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June 4, 2025 • 24 mins

Jason breaks down his top 5 storylines heading into the NBA Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers including the Shai Gilgeous-Alexander vs. Tyrese Haliburton matchup, whether it's time to have some all-time great conversations, why the ratings conversation is dumb, and more.

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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co slash audio. All right, welcome to Hoops and I

(02:18):
here at the volume. Happy Wednesday, everybody. Hope all of
you guys are having a great week well. As promised, today,
we're going to go through the top five storylines of
the twenty twenty five NBA Finals. We've talked a lot
of basketball over the last couple of days. We're gonna
get into some of the narratives that are surrounding this series,
some of the debates, and some things to keep an
eye on in terms of stories to follow in this series.

(02:40):
You guys know the joke before we get started. Subscribe
to the Hoops and Not YouTube channels. You don't miss
any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at
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under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave
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great work on our social media feeds Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
and TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us there and
then keep dropping mailback question in our YouTube comments so

(03:01):
we can get to them in our mail bags throughout
the remainder of the postseason. All right, let's talk some basketball.
So the first storyline that I think we've already seen
quite a bit of talk surrounding in the week leading
up to the finals, just people complaining about small markets
and the ratings. Right like I saw, there's kind of

(03:22):
already a theme heading into the conference finals, as we
had the Knicks alongside a Minnesota Timberwolves team, in Oklahoma
City thunder team and an Indiana Pacers team. But this
to me is the inevitable part of the NBA cycle.
There's a lot of talk about like having small markets
and that being the driving force behind low ratings, when
that simply is not the case. We've seen so many

(03:44):
examples of teams in every sport be able to overcome
whatever perceived limitations sit on in their market to become
a very like, a very resonant team in among NBA fans.
Classic examples we talked about recently, Golden State wasn't viewed
as that type of team. Steph made them into that

(04:06):
type of team. Cleveland wasn't viewed as that type of team.
Cleveland was one of the biggest rating draws in the
league for a while because of Lebron James. You build
that sort of ratings monster in the NFL teams like
the Kansas City Chiefs. You think the Kansas City Chiefs
were major ratings draws ten years ago. This is something
that you build through exposure in high stakes moments like this.

(04:30):
Very similarly, we remember after MJ retired, there's a phase
there where it's like, oh, man, like, who's gonna be
the next guy, Who's gonna be the next face of
the league. But then it just builds in momentum and
all of a sudden, it's okay, here comes Kobe, here
comes Shack, Here comes Tim Duncan, here comes Lebron, And
all of a sudden, we have a very healthy trove
of stars to drive the league forward. Right. It's all

(04:51):
part of that natural kind of ebb and flow. We're
in a weird spot here. Lebron and Steph are aging out.
Some of these younger stars like Tyre's Halliburton and shake
yel Just Alexander don't have a ton of exposure to
casual basketball fans. Yet this is their opportunity. It is
through play style and resonating with people and being the
type of culturally resonant basketball force that Steph was that

(05:14):
Lebron was combined with sustained success in late May in June.
That actually provides them foundation to have a strong set
of ratings moving forward for the league again ultimately the
NBA Finals. The goal of them is to showcase the
two best teams in the NBA. This series may only
have one Top five player, maybe only three Top twenty

(05:37):
five players between Siakam and SGA and Tyres Halliburton, depending
on how you feel about chatter Jdubb. I haven't done
my player rankings yet. Maybe JDub lands in the top
twenty five, but like maybe as few as three players
in top twenty five. But it does showcase the best
basketball that has been played this season and specifically within

(05:58):
the realm of what works in the modern game. As
we've talked about so much, you can increase your offensive
efficiency by like roughly twenty percent every time you push
the ball in transition. Pushing the ball in transition is
low hanging fruit that exists in basketball for you to
take advantage of. It is there for everybody, and the
pacers in the Thunder have been two of the best

(06:20):
to do that. Ball pressure is a simple market inefficiency
that makes ball handlers uncomfortable, forces them to work later
into the shot clock. On offense, potentially forces turnovers by
speeding up those players, and can lead to easier transition
opportunities going the other way. This is low hanging fruit
that is available to everybody in the league, and the

(06:40):
Pacers in the Thunder have just been the two best
teams at actually taking advantage of it. This is a
showcase of the right way to play basketball in the
modern NBA, regardless of who is on your roster, and
if you have the ability to replicate these things, you
can actually drive more success for your team. And in
that case, I find it to be a very series.

(07:00):
It's not going to crush in the ratings. It never
was going to, but that doesn't mean that teams like
this and that players like this can't eventually drive ratings.
There's a version. If I would have told you in
two thousand and eight that in the twenty seventeen NBA
Finals we were going to see the Golden State Warriors
and the Cleveland Cavaliers, all of you would have been
bitching at the time about how it was going to

(07:21):
be a low ratings type of situation. That's not the case.
These guys can build juggernauts in the ratings with their
presence and their ability to capture their hearts and minds
of basketball fans. Number two, Tyres Halliburton, in the line
of embarrassment perpetuated by this Oklahoma City defense. I've talked
a little bit about this on the show over the

(07:42):
course of the last couple of weeks, but Oklahoma City
has done some serious damage to some really good players
in this postseason run. So I wanted to actually give
you guys a rundown of just some of the specific,
truly damaging performances their defense has done to some respected
players around this league. In the first round, Desmond Bain
had a game where he went three for twelve with
four turnovers, another game where he went three for fourteen

(08:06):
with five turnovers. Jaron Jackson had a game where he
went two for thirteen with just four points four points
on thirteen shots as a power forward in the NBA.
In the sweep game, he went just three for twelve
from the field. I talked about Nikole Jokics playing three
of the worst games of his career in rapid secession
in that second round series. In that series, in Game two,

(08:29):
three and four, Nikole Jokic shot just thirty three percent
from the field just eighteen percent from three and had
sixteen turnovers to just fifteen assists. How often have we
thought of Nikole Jokich as a guy who only makes
a third of his shots over a week of basketball games,
or as a player that has more turnovers than assists.

(08:51):
That was the type of damage that Oklahoma City did
too Jokic during a stretch where they won two out
of three games in regame control of the series. That
is the damage they were able to do to the
best player in the world. Julius Randall had almost entirely
rehabbed his playoff image through what he did through the
first two rounds, like on both ends of the floor

(09:14):
against the Lakers, and then just successfully breaking down Golden
State's defense over and over again the way that he did.
He had a two for eleven game for just six
points in Game two against Oklahoma City, and then in
Game four, a pivotal game at home where they desperately
needed him to be good, he was just one for
seven with five points. So this is a long list

(09:36):
of really good players that Oklahoma City hasn't just had
success against, but has flat out embarrassed, like even with
Jokich in those games, relative to what we usually see
from him. That is quite literally the lowest end of
the Jokich spectrum that Oklahoma City's defense showed us. Tyres

(09:56):
Haliburton at various points in his career, especially in the postseason,
has shown when things get really intense in terms of
ball pressure and physicality, he can have a problem with
maintaining his aggression and engagement in the game. And I
think it's very possible in this series that Oklahoma City
could bring out some of those really embarrassing stat lines

(10:17):
for Tyrese Haliburt. He's susceptible to those under any circumstances
against this particular defense. I think we could be walking
away from this series talking very differently about Tyrese Haliburton
than we did after the first three series. That is
a storyline that we have to keep an eye on.
Number three shake Giljes Alexander. If he can finish this

(10:40):
off by winning this series and winning finals, MVP is
putting together one of the best guard seasons in NBA history.
Even if you want to take that guard part and
set it aside. To win at least sixty eight games,
to make the All Star team, to win the scoring title,

(11:00):
to make first Team All NBA, to win MVP of
the League, and to tie it off with the Finals MVP.
He would be just the second player in NBA history
to accomplish all of those things in a single season,
with just Michael Jordan in nineteen ninety six being the
other one. Now, there's always a natural pushback to this

(11:23):
sort of thing, and I totally understand it. It's just
human nature. We start talking about it, it's like, holy shit,
this is one of the best seasons in NBA history,
and then we all immediately want to start bringing other
guys up. And I totally get that. It was like that.
I mean, I'm a Lebron fan. It was like that
with Lebron. I remember it was like, oh my god,
he just won a second title, and the jump shots
he was hitting against the Spurs in Game seven, and

(11:45):
just the way he played down the stretch of Game six,
and everyone's like, is this the greatest basketball player ever?
And what did we see? We saw this like natural
pushback from everybody as it became like no, no, no, no,
make him learn it. Michael Jordan did this, Kobe Bryant
did that, and it just becomes part of that natural pushback.
I understand that that's part of the deal, but that

(12:05):
doesn't mean we can't acknowledge what we're seeing in the moment.
Shay has an extremely talented roster this year. He has
one of the more talented rosters in recent NBA history.
This would not be as difficult as some other championships
that other stars have won. That goes without saying, but
over the course of his career, those circumstances will shift.

(12:27):
I don't think any player in NBA history has had
a more talented roster than Steph Curry did in twenty seventeen.
But he had another opportunity in twenty twenty three or
to twenty twenty two, excuse me to demonstrate that he
was capable of leading a championship team that had less talent,
that was actually operating at a talent deficit in the

(12:48):
NBA Finals. And so over the course of Shay's career,
we'll see more of those challenges that arise. Maybe as
this Oklahoma City roster gets more expensive, Maybe if he
forces his way out to some other team hoping for
green or pastors. One day he ends up on a
more limited team that's maybe too star Layden and doesn't
have the necessary depth. There's so many different ways that

(13:10):
Shay's career can go and this is just one part
of the story. And yeah, like if he wins the
finals this year and has this incredible season put together,
but over the course of the rest of his career
is underwhelming, then he's not gonna be remembered with MJ

(13:31):
And he's not gonna be remembered with Steph and Lebron
and Kobe and the greatest guards that have played this league.
It's all about sustaining and it's all about putting all
of those feathers in the cap of your story. I
talk about this with with Steph just a minute ago. Like,
if Steph only won the two Kevin Durant titles, probably
gets remembered differently, but he didn't. He won two others, right, Lebron,

(13:55):
same thing. If he only won the twenty twenty title
alongside Anthony Davis, you know, different type of story if
you only won the two titles with the heat. But
that's not what happened. We saw in twenty sixteen him
overcoming adversity in a different way. In twenty thirteen, a
couple of seven game series down the stretch of the postseason.

(14:17):
That twenty twenty title clearly his easiest one. It's not
the one everyone goes and tells the story about when
they're talking about how great Lebron James is. But in
the part of the in the journey of being a
basketball player, there are gonna be years when things kind
of pan out for you and it goes easier than
you're expecting. There're gonna be years when things don't go
your way and you face more adversity and you have

(14:39):
to dig deeper and you have to reach a different
level as a player. In the season, things have gone
pretty smoothly for Oklahoma City, but even in that context,
Shays had one of the greatest seasons in NBA history,
and he deserves credit for it based solely on the
fact that no one's ever done it other than Michael
Jordan in nineteen ninety six, and it would be an
excellent first feather in his cap. No one's gonna put

(15:02):
him as the second or third best player of all
time unless he sustains this for the better part of
the next decade, but this is the first step in
that direction, and it's been an incredibly impressive season from
shake Kyos as Alexander obviously pending him finishing the deal.
Number four is Oklahoma City an all time great team. Now,

(15:23):
as I've said multiple times, you do not earn that status,
at least not in my book, unless you win multiple
championships for all the reasons that I just said. Circumstances change.
It's like Boston this year. Boston this year, have a
couple guys get injured, don't play as well as they
typically do. Right Porzingis is dealing with an illness, Jalen

(15:43):
Brown's knee isn't quite where it used to be, and
you run into a tough matchup. What we didn't think
would be a tough matchup, but what ended up being
a tough matchup in the second round, and all of
a sudden things were a little tighter. All of a sudden,
we had some close games. We didn't have to see
Tatum and Brown super surgical clutch time decisions last year

(16:04):
in the postseason, in high stakes situations. This year we did.
They didn't do the job. New York actually beat them right.
It is through multiple seasons that we see teams overcome adversity.
It is through multiple seasons that teams can attain that
status of being an all time great team in NBA history,
But in this single season, would we consider this to

(16:28):
be an all time great single season in NBA history. Well,
they right now are eighty and eighteen. If they won
this series in five games, let's call it, they'd be
eighty four and nineteen in that particular case. That puts
them pretty far up the list in terms of best
records in single seasons. This postseason run has been pretty

(16:50):
impressive for them. We talked about the Western Conference being
an absolute blood bath, and it was. They were the
one team who got a favorable first round matchup. They
earned it by all of the regular season games that
they did. I thought there were seven good Western Conference
playoff teams, and obviously Oklahoma City got to play the eighth.
But after that, they beat the twenty twenty three champs,

(17:11):
the best player in the world, a team that I
viewed specifically as a tough matchup for them, and guess what,
they brought some adversity to the equation and we got
to see Oklahoma City overcome that adversity. They were down
to one in the series and trailing by eight in
the early fourth quarter of Game four. They're trailing by
nine early in the fourth quarter of Game five. They
overcame that that Timberwolves team is a very very good

(17:34):
team that has beat a lot of really good teams.
That Timberwolves team beat Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, and Bradley Beal.
They beat Nikola Jokics last year, they beat Luca and
Lebron this year. That is a team that has done
some damage and Oklahoma City survived them. And if they
beat this Pacers team, that's a Pacers team that just
won an Eastern Conference that had two sixty win teams

(17:56):
in it. So Jackson and I were having some fun
before the show. We were trying to figure out how
we would rank the top five teams since twenty ten.
So I'm calling that like kind of the end of
that era when Kobe won his last title in twenty ten.
So I'm going from the twenty eleven MAVs all the
way through to this theoretical twenty twenty five championship of

(18:17):
ok I'm a city team. If they were to win,
where would they rank? I thought the twenty seventeen Warriors
were the obvious number one. That is the most talented
roster ever assembled in the history of the NBA. I
don't think it's particularly close. They had the second and
third best players in the league playing on the same team.
They had Klay Thompson, who at the time was one

(18:40):
of the highest level starters in the league, an elite
defensive player, the second best shooter to ever play the game.
That was a phase of his career as well, when
he was really starting to come together as a more
consistent playoff performer. Klay Thompson was ridiculous. Draymond Green the
best defensive player of our era, Andre Gudala one of
the most gifted role players of our era. Seventeen one
Warriors clear the field. In my opinion, I think they're

(19:02):
the greatest basketball team ever assembled, even counting the nineties Bulls,
even counting the eighties Celtics and Lakers. I don't think
anyone's come close. I just think they're far and away
the best team in NBA history. Simple way to put it.
They were in that blood bath of a Western conference
and they literally swept them. They swept the entire West.
They won fifteen straight playoff games before the Cavs finally

(19:23):
were able to beat them once in a game in
Cleveland in game four of that NBA Finals run. The
twenty seventeen Warriors clear the field. I think there's actually
a gap between them and everyone else. Number two for
me the twenty twenty five Thunder with Land right there,
sixty eight wins, beating the types of teams they would
beat on the way. To me, that clears the other

(19:45):
teams that are on this list. Where it gets interesting
is starting to talk about those teams. Number three for
me was the twenty thirteen Heat. They won sixty six games.
They were defending champ which is another layer to add
to this as well, and beating that San Antonio Spurs.
They have back to back seven game series in the
playoff run. They beat that Indiana Pacers team in seven

(20:06):
in the Conference finals, and then they beat that San
Antonio Spurs team in seven in the NBA Finals. That's
San Antonio Spurs team is also on this list as
the twenty fourteen Spurs. I have them at number four.
They beat Dirk's MAVs in the first round. They beat
Kevin Durant's Thunder in the Conference finals, and they beat
Lebron and Dwayne Wade in the Miami Heat in the

(20:28):
NBA Finals. Not as successful as a regular season, I
think they only won sixty two games, but a more
impressive playoff run, so I put them on that list,
and then the fifth best team since twenty eleven. The
twenty twenty four Celtics kind of a weak playoff field.
They kind of just coasted through and beat everyone. I
thought the only real tough teams they played were the

(20:49):
Pacers in the MAVs, but they handled both of those
teams in four and five games, respectively. But they had
an incredibly dominant regular season, especially statistically, which put them
on this list at number five. So in short, among
the last fifteen champions, if Oklahoma City closes this deal,
I'd put them in second place behind the twenty seventeen

(21:11):
Golden State Warriors. Then our last storyline to follow in
this series. Is this series a sign that you need
to win with depth in the modern NBA? Yes and no.
There is more than one way to win a championship.
We were talking about this the other night on playback.
There's a bunch of different ways to win any singular
basketball game. Don't underestimate star impact. Yes, these are deep teams,

(21:37):
but Jay GISs Alexander forty points in the pivotal Game
four against Minnesota, multiple games where he was very good
in clutch time against the Denver Nuggets, Tyres Halliburton, three
games that he straight up stole with game winners of
one of them that ended up sending the game to overtime.

(21:59):
These guys, their singular talent is a big part of
why they are where they are. The depth, to me,
is all about that low hanging fruit. In order to
ball pressure full court for an entire game, in order
to push in transition as much as these teams do,
in order to capitalize on every little detail in every

(22:20):
single possession over the course of a sixteen game playoff run,
you do need depth. And so if you have less depth,
you can't capitalize on as much low hanging fruit. That
puts more pressure on your stars. But we have seen
stars carry the load on teams that have, you know,

(22:40):
six or seven players that they trust in their rotation
and get it done. So yes, to me, what it's
proven is that depth certainly is very valuable in the
modern NBA. It's not the end all be all. I
don't think the thunder make the finals without Shay. I
don't think the Pacers make the finals without Tighliburn if

(23:00):
you replace them with like like kind of like league
average types of players at their position. Let's just say,
you know, like if we're looking for a kind of
like a playmaking guard to fill in for Tyrees Haliburt,
and like if you take like Chris Paul at this
point in his career, that's not even close to the
same team. If you take Shay Gills as Alexander and

(23:21):
turn him into just a scoring guard, like call it,
Devin Booker, I don't think the thunder are nearly as
good as they are with Shake Gils just Alexander right now, right, So, like,
don't underestimate the star power and the way that those
guys elevate these teams. The low hanging fruit just helps
you win basketball games. And if you have depth, you
have a better chance to capitalize on that low hanging
fruit throughout each season in postseason. All right, guys, that's

(23:45):
all I have for the show today. As always, I
sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us. In supporting the show,
we have Colin Coward coming on with us live after
every game in this NBA Finals run. We will be
live after game one tomorrow night. After the final buzzer
on you Tube. I hope to see you guys then
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