Jason reacts live after the Denver Nuggets win a pivotal Game 3 against the Oklahoma City Thunder. He discusses another fantastic performance from Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray to outlast Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Then he discusses the Cleveland Cavaliers controlling Game 3 in a win over the Indiana Pacers behind another monster game from Donovan Mitchell.
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(02:33):
You're at the volume Havy Friday. Everybody hope ath you
guys are having a great start to your weekend. The
NBA Playoffs have been very good to us this year
as we continue to just get incredible night of hoops.
After incredible night of hoops, the Cleveland Cavaliers go into
Indiana and look like the Cleveland Cavaliers for the first
time in this series. We're gonna be breaking that game
down at the tail end of the show, but we're
(02:53):
gonna be starting with yet another classic between the Denver
Nuggets and the Oklahoma City Thunder. We were joking, the
guys that iver joking before we started the show. The
Nuggets have now won probably the best game I've ever
seen Yokic play and the worst game I've ever seen
Yokic play in the same series, which was super fascinating.
(03:16):
So many different angles to get into a bunch of
guys for Denver stepped up some really exciting stuff for
Oklahoma City in their future, but then some of the
classic concerns surrounding the team coming to the surface late
in the game as their offense generates just twenty one
points in the last seventeen minutes of the game. A
lot of really ugly high ISO stuff. We're gonna be
(03:38):
breaking that down. We'll get into both of those games
from the perspective of both teams. At the tail end
of the show, we'll take about ten minutes of questions
from the chat, So make sure you guys in the
stream here subscribe to the Hoops and Night YouTube channel.
Drop your questions in there. We'll get to the chat
at the tail end, and then when we are done
here tonight, we'll be heading over to playback for our
(03:59):
after show. We have the link in the description here.
It's just playback dot tv slash Hoops Tonight. We'll be
hanging out there for an extra half hour forty five
minutes or so, taking some questions. We can take callers
or watch some film what they can do. A bunch
of stuff in the after show. You guys have the jop.
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subscribe or excuse me, follow us there the last minute. Least,
keep dropping those mail bag questions for the chat at
the tail end of the show. So that was probably
the worst Yokitch game I've ever seen, Shades of the
(04:44):
Minnesota Timberwolves series last year where his jump shot completely
leaves him. You know, I thought Jokic made a concerted
effort early in this game to try to hunt scoring opportunities.
It kind of like became one of those things where
at first he was hunting scoring because he knew that
that was what his team needed, and then it became
almost like a come hell or high water, I'm finding
a way to make a jump shot, and he just
(05:06):
he just couldn't get one to go, and it was
he was also just struggling making reads. Okay, see, he
was bringing some baseline doubles and doing a good job
gapping on the weak side in the two on one,
and so Jokicic was turning the ball over and getting
himself into some trouble. He was struggling to finish around
the rim, smoked several shots at like point blank range
right at the front of the rim. And yet here
(05:27):
we are, Denver's up two to one in this series
and in a really strong position when you consider the
fact that it's highly likely that Nikola Jokic has a
massive bounce back type of game in Game four, a
very very important game of this series. My guess is
that whoever wins Game four will win this series. And
if Denver's going to win, they're gonna need a much
(05:48):
better effort from Jokics. That said, I want to give
Yoga some credit. He wanted some defensive battles late, he
won some rebounding battles late, and he did get two
big buckets in ot But I want to focus on
a couple of other nuggets that I thought stepped up
in a big way down the stretch of this game,
first of all, Jamal Murray, as it became obvious that
Jokis was not able to generate a quality look for himself,
(06:09):
at least not one that he could knock down. Down
the stretch of this game, Jamal Murray had to really
hit the gas as a score and it wasn't always pretty. Again,
like people, when you're playing against a defense like this,
especially as a guard, it's not gonna be pretty. It's
not gonna be super efficient, it's gonna be a chore.
Jamal Murray missed more shots than he made tonight. There
(06:30):
were some ugly ones. He had a couple shots around
the room. He had an airball layup, he had a
spinning like he tried to like shoot a three sixty
layup in traffic that he kind of just threw into
the bottom of the rim. They were difficult shots because
there were a lot of late clock situations where he
had to generate something. But then there were also situations
where he was able to make something happen. A little
(06:51):
step back over Isaiah Hartenstein along the left baseline, big
threes at a couple of points in this game. He
was just found a way to generate offense. He's been
always a very gifted finisher in traffic to a couple
of nifty finishes right at the front of the rim.
And then Aaron Gordon. There are so many players in
the league this year that have just in this playoff run,
(07:12):
that have just been consistently great in the clutch, over
and over again. Tyres Halliburton, Jalen Brunson, Aaron Gordon. Again,
he's already had two game winners in this postseason run.
Hits the three that sends this to overtime and extends
the game. I want to shout out Aaron Gordon defensively
as well. He got cooked a little bit by j
Dubb at various points in the fourth quarter, but he
(07:34):
was playing good defense. To his credit. He was hitting
some tough, contested shots and then he got several stops
late when he needed to. And then I also have
to shine the light on Christian Brown. I thought, Christian Brown,
you know, it's been interesting. There have been two stretches
of this series where I feel like he's played good
defense on Shae Gildes Alexander crunch time of Game one,
crunch time of Game three. Now, I think there's kind
(07:55):
of an overarching theme there involving slow down half court basketball,
and we'll dive further into that concept a little bit
later on in the show, But there was a stretch
there in that third quarter where I'm like, he's just
not doing a good enough job on Shae or Jdev.
He's just getting beat to the spot over and over
again at the point of attack. A lot of times
he wasn't even offering any sort of physical contact or
(08:17):
resistance until Shaye or Jadev were in the lane. He
just wasn't doing a good enough job. But they are
in crunch time over and over again, beating Shaye to
the spot on multiple occasions, actually forcing Shaye into trying
to grip for fouls, which obviously wasn't going to work
in this type of game. Late Christian Brown Two's credit
I talk about all the time the playoffs are about
(08:39):
solving puzzles, and while he struggled in the meat and
potatoes of this series, there have been two pivotal stretches
or he's been able to get multiple stops against Shake
Gildess Alexander, solving the puzzle in that sort of situation,
and honestly, guys, like if we zoom out on this series.
It's a whole lot of okc outplaying Denver and Denver
(09:02):
just pulling these games out late. And there's two different
ways to look at that. Right, there's the obvious fact
that Oklahoma City is very, very good and that they're
going to be very difficult to put out of their misery.
This is not a oh, you're up to one, you're
in control. This is they win game four that things
going back to Oklahoma City, You're probably not winning this series.
So like everything still hangs in the balance. But the
(09:23):
flip side to look at that is there's a lot
of opportunity for Denver to play better. I thought Oklahoma
City outworked Denver tonight. I thought they played with more
force throughout the game tonight they got Denver got demolished
on the glass again, giving up eighteen offensive rebounds if
they only got five offensive rebounds, and if we go back,
(09:44):
because even further back into game two, they didn't have
much success on the offensive glass relative to Game one.
In that game either, they had more rebounds offensively in
game one than they did in Game two in game
three combined, and so ok See has like completely flipped
the script on the whole Yokic dominating inside dynamic. They
(10:06):
flipped the script on the whole offensive rebounding dynamic. They've
taken the two arguably the two biggest advantages that Denver
has in this series, and they've flipped them in their direction,
as Yokich has been pretty bad the last two games
and they haven't been able to do much damage on
the offensive glass. And so again there's two ways to
look at that. There's okay se has clear advantages that
(10:27):
they're showing, and and then there's this all obvious fact
that Denver can play much better. Denver is capable of
doing more physical damage on the glass than they've been doing.
Yokich is obviously capable of playing a lot better. I
talked about this after Game two. The advantages for the
two teams are pretty clear, right Like for ok see
it's dribble penetration. They are dominating these games, and the
(10:49):
meat and potatoes just in those semi transition pushes with
Shay and j dubb quickly within like the first you know,
seven to ten seconds of the shot clock getting deep
dribble penetration, and then everything really pascating from there, all
of a sudden you're drawing tons of helpers, which is
putting your defense in rotation. Okay See, outside of crunch
(11:10):
time in the series, has passed the ball very well.
They're moving the ball out of those dribble penetration situations.
As Denver's rotating, okay See is getting offensive rebounds because
guys aren't matched up to box out because they're in rotation.
There's a lot of damage that Oklahoma City is doing
early in possessions with their dribble penetration that is trickling
(11:32):
down to all of these other elements of the game.
And for Denver, their advantage is very clearly the size
with Jokic on the interior and their ability to contend
on the offensive glass. And what's crazy is, for the
most part throughout this series, okay See has done a
better job of leveraging their advantages. But Denver, over and
(11:53):
over again, as long as they're within striking distance late,
has been the better half court team. And that's where
we got to dig into it a little bit deeper.
So JDub had a beautiful game tonight. I thought he
was in command of the floor. Moved the ball well
on ball and off ball, scoring good on ball, playmaking.
Jadub had a great game, but once again, when things
(12:15):
got slowed down, when things really slowed down late in
the game, those semi transition opportunities aren't there. I've got
a head of steam because I started my drive out
fifty feet from the basket and Christian Brown's picking me
up at the foul line. That's not there anymore. It's
slowed down. It's a knockdown, dragout half court fight. And
in those situations in both games, in game one, in
(12:37):
Game two, it's turned into a lot of high ISOs,
a lot of high ISOs for JDub, a lot of
high ISOs for Shay, a lot of tough in traffic,
contested shots in the middle of the floor, not a
lot of kickouts. How many times did you see a
kickout out of those clutch situations for the Thunder, they're
(12:58):
not there. So similar to Game one, Denver was consistently
able to offer late help. A lot of these shots
are being shot over double teams, over late secondary contests,
just a lot of traffic in the middle of the floor,
whereas with Denver there's like a solid two man game
taking place in the middle of the floor where you
(13:19):
don't know where it's gonna go. It might be Jamal
running action and looking for something from the three point line,
something in the mid range. It might be Yo kitch
in the pocket. It might be Yo kitchen the post.
Oh you overplayed yokich on a roll and left Aaron
Gordon wide open in the left corner. He's gonna hit
a three to burn you and tie the game. There's
more variety, there's more consistency. There is a better, more reliable,
(13:41):
clutch offense for Denver in this series, and so that's
really where this is gonna swing. I think if it's
close in Game four late, Denver's gonna win, and they're
probably gonna win the series. Oklahoma City does have a
pathway though, with their speed, with their defense to build
margin against this team. It's kind of similar to the
(14:01):
way I felt about the Clippers series. There's just not
a team in the league that's gonna be able to
execute the way Denver does in the half court Layton games.
They're just the very best at it. You know, I
used to, you know, I have a lot of like
random basketball debates with my friends who covered different teams
around the league, And I remember samis fondi Ario covers
the Warriors. He texted me once after the Lakers lost
(14:25):
that regular season game, the late regular season game, the
first Luka Doncic game against the Warriors, and he goes,
he just said to me, he goes, like, I love
it when teams go small ball against the Warriors because
just no one's ever going to play small ball as
well as we do. And it's such a simple idea,
but it's so true because the Warriors have been doing
the Draymond at center thing literally since twenty fourteen. Like that,
(14:49):
They've been doing it over a decade. They have every
detail of that style of game down pat same thing
goes for Denver. You're just not gonna eat them in
the clutch when you do. It's bizarre. What was the
game they lost to the Clippers. You had Aaron Gordon
missed a wide open dunk right under the rim. I
(15:09):
can't remember what mistake Jokic made, but Jokic made a
big mistake down the stretch of that game. They just
that was like the exception. Every other time you end
up in these close games against Denver, I've I've been
on the wrong side of this, guys. I've rooted for
the Lakers the last couple of years, so like they
are just completely indomitable in a tie game with five
minutes left. It's it's one of the crazier things I've
(15:31):
seen in my time following the league. And they just
got it done again tonight against Oklahoma City. And like,
there's obvious the main thing if you're looking at it
from Okac's standpoint, in the way that they can try
to avoid that slow down environment. Can't change the way
you play. Can't change the way you play just because
it slows down late, especially when you're going against Denver.
(15:53):
You gotta keep pushing in transition, you gotta attack early
in possessions. You got to move the ball. A good
semi transition drive that kicks leads to an advantage. Yeah,
you're right. You're gonna have to count on somebody like
a lou Dort to drive a close out, but you're
gonna start the engine, and your speed is such an
advantage when you're in motion, when there's ball in player
(16:14):
movement against this team, But when you just stare down
Jamal Murray in an ISO at the top of the
key and you can gap into driving lanes, it's just
an easier thing for Denver to deal with. You're playing
into their style of game, and so that's gonna be
the main thing that they're gonna have to flip again
moving forward in the series. I left Game two feeling
(16:36):
coin flip slight edge OKC. Now at Game three, I'm
coin flip slight edge Denver. Denver will be likely. I'm
not even sure what the lion is in game four.
I haven't looked yet, but I give Denver a slightly
better than a coin flip chance of winning Game four
at home. And if they win that game, I think
they're gonna win the series, because all of a sudden,
OKC has to win three games in a row and
(16:58):
Denver just has the best player in the world on
the time, and it can go either way. But I mean,
you gotta be kicking yourself if you're a thunderfan, because
you played well enough to win all three of these
games and you're down to one in this series. And like,
I've gotten into this argument a lot with a bunch
of people, and like I want to be clear, this
series is not over. I would not be the slightest
bit surprised if Oklahoma City won this series. And with
(17:19):
the way Boston's playing, guys, you could talk me into
Oklahoma City right now being the most likely team to
win the championship. So this is not some sort of
big sweeping Oklahoma City's bad kind of take. But I've
been preaching this all year. The team full of early
twenty year olds that's gonna play way harder than everybody
in the regular season, that's going to put up dramatic
(17:41):
statistical markers, that are going to do things like Jackson,
what was the odds before it was minus six hundred
after minus yeah, after Game one when Denver won Oka,
See was minus six hundred to win the series, Like,
the odds are being fed by these number and it's everyone.
It's breaking everybody's brain. Greatest net rating in NBA history
(18:05):
and all this kind of stuff, And all year long,
I've said, yeah, they're awesome. But young basketball players, I've
been preaching this for years. What are young basketball players?
What is the behavior of young basketball players? They struggle
to have success and then replicate it, and they struggle
to have failure, identify it, and avoid it. Veteran basketball
(18:26):
teams have succeeded and failed so many times that when
they identify success, they hammer it, and when they see failure,
they quickly identify it and they remove it from their diet.
They trim the fat. That is the difference between grown
ass men playing basketball and dudes in their early twenties.
And again that does not mean okay, so you can't
win the series. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised
(18:48):
if they won Game four, won Game five, one, game six,
beat the shit out of Minnesota, went into the finals,
and beat Boston or New York or Indiana or Cleveland,
whoever it is that comes out, I would not be surprised.
But they are vulnerable, and they are vulnerable because when
they get into these situations, they are young and inexperienced,
and the veteran older team who's been here a million times,
(19:10):
is very comfortable in these settings. And they have lost
two games that they should have won in this series.
And so like that's that's that is why, like the
next time this happens, the next time we see a
team full of early twenty year olds that win sixty
something games and dominates in the regular season. That is
(19:30):
why I bring this talking point up. It is not
a attempting to prevent them from getting the shine they deserve.
It is simply just something I've learned from a long
time watching basketball. The older veteran teams are just way
more comfortable in adversity than the younger basketball teams. And
(19:51):
maybe this will be the lesson, Maybe this will be
the one that triggers it. And maybe they beat the
Thunder six times in the series, or maybe they beat
the Nuggets six times in this series. But I just
think it's a really fascinating concept that the Thunder were
torching the Nuggets with a high variety attack, moving the ball,
driving kick hitting cutters, hitting shooters, and then they went
(20:14):
brain dead late in the game and played high io.
Because that's the kind of thing that can happen with
a young basketball team in those sorts of settings. All right,
let's move on to Cavs Pacers. Donovan Mitchell just logged
back to back forty point games in the playoffs for
the Cleveland Cavaliers for the first time since Lebron James
did so in the twenty sixteen NBA Finals. Finally got
(20:34):
his three point shot going a little bit. He was
two for eighteen in the first two games, but he
got several clean catch and shoot looks that helped him
build that rhythm. He got one on the left wing
and transitioned a couple ones on like other transition sequences.
Just those easy catch and shoot threes are great ways
to build rhythm as a three point shooter. He actually
hit five in this game, and he was able to
go to one of his patented step backs after the
(20:55):
Pacers cut the lead down to eleven in the early
fourth quarter. It was kind of like it felt like
one of those Pacers runs was coming. He had a
huge step back three that kind of stymied them, brought
it back to fourteen. They never got that close again.
That three point shot is a big piece of it
because especially when you're in a high volume offensive role
like he was before Garland got in the series, and
even now with Garland being in kind of a smaller role,
(21:18):
he's just leaned on for so much offensively, and if
you can step into threes and not come down, it's
such a great way to provide scoring without having to
like really exert yourself physically. But we got to emphasize
the job he was doing athletically. Donovan's moving probably like
he's always been an elite athlete, but it looks to
me like he's moving as well as ever, and he's
(21:39):
having these insane contact finishes in this series where he's
like it's almost like he gets that first angle and
then he just pops off the ground and just improvises,
like he pops off the ground, and then the ball
just starts win milling around at all these different angles
and then he finds a finishing angle to get a
shot off, whether it's like below the rim scoop or
(22:01):
he shoots like a really soft almost like floater layup
that he'll get a lot of really good roles on
right at the front of the rim. I just thought
he was fantastic tonight as he goes for a second
consecutive forty point game. Strus had his second consecutive twenty
point game. A little bit of everything, open catch and
shoot jump shots, contested catch and shoot jump shots, cutting, driving, closeouts,
(22:21):
running second side action, you know, big transition dunk there
in the fourth quarter. Darius Carland came back and like
he was a little rusty, but you could just tell
how much of greases the wheels for the offense. He
brings the ball up with pace, hits some sort of
action early in the possession and usually we'll get the
defense in rotation. And again, look beyond the box score.
The Calves logged a one thirty five offensive rating tonight
(22:44):
when Darius Garland was on the floor. But what I
want to zoom in on tonight is the defensive end
for the Cavs, because this is what I thought was
the ultimate, like kind of revealing thing that came out
of this game. We knew that the Calves could score
in this matchup. Donovan's been pretty comfortable all series. Obviously,
even down bodies, they were in position to win Game two.
(23:08):
But one of the things we talked about after Game
two is like their defense got cut to pieces in
Game one. And yeah, they came out in the first
quarter of Game two and they held the Pacers down,
but then for three straight quarters after that they gave
up at least thirty four points. They hadn't had any
sort of sustained success defensively against Indiana. Tonight they finally did.
(23:30):
They held him to just thirty eight points total in
the second and fourth quarters combined, when they built the
first big lead and when they put the game away.
So another way of looking at it is this was
the first time the Cavs had some defensive success against
the Pacers. So let's talk about how there's three concepts
that I want to get into. One the denial of
(23:51):
Tyres Halliburn to the zone defense that worked tonight, and
then three the job that Evan Mobley and Jared Allen
did on the back line tonight. So the denial of Haliburton.
This has been the Cavs game playing the entire series.
Started in Game one with sam Merril. They just in
the early part of that game didn't take the ball
out of the net enough times for them to be
(24:12):
able to do it as effectively. But basically what they're
doing is just trying to prevent Tyre's Halliburton from ever
having the basketball. So any made basket or defensive rebound,
whoever is closest to Halliburton will just run up and
basically hug him, like position themselves directly between Haliburton and
the ball and just not let him go get it.
(24:33):
Then on any ballscreen action, they're coming up super aggressive
and high to get him to get rid of the
ball if he ever does get the ball. So like
Tyree's will just sometimes just do a little shove off
move he'll get the ball, they'll run a ball screen,
they'll just immediately get the ball out of his hands.
And it's worked to varying degrees in this series. In
Game one, they tried Merrill on him, and Hollie still
got into a rhythm and he was still great. Game two,
(24:55):
they switched Truce on to him and it worked much better,
but then they lost control of Haliburton late in the game.
You could tell the difference between Struce and Meryl Strus
when he's kind of like bear hug denying Halliburton. He's
just stronger. So when Haliburtn tries to shed him through
that off ball contact, he's just having a harder time
than he did on Sam Meryl. But it succeeded in
a big way tonight in Game three, and it succeeded
(25:17):
in that it just killed his aggression. After taking fifteen
shots in game one, he's taken just nineteen shots total
in the last two games. Took only eight shots Tonight,
finished with just four points and five assists. A couple
of things. You can tell that even when he has
the ball, he's rushing, he's missing reads that he doesn't
(25:40):
usually miss, and he's not looking to be aggressive to score.
So the game plan is working. It's psyching Haliburton out.
We'll talk about Halliburton and how he can adjust to
that later, but that's the first piece of how the
Cavs are finally getting some defensive success against Indiana, denying
Tyre's Haliburton the basketball whenever they can. The second piece
of it was his own defense. We saw it to night.
(26:01):
In the second quarter, with about eleven minutes left, the
game was tied at thirty four, the Calves ran fifteen
possessions of a three to two zone. We'll get into
that concept here in a minute. The Pacers scored just
seven points on those fifteen possessions of zone. By the
end of the of the second quarter of the Calves
were up by twenty one points, so from a tie
(26:24):
game to a blowout, in large part because the Pacers
couldn't score against the zone. Now, a three to two
zone is very different from a two three zone. A
two three zone is built around taking away the rim,
and usually if you move the ball well against it,
you'll get wide open catch and shoot threes. Essentially, you
(26:44):
have the middle man whose responsibility it is to cover
the basket and depending on the scheme up to the elbows,
So like anybody who catches in the middle, sometimes the
middle guy will cover that. Sometimes different zones will use
different guys to cover that when they want to keep
someone at the basket, like we saw Houston in games
when they weren't playing Steph Curry, they would have Steven
Adams just sit right underneath the basket in their zone.
(27:06):
But a three to two zone is very different because
in a two three zone, the other four guys are
splitting the remainder of the three point line right, but
in a three to two zone, both of the bottom guys,
so again there's three guys up top, guy on the top,
guy on the wings, two guys that are on the bottom.
Both of those bottom guys are actually responsible for the corner.
(27:28):
So as a result, all five players have responsibility at
the three point line. And with the way that the
Cavs were doing it too, it's kind of similar to
what Houston was doing in the sense that, like as
ball and player movement would occur, guys would be willing
to change spots to make the whole thing function. But
there are opportunities against a three to two zone in
(27:49):
the interior that are not there against the outside and
it just flummixed Indiana early in the game. They did
do much better in the second half. They scored eleven
points in just nine possessions against the three to two,
so they did have some success there. The main thing
they started doing is two things. One high ball screens.
They started just screening the top man and having that
(28:09):
man roll into the middle of the floor, so they
were able to get some pocket passes into the middle
of the floor. They also got like a deep seal
for Thomas Bryant on a play where they had a
shooter in one corner that occupied one of the low
men and then they had Thomas Bryant just seal the
other low man, so it created a very big passing window.
They were able to throw them the ball and he got
a big dunk. So they kind of figured it out
in the second half. And I don't think we're going
to see a ton of that zone moving forward. I
(28:31):
think we'll see it a little bit here and there.
But again, as I often talked about, the zone defenses
are not meant to like permanently flummix NBA teams. If
they do, you stick with it, and we will see
that from time to time, Like you'll see long stretches
of it, like shot a lot today. You'll see it,
you know, like in what was a Game six against
the Warriors when the Rockets ran a bunch of their zone.
But like it's primarily its primary purpose is to just
(28:53):
disrupt rhythm. Oh you're used to playing this way, Well
how about we just you know, throw a giant wrench
in things and make you play a very different style
of basketball. And it worked for fifteen possessions in the
second quarter. It threw the Pacers out of whack. Yeah,
they eventually figured it out, but it didn't matter because
they were already down twenty one at that point. So like,
just this is why, like when I talk about with
coaches mixing up coverages, like you cats just run the
(29:16):
same damn thing every time. You got to do something
that just kind of disrupts the flow. It's like you
can't just you know, run high drop ten possessions in
a row, then low drop ten possessions in a row
in an adjustment. A lot of time, the best coaches
will mix in various different coverages multiple times in the
same quarter just to keep an offensive player or an
(29:36):
entire offense off balance. The third piece of it Evan
Mobley and Jared Allen multiple efforts at the rim. Defensively,
those two guys are pretty rough in game one, and
they've had their playoff moments where they haven't been very
good defensively over the years, but I thought they were
amazing tonight. This Indiana Pacers team applies so much rim
pressure with their speed, and they're just in a lot
(29:58):
of positions. In a lot of times, they're expected to
be in multiple places at once, step up and contest
a driver, then recover to someone at the basket. They
forced a bunch of misses at the rim or near
the rim for the Pacers tonight with their activity. All
three of those guys just did are really excuse me?
All three of those factors, I should say, Mobile and
(30:18):
Allen on the back line. The zone defense, the denial
of Halliburton finally had some sustained success slowing down Indiana's offense,
which I thought was the main takeaway from tonight's game.
And then for the Pacers moving forward, Tyres Halliburn's got
to find a way to get involved. The opportunities are
still there when he is aggressive to the ball, he
(30:39):
can still get a catch, he can shed the deny.
Then once they get up the floor, he's rushing against
the blitzes. He's usually so comfortable he's like rushing that
pass and not putting it into a place where they
can quickly compromise the defense. He missed two floaters early
in the game, one where he got blocked and one
where he missed it long, and on both of them
there were kickout reads, but he's like rushed. You can
(31:00):
tell like this is legitimately just kind of getting him
out of sorts. And so some of this is like
Haliburton just needs to take a deep breath, understand the
coverage and what it's doing, and find a way to
be impactful anyway, meaning like overcome that circumstance we talked
about shedding the deny and still looking to be aggressive
making the proper reads. There's also when you're being face guarded,
(31:23):
that guy is most likely not going to help as
on a screening action. I would like to see Carlisle
really be aggressive with Haliburton as a screener in game
four to try to just generate some openings for him there.
If he sets good screens, Struce will have no choice
but to help. If Streuce doesn't help, if he sets
a good screen, then there's an opportunity for someone to
(31:44):
drive downhill. Just I would just run a bunch of
Siakam Halliburton inverted pick and roll and just try to
get Siakam going downhill, or get Struce off of Halliburton
with a slower defender on Halliburton so that he can
get going with the dribble. But your offense is pre
dedicated on ty rees and his advantage creation, and right
now he's all out of whack and you gotta find
a way to get that right. All right, For about
(32:06):
ten minutes before we get out here, we're gonna take
some questions from the chat. We're gonna bring Jackson up
on stage. Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
First question is about Shake Gilles Alexander, who also had
a bit of a stinker tonight. Do you believe that
s J can solve the puzzles against elite Slash Smart
Defenses Slash. What is he actually struggling with so far
in this series?
Speaker 2 (32:26):
You know, it's interesting because I feel like j Dubb
has been more the player that has been like the
get the defense and rotation guy. He's bringing a lot
of downhill force, He's moving the ball quickly through action,
and it feels like Shay is more leaning on his
shot making in this series. That said, I did think
there were sequences in this game where he passed the
(32:48):
ball well, it was mostly in that late game sequence
where he just completely went away from the player movement. Also, secondarily,
I thought that he and you know, Jackson, you and
I were talking about this texting while the game is
still going, but he kind of got into like the
foul baity thing late against Christian Brown, and like that
just wasn't the right approach in that sort of situation,
(33:10):
especially since like he hit some shots, like there was
a Shane and Jada kind of had a nice shot
making fourth quarter there there were like five or six
like pretty tough jump shots that those dudes hit. But
in general, the two of them, you know, we talked
about this a lot on the show, like there's a
flow of the game piece that comes from a ball handler,
Like you've got to be in charge of the flow
of the game, and when you've got Chaed Holmgren on
(33:32):
the floor, you got to find a way to keep
him involved in those late game sequences when you like,
you've just got to keep that flow, keep that motion
late in games. And that's the main thing is in
both of these games that they've lost, Shay is kind
of hijacked things into a slow, high ISO attack, and
I just don't think it's been the right move.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Yeah, I agree, it does feel like they're and they're
choosing to drag the pace of it down at the
end of the those possession at the end of the game.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Why why are they doing that?
Speaker 3 (34:01):
They don't need to do that, That's not where they
have advantagies. Why are you let Why Why Isosha against
Christian Brown, who you know, who isn't a perfect defender,
but is their best defender for Shay, Why not involve
Jokchin the pick and roll? Why not try to do
something on the second side. It's it seems like from
a strategic standpoint, whether it's coaching or Shay, they're they're there.
(34:22):
It seems like they're intentionally putting themselves in tougher spots.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
No, they absolutely are. It's a there's a very difficult
way to play basketball. Trust me, I've figured this out
with the with the Lakers this year. You know, like
everyone keeps wondering like what's going on, Like why is
it that Golden State is causing so many more problems
for Minnesota? And it's like, here's the thing. I've watched
Luca before do this spam helio centric thing, and I've
(34:47):
seen it work, but it hasn't worked in a championship context.
And really, the only player ever in NBA history that's
won a championship with the heliocentric style is Lebron James.
And even then and then he became a very good
off ball player played off of Kyrie Irving and that
sort of thing, and he's probably the most conditioned athlete
in the history of the sport. So like that's an exception.
(35:10):
The truth is that's just a really hard way to
play basketball. It's a really hard way to play basketball
to hunt matchups in the middle of the floor, especially
against these elite defenses that and that's the thing, like
even Denver, a weaker defense that doesn't have elite defensive
personnel can have success when you become predictable with the
way that you attack, especially when the physicality is allowed.
(35:31):
And so it's like, ultimately the way they need to
approach these late game situations is the scale through the
scope of advantage creation. So if they're just gonna switch
any action with Shane J. Dubb And or Dort for instance,
bring up Jokic into the screening action, find a way
(35:53):
to get the defense in rotation and play the drive
and kick style that was actually giving you the success
you were having throughout the rest of the game.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, one hundred percent. Sort of on this note, can
you evaluate? Question is can you evaluate Mark Dagenall after
fouling early in the game in game one and then
tonight he had the weird challenge he didn't call time
out at the end of the fourth quarter and then
he started overtime with chat on the bench. Where how
do you feel like he's handled the series so far?
Speaker 2 (36:21):
I don't necessarily have an issue with the lack of
the time out there because Jadab it's kind of a
similar concept to what you do with Tatum on that
game winning attempt in the second Knicks game. In that situation,
you're going high. I soo obviously that's the game plan,
(36:42):
that's what they were doing, And there's something to be
said about, like Dad Jenn't needs to do a better
job of kind of like orchestrating the offense from the
sideline and being like, hey, guys, if we do this,
we're playing directly into their hands. But like I thought,
where they went wrong on that possession is they gave
the ball to JDub on the inbound and then Jup
gave the ball to Shay and like, even though she
(37:03):
hit a couple of shots in that stretch, I thought
Jay Dubb had a better matchup and was in better rhythm,
and so that was where it got weird. But you know,
in a lot of these situations, you know how it
is with me, guys, Like when it comes to on
court decision making, I primarily focus on the players, right
the challenge piece, the Chet Homer piece. Chet wasn't involved
(37:26):
in the offense at all at that point in the game,
so like, I kind of see where he's probably just thinking,
I want to get an extra like perimeter defender on
the floor in that situation, especially since Jamal Murray was
attacking the way that he was attacking at that point
in the game. I'm just not going to be as
on the coach for the decisions the players are making
(37:46):
on the floor, if that makes sense. But yeah, Mark
does need to do a good job in the off
day here of expressing to his team how they need
to change their approach when they end up in these
late game situations for sure.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
Next question, what does Minnesota have that OKAC is seemingly
unable to replicate against Denver? It seems like okay See
has more weapons and talent and skill almost across the board.
Is it just Gobert? What's the why does Minnesota seem
to have Denver's number?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Comparative size, Minnesota is substantially bigger than Oklahoma City, substantially bigger.
It was like Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Junior and
all these guys, all of their individual matchups are several
inches taller than what you have in the OKAC matchup.
It's just there's also a frontline depth piece. Like it's
all higher heart and sign and chet. You had a
(38:33):
steady diet of Karl Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert and
nasried in that series. They were just cycling bigs in
to just beat the shit out of Jokic. But like,
I mean, the other thing too, is like the there
is a little bit of a rim pressure piece with
ant that is very different than the rim pressure piece
(38:54):
you get from even Shay and J Dubb like ant
cut Denver to pieces that series. And like even in
Game seven, when he wasn't putting up the big numbers
necessarily like efficiency wise, in that second half, he was
in attack mode and he was getting that defense in
rotation consistently, and like there's a little bit of like
when this game slowed down, it's like, oh, way, J
(39:16):
Dub is an elite athlete, but he's not like ant athlete.
And Shae's an elite athlete, but he's not like ant athlete,
and they can actually kind of manage that dynamic a
little bit better. But I just the simple answer to
your question is just that Minnesota's defense is substantially bigger
than oklahoma sagy for sure.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Let's do one more question and then we'll go over
to playback for a bit. Aaron Gordon has now hit
obviously the game winning three in Game one, hit a
very very clutch three again tonight. Have you ever seen
a shooting turnaround this drastic?
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Okay, let's have some fun here, Jackson. What are examples
of guys in our lives that we can remember that
sucked at shooting and then became good at it?
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Kawhi Leonard is one that pops the mind from me.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
KWHI Leonard is a great example.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
I don't know statistically whether if it's as drastic, but
he pops the mind from me.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Yeah, I'm trying to think like Jason Kidd, that's a
good one towards the tail end of his career. Who's
the big Brook Lopez.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
I don't think Kawhi is even the best example. Why
is shockingly good three point percentage early on in his career.
He I don't know if he's even the best example, right.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
No, Yeah, you're right. Yeah, it was like weirdly good
with touch. He just wasn't a volume shooter until yeah
in his career. Well that I remember. That was the
thing with Kawhi is everyone was like in his pre
draft workout he'd made like eighty five percent of his
free throws or something, and everyone was, wow, this means
he can shoot.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Right right right.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
One that came to mind for me is uh, not
as obvious one, but just as I watched it a
lot as Derek White the season that he was not
that he was as bad of a shooter as Aaron
Gordon was, but he was like low thirties thirty one percent,
thirty percent, and then in that finals year that they
lost the Warriors, it was like, we're going to just
let him shoot it in the corner, and he missed
a bunch of shots, and now he's like thirty eight.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
That's a good one. Now, Derek White's a good one there. Yeah,
this is a this is a good question. But Aaron
Gordon is one of the classic ones in the sense
that it wasn't like typical player development, like I mean,
you could be like you could go to like Lebron
became a better shooter over the course of his career,
but it's like he never was that bad, you know,
he just got Aaron Gordon was a guy that like
that you would just leave completely wide open, and now
(41:21):
he's become a guy that like legitimately is a knockdown
three point shooter, and I feel like it's gonna go
in every time. Sneaky guy on this list too is
Russell Westbrook at this point in his career is like
suddenly becoming a guy that, like he had a big
three out of the left corner or was it out
of the right corner in tonight's game. But that's a
very good question, all right, guys, we're gonna head over
to playback again playback dot tv slash Hoops tonight. We're
(41:42):
gonna go a little bit shorter tonight, just for about
a half hour forty five minutes, but we'll meet you
guys over there in just a few minutes. We'll take
some callers, we'll take some questions from the chat, we
may watch a little bit of film again. I always
appreciate you guys for rocking with us and walking rocking
with the show. We will see you guys over on playback. So, guys,
as always, I appreciate you for listening and supporting Hoops tonight.
It would actually be really helpful for us if you
(42:03):
guys would take a second and leave a rating and
a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us.
But if you could take a minute to do that,
I'd really appreciate it. The volume
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(02:33):
You're at the volume Havy Friday. Everybody hope ath you
guys are having a great start to your weekend. The
NBA Playoffs have been very good to us this year
as we continue to just get incredible night of hoops.
After incredible night of hoops, the Cleveland Cavaliers go into
Indiana and look like the Cleveland Cavaliers for the first
time in this series. We're gonna be breaking that game
down at the tail end of the show, but we're
(02:53):
gonna be starting with yet another classic between the Denver
Nuggets and the Oklahoma City Thunder. We were joking, the
guys that iver joking before we started the show. The
Nuggets have now won probably the best game I've ever
seen Yokic play and the worst game I've ever seen
Yokic play in the same series, which was super fascinating.
(03:16):
So many different angles to get into a bunch of
guys for Denver stepped up some really exciting stuff for
Oklahoma City in their future, but then some of the
classic concerns surrounding the team coming to the surface late
in the game as their offense generates just twenty one
points in the last seventeen minutes of the game. A
lot of really ugly high ISO stuff. We're gonna be
(03:38):
breaking that down. We'll get into both of those games
from the perspective of both teams. At the tail end
of the show, we'll take about ten minutes of questions
from the chat, So make sure you guys in the
stream here subscribe to the Hoops and Night YouTube channel.
Drop your questions in there. We'll get to the chat
at the tail end, and then when we are done
here tonight, we'll be heading over to playback for our
(03:59):
after show. We have the link in the description here.
It's just playback dot tv slash Hoops Tonight. We'll be
hanging out there for an extra half hour forty five
minutes or so, taking some questions. We can take callers
or watch some film what they can do. A bunch
of stuff in the after show. You guys have the jop.
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(04:20):
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Jackson's releasing content throughout the year. Make sure you guys
subscribe or excuse me, follow us there the last minute. Least,
keep dropping those mail bag questions for the chat at
the tail end of the show. So that was probably
the worst Yokitch game I've ever seen, Shades of the
(04:44):
Minnesota Timberwolves series last year where his jump shot completely
leaves him. You know, I thought Jokic made a concerted
effort early in this game to try to hunt scoring opportunities.
It kind of like became one of those things where
at first he was hunting scoring because he knew that
that was what his team needed, and then it became
almost like a come hell or high water, I'm finding
a way to make a jump shot, and he just
(05:06):
he just couldn't get one to go, and it was
he was also just struggling making reads. Okay, see, he
was bringing some baseline doubles and doing a good job
gapping on the weak side in the two on one,
and so Jokicic was turning the ball over and getting
himself into some trouble. He was struggling to finish around
the rim, smoked several shots at like point blank range
right at the front of the rim. And yet here
(05:27):
we are, Denver's up two to one in this series
and in a really strong position when you consider the
fact that it's highly likely that Nikola Jokic has a
massive bounce back type of game in Game four, a
very very important game of this series. My guess is
that whoever wins Game four will win this series. And
if Denver's going to win, they're gonna need a much
(05:48):
better effort from Jokics. That said, I want to give
Yoga some credit. He wanted some defensive battles late, he
won some rebounding battles late, and he did get two
big buckets in ot But I want to focus on
a couple of other nuggets that I thought stepped up
in a big way down the stretch of this game,
first of all, Jamal Murray, as it became obvious that
Jokis was not able to generate a quality look for himself,
(06:09):
at least not one that he could knock down. Down
the stretch of this game, Jamal Murray had to really
hit the gas as a score and it wasn't always pretty. Again,
like people, when you're playing against a defense like this,
especially as a guard, it's not gonna be pretty. It's
not gonna be super efficient, it's gonna be a chore.
Jamal Murray missed more shots than he made tonight. There
(06:30):
were some ugly ones. He had a couple shots around
the room. He had an airball layup, he had a
spinning like he tried to like shoot a three sixty
layup in traffic that he kind of just threw into
the bottom of the rim. They were difficult shots because
there were a lot of late clock situations where he
had to generate something. But then there were also situations
where he was able to make something happen. A little
(06:51):
step back over Isaiah Hartenstein along the left baseline, big
threes at a couple of points in this game. He
was just found a way to generate offense. He's been
always a very gifted finisher in traffic to a couple
of nifty finishes right at the front of the rim.
And then Aaron Gordon. There are so many players in
the league this year that have just in this playoff run,
(07:12):
that have just been consistently great in the clutch, over
and over again. Tyres Halliburton, Jalen Brunson, Aaron Gordon. Again,
he's already had two game winners in this postseason run.
Hits the three that sends this to overtime and extends
the game. I want to shout out Aaron Gordon defensively
as well. He got cooked a little bit by j
Dubb at various points in the fourth quarter, but he
(07:34):
was playing good defense. To his credit. He was hitting
some tough, contested shots and then he got several stops
late when he needed to. And then I also have
to shine the light on Christian Brown. I thought, Christian Brown,
you know, it's been interesting. There have been two stretches
of this series where I feel like he's played good
defense on Shae Gildes Alexander crunch time of Game one,
crunch time of Game three. Now, I think there's kind
(07:55):
of an overarching theme there involving slow down half court basketball,
and we'll dive further into that concept a little bit
later on in the show, But there was a stretch
there in that third quarter where I'm like, he's just
not doing a good enough job on Shae or Jdev.
He's just getting beat to the spot over and over
again at the point of attack. A lot of times
he wasn't even offering any sort of physical contact or
(08:17):
resistance until Shaye or Jadev were in the lane. He
just wasn't doing a good enough job. But they are
in crunch time over and over again, beating Shaye to
the spot on multiple occasions, actually forcing Shaye into trying
to grip for fouls, which obviously wasn't going to work
in this type of game. Late Christian Brown Two's credit
I talk about all the time the playoffs are about
(08:39):
solving puzzles, and while he struggled in the meat and
potatoes of this series, there have been two pivotal stretches
or he's been able to get multiple stops against Shake
Gildess Alexander, solving the puzzle in that sort of situation,
and honestly, guys, like if we zoom out on this series.
It's a whole lot of okc outplaying Denver and Denver
(09:02):
just pulling these games out late. And there's two different
ways to look at that. Right, there's the obvious fact
that Oklahoma City is very, very good and that they're
going to be very difficult to put out of their misery.
This is not a oh, you're up to one, you're
in control. This is they win game four that things
going back to Oklahoma City, You're probably not winning this series.
So like everything still hangs in the balance. But the
(09:23):
flip side to look at that is there's a lot
of opportunity for Denver to play better. I thought Oklahoma
City outworked Denver tonight. I thought they played with more
force throughout the game tonight they got Denver got demolished
on the glass again, giving up eighteen offensive rebounds if
they only got five offensive rebounds, and if we go back,
(09:44):
because even further back into game two, they didn't have
much success on the offensive glass relative to Game one.
In that game either, they had more rebounds offensively in
game one than they did in Game two in game
three combined, and so ok See has like completely flipped
the script on the whole Yokic dominating inside dynamic. They
(10:06):
flipped the script on the whole offensive rebounding dynamic. They've
taken the two arguably the two biggest advantages that Denver
has in this series, and they've flipped them in their direction,
as Yokich has been pretty bad the last two games
and they haven't been able to do much damage on
the offensive glass. And so again there's two ways to
look at that. There's okay se has clear advantages that
(10:27):
they're showing, and and then there's this all obvious fact
that Denver can play much better. Denver is capable of
doing more physical damage on the glass than they've been doing.
Yokich is obviously capable of playing a lot better. I
talked about this after Game two. The advantages for the
two teams are pretty clear, right Like for ok see
it's dribble penetration. They are dominating these games, and the
(10:49):
meat and potatoes just in those semi transition pushes with
Shay and j dubb quickly within like the first you know,
seven to ten seconds of the shot clock getting deep
dribble penetration, and then everything really pascating from there, all
of a sudden you're drawing tons of helpers, which is
putting your defense in rotation. Okay See, outside of crunch
(11:10):
time in the series, has passed the ball very well.
They're moving the ball out of those dribble penetration situations.
As Denver's rotating, okay See is getting offensive rebounds because
guys aren't matched up to box out because they're in rotation.
There's a lot of damage that Oklahoma City is doing
early in possessions with their dribble penetration that is trickling
(11:32):
down to all of these other elements of the game.
And for Denver, their advantage is very clearly the size
with Jokic on the interior and their ability to contend
on the offensive glass. And what's crazy is, for the
most part throughout this series, okay See has done a
better job of leveraging their advantages. But Denver, over and
(11:53):
over again, as long as they're within striking distance late,
has been the better half court team. And that's where
we got to dig into it a little bit deeper.
So JDub had a beautiful game tonight. I thought he
was in command of the floor. Moved the ball well
on ball and off ball, scoring good on ball, playmaking.
Jadub had a great game, but once again, when things
(12:15):
got slowed down, when things really slowed down late in
the game, those semi transition opportunities aren't there. I've got
a head of steam because I started my drive out
fifty feet from the basket and Christian Brown's picking me
up at the foul line. That's not there anymore. It's
slowed down. It's a knockdown, dragout half court fight. And
in those situations in both games, in game one, in
(12:37):
Game two, it's turned into a lot of high ISOs,
a lot of high ISOs for JDub, a lot of
high ISOs for Shay, a lot of tough in traffic,
contested shots in the middle of the floor, not a
lot of kickouts. How many times did you see a
kickout out of those clutch situations for the Thunder, they're
(12:58):
not there. So similar to Game one, Denver was consistently
able to offer late help. A lot of these shots
are being shot over double teams, over late secondary contests,
just a lot of traffic in the middle of the floor,
whereas with Denver there's like a solid two man game
taking place in the middle of the floor where you
(13:19):
don't know where it's gonna go. It might be Jamal
running action and looking for something from the three point line,
something in the mid range. It might be Yo kitch
in the pocket. It might be Yo kitchen the post.
Oh you overplayed yokich on a roll and left Aaron
Gordon wide open in the left corner. He's gonna hit
a three to burn you and tie the game. There's
more variety, there's more consistency. There is a better, more reliable,
(13:41):
clutch offense for Denver in this series, and so that's
really where this is gonna swing. I think if it's
close in Game four late, Denver's gonna win, and they're
probably gonna win the series. Oklahoma City does have a
pathway though, with their speed, with their defense to build
margin against this team. It's kind of similar to the
(14:01):
way I felt about the Clippers series. There's just not
a team in the league that's gonna be able to
execute the way Denver does in the half court Layton games.
They're just the very best at it. You know, I
used to, you know, I have a lot of like
random basketball debates with my friends who covered different teams
around the league, And I remember samis fondi Ario covers
the Warriors. He texted me once after the Lakers lost
(14:25):
that regular season game, the late regular season game, the
first Luka Doncic game against the Warriors, and he goes,
he just said to me, he goes, like, I love
it when teams go small ball against the Warriors because
just no one's ever going to play small ball as
well as we do. And it's such a simple idea,
but it's so true because the Warriors have been doing
the Draymond at center thing literally since twenty fourteen. Like that,
(14:49):
They've been doing it over a decade. They have every
detail of that style of game down pat same thing
goes for Denver. You're just not gonna eat them in
the clutch when you do. It's bizarre. What was the
game they lost to the Clippers. You had Aaron Gordon
missed a wide open dunk right under the rim. I
(15:09):
can't remember what mistake Jokic made, but Jokic made a
big mistake down the stretch of that game. They just
that was like the exception. Every other time you end
up in these close games against Denver, I've I've been
on the wrong side of this, guys. I've rooted for
the Lakers the last couple of years, so like they
are just completely indomitable in a tie game with five
minutes left. It's it's one of the crazier things I've
(15:31):
seen in my time following the league. And they just
got it done again tonight against Oklahoma City. And like,
there's obvious the main thing if you're looking at it
from Okac's standpoint, in the way that they can try
to avoid that slow down environment. Can't change the way
you play. Can't change the way you play just because
it slows down late, especially when you're going against Denver.
(15:53):
You gotta keep pushing in transition, you gotta attack early
in possessions. You got to move the ball. A good
semi transition drive that kicks leads to an advantage. Yeah,
you're right. You're gonna have to count on somebody like
a lou Dort to drive a close out, but you're
gonna start the engine, and your speed is such an
advantage when you're in motion, when there's ball in player
(16:14):
movement against this team, But when you just stare down
Jamal Murray in an ISO at the top of the
key and you can gap into driving lanes, it's just
an easier thing for Denver to deal with. You're playing
into their style of game, and so that's gonna be
the main thing that they're gonna have to flip again
moving forward in the series. I left Game two feeling
(16:36):
coin flip slight edge OKC. Now at Game three, I'm
coin flip slight edge Denver. Denver will be likely. I'm
not even sure what the lion is in game four.
I haven't looked yet, but I give Denver a slightly
better than a coin flip chance of winning Game four
at home. And if they win that game, I think
they're gonna win the series, because all of a sudden,
OKC has to win three games in a row and
(16:58):
Denver just has the best player in the world on
the time, and it can go either way. But I mean,
you gotta be kicking yourself if you're a thunderfan, because
you played well enough to win all three of these
games and you're down to one in this series. And like,
I've gotten into this argument a lot with a bunch
of people, and like I want to be clear, this
series is not over. I would not be the slightest
bit surprised if Oklahoma City won this series. And with
(17:19):
the way Boston's playing, guys, you could talk me into
Oklahoma City right now being the most likely team to
win the championship. So this is not some sort of
big sweeping Oklahoma City's bad kind of take. But I've
been preaching this all year. The team full of early
twenty year olds that's gonna play way harder than everybody
in the regular season, that's going to put up dramatic
(17:41):
statistical markers, that are going to do things like Jackson,
what was the odds before it was minus six hundred
after minus yeah, after Game one when Denver won Oka,
See was minus six hundred to win the series, Like,
the odds are being fed by these number and it's everyone.
It's breaking everybody's brain. Greatest net rating in NBA history
(18:05):
and all this kind of stuff, And all year long,
I've said, yeah, they're awesome. But young basketball players, I've
been preaching this for years. What are young basketball players?
What is the behavior of young basketball players? They struggle
to have success and then replicate it, and they struggle
to have failure, identify it, and avoid it. Veteran basketball
(18:26):
teams have succeeded and failed so many times that when
they identify success, they hammer it, and when they see failure,
they quickly identify it and they remove it from their diet.
They trim the fat. That is the difference between grown
ass men playing basketball and dudes in their early twenties.
And again that does not mean okay, so you can't
win the series. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised
(18:48):
if they won Game four, won Game five, one, game six,
beat the shit out of Minnesota, went into the finals,
and beat Boston or New York or Indiana or Cleveland,
whoever it is that comes out, I would not be surprised.
But they are vulnerable, and they are vulnerable because when
they get into these situations, they are young and inexperienced,
and the veteran older team who's been here a million times,
(19:10):
is very comfortable in these settings. And they have lost
two games that they should have won in this series.
And so like that's that's that is why, like the
next time this happens, the next time we see a
team full of early twenty year olds that win sixty
something games and dominates in the regular season. That is
(19:30):
why I bring this talking point up. It is not
a attempting to prevent them from getting the shine they deserve.
It is simply just something I've learned from a long
time watching basketball. The older veteran teams are just way
more comfortable in adversity than the younger basketball teams. And
(19:51):
maybe this will be the lesson, Maybe this will be
the one that triggers it. And maybe they beat the
Thunder six times in the series, or maybe they beat
the Nuggets six times in this series. But I just
think it's a really fascinating concept that the Thunder were
torching the Nuggets with a high variety attack, moving the ball,
driving kick hitting cutters, hitting shooters, and then they went
(20:14):
brain dead late in the game and played high io.
Because that's the kind of thing that can happen with
a young basketball team in those sorts of settings. All right,
let's move on to Cavs Pacers. Donovan Mitchell just logged
back to back forty point games in the playoffs for
the Cleveland Cavaliers for the first time since Lebron James
did so in the twenty sixteen NBA Finals. Finally got
(20:34):
his three point shot going a little bit. He was
two for eighteen in the first two games, but he
got several clean catch and shoot looks that helped him
build that rhythm. He got one on the left wing
and transitioned a couple ones on like other transition sequences.
Just those easy catch and shoot threes are great ways
to build rhythm as a three point shooter. He actually
hit five in this game, and he was able to
go to one of his patented step backs after the
(20:55):
Pacers cut the lead down to eleven in the early
fourth quarter. It was kind of like it felt like
one of those Pacers runs was coming. He had a
huge step back three that kind of stymied them, brought
it back to fourteen. They never got that close again.
That three point shot is a big piece of it
because especially when you're in a high volume offensive role
like he was before Garland got in the series, and
even now with Garland being in kind of a smaller role,
(21:18):
he's just leaned on for so much offensively, and if
you can step into threes and not come down, it's
such a great way to provide scoring without having to
like really exert yourself physically. But we got to emphasize
the job he was doing athletically. Donovan's moving probably like
he's always been an elite athlete, but it looks to
me like he's moving as well as ever, and he's
(21:39):
having these insane contact finishes in this series where he's
like it's almost like he gets that first angle and
then he just pops off the ground and just improvises,
like he pops off the ground, and then the ball
just starts win milling around at all these different angles
and then he finds a finishing angle to get a
shot off, whether it's like below the rim scoop or
(22:01):
he shoots like a really soft almost like floater layup
that he'll get a lot of really good roles on
right at the front of the rim. I just thought
he was fantastic tonight as he goes for a second
consecutive forty point game. Strus had his second consecutive twenty
point game. A little bit of everything, open catch and
shoot jump shots, contested catch and shoot jump shots, cutting, driving, closeouts,
(22:21):
running second side action, you know, big transition dunk there
in the fourth quarter. Darius Carland came back and like
he was a little rusty, but you could just tell
how much of greases the wheels for the offense. He
brings the ball up with pace, hits some sort of
action early in the possession and usually we'll get the
defense in rotation. And again, look beyond the box score.
The Calves logged a one thirty five offensive rating tonight
(22:44):
when Darius Garland was on the floor. But what I
want to zoom in on tonight is the defensive end
for the Cavs, because this is what I thought was
the ultimate, like kind of revealing thing that came out
of this game. We knew that the Calves could score
in this matchup. Donovan's been pretty comfortable all series. Obviously,
even down bodies, they were in position to win Game two.
(23:08):
But one of the things we talked about after Game
two is like their defense got cut to pieces in
Game one. And yeah, they came out in the first
quarter of Game two and they held the Pacers down,
but then for three straight quarters after that they gave
up at least thirty four points. They hadn't had any
sort of sustained success defensively against Indiana. Tonight they finally did.
(23:30):
They held him to just thirty eight points total in
the second and fourth quarters combined, when they built the
first big lead and when they put the game away.
So another way of looking at it is this was
the first time the Cavs had some defensive success against
the Pacers. So let's talk about how there's three concepts
that I want to get into. One the denial of
(23:51):
Tyres Halliburn to the zone defense that worked tonight, and
then three the job that Evan Mobley and Jared Allen
did on the back line tonight. So the denial of Haliburton.
This has been the Cavs game playing the entire series.
Started in Game one with sam Merril. They just in
the early part of that game didn't take the ball
out of the net enough times for them to be
(24:12):
able to do it as effectively. But basically what they're
doing is just trying to prevent Tyre's Halliburton from ever
having the basketball. So any made basket or defensive rebound,
whoever is closest to Halliburton will just run up and
basically hug him, like position themselves directly between Haliburton and
the ball and just not let him go get it.
(24:33):
Then on any ballscreen action, they're coming up super aggressive
and high to get him to get rid of the
ball if he ever does get the ball. So like
Tyree's will just sometimes just do a little shove off
move he'll get the ball, they'll run a ball screen,
they'll just immediately get the ball out of his hands.
And it's worked to varying degrees in this series. In
Game one, they tried Merrill on him, and Hollie still
got into a rhythm and he was still great. Game two,
(24:55):
they switched Truce on to him and it worked much better,
but then they lost control of Haliburton late in the game.
You could tell the difference between Struce and Meryl Strus
when he's kind of like bear hug denying Halliburton. He's
just stronger. So when Haliburtn tries to shed him through
that off ball contact, he's just having a harder time
than he did on Sam Meryl. But it succeeded in
a big way tonight in Game three, and it succeeded
(25:17):
in that it just killed his aggression. After taking fifteen
shots in game one, he's taken just nineteen shots total
in the last two games. Took only eight shots Tonight,
finished with just four points and five assists. A couple
of things. You can tell that even when he has
the ball, he's rushing, he's missing reads that he doesn't
(25:40):
usually miss, and he's not looking to be aggressive to score.
So the game plan is working. It's psyching Haliburton out.
We'll talk about Halliburton and how he can adjust to
that later, but that's the first piece of how the
Cavs are finally getting some defensive success against Indiana, denying
Tyre's Haliburton the basketball whenever they can. The second piece
of it was his own defense. We saw it to night.
(26:01):
In the second quarter, with about eleven minutes left, the
game was tied at thirty four, the Calves ran fifteen
possessions of a three to two zone. We'll get into
that concept here in a minute. The Pacers scored just
seven points on those fifteen possessions of zone. By the
end of the of the second quarter of the Calves
were up by twenty one points, so from a tie
(26:24):
game to a blowout, in large part because the Pacers
couldn't score against the zone. Now, a three to two
zone is very different from a two three zone. A
two three zone is built around taking away the rim,
and usually if you move the ball well against it,
you'll get wide open catch and shoot threes. Essentially, you
(26:44):
have the middle man whose responsibility it is to cover
the basket and depending on the scheme up to the elbows,
So like anybody who catches in the middle, sometimes the
middle guy will cover that. Sometimes different zones will use
different guys to cover that when they want to keep
someone at the basket, like we saw Houston in games
when they weren't playing Steph Curry, they would have Steven
Adams just sit right underneath the basket in their zone.
(27:06):
But a three to two zone is very different because
in a two three zone, the other four guys are
splitting the remainder of the three point line right, but
in a three to two zone, both of the bottom guys,
so again there's three guys up top, guy on the top,
guy on the wings, two guys that are on the bottom.
Both of those bottom guys are actually responsible for the corner.
(27:28):
So as a result, all five players have responsibility at
the three point line. And with the way that the
Cavs were doing it too, it's kind of similar to
what Houston was doing in the sense that, like as
ball and player movement would occur, guys would be willing
to change spots to make the whole thing function. But
there are opportunities against a three to two zone in
(27:49):
the interior that are not there against the outside and
it just flummixed Indiana early in the game. They did
do much better in the second half. They scored eleven
points in just nine possessions against the three to two,
so they did have some success there. The main thing
they started doing is two things. One high ball screens.
They started just screening the top man and having that
(28:09):
man roll into the middle of the floor, so they
were able to get some pocket passes into the middle
of the floor. They also got like a deep seal
for Thomas Bryant on a play where they had a
shooter in one corner that occupied one of the low
men and then they had Thomas Bryant just seal the
other low man, so it created a very big passing window.
They were able to throw them the ball and he got
a big dunk. So they kind of figured it out
in the second half. And I don't think we're going
to see a ton of that zone moving forward. I
(28:31):
think we'll see it a little bit here and there.
But again, as I often talked about, the zone defenses
are not meant to like permanently flummix NBA teams. If
they do, you stick with it, and we will see
that from time to time, Like you'll see long stretches
of it, like shot a lot today. You'll see it,
you know, like in what was a Game six against
the Warriors when the Rockets ran a bunch of their zone.
But like it's primarily its primary purpose is to just
(28:53):
disrupt rhythm. Oh you're used to playing this way, Well
how about we just you know, throw a giant wrench
in things and make you play a very different style
of basketball. And it worked for fifteen possessions in the
second quarter. It threw the Pacers out of whack. Yeah,
they eventually figured it out, but it didn't matter because
they were already down twenty one at that point. So like,
just this is why, like when I talk about with
coaches mixing up coverages, like you cats just run the
(29:16):
same damn thing every time. You got to do something
that just kind of disrupts the flow. It's like you
can't just you know, run high drop ten possessions in
a row, then low drop ten possessions in a row
in an adjustment. A lot of time, the best coaches
will mix in various different coverages multiple times in the
same quarter just to keep an offensive player or an
(29:36):
entire offense off balance. The third piece of it Evan
Mobley and Jared Allen multiple efforts at the rim. Defensively,
those two guys are pretty rough in game one, and
they've had their playoff moments where they haven't been very
good defensively over the years, but I thought they were
amazing tonight. This Indiana Pacers team applies so much rim
pressure with their speed, and they're just in a lot
(29:58):
of positions. In a lot of times, they're expected to
be in multiple places at once, step up and contest
a driver, then recover to someone at the basket. They
forced a bunch of misses at the rim or near
the rim for the Pacers tonight with their activity. All
three of those guys just did are really excuse me?
All three of those factors, I should say, Mobile and
(30:18):
Allen on the back line. The zone defense, the denial
of Halliburton finally had some sustained success slowing down Indiana's offense,
which I thought was the main takeaway from tonight's game.
And then for the Pacers moving forward, Tyres Halliburn's got
to find a way to get involved. The opportunities are
still there when he is aggressive to the ball, he
(30:39):
can still get a catch, he can shed the deny.
Then once they get up the floor, he's rushing against
the blitzes. He's usually so comfortable he's like rushing that
pass and not putting it into a place where they
can quickly compromise the defense. He missed two floaters early
in the game, one where he got blocked and one
where he missed it long, and on both of them
there were kickout reads, but he's like rushed. You can
(31:00):
tell like this is legitimately just kind of getting him
out of sorts. And so some of this is like
Haliburton just needs to take a deep breath, understand the
coverage and what it's doing, and find a way to
be impactful anyway, meaning like overcome that circumstance we talked
about shedding the deny and still looking to be aggressive
making the proper reads. There's also when you're being face guarded,
(31:23):
that guy is most likely not going to help as
on a screening action. I would like to see Carlisle
really be aggressive with Haliburton as a screener in game
four to try to just generate some openings for him there.
If he sets good screens, Struce will have no choice
but to help. If Streuce doesn't help, if he sets
a good screen, then there's an opportunity for someone to
(31:44):
drive downhill. Just I would just run a bunch of
Siakam Halliburton inverted pick and roll and just try to
get Siakam going downhill, or get Struce off of Halliburton
with a slower defender on Halliburton so that he can
get going with the dribble. But your offense is pre
dedicated on ty rees and his advantage creation, and right
now he's all out of whack and you gotta find
a way to get that right. All right, For about
(32:06):
ten minutes before we get out here, we're gonna take
some questions from the chat. We're gonna bring Jackson up
on stage. Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
First question is about Shake Gilles Alexander, who also had
a bit of a stinker tonight. Do you believe that
s J can solve the puzzles against elite Slash Smart
Defenses Slash. What is he actually struggling with so far
in this series?
Speaker 2 (32:26):
You know, it's interesting because I feel like j Dubb
has been more the player that has been like the
get the defense and rotation guy. He's bringing a lot
of downhill force, He's moving the ball quickly through action,
and it feels like Shay is more leaning on his
shot making in this series. That said, I did think
there were sequences in this game where he passed the
(32:48):
ball well, it was mostly in that late game sequence
where he just completely went away from the player movement. Also, secondarily,
I thought that he and you know, Jackson, you and
I were talking about this texting while the game is
still going, but he kind of got into like the
foul baity thing late against Christian Brown, and like that
just wasn't the right approach in that sort of situation,
(33:10):
especially since like he hit some shots, like there was
a Shane and Jada kind of had a nice shot
making fourth quarter there there were like five or six
like pretty tough jump shots that those dudes hit. But
in general, the two of them, you know, we talked
about this a lot on the show, like there's a
flow of the game piece that comes from a ball handler,
Like you've got to be in charge of the flow
of the game, and when you've got Chaed Holmgren on
(33:32):
the floor, you got to find a way to keep
him involved in those late game sequences when you like,
you've just got to keep that flow, keep that motion
late in games. And that's the main thing is in
both of these games that they've lost, Shay is kind
of hijacked things into a slow, high ISO attack, and
I just don't think it's been the right move.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Yeah, I agree, it does feel like they're and they're
choosing to drag the pace of it down at the
end of the those possession at the end of the game.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Why why are they doing that?
Speaker 3 (34:01):
They don't need to do that, That's not where they
have advantagies. Why are you let Why Why Isosha against
Christian Brown, who you know, who isn't a perfect defender,
but is their best defender for Shay, Why not involve
Jokchin the pick and roll? Why not try to do
something on the second side. It's it seems like from
a strategic standpoint, whether it's coaching or Shay, they're they're there.
(34:22):
It seems like they're intentionally putting themselves in tougher spots.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
No, they absolutely are. It's a there's a very difficult
way to play basketball. Trust me, I've figured this out
with the with the Lakers this year. You know, like
everyone keeps wondering like what's going on, Like why is
it that Golden State is causing so many more problems
for Minnesota? And it's like, here's the thing. I've watched
Luca before do this spam helio centric thing, and I've
(34:47):
seen it work, but it hasn't worked in a championship context.
And really, the only player ever in NBA history that's
won a championship with the heliocentric style is Lebron James.
And even then and then he became a very good
off ball player played off of Kyrie Irving and that
sort of thing, and he's probably the most conditioned athlete
in the history of the sport. So like that's an exception.
(35:10):
The truth is that's just a really hard way to
play basketball. It's a really hard way to play basketball
to hunt matchups in the middle of the floor, especially
against these elite defenses that and that's the thing, like
even Denver, a weaker defense that doesn't have elite defensive
personnel can have success when you become predictable with the
way that you attack, especially when the physicality is allowed.
(35:31):
And so it's like, ultimately the way they need to
approach these late game situations is the scale through the
scope of advantage creation. So if they're just gonna switch
any action with Shane J. Dubb And or Dort for instance,
bring up Jokic into the screening action, find a way
(35:53):
to get the defense in rotation and play the drive
and kick style that was actually giving you the success
you were having throughout the rest of the game.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, one hundred percent. Sort of on this note, can
you evaluate? Question is can you evaluate Mark Dagenall after
fouling early in the game in game one and then
tonight he had the weird challenge he didn't call time
out at the end of the fourth quarter and then
he started overtime with chat on the bench. Where how
do you feel like he's handled the series so far?
Speaker 2 (36:21):
I don't necessarily have an issue with the lack of
the time out there because Jadab it's kind of a
similar concept to what you do with Tatum on that
game winning attempt in the second Knicks game. In that situation,
you're going high. I soo obviously that's the game plan,
(36:42):
that's what they were doing, And there's something to be
said about, like Dad Jenn't needs to do a better
job of kind of like orchestrating the offense from the
sideline and being like, hey, guys, if we do this,
we're playing directly into their hands. But like I thought,
where they went wrong on that possession is they gave
the ball to JDub on the inbound and then Jup
gave the ball to Shay and like, even though she
(37:03):
hit a couple of shots in that stretch, I thought
Jay Dubb had a better matchup and was in better rhythm,
and so that was where it got weird. But you know,
in a lot of these situations, you know how it
is with me, guys, Like when it comes to on
court decision making, I primarily focus on the players, right
the challenge piece, the Chet Homer piece. Chet wasn't involved
(37:26):
in the offense at all at that point in the game,
so like, I kind of see where he's probably just thinking,
I want to get an extra like perimeter defender on
the floor in that situation, especially since Jamal Murray was
attacking the way that he was attacking at that point
in the game. I'm just not going to be as
on the coach for the decisions the players are making
(37:46):
on the floor, if that makes sense. But yeah, Mark
does need to do a good job in the off
day here of expressing to his team how they need
to change their approach when they end up in these
late game situations for sure.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
Next question, what does Minnesota have that OKAC is seemingly
unable to replicate against Denver? It seems like okay See
has more weapons and talent and skill almost across the board.
Is it just Gobert? What's the why does Minnesota seem
to have Denver's number?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Comparative size, Minnesota is substantially bigger than Oklahoma City, substantially bigger.
It was like Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Junior and
all these guys, all of their individual matchups are several
inches taller than what you have in the OKAC matchup.
It's just there's also a frontline depth piece. Like it's
all higher heart and sign and chet. You had a
(38:33):
steady diet of Karl Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert and
nasried in that series. They were just cycling bigs in
to just beat the shit out of Jokic. But like,
I mean, the other thing too, is like the there
is a little bit of a rim pressure piece with
ant that is very different than the rim pressure piece
(38:54):
you get from even Shay and J Dubb like ant
cut Denver to pieces that series. And like even in
Game seven, when he wasn't putting up the big numbers
necessarily like efficiency wise, in that second half, he was
in attack mode and he was getting that defense in
rotation consistently, and like there's a little bit of like
when this game slowed down, it's like, oh, way, J
(39:16):
Dub is an elite athlete, but he's not like ant athlete.
And Shae's an elite athlete, but he's not like ant athlete,
and they can actually kind of manage that dynamic a
little bit better. But I just the simple answer to
your question is just that Minnesota's defense is substantially bigger
than oklahoma sagy for sure.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Let's do one more question and then we'll go over
to playback for a bit. Aaron Gordon has now hit
obviously the game winning three in Game one, hit a
very very clutch three again tonight. Have you ever seen
a shooting turnaround this drastic?
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Okay, let's have some fun here, Jackson. What are examples
of guys in our lives that we can remember that
sucked at shooting and then became good at it?
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Kawhi Leonard is one that pops the mind from me.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
KWHI Leonard is a great example.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
I don't know statistically whether if it's as drastic, but
he pops the mind from me.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Yeah, I'm trying to think like Jason Kidd, that's a
good one towards the tail end of his career. Who's
the big Brook Lopez.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
I don't think Kawhi is even the best example. Why
is shockingly good three point percentage early on in his career.
He I don't know if he's even the best example, right.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
No, Yeah, you're right. Yeah, it was like weirdly good
with touch. He just wasn't a volume shooter until yeah
in his career. Well that I remember. That was the
thing with Kawhi is everyone was like in his pre
draft workout he'd made like eighty five percent of his
free throws or something, and everyone was, wow, this means
he can shoot.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Right right right.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
One that came to mind for me is uh, not
as obvious one, but just as I watched it a
lot as Derek White the season that he was not
that he was as bad of a shooter as Aaron
Gordon was, but he was like low thirties thirty one percent,
thirty percent, and then in that finals year that they
lost the Warriors, it was like, we're going to just
let him shoot it in the corner, and he missed
a bunch of shots, and now he's like thirty eight.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
That's a good one. Now, Derek White's a good one there. Yeah,
this is a this is a good question. But Aaron
Gordon is one of the classic ones in the sense
that it wasn't like typical player development, like I mean,
you could be like you could go to like Lebron
became a better shooter over the course of his career,
but it's like he never was that bad, you know,
he just got Aaron Gordon was a guy that like
that you would just leave completely wide open, and now
(41:21):
he's become a guy that like legitimately is a knockdown
three point shooter, and I feel like it's gonna go
in every time. Sneaky guy on this list too is
Russell Westbrook at this point in his career is like
suddenly becoming a guy that, like he had a big
three out of the left corner or was it out
of the right corner in tonight's game. But that's a
very good question, all right, guys, we're gonna head over
to playback again playback dot tv slash Hoops tonight. We're
(41:42):
gonna go a little bit shorter tonight, just for about
a half hour forty five minutes, but we'll meet you
guys over there in just a few minutes. We'll take
some callers, we'll take some questions from the chat, we
may watch a little bit of film again. I always
appreciate you guys for rocking with us and walking rocking
with the show. We will see you guys over on playback. So, guys,
as always, I appreciate you for listening and supporting Hoops tonight.
It would actually be really helpful for us if you
(42:03):
guys would take a second and leave a rating and
a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us.
But if you could take a minute to do that,
I'd really appreciate it. The volume
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Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre
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