October 25, 2025 • 50 mins
Jason reacts to more games from the first week of the NBA season now that every team has played at least once and gives his thoughts on Philadelphia 76ers rookie VJ Edgecombe, Joel Embiid’s poor play, the Utah Jazz embarrassing Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers, the Toronto Raptors beating the Atlanta Hawks, how the Golden State Warriors look compared to the Los Angeles Lakers, and what it would take for San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama to become the best player in the NBA this season.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume. All right, Well, god to hoops tonight. Here
at the Volume Heavy Friday. Everybody. Hope all you guys
had a great first week. I'm very excited to get
into our mail bag today. I got caught up on
(00:24):
three more games from the Wednesday Night Slate. I swear
my eyes are gonna be squares soon. I watched ten
of the first sixteen NBA regular season games. It's been
an absolute grind this week. We had three fun live
shows over the last few nights. But I'm very excited
to kind of bounce around and get to the stuff
that we haven't talked about yet. We do have a
handful of questions related to some of our regular teams
that we cover often on the show. But we're gonna
(00:45):
be breaking down three games from Wednesday Night Slate. We're
gonna hit Raptors, Hawks, We're gonna hit Clippers, Jazz, We're
gonna hit six Ers, Celtics. I've got questions from some
other teams around the league, some big picture basketball kind
of philosophy questions, all sorts of interesting stuff from you
guys in today's mail bag. You guys are the joke
before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops and I
YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos,
follow me on Twitter and underscore jcnlts. You guys don't
(01:08):
miss how announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever
you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also super
helpful if you leave a rating in a review on
that front. Jackson's doing great work on our social media
feeds Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. Make sure you guys follow
us there. Then, the last but not least, keep dropping
mail bag questions in the YouTube comments again in our
full episodes. Right, mail bag, colon, write your question. We're
going to get to them mostly on Fridays, but about
(01:30):
once a week throughout the remainder of the season. All right,
let's talk some basketball. So first question, shout out to
Harry weston the question that allowed us to get to
all of these games. Out of the other games on
opening night, who surprised you the most? I think Charlotte
and Toronto could have sneaky good seasons and VJ Edgecomb
looks like the future in Philly. Also, what happened in Utah,
(01:53):
I would argue Veja was the biggest surprise from that
Wednesday Night Slate. But I thought that this question was
a great opportunity for us to just quickly bounce through
a couple of game reactions. I caught up on Raptors, Hawks, Clippers, Jazz,
and six or Celtics this morning. I'm just gonna go
ahead and give you guys my takeaways on all three
of those games. So, first of all, I haven't had
(02:13):
the chance to watch Charlotte yet, although I caught them
in preseason. I thought they looked good in preseason. I'm
generally not as high on Charlotte as some of my
peers are, just because I think they're kind of generally
unserious and they have a very injury prone set of
core players. But we will get to the Charlotte Hornets
at some point in time down the line. Starting with
Raptors Hawks, I thought Toronto's size, length, and athleticism in
(02:37):
their starting lineup popped off the screen right away. When
you have Brandon Ingram and Scottie Barnes, who are, in
addition to being two really big forwards, Barnes brings a
strength and power element, Ingram brings a length element. Ingram's
more of an over the top shooter. Barnes is more
of a rim pressuring type of player, but both of
them are pretty high level playmakers for the forward position.
(03:00):
Yaka Pertl obviously a big, strong center, kind of an
underrated player in my opinion, and then RJ. Barrett obviously
one of the more athletic kind of two three swingmen
out there at two through five. They're just very physically imposing,
and they came out with super impressive defensive intensity right
from the jump, and they it just was a carryover
(03:21):
from what we saw from the tail end of last season.
If you guys remember, they ran the floor insanely well
in transition, kind of flipping the script on what Atlanta
typically likes to do. Toronto had forty three transition points
in this game. They had an offensive rating over one
forty on their transition possessions. Just a combination of really
poor Atlanta transition defense, which we'll get to in a minute,
(03:44):
and just how athletically imposing they can be when they're
running the floor and brandon ingram right out. The gates
came out super aggressive, scoring off of off ball action
and on ball action, just curling around screens and getting
into the middle of the floor. His scoring polish was
immediately apparent. I think he going to make life a
lot easier for them on that end, especially when they
get into crunch time, which obviously they did not experience
(04:05):
in this particular game. I thought RJ. Barrett was fantastic.
He hit some much needed threes early in the game
to space the floor, did a great job pressure in
the rim. He obviously played really really good defense as well,
and the Raptors just went into Atlanta and smacked them.
They had seven guys in double figures. Grady Dick had
twenty off the bench. He hit a bunch of jumpers
from all sorts of ranges all over the floor. They
(04:28):
were just six for twenty five from three and yet
they logged a one twenty two offensive rating. And it
was a combination to two things. Obviously, the transition pushes.
When you have over forty transition points in a game,
that's a pretty unusual number to see there. That's a
big way to boost your offensive rating. And then the
second piece of it is when they got in the
half court, they had a lot of really impressive ball
(04:49):
in player movement. They got in and out of actions quickly.
They ran a lot of actions on every possession, and
one of the things that stood out to me is
they do have more playmaking talent than you would think,
like for all the limits in terms of shooting talent.
We've seen this before with teams like the Golden State Warriors.
Now they weaponize shooting in the form of Steph and
Buddy Heeled now and Klay Thompson. In the past they
(05:11):
weaponized shooting to create that initial advantage, but from there
they tend to have less shooting than most teams, but
they just break you down with really crisp decision making
and movement right and obviously for Toronto, they don't have
the thread of the shooting, so it'll be harder for
them to break down elite defenses. But one of the
things I thought they did really well was they just
passed and moved in and out of their actions well
(05:33):
and got a lot of really good looks at the
rim they had. I don't have the number directly in
front of me. They had a million points in the
paint in this game. That was a huge part of
how they controlled the offensive end of the floor. In
this game, they had assists on two thirds of their baskets. Again,
anything over sixty five percent and assist percentage to me,
is really strong. They started up over that to start
(05:54):
the season. Again, they can't shoot the ball, but they
have real strengths. They're big, they're athletic, they're great at defense,
they run the floor and transition well, and when they
get in the half court, they have really nice playmaking talent.
It's a good recipe for winning basketball games, even if
they're shooting will provide issues in certain matchups. Again, Atlanta
was pretty disappointing, which we'll get into. I wasn't all
(06:15):
bad for Atlanta. Jalen Johnson really impressed me with his
passing ability. He lacks that perimeter polish like the jumper
still isn't there. There's like some tight spaceball handling stuff
where he can still have some issues. But he pressures
the rim well, both in transition and in the half
court when he looks to drive. And then he's just
got really natural feel for seeing the floor and seeing
the openings that are generated when he pressures the rim.
(06:35):
And I was impressed by a lot of his playmaking,
especially in the first half of that game. He kept
them in the game despite Toronto out playing them basically
in every other matchup. To start, But I was pretty
disappointed in Atlanta for a group that has so many
great athletes and some guys with some good defensive reputations,
right with Dyson Daniels and Nakil Alexander Walker, I thought
(06:57):
they were just super sloppy guarding the act that Toronto
was running in the half court, Like they botched switches
constantly in this game, and you want to credit the
Raptors for their movement, for their passing, and again, like
you do that kind of stuff, it has the potential
to lead to defense making mistakes. But I thought Atlanta
looked like a team that has not been approaching the
defensive end with much focus through training camp. I was
(07:19):
definitely disappointed there. And then their transition defense was flat
out abysmal, which is super strange for such an athletic team.
They need to be a good transition defense. Nikhil Alexander
Walker seems to have taken his new role in Atlanta
as like a high volume ball handling role, which I
think is a misallocation of what he does well. I
think he's at his best when he's guarding the ball
and then playing with an advantage taking catch and shoot
(07:40):
threes and using more of his ball handling ability, driving
closeouts and playing when the defense is already compromised rather
than attacking out front. Now he's going to have to
do a certain amount of that because Atlanta's not as
heavy on ball handling as Minnesota was. But I did
think that his shot selection was a little questionable in
this game. Atlanta just got out played from the jump.
So not a good start from the Hawks. They need
(08:02):
to have a better showing a night two Clippers Jazz.
This is one of the strangest opening night performances that
I've ever seen. I have a ton of respect for
the Clippers organization. I think they have one of the
best coaches in the league. I think they have a
well run front office that has a good feel for
how to build a modern NBA team, and I think
this roster in particular is built for regular season success.
(08:24):
But holy shit, did they come out flat and in
the opening minutes. I primarily blame Kawhi, Leonard In Viza
Zubats for the initial run that Utah went on. Utah
was basically just running Lori Markinen and off of like
downscreens from Walker, Kessler and Kawhi and Zoo just defended
it super poorly. Kawhi was applying little to no pressure
(08:47):
physicality on market In in his lock and trail. He
was getting caught on screens and not getting out to
him when he was shooting. When market In would curl,
he was just kind of lazily jogging behind. And then
Zoo like was just essentially not helping Kawhi on either
side of the action. Wasn't showing up high when Marketing
would come off the screen, wasn't helping when Marketing would curl,
(09:10):
but then also leaving Walker Kessler open because Kesler ended
up hitting two threes early in the game, which shout
out to Walker Kessler. I know in the game plan,
you're kind of gonna let him take that, right, but like,
if you're not gonna help on the curls in on
the at the level stuff, then you've got it. You
can't also just leave him wide open. You're basically just
floating around out there. And so Kawhi and Zoo came
(09:32):
out super flat defending those actions early, and Marketing and
Kessler torched them. They take an early double digit lead,
and then once the bench group started to work their
way into the game, it turnovers became a massive problem
for the Clips, like use of Nurkic comes in and
just starts pressuring the high post entry on Zubats and
Brook Lopez and forces a couple of turnovers right away
(09:54):
that led into runouts, and the Clippers had like a
half dozen of these super bizarre unforced turnovers where like
you're just throwing the ball right to the other team
or just throwing it out of bounds because the guy
you're throwing it to is not paying attention. Just they
literally looked like they were asleep. And it was crazy
because the next thing you knew, it was the early
third quarter and Tyler's calling a time out because the
(10:15):
Clippers are down by thirty seven on the road in Utah.
Like it was just bizarre, and Tyler took the blame.
And I'm sure the Clippers will bounce back with a
win tonight, but it was pretty crazy. I'm not gonna lie.
They definitely did not look ready for the start of
the season. I do want to credit Utah like they
came out and played great basketball. They have a very
good front court with Kessler and market In. Those are
(10:37):
talented guys when they're healthy and on the floor, and
they you know, just a casual reminder that even with
bad teams in the NBA, there's a lot of talent
out there, and if you come out and you bring
a lack of daisical effort, I don't know that you
can get away with it anymore night to night in
the regular season. I mean I rooted for the Lakers
in a game that they lost to the Jazz last year,
Like this is a bottom feeder that puts some really
(10:58):
high level basketball players on the floor. I thought Keante
George was great all night. Bryce Senseibah came in and
torched them from three. Hit a couple big ones in
the late third quarter or late second quarter. Excuse me,
that helps kind of blow the game open. Really nice
debut for the Utah Jazz, high energy performance to kick
the Clippers. But today's show is brought to you by
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Six are Celtics. What a debut for VJ edgecomb thirty
four points and seven rebounds looked like the perfect compliment
to Tyrese Maxi. I've always loved the idea of like
(13:29):
hyper athletic guys alongside skill guards in the backcourt, so
like essentially the Polish finesse type of guard, even though
Tyrese I think brings insane speed to the table obviously,
but that's why he's able to go for forty right,
he has the skill piece, and then off of him,
I want an athlete that can rebound, defend, and can
(13:49):
score with an advantage. And the key kind of storyline
in the game defensively was that Boston was roaming off
of VJ edge comb all night and then in his
on ball reps they were going under his picks. Boston
essentially dared VJ to beat them all night long, and
VJ just did. He got six unguarded catch and shoot
threes and made three of them. He hit two off
(14:11):
the dribble jump shots versus passive coverages. I thought he
did a wonderful job of slashing in the half court
when he had a chance, Like there was a play
where Peyton Pritchard was nail helping off of I think
it was Tyrese on the right wing and Peyton Pritchard
digs down into nail help Vj's just standing on the
left wing. This was early in the game. Talk about
those baked in driving lanes all the time. Right when
(14:32):
there's nail help, he's closing out on one of your shoulders,
all you have to do is rip the other direction
and you kind of have guaranteed dribble penetration right swing
past to VJ. He just ripped left immediately on the catch,
got a dunk. He in a transition push, ended up
catching Xavier Tillman in a cross match and the sixers
of space the floor nasty left or right crossover, went
(14:54):
up and dunked it because he got there so fast
at Boston's help, was not able to step over. He
had some super dynamic transition plays. He got a ridiculous
lob in the second half that was thrown way behind
him in traffic where he took off off his right foot,
caught it with two hands and dunked it from almost
behind his head. In the first half, one of the
(15:14):
plays that really got me excited for his potential. He
had this nasty full speed euro step where he kind
of like attacks and semi transition, gets a little bit
of a downhill, gets some momentum going downhill, and Jalen
Brown steps up to help at the rim and at
full speed, he like plants his right foot in Euros
back to the left for like a lefty soft finish
(15:35):
off the glass. Just a ridiculously athletic play. And even
on the shots he missed, I thought he got great separation,
like he was able to just get to these like
really nice lift and rhythm, little mid range pull ups
that he just happened to miss because right now he's
still not quite that polished, and that stuff will come
in time. And so that's why VJ to me feels
very safe as a bet to be an All Star
(15:56):
in this league, because if he can stay healthy, the
reports about his character and his work ethic are great,
and he's just a transcendently athletic guard. And so what
an exciting backcourt partner for Tyrese Maxey, who was amazing
in this game. His pull up three was dialed in.
He ended up hitting three in a row in the
second half that closed a double digit Celtics lead, and
(16:16):
all three of them were nasty. He had like three
or four ridiculous like hard drive to the right into
a pullback, durable quick step back three, or he was
moving super fast but if you like froze it like
trimmed out the move before he's straight up and down
on the pull up jump shot. Just a really impressive
display footwork and athleticism. He ended up going for forty
(16:40):
in this game, and then they just have all these
forwards who just play hard off of them. Obviously, Kelly, Youubray,
we all know he's been in that starting lineup for
a little while now. He hit the biggest shot of
the night, a little action off the right side where
that Sam Howser made a poor defensive decision. He helped
off the strong side corner when it was pretty unnecessary,
and so it was a little easy kickouts. One of
those things were in the moment you're like, okay, Kelly
(17:02):
had been off from three for most of the game,
but at the same time, you stick to your defensive principles.
Like Quentin Grimes was already wide open at the top
of the key on this play, in large part because
his man was already helping. So it was just kind
of like an unnecessary overhelp from Sam Hauser, And that
pass back across your body to the top of the
key to Grimes is a much tougher pass to make
(17:24):
than like a little five foot shovel pass to a
wide open man in the corner. Kelly Ubre hits that shot.
It effectively amounted to the game winner because they were
down two when he hit that shot. But I was
also really impressed by Dominic Barlow and Jabari Walker. The
two of them both just kind of crashing and cutting
and running constantly and just wrecking havoc at the rim
just by being big athletes off of the attention that
(17:47):
was garnered by their guards. Honestly, the only disappointing thing
if you were a seventy six ers fan was that
Joel Embiid looked like an absolute shell of himself. Like
Jackson and I were joking before we started recording, like
I don't think he made a single move towards the
best in that entire game. Every time he caught it
was just kind of like a face up jumper. You
had Jalen Brown in a post up and like just
(18:07):
spun over his left shoulder for a super difficult fade away.
You could tell the lift isn't there. The left shoulder
fade away. As a classic example, that's one of the
toughest shots in basketball for a right handed player because
you have to pivot and like square up in mid
air and he just didn't get close to enough lift
and so he kind of just flung it up there
and it didn't really have much of a chance to
go in. He had some plays in help side it.
(18:28):
He has a couple plays, like he had a block
in transition in the second half where you're like, whoa,
that was kind of like a throwback little play. But
like for the most part, he didn't really seem very
vertical or mobile around the basket and help on defense.
He just kind of looked he looked like his knees
are shot. But let's hope that he's just working his
way back and then he can continue to get better
as the season progressive. It made me happy to see
(18:49):
him out there playing, but it was definitely disappointing to
see just the level of physical aggression that he had.
But what a fun backcourt to root for. Now you
have Quinn Grimes too, Like obviously he was there last year,
but do you have Quentin Grimes and Jared McCain as well,
Like you have four really good guards. Grimes had a
huge three late off the left wing, kind of a
contested one when they really needed it. Jared mccaina obviously
(19:10):
will be back eventually when his thumb gets better. It's
fun team for Sixers fans. I would imagine that the
edgecomb stuff had to have been the antidote to the
Joe El embiid frustrations on the Celtics front. They got
stagnant late. They started spamming Jalen Brown Jalen Brown high
post ups and he hit one of them, but there
were some misses in there, and it just kind of
(19:30):
got stagnant and they got away from some of the
stuff they were doing earlier in the game. They did
control the majority of the game, though in large part
because they do have a lot of talented perimeter players
like Derek White, Peyton Pritchard, Jalen Brown, and Anthony Simons
all had moments in the game where they had big
stretches on offense where they put some points up and
kind of got into a little bit of a flow.
(19:51):
Anfrony applied some more rim pressure than he did in preseason.
He had a big semi transition dunk where he crossed
his man up and went up off his right foot
and dunked it with two hands. Yeah, the only thing
that really stood out to me, They just struggled to
guard in large part because their front courd is just
so limited, and that's a fast sixers team, and so
(20:11):
when you don't have rim protection behind them, it just
puts your guards in a really tough spot. And man,
that center rotation looked brutals. Zavi or Tillman missed several
threes that looked like they had no chance to go in.
Right at the end of the game late off of
a miss from Jalen Brown, he had a point blank range,
little kind of touch floater hook thing that was like
three feet from the basket that he left short. That
(20:34):
was a huge miss. In crunch time. Luca Garza couldn't
hit a shot. Nimi Kuita was probably the best guy
that we saw last night. He put up a decent
stat line. Sits on Wednesday put up a decent stat line,
but it was just jarring to see that core juxtaposed
with what we saw last year from the Celtics from
the center position. All right, let's start getting into our
(20:54):
mail back questions. Jason, I understand you're a Lakers fan
and also a Lebron fan, but I believe that you've
too much stock into the stardom of Luca and have
them ranked too high on your championship contenders list. To me,
at most, they should be closer to the bottom of
the puncher's chance tier, behind teams like the Knicks, Clippers,
t Wolves, and Warriors. Those teams, while they had their flaws,
are better constructed than the Lakers, And to me, it's
(21:15):
foolish to be blinded by a potential all time great
season by LUCA turning into a deep playoff run. In
the parody era of the NBA, I've yet to mention Lebron,
who is forty year old star and can be a
star on offense on any given night, but defensively he
can be picked on when not going against star power
against power style offensive players, and can be caught ball
watching at times. And I feel like that, combined with
your other two best players in Luca and Reeves not
(21:37):
being plus defenders, as a recipe for another first round exit.
So there's an interesting point you're making, which I want
to get into in a minute. I do disagree with
some of the specifics, like Lebron was one of the
best ISO defenders in the league last year and had
a stretch really for like two thirds of the season
where he was an all defense level player. He got
off to a rough start to the year, but like
to me, Lebron when he's healthy in this actually in
(22:00):
a role like this alongside Luca where he doesn't have
to do as much offensively, I think he's one of
the most important defensive players on the Lakers. To be
honest with you, I thought you saw the absence of
him in a big way against the Warriors. He is
a huge part of their ability to kind of like
troll the back line off of Golden State's actions. And
he's just one of the most attentive defenders and better
(22:21):
communicators on the team. I mean, he was second team
All NBA last year. I don't know what it is. Like,
I get it he has sciatica. He's out to start
the year, But like, he just had two seasons where
he played seventy games and made the All NBA team twice.
I somehow he's still underrated. I don't know how that
keeps happening. But like I'm I don't think the Lakers
have a Lebron problem. Let's just put it that way.
(22:43):
That said, like I do agree with you that I'm
the Lakers I'm lower on than when I originally did
my Contenders video. So to be one hundred percent transparent,
we recorded our contender rankings in early October. I want
to say it was like on October second, Okay, so
it was before I had seen them play any basketball.
It was based on the fact that the Lakers won
(23:04):
fifty games last year and they were the three seed,
and looking at the improved version of the Lakers with
like Luka Doncic being in better shape and them essentially
adding three rotation level players for nothing and only losing
Dorian Finney Smith, who by the way, I think Dorian
has been very important over the years. But like again,
this was a team that couldn't even play a center
(23:25):
against Minnesota. They get a guy like DeAndre and who's
very flawed but at least can play the position. You
hit a guy like Marcus Smart, who's a big upgrade
over someone like Jordan Goodwin, for example. Like that was
what that was my rationale when I originally put that together.
But I did a recording with the Nerd Sesh guys
a couple weeks after that. It was like mid mid October,
like October fifteenth or sixteenth or so, where I had
(23:46):
seen them play in preseason a few times, and I
was pretty underwhelmed, and I talked about how I was
gonna put a couple teams ahead of them, and right
now I agree. Like so I originally my contender rankings,
if you remember, I had Denver, Oklahoma City, Cleveland, Minnesota.
Then I the Lakers at five after what I've seen
from preseason in camp, and by the way, this list
is constantly in a shift throughout the season. My preliminary
(24:09):
rankings in like early October, those are essentially on paper rankings,
but on paper means nothing when you throw the ball
up in the air and we're on the hardwood and
we're playing basketball, right So, like, we have a bunch
more data. Now, we have training camps from all these teams,
We have a handful of regular season games. The two
teams I would clearly put above them now are Houston
and Golden State. I think I'm inclined to put Golden
(24:30):
State at that five spot, potentially even that four spot
above Minnesota. I kind of have Minnesota, Golden State in
Houston kind of vying and competing for that next spot
behind Denver and Oklahoma City at this point. Again, that
could change in a few weeks, but that's just where
I'm at right now. But it's a long season and
I expect a lot to change over the course of
the year. The Lakers are playing bad basketball right now,
(24:52):
but they have a lot that they can clean up,
and they have a bona fide top tier superstar at
the top at like the peak of his powers, and
Lebron James will eventu return to this team. I think
it's certainly possible that he ends up getting traded or
something or bought out or something like that, but I
still think it's far more likely than not that he
plays basketball for the Lakers until he retires. And so
at some point late October or excuse me, late November
(25:14):
early December, he's gonna return to this team, and he
immediately addresses a lot of their biggest concerns in terms
of just like size and physicality and basketball IQ and
defensive communication on the back line and all that kind
of stuff. So like they're gonna have some The Lakers
are gonna have something to say at some point. I
have no idea what level they'll be able to reach.
Right now, they look pretty mediocre and unathletic, so I'm
(25:35):
dropping them to seventh, behind Houston and Golden State, as
well as the original four teams that I named Denver,
Oklahoma City, Cleveland, Minnesota. After that point, like, I'm just
not super high on the Knicks. I know they won
their first game. I'm keeping an open mind with the
new coaching staff. I want to see what they've got.
But like, to me, the Knicks, if you literally just
remove four wins against the Celtics in the second round,
(25:57):
were incredibly underwhelming all season law last year. It's gonna
take a lot for me to kind of turn around
my opinion on the Knicks. And then the Clippers literally
went into Utah and got their asses beat. I'm like,
I'm not about to jump onto to the Clippers bandwagon
two day of all days, Like, the Lakers have looked disappointing,
but so have the Clippers so well. We'll continue to
(26:21):
kind of evaluate that over time. Like if two weeks
from now we're gonna do power rankings, I'm gonna talk
about contender rankings when I make changes as we kind
of work our way through the season. But yeah, like
in early October, October second I had the Lakers at five,
I'm dropping them to seven at this point, with Houston
and Golden State moving above them, is there a world
in which Jonathan Cammingham matures to a point where he
(26:42):
doesn't get traded off the Warriors? Also, simply calling Steph
the greatest shooter of all time doesn't do his greatness justice.
He is one of the greatest scorers and greatest players period.
I completely agree to me. Steph is the fifth greatest
perimeter player of all time, just behind Michael Jordan, Lebron James,
Kobe Bryant, and Magic Johnson. I agree with you that
kind of like, like defining his game as just elite
(27:04):
shooting is a huge, you know, like disservice to what
he's accomplished in this league. I think he's the best
off ball mover in the history of the league. He's
one of the most conditioned athletes in the league. I mean,
the dude has put in a ton of work in
his body. Do you guys remember when he hit that
I just watching the highlight again this morning. He had
like a thirty seven footer last night to tie the
(27:27):
game at one twenty. Like it was literally a thirty
seven footer off of a ball screen, and you know
he runs over He kind of like signals to call
the time out to the Denver bench and then he
runs over and he just flexes, and you're like, holy shit,
Like Steph is jacked. Like he has clearly worked a
ton on his body, which is, by the way, has
helped him to become a better, more useful defender, and
(27:49):
has helped him to handle off ball contact and just
in general get open easier. And as the league has
become more physical, like I saw a bunch of times
on Opening Night where he's like throwing win moves on
Gabe Vincent and getting open because he's just so damned strong.
Now he's legitimately much stronger than a guy like Gabe Vincent, right, So,
like he's putting a ton of work there. He's a
(28:10):
very good passer. This is a guy who does a
lot of his work off the ball. But if they
ran like twenty eighteen Rockets offense or twenty nineteen Rockets
offense where they just spam Steph high pick and rolls
spread with shooting, I think Steph could get up around
eight to nine assists per game easily. I think he's
a high level passer in that regard, And then I
(28:31):
think he's one of the best competitors of his era. Like,
this is a guy that is, you know, wired in
a way that drives him to a different extent than
many of the players in this league. So I agree
with you that kind of synthesizing him down to just
a great shooter doesn't do him justice. To your question
about Johnathan Kaminga, I absolutely think there's a world in
(28:52):
which Jonathan Kminga matures to a point where he doesn't
get traded off the Warriors. I mean, anybody who's close
to the Warriors will tell you that. Even though there's
a lot of people in their basketball operations that have
been skeptical about him in his fit, Joe Lakub loves
the guy, Like Joe Lakub is obsessed with Jonathan Kaminga
and wants to keep him. And so if Jonathan Kaminga
(29:13):
plays well enough over the course of the next three
months or so, I think it's more likely than not
that he doesn't get traded. I'm a big believer and
let's not overreact to one game or two games under
any circumstances. We talked about this after the Lakers game,
Like both the Lakers and Denver are big, slow teams.
(29:34):
When you're big and slow and you've got Steph Curry,
you're gonna cut him to pieces in a lot of ways.
I've talked at length about how Steph in particular causes
massive problems for Denver's pick and roll defense because Jokich
is slow and he can just get to his spots
whenever he wants to. That's not me trying to pour
cold water on the Warriors. It just means I want
(29:55):
to see them against some different types of matchups, Like
when you're playing against really and athletic perimeter defenses, the
job changes and suddenly those reads become like instead of
having like this big of a window to make a read,
it's more like this big of a window to make
or read. Like everything just gets a little bit faster.
Everything just gets a little bit more difficult to read
(30:15):
and to process. And so those are the kinds of
games where we're gonna see a different challenge for Jonathan
kaminga right. But what we've seen early in the season
is he's knocking down his catch and shoot threes, which
is absolutely crucial. He's making good reads in the offense.
He's being aggressive, but not too aggressive, like he's he's
not completely shelving Jonathan kaminga the scorer, but he is
(30:37):
kind of refining it and being picky about when he's
when he's going, and he's playing great defense. I thought
he was a monster defensively down the stretch against Denver
so like, and he got cooked by Luca, but Luca's
Luca right, so like overall, like he's off to a
great start. But the Warriors have played two teams that
kind of like slot nicely into their into their advance.
(31:00):
And I'm not saying this retroactively. I said last year
after the first time the Lakers played the Warriors with
Luka Doncic, I was like, Oh, the Warriors are too
fast for them. This is a bad matchup for the Lakers.
I even said before the playoffs, I was like, if
the Lakers met the Warriors in a playoff series, I'd
be inclined to pick the Warriors. That was after they
played in the regular season and they I think they
(31:22):
went into La and beat them with Luca Lebron in Austin, right.
And then I've said before the season at length that
the kinds of teams that can upset Denver are teams
that have really high level pick and roll players and
that have speed. And I mentioned like Luca against Denver,
and I mentioned Steph against Denver in particular. Those are
just matchups that I think are favorable for Golden State.
(31:44):
That's the strength. Like I think Denver is the championship favorite.
So if you match up well against Denver, that's a
huge feather in your cap if your goal is to
win a championship, Like that means that Like let's say
that Denver meets Oklahoma City in the second round for
some reason, and they eliminate Oklahoma City and then Golden
State faces Denver in the conference finals all of a sudden,
like there's like a very significant window for Golden State
(32:07):
to slip through there and win a title. Now, Golden
State did provide some issues for Oklahoma City last year.
We talked about this in our Oka see like who
can beat Oklahoma City series, And like I think Jimmy
and Horford and Draymond are just such high IQ defenders
that they can cause some problems for Oklahoma City's offense.
But what I specifically worry about the Oklahoma City matchup
(32:29):
for Golden State is just they have all that speed,
and that's the kind of thing that I think could
be a very different type of challenge for a Golden
State team that does lack offensive firepower once you get
off of steph. So I'm just curious to see it. Like,
the Warriors have aced every test so far, but there
are more tests down the line, and as long as
(32:51):
Jonathan Minga keeps performing well in those tests, He's going
to be a Warrior at the end of the season,
and he very well might be a Warrior long term.
Next question, you mentioned last season's Lakers team handling the
Warriors better due to Anthony Davis being able to roam,
slash protect the rim, allowing the perimeter defenders to overplay
the three point line. Looking towards the season, which playoff
(33:13):
teams would give Golden State the most trouble and conversely
teams who Golden State fans should hope to be a
match up in May. So again, this is just really
quick follow up to what we were just talking about.
I think the teams in particular that worry me for
Golden State are really fast and athletic perimeter teams that
are also high IQs. So like, for instance, one of
the things that always worried me about Minnesota is Minnesota
(33:34):
has a lot of guys that, despite being good defenders,
can lose their attentiveness off ball and they can lose
track of guys like Steph. This was something that happened
in the regular season in Minnesota Golden State matchups, and
it was why Golden State I think, in a lot
of ways presented problems for Minnesota when they were healthy.
Last year. That series was kind of like a coin
flip to me if both teams were healthy, But Golden
(33:56):
State presents a lot of problems with them because Minnesota
struggles to track off ball shooters. But specifically Oklahoma City
is a team that I have my eye on. Oklahoma
City provides that combination of high IQ speed that's not
going to lose track of Steph and they're not gonna
botch as many switches as other teams, and they have
(34:17):
rim protection and Chet Holmgren to roam around the basket.
They're gonna present some problems. Another team I think is
the Clippers. They have some really high level perimeter defenders
in Chris Doun and Derek Jones Junior that can chase
Steph around while also having high IQ off ball defenders
and some rim protection with Zoo. We saw that in
the late regular season game last year. So there are
(34:39):
teams that I think present a different challenge for Golden State,
and I am just curious to see what they look
like when they run into those teams. But I do
think Golden State matches up well with a team like
the Lakers. I do think Golden State matches up really
well with a team like Denver and then Minnesota just
because of their lack of off ball attentiveness. Do you
think there's a chance the Spurs don't have to trade
(34:59):
to in the Chip next season or in any other
or in other words, what is the lowest limit that
has to happen for the Spurs to not just be
one of the contenders, but to really see that it
could happen like Oklahoma City in Game one last season,
in game one of the regular season, that was when
Oklahoma City went into Denver and kick Denver's ass. If
you guys remember, So, here's the thing. I'm gonna say,
the same thing that I was talking about with Golden State.
(35:21):
It's very encouraging for showing for the Spurs. You don't
even have dearon Fox and yet all your young guards
play pretty well. Your defense just utterly demolishes Dallas. Victor
women Yama is hoop and his ass off, Steph Castle's
throwing lobs in transition, and damn near getting a twenty
point triple double. There's a lot of upside with what
you saw from that one particular matchup, but it was
(35:43):
a team that I think was a good matchup for
san Antonio, right, Like Dallas is super light on shooting
and ball handling that allows Victor women Yama to roam
the paint really well right on the other end of
the floor. Like we talked about that night, I think
Victor can kind of cook any bigger player in the
league because they're all too big to be able to
(36:05):
move with him, but they're all not big enough to
actually bother him because he's so damn tall. So, like,
I think there'll be different challenges with San Antonio, Like
Oklahoma City's a classic example where they're going to be smaller,
quicker up underneath you, and it's going to be a
lot more about processing and shooting. And you know, this
is a San Antonio team that's light on shooting, right,
(36:25):
So I think, like it's ridiculous to overreact to one
game against a heavily flawed Dallas Mavericks roster. But we'll
just continue to watch them and see how they develop. Yes,
if Steph Castle and Devin Vessel and Dylan Harper and
all these guys just blossom and Deer and Fox is
a big bounce back season that's closer to two years
ago rather than last year, then yeah, they might not
(36:48):
need to make a trade, and they might be able
to just kind of naturally improve internally and make a
run for the championship at some point in the next
couple of years. But I think it's more likely than
not that over the course of this season, their limitations
and shooting and just youthful inconsistency lead them to want
to bring veteran shooting in and just a little bit
more of like a solid, kind of like higher floor
(37:11):
option at some of their position groups. Now, the thing
is is Victor is messing up timeline stuff, because Victor
very well might be just a legitimate top tier superstar
this year. It seems likely at this point after what
we saw on opening night. And so if Victor is
going to be that guy, all of a sudden, you're
in your championship window now and so it kind of
(37:33):
changes your calculus when you're building the team. So it's
just something to keep an eye on. We're gonna go
quick through these last ones here. How do you unlock
BAM's offense? If you're spo I think Bam kind of
is what he is at this point as an offensive player.
He is a guy that struggles to make anything that's
not a dunk and like that. Just yes, he's improved
(37:54):
as like a standstill three point shooter, but he's not
a really high level jump shooter by any stretch of
the imagination. He struggles with hooks, he struggles with floaters,
he struggles with layups, damn. Similar to Anthony Davis, although
Ad has done a lot better in terms of his
short range shot making, like his hooks and his floaters,
but similar like Bam to an even greater extent, just
has never added the offensive polish necessary to be a
(38:17):
super high level offensive player. To me, he kind of
is what he is at this point. He's a five
out big. He's a guy that can play on the
perimeter as a screener, dribble handoff, guy that makes good
decisions with the basketball, sets good screens, and rolls hard
to the rim and he's good at hitting backcutters like that,
to me is just kind of his destiny as an
NBA player at this point. What kind of season do
(38:38):
you think Klay Thompson is about to have. It feels
like he is completely faded out of media discussions. Well, ye,
he's not the same player used to be. I don't
think Clay is going to be a super prominent player
in NBA media discussions because Clay is now at this point,
you know, not one of the ten or fifteen best
two guards in the league anymore. So one of the
(38:58):
things that's going to be tricky with Clay is he's
the one dead serious shooter on the team and so
he's going to be accounted for in the in the
game plan, Like opponents are going to put their most attentive,
best lock and trail defender on Clay and they're going
to count for a mall game and just dare everyone
else to shoot. He's not a guy that's going to
(39:19):
put the ball on the floor and create offense for
himself at this point, and the lack of playmaking talent
on the roster is leading him to be like, even
when he does get left open, whether it's transition chaos
or offensive rebound chaos, Like they don't always get the
ball to him, So I just don't really see him
as a guy that's gonna have too much of an
impact at this phase in his career. Hi, Jason, my
(39:40):
brother and I watch basketball like junkies and have had
this hypothesis that the game is evolving at a rate
where the skill level will soon turn basketball into a
punish league. Essentially, I believe that the majority of the
smallest defensive laps is like a bad head or a
slow rotation, will be the most important margins for successful teams.
I wanted your thoughts on that. I love the show
and your team's contra to the game. I love much
(40:01):
love from Brooklyn, So first of all, thanks for supporting
the show and for the kind words. What you're talking
about is something that I'm a huge believer in the
idea of, essentially, like capitalizing on the small advantages that
occur in actions, whether it's like you said, like a
guy hedges for too long and the guy who slips
out of its wide open at the three point line,
or this team is slow in rotation, so if we
(40:23):
just move the ball around we're going to get open shots.
I think it's a little bit more complicated in the
sense that like those kinds of advantages happen on almost
every possession somewhere. It's a lot of it has to
do with playmaking talent. Like you talk about punish as
in punishing mistakes. In order to punish mistakes, you need
two things. You need a high IQ player with the
(40:45):
ball that will find that mistake and hit the pass
it hit the opening. And then you need too, a
guy that's actually going to make the defense pay in
that opening, whether it's hitting a catch and shoot shot,
racking a close out and getting all the way to
the rim, or racking a close out getting to the
middle of the floor and make the next read in
that chain. Essentially, it's going to be about reading and reacting.
(41:05):
It's a copycat league. There's going to be a lot
of basketball operations professionals and coaching professionals that are going
to look at teams like Indiana. We talked about how
last night, I think Indiana, irrespective of talent, plays the
best basketball in the NBA because of all the things
that you specifically are mentioning. So all these entities around
(41:27):
the league are going to watch that and they're going
to go like, we need to do this. Why do
you think you're hearing every every fucking team in training camp?
We want to run more. We want to run more.
We want to know why, because running works, and so
they want to be better basketball teams, and so they
know that that's a way to improve their basketball team.
And so essentially everyone's going to start hunting these things.
More transition pushes more action in the half court, which
(41:47):
is going to generate those kinds of small defensive lapses
like you're talking about. From there, it's going to be
reading and reacting and play finishing, hitting those gaps with passes,
making the right decision against the advantage, and then finishing
the play by hitting shots. Can you see Jaden McDaniel's
turn into a number two for Ant? No? I don't
really see that in his future. I see him as
(42:09):
being a guy that can do some weak side scoring
forward stuff, you know, hitting threes, driving closeouts, doing damage
on the glass when he's being ignored. I don't see
him as a legitimate number two. The kind of player
that I keep coming back to for Ant is like
a skill guard. I know it'll never happen. But like
Austin Reeves is an example of a player that I
think would be a beautiful fit alongside Anthony Edwards. Kind
(42:32):
of like a skill, finesse guard that's good at getting
to the foul line, that has like high level mid
range scoring chops that just in general is like a
finesse like offensive engine type of player off of ANT.
Like that's the kind of guy that I look at
as like a legit number two off of Ant, a
skill guard alongside Ant's like bulky athleticism in rim pressure. Right.
(42:53):
But I really like Jayden. I think he looks great.
I think the jump shot is real. I just think
once you start talking about number two's, I think they
just need to be a little bit more refined in
terms of their offensive skill four more quick ones. As
you continue to get more and more success in the
niche of basketball content analysis, will there ever be a
time where you take your talents to covering the NFL
as well? I have your post notifications on for X
(43:14):
and I love your football takes when you have them.
Keep up the great work. So I love the NFL.
I've loved it since I was a kid. The long
and short of it, is is that like every year
right about now, when the NBA regular season starts, it's
really hard for me to just give it the attention.
Right Like, there was a game on last night. I
was working, so I wasn't gonna watch it, right, And
(43:36):
same thing goes for Sunday. There are times where like,
you know, it's Sunday and it's like, Okay, I want
to sit down and watch. But then it'll be like, well,
there were some games on the Friday night and Saturday
night slate that I need to get caught up on,
and so I'll just get my laptop out and I'll
just start watching film. And you know, it kind of
takes me back to the the kind of like that
like cliche that Lebron uses. It's that keep the main
(43:57):
thing the main thing, Like I don't want to sit
there and start talking about the NFL if I haven't
put in the necessary work. What I like, what allows
me to cover the game the way that I do
is that I put an enormous amount of work into
watching NBA games and learning about how the NBA works
on both ends of the floor and talking to smart
(44:19):
NBA people. And so it's one of those things where
I don't want to like take resources from that department
and dedicate them to the NFL and have my NBA
work suffer. And so is there a version of this
in the future where maybe I'm doing it. I'm not
going to say never, but in the short term, I
think it's far more likely than not that I just
stay in my wheelhouse and cover the NBA. With the
(44:43):
Bucks shooting so many threes, I feel like we, I'm
a fan of, lead the team and lead the NBA
in three point attempts and we can come out of
the East. Do you see the vision? I did not
see Milwaukee versus Washington. That was one of the games
that I did not watch the first through the first
few games. But we saw this last season towards the
end the year Steady died of Jannis on the ball,
a lot of guard screens surrounding him with a ton
(45:04):
of shooting, and Yanni's just kind of playing driving kick,
like get to the basket and finish, draw fout or
spray out to a shooter. Right as far as leaning
into three point attempts, like again, like when you're not
good compared to the best teams in the league, you
want to apply as much variance as possible, right, So
it makes sense for the Bucks to be a team
(45:25):
that takes a lot of threes and that gives up
a lot of threes because essentially, if they protect the
rim and they force the other team to shoot, they
might go cold. And if you shoot a ton of threes,
you might get hot, and you're gonna win on the
nights when you get hot from three and the other
team doesn't. But ultimately it comes down to quality. I
don't believe in inflating your three point attempts just for
the sake of inflating your three point attempts. A bad
(45:47):
three point shot isn't worth three points, it's worth zero points.
You want to generate the highest available shot quality in
any situation. A lot of it will be game plan
dependent too, depending on how your opponent is guarding things.
But if the Bucks end up generating a ton of
threes with shooting off of Giannis, I think it's a
smart approach to increase variance to give them more of
an upset threat. Big fan of the show and have
(46:10):
learned a ton about the game from your channel, So
thank you for what you do. Thank you for the
kind words and for the sport. My question is simple,
do you think it's insane to think that Wemby genuinely
might be the best player live right now? And what
would need to happen for that to be the consensus
in your opinion? Thanks again. This kind of takes me
to like the Kobe Lebron debate in the late two thousands.
If you guys, remember, it's very possible that we're looking
at this thing in like three weeks and Wemby's averaging
(46:32):
thirty five, fourteen and six with like five blocks or
of some insane shit like that, and then all of
us are like, oh my gosh, this one to be
the best player in the league. Similarly, Lebron in the
late two thousands was just a wrecking ball is winning
sixty games with weak rosters and putting up absurd stat
lines and crazy highlights every single night. But like when
(46:54):
it came to slow down playoff basketball against the best
teams in the league, Kobe still better than him. In
the late two thousands, no surprise, Lebron was in his
early to mid twenties. Kobe was in his early thirties
and was more refined at that point, and he had
a lot more experience, right, But like the becoming the
best player in the NBA, becoming the best player in
(47:15):
the world is a playoff game. It is very much
about solving the puzzle of four elite opponents in two months,
having to beat them four times out of seven, when
all the game planning is geared around your weaknesses. So
it's one of those things where like, there's nothing Wemby
could do in the regular season that would convince me
that he's the best player in the world. That is
(47:35):
an honor that I personally wouldn't consider him for unless
he was doing it in the playoffs and you know,
carrying his team to like it's not even so much
like he has to win the title necessarily, although that
is the ultimate kind of like, you know, signal that
you've arrived on that front. But to me, it's more
(47:56):
just like him thriving in the playoffs and being a
dominant player off player, and like not experiencing a drop
off from regular season production to playoff production. When he
can tie those two things together, which obviously we haven't
even seen that yet, that's when I would start to
consider him to be the best player alive. Last question, Jason,
I enjoy your content, keep up the good work. Fist bump.
(48:17):
I want to ask as a thunderfan, I'm starting to
worry about Chet. Obviously, we want him to stay healthy
and be careful for those bumps he's absorbing, but we're
also worried about how his offensive skill will only show
in flashes while other times he just can become a
non factor, especially in the clutch. What do you think
you should be working on to stay more consistent? So
I get triggered with this kind of thing. I feel
like it's really hard for big lanky dudes that aren't
(48:39):
super polished, like Kevin Durant for example, to be ball
handlers in like physical late game environments, especially like I
think it's one thing when you're big and strong like
Jokic or Lebron or Luca, when you have like real strength,
you can thrive in that physicality and get to your
spot still. But like a lot of the thinner players,
(49:00):
especially when they're not super polished, they can get kind
of dislodged and beat up a little bit in those situations.
And so I don't really ever see Chet as being
like the guy that you're just gonna run the offense
through and crunch time, not unless he becomes a dramatically
better jump shooter, which he just hasn't been to this
point in his career. But I'm still super high on Chet.
(49:21):
Like I think he's still one of the most underrated
defensive players in the league. He's a huge part of
what they did defensively in last year's playoff run. I
do want to see him improve as a catch and
shoot jump shooter, Like he's got to start beating nail
help with those above the break threes off of the
right and left wing. But like, yeah, I think I'm
not gonna say I've learned this lesson with Shay. I
(49:41):
don't want to put a ceiling on anybody, so I
don't want to sit here and pretend is though Chet
is incapable of becoming a guy that can become a
high usage player in crunch time, But right now he's
too thin and two and lacks the polish necessary to
be that kind of guy outside of spurts, especially early
in games and in regular season context. But the main
thing for me is, like if he gets to the
point where he's like a forty percent knockdown, you know,
(50:04):
above the break three point shooter when he's open, that'll
be plenty. Offensively, that's all. That's all the thunderneath from him.
He does enough damages a cutter along the baseline and
as an offensive rebounder, and with what he does defensively,
and he can provide little pops of scoring throughout the
game off the dribble, obviously inconsistently, but he can do that.
To me, the main like kind of barrier between where
(50:24):
he is right now and like making the thunder unbeatable
is like he's got to get to the point where
he can hit forty percent of his unguarded catch and
shoot threes above the break. All right, guys, it's all
have for today. As always, a sincerely appreciate you guys
for supporting us and supporting the show. But he will
be back on Monday. Enjoy your weekend. Lots of basketball
to get into when we get some Monday, I would
see you guys then
The volume. All right, Well, god to hoops tonight. Here
at the Volume Heavy Friday. Everybody. Hope all you guys
had a great first week. I'm very excited to get
into our mail bag today. I got caught up on
(00:24):
three more games from the Wednesday Night Slate. I swear
my eyes are gonna be squares soon. I watched ten
of the first sixteen NBA regular season games. It's been
an absolute grind this week. We had three fun live
shows over the last few nights. But I'm very excited
to kind of bounce around and get to the stuff
that we haven't talked about yet. We do have a
handful of questions related to some of our regular teams
that we cover often on the show. But we're gonna
(00:45):
be breaking down three games from Wednesday Night Slate. We're
gonna hit Raptors, Hawks, We're gonna hit Clippers, Jazz, We're
gonna hit six Ers, Celtics. I've got questions from some
other teams around the league, some big picture basketball kind
of philosophy questions, all sorts of interesting stuff from you
guys in today's mail bag. You guys are the joke
before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops and I
YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos,
follow me on Twitter and underscore jcnlts. You guys don't
(01:08):
miss how announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever
you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also super
helpful if you leave a rating in a review on
that front. Jackson's doing great work on our social media
feeds Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. Make sure you guys follow
us there. Then, the last but not least, keep dropping
mail bag questions in the YouTube comments again in our
full episodes. Right, mail bag, colon, write your question. We're
going to get to them mostly on Fridays, but about
(01:30):
once a week throughout the remainder of the season. All right,
let's talk some basketball. So first question, shout out to
Harry weston the question that allowed us to get to
all of these games. Out of the other games on
opening night, who surprised you the most? I think Charlotte
and Toronto could have sneaky good seasons and VJ Edgecomb
looks like the future in Philly. Also, what happened in Utah,
(01:53):
I would argue Veja was the biggest surprise from that
Wednesday Night Slate. But I thought that this question was
a great opportunity for us to just quickly bounce through
a couple of game reactions. I caught up on Raptors, Hawks, Clippers, Jazz,
and six or Celtics this morning. I'm just gonna go
ahead and give you guys my takeaways on all three
of those games. So, first of all, I haven't had
(02:13):
the chance to watch Charlotte yet, although I caught them
in preseason. I thought they looked good in preseason. I'm
generally not as high on Charlotte as some of my
peers are, just because I think they're kind of generally
unserious and they have a very injury prone set of
core players. But we will get to the Charlotte Hornets
at some point in time down the line. Starting with
Raptors Hawks, I thought Toronto's size, length, and athleticism in
(02:37):
their starting lineup popped off the screen right away. When
you have Brandon Ingram and Scottie Barnes, who are, in
addition to being two really big forwards, Barnes brings a
strength and power element, Ingram brings a length element. Ingram's
more of an over the top shooter. Barnes is more
of a rim pressuring type of player, but both of
them are pretty high level playmakers for the forward position.
(03:00):
Yaka Pertl obviously a big, strong center, kind of an
underrated player in my opinion, and then RJ. Barrett obviously
one of the more athletic kind of two three swingmen
out there at two through five. They're just very physically imposing,
and they came out with super impressive defensive intensity right
from the jump, and they it just was a carryover
(03:21):
from what we saw from the tail end of last season.
If you guys remember, they ran the floor insanely well
in transition, kind of flipping the script on what Atlanta
typically likes to do. Toronto had forty three transition points
in this game. They had an offensive rating over one
forty on their transition possessions. Just a combination of really
poor Atlanta transition defense, which we'll get to in a minute,
(03:44):
and just how athletically imposing they can be when they're
running the floor and brandon ingram right out. The gates
came out super aggressive, scoring off of off ball action
and on ball action, just curling around screens and getting
into the middle of the floor. His scoring polish was
immediately apparent. I think he going to make life a
lot easier for them on that end, especially when they
get into crunch time, which obviously they did not experience
(04:05):
in this particular game. I thought RJ. Barrett was fantastic.
He hit some much needed threes early in the game
to space the floor, did a great job pressure in
the rim. He obviously played really really good defense as well,
and the Raptors just went into Atlanta and smacked them.
They had seven guys in double figures. Grady Dick had
twenty off the bench. He hit a bunch of jumpers
from all sorts of ranges all over the floor. They
(04:28):
were just six for twenty five from three and yet
they logged a one twenty two offensive rating. And it
was a combination to two things. Obviously, the transition pushes.
When you have over forty transition points in a game,
that's a pretty unusual number to see there. That's a
big way to boost your offensive rating. And then the
second piece of it is when they got in the
half court, they had a lot of really impressive ball
(04:49):
in player movement. They got in and out of actions quickly.
They ran a lot of actions on every possession, and
one of the things that stood out to me is
they do have more playmaking talent than you would think,
like for all the limits in terms of shooting talent.
We've seen this before with teams like the Golden State Warriors.
Now they weaponize shooting in the form of Steph and
Buddy Heeled now and Klay Thompson. In the past they
(05:11):
weaponized shooting to create that initial advantage, but from there
they tend to have less shooting than most teams, but
they just break you down with really crisp decision making
and movement right and obviously for Toronto, they don't have
the thread of the shooting, so it'll be harder for
them to break down elite defenses. But one of the
things I thought they did really well was they just
passed and moved in and out of their actions well
(05:33):
and got a lot of really good looks at the
rim they had. I don't have the number directly in
front of me. They had a million points in the
paint in this game. That was a huge part of
how they controlled the offensive end of the floor. In
this game, they had assists on two thirds of their baskets. Again,
anything over sixty five percent and assist percentage to me,
is really strong. They started up over that to start
(05:54):
the season. Again, they can't shoot the ball, but they
have real strengths. They're big, they're athletic, they're great at defense,
they run the floor and transition well, and when they
get in the half court, they have really nice playmaking talent.
It's a good recipe for winning basketball games, even if
they're shooting will provide issues in certain matchups. Again, Atlanta
was pretty disappointing, which we'll get into. I wasn't all
(06:15):
bad for Atlanta. Jalen Johnson really impressed me with his
passing ability. He lacks that perimeter polish like the jumper
still isn't there. There's like some tight spaceball handling stuff
where he can still have some issues. But he pressures
the rim well, both in transition and in the half
court when he looks to drive. And then he's just
got really natural feel for seeing the floor and seeing
the openings that are generated when he pressures the rim.
(06:35):
And I was impressed by a lot of his playmaking,
especially in the first half of that game. He kept
them in the game despite Toronto out playing them basically
in every other matchup. To start, But I was pretty
disappointed in Atlanta for a group that has so many
great athletes and some guys with some good defensive reputations,
right with Dyson Daniels and Nakil Alexander Walker, I thought
(06:57):
they were just super sloppy guarding the act that Toronto
was running in the half court, Like they botched switches
constantly in this game, and you want to credit the
Raptors for their movement, for their passing, and again, like
you do that kind of stuff, it has the potential
to lead to defense making mistakes. But I thought Atlanta
looked like a team that has not been approaching the
defensive end with much focus through training camp. I was
(07:19):
definitely disappointed there. And then their transition defense was flat
out abysmal, which is super strange for such an athletic team.
They need to be a good transition defense. Nikhil Alexander
Walker seems to have taken his new role in Atlanta
as like a high volume ball handling role, which I
think is a misallocation of what he does well. I
think he's at his best when he's guarding the ball
and then playing with an advantage taking catch and shoot
(07:40):
threes and using more of his ball handling ability, driving
closeouts and playing when the defense is already compromised rather
than attacking out front. Now he's going to have to
do a certain amount of that because Atlanta's not as
heavy on ball handling as Minnesota was. But I did
think that his shot selection was a little questionable in
this game. Atlanta just got out played from the jump.
So not a good start from the Hawks. They need
(08:02):
to have a better showing a night two Clippers Jazz.
This is one of the strangest opening night performances that
I've ever seen. I have a ton of respect for
the Clippers organization. I think they have one of the
best coaches in the league. I think they have a
well run front office that has a good feel for
how to build a modern NBA team, and I think
this roster in particular is built for regular season success.
(08:24):
But holy shit, did they come out flat and in
the opening minutes. I primarily blame Kawhi, Leonard In Viza
Zubats for the initial run that Utah went on. Utah
was basically just running Lori Markinen and off of like
downscreens from Walker, Kessler and Kawhi and Zoo just defended
it super poorly. Kawhi was applying little to no pressure
(08:47):
physicality on market In in his lock and trail. He
was getting caught on screens and not getting out to
him when he was shooting. When market In would curl,
he was just kind of lazily jogging behind. And then
Zoo like was just essentially not helping Kawhi on either
side of the action. Wasn't showing up high when Marketing
would come off the screen, wasn't helping when Marketing would curl,
(09:10):
but then also leaving Walker Kessler open because Kesler ended
up hitting two threes early in the game, which shout
out to Walker Kessler. I know in the game plan,
you're kind of gonna let him take that, right, but like,
if you're not gonna help on the curls in on
the at the level stuff, then you've got it. You
can't also just leave him wide open. You're basically just
floating around out there. And so Kawhi and Zoo came
(09:32):
out super flat defending those actions early, and Marketing and
Kessler torched them. They take an early double digit lead,
and then once the bench group started to work their
way into the game, it turnovers became a massive problem
for the Clips, like use of Nurkic comes in and
just starts pressuring the high post entry on Zubats and
Brook Lopez and forces a couple of turnovers right away
(09:54):
that led into runouts, and the Clippers had like a
half dozen of these super bizarre unforced turnovers where like
you're just throwing the ball right to the other team
or just throwing it out of bounds because the guy
you're throwing it to is not paying attention. Just they
literally looked like they were asleep. And it was crazy
because the next thing you knew, it was the early
third quarter and Tyler's calling a time out because the
(10:15):
Clippers are down by thirty seven on the road in Utah.
Like it was just bizarre, and Tyler took the blame.
And I'm sure the Clippers will bounce back with a
win tonight, but it was pretty crazy. I'm not gonna lie.
They definitely did not look ready for the start of
the season. I do want to credit Utah like they
came out and played great basketball. They have a very
good front court with Kessler and market In. Those are
(10:37):
talented guys when they're healthy and on the floor, and
they you know, just a casual reminder that even with
bad teams in the NBA, there's a lot of talent
out there, and if you come out and you bring
a lack of daisical effort, I don't know that you
can get away with it anymore night to night in
the regular season. I mean I rooted for the Lakers
in a game that they lost to the Jazz last year,
Like this is a bottom feeder that puts some really
(10:58):
high level basketball players on the floor. I thought Keante
George was great all night. Bryce Senseibah came in and
torched them from three. Hit a couple big ones in
the late third quarter or late second quarter. Excuse me,
that helps kind of blow the game open. Really nice
debut for the Utah Jazz, high energy performance to kick
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Six are Celtics. What a debut for VJ edgecomb thirty
four points and seven rebounds looked like the perfect compliment
to Tyrese Maxi. I've always loved the idea of like
(13:29):
hyper athletic guys alongside skill guards in the backcourt, so
like essentially the Polish finesse type of guard, even though
Tyrese I think brings insane speed to the table obviously,
but that's why he's able to go for forty right,
he has the skill piece, and then off of him,
I want an athlete that can rebound, defend, and can
(13:49):
score with an advantage. And the key kind of storyline
in the game defensively was that Boston was roaming off
of VJ edge comb all night and then in his
on ball reps they were going under his picks. Boston
essentially dared VJ to beat them all night long, and
VJ just did. He got six unguarded catch and shoot
threes and made three of them. He hit two off
(14:11):
the dribble jump shots versus passive coverages. I thought he
did a wonderful job of slashing in the half court
when he had a chance, Like there was a play
where Peyton Pritchard was nail helping off of I think
it was Tyrese on the right wing and Peyton Pritchard
digs down into nail help Vj's just standing on the
left wing. This was early in the game. Talk about
those baked in driving lanes all the time. Right when
(14:32):
there's nail help, he's closing out on one of your shoulders,
all you have to do is rip the other direction
and you kind of have guaranteed dribble penetration right swing
past to VJ. He just ripped left immediately on the catch,
got a dunk. He in a transition push, ended up
catching Xavier Tillman in a cross match and the sixers
of space the floor nasty left or right crossover, went
(14:54):
up and dunked it because he got there so fast
at Boston's help, was not able to step over. He
had some super dynamic transition plays. He got a ridiculous
lob in the second half that was thrown way behind
him in traffic where he took off off his right foot,
caught it with two hands and dunked it from almost
behind his head. In the first half, one of the
(15:14):
plays that really got me excited for his potential. He
had this nasty full speed euro step where he kind
of like attacks and semi transition, gets a little bit
of a downhill, gets some momentum going downhill, and Jalen
Brown steps up to help at the rim and at
full speed, he like plants his right foot in Euros
back to the left for like a lefty soft finish
(15:35):
off the glass. Just a ridiculously athletic play. And even
on the shots he missed, I thought he got great separation,
like he was able to just get to these like
really nice lift and rhythm, little mid range pull ups
that he just happened to miss because right now he's
still not quite that polished, and that stuff will come
in time. And so that's why VJ to me feels
very safe as a bet to be an All Star
(15:56):
in this league, because if he can stay healthy, the
reports about his character and his work ethic are great,
and he's just a transcendently athletic guard. And so what
an exciting backcourt partner for Tyrese Maxey, who was amazing
in this game. His pull up three was dialed in.
He ended up hitting three in a row in the
second half that closed a double digit Celtics lead, and
(16:16):
all three of them were nasty. He had like three
or four ridiculous like hard drive to the right into
a pullback, durable quick step back three, or he was
moving super fast but if you like froze it like
trimmed out the move before he's straight up and down
on the pull up jump shot. Just a really impressive
display footwork and athleticism. He ended up going for forty
(16:40):
in this game, and then they just have all these
forwards who just play hard off of them. Obviously, Kelly, Youubray,
we all know he's been in that starting lineup for
a little while now. He hit the biggest shot of
the night, a little action off the right side where
that Sam Howser made a poor defensive decision. He helped
off the strong side corner when it was pretty unnecessary,
and so it was a little easy kickouts. One of
those things were in the moment you're like, okay, Kelly
(17:02):
had been off from three for most of the game,
but at the same time, you stick to your defensive principles.
Like Quentin Grimes was already wide open at the top
of the key on this play, in large part because
his man was already helping. So it was just kind
of like an unnecessary overhelp from Sam Hauser, And that
pass back across your body to the top of the
key to Grimes is a much tougher pass to make
(17:24):
than like a little five foot shovel pass to a
wide open man in the corner. Kelly Ubre hits that shot.
It effectively amounted to the game winner because they were
down two when he hit that shot. But I was
also really impressed by Dominic Barlow and Jabari Walker. The
two of them both just kind of crashing and cutting
and running constantly and just wrecking havoc at the rim
just by being big athletes off of the attention that
(17:47):
was garnered by their guards. Honestly, the only disappointing thing
if you were a seventy six ers fan was that
Joel Embiid looked like an absolute shell of himself. Like
Jackson and I were joking before we started recording, like
I don't think he made a single move towards the
best in that entire game. Every time he caught it
was just kind of like a face up jumper. You
had Jalen Brown in a post up and like just
(18:07):
spun over his left shoulder for a super difficult fade away.
You could tell the lift isn't there. The left shoulder
fade away. As a classic example, that's one of the
toughest shots in basketball for a right handed player because
you have to pivot and like square up in mid
air and he just didn't get close to enough lift
and so he kind of just flung it up there
and it didn't really have much of a chance to
go in. He had some plays in help side it.
(18:28):
He has a couple plays, like he had a block
in transition in the second half where you're like, whoa,
that was kind of like a throwback little play. But
like for the most part, he didn't really seem very
vertical or mobile around the basket and help on defense.
He just kind of looked he looked like his knees
are shot. But let's hope that he's just working his
way back and then he can continue to get better
as the season progressive. It made me happy to see
(18:49):
him out there playing, but it was definitely disappointing to
see just the level of physical aggression that he had.
But what a fun backcourt to root for. Now you
have Quinn Grimes too, Like obviously he was there last year,
but do you have Quentin Grimes and Jared McCain as well,
Like you have four really good guards. Grimes had a
huge three late off the left wing, kind of a
contested one when they really needed it. Jared mccaina obviously
(19:10):
will be back eventually when his thumb gets better. It's
fun team for Sixers fans. I would imagine that the
edgecomb stuff had to have been the antidote to the
Joe El embiid frustrations on the Celtics front. They got
stagnant late. They started spamming Jalen Brown Jalen Brown high
post ups and he hit one of them, but there
were some misses in there, and it just kind of
(19:30):
got stagnant and they got away from some of the
stuff they were doing earlier in the game. They did
control the majority of the game, though in large part
because they do have a lot of talented perimeter players
like Derek White, Peyton Pritchard, Jalen Brown, and Anthony Simons
all had moments in the game where they had big
stretches on offense where they put some points up and
kind of got into a little bit of a flow.
(19:51):
Anfrony applied some more rim pressure than he did in preseason.
He had a big semi transition dunk where he crossed
his man up and went up off his right foot
and dunked it with two hands. Yeah, the only thing
that really stood out to me, They just struggled to
guard in large part because their front courd is just
so limited, and that's a fast sixers team, and so
(20:11):
when you don't have rim protection behind them, it just
puts your guards in a really tough spot. And man,
that center rotation looked brutals. Zavi or Tillman missed several
threes that looked like they had no chance to go in.
Right at the end of the game late off of
a miss from Jalen Brown, he had a point blank range,
little kind of touch floater hook thing that was like
three feet from the basket that he left short. That
(20:34):
was a huge miss. In crunch time. Luca Garza couldn't
hit a shot. Nimi Kuita was probably the best guy
that we saw last night. He put up a decent
stat line. Sits on Wednesday put up a decent stat line,
but it was just jarring to see that core juxtaposed
with what we saw last year from the Celtics from
the center position. All right, let's start getting into our
(20:54):
mail back questions. Jason, I understand you're a Lakers fan
and also a Lebron fan, but I believe that you've
too much stock into the stardom of Luca and have
them ranked too high on your championship contenders list. To me,
at most, they should be closer to the bottom of
the puncher's chance tier, behind teams like the Knicks, Clippers,
t Wolves, and Warriors. Those teams, while they had their flaws,
are better constructed than the Lakers, And to me, it's
(21:15):
foolish to be blinded by a potential all time great
season by LUCA turning into a deep playoff run. In
the parody era of the NBA, I've yet to mention Lebron,
who is forty year old star and can be a
star on offense on any given night, but defensively he
can be picked on when not going against star power
against power style offensive players, and can be caught ball
watching at times. And I feel like that, combined with
your other two best players in Luca and Reeves not
(21:37):
being plus defenders, as a recipe for another first round exit.
So there's an interesting point you're making, which I want
to get into in a minute. I do disagree with
some of the specifics, like Lebron was one of the
best ISO defenders in the league last year and had
a stretch really for like two thirds of the season
where he was an all defense level player. He got
off to a rough start to the year, but like
to me, Lebron when he's healthy in this actually in
(22:00):
a role like this alongside Luca where he doesn't have
to do as much offensively, I think he's one of
the most important defensive players on the Lakers. To be
honest with you, I thought you saw the absence of
him in a big way against the Warriors. He is
a huge part of their ability to kind of like
troll the back line off of Golden State's actions. And
he's just one of the most attentive defenders and better
(22:21):
communicators on the team. I mean, he was second team
All NBA last year. I don't know what it is. Like,
I get it he has sciatica. He's out to start
the year, But like, he just had two seasons where
he played seventy games and made the All NBA team twice.
I somehow he's still underrated. I don't know how that
keeps happening. But like I'm I don't think the Lakers
have a Lebron problem. Let's just put it that way.
(22:43):
That said, like I do agree with you that I'm
the Lakers I'm lower on than when I originally did
my Contenders video. So to be one hundred percent transparent,
we recorded our contender rankings in early October. I want
to say it was like on October second, Okay, so
it was before I had seen them play any basketball.
It was based on the fact that the Lakers won
(23:04):
fifty games last year and they were the three seed,
and looking at the improved version of the Lakers with
like Luka Doncic being in better shape and them essentially
adding three rotation level players for nothing and only losing
Dorian Finney Smith, who by the way, I think Dorian
has been very important over the years. But like again,
this was a team that couldn't even play a center
(23:25):
against Minnesota. They get a guy like DeAndre and who's
very flawed but at least can play the position. You
hit a guy like Marcus Smart, who's a big upgrade
over someone like Jordan Goodwin, for example. Like that was
what that was my rationale when I originally put that together.
But I did a recording with the Nerd Sesh guys
a couple weeks after that. It was like mid mid October,
like October fifteenth or sixteenth or so, where I had
(23:46):
seen them play in preseason a few times, and I
was pretty underwhelmed, and I talked about how I was
gonna put a couple teams ahead of them, and right
now I agree. Like so I originally my contender rankings,
if you remember, I had Denver, Oklahoma City, Cleveland, Minnesota.
Then I the Lakers at five after what I've seen
from preseason in camp, and by the way, this list
is constantly in a shift throughout the season. My preliminary
(24:09):
rankings in like early October, those are essentially on paper rankings,
but on paper means nothing when you throw the ball
up in the air and we're on the hardwood and
we're playing basketball, right So, like, we have a bunch
more data. Now, we have training camps from all these teams,
We have a handful of regular season games. The two
teams I would clearly put above them now are Houston
and Golden State. I think I'm inclined to put Golden
(24:30):
State at that five spot, potentially even that four spot
above Minnesota. I kind of have Minnesota, Golden State in
Houston kind of vying and competing for that next spot
behind Denver and Oklahoma City at this point. Again, that
could change in a few weeks, but that's just where
I'm at right now. But it's a long season and
I expect a lot to change over the course of
the year. The Lakers are playing bad basketball right now,
(24:52):
but they have a lot that they can clean up,
and they have a bona fide top tier superstar at
the top at like the peak of his powers, and
Lebron James will eventu return to this team. I think
it's certainly possible that he ends up getting traded or
something or bought out or something like that, but I
still think it's far more likely than not that he
plays basketball for the Lakers until he retires. And so
at some point late October or excuse me, late November
(25:14):
early December, he's gonna return to this team, and he
immediately addresses a lot of their biggest concerns in terms
of just like size and physicality and basketball IQ and
defensive communication on the back line and all that kind
of stuff. So like they're gonna have some The Lakers
are gonna have something to say at some point. I
have no idea what level they'll be able to reach.
Right now, they look pretty mediocre and unathletic, so I'm
(25:35):
dropping them to seventh, behind Houston and Golden State, as
well as the original four teams that I named Denver,
Oklahoma City, Cleveland, Minnesota. After that point, like, I'm just
not super high on the Knicks. I know they won
their first game. I'm keeping an open mind with the
new coaching staff. I want to see what they've got.
But like, to me, the Knicks, if you literally just
remove four wins against the Celtics in the second round,
(25:57):
were incredibly underwhelming all season law last year. It's gonna
take a lot for me to kind of turn around
my opinion on the Knicks. And then the Clippers literally
went into Utah and got their asses beat. I'm like,
I'm not about to jump onto to the Clippers bandwagon
two day of all days, Like, the Lakers have looked disappointing,
but so have the Clippers so well. We'll continue to
(26:21):
kind of evaluate that over time. Like if two weeks
from now we're gonna do power rankings, I'm gonna talk
about contender rankings when I make changes as we kind
of work our way through the season. But yeah, like
in early October, October second I had the Lakers at five,
I'm dropping them to seven at this point, with Houston
and Golden State moving above them, is there a world
in which Jonathan Cammingham matures to a point where he
(26:42):
doesn't get traded off the Warriors? Also, simply calling Steph
the greatest shooter of all time doesn't do his greatness justice.
He is one of the greatest scorers and greatest players period.
I completely agree to me. Steph is the fifth greatest
perimeter player of all time, just behind Michael Jordan, Lebron James,
Kobe Bryant, and Magic Johnson. I agree with you that
kind of like, like defining his game as just elite
(27:04):
shooting is a huge, you know, like disservice to what
he's accomplished in this league. I think he's the best
off ball mover in the history of the league. He's
one of the most conditioned athletes in the league. I mean,
the dude has put in a ton of work in
his body. Do you guys remember when he hit that
I just watching the highlight again this morning. He had
like a thirty seven footer last night to tie the
(27:27):
game at one twenty. Like it was literally a thirty
seven footer off of a ball screen, and you know
he runs over He kind of like signals to call
the time out to the Denver bench and then he
runs over and he just flexes, and you're like, holy shit,
Like Steph is jacked. Like he has clearly worked a
ton on his body, which is, by the way, has
helped him to become a better, more useful defender, and
(27:49):
has helped him to handle off ball contact and just
in general get open easier. And as the league has
become more physical, like I saw a bunch of times
on Opening Night where he's like throwing win moves on
Gabe Vincent and getting open because he's just so damned strong.
Now he's legitimately much stronger than a guy like Gabe Vincent, right, So,
like he's putting a ton of work there. He's a
(28:10):
very good passer. This is a guy who does a
lot of his work off the ball. But if they
ran like twenty eighteen Rockets offense or twenty nineteen Rockets
offense where they just spam Steph high pick and rolls
spread with shooting, I think Steph could get up around
eight to nine assists per game easily. I think he's
a high level passer in that regard, And then I
(28:31):
think he's one of the best competitors of his era. Like,
this is a guy that is, you know, wired in
a way that drives him to a different extent than
many of the players in this league. So I agree
with you that kind of synthesizing him down to just
a great shooter doesn't do him justice. To your question
about Johnathan Kaminga, I absolutely think there's a world in
(28:52):
which Jonathan Kminga matures to a point where he doesn't
get traded off the Warriors. I mean, anybody who's close
to the Warriors will tell you that. Even though there's
a lot of people in their basketball operations that have
been skeptical about him in his fit, Joe Lakub loves
the guy, Like Joe Lakub is obsessed with Jonathan Kaminga
and wants to keep him. And so if Jonathan Kaminga
(29:13):
plays well enough over the course of the next three
months or so, I think it's more likely than not
that he doesn't get traded. I'm a big believer and
let's not overreact to one game or two games under
any circumstances. We talked about this after the Lakers game,
Like both the Lakers and Denver are big, slow teams.
(29:34):
When you're big and slow and you've got Steph Curry,
you're gonna cut him to pieces in a lot of ways.
I've talked at length about how Steph in particular causes
massive problems for Denver's pick and roll defense because Jokich
is slow and he can just get to his spots
whenever he wants to. That's not me trying to pour
cold water on the Warriors. It just means I want
(29:55):
to see them against some different types of matchups, Like
when you're playing against really and athletic perimeter defenses, the
job changes and suddenly those reads become like instead of
having like this big of a window to make a read,
it's more like this big of a window to make
or read. Like everything just gets a little bit faster.
Everything just gets a little bit more difficult to read
(30:15):
and to process. And so those are the kinds of
games where we're gonna see a different challenge for Jonathan
kaminga right. But what we've seen early in the season
is he's knocking down his catch and shoot threes, which
is absolutely crucial. He's making good reads in the offense.
He's being aggressive, but not too aggressive, like he's he's
not completely shelving Jonathan kaminga the scorer, but he is
(30:37):
kind of refining it and being picky about when he's
when he's going, and he's playing great defense. I thought
he was a monster defensively down the stretch against Denver
so like, and he got cooked by Luca, but Luca's
Luca right, so like overall, like he's off to a
great start. But the Warriors have played two teams that
kind of like slot nicely into their into their advance.
(31:00):
And I'm not saying this retroactively. I said last year
after the first time the Lakers played the Warriors with
Luka Doncic, I was like, Oh, the Warriors are too
fast for them. This is a bad matchup for the Lakers.
I even said before the playoffs, I was like, if
the Lakers met the Warriors in a playoff series, I'd
be inclined to pick the Warriors. That was after they
played in the regular season and they I think they
(31:22):
went into La and beat them with Luca Lebron in Austin, right.
And then I've said before the season at length that
the kinds of teams that can upset Denver are teams
that have really high level pick and roll players and
that have speed. And I mentioned like Luca against Denver,
and I mentioned Steph against Denver in particular. Those are
just matchups that I think are favorable for Golden State.
(31:44):
That's the strength. Like I think Denver is the championship favorite.
So if you match up well against Denver, that's a
huge feather in your cap if your goal is to
win a championship, Like that means that Like let's say
that Denver meets Oklahoma City in the second round for
some reason, and they eliminate Oklahoma City and then Golden
State faces Denver in the conference finals all of a sudden,
like there's like a very significant window for Golden State
(32:07):
to slip through there and win a title. Now, Golden
State did provide some issues for Oklahoma City last year.
We talked about this in our Oka see like who
can beat Oklahoma City series, And like I think Jimmy
and Horford and Draymond are just such high IQ defenders
that they can cause some problems for Oklahoma City's offense.
But what I specifically worry about the Oklahoma City matchup
(32:29):
for Golden State is just they have all that speed,
and that's the kind of thing that I think could
be a very different type of challenge for a Golden
State team that does lack offensive firepower once you get
off of steph. So I'm just curious to see it. Like,
the Warriors have aced every test so far, but there
are more tests down the line, and as long as
(32:51):
Jonathan Minga keeps performing well in those tests, He's going
to be a Warrior at the end of the season,
and he very well might be a Warrior long term.
Next question, you mentioned last season's Lakers team handling the
Warriors better due to Anthony Davis being able to roam,
slash protect the rim, allowing the perimeter defenders to overplay
the three point line. Looking towards the season, which playoff
(33:13):
teams would give Golden State the most trouble and conversely
teams who Golden State fans should hope to be a
match up in May. So again, this is just really
quick follow up to what we were just talking about.
I think the teams in particular that worry me for
Golden State are really fast and athletic perimeter teams that
are also high IQs. So like, for instance, one of
the things that always worried me about Minnesota is Minnesota
(33:34):
has a lot of guys that, despite being good defenders,
can lose their attentiveness off ball and they can lose
track of guys like Steph. This was something that happened
in the regular season in Minnesota Golden State matchups, and
it was why Golden State I think, in a lot
of ways presented problems for Minnesota when they were healthy.
Last year. That series was kind of like a coin
flip to me if both teams were healthy, But Golden
(33:56):
State presents a lot of problems with them because Minnesota
struggles to track off ball shooters. But specifically Oklahoma City
is a team that I have my eye on. Oklahoma
City provides that combination of high IQ speed that's not
going to lose track of Steph and they're not gonna
botch as many switches as other teams, and they have
(34:17):
rim protection and Chet Holmgren to roam around the basket.
They're gonna present some problems. Another team I think is
the Clippers. They have some really high level perimeter defenders
in Chris Doun and Derek Jones Junior that can chase
Steph around while also having high IQ off ball defenders
and some rim protection with Zoo. We saw that in
the late regular season game last year. So there are
(34:39):
teams that I think present a different challenge for Golden State,
and I am just curious to see what they look
like when they run into those teams. But I do
think Golden State matches up well with a team like
the Lakers. I do think Golden State matches up really
well with a team like Denver and then Minnesota just
because of their lack of off ball attentiveness. Do you
think there's a chance the Spurs don't have to trade
(34:59):
to in the Chip next season or in any other
or in other words, what is the lowest limit that
has to happen for the Spurs to not just be
one of the contenders, but to really see that it
could happen like Oklahoma City in Game one last season,
in game one of the regular season, that was when
Oklahoma City went into Denver and kick Denver's ass. If
you guys remember, So, here's the thing. I'm gonna say,
the same thing that I was talking about with Golden State.
(35:21):
It's very encouraging for showing for the Spurs. You don't
even have dearon Fox and yet all your young guards
play pretty well. Your defense just utterly demolishes Dallas. Victor
women Yama is hoop and his ass off, Steph Castle's
throwing lobs in transition, and damn near getting a twenty
point triple double. There's a lot of upside with what
you saw from that one particular matchup, but it was
(35:43):
a team that I think was a good matchup for
san Antonio, right, Like Dallas is super light on shooting
and ball handling that allows Victor women Yama to roam
the paint really well right on the other end of
the floor. Like we talked about that night, I think
Victor can kind of cook any bigger player in the
league because they're all too big to be able to
(36:05):
move with him, but they're all not big enough to
actually bother him because he's so damn tall. So, like,
I think there'll be different challenges with San Antonio, Like
Oklahoma City's a classic example where they're going to be smaller,
quicker up underneath you, and it's going to be a
lot more about processing and shooting. And you know, this
is a San Antonio team that's light on shooting, right,
(36:25):
So I think, like it's ridiculous to overreact to one
game against a heavily flawed Dallas Mavericks roster. But we'll
just continue to watch them and see how they develop. Yes,
if Steph Castle and Devin Vessel and Dylan Harper and
all these guys just blossom and Deer and Fox is
a big bounce back season that's closer to two years
ago rather than last year, then yeah, they might not
(36:48):
need to make a trade, and they might be able
to just kind of naturally improve internally and make a
run for the championship at some point in the next
couple of years. But I think it's more likely than
not that over the course of this season, their limitations
and shooting and just youthful inconsistency lead them to want
to bring veteran shooting in and just a little bit
more of like a solid, kind of like higher floor
(37:11):
option at some of their position groups. Now, the thing
is is Victor is messing up timeline stuff, because Victor
very well might be just a legitimate top tier superstar
this year. It seems likely at this point after what
we saw on opening night. And so if Victor is
going to be that guy, all of a sudden, you're
in your championship window now and so it kind of
(37:33):
changes your calculus when you're building the team. So it's
just something to keep an eye on. We're gonna go
quick through these last ones here. How do you unlock
BAM's offense? If you're spo I think Bam kind of
is what he is at this point as an offensive player.
He is a guy that struggles to make anything that's
not a dunk and like that. Just yes, he's improved
(37:54):
as like a standstill three point shooter, but he's not
a really high level jump shooter by any stretch of
the imagination. He struggles with hooks, he struggles with floaters,
he struggles with layups, damn. Similar to Anthony Davis, although
Ad has done a lot better in terms of his
short range shot making, like his hooks and his floaters,
but similar like Bam to an even greater extent, just
has never added the offensive polish necessary to be a
(38:17):
super high level offensive player. To me, he kind of
is what he is at this point. He's a five
out big. He's a guy that can play on the
perimeter as a screener, dribble handoff, guy that makes good
decisions with the basketball, sets good screens, and rolls hard
to the rim and he's good at hitting backcutters like that,
to me is just kind of his destiny as an
NBA player at this point. What kind of season do
(38:38):
you think Klay Thompson is about to have. It feels
like he is completely faded out of media discussions. Well, ye,
he's not the same player used to be. I don't
think Clay is going to be a super prominent player
in NBA media discussions because Clay is now at this point,
you know, not one of the ten or fifteen best
two guards in the league anymore. So one of the
(38:58):
things that's going to be tricky with Clay is he's
the one dead serious shooter on the team and so
he's going to be accounted for in the in the
game plan, Like opponents are going to put their most attentive,
best lock and trail defender on Clay and they're going
to count for a mall game and just dare everyone
else to shoot. He's not a guy that's going to
(39:19):
put the ball on the floor and create offense for
himself at this point, and the lack of playmaking talent
on the roster is leading him to be like, even
when he does get left open, whether it's transition chaos
or offensive rebound chaos, Like they don't always get the
ball to him, So I just don't really see him
as a guy that's gonna have too much of an
impact at this phase in his career. Hi, Jason, my
(39:40):
brother and I watch basketball like junkies and have had
this hypothesis that the game is evolving at a rate
where the skill level will soon turn basketball into a
punish league. Essentially, I believe that the majority of the
smallest defensive laps is like a bad head or a
slow rotation, will be the most important margins for successful teams.
I wanted your thoughts on that. I love the show
and your team's contra to the game. I love much
(40:01):
love from Brooklyn, So first of all, thanks for supporting
the show and for the kind words. What you're talking
about is something that I'm a huge believer in the
idea of, essentially, like capitalizing on the small advantages that
occur in actions, whether it's like you said, like a
guy hedges for too long and the guy who slips
out of its wide open at the three point line,
or this team is slow in rotation, so if we
(40:23):
just move the ball around we're going to get open shots.
I think it's a little bit more complicated in the
sense that like those kinds of advantages happen on almost
every possession somewhere. It's a lot of it has to
do with playmaking talent. Like you talk about punish as
in punishing mistakes. In order to punish mistakes, you need
two things. You need a high IQ player with the
(40:45):
ball that will find that mistake and hit the pass
it hit the opening. And then you need too, a
guy that's actually going to make the defense pay in
that opening, whether it's hitting a catch and shoot shot,
racking a close out and getting all the way to
the rim, or racking a close out getting to the
middle of the floor and make the next read in
that chain. Essentially, it's going to be about reading and reacting.
(41:05):
It's a copycat league. There's going to be a lot
of basketball operations professionals and coaching professionals that are going
to look at teams like Indiana. We talked about how
last night, I think Indiana, irrespective of talent, plays the
best basketball in the NBA because of all the things
that you specifically are mentioning. So all these entities around
(41:27):
the league are going to watch that and they're going
to go like, we need to do this. Why do
you think you're hearing every every fucking team in training camp?
We want to run more. We want to run more.
We want to know why, because running works, and so
they want to be better basketball teams, and so they
know that that's a way to improve their basketball team.
And so essentially everyone's going to start hunting these things.
More transition pushes more action in the half court, which
(41:47):
is going to generate those kinds of small defensive lapses
like you're talking about. From there, it's going to be
reading and reacting and play finishing, hitting those gaps with passes,
making the right decision against the advantage, and then finishing
the play by hitting shots. Can you see Jaden McDaniel's
turn into a number two for Ant? No? I don't
really see that in his future. I see him as
(42:09):
being a guy that can do some weak side scoring
forward stuff, you know, hitting threes, driving closeouts, doing damage
on the glass when he's being ignored. I don't see
him as a legitimate number two. The kind of player
that I keep coming back to for Ant is like
a skill guard. I know it'll never happen. But like
Austin Reeves is an example of a player that I
think would be a beautiful fit alongside Anthony Edwards. Kind
(42:32):
of like a skill, finesse guard that's good at getting
to the foul line, that has like high level mid
range scoring chops that just in general is like a
finesse like offensive engine type of player off of ANT.
Like that's the kind of guy that I look at
as like a legit number two off of Ant, a
skill guard alongside Ant's like bulky athleticism in rim pressure. Right.
(42:53):
But I really like Jayden. I think he looks great.
I think the jump shot is real. I just think
once you start talking about number two's, I think they
just need to be a little bit more refined in
terms of their offensive skill four more quick ones. As
you continue to get more and more success in the
niche of basketball content analysis, will there ever be a
time where you take your talents to covering the NFL
as well? I have your post notifications on for X
(43:14):
and I love your football takes when you have them.
Keep up the great work. So I love the NFL.
I've loved it since I was a kid. The long
and short of it, is is that like every year
right about now, when the NBA regular season starts, it's
really hard for me to just give it the attention.
Right Like, there was a game on last night. I
was working, so I wasn't gonna watch it, right, And
(43:36):
same thing goes for Sunday. There are times where like,
you know, it's Sunday and it's like, Okay, I want
to sit down and watch. But then it'll be like, well,
there were some games on the Friday night and Saturday
night slate that I need to get caught up on,
and so I'll just get my laptop out and I'll
just start watching film. And you know, it kind of
takes me back to the the kind of like that
like cliche that Lebron uses. It's that keep the main
(43:57):
thing the main thing, Like I don't want to sit
there and start talking about the NFL if I haven't
put in the necessary work. What I like, what allows
me to cover the game the way that I do
is that I put an enormous amount of work into
watching NBA games and learning about how the NBA works
on both ends of the floor and talking to smart
(44:19):
NBA people. And so it's one of those things where
I don't want to like take resources from that department
and dedicate them to the NFL and have my NBA
work suffer. And so is there a version of this
in the future where maybe I'm doing it. I'm not
going to say never, but in the short term, I
think it's far more likely than not that I just
stay in my wheelhouse and cover the NBA. With the
(44:43):
Bucks shooting so many threes, I feel like we, I'm
a fan of, lead the team and lead the NBA
in three point attempts and we can come out of
the East. Do you see the vision? I did not
see Milwaukee versus Washington. That was one of the games
that I did not watch the first through the first
few games. But we saw this last season towards the
end the year Steady died of Jannis on the ball,
a lot of guard screens surrounding him with a ton
(45:04):
of shooting, and Yanni's just kind of playing driving kick,
like get to the basket and finish, draw fout or
spray out to a shooter. Right as far as leaning
into three point attempts, like again, like when you're not
good compared to the best teams in the league, you
want to apply as much variance as possible, right, So
it makes sense for the Bucks to be a team
(45:25):
that takes a lot of threes and that gives up
a lot of threes because essentially, if they protect the
rim and they force the other team to shoot, they
might go cold. And if you shoot a ton of threes,
you might get hot, and you're gonna win on the
nights when you get hot from three and the other
team doesn't. But ultimately it comes down to quality. I
don't believe in inflating your three point attempts just for
the sake of inflating your three point attempts. A bad
(45:47):
three point shot isn't worth three points, it's worth zero points.
You want to generate the highest available shot quality in
any situation. A lot of it will be game plan
dependent too, depending on how your opponent is guarding things.
But if the Bucks end up generating a ton of
threes with shooting off of Giannis, I think it's a
smart approach to increase variance to give them more of
an upset threat. Big fan of the show and have
(46:10):
learned a ton about the game from your channel, So
thank you for what you do. Thank you for the
kind words and for the sport. My question is simple,
do you think it's insane to think that Wemby genuinely
might be the best player live right now? And what
would need to happen for that to be the consensus
in your opinion? Thanks again. This kind of takes me
to like the Kobe Lebron debate in the late two thousands.
If you guys, remember, it's very possible that we're looking
at this thing in like three weeks and Wemby's averaging
(46:32):
thirty five, fourteen and six with like five blocks or
of some insane shit like that, and then all of
us are like, oh my gosh, this one to be
the best player in the league. Similarly, Lebron in the
late two thousands was just a wrecking ball is winning
sixty games with weak rosters and putting up absurd stat
lines and crazy highlights every single night. But like when
(46:54):
it came to slow down playoff basketball against the best
teams in the league, Kobe still better than him. In
the late two thousands, no surprise, Lebron was in his
early to mid twenties. Kobe was in his early thirties
and was more refined at that point, and he had
a lot more experience, right, But like the becoming the
best player in the NBA, becoming the best player in
(47:15):
the world is a playoff game. It is very much
about solving the puzzle of four elite opponents in two months,
having to beat them four times out of seven, when
all the game planning is geared around your weaknesses. So
it's one of those things where like, there's nothing Wemby
could do in the regular season that would convince me
that he's the best player in the world. That is
(47:35):
an honor that I personally wouldn't consider him for unless
he was doing it in the playoffs and you know,
carrying his team to like it's not even so much
like he has to win the title necessarily, although that
is the ultimate kind of like, you know, signal that
you've arrived on that front. But to me, it's more
(47:56):
just like him thriving in the playoffs and being a
dominant player off player, and like not experiencing a drop
off from regular season production to playoff production. When he
can tie those two things together, which obviously we haven't
even seen that yet, that's when I would start to
consider him to be the best player alive. Last question, Jason,
I enjoy your content, keep up the good work. Fist bump.
(48:17):
I want to ask as a thunderfan, I'm starting to
worry about Chet. Obviously, we want him to stay healthy
and be careful for those bumps he's absorbing, but we're
also worried about how his offensive skill will only show
in flashes while other times he just can become a
non factor, especially in the clutch. What do you think
you should be working on to stay more consistent? So
I get triggered with this kind of thing. I feel
like it's really hard for big lanky dudes that aren't
(48:39):
super polished, like Kevin Durant for example, to be ball
handlers in like physical late game environments, especially like I
think it's one thing when you're big and strong like
Jokic or Lebron or Luca, when you have like real strength,
you can thrive in that physicality and get to your
spot still. But like a lot of the thinner players,
(49:00):
especially when they're not super polished, they can get kind
of dislodged and beat up a little bit in those situations.
And so I don't really ever see Chet as being
like the guy that you're just gonna run the offense
through and crunch time, not unless he becomes a dramatically
better jump shooter, which he just hasn't been to this
point in his career. But I'm still super high on Chet.
(49:21):
Like I think he's still one of the most underrated
defensive players in the league. He's a huge part of
what they did defensively in last year's playoff run. I
do want to see him improve as a catch and
shoot jump shooter, Like he's got to start beating nail
help with those above the break threes off of the
right and left wing. But like, yeah, I think I'm
not gonna say I've learned this lesson with Shay. I
(49:41):
don't want to put a ceiling on anybody, so I
don't want to sit here and pretend is though Chet
is incapable of becoming a guy that can become a
high usage player in crunch time, But right now he's
too thin and two and lacks the polish necessary to
be that kind of guy outside of spurts, especially early
in games and in regular season context. But the main
thing for me is, like if he gets to the
point where he's like a forty percent knockdown, you know,
(50:04):
above the break three point shooter when he's open, that'll
be plenty. Offensively, that's all. That's all the thunderneath from him.
He does enough damages a cutter along the baseline and
as an offensive rebounder, and with what he does defensively,
and he can provide little pops of scoring throughout the
game off the dribble, obviously inconsistently, but he can do that.
To me, the main like kind of barrier between where
(50:24):
he is right now and like making the thunder unbeatable
is like he's got to get to the point where
he can hit forty percent of his unguarded catch and
shoot threes above the break. All right, guys, it's all
have for today. As always, a sincerely appreciate you guys
for supporting us and supporting the show. But he will
be back on Monday. Enjoy your weekend. Lots of basketball
to get into when we get some Monday, I would
see you guys then
Hosts And Creators
Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre
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