Jason Timpf reacts to Kyrie Irving’s game-winning shot over Nikola Jokic to lift his Dallas Mavericks over the Denver Nuggets. Jason then dives into the Milwaukee Bucks' 140-129 win over Kevin Durant and the Phoenix Suns. Finally, Jason drops his weekly NBA Power Rankings.
Timeline (Timestaps may vary based on advertisements):
04:00 - Introduction
07:20 - Mavericks stun Nuggets
13:00 - Kyrie's insane shot
18:15 - No need to panic for Denver
29:00 - Bucks blow out Suns
43:00 - Is Kyrie Irving most skilled player ever?
51:00 - NBA Power Rankings
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Episode Transcript
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You're at the volume. Have you Monday, everybody? Hope all
of you guys had an incredible weekend. We have a
(01:48):
jam packed show for you today. We're gonna start with
that absurdly entertaining matchup between the Dallas Mavericks and the
Denver Nuggets last night, ended by a legendary Kyrie Irving shot.
We're gonna break that game down from the perspective both teams.
After that, the Phoenix Suns went on the road into
Milwaukee and got their ass kicked. A nuclear shooting performance
from them wasn't enough for the even more nuclear performance
(02:10):
that gave up from Milwaukee. So we're gonna break that
game down After that there was a lot of talk
going on yesterday after Tyrie's left handed hook shot to
win the game, but also after Damian Lillard said that
he's the most skilled player ever about whether or not
Kyrie Irving is the most skilled player ever. And so
I have a take on that front, kind of diving
into what I interpret to mean basketball skill, where I
(02:33):
do think Kyrie has an edge who I would name
if I had to pick a most skilled We'll do
that as our third segment, and like we do every
single Monday, at the end of the show, we'll have
our latest edition of the Power Rankings. You guys know
the Joe Foberge started subscribe to our brand new YouTube
channel mean a lot to me. If you guys to
take a second scroll down hit that subscribe button. Don't
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(02:53):
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a rating and review on that front. Don't forget about
my Twitter feed underscore jsonlt where I leave film threat
as well as show announcements. I did a film thread
this morning on like five or six examples of some
of the really really poor defense that Phoenix was playing.
Against Milwaukee. You can find out on my Twitter feed.
The last but not least, keep dropping mail back questions
(03:14):
in the YouTube comments so we can keep hitting them
throughout the rest of this week. We'll have a mail
bag intomorrow's show, and then before we get started. This
is the best time of year to go out and
see a basketball game. Obviously, we've got the NBA season
heating up going into the playoffs, and obviously playoff basketball
is highly entertaining, but we also have college basketball in
(03:34):
the tournament. Single elimination basketball, especially when we get to
this phase, is the most entertaining basketball that you'll see
in person, and specifically when you go to these arenas
for these NCAA Tournament games, it's kind of if you've
ever been to one. I've been to two myself, and
I'm sure some of you guys have had as well.
When you're in those arenas, the crazy back and forth
vibe of the two fan bases kind of competing with
(03:56):
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(05:01):
let's talk some basketball. So on Nuggets maps. I want
to start with the end of the game, and then
we'll get to some of the stuff later on, because
it really was a super entertaining finish. It basically came
down to match up hunting late, the same kind of
stuff we're always accustomed to seeing from Denver. Right the
Jokich Murray two man game, they were specifically targeting Luka
Doncic in every action that they could on that end
(05:21):
of the floor, and then on the other end of
the floor, Kyrie and Luca were constantly trying to pick
on Jamal Murray. And we're gonna dive into this a
little bit later when we get into some of the
stuff with Denver. But I did not think Denver did
a good job trying to avoid those switches. I thought
they conceded those switches, and honestly, they got away with
it because the Mavericks were up by nine with about
four minutes left, and they turned that. Denver turned that
(05:44):
nine point deficit into a tie game at one O
two in about three minutes. And a big part of
that was there were some possessions where Luca and Kyrie
got Jamal Murray onto switches, got really good looks for
them and missed both of them. The one I'm thinking
of is the floater that Kyrie had in the middle
of the floor, and then Luca had like a turnaround
jump shot kind of one like fadeaway around the foul line.
(06:07):
That one went in and out as well, and so
like a lot of it was just kind of good fortune.
But I thought, I thought Denver could have done a
better job of trying to prevent those switches from happening,
because it just, you know, they're just they have the
ability with Aaron Gordon to keep a big body on
Luca and to make it tougher on him. They have
the ability with a guard defender like KCP to to
(06:27):
make him take tough shots over an excellent defender. And
so we'll get a little bit deeper into that into
when we get to the Denver side of things. But
it was a lot of matchup hunting. And then on
the Dallas side they were attacking Jamal Murray and on
the Denver side they were attacking Luka Doncicic, and in
that stretch they were just getting better stuff. On the
other end, Denver scored on almost every single possession during
that stretch, just either getting you know, Luca switched onto
(06:51):
the Jokic and Jokicic just taking him down in the
post and getting an easy basket, or like Jamal Murray
in a two man game, getting Maxi Kleebudy. You know,
we have all this talk about Kyrie's finished, which obviously
was incredible, and we're gonna get to but Jamal Murray
had a pretty nasty left handed finish himself where he
got Maxi Kleiba on his right shoulder, kind of worked
him down the lane. Daniel Gafford came over and he
(07:12):
just went way out to the side and scooped in
a nasty left handed finish off the glass. And then
the final one when it was one O two, one
O two, so it's one of two, one or two.
Luca gets the switch on Murray misses that little turnaround
jump shot, but down on the other end at one
O two, one O two, Murray gets Luca on a
switch and he makes a really smart play. So Kleiba's
(07:32):
back on Jokic at this point. Jamal kind of drags
Luka out to the left side and Jokic comes up
to set another ball screen and Jamal Murray identifies something
where he knew he was gonna be able to get
a clean look Luca. When he saw the screen coming
from Jokic, Luca backed off and then prepared to go
underneath Jokic so that he could switch, but stay in
(07:54):
position on Jokic to not give up an easy, you know,
over the top pass where he could just rumble into
the pain without anybody in front of him. Right, So,
Luca's preparing to duck underneath Jokic to switch, and Kleiba's
getting ready to jump out on the other side. But
again there's a gap there between where Jamal Murray is
and where Kleeba is gonna be coming on the other
(08:15):
side of the screen and Luca's ducking under. There's a
little opening in there, and Jamal Murray really smartly just
throws a little bit of a fake with the dribble
to get Luca to commit to the switch, and then
he pulled back into that opening, got a really good
look at three, knocked it down as one oh five,
one oh two. We go down to the other end
and Aaron Gordon makes a huge mistake in my opinion.
(08:37):
Luka Doncic comes off of a pin down. He's starting
kind of at the right elbow. He comes down and
Tim hardaway Junior is setting a screen kind of around
the top of the key. Luca's not trying to come
off for a shot. Luca's just coming off to try
to get the basketball because there's like I think there's
like twenty six seconds left or something like that. So
Luca pops out catches the ball like thirty feet but
(08:58):
Aaron Gordon again, like imagine in the top of the key,
there's Tim Hardaway Junior, there's Luca coming out thirty feet
from the rim. Gordon's down here as he's gonna trail Luca,
but instead of just running out to meet Luca, he
tried to duck under Tim Hardaway on the opposite side
of the screen, and so as a result, he was
taking a weird kind of banana route to get to
where Luca was when that screen wasn't really in position
(09:20):
to stop him. He could have just sprinted out, and
again Luca wasn't looking to shoot there, but Luca caught
and he was so wide open because Aaron Gordon tried
to go around the other side of the screen. He
just had all day and he's like, all right, fine,
I'm gonna shoot this. And it was catastrophic for two reasons.
Not only was it the three point shot that tied
the game, but they didn't take any time off the clock,
(09:41):
like if that exact same thing, like if Aaron Gordon
takes a better angle instead of trying to jump the screen,
but just just trails behind Luca the way you're supposed to.
He catches, he turns, probably calls for a screen. By
the time he actually gets a quality three point shot up,
it could be another five to ten seconds. And if
it takes five to ten seconds and they make the shot,
then it's one oh five, one oh five, But the
(10:01):
shot clock is turned off, and then you could take
your time to get a great one. And instead there
was just a little bit of a gap, which put
Denver in the predicament because Dallas had a time out.
It put Denver in that predicament where they kind of
had to leave some time on the clock. So at
that point you just want to get the best possible shot.
Jamal Murray got a great look. They had another Yokic
ball screen. PJ. Washington actually was switching out on Jamal
(10:25):
Murray and in his backwards kind of like recovery step,
he tripped and fell, and so Jamal got great lift
great separation, one of the easiest shots he got all
night there around the right elbow, and he just missed it,
but again because of the bad angle Aaron Gordon took
on the other end of the floor, they were in
a position where they had to shoot before the end
of the shot clock. So then we go down to
(10:46):
the other end. Just a couple seconds left. Kyrie Irving
comes off of that ball, off of that off ball action,
and Yokic switches and Yokic defends it as perfectly as
you possibly can, even given the insane shot that Kyrie took.
It was very very good contest form Nikole Jokic. But
Kyrie Irving just goes into that that rip through news
left and gets to that left handed floater or half
(11:10):
hook or whatever the heck you want to call it,
and knocks it down. Crowd goes crazy. Really one of
the most impressive game winners that I've seen, because that
was not luck. That is something that Kyrie Irving is
capable of doing. There are two things that I want
to hit about Kyrie's lefty runner that were so interesting
to me. First of all, improvisational shot making. When I
talk about scoring the basketball, and you know, there's all
(11:33):
these different roles that a player has on a basketball team.
But to me, one of the specific traits that identifies
a player as a scorer is it's kind of like
a natural knack for finding ways to put the ball
in the basket. To me, that comes down to a
combination of obviously the skill set, but there's two additional
elements to it. It's audacity and improvisation. Audacity is confidence.
(11:57):
Audacity is like, you bet your ass I can take
and make this left handed floater, like a Jamal Murray
for instance, Like he's playing on a basketball team with
the best player in the world, and that dude has
the audacity to look him off and take his own
shots sometimes and it's the right decision because of his
abilities as a shot maker. Again, that first piece is
the most important part. You have to have the skill set,
but from there, if you have the audacity to confidence
(12:20):
and you connect it with the improvisation, which to me
is the natural ability of a score to just find
kind of funky combinations of skill. So, for instance, you
might see that left handed runner and you might think
to yourself, Kyrie probably doesn't practice that, and you're right,
I doubt sincerely that Kyrie has a drill where he
takes a fifteen foot drifting one leg floater moving to
(12:44):
his left hand side off of that specific footwork. He
probably doesn't, but what he does do is all the
individual pieces of that put together. I've talked about this
with a step back three before. The step back three
looks like a complicated dribble combination and footwork combination in
to a shot, but it's really not. Like if I
do an in and out dribble and then between the
(13:04):
legs dribble and then an advanced dribble, but instead of
continuing that step, I plant that right foot and push back,
I stick my left foot way out to catch my
momentum so that I go straight up and down, and
at the end of the shot, I'm just going straight
up and down. So as long as I have the
handle to be able to do an in and out
between the legs dribble and then another in and out
on the other side, I'm good. As long as I
(13:26):
have the footwork to be able to make all those
plants and control my body weight in those angles, and
as long as I have good catch and shoot straight
up and down jump shooting ability, I can put all
of that together and make this advance to play. Now again,
does Kyrie practice a drifting left handed floater. Probably not.
But what he does practice is a huge variety of
(13:48):
left handed shots around the rim, left handed floaters and
scoops and high finishes, low finishes, you know, trying to
sneak by defenders, trying to finish over the top of defenders.
He does a ton of stuff with his left hand.
That move is a combination of things that Kyrie does,
work on the footwork to get that little bit of
separation right the handle, to get the ball into his
left hand in a position where he has command of it,
(14:11):
and then from there the touch takes over. But that,
to me is what improvisational shot making is. And all
the best improvisational scorers in the league, they do take
shots in games that don't necessarily resemble shots that they
take in practice, but it's pieces, little bits and pieces
of things that they do practice that they in the
moment go, wait, I see this opening, and it's all
(14:34):
happening in a fraction of a second. I see this opening.
I think I can get to that spot, and then
from there I think I can kind of, you know,
maybe just go into like a left handed kind of
half hook, kind of like I do, closer to the rim,
but I'll just have to put a little more juice
on it, you know that kind of thing. It's it's
like an instantaneous interpretation of the situation and then the
(14:55):
ability to quickly pick from your skill set to grab
these little things that you can piece together into a
move to make a shot in that specific situation. And
to me, that's what separates the best scores in the
world from the guys beneath them is it's they have
the skill set, but they also have this overwhelming confidence
or audacity as I call it. And then the improvisation,
(15:17):
the ability to think quickly on their feet to find
ways to get to a shot they can make right.
And so that to me is what kind of sets
that apart. It's the improvisation and the second thing, the
fundamental foundation. That was a crazy shot, but make no mistake,
it was about his baseline foundation of ball handling, his
(15:38):
baseline foundation of footwork, and his baseline foundation of touch.
That is fundamental basketball that has been pieced together into
basically an art form. Right, But like, don't don't make
the mistake of thinking that that doesn't come from a
fundamental foundation, because it absolutely does. Now moving to the
rest of the game, I thought the story of the
(16:00):
game for Dallas was dominating the bench groups for Denver,
specifically on the offensive glass. And Denver's a weird team,
like when you look in the big picture, they're sixteenth
in defensive rebounding percentage, their bottom half defensive rebounding team,
but they're excellent at rebounding with their starters. Even last
night with the starting lineup, so Jokic with Gordon, Michael Porter, Junior,
(16:21):
Jamal Murray and KCP, those guys grabbed almost seventy five
percent of available defensive rebounds, which is excellent. So that
wasn't the issue. But those bench groups what they do again,
like instead of going with a slower, you know, limited
center like DeAndre Jordan, they just go with Zignaji. They
do a ton of switching, and they just give the
ball to Jamal Murray and just basically let him go
(16:41):
to work. And again, like they're in a predicament. Denver's
been in this predicament for a long time where they
they really struggled to kind of maintain leads without Jokics,
that's been a thing forever, that was the thing last
year when they won the title. This is just their
best pathway to try to float the ship without Nicole
Jokic is to go small, do a lot of switch
and rely on Jamal Murray to make shots. And he
(17:02):
just didn't quite have the same shot making game that
he's capable of having, and they got absolutely demolished on
the glass. In those units, particularly Derek Jones Junior and
Derek Lively were doing a ton of damage. Dallas had
twenty two offensive rebounds in this game, leading to twenty
three second chance points, and as a result, even though
they were plus ten, Denver was plus ten in Nikola
(17:25):
Jokic's minutes, Dallas was able to get out of there
with the win by dominating those specific lineups. Now, one
of the things that I did think was interesting, I
don't think it's a complete coincidence that Phoenix and Dallas
were the two teams that got wins against Denver since
the All Star Break, because this again, for people who
are not aware, Denver has won every other game they
played since the All Star Break. They're eleven to two
(17:47):
I think in the thirteen games since then, and their
two losses were Phoenix and Dallas, both games where they
led by three points with just a few seconds left
and then crazy shot making at the end of the
game took the game away from them, right. So, Like,
one of the things that I think is interesting is
Dallas is Dallas and Phoenix both they're uniquely capable of
picking on matchups and actually getting some of Denver's more
(18:11):
limited on ball defenders into space. Right. So, like, for instance,
they're really diligent about getting the switches they want. They
make sure that they get the right matchup before they
get into their one on one play. Now, again, we've
talked about it a little bit on the Denver side.
We'll get a little further into it, but I think
Denver needs to do a better job of trying to
fight against those switches just by you know, we'll get
into that in a minute. But like, Dallas was very
(18:33):
pretty good about diligently getting the right matchups before they go.
In addition to that, they are a team that has
some speed advantages, right, Like, I'll give you an example.
There's a random play mid fourth quarter where Derrek Jones
Junior was on the right wing and he had Michael
Porter Junior on him and he just got him with
a basic rip through moove to the left and got
all the way to the rim for a layup. And
then like so when you look at it, and it's
(18:55):
like they're getting a lot of shots where it's like, Okay,
they're getting Michael Porter Junior on a switch and then
going to work. They're getting Jamal Murray on a switch
and they're going to work. So they can be very
diligent about getting the right types of shots against the
right matchups. And I think that's something that Dallas and
Phoenix in particular are are really good at. Now both
of those matchups Denver had extended stretches where they kick
(19:16):
their ass because they're so much bigger and there they
do have better personnel that they can kind of go
to on both ends of the floor to kind of
get these jobs done. So like I would pick Denver
in a series against both of them, but I do
think it's interesting and something to keep an eye on
in terms of like a threat to beat Denver that
both Dallas and Phoenix are these like kind of high
level matchup attacking teams that rely a lot on helio
(19:37):
centric kind of a ball screen attack and that can
really kind of get Denver's limited defenders in space. On
the Denver side of things, getting bullied on the glass
and the Yokachov groups is totally normal. Like I mentioned,
like they yokichen groups this season have almost a seventy
five percent defensive rebound percentage, and they had almost a
seventy five percent defensive rebound percentage yesterday. This is kind
(20:00):
of just an issue with their bench. And again, they
won last year under the same circumstances. It's never been
about like, oh man, you know, Denver can't overcome its bench.
It's like they do overcome their bench. It's like they
have a bad bench and then they win. Anyway, That's
that's pretty much been the story for Denver forever. Right
that said, they need to hold up better on the
glass than they did, and I did think a lot
of it was just not being as quick to the ball,
(20:22):
and that's something I think they have a room for
improvement on. And then again, like this game and the
Suns game, they executed perfectly down the stretch in both games.
So like if you remember in the Suns game, there
was a twelve zero run that turned a what was
it a ninety nine to ninety lead into a one
oh two to ninety nine lead for Denver. And then
in this game, what was it It was one oh
(20:44):
nine to one hundred, I think, and then they scored.
They won on a fifteen to three run to go
up one fifteen to one twelve. So very similarly in
both games, Denver went on like a dominant run down
the stretch, but they played better defense on the KD
shot like that one was like Aaron Gordon ended pretty
damn well and ad just made the shot. I thought
that they had a couple of execution lapses on the
(21:06):
defensive end at the end of this game, not just
the Aaron Gordon one where he went on the wrong
side of that pick, but they were just way too
willing to give the right matchups, better matchups to Dallas
down the stretch offensively. And the last thing before we
move on to the next game, there's a reason why
I'm not a big believer in just conceding those switches
so easy. First of all, especially when you're like Denver,
(21:28):
has the ability to put teams in a predicament where
if you don't switch, or you hedge and recover, or
you help or you do anything that leaves a shooter open.
There's such high level shooters that it's a problem, right,
Whereas you know, some of the offensive talent surrounding Dallas
in these groups is they're not as good at beating
some of these some of these aggressive defensive coverages. So
(21:50):
for instance, like there was a play where they doubled
Luca on a switch and Nexic cleve at airball to
three over the backside of the rint, And like there
there are guys with Dallas where it's like, yeah, we
don't want to just leave him wide open all game,
but like a late contest we can live with kind
of thing. Whereas you can't do that with Michael Porter Junior.
You can't do that with KCP and Aaron Gordon's under
the rim where he's not missing much, right, So like
(22:13):
that is that is one of those things where like
I would be more willing in those situations rather than
having Jamal Murray just switch, I would hedge in those
situations and essentially rotate on the weak side and make
sure that you're just leaving the right guy open. Because
ky both Kyrie and Luca are aware of the fact
that for them, a tough contested shot is probably better
(22:35):
than an open look for some of these other guys,
and so they probably will allow you to chase over
the top and to recover and get back in front
and not give up the switch. Then as the shot
clock winds down, they'll have no choice but to ISO
Kyrie against KCP or Luca against Aaron Gordon. If you
chase over the top, I think it'll inevitably end up
(22:56):
in a Luca Kyrie ISO, just against a better matchup.
I don't think Lucas gonna pass out and just live
with you know, MAXI Kleeba taking threes down the stretch
of these games like they want to get the right
player to take the right shot, right, And there's just
more flexibility with Dallas to leave openings than there is
against some of these other better teams like Boston or
(23:17):
like Denver for instance. Right. So, like again, I thought
that was something execution wise that they could have been
better at down the stretch. But we're being nitpicky. I
actually had this in my power ranking segment, but I'll
just say it right now. They're eleven and two since
the All Star Break, and their two losses are games
that they led in the final seconds by three points,
and crazy shot making took the games away. So make
of that what you will, but to me, that's pretty
(23:40):
scary and it looks a lot like a Denver team
that is hell bent on repeating, and that's why I
feel so confident in them, all right. Moving on to
Sun's Bucks. This was an interesting game because what if
I told you that Phoenix took fifty jump shots in
this game. They got sixty five points out of them,
so one point three points per jump shot, and they
(24:00):
got blown out. And that's because the Bucks took fifty
six jump shots and got eighty eight points out of them,
which is one point five to seven points per shot.
So Phoenix had this incredible shooting performance on the road
in Milwaukee and got killed because Milwaukee shot them out
of the gym to an even greater extent. Now I
want to I'm gonna start with the Milwaukee side, but
(24:23):
this was one of Phoenix's worst defensive performances of the season.
We'll get a little bit deeper into it in a minute,
but really the story of the game early on was
Bobby Portis. And I've been defending Bobby Portis all year
because there are a lot of Bucks fans that are
low on him just because he's a backup center. And
you know, backup. Anybody in the league who's a backup
is a backup for a reason, right, Like if Bobby
(24:43):
Portis was everything he is offensively, but like less prone
to cold spells and just way better defensively, then he's
making twenty five million a year and he's starting for
somebody Like it's it's unrealistic for people to have those
levels of expectations, and like, to me, you can't do
much better than Bobby Portis as a backup center. Ask
(25:03):
Nuggets fans if they'd take Bobby Portis as a backup center.
Ask Lakers fans if they take Bobby Portis as a
backup center. Like that, you could do a hell of
a lot worse than Bobby Portis. And he was incredible
at the start of this game. And for the record,
he's been a good offensive player all season. Just a
couple quick numbers for you guys. Two hundred and thirty
points and two hundred and twenty seven post ups including
(25:24):
passes to over a point per possession one point one
zero points per spot up possession. That's sixty seven percentile
so he's a great shooter and close out attacker, picking
and popping, picking and rolling. He personally shoots sixty one
point four percent in effective field goal percentage on shots
on pops and rolls. That's one point two points per possession.
That's awesome. He personally shoots over fifty one percent on
(25:47):
unguarded catch and shoot jump shots, which is gonna be
a theme because Phoenix was leaving him open to start.
This game started with the coverage opening. Uh, this was
when Drew Eubanks came into the game. Well, I've talked
a lot about this concept before, but when you run
drop coverage, and again, drop coverage is real basic. The
big guy who's guarding the screener is going to drop
(26:08):
back and keep the ball handler and the roll man
in front of him. Right the on ball guy's chasing
over the top. So here comes the screen guys chasing
over the top. He's trying to funnel into the screen
defender that's waiting. So if the guy rolls to the rim,
if the guy screens and rolls, he can effectively kind
of guard both, right, especially if he's an elite defensive player,
and he can kind of kind of lunge and stunt
(26:29):
and be in the right places. But if he pops
any sort of drop coverage has no counter for the
drop or for the pop other than just to offer
a late close out. That's all he can do. So
the guy comes over the top screener pops right. The
big guy's waiting. As soon as the pass goes, he's
got to close out, or you have to close out
from the weak side, which leaves another guy short open, right.
(26:52):
So it is a fundamental baked in opening of the coverage.
You run pick and pop against the drop coverage, you're
going to get wide up in threes for your big man.
It is just like how it works. That's just how
the coverage works. Right. So Drew youu Banks early is
just getting absolutely barbecued by Bobby Portis screening and popping right.
But then he gets hot, right, and again when the
(27:14):
guy gets hot, you kind of have to make a
certain adjustment. Right at this point, use if Nurkic comes
back into the game and he's doing a better job
in his coverage of kind of like lingering by Portas,
but he's not offering hard contests. And I'm literally sitting
here and I'm like, I like, this guy is engulfed
in flames and is like six for seven from the
field and all six of his makes have been jump shots,
(27:37):
or I think five of his first six makes for
jump shots, and you're offering like a like again, uh,
did you guys remember earlier this year when the uh,
when the San Antonio Spurs scouting report got released or
the I think it was a Dallas' scouting report of
the Spurs for a preseason game, and it was like
all the breakdown and they talk about like how you
(27:57):
close out on shooters. We had very similar scouting reports
when I was in college at the Naia School, which
was the best coaching staff that I personally played for,
and like they do all the research and they tell
you it's like, okay, this guy, you're closing out hard,
meaning like you have to be like completely up in
disrupting the shooting pocket, Like even a contest doesn't work.
You have to disrupt the shooting pocket before he gets
(28:17):
up into his release. When he gets up into the release,
it's over right. And then they have everything from there
to like closing out short, which is like I'm literally
going to run out at you, but I'm purposefully gonna
stop short and then if you shoot, I'll offer a
late contest. And it's like, Bobby Portis is fifty one
percent on unguarded catch and shoot jump shots field goal
percentage not waited for threes. That's like he just makes
(28:40):
more than half of them. And so like at this point,
he's already scorching hot and you're throwing short close outs
at him. And if you guys want to see a
visual example of what I'm talking about, go to my
Twitter feed. I underscore jsonlt. I clipped like five or
six examples of this. But Yusuf Nurkitz was just straight
up just not paying attention and just letting Bobby Porters shoot.
(29:01):
There's another one. He comes out Bobby Porter's in a transition.
Possession cuts through along the baseline and Kevin Durant points
and tells Nurkics to pick him up, and Nurkics just
doesn't run with him. So Portas catches on the on
the right wing, and then all of a sudden, Nurkis
is like, oh shit, I left him open again, and
he sprints out at him. At this point, but Bobby
just kind of pump fakes and takes a side step
(29:22):
and knocks down another three. It was bad defense. Then
Malik Beasley hits a couple threes in a row. Now
we're into that, like late second quarter stretch. There's a play.
They're running a ball screen on the right side of
the floor. Dame is and Bradley Beal, who's guarding Malik Beasley.
Straight up, Malik Bezzy's Malik Beasley's on the left wing.
Dame's running the ball screen on the right wing. Okay,
(29:43):
Bradley Beal straight up turns his back like like, Malik
Beasley's behind me, turns his back to go like offer
a third defender at the ball screen. The ball screen
hasn't accomplished anything. They haven't even run it yet, so
no one's open. So Beal's helping for no reason. So
Dame just goes, okay, just throws a swing pass to
(30:03):
a wide open Malik Beasley. They had already made sixteen
threes to this point, and they're just leaving dudes wide open.
Malik Beasley, by the way, went into the night as
the ninth best three point shooter in the entire NBA.
Right after that, Vogel tries a little bit of zone
they were on like a three to two zone, which
(30:24):
a three two zone. The way it looked like they were,
I think what Frank Vogel was thinking in this three
two zone was essentially having all five three point shot
spots occupied. But again, it's about execution. Kevin Durantz in
the left corner guarding in the three two, but because
it was unoccupied, he kind of started down at the block.
(30:44):
Malik Beasley runs to the corner and Kadie's just too
slow getting out there, and Malik Beasley gets open again.
He had just made that three, beating Bradley Beal. Now
they're down twenty two points in the game's over. Like
it was. It was honestly one of phoenix worst defensive
performances of the season. And they like again, like we
talk a lot about shooting luck and and look, I
(31:06):
want to be clear, I do believe that there's a
variance element to shooting, and we'd be all foolish to
pretend that like that doesn't exist, But there are so
many different things that factor into it that go way
deeper than just like nearest defender. And it's like you
let a guy get comfortable, you let a team get comfortable,
with wide open looks, and then even when you do
start offering token contests later that qualify as like a
(31:30):
the defender got within you know whatever distance, but it
doesn't matter because they're confident they're in rhythm, and there's
a difference between being there on time and being there late,
because like, if you get there and you get the
hand up, but you didn't actually disrupt the fluidity of
the of the upward shooting motion, it's gonna go in
when they're like that. Even further, like, I've seen teams
(31:54):
that can concede shots into teams missing, but they're get
They're like teams that drag games down into the mud.
Teams that like are super physical and they kick your
ass for forty eight minutes to where even when you're
wide open, you're exhausted and you can't knock the shots down.
Phoenix is not one of those teams. They're not physically
imposing like that. They're not going to be a team
(32:15):
that can get away with packing the paint and leaving
guys open. They're gonna have to be better about getting
out to shooters. So if Phoenix goes on a run,
they get it back to six on an Eric Gordon
kind of like janky pump fake give and go situation
where he kind of like takes a goes up like
he's gonna take a bad shot, nearly gets blocked, throws
it down to the block, cuts down, gets a little
(32:36):
lay up. It's one hundred and ninety four, so they
get it down to six. There was only there was
like a minute and some change left in the third
quarter when that shot went in. Milwaukee went into the
fourth quarter up fifteen. They turned it from six to
fifteen in less than two minutes, and it was mostly
dang driving a lot of downhill pressure. Drew a foul
on Devin Booker, if I remember correctly, drew another foul
(32:58):
I can't remember who the second one was on. Got
to the foul one a couple times, and then right
before the buzzer just kind of takes that same kind
of drifting to the right pull up three or drifting
to the left pull up three when he hit the
game winner a few months ago. But just a quick
little slurry from Damian Lillard and whatever run or hope
that Phoenix had to get back in the game was
gone like that. And I do think it's interesting that
(33:21):
Dame has looked a lot more in rhythm in these
games that Giannis has been out, and to me, that's
a strong indicator that more of his issues this year
have been about rhythm rather than about his decline. And
to me, that's super encouraging. And for the record, if
you go back in this recent stretch, he's he's like,
I can't remember the exact stretch of games that I
pulled this morning, but the last sample of the last
(33:42):
few weeks, he's up around like thirty eight percent from
three and s field goal percentage is like forty four percent,
and scoring volume hasn't been great, but he's been knocking
down shots at a higher cliff than he did to
start the season. Chris Middleton looked great twenty two points
on only fifteen shots. He had seven assists. Super important
element to Milwaukee reach whatever offensive ceiling they have is
getting Chris Middleton out there and humming on offense. And
(34:05):
then here's the thing. They did not defend super well yesterday.
They gave up a one to twenty eight offensive rating
to Phoenix, so technically they defended bad. There were a
couple of smart things they did, though, like they really
kind of removed kd's aggression from the game. And one
of the things they did that was really smart is
when KDI would have his cleared side ISOs, they would
bring help from the baseline and then pre rotate like
(34:30):
windshield wiper rotation from the weak side the skip pass.
So basically normally like you'll see a double team from
one pass away and it'll be super easy to make
that hickout pass, right. But because they were doubling from
the baseline side and rotating from the skip pass and
taking advantage of Phoenix's issues sometimes when beating double teams
(34:52):
with smart decision making and quick on time and on
target passes, they were able to kind of effectively rotate
out of those kt KD double teams without up too much,
which was though one little silver lining defensively from an
otherwise you know, you know, mixed bag of defense on
the Phoenix side. It's really that simple to me, Like
if they defend like that, they're gonna get beaten in
(35:13):
the first round. They're not good enough in some of
these other areas to get away with just leaving people
open like that. And and again, like I've seen Phoenix
have really good defensive performances. I know it's in there.
It's just a question of consistency. I mean, I saw
quote from Kyrie after the MAVs game saying the same
kind of thing, like, oh, we know we can do that,
and it's like, yeah, that's great. But like like I
(35:34):
talked about yesterday when we were talking about the Kings,
if it's not a habit, then when shit hits the fan,
I don't trust you to be able to do it.
It's got to be a habit. It's got to be
something that you It's unusual when you don't do it,
not unusual when you do do it. And we're getting
to that point with Phoenix in Dallas where both of
those teams where it's like when they do it, it
looks great, but when they don't, they can lose to anybody,
(35:56):
and it's it's in. It's a problem, all right. I
re irving as the most skilled player in the league.
So obviously Kyrie makes a shot. We did a breakdown
of the shot in our breakdown of the game, so
I won't get into it right here. MAVs fans and
Nuggets fans looking for a breakdown of mapvs. Nuggets, you
can find that on our YouTube feed. In the full
episode if you happen to be watching a breakout clip,
(36:17):
but we have Damian Lillard come out after the game
talking about whether or not Kyrie Irving is the most
skilled player in the NBA. Now, this has been a
debate around the game of basketball for a very long time,
and specifically, I think this moniker is one that we
use with Kyrie specifically because of the fact that he's
(36:38):
kind of a confusing player. What I mean by that
is like Kyrie is like super super good. There's a
pretty substantial gap, in my opinion, between how good Kyrie
is and how much he's valued by most basketball fans.
This is something I've been pushing back on for years now.
It's like, Okay, so you disagree with some stuff Kyrie
(36:58):
did off the floor. Okay, so he's had some clear
examples of for teammate behavior. But when the dude is
on the court, he's incredible. He's literally incredible, And like
we literally just saw the other night with Luca out,
Kyrie almost single handedly hold his team to a win
(37:19):
like they are they are. Like we over complicate this
a lot of the times when we talk about basketball players,
and we overlook because it's It's like it's almost become
an expectation for a player. We overlook what a player
is actually accomplishing on the court. Kyrie is a guy
who can straight up be your number one if you're
(37:40):
great everywhere else. Can he be the number one on
a limited team? No? Is he a floor razer like that? No,
But the dude can run an offense, and he competes
hard enough defensively when he's locked in that he can
be a positive defensive player. He's a positive defensive player
on the twenty sixteen caves. So I think a lot
of this is like Galaxy brain, right, And so the
way people counteract that is when they have this half
(38:01):
of their brain that's going like Kyrie's overrated, Kyrie's bad teammate,
Kyrie's this, Kyrie's that they counteract that with like, oh, well,
you know, he's the most skilled player in the NBA,
instead of just talking about the fact that he's just
really great at basketball. And to me, that specific phrase
most skilled, it really just depends on how you're defining that.
(38:22):
To me, if I had to define what specifically Kyrie
does better than most players in the league, it's a
versatility of skills, He has the best combination of footwork,
ball handling, and shot making from all of the various
spots on the floor out of anybody in the league
in my opinion, Like, there are guys who are better
(38:43):
than him in ball screens, but they're not as good
in the post. There are guys that are better than
in the post, but they're not as good in ball screens.
There are guys who are better than him in ISO,
but they aren't as good in the other areas. Kyrie
is literally capable of doing every conceivable basketball thing as
(39:03):
about as well as anybody in the league, but that
doesn't necessarily make him the most skilled in my opinion.
For instance, I think when when people ask me who
the most skilled player in NBA history was or is,
it's very obvious to me it's Steph Curry. Who's the
only player beneath the height of six ' five who
(39:24):
is a top ten player in NBA history. It's Steph.
I have him as the fifth best perimeter player of
all time, and he's pretty much definitively a top ten
player in NBA history. All the other dudes around him
are big guys, either big forwards or centers, right or
shooting guards that are six ' six and freaky athletic. Right, So,
like Steph has proven just in what he's been able
(39:46):
to accomplish on the court that when it comes to
winning basketball games on the strength of his skill, no
one's better than Steph. But to me, with Steph, it's
focused in specific areas. So, for instance, Kyrie Irving in
my opinion, has a more advanced ISO bag in terms
of the numbers of moves that he can go to,
(40:09):
but Steph's just way better than him at shooting, and
Steph has been able to weaponize that shooting both on
ball and off the ball to a greater effect than
Kyrie has been able to weaponize all of his footwork
and dribble combinations and shot making. So I can't. I
can't in my right mind say Kyrie's more skilled than
Steph because Steph's skill beats Kyrie's skill every single time.
(40:34):
And I don't blame Steph like, for instance, Kyrie. Here's
just one simple example. Kyrie Irving is a better vertical
athlete than Steph. Steph is bigger and stronger, equally quick,
but Kyrie is a better vertical athlete. He also has
a shot where he shoots at the top of his jump,
where Steph shoots a little bit more at the beginning,
(40:54):
a little bit like on the way up in his shot. So,
for instance, doesn't make any sense at all for Steph
to work on, you know, complicated posts turnaround footwork, because
he's never gonna use that. He's not enough of a
vertical athlete and his jump shot release is not built
to turn over his left shoulder and elevate over the
(41:16):
top of a defender in a post up and knock
down a shot. Now, that's not to say Steph has
never hit a turnaround jumper. Of course he has, but
it's extremely rare. It's not a shot he goes to
and he usually needs a lot of separation to do it.
That's not a shot he works on because it doesn't
make sense for him to work on it. So Kyrie,
because he is a better vertical athlete, and because he
does shoot at the top of his release or release
(41:37):
at the top of his jump, he is a guy
that actually can use and does use turnaround jump shots
all the time. Famously, Game five of the twenty sixteen
NBA Finals, in that four quarter run, I think he
get two big left shoulder fades over Klay Thompson, where
he drove hard to the left, planted and turned over
his left shoulder, got great step got great lift, shot
(41:58):
over the contest of Klay Thompson, and shotdown right like
it's just it's just a difference. But at the same time,
like bottom line is Stepford damn near his entire career
has come off of ball ball screens and off ball
actions and hit threes at like forty five percent on
massive volume, and and and and he's learned how to
weaponize that into a playmaking element of his game, both
(42:18):
on and off the ball. And Steph is able to
weaponize his skill into more points and and therefore he's
a better basketball player, and therefore he's the most skilled
player in NBA history in my opinion. But if I
was looking for some sort of claim to fame for Kyrie,
to me, he is the most versatile skill set in
the NBA. He can score like forwards do. He can
score like shooting guards do. He can score like point
(42:41):
guards do. He can do what Steph does and come
off of a wide pin down and shoot a movement
three over his left or right shoulder. He can run
a ball screen and make a variety of pull up
threes in pick and roll, but he's not as good
at those things as Steph is. And that's why I look.
I look at Steph as the most skilled player in
(43:01):
the NBA. But again, like to me, that really is
just in the eye of the beholder, and arguing arguing
about it doesn't really make a ton of sense, just
simply because like, most skilled to one person may not
mean the same thing to another person. For instance, like Steph,
in my opinion, is a much better playmaker than Kyrie,
But like, like does that factor in as a skill?
(43:23):
Steph is a much better off ball player than Kyrie.
The ability to move without the basketball and weaponize that
is that a skill? It just depends if you're factoring
it in, because if we're not factoring that in, if
I'm just strictly looking at like one on one play,
then I might lean more towards Kyrie or I, like
I have to think about it, But like it's it's
a different discussion, right, And that's my point, Like it's
(43:45):
it's really difficult to kind of nail down the parameters
of this. But what like if I had to based
on my kind of interpretation of what most skilled is.
It's the one guy in NBA history who's beneath the
height of six five, who's a top ten player in
the history of the game. That's Steph. He won with
the skill and did it better than any other skill
player in the history of the league. Therefore it's him,
and that's why I give him that title, all right,
(44:05):
Moving on our power rankings. Number ten the new team
Dallas Mavericks bounce back nicely from their disastrous East Coast
road road trip in February. They've won five of their
last six, their eighth in defense over that span. Remember,
their defense really fell apart on the East Coast trip,
so obviously that's encouraging. They legitimize it all with the
(44:26):
gigantic win over the Nuggets yesterday kind of demonstrated some
of the advantages they have in terms of their ability
to capitalize on the lesser defenders in Denver's roster by
being more deliberate about their matchup, attacking, and some of
their perimeter speed. Number nine the LA Clippers. The bottom
continues to fall out for them. They've lost four of
their last five. They are also now just eight to
ten in their last eighteen games, they are seventeenth in
(44:49):
offense and twenty sixth and defense over that span. All
of a sudden, this what was kind of a slump
is starting to look like something that's a lot worse.
This is a quarter of a season where they've been
mostly a bad team, and that's a problem. Last night
against the Hawks, I only checked out the second quarter
of this game when the bottom kind of fell out.
Bad defense all over the floors, especially in transition, just
(45:11):
like basic shit like not getting back and protecting the basket,
really stagnant offensively as well. It just kind of looks
like bad vibes. And like, again, this is one of
those things you can build good habits, and the Clippers
did for a long time, but they've now spent a
long time building bad habits. And again, like this is
one of those things where like sometimes it's really difficult
(45:33):
to regain control of the situation, which is why it's
so important when you identify your starting to let go
of the rope a little bit, that's when you have
to knuckle down and kind of regain your identity. They've
let this drag on for a really long time now,
and they could be in some trouble number eight, the
New Orleans Pelicans two in one week. They beat the
Clippers and the Blazers. They lost the Caves. Zion's last
thirteen games twenty four point seven rebounds and six assists,
(45:55):
fifty eight percent from the field, thirty three percent from
three to seventy four percent from the line. Really the
season turned around from them on the strength of their
defense and Zion Williamson's offensive leap that he took. It
kind of seems like circum kind of seemed like a
part of the circumstance of him just kind of getting
into shape over the course of the season as well.
Zion's been one of the best and most versatile shot
(46:15):
creators in the NBA this year. One point zero seven
points per possession and pick and roll on four hundred
and fifteen possessions. That's eighty second percentile, one point zero
four points per ISO on three hundred and seventy three possessions,
at seventy first percentile, one point zero five points per
post up, which is in two hundred and forty eight possessions,
which is fifty six percentile. He's personally shooting fifty one
(46:36):
percent from the field in all of those situations, so
really impressive shot creation season from Zion to make the mistake.
They're winning on the strength of their defense, second best
in defensive rating over their last fifteen games and also
second best at forcing turnovers over the course of that
fifteen game span. Number seven the Cleveland Cavaliers. They beat
the Pelicans, but they lost to Houston and Phoenix. Still
(46:56):
really struggling to score the basketball with Evan Mobley out.
They've put it George' kneeing in at the four, and
it just hasn't go well, gone well on both ends
of the floor. He is getting attacked a lot on defense,
and he's not making enough shots on the other end,
probably in large part because he's having to work so
hard on the defensive end with teams picking on him.
Both Donovan Mitchell and Karris Lavert are slumping right now,
so a little bit of a downturn going on in Cleveland.
(47:17):
Number six the New York Knicks three and oh week
right win against Sacramento on Saturday really bullied the Kings physically.
Ojan Andobi is back first three games the plus minus
hero keeping it going there plus forty five in Ojan
and Obi's minutes over the last three games. Number five
the Minnesota Timberwolves. Kind of a light schedule week for them.
They only had two games, super impressive defensive performance against
(47:40):
the Clippers, Kawhi went down, and then they just strangled
the life out of Paul George and James Harden to
get a win. Then they blew out the Jazz. I
still don't love Kyle Anderson at the four, but they
got another month to kind of figure out what they
want to do on that front. I'm sure they will again.
I still lean towards either going with nas Reed for
bigger matchups and then going with the kill Alexander Walker
for smaller matchups. I just don't think Hayle Anderson at
(48:00):
this phase is having enough impact on either end of
the floor to justify it. Kind of feels like just
putting a forward out there for the sake of putting
a forward out there. Number four the Milwaukee Bucks. The
West Coast trip was an absolute disaster. They went one
to three and their defense got absolutely shredded. But they
came back. They got a big bounce back win against Philly,
and then their offense broke out in a huge way
(48:21):
against Phoenix. An outstanding jump shooting game from them. Another
game where Dame looked really comfortable with higher usage, which
is encouraging to me, just kind of in terms of
like whether or not this has to do with his
kind of rough season, whether or not it has to
do with decline, or just the fit, and I lean
more towards the fit, which is encouraging because all you
really have to do is figure it out by the
time you get to Boston, and they have plenty of
(48:42):
time until then. Chris Middleton's first game back, he looked great.
Only thing that's concerning a one to twenty four defensive
rating for Milwaukee over the last six games, which is
really bad, even in the win against Phoenix that got
lit up defensively of one twenty eight defensive rating in
that game. So need to gain regain control of the
situation on defense. Three Oklahoma City Thunder two in one week.
They beat Dallas in Memphis, lost Indiana. Jalen Williams missed
(49:05):
the Indiana game, so they're loss. Obviously they were short handed,
but he came back and was incredible in a big
win over that red hot Mavericks team. Just a really
interesting example of high level shot making while also getting
to the rim with his power defensive plays at the
end of the game, making a big block at the rim,
had a nasty dunk in kind of garbage time, I
should say, like kind of the ice the game on
(49:27):
a backcut. Just love his combination of talent and competitiveness.
I think he's a star in the making. Number two
the Denver Nuggets. They're lost to Dallas and Boston's undefeated
week have Denver dropping to two in my power rankings.
But here's all I'm gonna say. They have two losses
total since the All Star Break, and both of them
were games where they held a three point lead in
(49:48):
the final seconds and lost basically just on supreme shot making,
contested pull up three from Kevin Durant, a thirty foot
bomb from Luka Doncic, and Kyrie Irving making a crazy
left handed flav floater. Make of that whatever you will
in terms of whether or not it's a matchup weakness.
I go the other way. If you're eleven and two
with two last second losses and you're the defending champion
(50:10):
and you're ramping up going into the postseason, that to
me is a big box checked for. Like primes to
repeat and It's a big part of why I'm still
so confident in Denver. Number one. Boston Celtics undefeated week
some light games in their schedule against Portland, Utah, and Washington,
but they had one of their most impressive wins of
the season against Phoenix. I thought Al Horford was an
(50:30):
absolute monster in that game, torching both of pretty much
every Phoenix big man who played for overhelping in the paint.
Tatum and Brown were both amazing in that game as well.
They're clicking on all cylinders. It seems to me pretty
consistently whenever Boston has a disappointment like those back to
back losses to Denver and Cleveland, they tend to bounce
(50:50):
back in a big way. And they really did. They're
sitting at number one in our power rankings. All right, guys,
that is all I have for today. Is always I
sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show. Will be
back from morning with another instant reaction as well as
a mail bag. I'll see you guys. Then the volume
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You're at the volume. Have you Monday, everybody? Hope all
of you guys had an incredible weekend. We have a
(01:48):
jam packed show for you today. We're gonna start with
that absurdly entertaining matchup between the Dallas Mavericks and the
Denver Nuggets last night, ended by a legendary Kyrie Irving shot.
We're gonna break that game down from the perspective both teams.
After that, the Phoenix Suns went on the road into
Milwaukee and got their ass kicked. A nuclear shooting performance
from them wasn't enough for the even more nuclear performance
(02:10):
that gave up from Milwaukee. So we're gonna break that
game down After that there was a lot of talk
going on yesterday after Tyrie's left handed hook shot to
win the game, but also after Damian Lillard said that
he's the most skilled player ever about whether or not
Kyrie Irving is the most skilled player ever. And so
I have a take on that front, kind of diving
into what I interpret to mean basketball skill, where I
(02:33):
do think Kyrie has an edge who I would name
if I had to pick a most skilled We'll do
that as our third segment, and like we do every
single Monday, at the end of the show, we'll have
our latest edition of the Power Rankings. You guys know
the Joe Foberge started subscribe to our brand new YouTube
channel mean a lot to me. If you guys to
take a second scroll down hit that subscribe button. Don't
forget about my podcast feed wherever you get your podcast
(02:53):
under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave
a rating and review on that front. Don't forget about
my Twitter feed underscore jsonlt where I leave film threat
as well as show announcements. I did a film thread
this morning on like five or six examples of some
of the really really poor defense that Phoenix was playing.
Against Milwaukee. You can find out on my Twitter feed.
The last but not least, keep dropping mail back questions
(03:14):
in the YouTube comments so we can keep hitting them
throughout the rest of this week. We'll have a mail
bag intomorrow's show, and then before we get started. This
is the best time of year to go out and
see a basketball game. Obviously, we've got the NBA season
heating up going into the playoffs, and obviously playoff basketball
is highly entertaining, but we also have college basketball in
(03:34):
the tournament. Single elimination basketball, especially when we get to
this phase, is the most entertaining basketball that you'll see
in person, and specifically when you go to these arenas
for these NCAA Tournament games, it's kind of if you've
ever been to one. I've been to two myself, and
I'm sure some of you guys have had as well.
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vibe of the two fan bases kind of competing with
(03:56):
each other at every big play, it really is a
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(05:01):
let's talk some basketball. So on Nuggets maps. I want
to start with the end of the game, and then
we'll get to some of the stuff later on, because
it really was a super entertaining finish. It basically came
down to match up hunting late, the same kind of
stuff we're always accustomed to seeing from Denver. Right the
Jokich Murray two man game, they were specifically targeting Luka
Doncic in every action that they could on that end
(05:21):
of the floor, and then on the other end of
the floor, Kyrie and Luca were constantly trying to pick
on Jamal Murray. And we're gonna dive into this a
little bit later when we get into some of the
stuff with Denver. But I did not think Denver did
a good job trying to avoid those switches. I thought
they conceded those switches, and honestly, they got away with
it because the Mavericks were up by nine with about
four minutes left, and they turned that. Denver turned that
(05:44):
nine point deficit into a tie game at one O
two in about three minutes. And a big part of
that was there were some possessions where Luca and Kyrie
got Jamal Murray onto switches, got really good looks for
them and missed both of them. The one I'm thinking
of is the floater that Kyrie had in the middle
of the floor, and then Luca had like a turnaround
jump shot kind of one like fadeaway around the foul line.
(06:07):
That one went in and out as well, and so
like a lot of it was just kind of good fortune.
But I thought, I thought Denver could have done a
better job of trying to prevent those switches from happening,
because it just, you know, they're just they have the
ability with Aaron Gordon to keep a big body on
Luca and to make it tougher on him. They have
the ability with a guard defender like KCP to to
(06:27):
make him take tough shots over an excellent defender. And
so we'll get a little bit deeper into that into
when we get to the Denver side of things. But
it was a lot of matchup hunting. And then on
the Dallas side they were attacking Jamal Murray and on
the Denver side they were attacking Luka Doncicic, and in
that stretch they were just getting better stuff. On the
other end, Denver scored on almost every single possession during
that stretch, just either getting you know, Luca switched onto
(06:51):
the Jokic and Jokicic just taking him down in the
post and getting an easy basket, or like Jamal Murray
in a two man game, getting Maxi Kleebudy. You know,
we have all this talk about Kyrie's finished, which obviously
was incredible, and we're gonna get to but Jamal Murray
had a pretty nasty left handed finish himself where he
got Maxi Kleiba on his right shoulder, kind of worked
him down the lane. Daniel Gafford came over and he
(07:12):
just went way out to the side and scooped in
a nasty left handed finish off the glass. And then
the final one when it was one O two, one
O two, so it's one of two, one or two.
Luca gets the switch on Murray misses that little turnaround
jump shot, but down on the other end at one
O two, one O two, Murray gets Luca on a
switch and he makes a really smart play. So Kleiba's
(07:32):
back on Jokic at this point. Jamal kind of drags
Luka out to the left side and Jokic comes up
to set another ball screen and Jamal Murray identifies something
where he knew he was gonna be able to get
a clean look Luca. When he saw the screen coming
from Jokic, Luca backed off and then prepared to go
underneath Jokic so that he could switch, but stay in
(07:54):
position on Jokic to not give up an easy, you know,
over the top pass where he could just rumble into
the pain without anybody in front of him. Right, So,
Luca's preparing to duck underneath Jokic to switch, and Kleiba's
getting ready to jump out on the other side. But
again there's a gap there between where Jamal Murray is
and where Kleeba is gonna be coming on the other
(08:15):
side of the screen and Luca's ducking under. There's a
little opening in there, and Jamal Murray really smartly just
throws a little bit of a fake with the dribble
to get Luca to commit to the switch, and then
he pulled back into that opening, got a really good
look at three, knocked it down as one oh five,
one oh two. We go down to the other end
and Aaron Gordon makes a huge mistake in my opinion.
(08:37):
Luka Doncic comes off of a pin down. He's starting
kind of at the right elbow. He comes down and
Tim hardaway Junior is setting a screen kind of around
the top of the key. Luca's not trying to come
off for a shot. Luca's just coming off to try
to get the basketball because there's like I think there's
like twenty six seconds left or something like that. So
Luca pops out catches the ball like thirty feet but
(08:58):
Aaron Gordon again, like imagine in the top of the key,
there's Tim Hardaway Junior, there's Luca coming out thirty feet
from the rim. Gordon's down here as he's gonna trail Luca,
but instead of just running out to meet Luca, he
tried to duck under Tim Hardaway on the opposite side
of the screen, and so as a result, he was
taking a weird kind of banana route to get to
where Luca was when that screen wasn't really in position
(09:20):
to stop him. He could have just sprinted out, and
again Luca wasn't looking to shoot there, but Luca caught
and he was so wide open because Aaron Gordon tried
to go around the other side of the screen. He
just had all day and he's like, all right, fine,
I'm gonna shoot this. And it was catastrophic for two reasons.
Not only was it the three point shot that tied
the game, but they didn't take any time off the clock,
(09:41):
like if that exact same thing, like if Aaron Gordon
takes a better angle instead of trying to jump the screen,
but just just trails behind Luca the way you're supposed to.
He catches, he turns, probably calls for a screen. By
the time he actually gets a quality three point shot up,
it could be another five to ten seconds. And if
it takes five to ten seconds and they make the shot,
then it's one oh five, one oh five, But the
(10:01):
shot clock is turned off, and then you could take
your time to get a great one. And instead there
was just a little bit of a gap, which put
Denver in the predicament because Dallas had a time out.
It put Denver in that predicament where they kind of
had to leave some time on the clock. So at
that point you just want to get the best possible shot.
Jamal Murray got a great look. They had another Yokic
ball screen. PJ. Washington actually was switching out on Jamal
(10:25):
Murray and in his backwards kind of like recovery step,
he tripped and fell, and so Jamal got great lift
great separation, one of the easiest shots he got all
night there around the right elbow, and he just missed it,
but again because of the bad angle Aaron Gordon took
on the other end of the floor, they were in
a position where they had to shoot before the end
of the shot clock. So then we go down to
(10:46):
the other end. Just a couple seconds left. Kyrie Irving
comes off of that ball, off of that off ball action,
and Yokic switches and Yokic defends it as perfectly as
you possibly can, even given the insane shot that Kyrie took.
It was very very good contest form Nikole Jokic. But
Kyrie Irving just goes into that that rip through news
left and gets to that left handed floater or half
(11:10):
hook or whatever the heck you want to call it,
and knocks it down. Crowd goes crazy. Really one of
the most impressive game winners that I've seen, because that
was not luck. That is something that Kyrie Irving is
capable of doing. There are two things that I want
to hit about Kyrie's lefty runner that were so interesting
to me. First of all, improvisational shot making. When I
talk about scoring the basketball, and you know, there's all
(11:33):
these different roles that a player has on a basketball team.
But to me, one of the specific traits that identifies
a player as a scorer is it's kind of like
a natural knack for finding ways to put the ball
in the basket. To me, that comes down to a
combination of obviously the skill set, but there's two additional
elements to it. It's audacity and improvisation. Audacity is confidence.
(11:57):
Audacity is like, you bet your ass I can take
and make this left handed floater, like a Jamal Murray
for instance, Like he's playing on a basketball team with
the best player in the world, and that dude has
the audacity to look him off and take his own
shots sometimes and it's the right decision because of his
abilities as a shot maker. Again, that first piece is
the most important part. You have to have the skill set,
but from there, if you have the audacity to confidence
(12:20):
and you connect it with the improvisation, which to me
is the natural ability of a score to just find
kind of funky combinations of skill. So, for instance, you
might see that left handed runner and you might think
to yourself, Kyrie probably doesn't practice that, and you're right,
I doubt sincerely that Kyrie has a drill where he
takes a fifteen foot drifting one leg floater moving to
(12:44):
his left hand side off of that specific footwork. He
probably doesn't, but what he does do is all the
individual pieces of that put together. I've talked about this
with a step back three before. The step back three
looks like a complicated dribble combination and footwork combination in
to a shot, but it's really not. Like if I
do an in and out dribble and then between the
(13:04):
legs dribble and then an advanced dribble, but instead of
continuing that step, I plant that right foot and push back,
I stick my left foot way out to catch my
momentum so that I go straight up and down, and
at the end of the shot, I'm just going straight
up and down. So as long as I have the
handle to be able to do an in and out
between the legs dribble and then another in and out
on the other side, I'm good. As long as I
(13:26):
have the footwork to be able to make all those
plants and control my body weight in those angles, and
as long as I have good catch and shoot straight
up and down jump shooting ability, I can put all
of that together and make this advance to play. Now again,
does Kyrie practice a drifting left handed floater. Probably not.
But what he does practice is a huge variety of
(13:48):
left handed shots around the rim, left handed floaters and
scoops and high finishes, low finishes, you know, trying to
sneak by defenders, trying to finish over the top of defenders.
He does a ton of stuff with his left hand.
That move is a combination of things that Kyrie does,
work on the footwork to get that little bit of
separation right the handle, to get the ball into his
left hand in a position where he has command of it,
(14:11):
and then from there the touch takes over. But that,
to me is what improvisational shot making is. And all
the best improvisational scorers in the league, they do take
shots in games that don't necessarily resemble shots that they
take in practice, but it's pieces, little bits and pieces
of things that they do practice that they in the
moment go, wait, I see this opening, and it's all
(14:34):
happening in a fraction of a second. I see this opening.
I think I can get to that spot, and then
from there I think I can kind of, you know,
maybe just go into like a left handed kind of
half hook, kind of like I do, closer to the rim,
but I'll just have to put a little more juice
on it, you know that kind of thing. It's it's
like an instantaneous interpretation of the situation and then the
(14:55):
ability to quickly pick from your skill set to grab
these little things that you can piece together into a
move to make a shot in that specific situation. And
to me, that's what separates the best scores in the
world from the guys beneath them is it's they have
the skill set, but they also have this overwhelming confidence
or audacity as I call it. And then the improvisation,
(15:17):
the ability to think quickly on their feet to find
ways to get to a shot they can make right.
And so that to me is what kind of sets
that apart. It's the improvisation and the second thing, the
fundamental foundation. That was a crazy shot, but make no mistake,
it was about his baseline foundation of ball handling, his
(15:38):
baseline foundation of footwork, and his baseline foundation of touch.
That is fundamental basketball that has been pieced together into
basically an art form. Right, But like, don't don't make
the mistake of thinking that that doesn't come from a
fundamental foundation, because it absolutely does. Now moving to the
rest of the game, I thought the story of the
(16:00):
game for Dallas was dominating the bench groups for Denver,
specifically on the offensive glass. And Denver's a weird team,
like when you look in the big picture, they're sixteenth
in defensive rebounding percentage, their bottom half defensive rebounding team,
but they're excellent at rebounding with their starters. Even last
night with the starting lineup, so Jokic with Gordon, Michael Porter, Junior,
(16:21):
Jamal Murray and KCP, those guys grabbed almost seventy five
percent of available defensive rebounds, which is excellent. So that
wasn't the issue. But those bench groups what they do again,
like instead of going with a slower, you know, limited
center like DeAndre Jordan, they just go with Zignaji. They
do a ton of switching, and they just give the
ball to Jamal Murray and just basically let him go
(16:41):
to work. And again, like they're in a predicament. Denver's
been in this predicament for a long time where they
they really struggled to kind of maintain leads without Jokics,
that's been a thing forever, that was the thing last
year when they won the title. This is just their
best pathway to try to float the ship without Nicole
Jokic is to go small, do a lot of switch
and rely on Jamal Murray to make shots. And he
(17:02):
just didn't quite have the same shot making game that
he's capable of having, and they got absolutely demolished on
the glass. In those units, particularly Derek Jones Junior and
Derek Lively were doing a ton of damage. Dallas had
twenty two offensive rebounds in this game, leading to twenty
three second chance points, and as a result, even though
they were plus ten, Denver was plus ten in Nikola
(17:25):
Jokic's minutes, Dallas was able to get out of there
with the win by dominating those specific lineups. Now, one
of the things that I did think was interesting, I
don't think it's a complete coincidence that Phoenix and Dallas
were the two teams that got wins against Denver since
the All Star Break, because this again, for people who
are not aware, Denver has won every other game they
played since the All Star Break. They're eleven to two
(17:47):
I think in the thirteen games since then, and their
two losses were Phoenix and Dallas, both games where they
led by three points with just a few seconds left
and then crazy shot making at the end of the
game took the game away from them, right. So, Like,
one of the things that I think is interesting is
Dallas is Dallas and Phoenix both they're uniquely capable of
picking on matchups and actually getting some of Denver's more
(18:11):
limited on ball defenders into space. Right. So, like, for instance,
they're really diligent about getting the switches they want. They
make sure that they get the right matchup before they
get into their one on one play. Now, again, we've
talked about it a little bit on the Denver side.
We'll get a little further into it, but I think
Denver needs to do a better job of trying to
fight against those switches just by you know, we'll get
into that in a minute. But like, Dallas was very
(18:33):
pretty good about diligently getting the right matchups before they go.
In addition to that, they are a team that has
some speed advantages, right, Like, I'll give you an example.
There's a random play mid fourth quarter where Derrek Jones
Junior was on the right wing and he had Michael
Porter Junior on him and he just got him with
a basic rip through moove to the left and got
all the way to the rim for a layup. And
then like so when you look at it, and it's
(18:55):
like they're getting a lot of shots where it's like, Okay,
they're getting Michael Porter Junior on a switch and then
going to work. They're getting Jamal Murray on a switch
and they're going to work. So they can be very
diligent about getting the right types of shots against the
right matchups. And I think that's something that Dallas and
Phoenix in particular are are really good at. Now both
of those matchups Denver had extended stretches where they kick
(19:16):
their ass because they're so much bigger and there they
do have better personnel that they can kind of go
to on both ends of the floor to kind of
get these jobs done. So like I would pick Denver
in a series against both of them, but I do
think it's interesting and something to keep an eye on
in terms of like a threat to beat Denver that
both Dallas and Phoenix are these like kind of high
level matchup attacking teams that rely a lot on helio
(19:37):
centric kind of a ball screen attack and that can
really kind of get Denver's limited defenders in space. On
the Denver side of things, getting bullied on the glass
and the Yokachov groups is totally normal. Like I mentioned,
like they yokichen groups this season have almost a seventy
five percent defensive rebound percentage, and they had almost a
seventy five percent defensive rebound percentage yesterday. This is kind
(20:00):
of just an issue with their bench. And again, they
won last year under the same circumstances. It's never been
about like, oh man, you know, Denver can't overcome its bench.
It's like they do overcome their bench. It's like they
have a bad bench and then they win. Anyway, That's
that's pretty much been the story for Denver forever. Right
that said, they need to hold up better on the
glass than they did, and I did think a lot
of it was just not being as quick to the ball,
(20:22):
and that's something I think they have a room for
improvement on. And then again, like this game and the
Suns game, they executed perfectly down the stretch in both games.
So like if you remember in the Suns game, there
was a twelve zero run that turned a what was
it a ninety nine to ninety lead into a one
oh two to ninety nine lead for Denver. And then
in this game, what was it It was one oh
(20:44):
nine to one hundred, I think, and then they scored.
They won on a fifteen to three run to go
up one fifteen to one twelve. So very similarly in
both games, Denver went on like a dominant run down
the stretch, but they played better defense on the KD
shot like that one was like Aaron Gordon ended pretty
damn well and ad just made the shot. I thought
that they had a couple of execution lapses on the
(21:06):
defensive end at the end of this game, not just
the Aaron Gordon one where he went on the wrong
side of that pick, but they were just way too
willing to give the right matchups, better matchups to Dallas
down the stretch offensively. And the last thing before we
move on to the next game, there's a reason why
I'm not a big believer in just conceding those switches
so easy. First of all, especially when you're like Denver,
(21:28):
has the ability to put teams in a predicament where
if you don't switch, or you hedge and recover, or
you help or you do anything that leaves a shooter open.
There's such high level shooters that it's a problem, right,
Whereas you know, some of the offensive talent surrounding Dallas
in these groups is they're not as good at beating
some of these some of these aggressive defensive coverages. So
(21:50):
for instance, like there was a play where they doubled
Luca on a switch and Nexic cleve at airball to
three over the backside of the rint, And like there
there are guys with Dallas where it's like, yeah, we
don't want to just leave him wide open all game,
but like a late contest we can live with kind
of thing. Whereas you can't do that with Michael Porter Junior.
You can't do that with KCP and Aaron Gordon's under
the rim where he's not missing much, right, So like
(22:13):
that is that is one of those things where like
I would be more willing in those situations rather than
having Jamal Murray just switch, I would hedge in those
situations and essentially rotate on the weak side and make
sure that you're just leaving the right guy open. Because
ky both Kyrie and Luca are aware of the fact
that for them, a tough contested shot is probably better
(22:35):
than an open look for some of these other guys,
and so they probably will allow you to chase over
the top and to recover and get back in front
and not give up the switch. Then as the shot
clock winds down, they'll have no choice but to ISO
Kyrie against KCP or Luca against Aaron Gordon. If you
chase over the top, I think it'll inevitably end up
(22:56):
in a Luca Kyrie ISO, just against a better matchup.
I don't think Lucas gonna pass out and just live
with you know, MAXI Kleeba taking threes down the stretch
of these games like they want to get the right
player to take the right shot, right, And there's just
more flexibility with Dallas to leave openings than there is
against some of these other better teams like Boston or
(23:17):
like Denver for instance. Right. So, like again, I thought
that was something execution wise that they could have been
better at down the stretch. But we're being nitpicky. I
actually had this in my power ranking segment, but I'll
just say it right now. They're eleven and two since
the All Star Break, and their two losses are games
that they led in the final seconds by three points,
and crazy shot making took the games away. So make
of that what you will, but to me, that's pretty
(23:40):
scary and it looks a lot like a Denver team
that is hell bent on repeating, and that's why I
feel so confident in them, all right. Moving on to
Sun's Bucks. This was an interesting game because what if
I told you that Phoenix took fifty jump shots in
this game. They got sixty five points out of them,
so one point three points per jump shot, and they
(24:00):
got blown out. And that's because the Bucks took fifty
six jump shots and got eighty eight points out of them,
which is one point five to seven points per shot.
So Phoenix had this incredible shooting performance on the road
in Milwaukee and got killed because Milwaukee shot them out
of the gym to an even greater extent. Now I
want to I'm gonna start with the Milwaukee side, but
(24:23):
this was one of Phoenix's worst defensive performances of the season.
We'll get a little bit deeper into it in a minute,
but really the story of the game early on was
Bobby Portis. And I've been defending Bobby Portis all year
because there are a lot of Bucks fans that are
low on him just because he's a backup center. And
you know, backup. Anybody in the league who's a backup
is a backup for a reason, right, Like if Bobby
(24:43):
Portis was everything he is offensively, but like less prone
to cold spells and just way better defensively, then he's
making twenty five million a year and he's starting for
somebody Like it's it's unrealistic for people to have those
levels of expectations, and like, to me, you can't do
much better than Bobby Portis as a backup center. Ask
(25:03):
Nuggets fans if they'd take Bobby Portis as a backup center.
Ask Lakers fans if they take Bobby Portis as a
backup center. Like that, you could do a hell of
a lot worse than Bobby Portis. And he was incredible
at the start of this game. And for the record,
he's been a good offensive player all season. Just a
couple quick numbers for you guys. Two hundred and thirty
points and two hundred and twenty seven post ups including
(25:24):
passes to over a point per possession one point one
zero points per spot up possession. That's sixty seven percentile
so he's a great shooter and close out attacker, picking
and popping, picking and rolling. He personally shoots sixty one
point four percent in effective field goal percentage on shots
on pops and rolls. That's one point two points per possession.
That's awesome. He personally shoots over fifty one percent on
(25:47):
unguarded catch and shoot jump shots, which is gonna be
a theme because Phoenix was leaving him open to start.
This game started with the coverage opening. Uh, this was
when Drew Eubanks came into the game. Well, I've talked
a lot about this concept before, but when you run
drop coverage, and again, drop coverage is real basic. The
big guy who's guarding the screener is going to drop
(26:08):
back and keep the ball handler and the roll man
in front of him. Right the on ball guy's chasing
over the top. So here comes the screen guys chasing
over the top. He's trying to funnel into the screen
defender that's waiting. So if the guy rolls to the rim,
if the guy screens and rolls, he can effectively kind
of guard both, right, especially if he's an elite defensive player,
and he can kind of kind of lunge and stunt
(26:29):
and be in the right places. But if he pops
any sort of drop coverage has no counter for the
drop or for the pop other than just to offer
a late close out. That's all he can do. So
the guy comes over the top screener pops right. The
big guy's waiting. As soon as the pass goes, he's
got to close out, or you have to close out
from the weak side, which leaves another guy short open, right.
(26:52):
So it is a fundamental baked in opening of the coverage.
You run pick and pop against the drop coverage, you're
going to get wide up in threes for your big man.
It is just like how it works. That's just how
the coverage works. Right. So Drew youu Banks early is
just getting absolutely barbecued by Bobby Portis screening and popping right.
But then he gets hot, right, and again when the
(27:14):
guy gets hot, you kind of have to make a
certain adjustment. Right at this point, use if Nurkic comes
back into the game and he's doing a better job
in his coverage of kind of like lingering by Portas,
but he's not offering hard contests. And I'm literally sitting
here and I'm like, I like, this guy is engulfed
in flames and is like six for seven from the
field and all six of his makes have been jump shots,
(27:37):
or I think five of his first six makes for
jump shots, and you're offering like a like again, uh,
did you guys remember earlier this year when the uh,
when the San Antonio Spurs scouting report got released or
the I think it was a Dallas' scouting report of
the Spurs for a preseason game, and it was like
all the breakdown and they talk about like how you
(27:57):
close out on shooters. We had very similar scouting reports
when I was in college at the Naia School, which
was the best coaching staff that I personally played for,
and like they do all the research and they tell
you it's like, okay, this guy, you're closing out hard,
meaning like you have to be like completely up in
disrupting the shooting pocket, Like even a contest doesn't work.
You have to disrupt the shooting pocket before he gets
(28:17):
up into his release. When he gets up into the release,
it's over right. And then they have everything from there
to like closing out short, which is like I'm literally
going to run out at you, but I'm purposefully gonna
stop short and then if you shoot, I'll offer a
late contest. And it's like, Bobby Portis is fifty one
percent on unguarded catch and shoot jump shots field goal
percentage not waited for threes. That's like he just makes
(28:40):
more than half of them. And so like at this point,
he's already scorching hot and you're throwing short close outs
at him. And if you guys want to see a
visual example of what I'm talking about, go to my
Twitter feed. I underscore jsonlt. I clipped like five or
six examples of this. But Yusuf Nurkitz was just straight
up just not paying attention and just letting Bobby Porters shoot.
(29:01):
There's another one. He comes out Bobby Porter's in a transition.
Possession cuts through along the baseline and Kevin Durant points
and tells Nurkics to pick him up, and Nurkics just
doesn't run with him. So Portas catches on the on
the right wing, and then all of a sudden, Nurkis
is like, oh shit, I left him open again, and
he sprints out at him. At this point, but Bobby
just kind of pump fakes and takes a side step
(29:22):
and knocks down another three. It was bad defense. Then
Malik Beasley hits a couple threes in a row. Now
we're into that, like late second quarter stretch. There's a play.
They're running a ball screen on the right side of
the floor. Dame is and Bradley Beal, who's guarding Malik Beasley.
Straight up, Malik Bezzy's Malik Beasley's on the left wing.
Dame's running the ball screen on the right wing. Okay,
(29:43):
Bradley Beal straight up turns his back like like, Malik
Beasley's behind me, turns his back to go like offer
a third defender at the ball screen. The ball screen
hasn't accomplished anything. They haven't even run it yet, so
no one's open. So Beal's helping for no reason. So
Dame just goes, okay, just throws a swing pass to
(30:03):
a wide open Malik Beasley. They had already made sixteen
threes to this point, and they're just leaving dudes wide open.
Malik Beasley, by the way, went into the night as
the ninth best three point shooter in the entire NBA.
Right after that, Vogel tries a little bit of zone
they were on like a three to two zone, which
(30:24):
a three two zone. The way it looked like they were,
I think what Frank Vogel was thinking in this three
two zone was essentially having all five three point shot
spots occupied. But again, it's about execution. Kevin Durantz in
the left corner guarding in the three two, but because
it was unoccupied, he kind of started down at the block.
(30:44):
Malik Beasley runs to the corner and Kadie's just too
slow getting out there, and Malik Beasley gets open again.
He had just made that three, beating Bradley Beal. Now
they're down twenty two points in the game's over. Like
it was. It was honestly one of phoenix worst defensive
performances of the season. And they like again, like we
talk a lot about shooting luck and and look, I
(31:06):
want to be clear, I do believe that there's a
variance element to shooting, and we'd be all foolish to
pretend that like that doesn't exist, But there are so
many different things that factor into it that go way
deeper than just like nearest defender. And it's like you
let a guy get comfortable, you let a team get comfortable,
with wide open looks, and then even when you do
start offering token contests later that qualify as like a
(31:30):
the defender got within you know whatever distance, but it
doesn't matter because they're confident they're in rhythm, and there's
a difference between being there on time and being there late,
because like, if you get there and you get the
hand up, but you didn't actually disrupt the fluidity of
the of the upward shooting motion, it's gonna go in
when they're like that. Even further, like, I've seen teams
(31:54):
that can concede shots into teams missing, but they're get
They're like teams that drag games down into the mud.
Teams that like are super physical and they kick your
ass for forty eight minutes to where even when you're
wide open, you're exhausted and you can't knock the shots down.
Phoenix is not one of those teams. They're not physically
imposing like that. They're not going to be a team
(32:15):
that can get away with packing the paint and leaving
guys open. They're gonna have to be better about getting
out to shooters. So if Phoenix goes on a run,
they get it back to six on an Eric Gordon
kind of like janky pump fake give and go situation
where he kind of like takes a goes up like
he's gonna take a bad shot, nearly gets blocked, throws
it down to the block, cuts down, gets a little
(32:36):
lay up. It's one hundred and ninety four, so they
get it down to six. There was only there was
like a minute and some change left in the third
quarter when that shot went in. Milwaukee went into the
fourth quarter up fifteen. They turned it from six to
fifteen in less than two minutes, and it was mostly
dang driving a lot of downhill pressure. Drew a foul
on Devin Booker, if I remember correctly, drew another foul
(32:58):
I can't remember who the second one was on. Got
to the foul one a couple times, and then right
before the buzzer just kind of takes that same kind
of drifting to the right pull up three or drifting
to the left pull up three when he hit the
game winner a few months ago. But just a quick
little slurry from Damian Lillard and whatever run or hope
that Phoenix had to get back in the game was
gone like that. And I do think it's interesting that
(33:21):
Dame has looked a lot more in rhythm in these
games that Giannis has been out, and to me, that's
a strong indicator that more of his issues this year
have been about rhythm rather than about his decline. And
to me, that's super encouraging. And for the record, if
you go back in this recent stretch, he's he's like,
I can't remember the exact stretch of games that I
pulled this morning, but the last sample of the last
(33:42):
few weeks, he's up around like thirty eight percent from
three and s field goal percentage is like forty four percent,
and scoring volume hasn't been great, but he's been knocking
down shots at a higher cliff than he did to
start the season. Chris Middleton looked great twenty two points
on only fifteen shots. He had seven assists. Super important
element to Milwaukee reach whatever offensive ceiling they have is
getting Chris Middleton out there and humming on offense. And
(34:05):
then here's the thing. They did not defend super well yesterday.
They gave up a one to twenty eight offensive rating
to Phoenix, so technically they defended bad. There were a
couple of smart things they did, though, like they really
kind of removed kd's aggression from the game. And one
of the things they did that was really smart is
when KDI would have his cleared side ISOs, they would
bring help from the baseline and then pre rotate like
(34:30):
windshield wiper rotation from the weak side the skip pass.
So basically normally like you'll see a double team from
one pass away and it'll be super easy to make
that hickout pass, right. But because they were doubling from
the baseline side and rotating from the skip pass and
taking advantage of Phoenix's issues sometimes when beating double teams
(34:52):
with smart decision making and quick on time and on
target passes, they were able to kind of effectively rotate
out of those kt KD double teams without up too much,
which was though one little silver lining defensively from an
otherwise you know, you know, mixed bag of defense on
the Phoenix side. It's really that simple to me, Like
if they defend like that, they're gonna get beaten in
(35:13):
the first round. They're not good enough in some of
these other areas to get away with just leaving people
open like that. And and again, like I've seen Phoenix
have really good defensive performances. I know it's in there.
It's just a question of consistency. I mean, I saw
quote from Kyrie after the MAVs game saying the same
kind of thing, like, oh, we know we can do that,
and it's like, yeah, that's great. But like like I
(35:34):
talked about yesterday when we were talking about the Kings,
if it's not a habit, then when shit hits the fan,
I don't trust you to be able to do it.
It's got to be a habit. It's got to be
something that you It's unusual when you don't do it,
not unusual when you do do it. And we're getting
to that point with Phoenix in Dallas where both of
those teams where it's like when they do it, it
looks great, but when they don't, they can lose to anybody,
(35:56):
and it's it's in. It's a problem, all right. I
re irving as the most skilled player in the league.
So obviously Kyrie makes a shot. We did a breakdown
of the shot in our breakdown of the game, so
I won't get into it right here. MAVs fans and
Nuggets fans looking for a breakdown of mapvs. Nuggets, you
can find that on our YouTube feed. In the full
episode if you happen to be watching a breakout clip,
(36:17):
but we have Damian Lillard come out after the game
talking about whether or not Kyrie Irving is the most
skilled player in the NBA. Now, this has been a
debate around the game of basketball for a very long time,
and specifically, I think this moniker is one that we
use with Kyrie specifically because of the fact that he's
(36:38):
kind of a confusing player. What I mean by that
is like Kyrie is like super super good. There's a
pretty substantial gap, in my opinion, between how good Kyrie
is and how much he's valued by most basketball fans.
This is something I've been pushing back on for years now.
It's like, Okay, so you disagree with some stuff Kyrie
(36:58):
did off the floor. Okay, so he's had some clear
examples of for teammate behavior. But when the dude is
on the court, he's incredible. He's literally incredible, And like
we literally just saw the other night with Luca out,
Kyrie almost single handedly hold his team to a win
(37:19):
like they are they are. Like we over complicate this
a lot of the times when we talk about basketball players,
and we overlook because it's It's like it's almost become
an expectation for a player. We overlook what a player
is actually accomplishing on the court. Kyrie is a guy
who can straight up be your number one if you're
(37:40):
great everywhere else. Can he be the number one on
a limited team? No? Is he a floor razer like that? No,
But the dude can run an offense, and he competes
hard enough defensively when he's locked in that he can
be a positive defensive player. He's a positive defensive player
on the twenty sixteen caves. So I think a lot
of this is like Galaxy brain, right, And so the
way people counteract that is when they have this half
(38:01):
of their brain that's going like Kyrie's overrated, Kyrie's bad teammate,
Kyrie's this, Kyrie's that they counteract that with like, oh, well,
you know, he's the most skilled player in the NBA,
instead of just talking about the fact that he's just
really great at basketball. And to me, that specific phrase
most skilled, it really just depends on how you're defining that.
(38:22):
To me, if I had to define what specifically Kyrie
does better than most players in the league, it's a
versatility of skills, He has the best combination of footwork,
ball handling, and shot making from all of the various
spots on the floor out of anybody in the league
in my opinion, Like, there are guys who are better
(38:43):
than him in ball screens, but they're not as good
in the post. There are guys that are better than
in the post, but they're not as good in ball screens.
There are guys who are better than him in ISO,
but they aren't as good in the other areas. Kyrie
is literally capable of doing every conceivable basketball thing as
(39:03):
about as well as anybody in the league, but that
doesn't necessarily make him the most skilled in my opinion.
For instance, I think when when people ask me who
the most skilled player in NBA history was or is,
it's very obvious to me it's Steph Curry. Who's the
only player beneath the height of six ' five who
(39:24):
is a top ten player in NBA history. It's Steph.
I have him as the fifth best perimeter player of
all time, and he's pretty much definitively a top ten
player in NBA history. All the other dudes around him
are big guys, either big forwards or centers, right or
shooting guards that are six ' six and freaky athletic. Right, So,
like Steph has proven just in what he's been able
(39:46):
to accomplish on the court that when it comes to
winning basketball games on the strength of his skill, no
one's better than Steph. But to me, with Steph, it's
focused in specific areas. So, for instance, Kyrie Irving in
my opinion, has a more advanced ISO bag in terms
of the numbers of moves that he can go to,
(40:09):
but Steph's just way better than him at shooting, and
Steph has been able to weaponize that shooting both on
ball and off the ball to a greater effect than
Kyrie has been able to weaponize all of his footwork
and dribble combinations and shot making. So I can't. I
can't in my right mind say Kyrie's more skilled than
Steph because Steph's skill beats Kyrie's skill every single time.
(40:34):
And I don't blame Steph like, for instance, Kyrie. Here's
just one simple example. Kyrie Irving is a better vertical
athlete than Steph. Steph is bigger and stronger, equally quick,
but Kyrie is a better vertical athlete. He also has
a shot where he shoots at the top of his jump,
where Steph shoots a little bit more at the beginning,
(40:54):
a little bit like on the way up in his shot. So,
for instance, doesn't make any sense at all for Steph
to work on, you know, complicated posts turnaround footwork, because
he's never gonna use that. He's not enough of a
vertical athlete and his jump shot release is not built
to turn over his left shoulder and elevate over the
(41:16):
top of a defender in a post up and knock
down a shot. Now, that's not to say Steph has
never hit a turnaround jumper. Of course he has, but
it's extremely rare. It's not a shot he goes to
and he usually needs a lot of separation to do it.
That's not a shot he works on because it doesn't
make sense for him to work on it. So Kyrie,
because he is a better vertical athlete, and because he
does shoot at the top of his release or release
(41:37):
at the top of his jump, he is a guy
that actually can use and does use turnaround jump shots
all the time. Famously, Game five of the twenty sixteen
NBA Finals, in that four quarter run, I think he
get two big left shoulder fades over Klay Thompson, where
he drove hard to the left, planted and turned over
his left shoulder, got great step got great lift, shot
(41:58):
over the contest of Klay Thompson, and shotdown right like
it's just it's just a difference. But at the same time,
like bottom line is Stepford damn near his entire career
has come off of ball ball screens and off ball
actions and hit threes at like forty five percent on
massive volume, and and and and he's learned how to
weaponize that into a playmaking element of his game, both
(42:18):
on and off the ball. And Steph is able to
weaponize his skill into more points and and therefore he's
a better basketball player, and therefore he's the most skilled
player in NBA history in my opinion. But if I
was looking for some sort of claim to fame for Kyrie,
to me, he is the most versatile skill set in
the NBA. He can score like forwards do. He can
score like shooting guards do. He can score like point
(42:41):
guards do. He can do what Steph does and come
off of a wide pin down and shoot a movement
three over his left or right shoulder. He can run
a ball screen and make a variety of pull up
threes in pick and roll, but he's not as good
at those things as Steph is. And that's why I look.
I look at Steph as the most skilled player in
(43:01):
the NBA. But again, like to me, that really is
just in the eye of the beholder, and arguing arguing
about it doesn't really make a ton of sense, just
simply because like, most skilled to one person may not
mean the same thing to another person. For instance, like Steph,
in my opinion, is a much better playmaker than Kyrie,
But like, like does that factor in as a skill?
(43:23):
Steph is a much better off ball player than Kyrie.
The ability to move without the basketball and weaponize that
is that a skill? It just depends if you're factoring
it in, because if we're not factoring that in, if
I'm just strictly looking at like one on one play,
then I might lean more towards Kyrie or I, like
I have to think about it, But like it's it's
a different discussion, right, And that's my point, Like it's
(43:45):
it's really difficult to kind of nail down the parameters
of this. But what like if I had to based
on my kind of interpretation of what most skilled is.
It's the one guy in NBA history who's beneath the
height of six five, who's a top ten player in
the history of the game. That's Steph. He won with
the skill and did it better than any other skill
player in the history of the league. Therefore it's him,
and that's why I give him that title, all right,
(44:05):
Moving on our power rankings. Number ten the new team
Dallas Mavericks bounce back nicely from their disastrous East Coast
road road trip in February. They've won five of their
last six, their eighth in defense over that span. Remember,
their defense really fell apart on the East Coast trip,
so obviously that's encouraging. They legitimize it all with the
(44:26):
gigantic win over the Nuggets yesterday kind of demonstrated some
of the advantages they have in terms of their ability
to capitalize on the lesser defenders in Denver's roster by
being more deliberate about their matchup, attacking, and some of
their perimeter speed. Number nine the LA Clippers. The bottom
continues to fall out for them. They've lost four of
their last five. They are also now just eight to
ten in their last eighteen games, they are seventeenth in
(44:49):
offense and twenty sixth and defense over that span. All
of a sudden, this what was kind of a slump
is starting to look like something that's a lot worse.
This is a quarter of a season where they've been
mostly a bad team, and that's a problem. Last night
against the Hawks, I only checked out the second quarter
of this game when the bottom kind of fell out.
Bad defense all over the floors, especially in transition, just
(45:11):
like basic shit like not getting back and protecting the basket,
really stagnant offensively as well. It just kind of looks
like bad vibes. And like, again, this is one of
those things you can build good habits, and the Clippers
did for a long time, but they've now spent a
long time building bad habits. And again, like this is
one of those things where like sometimes it's really difficult
(45:33):
to regain control of the situation, which is why it's
so important when you identify your starting to let go
of the rope a little bit, that's when you have
to knuckle down and kind of regain your identity. They've
let this drag on for a really long time now,
and they could be in some trouble number eight, the
New Orleans Pelicans two in one week. They beat the
Clippers and the Blazers. They lost the Caves. Zion's last
thirteen games twenty four point seven rebounds and six assists,
(45:55):
fifty eight percent from the field, thirty three percent from
three to seventy four percent from the line. Really the
season turned around from them on the strength of their
defense and Zion Williamson's offensive leap that he took. It
kind of seems like circum kind of seemed like a
part of the circumstance of him just kind of getting
into shape over the course of the season as well.
Zion's been one of the best and most versatile shot
(46:15):
creators in the NBA this year. One point zero seven
points per possession and pick and roll on four hundred
and fifteen possessions. That's eighty second percentile, one point zero
four points per ISO on three hundred and seventy three possessions,
at seventy first percentile, one point zero five points per
post up, which is in two hundred and forty eight possessions,
which is fifty six percentile. He's personally shooting fifty one
(46:36):
percent from the field in all of those situations, so
really impressive shot creation season from Zion to make the mistake.
They're winning on the strength of their defense, second best
in defensive rating over their last fifteen games and also
second best at forcing turnovers over the course of that
fifteen game span. Number seven the Cleveland Cavaliers. They beat
the Pelicans, but they lost to Houston and Phoenix. Still
(46:56):
really struggling to score the basketball with Evan Mobley out.
They've put it George' kneeing in at the four, and
it just hasn't go well, gone well on both ends
of the floor. He is getting attacked a lot on defense,
and he's not making enough shots on the other end,
probably in large part because he's having to work so
hard on the defensive end with teams picking on him.
Both Donovan Mitchell and Karris Lavert are slumping right now,
so a little bit of a downturn going on in Cleveland.
(47:17):
Number six the New York Knicks three and oh week
right win against Sacramento on Saturday really bullied the Kings physically.
Ojan Andobi is back first three games the plus minus
hero keeping it going there plus forty five in Ojan
and Obi's minutes over the last three games. Number five
the Minnesota Timberwolves. Kind of a light schedule week for them.
They only had two games, super impressive defensive performance against
(47:40):
the Clippers, Kawhi went down, and then they just strangled
the life out of Paul George and James Harden to
get a win. Then they blew out the Jazz. I
still don't love Kyle Anderson at the four, but they
got another month to kind of figure out what they
want to do on that front. I'm sure they will again.
I still lean towards either going with nas Reed for
bigger matchups and then going with the kill Alexander Walker
for smaller matchups. I just don't think Hayle Anderson at
(48:00):
this phase is having enough impact on either end of
the floor to justify it. Kind of feels like just
putting a forward out there for the sake of putting
a forward out there. Number four the Milwaukee Bucks. The
West Coast trip was an absolute disaster. They went one
to three and their defense got absolutely shredded. But they
came back. They got a big bounce back win against Philly,
and then their offense broke out in a huge way
(48:21):
against Phoenix. An outstanding jump shooting game from them. Another
game where Dame looked really comfortable with higher usage, which
is encouraging to me, just kind of in terms of
like whether or not this has to do with his
kind of rough season, whether or not it has to
do with decline, or just the fit, and I lean
more towards the fit, which is encouraging because all you
really have to do is figure it out by the
time you get to Boston, and they have plenty of
(48:42):
time until then. Chris Middleton's first game back, he looked great.
Only thing that's concerning a one to twenty four defensive
rating for Milwaukee over the last six games, which is
really bad, even in the win against Phoenix that got
lit up defensively of one twenty eight defensive rating in
that game. So need to gain regain control of the
situation on defense. Three Oklahoma City Thunder two in one week.
They beat Dallas in Memphis, lost Indiana. Jalen Williams missed
(49:05):
the Indiana game, so they're loss. Obviously they were short handed,
but he came back and was incredible in a big
win over that red hot Mavericks team. Just a really
interesting example of high level shot making while also getting
to the rim with his power defensive plays at the
end of the game, making a big block at the rim,
had a nasty dunk in kind of garbage time, I
should say, like kind of the ice the game on
(49:27):
a backcut. Just love his combination of talent and competitiveness.
I think he's a star in the making. Number two
the Denver Nuggets. They're lost to Dallas and Boston's undefeated
week have Denver dropping to two in my power rankings.
But here's all I'm gonna say. They have two losses
total since the All Star Break, and both of them
were games where they held a three point lead in
(49:48):
the final seconds and lost basically just on supreme shot making,
contested pull up three from Kevin Durant, a thirty foot
bomb from Luka Doncic, and Kyrie Irving making a crazy
left handed flav floater. Make of that whatever you will
in terms of whether or not it's a matchup weakness.
I go the other way. If you're eleven and two
with two last second losses and you're the defending champion
(50:10):
and you're ramping up going into the postseason, that to
me is a big box checked for. Like primes to
repeat and It's a big part of why I'm still
so confident in Denver. Number one. Boston Celtics undefeated week
some light games in their schedule against Portland, Utah, and Washington,
but they had one of their most impressive wins of
the season against Phoenix. I thought Al Horford was an
(50:30):
absolute monster in that game, torching both of pretty much
every Phoenix big man who played for overhelping in the paint.
Tatum and Brown were both amazing in that game as well.
They're clicking on all cylinders. It seems to me pretty
consistently whenever Boston has a disappointment like those back to
back losses to Denver and Cleveland, they tend to bounce
(50:50):
back in a big way. And they really did. They're
sitting at number one in our power rankings. All right, guys,
that is all I have for today. Is always I
sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show. Will be
back from morning with another instant reaction as well as
a mail bag. I'll see you guys. Then the volume
Hosts And Creators
Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre
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