A Magic Upset, a Lakers Surprise, Playoff Wemby, El Cheapo, Bill’s Award Flip, and Other Round 1 Notes With Zach Lowe

**Bill Simmons** (0:00)
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Bill Simmons Podcast, we are live on Netflix Sunday night. Zach Lowe is here.
I don't know where to begin, but this was an awesome sports weekend because we had a two day WrestleMania. I know you don't care about that. We had hockey started today. We had just a devastating Bruins collapse in Buffalo. First Buffalo home playoff game, I think first Buffalo playoff game in 15 years. And the Bruins just fell apart in seven minutes, and it was just pure delirium in Buffalo. And then we had 10 basketball games in the span of 52 hours, if you count the two play-ins. Do you get numb by the end of this? Because I feel like my brain's a little scrambled by the time we got to the fourth game tonight.

**Zach Lowe** (1:53)
Usually I do, but I'm feeling crystal clear this weekend. I don't know if it's the schedule. I don't know if it's actually, I slept last night pretty well, but I'm feeling good. I'm feeling less, I'm usually fried, and I'm not fried right now.

**Bill Simmons** (2:07)
Well, we had some blowouts when Sheldt. Heading into the playoffs, everyone was thinking, this feels like chalk round one. This was like all the Ringer-Gamlet guys were all like, what's going to be the weird series? What's going to be the upset? And the logical one seemed to be Houston Lakers, do we trust that Luka is not going to be back for round one? Like Houston's weird, and then all of a sudden KD gets scratched. So that series goes haywire. Then today Orlando, Detroit.
You and I, we were texting with a bunch of people today, and you and I, you mentioned it first about, eh, Detroit, Orlando, something with Orlando, I don't know. You sniffed it out. How did Spock sniff this one out, that Orlando is going to be the big upset?

**Zach Lowe** (2:51)
I mean, Detroit, you know, the long layoff, Cade coming back from the collapsed lung, Orlando looked awesome against Charlotte in the last playoff game, and they just have oscillated between this like, we're dead, we're dying, we're going to break up the whole team to like, oh my God, this is the team that everyone thought we would be when our over was 50 and a half, and some people like this idiot right here took the over. And I just, once they beat Charlotte like that, I was like, maybe they'll just carry this momentum a little bit further. I don't know what this means for the rest of the series, but super impressive start by them. And yeah, it's been such a weird, we've been ready to break up that team 25 different times, and here they are up 1-0 in the first round.

**Bill Simmons** (3:29)
Rock bottom on Sunday and then on Wednesday. On Sunday, they lose to the Maine Celtics.
The G League Celtics basically beat them.
Capped off by a Luca Garza designed Dirk Nowitzki in your face three that basically swings the playoffs, gives Philly a home game in the play-in. Then they go and they play that play-in game on Wednesday, and they're awful, and they just stink. And the next day, there's this TikTok that somebody did about Palo. Did you see that? It was like top five worst plays of the play-in. First honorable mention, here's Palo Bancaro. And then he would go to the next one, and he'd be like... And then the former number one pick of the whatever draft, and each time it was a different intro, but it was just a series of terrible Palo plays. I don't have TikTok on my phone, but this got sent to me over and over again because it was on social. And it was basically, Thursday was basically the Palo punching bag day. Everybody's like, that's it, magic suck. It's all Palo's fault. They're going to fire Mosley, blah, blah, blah. And they killed Charlotte on Friday. Like they killed them. And it was this defensive thing that they put on where it was like, holy shit, where'd this come from? It captured my attention. I didn't know if they'd be able to sustain it. The thing that was stunning about tonight, Zach, or today, I guess, they basically took Dernan out of the game.