Jason reacts live after the Golden State Warriors defeat the Houston Rockets in Game 7. Jason also reacts to the Indiana Pacers Game 1 road win vs the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference 2nd round. Jason wraps up by recapping his 1st round series predictions and discusses what he’s learned so far in the NBA playoffs.
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see dkang dot co slash audio. All right, welcome to
(02:32):
hoops tonight. You're at the Volume. Happy someday everybody. Hope
all of you guys are having a great night. Very
excited to break down Game seven of the Warriors and
the Rockets. Is the Warriors advance. We also got Game
one of Cavs Pacers, a very interesting game where the
Pacers threw a great punch. Sorry for the delay getting
over here tonight. I had to work with mister Colin
Cowherd tonight. He's the boss mans. You never say no,
(02:53):
But I broke down a bunch of stuff with him
about the first round on his show that you guys
will see on the Volumes feed later. But I really
wanted to take some time to get into the nitty
gritty of what happened tonight. So we're gonna do that
on today's show. After we hit the two games at
the tail end, I'm gonna go through each of the
eight first round series and talk about the biggest thing
that I learned through those series. When we finish up
(03:15):
here tonight, after we get through those three segments, we're
gonna head over to playback. Over on playback, we're gonna
start talking about Minnesota versus Golden State first round. We're
gonna go through some film. We're gonna take questions from
you guys. You're gonna get to come up on the stage.
So if you're not already set up on playback, make
sure you guys get set up over there on the
Hoops Tonight channel. As soon as we wrap up here
live on YouTube, we're heading over. I hope you guys
(03:37):
will come hang out for another forty five minutes as
we do some more stuff to talk some hoops and
watch some film. So you guys on the Joe before
we get started, subscribe to the Hoops and Not YouTube
channel so you don't miss any more of our videos.
Follow me on Twitter at underscore json LTS. You guys
don't miss show announcement, So forget about a podcast feed
where you get your podcast on our Hoops Tonight. It's
also super helpful if you leave a rating in a
review on that front. Don't forget about social media feeds
(03:57):
on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, where're making content throughout the
remainder their season. Follow us there the last but not least,
keep dropping mail bag questions in the YouTube comments. So
after Game six, I talked about two things that would
need to go right in order for the Warriors to
win Game seven. One day would need to get alpurn
Shanghun and Fred Van Vliet under control. Those guys went
(04:18):
for an efficient fifty points in Game six, and two
they would need to get Steph going as a scorer
because even though we can create advantages, because Houston can
tighten the screws the way they do, He's really the
only guy who can save them when Houston's really in
that type of groove defensively. We talked about this a
(04:39):
lot after Game six. You can't point to Moses Moody
to save you. You can't point to Brandon Pajemski to save you,
even like with Buddy Heal's hot shooting in the first half.
In that third quarter, it ultimately came down to Steph
and his ability to generate offense against an elite, momentous
attack from Houston. They took the first piece, they took
(04:59):
care of that for piece right away. Right Draymon had
his best defensive game of the series in my opinion.
He had Shangoon in jail. His attempts close to the
rim looked super disrupted. He had some bad misses there.
He was beating Shangun to spot so cleanly in the
second half that he kept settling for that stupid one
leg fade away that he was either shooting way over
(05:19):
the back of the rim or way short of the
front of the rim. Draymon had him completely flustered defensively
in that game. I want to give Kevon Looney some
credit there to Kevon Luony has been great, but Draymond again,
this has been a tough offensive series form. If you
look at the way that the floor is set up,
because they put Fran van Vliet on Draymond so that
they can switch to Steph Draymond pick and roll. That
(05:41):
took away Draymon's best piece of offensive utility for this team,
which is connective playmaking leading those four on threes out
of Steph Curry traps. But because they're just switching any
screen with Draymon, it put him into a position where
he was more of a spot up shooter, which by
the way, he did hit a couple of big threes
early in this game. But Draymond was in a tough
position offensive in the series, and so it wasn't going
(06:01):
to be a big box score series. That's a lot
of Warriors fans saying like, oh, we're gonna, you know,
take a look at Draymond after this series because he's
not producing. It's like this was never going to be
the series where he produced offensively because of the way
Houston matched up. They kept their three switchiest defenders on Draymond, Jimmy,
and Steph to try to neutralize any two man game
with those two, so that you'd have to play two
(06:22):
man game with whoever else was on the floor. But
Draymond did an amazing job defensively in the series and
gained control over one of the biggest problems they were having,
which was Shang Gooon. Over the course of the series,
all of their guards did a fantastic job on Fred
van Vliet. Those guys held They held Fred and Shang
Gun together to thirty eight points on thirty six shots,
(06:45):
so very inefficient lower volume, and most of the damage
that those two did was in the fourth quarter after
Golden State had already taken control of the game. And
that really, ultimately was why I never flipped my pick
away from Golden State in this series. I just felt
like Golden State could this offense if they ever needed to.
I just figured they would have done it on Friday.
I'm sure in the Warriors' locker room they're like, we
(07:06):
should have done this on Friday, you know, give themselves
a little bit of extra time. But they brought their
requisite intensity and energy defensively tonight and they strangled Houston
and that bought them quite a bit of margin for
air on Steph scoring. Steph goes scoreless for almost the
entire first half, but it didn't matter because Buddy Heald
was incredible. Now, those of you guys who were on
playback with me after Game six, we talked about this
(07:28):
specific thing. Steve Kurlean heavily into Gary Payton in Game six,
and I think it might have had something to do
with foul trouble for Buddy Heald, but he just went
away from Buddy Heeld. His minutes were super low, and
they really really struggled offensively in that game. Right, But
in this particular game, and maybe it was Gary Payton
(07:49):
being sick. Maybe it was an adjustment from Steve Kerr,
but we talked in the playback after Game six. The
numbers clearly showed in this series that the Warriors were
substantially better with Buddy Healed on the floor as a
complimentary offensive piece than Gary Payton as complimentary defensive pace.
I'm a huge Gary Payton fan. I just think this
was a tough matchup for him. I was texting with
(08:11):
Jackson earlier today. Jackson made a very interesting point. He
was talking about how like in this matchup, because you're
not as worried about Houston's guards doing a ton of
damage just with like unbelievable star level talent, he doesn't
have as much upside defensively in the series, and then
the offensive limitations are still there. Gary Payton had moments
in this series. He won a game in this series
(08:33):
slipping out of ball screens right as we talked about.
I think that was Game four. I remember it was
either Game three or Game four. I can't remember one
of the two in Golden State. But overall in this series,
the team fared better with Buddy Heeled on the floor.
They leaned more into him, tonight. It's that complimentary scoring,
Like if Steph's gonna get face guarded and double teamed
off of ball screens, there's a lot of space to operate.
But he got a lot of clean looks and he
(08:55):
was able to benefit off that. He had thirty three
points on fifteen shots. But Houston made a run Iyande,
a run that started in the late second half, extended
into the excuse me a late first half, and extended
into the early second half. Houston cut the lead down
to three, and they tightened the screws and Buddy wasn't
getting open and Jimmy wasn't getting open, and Steph was
(09:15):
really the only guy who was going to be able
to save them in that spot, and right when they
needed him too, he got going. He had twenty two points,
but that's underselling it because almost well all of that
came over the final two quarters. In change. He had
a little pull up three, a deep pull up three
in the late first half, but all of those twenty
two points came basically over the last you know, roughly
(09:36):
twenty five to twenty six minutes of the game. He
started working primarily on the ball instead of running through
off ball action. There was a lot of high pick
and roll, a lot of high ISO and those of
us who have been following the Warriors over the last decade,
we know that's the break glass in case of emergency
approach for the Warriors when things get really tough on offense,
(09:57):
and it's just the advantage of Steph. Steph can default
into high ballscreen attack when he needs to, and he
did an amazing job of it. Down the stretch, attacked
Jabari Smith and an ISO and was able to shake
him and get downhill all the way to the basket
for a layup. Take that little piece and file it
away from the Minnesota matchup because Steph is definitely more
comfortable against taller athletes than he is against the load
(10:20):
of the ground athletes, which is something to keep in mind.
But he was the shot making was there, he was
getting to the rim consistently. Steph just completely took over
the game and Houston was never able to recover from it.
Like guys, this is why I hold stars to that standard,
especially when it's their role on that team. I knew
Steph was capable of this. This is what he does
(10:44):
better than just about anybody in the world, and it
wasn't gonna be Moses Moody save in them. It wasn't
gonna be Brandon Pajemski saving them. It was gonna be Steph.
It had to be Steph, and Steph took that responsibility
seriously and came through for his team, especially when that's
your role. Like you know, it's like I, you want
to know why I was really critical of Lebron after
Game seven or excuse me, game five of their first
(11:06):
round series because he wasn't rebounding. I wasn't as critical
of him in the Game four loss because he only
took two shots in the fourth quarter. His job wasn't
to score on that team. It was Luca's job. Luca
wasn't doing his job. In Game five, the Wolves kicked
the shit out of the Lakers on the glass. Lebron's
(11:26):
the one guy who was capable of anchoring them on
the defensive glass, and it was him that I was
seeing that was letting go of the rope and not
doing his job. He's the star, he has the superpower.
He's the one guy who could save them in that spot,
and he couldn't do it that Luca in that Game four.
(11:47):
He's the one guy who can create the offense against
that elite defense and save the day. This is why
I always look at stars before coaches, stars before role players.
This is a unique sport in that in this sport,
your superpower is your superpower is your superstars. They are
(12:07):
the one being an entity on the court that can
circumvent the surrounding circumstances. And when all hell broke loose
tonight and Houston was making their run and a men
Thompson's getting downhill with a rim every single time, Steph
Curry took over the game. And when he took over
the game, everyone else was helpless and the Warriors immediately
pulled away. They immediately pulled away. And so those two
(12:32):
dynamics that needed to flip the defense on Fred and
Alburn and then the scoring for Steph Curry, they flipped.
Warriors are able to flip the dynamic that took place
over the other two games. I thought Jimmy was great
again tonight. He hit a lot of stabilizing shots. He
went on a little solo run in the fourth quarter
that helped stiff arm the Rockets. I want to shout
out Steve Kerr. I thought he coached a great series
(12:53):
and I thought he played every right card in game seven,
increasing Buddy Heels minutes like we talked about, although that
might have had something to do with Garry hate and
being sick. He played Kevon Looney instead of quinning post,
which I thought was a really smart move after how
they just got bludgeoned on the glass in game six.
You needed to lean more towards rebounding. That was a
really smart decision. Loony also had some really good defensive
possessions on Shangun. He had some adjustments for the zone.
(13:16):
We talked about that after game six, like they really
struggled against the zone in the fourth quarter. They just
had some innovative stuff. You know, there was a possession,
did you guys see the possession where Jimmy got the
layup because him and Steph both broke open on a
back cut at the same time and they kind of
almost ran into each other, but Jimmy got the layup.
What they were doing in that sequence, which I thought
was really smart, is they were triggering switches and then
(13:37):
back cutting. Steph has got Shangun on him. He's running
out like he's gonna go to the wing. Shanggoon passes him.
Off to the next guy. Steph's watching now print as
soon as he passes him off, he back cuts. Because
as soon as he passes him off, he relaxes. Steph
was able to get back cut right to the rim.
He was actually wide open. Jimmy ended up getting the ball,
same sort of thing from Jimmy trigger to switch back
cut out of it. They got a wide open three
(13:58):
for Buddy. Heel. That a really smart play design where
they had Steph flash to the high post to occupy
a defender right as Jimmy was racking to the right
off of his man, which occupied the two top guys
in the zone, and Buddy relocated across the top of
the key, wide open for three. The current his staff
took the time to look through some specific details for
ways they could get openings against that zone defense. I
(14:21):
thought the Warriors championship pedigree showed in a big way tonight.
Is they got the winning game in Game seven. Looking
forward to Minnesota, I was, Colin asked me tonight, He
was like, you know, after what we saw from Houston,
you know, Minnesota in theory is just a better version
of Houston. You know, is Golden State just gonna get crushed.
And one of the things I told Colin, I don't
know who I'm gonna pick yet. I'm gonna I want
(14:42):
to watch more film, I want to get more into it.
But I am way more on the coin flip side
of things then a lot of I think there's gonna
be a lot of Warriors pessimism. You guys are gonna
see on in sports media over the next couple of days.
I think you're gonna see a lot of They're gonna
go get crushed by Minnesota. And here's the thing, maybe
they do. Maybe they go get crushed by Minnesota. I
look at it as a fundamentally different matchup than Houston
(15:05):
in some good ways and some bad ways. There's no
doubt they're gonna be harder to guard. Julius Randall and
Anthony Edwards and nasried that they're an entirely different animal
offensively than what Houston does. That said the other end
of the floor, I do think Golden State's gonna have
actually more success scoring against Minnesota than they did against Houston.
(15:28):
There's a big difference between like the speed that Houston
has on the ground in the form of Fred van
Vliet and a men Thompson, which were the two defenders
who did the best job on Steph and bigger athletes.
Steph looked pretty comfortable tonight against Jabari Smith Junior. He
looked pretty comfortable tonight against Jabari in the entire series.
(15:48):
He looks comfortable against Dylan Brooks on an island in isolation.
In those situations, those bigger, taller wings, they have more weight.
They struggled to move side to side as quickly as
some smaller players do, like in a weird way, like,
I am very concerned about Golden State's abilities should they
win the next round to compete with a team like
(16:09):
Oklahoma City because Oklahoma City has a ton of speed
on the ground. They literally are a much better version
of Houston, who's really fast on the ground, excellent in rotation.
They also have rim protection and also have super high
level offensive talent. That's a tougher matchup for Golden State
now in my opinion, after what we saw from Houston.
But Minnesota it's a lot of like Julius Randalls, kind
(16:31):
of a big upright athlete that you can move side
to side on and have success against. Even Jaden McDaniels
is a guy that Steph can break free of because
he's a little bit stilty and upright, and Steph can
move side to side against him. Working against Nas Reed,
I think he's gonna have a good amount of success
like that series. It's also a fundamentally different defensive type
(16:52):
of job than what Minnesota just had against La La.
Two big giant forwards that are just trying to play
isoball that plays directly into what Minnesota does well. Those
are matchups that Naz Red and Julius Randall can succeed
in that they're not going to succeed in against Steph.
Even just the concept of isolation, Minnesota is gonna have
to deal with all of the ball and the player
(17:12):
movement as guys are running around. And by the way,
if you guys want to see some examples, we'll go
over them in playback after the show. Come hang out
with us on playback and I'll show you guys some film.
The last two wins that Golden State had against Minnesota
this year, Steph beat them down the stretch with off
ball movement as guys like Ant and Nas and Julius
Randall were not as attentive as they need to be.
(17:35):
The job against the Lakers was a physical job. We
can hold up on an island against Lebron and Luca
in one on one. The job against the Warriors is
a mental job. It's about tracking shooters, getting through action,
communicating through tons of switches. Totally different jobs. So it's
gonna be an interesting series. I think. I haven't seen
the odds yet. I'll look him up here in a minute,
(17:57):
but I do think that Golden State has the ability
through Steph to have a more successful offensive series against
Minnesota than they did against Houston, which I think could
make it a closer series. Again, not gonna make a
pick tonight, but I'm leaning much closer towards that being
a coin flip series than it being some sort of
giant advantage towards Minnesota. On the Houston front, I think
(18:19):
the answer after tonight is you got to go after Yannis.
I think he's the obvious decision. I think he fits
the identity of the team. I think that you put
everything on the table but a men Thompson. If you
can combine Janis as a legitimate shot creator with everything
that you have in the size and physicality of this team,
you'll basically be a superstar led version of this Houston
Rockets team, which I think could be super exciting. But
(18:40):
we will talk more about the Rockets on another day.
All right, So we're gonna hit Pacers Calves for a
little bit and then I'm gonna go over my takeaways
from each of the eight first round series, and then
after that we will head over to playback for the
rest of the night. So I thought the Pacers just
completely caught the Calves off guard today. The Pacers offense
is bill around the ability of all five players on
(19:02):
the floor to be able to both score and playmake
out of every spot. Right, So like knockdown, catch and
shoot threes, but also to hit off the dribble threes
out of combinations. You'll see Siakam and Turner even hit
the occasional off the dribble three. Right. All five guys
can score in the mid range, All five guys can
score at the rim. All five guys can pass and
(19:23):
play playmate out of any of those spots. Right. None
of the guys are super high level offensive players, but
they all can be super effective if they have an advantage,
meaning a defender running at them versus sitting stationary in
front of them, and Tyre's Halliburton is the most relentless
advantage Hunter I have ever seen. You turn your head
and a guy relocates or cuts behind you, Tyree's gonna
(19:46):
hit him every single time you sink too far into
nail help off the top of the off of the
wing like he's gonna throw that swing pass and burn you.
Every single time you get caught with a foot in
the paint on the weak side, He's gonna burn you
with that skip pass every single time. I thought the
Cavs came out the gates today super undisciplined and unfocused
in their off ball defense. Early in the game was
(20:06):
a lot of Max Struce and Jared Allen. Those are
the two guys that were consistently getting burned, just getting
caught sinking into the lane and help or just not
paying attention as their main is relocating or cutting around them.
DeAndre Hunter, when he was in the game, he was brutal.
I counted about a half dozen different mistakes that he
made that directly led to good opportunities for the Pacers. Really,
the Pacers offense operated at peak efficiency all night. Here's
(20:29):
some crazy stats for you. They generated seventeen unguarded catch
and shoot threes compared to just ten for Cleveland. They
got better looks. They had a one seventeen offensive rating
in the half court. That's insane, ninety seven for Cleveland
in this game, twenty seven spot up opportunities for Indiana
that they converted at a rate of one point five
(20:52):
to six points per possession. They got over one point
three points per jump shot. Overall, they shot extremely well.
All their play types worked. They had a one to
seventeen offensive rating on post ups including passes, a one
to thirty six offensive rating, and pick and rolls including passes,
a one to eleven offensive rating on isolations including passes.
They just picked the calves apart tonight. And then in
(21:15):
crunch time, like Donovan Mitchell goes on a run in
that third quarter, gets down Hill a bunch, It turns
into a back and forth game in the fourth quarter,
and in crunch time, Indiana was able to take control
again and it came down to Tyre's Halliburton beating Jared Allen.
In switches. We talked a lot about this in the
series preview. Inevitably, as things grind down, especially late in
(21:36):
games in Cleveland, does a lot of switching with their
bigs in general, but they did run a good amount
of you know, traditional kind of picking there, like like
like high drop type of looks where they tried not
to switch Mobley and Allen onto guards earlier in the
game if they could avoid it. But Jared Allen throughout
the game at various points, a few times in the
first half and then a bunch of times down the
(21:57):
stretch was switching on to Tyrese Halliburton in screening it.
And that's where the difference is between Tyreese when he's
at a near MVP level versus the guy that we
saw for most of the end of last year when
he wasn't very explosive. He's such a smart player that
if you run drop coverage or traditional at the level
coverage or any sort of traditional pick and roll coverage,
(22:19):
he just passes the ball too well. You'll get picked
apart as a passer. But if you can shut down
those openings by switching, you could put the onus on
Tyre's Halliburton to beat you as an isolation player. And
when he had his hamstring injury, he just wasn't quick
enough with that first step to like consistently beat people
off the dribble and make some good stuff happen there.
He beat Jared Allen on a switch six times in
(22:42):
this game for either a bucket or a kickout to
somebody else for a bucket three times in crunch Time.
The sequence in Crunch Time hits a step back three
at the top of the key, gets down into the
painted area, it takes a dramatic step back up to
the top, knocks it down on the second one on
the switch. Donove and Mitchell follows Miles Turner down the
lane as Miles Turner is rolling, so Halliburton's sitting against
(23:06):
Alan up top on the switch on the other side
of the floor. DeAndre Hunter comes over to try to
scam to try to scram Donovan Mitchell out of the switch,
meaning he's going over to Donovan and being like, you
get out to my man over here on the wing.
I think it was nem hard and I will take
Miles Turner so that I can battle with him on
the glass, meaning an interchange. Right, So Mitchell's on Turner,
(23:28):
DeAndre Hunter's coming over to scram him out of the switch.
There's a little miscommunication. Donovan Mitchell's not paying attention. Donov
Mitchell had a really bad game on both ends of
the floor, in my opinion. We'll talk about that in
a minute, but especially on defense, Donovan's not paying attention,
so nem Hard's wide open. Just for a second, nem
Hard's wide open, and Halliburton just throws the easy swing
pass like he does every single time you make that
(23:49):
kind of mistake, and nem Hard knocks down the three,
and then he beats him to the basket, takes a
series of moves towards the right elbow against Jared Allen,
and then beats him with a step through moves and
banks it in, and so like, even when Cleveland took
a lead and the game slowed down and they got
into half court, Indy was able to reassertain control just
by being a better half court team than Cleveland was.
(24:11):
And I thought Tyree's Halliburton was the best player in
the in Game one. I thought he pretty significantly outplayed
Donovan Mitchell really on both ends of the floor, and
like Indy just came in and threw a great punch.
I thought as a team they were great defensively, making
everything hard on Donovan Mitchell. I think it's gonna be
a pretty significant wake up call for the Calves on
(24:32):
a bunch of levels, Like if you're not familiar with
what the Indiana Pacers do, what a great game one
just as a crash course in what makes them such
a scary team. And like Tyre's Halliburton's sneaky, playing pretty
close to that superstar level over the course of the
last few games. And he's like cooking everybody in every
which way, and he's got that offense humming at about
(24:53):
as high a level as you'll see an offense operate
in the NBA Playoffs. Really impressive game one from Indiana.
On the Calves front, the attentiveness off ball is the
big one. There are so many situations, especially in the
early parts of the game, where Cleveland would, like you know,
their guy would give up the ball and they would
go relocate to somewhere else on the floor, and you
(25:13):
would see Cavs defenders off ball just relax, and when
they relax, they just would get burned every single time
with the pass. Simple example, there's a play where I
think it was Nie Smith. Nie Smith's on the right
wing and I think he was being guarded by Max
Strus was the guy guarding him, but I'm pretty sure
it was Nie Smith on the right wing and Haliburton
gets Jared Allen on a switch and he's dancing with
(25:34):
the ball and Max Strus just relaxes and he kind
of like sits back down towards the left elbow, like
ten feet off of Nie Smith, not even helping on
the drive. Jared Allen's not even compromised. Just easy swing
pass over to the right wing. There's a wide open
catch and shoot three for Nie Smith that he knocks down,
and it's like, I know, Max Strus can be a better,
(25:54):
more attentive defender. He lost Andrew Aaron Nee Smith on
the first possession of the game, same sort of thing,
sinking into nail help, staring over at the ball at
Tyres Halliburton swing pass Nie Smith beats him off the
dribble attacking a close out and gets a little banking him.
DeAndre Hunter. Jared Allen lost Pascal Siakam a bunch of
times early in the game. Like they're just as a team,
(26:15):
they need to really be more mentally engaged defensively off
the ball against this Indiana Pacers team. You cannot make
those types of mistakes. You will get burned and then
Donovan Mitchell. I thought he just did a really poor
job of managing that game. He tried to solve all
of his problems by scoring. I was watched. I've rewatched
the entire game during the Warriors game, and I rewatched
(26:38):
every single Cavs offensive possession, and there are just a
lot of situations where Donovan's getting into the middle of
the floor and there are kickout opportunities there and he's
not taking them. He's taking contested floaters and step throughs
and euros and things along those lines. He ends up
taking thirty shots to get to you know, the thirty
whatever points that he had in the game is super inefficient.
He burned out all of his energy so that he
(26:58):
had nothing for the defensive end of the floor and
was getting cooked in a bunch of different ways on
that end. Like I just thought, he tried to solve
all of his problems by scoring, and I thought it
was a mistake. Remember, Cleveland is at their best when
the ball is popping around. They are a team that
can generate a lot more in the way of catch
and shoot threes than they demonstrated today. They played an
old fashioned Cavs game from years past, as a shot
(27:21):
creation as a shot creation team, And I thought that
came down to Donovan Mitchell. I thought he got out
played by Tyres Haliburton tonight pretty substantially. And like, here's
the thing, the Garland news is pretty sketchy. We're hearing
that his foot is a lot more serious than we thought. Obviously,
I thought he was going to play today. He didn't
play today. That's going to be a factor in this series.
But even if Darius Garland isn't at one hundred percent,
(27:43):
he should be able to help the flow of this offense.
He should be able to at least like get the
ball moving from side to side a little bit more so,
even if he's not ready to go like at the
level he was earlier in the season, I think getting
him out there will be super helpful. And my guess
is that we end up seeing him in game two.
But you know, if they have to go without game two,
it's about the management of the flow of the game
(28:05):
for Donovan and which that what that means is is
like he's gonna have to shoot more than he typically does,
Like you probably want him around twenty to twenty four
shot attempts in a situation like this with Garland out,
but he needs to make a lot more swing passes,
a lot more kickout passes on the drive, understanding that
even if he has an opportunity to take a semi
contested shot in the lane, it's about taking it easy
(28:26):
on his legs. It's about getting the rhythm of his
teammates going. It's about the engine of the offense. Again,
Tyres Halliburton didn't have a massive scoring night tonight, but
the Pacers scored a million points and it was based
on his advantage creation. That's the game flow piece of it.
It's about understanding these little bits and pieces of time,
(28:46):
Like here's a little three minute stretch where like I
really need to be looking to score the ball. Here's
a stretch of the game where we got a lot
of offensive talent on the field, on the court, I
would actually be be better served making these sort of
kickout passes. Like there was a stretch where Isaac Korro
is on the floor with him for a while, and
it's like I can kind of see why on some
of those he's not kicking to Isaac. He's looking to
be aggressive. But like there are a lot of situations
(29:07):
where Sam Merrill or Dean Wade or like standing in
catch and shoot situations and the ball is just not
getting sprayed around because Donovan's trying to smash his head
through a brick wall instead of taking the easy stuff
that's available for him. So, in short, Indiana threw their
best punch tonight and the Calves through a really shitty one.
I think the Calves can play a hell of a
lot better. But I also, as I mentioned in the
(29:27):
series preview, I predicted Calves in six in large part
because I do think the Pacers will have extended stretch
of the series where they look really good, and they
definitely showed that in game one. And here's the thing.
If Darius Garland isn't gonna be ready, or if he's
gonna be far from one hundred percent, this instantly becomes
much more of a coin flip type of series that
the Pacers absolutely can win. All right, Before we head
(29:48):
over to playback, I wanted to take we finished our
first round right out of the eight series, only got
five of them right, So not a great prediction first
round for me. But what I wanted to do is
go through this space SCIFX series one by one and
talk a little bit about what I learned in each
of those series. So Cleveland Miami, really simple, just how
high of a level Cleveland's offense is operating at in
(30:09):
the half court in that series they were at like
a one to eighteen offensive rating. They in their overall
offensive rating, it was like astronomical off the charts, the
destructive blowouts, the Ty Jerome incredible shot making, the Donovan
Mitchell incredible shot making, next Strews and DeAndre Hunter hitting
all those contested threes, Like the Cavs offense was just
operating at such an insanely high level in Round one,
(30:31):
which was a big thing that stood out to me
from that series. Obviously not a great Round two opener,
but that was my big takeaway from that specific series.
Magic Celtics. I talked a lot last year after the
Celtics won the title about how one of the things
that I was most excited about for Celtics fans was
the simple idea that Tatum in that entire playoff run
(30:51):
operated like a second tier superstar, a very versatile player
who was intricately valuable to the way that they won
the title. That he wasn't bringing the scoring necess to
be a true top tier, superstar type of talent. In
that first round series against Orlando, I thought Tatum showed
clearly that he's just playing at a much higher level
than he did last year. There's some other issues for
the Celtics, some other guys not playing as wellsps Porzingis
(31:13):
isn't playing super well, a couple guys aren't shooting the
ball from three as well as they typically are. But
Tatum's playing a lot better and that makes up a
lot of the ground in that specific spot. Pistons knicks,
the Pistons are closer than we thought. Right Kate Cunningham,
I think, even though he showed a lot of warts
over the tail end of each of those games, I
thought we saw pretty clearly the type of consistent, type
(31:35):
of playoff weapon that Kate can be. In the big picture.
We also just saw that experience matters time and time
again down the stretch, the more experienced veteran team was
able to make the necessary plays to win the game.
The Pacers Bucks series just that Tyre Saliburton is back
to the form that he was at before he got
hurt last year, which fundamentally alters the ceiling of this
(31:55):
Pacers team, the way he was attacking Giannison switches, the
way he was going blow for blow with Gary Trent
Junior down the stretch of Game five. That was just
a really, really impressive series from Tyres that I think
showed a different level of upside for Indiana than we
originally thought. Oklahoma City Memphis, really Oklahoma City's passing is
what stood out to me in that series. I really
liked the way that they moved the ball through the
(32:17):
middle of the floor to high quality close out opportunities,
high quality cutting opportunities along the baseline. That was something
they struggled with last year against Dallas. And Memphis is
not a very good team, but Memphis does play a
style of defense that tests your ability to make the
extra pass, and I thought we saw some of Okasee's
better passing games of the season in that series, which
(32:37):
I think bodes well for them for future matchups, not
just Denver, but should they face a Minnesota or a
Golden State in the Conference finals, should they face a
Boston in the NBA Finals, that processing speed is going
to have to be really locked in for them, and
I thought it looks good in the Warriors Rocket Series
Series one exactly as I expected, except for that we
(32:58):
got that extra game, and it was just one of
multiple examples. And I'm going to wrap in the Lakers
and the Timberwolves here for a second. Physicality matters, Like
one of the biggest takeaways I had from the first
round is like, if you're just a bunch of big,
strong athletes, it just makes everything so much easier. And
so I think there are certain teams like the Lakers,
for instance, Like if I saw this exact same Lakers
(33:19):
roster more or less going to the playoffs next year,
I would discount them as a substantial threat because I
thought Minnesota exposed them as a team that is just
nowhere near physical enough to be able to thrive in
the postseason. The Lakers are going to have to make
substantial changes to their roster to be able to hang
in this setting. Like I thought, it looked a lot.
I thought it looked a lot closer to what happened Phoenix,
(33:40):
you know, than some of the tougher series that we
saw over the course of Minnesota's playoff run last year.
And so like that piece, and then looking at the
Golden State series, similarly, all those different things panned out
like steph was able to find a way to score
against them. You know, their defense was able to strangle Houston.
But the big thing that stood that stood out there
was like Houston's size and athleticism was a problem and
(34:04):
Golden State didn't really conquer that problem until about, you know,
halfway through that third quarter there in Game seven. So
just a lot of takeaways for me in that first
round about how important that physicality and athleticism piece is.
Last note on the Lakers piece, just the importance of
conditioning for your top tier players like Aunt and Julius
(34:25):
just consistently outperforming Luca, Lebron and Austin down the clutch
stretches of those games, not as read doing a ton
of damage in those situations. Lots of lessons to be
learned there. And then for Denver, Denver versus the Clippers.
You know, I've heard a lot of talk about how
depth is so important these days, and again, as I
have always said, depth is absolutely important, but I still
think superstars decide outcomes. And Nikole Jokic was far and
(34:49):
away better than Harden and Kawhi in that first round series.
Don't read the box score. It was a much tougher
series for him in terms of efficiency and volume because
he was dealing with a bigger center in Zubots. But
the offense for Denver hummed at an extremely high level
when Yokich was on the floor down the tail end
of the series, and I thought he was the difference
in all those different ways. And you can even apply
that same concept to all these other series. Brunson badly
(35:12):
outplayed Paid down the stretch of games, that's why they won,
and badly outplayed Luca down the stretch of games, that's
why they won. Like Halliburton, even in the Pacers series,
Jason Tatum out playing Palo and Franz. It's the Superstars,
Steph Curry out playing Fred van Vliet in a Game
seven when it mattered Like ultimately, Superstars still determine the
(35:34):
outcomes of these games. But happy to have the first
round of the book. That's all we have for our
YouTube live show tonight. We are headed over to playback
right now, So again, click the link that's in the
description of this video. Head over to playback. We'll get
started there and just a couple of minutes and we'll
take some questions from you guys. We'll let you guys
come on stage, we' watch some film, lots of interesting
stuff to get into. I'll see you guys over there
(35:56):
in just a few minutes. But so guys, as always,
I appreciate you for listening to and supporting Hoops tonight.
They would actually be really helpful for us if you
guys would take a second and leave a rating and
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see dkang dot co slash audio. All right, welcome to
(02:32):
hoops tonight. You're at the Volume. Happy someday everybody. Hope
all of you guys are having a great night. Very
excited to break down Game seven of the Warriors and
the Rockets. Is the Warriors advance. We also got Game
one of Cavs Pacers, a very interesting game where the
Pacers threw a great punch. Sorry for the delay getting
over here tonight. I had to work with mister Colin
Cowherd tonight. He's the boss mans. You never say no,
(02:53):
But I broke down a bunch of stuff with him
about the first round on his show that you guys
will see on the Volumes feed later. But I really
wanted to take some time to get into the nitty
gritty of what happened tonight. So we're gonna do that
on today's show. After we hit the two games at
the tail end, I'm gonna go through each of the
eight first round series and talk about the biggest thing
that I learned through those series. When we finish up
(03:15):
here tonight, after we get through those three segments, we're
gonna head over to playback. Over on playback, we're gonna
start talking about Minnesota versus Golden State first round. We're
gonna go through some film. We're gonna take questions from
you guys. You're gonna get to come up on the stage.
So if you're not already set up on playback, make
sure you guys get set up over there on the
Hoops Tonight channel. As soon as we wrap up here
live on YouTube, we're heading over. I hope you guys
(03:37):
will come hang out for another forty five minutes as
we do some more stuff to talk some hoops and
watch some film. So you guys on the Joe before
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(03:57):
on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, where're making content throughout the
remainder their season. Follow us there the last but not least,
keep dropping mail bag questions in the YouTube comments. So
after Game six, I talked about two things that would
need to go right in order for the Warriors to
win Game seven. One day would need to get alpurn
Shanghun and Fred Van Vliet under control. Those guys went
(04:18):
for an efficient fifty points in Game six, and two
they would need to get Steph going as a scorer
because even though we can create advantages, because Houston can
tighten the screws the way they do, He's really the
only guy who can save them when Houston's really in
that type of groove defensively. We talked about this a
(04:39):
lot after Game six. You can't point to Moses Moody
to save you. You can't point to Brandon Pajemski to save you,
even like with Buddy Heal's hot shooting in the first half.
In that third quarter, it ultimately came down to Steph
and his ability to generate offense against an elite, momentous
attack from Houston. They took the first piece, they took
(04:59):
care of that for piece right away. Right Draymon had
his best defensive game of the series in my opinion.
He had Shangoon in jail. His attempts close to the
rim looked super disrupted. He had some bad misses there.
He was beating Shangun to spot so cleanly in the
second half that he kept settling for that stupid one
leg fade away that he was either shooting way over
(05:19):
the back of the rim or way short of the
front of the rim. Draymon had him completely flustered defensively
in that game. I want to give Kevon Looney some
credit there to Kevon Luony has been great, but Draymond again,
this has been a tough offensive series form. If you
look at the way that the floor is set up,
because they put Fran van Vliet on Draymond so that
they can switch to Steph Draymond pick and roll. That
(05:41):
took away Draymon's best piece of offensive utility for this team,
which is connective playmaking leading those four on threes out
of Steph Curry traps. But because they're just switching any
screen with Draymon, it put him into a position where
he was more of a spot up shooter, which by
the way, he did hit a couple of big threes
early in this game. But Draymond was in a tough
position offensive in the series, and so it wasn't going
(06:01):
to be a big box score series. That's a lot
of Warriors fans saying like, oh, we're gonna, you know,
take a look at Draymond after this series because he's
not producing. It's like this was never going to be
the series where he produced offensively because of the way
Houston matched up. They kept their three switchiest defenders on Draymond, Jimmy,
and Steph to try to neutralize any two man game
with those two, so that you'd have to play two
(06:22):
man game with whoever else was on the floor. But
Draymond did an amazing job defensively in the series and
gained control over one of the biggest problems they were having,
which was Shang Gooon. Over the course of the series,
all of their guards did a fantastic job on Fred
van Vliet. Those guys held They held Fred and Shang
Gun together to thirty eight points on thirty six shots,
(06:45):
so very inefficient lower volume, and most of the damage
that those two did was in the fourth quarter after
Golden State had already taken control of the game. And
that really, ultimately was why I never flipped my pick
away from Golden State in this series. I just felt
like Golden State could this offense if they ever needed to.
I just figured they would have done it on Friday.
I'm sure in the Warriors' locker room they're like, we
(07:06):
should have done this on Friday, you know, give themselves
a little bit of extra time. But they brought their
requisite intensity and energy defensively tonight and they strangled Houston
and that bought them quite a bit of margin for
air on Steph scoring. Steph goes scoreless for almost the
entire first half, but it didn't matter because Buddy Heald
was incredible. Now, those of you guys who were on
playback with me after Game six, we talked about this
(07:28):
specific thing. Steve Kurlean heavily into Gary Payton in Game six,
and I think it might have had something to do
with foul trouble for Buddy Heald, but he just went
away from Buddy Heeld. His minutes were super low, and
they really really struggled offensively in that game. Right, But
in this particular game, and maybe it was Gary Payton
(07:49):
being sick. Maybe it was an adjustment from Steve Kerr,
but we talked in the playback after Game six. The
numbers clearly showed in this series that the Warriors were
substantially better with Buddy Healed on the floor as a
complimentary offensive piece than Gary Payton as complimentary defensive pace.
I'm a huge Gary Payton fan. I just think this
was a tough matchup for him. I was texting with
(08:11):
Jackson earlier today. Jackson made a very interesting point. He
was talking about how like in this matchup, because you're
not as worried about Houston's guards doing a ton of
damage just with like unbelievable star level talent, he doesn't
have as much upside defensively in the series, and then
the offensive limitations are still there. Gary Payton had moments
in this series. He won a game in this series
(08:33):
slipping out of ball screens right as we talked about.
I think that was Game four. I remember it was
either Game three or Game four. I can't remember one
of the two in Golden State. But overall in this series,
the team fared better with Buddy Heeled on the floor.
They leaned more into him, tonight. It's that complimentary scoring,
Like if Steph's gonna get face guarded and double teamed
off of ball screens, there's a lot of space to operate.
But he got a lot of clean looks and he
(08:55):
was able to benefit off that. He had thirty three
points on fifteen shots. But Houston made a run Iyande,
a run that started in the late second half, extended
into the excuse me a late first half, and extended
into the early second half. Houston cut the lead down
to three, and they tightened the screws and Buddy wasn't
getting open and Jimmy wasn't getting open, and Steph was
(09:15):
really the only guy who was going to be able
to save them in that spot, and right when they
needed him too, he got going. He had twenty two points,
but that's underselling it because almost well all of that
came over the final two quarters. In change. He had
a little pull up three, a deep pull up three
in the late first half, but all of those twenty
two points came basically over the last you know, roughly
(09:36):
twenty five to twenty six minutes of the game. He
started working primarily on the ball instead of running through
off ball action. There was a lot of high pick
and roll, a lot of high ISO and those of
us who have been following the Warriors over the last decade,
we know that's the break glass in case of emergency
approach for the Warriors when things get really tough on offense,
(09:57):
and it's just the advantage of Steph. Steph can default
into high ballscreen attack when he needs to, and he
did an amazing job of it. Down the stretch, attacked
Jabari Smith and an ISO and was able to shake
him and get downhill all the way to the basket
for a layup. Take that little piece and file it
away from the Minnesota matchup because Steph is definitely more
comfortable against taller athletes than he is against the load
(10:20):
of the ground athletes, which is something to keep in mind.
But he was the shot making was there, he was
getting to the rim consistently. Steph just completely took over
the game and Houston was never able to recover from it.
Like guys, this is why I hold stars to that standard,
especially when it's their role on that team. I knew
Steph was capable of this. This is what he does
(10:44):
better than just about anybody in the world, and it
wasn't gonna be Moses Moody save in them. It wasn't
gonna be Brandon Pajemski saving them. It was gonna be Steph.
It had to be Steph, and Steph took that responsibility
seriously and came through for his team, especially when that's
your role. Like you know, it's like I, you want
to know why I was really critical of Lebron after
Game seven or excuse me, game five of their first
(11:06):
round series because he wasn't rebounding. I wasn't as critical
of him in the Game four loss because he only
took two shots in the fourth quarter. His job wasn't
to score on that team. It was Luca's job. Luca
wasn't doing his job. In Game five, the Wolves kicked
the shit out of the Lakers on the glass. Lebron's
(11:26):
the one guy who was capable of anchoring them on
the defensive glass, and it was him that I was
seeing that was letting go of the rope and not
doing his job. He's the star, he has the superpower.
He's the one guy who could save them in that spot,
and he couldn't do it that Luca in that Game four.
(11:47):
He's the one guy who can create the offense against
that elite defense and save the day. This is why
I always look at stars before coaches, stars before role players.
This is a unique sport in that in this sport,
your superpower is your superpower is your superstars. They are
(12:07):
the one being an entity on the court that can
circumvent the surrounding circumstances. And when all hell broke loose
tonight and Houston was making their run and a men
Thompson's getting downhill with a rim every single time, Steph
Curry took over the game. And when he took over
the game, everyone else was helpless and the Warriors immediately
pulled away. They immediately pulled away. And so those two
(12:32):
dynamics that needed to flip the defense on Fred and
Alburn and then the scoring for Steph Curry, they flipped.
Warriors are able to flip the dynamic that took place
over the other two games. I thought Jimmy was great
again tonight. He hit a lot of stabilizing shots. He
went on a little solo run in the fourth quarter
that helped stiff arm the Rockets. I want to shout
out Steve Kerr. I thought he coached a great series
(12:53):
and I thought he played every right card in game seven,
increasing Buddy Heels minutes like we talked about, although that
might have had something to do with Garry hate and
being sick. He played Kevon Looney instead of quinning post,
which I thought was a really smart move after how
they just got bludgeoned on the glass in game six.
You needed to lean more towards rebounding. That was a
really smart decision. Loony also had some really good defensive
possessions on Shangun. He had some adjustments for the zone.
(13:16):
We talked about that after game six, like they really
struggled against the zone in the fourth quarter. They just
had some innovative stuff. You know, there was a possession,
did you guys see the possession where Jimmy got the
layup because him and Steph both broke open on a
back cut at the same time and they kind of
almost ran into each other, but Jimmy got the layup.
What they were doing in that sequence, which I thought
was really smart, is they were triggering switches and then
(13:37):
back cutting. Steph has got Shangun on him. He's running
out like he's gonna go to the wing. Shanggoon passes him.
Off to the next guy. Steph's watching now print as
soon as he passes him off, he back cuts. Because
as soon as he passes him off, he relaxes. Steph
was able to get back cut right to the rim.
He was actually wide open. Jimmy ended up getting the ball,
same sort of thing from Jimmy trigger to switch back
cut out of it. They got a wide open three
(13:58):
for Buddy. Heel. That a really smart play design where
they had Steph flash to the high post to occupy
a defender right as Jimmy was racking to the right
off of his man, which occupied the two top guys
in the zone, and Buddy relocated across the top of
the key, wide open for three. The current his staff
took the time to look through some specific details for
ways they could get openings against that zone defense. I
(14:21):
thought the Warriors championship pedigree showed in a big way tonight.
Is they got the winning game in Game seven. Looking
forward to Minnesota, I was, Colin asked me tonight, He
was like, you know, after what we saw from Houston,
you know, Minnesota in theory is just a better version
of Houston. You know, is Golden State just gonna get crushed.
And one of the things I told Colin, I don't
know who I'm gonna pick yet. I'm gonna I want
(14:42):
to watch more film, I want to get more into it.
But I am way more on the coin flip side
of things then a lot of I think there's gonna
be a lot of Warriors pessimism. You guys are gonna
see on in sports media over the next couple of days.
I think you're gonna see a lot of They're gonna
go get crushed by Minnesota. And here's the thing, maybe
they do. Maybe they go get crushed by Minnesota. I
look at it as a fundamentally different matchup than Houston
(15:05):
in some good ways and some bad ways. There's no
doubt they're gonna be harder to guard. Julius Randall and
Anthony Edwards and nasried that they're an entirely different animal
offensively than what Houston does. That said the other end
of the floor, I do think Golden State's gonna have
actually more success scoring against Minnesota than they did against Houston.
(15:28):
There's a big difference between like the speed that Houston
has on the ground in the form of Fred van
Vliet and a men Thompson, which were the two defenders
who did the best job on Steph and bigger athletes.
Steph looked pretty comfortable tonight against Jabari Smith Junior. He
looked pretty comfortable tonight against Jabari in the entire series.
(15:48):
He looks comfortable against Dylan Brooks on an island in isolation.
In those situations, those bigger, taller wings, they have more weight.
They struggled to move side to side as quickly as
some smaller players do, like in a weird way, like,
I am very concerned about Golden State's abilities should they
win the next round to compete with a team like
(16:09):
Oklahoma City because Oklahoma City has a ton of speed
on the ground. They literally are a much better version
of Houston, who's really fast on the ground, excellent in rotation.
They also have rim protection and also have super high
level offensive talent. That's a tougher matchup for Golden State
now in my opinion, after what we saw from Houston.
But Minnesota it's a lot of like Julius Randalls, kind
(16:31):
of a big upright athlete that you can move side
to side on and have success against. Even Jaden McDaniels
is a guy that Steph can break free of because
he's a little bit stilty and upright, and Steph can
move side to side against him. Working against Nas Reed,
I think he's gonna have a good amount of success
like that series. It's also a fundamentally different defensive type
(16:52):
of job than what Minnesota just had against La La.
Two big giant forwards that are just trying to play
isoball that plays directly into what Minnesota does well. Those
are matchups that Naz Red and Julius Randall can succeed
in that they're not going to succeed in against Steph.
Even just the concept of isolation, Minnesota is gonna have
to deal with all of the ball and the player
(17:12):
movement as guys are running around. And by the way,
if you guys want to see some examples, we'll go
over them in playback after the show. Come hang out
with us on playback and I'll show you guys some film.
The last two wins that Golden State had against Minnesota
this year, Steph beat them down the stretch with off
ball movement as guys like Ant and Nas and Julius
Randall were not as attentive as they need to be.
(17:35):
The job against the Lakers was a physical job. We
can hold up on an island against Lebron and Luca
in one on one. The job against the Warriors is
a mental job. It's about tracking shooters, getting through action,
communicating through tons of switches. Totally different jobs. So it's
gonna be an interesting series. I think. I haven't seen
the odds yet. I'll look him up here in a minute,
(17:57):
but I do think that Golden State has the ability
through Steph to have a more successful offensive series against
Minnesota than they did against Houston, which I think could
make it a closer series. Again, not gonna make a
pick tonight, but I'm leaning much closer towards that being
a coin flip series than it being some sort of
giant advantage towards Minnesota. On the Houston front, I think
(18:19):
the answer after tonight is you got to go after Yannis.
I think he's the obvious decision. I think he fits
the identity of the team. I think that you put
everything on the table but a men Thompson. If you
can combine Janis as a legitimate shot creator with everything
that you have in the size and physicality of this team,
you'll basically be a superstar led version of this Houston
Rockets team, which I think could be super exciting. But
(18:40):
we will talk more about the Rockets on another day.
All right, So we're gonna hit Pacers Calves for a
little bit and then I'm gonna go over my takeaways
from each of the eight first round series, and then
after that we will head over to playback for the
rest of the night. So I thought the Pacers just
completely caught the Calves off guard today. The Pacers offense
is bill around the ability of all five players on
(19:02):
the floor to be able to both score and playmake
out of every spot. Right, So like knockdown, catch and
shoot threes, but also to hit off the dribble threes
out of combinations. You'll see Siakam and Turner even hit
the occasional off the dribble three. Right. All five guys
can score in the mid range, All five guys can
score at the rim. All five guys can pass and
(19:23):
play playmate out of any of those spots. Right. None
of the guys are super high level offensive players, but
they all can be super effective if they have an advantage,
meaning a defender running at them versus sitting stationary in
front of them, and Tyre's Halliburton is the most relentless
advantage Hunter I have ever seen. You turn your head
and a guy relocates or cuts behind you, Tyree's gonna
(19:46):
hit him every single time you sink too far into
nail help off the top of the off of the
wing like he's gonna throw that swing pass and burn you.
Every single time you get caught with a foot in
the paint on the weak side, He's gonna burn you
with that skip pass every single time. I thought the
Cavs came out the gates today super undisciplined and unfocused
in their off ball defense. Early in the game was
(20:06):
a lot of Max Struce and Jared Allen. Those are
the two guys that were consistently getting burned, just getting
caught sinking into the lane and help or just not
paying attention as their main is relocating or cutting around them.
DeAndre Hunter, when he was in the game, he was brutal.
I counted about a half dozen different mistakes that he
made that directly led to good opportunities for the Pacers. Really,
the Pacers offense operated at peak efficiency all night. Here's
(20:29):
some crazy stats for you. They generated seventeen unguarded catch
and shoot threes compared to just ten for Cleveland. They
got better looks. They had a one seventeen offensive rating
in the half court. That's insane, ninety seven for Cleveland
in this game, twenty seven spot up opportunities for Indiana
that they converted at a rate of one point five
(20:52):
to six points per possession. They got over one point
three points per jump shot. Overall, they shot extremely well.
All their play types worked. They had a one to
seventeen offensive rating on post ups including passes, a one
to thirty six offensive rating, and pick and rolls including passes,
a one to eleven offensive rating on isolations including passes.
They just picked the calves apart tonight. And then in
(21:15):
crunch time, like Donovan Mitchell goes on a run in
that third quarter, gets down Hill a bunch, It turns
into a back and forth game in the fourth quarter,
and in crunch time, Indiana was able to take control
again and it came down to Tyre's Halliburton beating Jared Allen.
In switches. We talked a lot about this in the
series preview. Inevitably, as things grind down, especially late in
(21:36):
games in Cleveland, does a lot of switching with their
bigs in general, but they did run a good amount
of you know, traditional kind of picking there, like like
like high drop type of looks where they tried not
to switch Mobley and Allen onto guards earlier in the
game if they could avoid it. But Jared Allen throughout
the game at various points, a few times in the
first half and then a bunch of times down the
(21:57):
stretch was switching on to Tyrese Halliburton in screening it.
And that's where the difference is between Tyreese when he's
at a near MVP level versus the guy that we
saw for most of the end of last year when
he wasn't very explosive. He's such a smart player that
if you run drop coverage or traditional at the level
coverage or any sort of traditional pick and roll coverage,
(22:19):
he just passes the ball too well. You'll get picked
apart as a passer. But if you can shut down
those openings by switching, you could put the onus on
Tyre's Halliburton to beat you as an isolation player. And
when he had his hamstring injury, he just wasn't quick
enough with that first step to like consistently beat people
off the dribble and make some good stuff happen there.
He beat Jared Allen on a switch six times in
(22:42):
this game for either a bucket or a kickout to
somebody else for a bucket three times in crunch Time.
The sequence in Crunch Time hits a step back three
at the top of the key, gets down into the
painted area, it takes a dramatic step back up to
the top, knocks it down on the second one on
the switch. Donove and Mitchell follows Miles Turner down the
lane as Miles Turner is rolling, so Halliburton's sitting against
(23:06):
Alan up top on the switch on the other side
of the floor. DeAndre Hunter comes over to try to
scam to try to scram Donovan Mitchell out of the switch,
meaning he's going over to Donovan and being like, you
get out to my man over here on the wing.
I think it was nem hard and I will take
Miles Turner so that I can battle with him on
the glass, meaning an interchange. Right, So Mitchell's on Turner,
(23:28):
DeAndre Hunter's coming over to scram him out of the switch.
There's a little miscommunication. Donovan Mitchell's not paying attention. Donov
Mitchell had a really bad game on both ends of
the floor, in my opinion. We'll talk about that in
a minute, but especially on defense, Donovan's not paying attention,
so nem Hard's wide open. Just for a second, nem
Hard's wide open, and Halliburton just throws the easy swing
pass like he does every single time you make that
(23:49):
kind of mistake, and nem Hard knocks down the three,
and then he beats him to the basket, takes a
series of moves towards the right elbow against Jared Allen,
and then beats him with a step through moves and
banks it in, and so like, even when Cleveland took
a lead and the game slowed down and they got
into half court, Indy was able to reassertain control just
by being a better half court team than Cleveland was.
(24:11):
And I thought Tyree's Halliburton was the best player in
the in Game one. I thought he pretty significantly outplayed
Donovan Mitchell really on both ends of the floor, and
like Indy just came in and threw a great punch.
I thought as a team they were great defensively, making
everything hard on Donovan Mitchell. I think it's gonna be
a pretty significant wake up call for the Calves on
(24:32):
a bunch of levels, Like if you're not familiar with
what the Indiana Pacers do, what a great game one
just as a crash course in what makes them such
a scary team. And like Tyre's Halliburton's sneaky, playing pretty
close to that superstar level over the course of the
last few games. And he's like cooking everybody in every
which way, and he's got that offense humming at about
(24:53):
as high a level as you'll see an offense operate
in the NBA Playoffs. Really impressive game one from Indiana.
On the Calves front, the attentiveness off ball is the
big one. There are so many situations, especially in the
early parts of the game, where Cleveland would, like you know,
their guy would give up the ball and they would
go relocate to somewhere else on the floor, and you
(25:13):
would see Cavs defenders off ball just relax, and when
they relax, they just would get burned every single time
with the pass. Simple example, there's a play where I
think it was Nie Smith. Nie Smith's on the right
wing and I think he was being guarded by Max
Strus was the guy guarding him, but I'm pretty sure
it was Nie Smith on the right wing and Haliburton
gets Jared Allen on a switch and he's dancing with
(25:34):
the ball and Max Strus just relaxes and he kind
of like sits back down towards the left elbow, like
ten feet off of Nie Smith, not even helping on
the drive. Jared Allen's not even compromised. Just easy swing
pass over to the right wing. There's a wide open
catch and shoot three for Nie Smith that he knocks down,
and it's like, I know, Max Strus can be a better,
(25:54):
more attentive defender. He lost Andrew Aaron Nee Smith on
the first possession of the game, same sort of thing,
sinking into nail help, staring over at the ball at
Tyres Halliburton swing pass Nie Smith beats him off the
dribble attacking a close out and gets a little banking him.
DeAndre Hunter. Jared Allen lost Pascal Siakam a bunch of
times early in the game. Like they're just as a team,
(26:15):
they need to really be more mentally engaged defensively off
the ball against this Indiana Pacers team. You cannot make
those types of mistakes. You will get burned and then
Donovan Mitchell. I thought he just did a really poor
job of managing that game. He tried to solve all
of his problems by scoring. I was watched. I've rewatched
the entire game during the Warriors game, and I rewatched
(26:38):
every single Cavs offensive possession, and there are just a
lot of situations where Donovan's getting into the middle of
the floor and there are kickout opportunities there and he's
not taking them. He's taking contested floaters and step throughs
and euros and things along those lines. He ends up
taking thirty shots to get to you know, the thirty
whatever points that he had in the game is super inefficient.
He burned out all of his energy so that he
(26:58):
had nothing for the defensive end of the floor and
was getting cooked in a bunch of different ways on
that end. Like I just thought, he tried to solve
all of his problems by scoring, and I thought it
was a mistake. Remember, Cleveland is at their best when
the ball is popping around. They are a team that
can generate a lot more in the way of catch
and shoot threes than they demonstrated today. They played an
old fashioned Cavs game from years past, as a shot
(27:21):
creation as a shot creation team, And I thought that
came down to Donovan Mitchell. I thought he got out
played by Tyres Haliburton tonight pretty substantially. And like, here's
the thing, the Garland news is pretty sketchy. We're hearing
that his foot is a lot more serious than we thought. Obviously,
I thought he was going to play today. He didn't
play today. That's going to be a factor in this series.
But even if Darius Garland isn't at one hundred percent,
(27:43):
he should be able to help the flow of this offense.
He should be able to at least like get the
ball moving from side to side a little bit more so,
even if he's not ready to go like at the
level he was earlier in the season, I think getting
him out there will be super helpful. And my guess
is that we end up seeing him in game two.
But you know, if they have to go without game two,
it's about the management of the flow of the game
(28:05):
for Donovan and which that what that means is is
like he's gonna have to shoot more than he typically does,
Like you probably want him around twenty to twenty four
shot attempts in a situation like this with Garland out,
but he needs to make a lot more swing passes,
a lot more kickout passes on the drive, understanding that
even if he has an opportunity to take a semi
contested shot in the lane, it's about taking it easy
(28:26):
on his legs. It's about getting the rhythm of his
teammates going. It's about the engine of the offense. Again,
Tyres Halliburton didn't have a massive scoring night tonight, but
the Pacers scored a million points and it was based
on his advantage creation. That's the game flow piece of it.
It's about understanding these little bits and pieces of time,
(28:46):
Like here's a little three minute stretch where like I
really need to be looking to score the ball. Here's
a stretch of the game where we got a lot
of offensive talent on the field, on the court, I
would actually be be better served making these sort of
kickout passes. Like there was a stretch where Isaac Korro
is on the floor with him for a while, and
it's like I can kind of see why on some
of those he's not kicking to Isaac. He's looking to
be aggressive. But like there are a lot of situations
(29:07):
where Sam Merrill or Dean Wade or like standing in
catch and shoot situations and the ball is just not
getting sprayed around because Donovan's trying to smash his head
through a brick wall instead of taking the easy stuff
that's available for him. So, in short, Indiana threw their
best punch tonight and the Calves through a really shitty one.
I think the Calves can play a hell of a
lot better. But I also, as I mentioned in the
(29:27):
series preview, I predicted Calves in six in large part
because I do think the Pacers will have extended stretch
of the series where they look really good, and they
definitely showed that in game one. And here's the thing.
If Darius Garland isn't gonna be ready, or if he's
gonna be far from one hundred percent, this instantly becomes
much more of a coin flip type of series that
the Pacers absolutely can win. All right, Before we head
(29:48):
over to playback, I wanted to take we finished our
first round right out of the eight series, only got
five of them right, So not a great prediction first
round for me. But what I wanted to do is
go through this space SCIFX series one by one and
talk a little bit about what I learned in each
of those series. So Cleveland Miami, really simple, just how
high of a level Cleveland's offense is operating at in
(30:09):
the half court in that series they were at like
a one to eighteen offensive rating. They in their overall
offensive rating, it was like astronomical off the charts, the
destructive blowouts, the Ty Jerome incredible shot making, the Donovan
Mitchell incredible shot making, next Strews and DeAndre Hunter hitting
all those contested threes, Like the Cavs offense was just
operating at such an insanely high level in Round one,
(30:31):
which was a big thing that stood out to me
from that series. Obviously not a great Round two opener,
but that was my big takeaway from that specific series.
Magic Celtics. I talked a lot last year after the
Celtics won the title about how one of the things
that I was most excited about for Celtics fans was
the simple idea that Tatum in that entire playoff run
(30:51):
operated like a second tier superstar, a very versatile player
who was intricately valuable to the way that they won
the title. That he wasn't bringing the scoring necess to
be a true top tier, superstar type of talent. In
that first round series against Orlando, I thought Tatum showed
clearly that he's just playing at a much higher level
than he did last year. There's some other issues for
the Celtics, some other guys not playing as wellsps Porzingis
(31:13):
isn't playing super well, a couple guys aren't shooting the
ball from three as well as they typically are. But
Tatum's playing a lot better and that makes up a
lot of the ground in that specific spot. Pistons knicks,
the Pistons are closer than we thought. Right Kate Cunningham,
I think, even though he showed a lot of warts
over the tail end of each of those games, I
thought we saw pretty clearly the type of consistent, type
(31:35):
of playoff weapon that Kate can be. In the big picture.
We also just saw that experience matters time and time
again down the stretch, the more experienced veteran team was
able to make the necessary plays to win the game.
The Pacers Bucks series just that Tyre Saliburton is back
to the form that he was at before he got
hurt last year, which fundamentally alters the ceiling of this
(31:55):
Pacers team, the way he was attacking Giannison switches, the
way he was going blow for blow with Gary Trent
Junior down the stretch of Game five. That was just
a really, really impressive series from Tyres that I think
showed a different level of upside for Indiana than we
originally thought. Oklahoma City Memphis, really Oklahoma City's passing is
what stood out to me in that series. I really
liked the way that they moved the ball through the
(32:17):
middle of the floor to high quality close out opportunities,
high quality cutting opportunities along the baseline. That was something
they struggled with last year against Dallas. And Memphis is
not a very good team, but Memphis does play a
style of defense that tests your ability to make the
extra pass, and I thought we saw some of Okasee's
better passing games of the season in that series, which
(32:37):
I think bodes well for them for future matchups, not
just Denver, but should they face a Minnesota or a
Golden State in the Conference finals, should they face a
Boston in the NBA Finals, that processing speed is going
to have to be really locked in for them, and
I thought it looks good in the Warriors Rocket Series
Series one exactly as I expected, except for that we
(32:58):
got that extra game, and it was just one of
multiple examples. And I'm going to wrap in the Lakers
and the Timberwolves here for a second. Physicality matters, Like
one of the biggest takeaways I had from the first
round is like, if you're just a bunch of big,
strong athletes, it just makes everything so much easier. And
so I think there are certain teams like the Lakers,
for instance, Like if I saw this exact same Lakers
(33:19):
roster more or less going to the playoffs next year,
I would discount them as a substantial threat because I
thought Minnesota exposed them as a team that is just
nowhere near physical enough to be able to thrive in
the postseason. The Lakers are going to have to make
substantial changes to their roster to be able to hang
in this setting. Like I thought, it looked a lot.
I thought it looked a lot closer to what happened Phoenix,
(33:40):
you know, than some of the tougher series that we
saw over the course of Minnesota's playoff run last year.
And so like that piece, and then looking at the
Golden State series, similarly, all those different things panned out
like steph was able to find a way to score
against them. You know, their defense was able to strangle Houston.
But the big thing that stood that stood out there
was like Houston's size and athleticism was a problem and
(34:04):
Golden State didn't really conquer that problem until about, you know,
halfway through that third quarter there in Game seven. So
just a lot of takeaways for me in that first
round about how important that physicality and athleticism piece is.
Last note on the Lakers piece, just the importance of
conditioning for your top tier players like Aunt and Julius
(34:25):
just consistently outperforming Luca, Lebron and Austin down the clutch
stretches of those games, not as read doing a ton
of damage in those situations. Lots of lessons to be
learned there. And then for Denver, Denver versus the Clippers.
You know, I've heard a lot of talk about how
depth is so important these days, and again, as I
have always said, depth is absolutely important, but I still
think superstars decide outcomes. And Nikole Jokic was far and
(34:49):
away better than Harden and Kawhi in that first round series.
Don't read the box score. It was a much tougher
series for him in terms of efficiency and volume because
he was dealing with a bigger center in Zubots. But
the offense for Denver hummed at an extremely high level
when Yokich was on the floor down the tail end
of the series, and I thought he was the difference
in all those different ways. And you can even apply
that same concept to all these other series. Brunson badly
(35:12):
outplayed Paid down the stretch of games, that's why they won,
and badly outplayed Luca down the stretch of games, that's
why they won. Like Halliburton, even in the Pacers series,
Jason Tatum out playing Palo and Franz. It's the Superstars,
Steph Curry out playing Fred van Vliet in a Game
seven when it mattered Like ultimately, Superstars still determine the
(35:34):
outcomes of these games. But happy to have the first
round of the book. That's all we have for our
YouTube live show tonight. We are headed over to playback
right now, So again, click the link that's in the
description of this video. Head over to playback. We'll get
started there and just a couple of minutes and we'll
take some questions from you guys. We'll let you guys
come on stage, we' watch some film, lots of interesting
stuff to get into. I'll see you guys over there
(35:56):
in just a few minutes. But so guys, as always,
I appreciate you for listening to and supporting Hoops tonight.
They would actually be really helpful for us if you
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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