Embed was out,

I think the Knicks were able to go small

with OG at center for big minutes in this game

and they ended up able to switch everything. I actually thought those lineups ended up being kind of a weird positive that maybe the Knicks didn't see coming until maybe until Embed was out. And obviously they plan on going to that. But look, still, I think there was a lot of things that broke right for the Sixers despite Embed not making it to the game. But they weren't able to capitalize. And I think that's bad news for the Sixers in this series. Yeah, totally. And I think there are going to be repercussions going forward beyond just tonight that are both injury related. The first was, to your point, this was set up for a 76er steel, and they might have been able to do it until Maxi messed up his finger, which was already messed up towards the end of the second quarter. And he became a totally different player in the second half. You know, he'd been killing the Knicks in the second quarter. And then after that, he said after the game, I couldn't dribble past the double teams. And the Knicks were taking away my favorite passes, which I thought was very surprisingly insightful. I think the Knicks realized he was a little bit hampered and were able to play a little more aggressively in the passing lanes and it made Maxie a little cautious, a little tentative and a little turnover prone. He had six turnovers on the game. And Maxie's been a superhero for them all season long, but he's looked a little tired and he just looked a little hampered by the, by the time we got into the fourth quarter last night. Yeah, they're doing a really good job cutting off his driving lanes. Again, when they went to switching everything, making him go really wide on a lot of these things, not basically taking away Maxie's ability to get downhill, too, which I think has been a theme throughout these first two games. So credit to Mike Brown and the Knicks for figuring out ways to take all that away, despite the fact that, you know, the middle of New York's defense tends to be the soft spot of that defense, right? And so, um, yeah, if Maxie's not going to be able to get going, I just don't see the way the Sixers come back in this series.

There's just no way because if Embed is going to be in and out with some of these injuries or even limited when he's on the court, they've got to find ways to get Maxie going.

And I don't know how they do it, especially if Maxie's, you know, if this hand is going to really bother him, then maybe there's no way to do it. But I think you're really starting to feel Philly's lack of ball handling around Tyrese Maxie right now. They don't have ways to get him off the ball, to set up plays for him. You know, Embed is kind of just a score at this point. When you tap into the best versions of Joel Embed, he does become that hub on offense, but obviously we didn't see it last night because he didn't play. We didn't really see a whole lot of that in game one. Maybe you can give it to Paul George and ask him to create a little bit, but he just doesn't have that same burst that he used to have anymore. So it would really just be him kind of bringing the ball up.

And maybe that's a way to get things going for him.

But, you know, the other guy would be Vijay Edgecombe, who's a rookie, who's been awesome as a rookie. And I don't want to doubt anything Vijayccombe related. But do you really want to put a rookie in that spot? I don't know. they've got to figure out ways, though, to get Maxa going or else they're done.

They're cooked.

...