March 19, 2025 • 36 mins
Jason reacts to the Golden State Warriors losing a strange game to the Denver Nuggets without Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray followed up by an impressive win over Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks without Steph Curry. Jimmy Butler was incredible offensively and Draymond Green led the charge defensively. Then he discusses the Los Angeles Clippers getting a great win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, Kawhi Leonard looking like he has his legs back, Donovan Mitchell's struggles, and more.
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4:15 - Start
5:15 - Nuggets/Bucks
28:15 - Cavs/Clippers
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Episode Transcript
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All right, well, good hoops and I here at the volume.
(01:46):
Happy Wednesday, everybody. I hope all of you guys are
having a great week. Just a quick show for you guys. Today,
we're gonna be hitting two games from last night's slate
as the Golden State Warriors without Steph Curry put on
a defensive masterclass against Giannis Dame in the Milwaukee Bucks.
We're gonna be breaking that game down. I want to
talk about some specific concepts in modern NBA defense and
how it's a little bit more about a team concept
(02:08):
than people are willing to give these schemes credit for.
We're gonna be talking about that, and then a little
bit of my concerns surrounding Milwaukee and the big picture.
Tail end of the show, we had a showdown between
a red hot Los Angeles Clippers team and the Cleveland
Cavaliers and what was a shootout for most of the
game until the Clippers were able to regain control with
their defense late. Really fascinating game that taught us a
(02:31):
bunch about both teams. You guys know the drill before
we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels
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We're releasing content throughout the year. Make sure you guys follow
us there, and the last but not least, keep dropping
(02:52):
mailbag questions in the YouTube comments so that we can
keep getting to them throughout the remainder of the season.
All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Warriors dropped
a game a couple nights ago against the Nuggets at
home without Jamal Murray and without Nicole Jokic playing for
the Nuggets, And to be clear, my thoughts coming out
of that game were, this is March in the NBA.
You're gonna see this quite a bit in this time
(03:15):
of year, because it's like a funky phase where half
the league already knows exactly what they are and are
in some variation of cruise control where you don't know
what you're getting any given night because they're either saving
legs for the playoffs or they're just not feeling that
level of intensity. And even for the teams that made
big deals at the trade deadline, the newness is starting
(03:37):
to fade. It's been over a month and this is
just kind of like this a lull that you're gonna
see and you're gonna see some weird results. Denver, in particular,
it has been a total shit show.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Like they get.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Smashed by the Thunder, but then they beat the Thunder,
then they get smashed by the Wolves, then they nearly
lose to the Lakers missing four starters. Then they do
actually lose to the Washington Wizards at home, just to
go the Golden State without Murray and jokicen beat the
Warriors who were red hot. It doesn't make any sense
that team is just bizarre. You're gonna see a lot
of general or a lot of weird results in general
(04:10):
this time of year, Like the Pacers without four starters
just went into Minnesota and beat the Wolves at full strength.
The Wizards also went into Detroit and beat a Pistons
team at full strength a few days before they're winning Denver.
Although it's worth mentioning that the Wizards have some real
stuff to start getting excited about, with their young talent flashing,
some real two way potential guys like Galaxar really shooting
(04:32):
the ball well from three, defending really well, Bilakulabali Kishan,
George bub Carrington. They've got a bunch of guys that
are popping for them. But the point is is that's March,
and so there's a certain amount of weird result that
you're gonna see in there. And Steve Kerrin formed us
that Steph really just needs a night off and that
he's been dealing with some back Sorenice, and so the
Warriors needed to beat the Bucks last night without Steph Curry.
(04:54):
And so conventional wisdom would tell you go into that
game thinking you're gonna win with defense, right, take Steph
out of the equation. You're gonna put a probably a
better defender than Steph into that rotation spot. Obviously you
lose the world on the offensive end of the floor,
but if you just defend extremely well, you give yourself
a chance. And that's exactly what the Warriors did. They
held the Bucks to just ninety two points. They had
(05:15):
two separate seventeen point quarters that they held them to.
They responded to two separate Bucks runs with defensive runs.
There was a late third quarter run where it was
really the only phase of the game where the Milwaukee
offense was in like really really cooking. Dame had the
pick and pop with brook Lopez going and Brooke was
hitting threes. They had some two man game with Damon
(05:37):
Giannis where they were passing well out of it. Giannis
was drawing double teams in the post and passing well
out of it. He made a nice pass to brook
Lopez who sealed the low man and got an easy layup.
They were skipping the ball to Kyle Kuzma, who hit
three after three, after three. It was just the one
phase in the game where Milwaukee's offense just looked like
it was getting easy stuff. And so they go on
this run and they go up seventy six to seventy
(05:59):
and then promptly the Warriors put the clamps on them
and hold them scoreless for three straight minutes, and they
regain control. And then something similar happened in the fourth quarter.
The Bucks go on another run, this time Giannis's on
the bench, Dame is doing a lot of cooking and
ball screens. They cut the lead down to three, but
the Warriors hold them completely scoreless over the final four
(06:20):
minutes of the game as they pull away and win
by eleven. And so it was their defense that was
able to completely strangle the Bucks at these stretches that
allowed them, in the limited offensive production they were getting
under the circumstances to have enough to win that game.
I want to start by digging into the concept of
being in two places at once on defense. This is
(06:41):
really the superpower that Draymond Green has used to become
one of the best defenders that the league has seen
over the last decade. Right, we think of defense too reductively.
Sometimes a lot of times we'll think of it like
can I guard my man and can he.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Guard his man? Do we have five guys that are
all like.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Elite defenders that can defend on an island and keep
defenses out of r rotation and keep their defense out
of rotation, and so on and so forth, And there's
a certain amount of that where you do need guys
that can hold up one on one. Draymond got a
huge one on one stop against Giannis late in the
game where he forced him into kind of a drifting,
floating hook shot that he missed off the rim. But
(07:16):
most of the best defenses that you'll see in the
history of the league are centered around a concept that
involves actually being aggressive on the ball, meaning like putting
two defenders on the ball or overhelping, putting guys into
situation to make stars play.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
In a crowd.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
But then those openings disappearing really quickly through excellent rotations
and setting up the floor in a way where you
have a plan for whatever it is that you're dealing
with from the opposing star, and like again, like this
is think about Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City's best defense in
the league. They're not just out there letting all their
guys play one on one on defense. That defense is
(07:54):
predicated on aggressive coverages, leaving openings that quickly disappear as
you rotate out of it with your speed. I thought
the Warriors executed this concept to perfection in this game.
I thought it all started with Draymond, who did an
incredible job on Giannis all game, but especially in ball
screens where he was consistently able to get up to
(08:15):
the level to defend the ball, but to get back
in time to handle Yiannis on the roll. We saw
play early in the game where he got a block
on Giannis where he was like kind of trailing the
play a little bit and he jumped and squared up
in mid air to get a piece of the ball
on the way down to force some miss. He had
a huge one late in the game when the ball
screens were getting pushed a little bit further out towards
(08:37):
half court. Really good ball pressure from Gary Payton. They
were pushing the ball screens out further to half court
and those rotations were more in like the short roll
area and Draymond Green once again showing up to the level.
He lets Giannis get past him, but he sprints back
and by the time Giannis actually caught it, Draymond had
him squared up again and then he was able to
(08:58):
play one on one defense and forced Raymond into a
tough faight away. Quentin Post, who had some issues defensively
in this game, had a big one late where he
showed on a ball screen Brooke Lopez slipped out of it.
He was slipping towards like the top of the key area,
and Post just sprinted back it, got back in front
of Brook, kept him out of rotation, forced him into
(09:19):
a tough fade away jump shot that he missed. So
again that concept the ability to be on the ball
to force a star ball handler to get rid of it,
but then also the ability to recover in rotation to
where the opening is gone. That is the concept that
makes an elite defense reach that level. Is their ability
to make you constantly feel like you're playing in a
(09:39):
crowd while never actually conceding the openings that lead to
the wide open shots that'll cook you in this sort
of situation. And then in those one on ones with Gianni's.
Draymond is one of the few defenders in the entire
NBA that has the strength and the quickness to force
Giannis into actually taking over the top shots. We talked
(10:00):
about this concept in the Thunder Game. If you remember
with Isaiah Hartenstein with Yannis, there's a specific amount of
like you need to have the strength so that when
Yanna sees those small openings he can't just blow through
your shoulder, but you also have to have the mobility
to get to a spot so that Jannis actually has
to make a move right. Once you have the ability
(10:22):
to slide your feet and hold that strength on that shoulder,
you can flatten Drives out with Giannis. Once you start
flattening drives out with Giannis, it turns into drifting, tougher
contested layups. It turns into the hooks and the floaters
that like he can't make, and he's gotten better at them.
But over the years, even with that improvement, he's still
(10:42):
getting less than a point per shot. He's still missing
almost sixty percent of his hooks and his floaters and
things like that. That big Iso stop ed late big
possession Janis against Draymond on the left elbow extended area,
Jannis makes an aggressive move towards the right, Draymond slides
his his feet, absorbs the contact, flattens out the drive,
(11:03):
forces him into that tough little hook in the lane
that he leaves short off the front of the rim.
And again, like we've talked about how Isaiah Hartenstein held
Giannis to his worst shooting game of the season, he
held Gianness to forty seven percent from the field. Well,
I should say Hartenstein and the thunder held Giannis to
forty seven percent from the field, which was his worst
(11:23):
shooting night of the season. Well, Draymond Green and the
Warriors just held him to thirty one percent from the field,
sixteen percent lower from the field than he has against
anybody else in the NBA this season. Just a casual
reminder that Draymond Green is still very much one of
the very best defensive players in the NBA. And you
know the second place that you're going to see that
(11:44):
be in two places at once. Type of concept come
into play is with gapping in closing out. I talk
about this concept a lot, but gapping all it is
is if you're one pass away, meaning like you're in
the driving lane, if there's a ball handler and there's
a defender scored up with him. He's got a driving
lane to the right, driving lane to the left. If
you're guarding one of the guys that's one pass away,
(12:05):
almost every defense is gonna have you gap into the
lane a little bit so that person's gonna step over
and exist in the driving lane, so that even if
he does beat his primary defender off the dribble, he's
just running into help. But in those situations, it requires
really sharp closeouts to prevent giving up those wide open
threes that can that can come from just a simple
(12:26):
swing pass right. I thought a perfect example of this
was the late three, the tying three that Gary Trent
Junior missed again that could have tied the games ninety
six to ninety three. Was a little over two minutes left.
Dam and Giannis are trying really hard to run a
cleared side pick and roll on the right side, and
it was hilarious because Giannis is having a meltdown because
Torian prince like would not get out of the corner,
and he's over there just like waving.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Like, get out of there, get out of there.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So Torrian finally clears out of the corner and they're
set up to run their cleared side ball screen. Why
I've talked a lot about this. The Bucks I think
are at their best sometimes with Giannis in his some
of his limitations as a play maker to keep the
floor in front of him. And so if you clear
the side, then when he rolls into that space in
the short corner, he's got the entire floor in front
of him and he can just barrel downhill to the
(13:09):
rim and have really easy passing raids available. That's why
he's wanting that cleared side. He wants to roll into
space right. So the Warriors decide to defend it by icing.
What that means is Gary Payton the second is going
to completely close off the drive towards the middle and
force Dame towards the sideline where Draymond is going to
be sitting, and basically a deep drop coverage kind of
(13:31):
right around the elbow extended, so that if Dame drives,
he's basically driving into a bracket. He drives into a
bracket where Janis and Gary Payton are there, kind of
trapping him on both sides, and then Jannis has to
roll not towards the cleared side. Yannis would have to
roll towards the middle, which is where all the traffic is.
That's why teams try to ice those side ball screens, right,
(13:53):
So Jannis flips the screening angle and tries to screen
Gary Payton so that Dame can at least get towards
the sideline with a little bit more of an advantage.
So Draymond identifies it immediately and goes, oh, Yiannis flips
the screen. I don't want Dame just gets screaming downhill.
So Draymond rushes up to the level like he's gonna
blitz Dame coming off the ball screen. This causes Dame
(14:15):
to panic, and Dame dribbles back out to half court,
but Gary Payton loses contain on him, and all of
a sudden, Dame comes screaming downhill from the top of
from out by half court. As he comes screaming downhill, though,
where's the next defender in the chain. It's Brandon Pajemski,
who's gapping off of Gary Trent right there at the
(14:35):
top of the key to help contain on the Dame drive.
So Dame obviously sees the read and goes, I'm gonna
swing it over to Gary Payton or excuse me to
Gary Trent Junior on the left wing right. But if
you watch Pods, Pods identifies it in real time and
he sees Dame picking up his dribble to make that
swing pass, starts his rotation early and ends up getting
(14:56):
a great contest on Gary Trent's three. That three would
have tied the game, but because of the great contest
from Pojemski, he rushes it. You can see Gary Trent
rush the shot and he leaves it way short and
ends up grazing the side of the rim.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
It had no chance of going in.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
And again that entire play got blown up because you
had an ice coverage that caused the Bucks to do
something they didn't want to do. So then when Giannis
flipped his screening angle, Draymond threw a blitz which forced
Dame to audible into dribbling the other way. But even
when Gary Payton lost control, there was another defender there
in the gap to make it feel like he was
(15:36):
playing in a crowd, make it feel like there's an opening,
but there's actually not an opening. Pods is on top
of it. He gets a great close out and so
essentially there's no paint touch there's no compromising of the
interior of the defense. There's nothing at the rim. It's
a smothered catch and shoot three that gets rushed and
badly missed by Gary Trent And again like the Bucks
(15:59):
shot extreemly well on open threes. On unguarded catch and
shoot threes, they were seven for nine, but they only
generated nine of them. When Golden State got a good
contest on a catch and shoot Milwaukee jumper, they were
just five for seventeen on those catch and shoots. The
contested catch and shoots again like that, those gapp being
(16:22):
closeouts are one of the big ways that Golden State
can make those perceived openings disappear in a heartbeat. Again,
it was just a defensive masterclass from the Warriors. On offense,
it was just about timely contributions. Like when Milwaukee took
their six point lead in the late third, Jimmy started
going to work and did some nice grift work to
get to the line a few times. I thought he
(16:42):
was brilliant. Over the last like fifteen minutes or so.
On offense, he just kept getting to the line. He
hit a few pull up jump shots, including a four
point play like an and three point shot on the
left wing. He made some nice driving kick plays, like
a really nice bounce past the Quinton post in the
right corner. Where as he was driving along the baseline,
the defender was there in the passing lane, and so
he had to change his pass angle to like bounce
(17:05):
right next to the defender so that it can sneak
through to Quinton post. The Bucks were also doing a
lot of aggressive helping late in the game off of
Gary Payton and Brandon Pajemski. They put Lopez on Gary
Payton and just sitting him under the basket. Gary Payton
had a really nice relocation to the top of the
key where Jimmy just shoveled it to him and Gary
Payton knocked down the three. Gary Payon keeps sitting in
these uncontested threes and it's been part of the way
(17:27):
that he's maintained his value on offense. And then late
in the game they ended up in rotation in a
ball screen at Pajemski ended up rotating up to the
right wing. Jimmy sprays it out the pods and he
ends up hitting the big uncontested three. But Jimmy just
kept making smart plays as that primary handler in those situations,
and credits to those guys they knocked down the shots.
I thought Buddy healed the two transition pull up threes
(17:50):
he hit after Milwaukee took that six point lead. I
thought both of those were huge shots. He had won
on the right wing, one on the left wing. Those
were just really important shots in the flow of the game.
A really impressive bounce back win for the Warriors after
the disappointment of that loss to Denver, and then on
the Milwaukee front again. Yiannis's three worst shooting games of
the season have all taken place in the last week.
(18:12):
You know, the Lakers one is whatever. The Lakers have
been one of the best defenses in the league for
the last several months, but they were down a bunch
of guys and they were just doubling him constantly. And
the Bucks did burn the Lakers by just skipping the
ball across the court and hitting threes. But the Thunder,
the Warriors, and the Lakers are three of the best
defenses in the NBA, and Giannis has really struggled to
get easy stuff at the rim against them again, Thunder
(18:34):
and Warriors being his two worst shooting literally. The Lakers
Thunders and Warriors games. All three of those are his
three worst shooting games of the season. I just hope
he's not dealing with any sort of like nagging lower
body injury because I would really like to see Yannis
healthy in the playoffs again after what happened the last
couple of years, and it just seems like he's trending
downward right now, and I just hope everything's all right
(18:57):
with him physically. The concerning thing for me with Milwaukee
is they just haven't been able to put things together
on offense, which is concerning because they that was a
strength of Theirs for most of the season last year.
And again like with their defense, even though it's performed
well statistically, they have a tendency to break down relatively easily.
(19:17):
Despite those defensive rating numbers. You look at the numbers
and it's like their tenth and defensive rating on the season.
They've been the best clutch defense in the NBA this year. Statistically,
it all looks great, but time and time again, in
these spots, especially against the best teams in the league,
it's the same issue. It's Brook Lopez in space, like
he's either sitting at the rim and leaving a shooter open,
or he's going out on the perimeter and guys are
(19:38):
running right around him. Every time they end up in rotation.
You see these sequences like the Pajemski three late in
the game. Watch Dame and Gary Trent on that play.
They just look lost in rotation on the backside, and
it's like, when you really get down to it, it's
like their best lineup is probably what you saw there
right like with Gary Trent and with Kyle Kuzma, and
(20:00):
it's like, when you have that group out there, there's
just too many players on the floor that are prone
to defense's mistakes. That's separate from any sort of big picture,
large sample sized metric they might put together. Make their
defense a little rickety when they need to get stops
in these situations, and it's hard to overcome that unless
you're a world beater on offense. And the Bucks just
(20:22):
haven't been that good on that end of the floor
this year. They look to me like a team that's
like destined for a disappointing finish at this point.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Pile Let's move on to Cavs Clippers.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
So the Clippers big test for them last night, an
opportunity to legitimize some of their recent success. The Clippers
had won six out of seven, including a three game
winning streak against Detroit, New York and Sacramento, playing some
really good ball. They're top five in both offense and
defense in that span. Why Leonard has started to look stronger.
They're just coming together, right. But the Caves present a
(21:05):
real challenge, particularly on the offensive end, because they can
just be so difficult to keep up with. And the
Cavs made it abundantly clear right out the gates of
this game that they were going to make it very
difficult to keep up with them. They came out in
lace three straight threes. Max Strew hit two in a row,
Darius Garland Lace is at three ouf the dribble. They
hit forty five points in the first quarter, so pretty
(21:27):
quickly the game took on the feel of a shootout.
I talk a lot about the concept of winning games
in different ways. Why, because in the playoffs you got
to beat four different teams in a seven game series,
usually for very different types of opponents, and one round
you might face like a big, physical defense that drags
you down into the mud. Everybody's legs are tired. Jumpers
(21:48):
stop falling and it turns into like winning a rock fight, right,
But then in the next round, you might fight fight
against a thinner, faster team that plays really fast and
scores a lot of points, and it becomes more about
your offensive firepower and your ability to keep up with
your perimeter speed. Even just stars can present different challenges. Oh,
this team has you know, nikolea jokicch sor if you
(22:10):
get Zubas right, a big, strong center that we have
to match up. Or maybe it's a super quick guard
like Darius Garland, Like how are we going to keep
Darius Garland from getting out of his spots? Every team
presents different types of challenges. That's why it's so important
to be able to win different types of wins. I
thought this particular game was a test of the Clippers
offensive firepower. Cleveland is the best offense in the league,
(22:31):
and while the Clippers did have some success against their
offense late in the game by getting some stops, for
two and a half quarters, the Cavs were just red hot.
They were in the zone. Sometimes that's just how it is.
It's not like Chris Dunn and Kawhi Leonard weren't guarding
at the start of the game, it's just good offense
beats good defense every time. So sometimes you're kind of
(22:52):
just hanging on for dear life, and you just have
to find a way to score at a similar pace,
just to weather the storm until they cool start missing shots,
or until your defense settles in and you start making
them uncomfortable. That's what I mean when I say the
game took on a feel of a shootout, like the
Clippers were just trying to keep up for the first
two and a half quarters of that game. Now, in
order for you to be able to consistently score against
(23:14):
a good defense, and again we've talked a lot about
the Cavs offense. They're seventh in defense. It's not an
exceptional defensive team, but they're a very good defensive team.
And if you're going to generate consistent offense against a
top ten defense like that, you need to have a
bunch of different guys that can generate quality shots from
a bunch of different types of actions or sequences. And
the Clippers proved that they were more than capable last night.
(23:37):
Kawhi looked absolutely amazing. It's crazy because like a few
weeks ago, he just didn't look good physically, it looked
like he wasn't getting lyft. It looks like his base
was getting disrupted by basically every team that he ran into.
Last night, the Clippers play by play guy set on
the broadcast quote, this is the Kawhi Leonard we know
and remember, and this is the Kawhi Leonard we need,
(23:58):
And he was absolutely right. I had thirty three, seven
and four with for steals. He was twelve for nineteen
from the field, five for six from three several specific
types of plays that I thought were great signs of
the improving strength of his base, and again that's always
been where Kawhi beats people. He's got such a strong
base that he's dislodging you from your base, and he's
(24:21):
getting such great lift that he can knock down consistently,
pull up jump shots from everywhere on the floor and
get to the room. He's just that pure three level
score that.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
You can't keep.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
From his spots, you can see the base strength coming
together with some of these types of plays. He had
a tap in offensive rebound putback on a shot that
he missed where he beat everyone else back up off
the floor on his second jump. That's always a sign
of athletic dominance when you can win on the second jump,
that was a big sign. He hit a right shoulder
(24:53):
fade over Dean Wade big shot late in the game.
Dean Wade defends him super well, gets a great contest.
Kawhi has to fade dramatically over his right shoulder, but
he just gets excellent lift and if you watch the shot,
he gets such great lift that even though he's drifting
away from the basket, his body is perfectly still imbalanced
while he's rising up and knocking down that shot. He
(25:14):
had another right shoulder fade over Evan Mobley late. It
was a different kind of fade. It was like a
quick spinning fade out of a drive and like, once again,
look at his balance, and that's a great sign because
those quick spins, those quick moves, those are the hardest
moves to stop your body and get balance as you're
coming up off the ground.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
All night long, he just looked like Kawhi.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
We know that at his best he has this like
scissor dribble combination that he'll go to for pull up
threes where he'll just pound the ball between his legs
and just go straight up into a three out of it.
He does it out of a couple different footworks and
a couple of different dribble combinations, but it's basically it's
like a live dribble jab step where he'll like use
that between the legs dribble to essentially jab and get
(25:58):
the defender to take a step back so that he
can just rise up and knock it down. He was
hitting that all night long. He just looked great. James
Harden was really smart with his attacks all night. He
was using guard screens to get favorable matchups before getting
into ball screens, and then he was attacking those guards
in ISO as well.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
He didn't shoot the ball super well, but he.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Got to the line eleven times, so he finished with
twenty two points and nine assists with zero turnovers. That's
a pretty damn good James Harden game. But it wasn't
just those two guys BOGGEDA mcgdonovitch had one of his
best games as a Clipper, some nice secondary shot creation
with the bench group. He also closed the game with
James Harden and Kawhi and did some really nice connective playmaking.
He was being guarded by Garland, so Kawhi was trying
(26:37):
to attack Garland by bringing Bogdanovitch into the action as
a screener. At first, they try to hedge and recover,
which is the most common coverage that you'll see teams
use when you've got a small quick guard that a
team's trying to attack. Because quickness is the ability to
rotate right, he can throw a hedge and he can
get out of there as quick as possible. Garland hedges, Bogdanovich, slips,
(27:00):
throws the pass to him. He makes a nice read
out to James Harden in the corner. James Harden gets
a close out, drives the close out and makes the floater.
That is that like excellent breaking down, that incremental breaking
down of the defense. Right, Kawhi draws two Magdonovich extends
the advantage with a nice kickout read. Harden gets a
close out that he scores against with a driving floater.
(27:23):
Getting three high level offensive players in those sequences makes
some more resilient against better defense. Right then, after the
hedge didn't work, they just straight up blitz Kawhi with
Darius Carlin floated out to Bogdanovic. He beats Donovan Mitchell,
who rotates to the top. He gets into the lane
and hits that tough floater that he knocked down in
the lane. He was eight for eight in this game
(27:45):
for twenty points. That's how you're going to keep up
in a shootout, all of those offensive initiation points that
you have, all those connective playmaking pieces, all the play
finishing coming together right, And then there was Zubas. Zubach
has been snikky kicking the shit out of some of
the best centers in the league all year. I saw
tweet last night that he's hung twenty and twenty on
(28:07):
a bunch of the All Star centers, and that's not
exactly true, but it's close enough to true. He had
twenty one and twenty two against Wemby, he had twenty
and nineteen against Jaron Jackson, he had twenty one and
nineteen against Anthony Davis, twenty three and eighteen against Straymond,
and then last night he puts up twenty eight and
twenty against Jared Allen. And it was just as bad
(28:30):
for Jared as it looked on the box score. Zubats
whooped his ass straight up, scored on him in the
post a bunch of times, one on one, just absolutely
butchered him on the offensive glass shot goes up. He
was just leaning on him and just shoving him out
of his spot, getting whatever he wanted. He had eight
offensive rebounds in the game. There's huge play late Cleveland
cuts the lead to seven and gets two stops in
(28:51):
a row against the Clippers offense. But on both plays
Zubas just wrecking balls into the lane and taps the
ball out and they keep the ball alive two times
in a row. He was hitting shots in the roll
off of Harden, he was ducking in on cuts. He
was just an absolute monster. He kicked Jared Allen's ass.
There's no way around it. So the question is why
(29:12):
does Zubac keep kicking ass against some of the best
bigs in basketball. It's an interesting part of the way
the modern game has changed at the center position. As
things have changed with pace and the way teams run
up and down the floor and attack in ball screens
with rim runners in vertical spacers, we've seen a massive
increase in these like thinner rim running types of bigs.
(29:34):
Jared Allen and Mobiley are great examples. Victor Women, Yama,
Chet Holmgren, Anthony Davis kind of fits this.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Mole. Rudy go Bear Derek Lively.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
That type of guy has become way more common in
the league as the league has become faster, more of
a transition game, more of a pick and roll, rolling
hard to the rim. You need vertical spacing type of league.
Back in the day, there were two or three huge,
bruising centers on every team. Now half the teams in
the league don't even have a guy like that. I
(30:04):
actually think it plays a role in how dominated a
guy like NICOLEA. Jokic is in this era. And by
the way, I don't mean that as a shot at Jokic.
It actually reminds me a lot of the dynamic with
Michael Jordan in the nineties. Back then, teams were so
loaded up on size and strength that overwhelming quickness was
a game breaker in a lot of ways that Michael
Jordan took advantage of. These days, the league is so
(30:26):
loaded up on quickness that size and strength can be
a game breaker, and that is how guys like Zubach
and Jokic to a much greater extent, have had a
lot of success. If you're really really big and strong,
and you have the footwork to actually use that physical
leverage and the touch in the IQ to make teams
pay by winning ground battles. You're gonna win a lot
(30:47):
of battles in this league. It's a matchup problem for
a lot of these teams. Zubach is just too big
and strong for these guys. I had Frank Friscilla, who
was doing the color commentary last night, he was saying
after the game that, uh, early in the game, on
Zoo's first post up, he's like, he literally said, he's
just too much for him. He can't hold his ground.
And it really was that simple. So you get great
(31:10):
offensive games from Kawhi, Zoo, and Bgdonovic. You get a
good game from Harden, even Norman Powell in his limited minutes.
I mean he played eighteen minutes and dropped eleven points
in a thirty six minute game. That's twenty two points.
I mean, that's a high offensive output for a limited role.
That allowed them to keep up with that red hot
scoring effort from the Caves. But they're in the late
(31:31):
third quarter, their defense finally started to settle in. I
thought Derek Jones Junior was instrumental in this stretch. Had
some great reps on both Garland and Mitchell Kawhi. I
thought was great all night on Donovan Mitchell. The Clippers
really started to force some more difficult shot angles from
the guards that forced some misses. That was what triggered
their run when they started to pull away. We talked
(31:52):
a lot about their offense earlier, but the Clippers held
the Calves to just nineteen points over the final fifteen
minutes and change of this game. It was just a
really impressive win for the Clippers. And here's the thing.
We can't completely right off this upside that they're showing.
This team build always had this capability of putting everything together,
(32:16):
and suddenly Kawhi gets his leg strength and just stays healthy,
and like, what if Kawhi just stays healthy to mid June, Well,
then they're absolutely a threat. It's just going to be
really difficult to shake the pessimism that surrounds Kawhi and
his health. This time last year, he was kicking ass
two and so were the Clippers. March twenty ninth of
last season in Orlando, Kawhi drops twenty nine to eleven
(32:38):
and five with four steals and two blocks. Goes twelve
for twenty one from the field and three for six
from three looks incredible. He played one more game that
season and we didn't see him again. So it is
what it is. There's a version of this story where
Kawhi holds up and the Clippers are a real threat,
but that question mark is just always.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Going to be there with it.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
On the Cleveland front, I had a bunch of Cavs
fans pissed off at us the other day for talking
about some of their struggles with Sizing and s Orlando.
Most of it was people just getting hung up on
a title. But I want to be clear, like I
wasn't saying the Calves as a team got exposed and
that they're fraudulent or anything like that. I just think
that there's value in looking at why a team is
struggling because it helps us learn about them. It's so
(33:24):
rare for a team like Boston last year or Denver
the year before to kind of run through the playoffs
without facing much in the way of adversity. The vast
majority of the time, you're gonna find yourself trailing in
a playoff series, even if you win the title. That's
what happened to the twenty twenty two Warriors. That's what
happened to the twenty twenty one Bucks. That's what happened
to the twenty twenty Lakers, That's what happened to the
(33:46):
twenty nineteen Raptors. Even the twenty eighteen Warriors trailed in
a playoff series, the twenty sixteen Calves trailed, the twenty
fifteen Warriors trailed. Like usually, adversity is a part of
the grind all the way through to the finish line.
There's no perfect basketball team in the NBA that just
beats the shit out of anybody and everybody. And so
with that being the case, again, that does happen occasionally.
(34:09):
It's rare though, and again like even with a team
like Boston, like part of it was that caught some
favorable matchups along the way. There's a version of that
where they win the title, but it looks tougher if
they have to face Denver in Milwaukee.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
So, like it's one of those things where when we're
talking about these flaws with these teams, it's just about
learning so that we can try to figure out what
makes them struggle so we can at least identify that
sort of thing when it pops up down the line.
Once again, last night, they struggled with size, Zubos kicked
Allen's ass, but similar to the Orlando game, I was
talking about how their perimeter size caused issues for the
(34:47):
Cavs guards, the length of Kawhi, the length of Derek
Jones Junior, the overall size of the Clippers on the floor, Darius, Garland,
Don and Mitchell went just eleven for thirty two. Kawhi
on the offensive end, show to relatively easy willingness to
target Cleveland's perimeter players and get pretty easy over the
top shots. They chewed Cleveland up and spit them out
(35:09):
on the glass. It's just worth keeping an eye on
when we see Cleveland struggle in the playoffs. This is
probably what it will look like. Bigger physical teams, especially
on the perimeter, making life tough for them, making them
feel like they're playing in a crowd, and leading to
some inefficiency from their guards. All right, guys, that's all
I have for today is always as sincerely appreciate you
(35:31):
guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We are
back tonight after the final buzzer of Nuggets Lakers. We
have our course correction segment that we're also doing there.
Plan on hitting at least another team or two in
that show as well, So make sure you guys come out,
come hang out later tonight live on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I'll see you guys.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Then VO what's up guys. As always, I appreciate you
for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight. They would actually
be really helpful for us if you guys would take
a second and leave a rating and a review. As always,
I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could
take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.
The volume.
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All right, well, good hoops and I here at the volume.
(01:46):
Happy Wednesday, everybody. I hope all of you guys are
having a great week. Just a quick show for you guys. Today,
we're gonna be hitting two games from last night's slate
as the Golden State Warriors without Steph Curry put on
a defensive masterclass against Giannis Dame in the Milwaukee Bucks.
We're gonna be breaking that game down. I want to
talk about some specific concepts in modern NBA defense and
how it's a little bit more about a team concept
(02:08):
than people are willing to give these schemes credit for.
We're gonna be talking about that, and then a little
bit of my concerns surrounding Milwaukee and the big picture.
Tail end of the show, we had a showdown between
a red hot Los Angeles Clippers team and the Cleveland
Cavaliers and what was a shootout for most of the
game until the Clippers were able to regain control with
their defense late. Really fascinating game that taught us a
(02:31):
bunch about both teams. You guys know the drill before
we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels
you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me
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show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast few wherever you
get your podcast on our Hoops Tonight. We also have
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We're releasing content throughout the year. Make sure you guys follow
us there, and the last but not least, keep dropping
(02:52):
mailbag questions in the YouTube comments so that we can
keep getting to them throughout the remainder of the season.
All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Warriors dropped
a game a couple nights ago against the Nuggets at
home without Jamal Murray and without Nicole Jokic playing for
the Nuggets, And to be clear, my thoughts coming out
of that game were, this is March in the NBA.
You're gonna see this quite a bit in this time
(03:15):
of year, because it's like a funky phase where half
the league already knows exactly what they are and are
in some variation of cruise control where you don't know
what you're getting any given night because they're either saving
legs for the playoffs or they're just not feeling that
level of intensity. And even for the teams that made
big deals at the trade deadline, the newness is starting
(03:37):
to fade. It's been over a month and this is
just kind of like this a lull that you're gonna
see and you're gonna see some weird results. Denver, in particular,
it has been a total shit show.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Like they get.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Smashed by the Thunder, but then they beat the Thunder,
then they get smashed by the Wolves, then they nearly
lose to the Lakers missing four starters. Then they do
actually lose to the Washington Wizards at home, just to
go the Golden State without Murray and jokicen beat the
Warriors who were red hot. It doesn't make any sense
that team is just bizarre. You're gonna see a lot
of general or a lot of weird results in general
(04:10):
this time of year, Like the Pacers without four starters
just went into Minnesota and beat the Wolves at full strength.
The Wizards also went into Detroit and beat a Pistons
team at full strength a few days before they're winning Denver.
Although it's worth mentioning that the Wizards have some real
stuff to start getting excited about, with their young talent flashing,
some real two way potential guys like Galaxar really shooting
(04:32):
the ball well from three, defending really well, Bilakulabali Kishan,
George bub Carrington. They've got a bunch of guys that
are popping for them. But the point is is that's March,
and so there's a certain amount of weird result that
you're gonna see in there. And Steve Kerrin formed us
that Steph really just needs a night off and that
he's been dealing with some back Sorenice, and so the
Warriors needed to beat the Bucks last night without Steph Curry.
(04:54):
And so conventional wisdom would tell you go into that
game thinking you're gonna win with defense, right, take Steph
out of the equation. You're gonna put a probably a
better defender than Steph into that rotation spot. Obviously you
lose the world on the offensive end of the floor,
but if you just defend extremely well, you give yourself
a chance. And that's exactly what the Warriors did. They
held the Bucks to just ninety two points. They had
(05:15):
two separate seventeen point quarters that they held them to.
They responded to two separate Bucks runs with defensive runs.
There was a late third quarter run where it was
really the only phase of the game where the Milwaukee
offense was in like really really cooking. Dame had the
pick and pop with brook Lopez going and Brooke was
hitting threes. They had some two man game with Damon
(05:37):
Giannis where they were passing well out of it. Giannis
was drawing double teams in the post and passing well
out of it. He made a nice pass to brook
Lopez who sealed the low man and got an easy layup.
They were skipping the ball to Kyle Kuzma, who hit
three after three, after three. It was just the one
phase in the game where Milwaukee's offense just looked like
it was getting easy stuff. And so they go on
this run and they go up seventy six to seventy
(05:59):
and then promptly the Warriors put the clamps on them
and hold them scoreless for three straight minutes, and they
regain control. And then something similar happened in the fourth quarter.
The Bucks go on another run, this time Giannis's on
the bench, Dame is doing a lot of cooking and
ball screens. They cut the lead down to three, but
the Warriors hold them completely scoreless over the final four
(06:20):
minutes of the game as they pull away and win
by eleven. And so it was their defense that was
able to completely strangle the Bucks at these stretches that
allowed them, in the limited offensive production they were getting
under the circumstances to have enough to win that game.
I want to start by digging into the concept of
being in two places at once on defense. This is
(06:41):
really the superpower that Draymond Green has used to become
one of the best defenders that the league has seen
over the last decade. Right, we think of defense too reductively.
Sometimes a lot of times we'll think of it like
can I guard my man and can he.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Guard his man? Do we have five guys that are
all like.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Elite defenders that can defend on an island and keep
defenses out of r rotation and keep their defense out
of rotation, and so on and so forth, And there's
a certain amount of that where you do need guys
that can hold up one on one. Draymond got a
huge one on one stop against Giannis late in the
game where he forced him into kind of a drifting,
floating hook shot that he missed off the rim. But
(07:16):
most of the best defenses that you'll see in the
history of the league are centered around a concept that
involves actually being aggressive on the ball, meaning like putting
two defenders on the ball or overhelping, putting guys into
situation to make stars play.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
In a crowd.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
But then those openings disappearing really quickly through excellent rotations
and setting up the floor in a way where you
have a plan for whatever it is that you're dealing
with from the opposing star, and like again, like this
is think about Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City's best defense in
the league. They're not just out there letting all their
guys play one on one on defense. That defense is
(07:54):
predicated on aggressive coverages, leaving openings that quickly disappear as
you rotate out of it with your speed. I thought
the Warriors executed this concept to perfection in this game.
I thought it all started with Draymond, who did an
incredible job on Giannis all game, but especially in ball
screens where he was consistently able to get up to
(08:15):
the level to defend the ball, but to get back
in time to handle Yiannis on the roll. We saw
play early in the game where he got a block
on Giannis where he was like kind of trailing the
play a little bit and he jumped and squared up
in mid air to get a piece of the ball
on the way down to force some miss. He had
a huge one late in the game when the ball
screens were getting pushed a little bit further out towards
(08:37):
half court. Really good ball pressure from Gary Payton. They
were pushing the ball screens out further to half court
and those rotations were more in like the short roll
area and Draymond Green once again showing up to the level.
He lets Giannis get past him, but he sprints back
and by the time Giannis actually caught it, Draymond had
him squared up again and then he was able to
(08:58):
play one on one defense and forced Raymond into a
tough faight away. Quentin Post, who had some issues defensively
in this game, had a big one late where he
showed on a ball screen Brooke Lopez slipped out of it.
He was slipping towards like the top of the key area,
and Post just sprinted back it, got back in front
of Brook, kept him out of rotation, forced him into
(09:19):
a tough fade away jump shot that he missed. So
again that concept the ability to be on the ball
to force a star ball handler to get rid of it,
but then also the ability to recover in rotation to
where the opening is gone. That is the concept that
makes an elite defense reach that level. Is their ability
to make you constantly feel like you're playing in a
(09:39):
crowd while never actually conceding the openings that lead to
the wide open shots that'll cook you in this sort
of situation. And then in those one on ones with Gianni's.
Draymond is one of the few defenders in the entire
NBA that has the strength and the quickness to force
Giannis into actually taking over the top shots. We talked
(10:00):
about this concept in the Thunder Game. If you remember
with Isaiah Hartenstein with Yannis, there's a specific amount of
like you need to have the strength so that when
Yanna sees those small openings he can't just blow through
your shoulder, but you also have to have the mobility
to get to a spot so that Jannis actually has
to make a move right. Once you have the ability
(10:22):
to slide your feet and hold that strength on that shoulder,
you can flatten Drives out with Giannis. Once you start
flattening drives out with Giannis, it turns into drifting, tougher
contested layups. It turns into the hooks and the floaters
that like he can't make, and he's gotten better at them.
But over the years, even with that improvement, he's still
(10:42):
getting less than a point per shot. He's still missing
almost sixty percent of his hooks and his floaters and
things like that. That big Iso stop ed late big
possession Janis against Draymond on the left elbow extended area,
Jannis makes an aggressive move towards the right, Draymond slides
his his feet, absorbs the contact, flattens out the drive,
(11:03):
forces him into that tough little hook in the lane
that he leaves short off the front of the rim.
And again, like we've talked about how Isaiah Hartenstein held
Giannis to his worst shooting game of the season, he
held Gianness to forty seven percent from the field. Well,
I should say Hartenstein and the thunder held Giannis to
forty seven percent from the field, which was his worst
(11:23):
shooting night of the season. Well, Draymond Green and the
Warriors just held him to thirty one percent from the field,
sixteen percent lower from the field than he has against
anybody else in the NBA this season. Just a casual
reminder that Draymond Green is still very much one of
the very best defensive players in the NBA. And you
know the second place that you're going to see that
(11:44):
be in two places at once. Type of concept come
into play is with gapping in closing out. I talk
about this concept a lot, but gapping all it is
is if you're one pass away, meaning like you're in
the driving lane, if there's a ball handler and there's
a defender scored up with him. He's got a driving
lane to the right, driving lane to the left. If
you're guarding one of the guys that's one pass away,
(12:05):
almost every defense is gonna have you gap into the
lane a little bit so that person's gonna step over
and exist in the driving lane, so that even if
he does beat his primary defender off the dribble, he's
just running into help. But in those situations, it requires
really sharp closeouts to prevent giving up those wide open
threes that can that can come from just a simple
(12:26):
swing pass right. I thought a perfect example of this
was the late three, the tying three that Gary Trent
Junior missed again that could have tied the games ninety
six to ninety three. Was a little over two minutes left.
Dam and Giannis are trying really hard to run a
cleared side pick and roll on the right side, and
it was hilarious because Giannis is having a meltdown because
Torian prince like would not get out of the corner,
and he's over there just like waving.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Like, get out of there, get out of there.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So Torrian finally clears out of the corner and they're
set up to run their cleared side ball screen. Why
I've talked a lot about this. The Bucks I think
are at their best sometimes with Giannis in his some
of his limitations as a play maker to keep the
floor in front of him. And so if you clear
the side, then when he rolls into that space in
the short corner, he's got the entire floor in front
of him and he can just barrel downhill to the
(13:09):
rim and have really easy passing raids available. That's why
he's wanting that cleared side. He wants to roll into
space right. So the Warriors decide to defend it by icing.
What that means is Gary Payton the second is going
to completely close off the drive towards the middle and
force Dame towards the sideline where Draymond is going to
be sitting, and basically a deep drop coverage kind of
(13:31):
right around the elbow extended, so that if Dame drives,
he's basically driving into a bracket. He drives into a
bracket where Janis and Gary Payton are there, kind of
trapping him on both sides, and then Jannis has to
roll not towards the cleared side. Yannis would have to
roll towards the middle, which is where all the traffic is.
That's why teams try to ice those side ball screens, right,
(13:53):
So Jannis flips the screening angle and tries to screen
Gary Payton so that Dame can at least get towards
the sideline with a little bit more of an advantage.
So Draymond identifies it immediately and goes, oh, Yiannis flips
the screen. I don't want Dame just gets screaming downhill.
So Draymond rushes up to the level like he's gonna
blitz Dame coming off the ball screen. This causes Dame
(14:15):
to panic, and Dame dribbles back out to half court,
but Gary Payton loses contain on him, and all of
a sudden, Dame comes screaming downhill from the top of
from out by half court. As he comes screaming downhill, though,
where's the next defender in the chain. It's Brandon Pajemski,
who's gapping off of Gary Trent right there at the
(14:35):
top of the key to help contain on the Dame drive.
So Dame obviously sees the read and goes, I'm gonna
swing it over to Gary Payton or excuse me to
Gary Trent Junior on the left wing right. But if
you watch Pods, Pods identifies it in real time and
he sees Dame picking up his dribble to make that
swing pass, starts his rotation early and ends up getting
(14:56):
a great contest on Gary Trent's three. That three would
have tied the game, but because of the great contest
from Pojemski, he rushes it. You can see Gary Trent
rush the shot and he leaves it way short and
ends up grazing the side of the rim.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
It had no chance of going in.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
And again that entire play got blown up because you
had an ice coverage that caused the Bucks to do
something they didn't want to do. So then when Giannis
flipped his screening angle, Draymond threw a blitz which forced
Dame to audible into dribbling the other way. But even
when Gary Payton lost control, there was another defender there
in the gap to make it feel like he was
(15:36):
playing in a crowd, make it feel like there's an opening,
but there's actually not an opening. Pods is on top
of it. He gets a great close out and so
essentially there's no paint touch there's no compromising of the
interior of the defense. There's nothing at the rim. It's
a smothered catch and shoot three that gets rushed and
badly missed by Gary Trent And again like the Bucks
(15:59):
shot extreemly well on open threes. On unguarded catch and
shoot threes, they were seven for nine, but they only
generated nine of them. When Golden State got a good
contest on a catch and shoot Milwaukee jumper, they were
just five for seventeen on those catch and shoots. The
contested catch and shoots again like that, those gapp being
(16:22):
closeouts are one of the big ways that Golden State
can make those perceived openings disappear in a heartbeat. Again,
it was just a defensive masterclass from the Warriors. On offense,
it was just about timely contributions. Like when Milwaukee took
their six point lead in the late third, Jimmy started
going to work and did some nice grift work to
get to the line a few times. I thought he
(16:42):
was brilliant. Over the last like fifteen minutes or so.
On offense, he just kept getting to the line. He
hit a few pull up jump shots, including a four
point play like an and three point shot on the
left wing. He made some nice driving kick plays, like
a really nice bounce past the Quinton post in the
right corner. Where as he was driving along the baseline,
the defender was there in the passing lane, and so
he had to change his pass angle to like bounce
(17:05):
right next to the defender so that it can sneak
through to Quinton post. The Bucks were also doing a
lot of aggressive helping late in the game off of
Gary Payton and Brandon Pajemski. They put Lopez on Gary
Payton and just sitting him under the basket. Gary Payton
had a really nice relocation to the top of the
key where Jimmy just shoveled it to him and Gary
Payton knocked down the three. Gary Payon keeps sitting in
these uncontested threes and it's been part of the way
(17:27):
that he's maintained his value on offense. And then late
in the game they ended up in rotation in a
ball screen at Pajemski ended up rotating up to the
right wing. Jimmy sprays it out the pods and he
ends up hitting the big uncontested three. But Jimmy just
kept making smart plays as that primary handler in those situations,
and credits to those guys they knocked down the shots.
I thought Buddy healed the two transition pull up threes
(17:50):
he hit after Milwaukee took that six point lead. I
thought both of those were huge shots. He had won
on the right wing, one on the left wing. Those
were just really important shots in the flow of the game.
A really impressive bounce back win for the Warriors after
the disappointment of that loss to Denver, and then on
the Milwaukee front again. Yiannis's three worst shooting games of
the season have all taken place in the last week.
(18:12):
You know, the Lakers one is whatever. The Lakers have
been one of the best defenses in the league for
the last several months, but they were down a bunch
of guys and they were just doubling him constantly. And
the Bucks did burn the Lakers by just skipping the
ball across the court and hitting threes. But the Thunder,
the Warriors, and the Lakers are three of the best
defenses in the NBA, and Giannis has really struggled to
get easy stuff at the rim against them again, Thunder
(18:34):
and Warriors being his two worst shooting literally. The Lakers
Thunders and Warriors games. All three of those are his
three worst shooting games of the season. I just hope
he's not dealing with any sort of like nagging lower
body injury because I would really like to see Yannis
healthy in the playoffs again after what happened the last
couple of years, and it just seems like he's trending
downward right now, and I just hope everything's all right
(18:57):
with him physically. The concerning thing for me with Milwaukee
is they just haven't been able to put things together
on offense, which is concerning because they that was a
strength of Theirs for most of the season last year.
And again like with their defense, even though it's performed
well statistically, they have a tendency to break down relatively easily.
(19:17):
Despite those defensive rating numbers. You look at the numbers
and it's like their tenth and defensive rating on the season.
They've been the best clutch defense in the NBA this year. Statistically,
it all looks great, but time and time again, in
these spots, especially against the best teams in the league,
it's the same issue. It's Brook Lopez in space, like
he's either sitting at the rim and leaving a shooter open,
or he's going out on the perimeter and guys are
(19:38):
running right around him. Every time they end up in rotation.
You see these sequences like the Pajemski three late in
the game. Watch Dame and Gary Trent on that play.
They just look lost in rotation on the backside, and
it's like, when you really get down to it, it's
like their best lineup is probably what you saw there
right like with Gary Trent and with Kyle Kuzma, and
(20:00):
it's like, when you have that group out there, there's
just too many players on the floor that are prone
to defense's mistakes. That's separate from any sort of big picture,
large sample sized metric they might put together. Make their
defense a little rickety when they need to get stops
in these situations, and it's hard to overcome that unless
you're a world beater on offense. And the Bucks just
(20:22):
haven't been that good on that end of the floor
this year. They look to me like a team that's
like destined for a disappointing finish at this point.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Pile Let's move on to Cavs Clippers.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
So the Clippers big test for them last night, an
opportunity to legitimize some of their recent success. The Clippers
had won six out of seven, including a three game
winning streak against Detroit, New York and Sacramento, playing some
really good ball. They're top five in both offense and
defense in that span. Why Leonard has started to look stronger.
They're just coming together, right. But the Caves present a
(21:05):
real challenge, particularly on the offensive end, because they can
just be so difficult to keep up with. And the
Cavs made it abundantly clear right out the gates of
this game that they were going to make it very
difficult to keep up with them. They came out in
lace three straight threes. Max Strew hit two in a row,
Darius Garland Lace is at three ouf the dribble. They
hit forty five points in the first quarter, so pretty
(21:27):
quickly the game took on the feel of a shootout.
I talk a lot about the concept of winning games
in different ways. Why, because in the playoffs you got
to beat four different teams in a seven game series,
usually for very different types of opponents, and one round
you might face like a big, physical defense that drags
you down into the mud. Everybody's legs are tired. Jumpers
(21:48):
stop falling and it turns into like winning a rock fight, right,
But then in the next round, you might fight fight
against a thinner, faster team that plays really fast and
scores a lot of points, and it becomes more about
your offensive firepower and your ability to keep up with
your perimeter speed. Even just stars can present different challenges. Oh,
this team has you know, nikolea jokicch sor if you
(22:10):
get Zubas right, a big, strong center that we have
to match up. Or maybe it's a super quick guard
like Darius Garland, Like how are we going to keep
Darius Garland from getting out of his spots? Every team
presents different types of challenges. That's why it's so important
to be able to win different types of wins. I
thought this particular game was a test of the Clippers
offensive firepower. Cleveland is the best offense in the league,
(22:31):
and while the Clippers did have some success against their
offense late in the game by getting some stops, for
two and a half quarters, the Cavs were just red hot.
They were in the zone. Sometimes that's just how it is.
It's not like Chris Dunn and Kawhi Leonard weren't guarding
at the start of the game, it's just good offense
beats good defense every time. So sometimes you're kind of
(22:52):
just hanging on for dear life, and you just have
to find a way to score at a similar pace,
just to weather the storm until they cool start missing shots,
or until your defense settles in and you start making
them uncomfortable. That's what I mean when I say the
game took on a feel of a shootout, like the
Clippers were just trying to keep up for the first
two and a half quarters of that game. Now, in
order for you to be able to consistently score against
(23:14):
a good defense, and again we've talked a lot about
the Cavs offense. They're seventh in defense. It's not an
exceptional defensive team, but they're a very good defensive team.
And if you're going to generate consistent offense against a
top ten defense like that, you need to have a
bunch of different guys that can generate quality shots from
a bunch of different types of actions or sequences. And
the Clippers proved that they were more than capable last night.
(23:37):
Kawhi looked absolutely amazing. It's crazy because like a few
weeks ago, he just didn't look good physically, it looked
like he wasn't getting lyft. It looks like his base
was getting disrupted by basically every team that he ran into.
Last night, the Clippers play by play guy set on
the broadcast quote, this is the Kawhi Leonard we know
and remember, and this is the Kawhi Leonard we need,
(23:58):
And he was absolutely right. I had thirty three, seven
and four with for steals. He was twelve for nineteen
from the field, five for six from three several specific
types of plays that I thought were great signs of
the improving strength of his base, and again that's always
been where Kawhi beats people. He's got such a strong
base that he's dislodging you from your base, and he's
(24:21):
getting such great lift that he can knock down consistently,
pull up jump shots from everywhere on the floor and
get to the room. He's just that pure three level
score that.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
You can't keep.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
From his spots, you can see the base strength coming
together with some of these types of plays. He had
a tap in offensive rebound putback on a shot that
he missed where he beat everyone else back up off
the floor on his second jump. That's always a sign
of athletic dominance when you can win on the second jump,
that was a big sign. He hit a right shoulder
(24:53):
fade over Dean Wade big shot late in the game.
Dean Wade defends him super well, gets a great contest.
Kawhi has to fade dramatically over his right shoulder, but
he just gets excellent lift and if you watch the shot,
he gets such great lift that even though he's drifting
away from the basket, his body is perfectly still imbalanced
while he's rising up and knocking down that shot. He
(25:14):
had another right shoulder fade over Evan Mobley late. It
was a different kind of fade. It was like a
quick spinning fade out of a drive and like, once again,
look at his balance, and that's a great sign because
those quick spins, those quick moves, those are the hardest
moves to stop your body and get balance as you're
coming up off the ground.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
All night long, he just looked like Kawhi.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
We know that at his best he has this like
scissor dribble combination that he'll go to for pull up
threes where he'll just pound the ball between his legs
and just go straight up into a three out of it.
He does it out of a couple different footworks and
a couple of different dribble combinations, but it's basically it's
like a live dribble jab step where he'll like use
that between the legs dribble to essentially jab and get
(25:58):
the defender to take a step back so that he
can just rise up and knock it down. He was
hitting that all night long. He just looked great. James
Harden was really smart with his attacks all night. He
was using guard screens to get favorable matchups before getting
into ball screens, and then he was attacking those guards
in ISO as well.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
He didn't shoot the ball super well, but he.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Got to the line eleven times, so he finished with
twenty two points and nine assists with zero turnovers. That's
a pretty damn good James Harden game. But it wasn't
just those two guys BOGGEDA mcgdonovitch had one of his
best games as a Clipper, some nice secondary shot creation
with the bench group. He also closed the game with
James Harden and Kawhi and did some really nice connective playmaking.
He was being guarded by Garland, so Kawhi was trying
(26:37):
to attack Garland by bringing Bogdanovitch into the action as
a screener. At first, they try to hedge and recover,
which is the most common coverage that you'll see teams
use when you've got a small quick guard that a
team's trying to attack. Because quickness is the ability to
rotate right, he can throw a hedge and he can
get out of there as quick as possible. Garland hedges, Bogdanovich, slips,
(27:00):
throws the pass to him. He makes a nice read
out to James Harden in the corner. James Harden gets
a close out, drives the close out and makes the floater.
That is that like excellent breaking down, that incremental breaking
down of the defense. Right, Kawhi draws two Magdonovich extends
the advantage with a nice kickout read. Harden gets a
close out that he scores against with a driving floater.
(27:23):
Getting three high level offensive players in those sequences makes
some more resilient against better defense. Right then, after the
hedge didn't work, they just straight up blitz Kawhi with
Darius Carlin floated out to Bogdanovic. He beats Donovan Mitchell,
who rotates to the top. He gets into the lane
and hits that tough floater that he knocked down in
the lane. He was eight for eight in this game
(27:45):
for twenty points. That's how you're going to keep up
in a shootout, all of those offensive initiation points that
you have, all those connective playmaking pieces, all the play
finishing coming together right, And then there was Zubas. Zubach
has been snikky kicking the shit out of some of
the best centers in the league all year. I saw
tweet last night that he's hung twenty and twenty on
(28:07):
a bunch of the All Star centers, and that's not
exactly true, but it's close enough to true. He had
twenty one and twenty two against Wemby, he had twenty
and nineteen against Jaron Jackson, he had twenty one and
nineteen against Anthony Davis, twenty three and eighteen against Straymond,
and then last night he puts up twenty eight and
twenty against Jared Allen. And it was just as bad
(28:30):
for Jared as it looked on the box score. Zubats
whooped his ass straight up, scored on him in the
post a bunch of times, one on one, just absolutely
butchered him on the offensive glass shot goes up. He
was just leaning on him and just shoving him out
of his spot, getting whatever he wanted. He had eight
offensive rebounds in the game. There's huge play late Cleveland
cuts the lead to seven and gets two stops in
(28:51):
a row against the Clippers offense. But on both plays
Zubas just wrecking balls into the lane and taps the
ball out and they keep the ball alive two times
in a row. He was hitting shots in the roll
off of Harden, he was ducking in on cuts. He
was just an absolute monster. He kicked Jared Allen's ass.
There's no way around it. So the question is why
(29:12):
does Zubac keep kicking ass against some of the best
bigs in basketball. It's an interesting part of the way
the modern game has changed at the center position. As
things have changed with pace and the way teams run
up and down the floor and attack in ball screens
with rim runners in vertical spacers, we've seen a massive
increase in these like thinner rim running types of bigs.
(29:34):
Jared Allen and Mobiley are great examples. Victor Women, Yama,
Chet Holmgren, Anthony Davis kind of fits this.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Mole. Rudy go Bear Derek Lively.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
That type of guy has become way more common in
the league as the league has become faster, more of
a transition game, more of a pick and roll, rolling
hard to the rim. You need vertical spacing type of league.
Back in the day, there were two or three huge,
bruising centers on every team. Now half the teams in
the league don't even have a guy like that. I
(30:04):
actually think it plays a role in how dominated a
guy like NICOLEA. Jokic is in this era. And by
the way, I don't mean that as a shot at Jokic.
It actually reminds me a lot of the dynamic with
Michael Jordan in the nineties. Back then, teams were so
loaded up on size and strength that overwhelming quickness was
a game breaker in a lot of ways that Michael
Jordan took advantage of. These days, the league is so
(30:26):
loaded up on quickness that size and strength can be
a game breaker, and that is how guys like Zubach
and Jokic to a much greater extent, have had a
lot of success. If you're really really big and strong,
and you have the footwork to actually use that physical
leverage and the touch in the IQ to make teams
pay by winning ground battles. You're gonna win a lot
(30:47):
of battles in this league. It's a matchup problem for
a lot of these teams. Zubach is just too big
and strong for these guys. I had Frank Friscilla, who
was doing the color commentary last night, he was saying
after the game that, uh, early in the game, on
Zoo's first post up, he's like, he literally said, he's
just too much for him. He can't hold his ground.
And it really was that simple. So you get great
(31:10):
offensive games from Kawhi, Zoo, and Bgdonovic. You get a
good game from Harden, even Norman Powell in his limited minutes.
I mean he played eighteen minutes and dropped eleven points
in a thirty six minute game. That's twenty two points.
I mean, that's a high offensive output for a limited role.
That allowed them to keep up with that red hot
scoring effort from the Caves. But they're in the late
(31:31):
third quarter, their defense finally started to settle in. I
thought Derek Jones Junior was instrumental in this stretch. Had
some great reps on both Garland and Mitchell Kawhi. I
thought was great all night on Donovan Mitchell. The Clippers
really started to force some more difficult shot angles from
the guards that forced some misses. That was what triggered
their run when they started to pull away. We talked
(31:52):
a lot about their offense earlier, but the Clippers held
the Calves to just nineteen points over the final fifteen
minutes and change of this game. It was just a
really impressive win for the Clippers. And here's the thing.
We can't completely right off this upside that they're showing.
This team build always had this capability of putting everything together,
(32:16):
and suddenly Kawhi gets his leg strength and just stays healthy,
and like, what if Kawhi just stays healthy to mid June, Well,
then they're absolutely a threat. It's just going to be
really difficult to shake the pessimism that surrounds Kawhi and
his health. This time last year, he was kicking ass
two and so were the Clippers. March twenty ninth of
last season in Orlando, Kawhi drops twenty nine to eleven
(32:38):
and five with four steals and two blocks. Goes twelve
for twenty one from the field and three for six
from three looks incredible. He played one more game that
season and we didn't see him again. So it is
what it is. There's a version of this story where
Kawhi holds up and the Clippers are a real threat,
but that question mark is just always.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Going to be there with it.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
On the Cleveland front, I had a bunch of Cavs
fans pissed off at us the other day for talking
about some of their struggles with Sizing and s Orlando.
Most of it was people just getting hung up on
a title. But I want to be clear, like I
wasn't saying the Calves as a team got exposed and
that they're fraudulent or anything like that. I just think
that there's value in looking at why a team is
struggling because it helps us learn about them. It's so
(33:24):
rare for a team like Boston last year or Denver
the year before to kind of run through the playoffs
without facing much in the way of adversity. The vast
majority of the time, you're gonna find yourself trailing in
a playoff series, even if you win the title. That's
what happened to the twenty twenty two Warriors. That's what
happened to the twenty twenty one Bucks. That's what happened
to the twenty twenty Lakers, That's what happened to the
(33:46):
twenty nineteen Raptors. Even the twenty eighteen Warriors trailed in
a playoff series, the twenty sixteen Calves trailed, the twenty
fifteen Warriors trailed. Like usually, adversity is a part of
the grind all the way through to the finish line.
There's no perfect basketball team in the NBA that just
beats the shit out of anybody and everybody. And so
with that being the case, again, that does happen occasionally.
(34:09):
It's rare though, and again like even with a team
like Boston, like part of it was that caught some
favorable matchups along the way. There's a version of that
where they win the title, but it looks tougher if
they have to face Denver in Milwaukee.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
So, like it's one of those things where when we're
talking about these flaws with these teams, it's just about
learning so that we can try to figure out what
makes them struggle so we can at least identify that
sort of thing when it pops up down the line.
Once again, last night, they struggled with size, Zubos kicked
Allen's ass, but similar to the Orlando game, I was
talking about how their perimeter size caused issues for the
(34:47):
Cavs guards, the length of Kawhi, the length of Derek
Jones Junior, the overall size of the Clippers on the floor, Darius, Garland,
Don and Mitchell went just eleven for thirty two. Kawhi
on the offensive end, show to relatively easy willingness to
target Cleveland's perimeter players and get pretty easy over the
top shots. They chewed Cleveland up and spit them out
(35:09):
on the glass. It's just worth keeping an eye on
when we see Cleveland struggle in the playoffs. This is
probably what it will look like. Bigger physical teams, especially
on the perimeter, making life tough for them, making them
feel like they're playing in a crowd, and leading to
some inefficiency from their guards. All right, guys, that's all
I have for today is always as sincerely appreciate you
(35:31):
guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We are
back tonight after the final buzzer of Nuggets Lakers. We
have our course correction segment that we're also doing there.
Plan on hitting at least another team or two in
that show as well, So make sure you guys come out,
come hang out later tonight live on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I'll see you guys.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Then VO what's up guys. As always, I appreciate you
for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight. They would actually
be really helpful for us if you guys would take
a second and leave a rating and a review. As always,
I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could
take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.
Hosts And Creators
Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre
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