August 23, 2025 • 42 mins
Jason explains why he has Jalen Brunson, point guard for the New York Knicks, ranked inside the top 10 of his NBA player rankings and ahead of guys such as Anthony Davis, Donovan Mitchell, and Kevin Durant. Then he reacts to comments made by Denzel Washington and makes the case against gatekeepers of content.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume. All right, Well, good to Hoops Tonight. You're
at the volume heavy Wednesday. Everybody up. All of you
guys are having a great week. We are continuing our
top ten in our player rankings today with number nine
(00:24):
Jalen Brunson. We're gonna be doing a deep dive on
Jalen what he does for this New York Knicks team.
At the tail end of the show today, Denzel Washington
came out and was pretty critical of the current state
of sports media, and as you guys know, it followed
me over the years. I'm bullish on the current state
of sports media. I think it's been a better situation
(00:45):
than we've ever had before, and so I have some
comments on that as well. At the tail end of
the show, you guys know the joke before we started.
Subscribe to Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss
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It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and
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(01:06):
Make sure you guys follow us there for content throughout
the remainder of the season. And last but not least, if
you disagree with any of these rankings in any way,
shape or form, please go in the YouTube comments here
right mail bag with a colon and then explain just
in an elevator pitch why you disagree with the ranking,
make a basketball case, and then on Fridays throughout the
remainder of this list. We have plenty of time about
(01:28):
another month or so over the course of this offseason
where we'll be covering these guys. Drop your arguments and
we'll get to them in our Friday mail bags throughout
the remainder of this series. All right, let's talk some basketball.
So for Jalen Brunson at number nine, this is his
first appearance in the top ten since we started doing
this Hoops Tonight Top twenty five list, which I believe
(01:49):
this is our fourth time doing it if I remember correctly.
Last year in review, for Jalen Brunson, sixty five games played,
basically played in every game outside of a stretch late
in the season after he sprained his ankle in a
game against the Los Angeles Slikers, in a game where
he was playing the best, some of the best basketball
of his career in that stretch and was just absolutely
torching the Lakers before he suffered that ankle injury. His
(02:12):
averages this season twenty six points per game, three rebounds,
and seven assists one stock per game on zero point
nine steals per game. His percentages, he was forty nine
percent from the field, thirty eight percent from three to
eighty two percent from the line, a career high six
point nine free throw attempts per game, fifty five percent
in effective field goal percentage that's just field goal percentage
(02:34):
weighted for threes, and then sixty one percent in true shooting.
This was the first time in his career where he
averaged over twenty points per game and over sixty percent
true shooting, and that led to an award heavy season
for Brunson. He finished tenth in MVP voting, He made
the All Star team for the second consecutive year. He
was selected second team All NBA, and he won the
(02:57):
Clutch Player of the Year award. We're going to be
talking a lot Jalen Brunson as a clutch player in
today's show. He followed that up with a super impressive
playoff run. He averaged twenty nine points, three rebounds, and
seven assists. His efficiency took a small hit down to
fifty eight percent. That's still very respectable for playoff scoring,
and that's just a very impressive stat line any way
(03:18):
you try to slice it. Similar to Donovan Mitchell, Jalen
Brunson has established himself now after multiple years, as one
of the statistical monsters of the NBA playoffs. In his
three playoff runs since joining the Knicks, that's forty two games,
Jalen Brunson has averaged thirty points, four rebounds, and seven
assists per game on fifty seven percent true shooting. Again,
(03:41):
one of the statistical monsters of the NBA playoffs. Let's
start here with Jalen Brunson. Why do I have him
ranked ahead of a guy like Donovan Mitchell, for example,
or even some of the younger stars further down on
the list, guys like Cade Cunningham. It comes down to
exactly why I picked the Knicks to beat the Pistons
(04:01):
in that playoff series last year. If you guys remember
I predicted that it would be a tougher series, but
I predicted that the Knicks would end up winning because
of Jalen Brunson and his ability to be the superior
game manager. This was the exact same reason why I
picked Jalen Brunson and the Knicks to beat the Cleveland
Cavaliers a few years back, because I believed in Jalen
(04:24):
Brunson as a superior game manager. This is a concept
that we've talked about a lot over the course of
the last six months. The idea that in basketball games,
your job as a point guard or as a primary
initiator is not just to get to your thirty points,
but to generate a ton of shots, sometimes fifty sixty
(04:45):
seventy shots for your entire team for entire games. And
that's not just points and assists either. Sometimes that's just
creating an initial advantage that gets drove and kicked a
few times into some sort of easy shot that may
not manifest as an a This's this for a guy
like Jalen Broun Center for your primary shot creator, but
that is going to be berthed out of the initial
(05:07):
advantage that he creates. You generate that first closeout that
guy drives, it generates an even better spot up opportunity.
That guy drives it, maybe hits a cutter, maybe hits
a wide open shooter to end the sequence. The guy
who isn't going to get any credit for that is
the guy who's generated that first advantage when the reality
is that second guy may not be as good at
(05:28):
making an advantage without that first closeout coming out of him.
And that's why that role of shot creation is so valuable.
Just a simple stat to kind of demonstrate this relative
to a guy like Donovan Mitchell, Jalen Brunson passed out
of pick and roll almost nine hundred times this year.
It was the fourth most in the entire NBA. For perspective,
Donovan Mitchell did so five hundred and seventeen times. So
(05:49):
there's a huge gap and the just the embracing of
simple advantages. You know, there are some things that I
think the Knicks need to improve on as a team
on offense, I think they have another level they can
get to with their personnel, especially in the playoffs. Like
the Knicks were fifth in offensive rating in the regular
season this year, but their offense took a pretty substantial
(06:10):
dip in the postseason. They went down to it was
like right under one hundred and thirteen in offensive rating,
if I remember correctly. And part of the reason for
that is like there wasn't enough variety added in around
Jalen Brunson, so Jalen would wear down at times. I
didn't think that Tom Tabadeau did enough of a job
investing throughout the season on trying to come up with
more reliable ways to initiate offense. Take for example, like
(06:34):
Ogn and Obi posting up. They ran about one hundred
Ogn and Ob post ups in the regular season, and
that was an action that I wanted them to explore
more in the postseason. But when you only ran it
like a little over once a game in the regular season,
it's not established enough to be something that you can
really depend on. And if you maybe run two hundred
post ups for Ogn and Obi in the regular season,
(06:56):
or more actions where maybe an action that gets Og
and O become downhill off of some sort of designed
play to get him involved, or a three man action
with bridges and Anenobe and cat involved, something that has
Brunson where he can have about like ten to fifteen
more possessions a game where he can just go stand
in the corner instead of having to face ball pressure
(07:18):
and create that initial advantage that could just prevent him
from wearing down. And I did actually think that Brunson
wore down a little bit over the tail end of
that playoff run by Game six against Indiana. He looked
like at themhard, kind of had him in cuffs, And
a big part of that is just that he was
so worn down at that point in the postseason. I
don't blame that on Brunson. I think Brunson has done
a really nice job as a game manager at you know,
(07:40):
kind of embracing the easy stuff that's available throughout games.
We're going to talk about that more in a minute,
But overall, I think that if you invest more in
the regular season, I think this is going to be
a big part of Mike Brown's job there. If you
invest more in the regular season in establishing stuff so
that it can become more reliable in the postseason, so
(08:02):
that you have some more diversity, it'll prevent you from
kind of tanking as an offense the way that they did.
And again, it's not all ogn Andobi post ups, but
it's just finding, you know, three or four other ways
to initiate your offense, but actually running them hundreds and
hundreds of times in the regular season so that they
feel second nature. One of the things that I've noticed
(08:22):
over the course of my first several years covering the
NBA is that, like when you get into the postseason,
a lot of the cute shit that you do in
the regular season kind of stops working when you get
to the postseason. Because if you if you run something
fifty seventy five times, it can create some highlights and
make an interesting talking point in a team specific podcast.
But if it's not something that they're running hundreds of times,
(08:45):
it's not going to be something that they count on
that they can rely on when they get to the postseason.
And I do think that this Knicks roster has the
type of, you know, aggregate ball handling talent to add
a little bit more of that diversity, even just again
something simple like not having Brunson face as much ball
pressure as he faces over the course of games, just
getting them into more situations where they can get the
(09:08):
offense started in other ways. But compared to many of
his small guard peers, I think Brunson is just better
at being a point guard, like managing the flow of
games and running a team while also hitting the absurd
scoring tunnels. The title totals excuse me, and again it's
worth mentioning that the Knicks had the fifth best offense
(09:29):
in the NBA last year in the regular season. Despite
some of those issues that I talked about earlier. The
beautiful thing about Brunson's game management was his ability to
strangle the game as it progressed further into it. So,
for example, Jalen Brunson is a guy that we view
as one of the best clutch players in the NBA
Win's Clutch Player of the Year Award this year. We're
(09:50):
gonna go over some of the numbers later, but it's
not like Jalen Brunson was coming out the gates in
first quarters and playing the same way. He was easing
his way into games, taking advantage of more of those
easy available reads throughout the first three quarters, letting the
game kind of flow, and then he would hit the
Jets down the stretch because he knew it was more
realistic and more achievable for him to do it in
(10:11):
a shorter burst, hyper efficiently to push his team over
the top than it would be for him to try
to strangle games from start to finish. So, for example,
these are Jalen Brunson's usage rates from quarter to quarter
throughout the game. In the first quarter twenty seven point
eight percent. In the second quarter, twenty seven point seven
(10:32):
percent in the third quarter, twenty six point eight percent
in the fourth quarter, is usage rate would skyrocket to
thirty four percent. This is the This is a perfect
example of what I'm talking about when I say understanding
the flow of basketball games. Jalen Brunson is one of
the most surgical half court scorers that we have in
our league. But he cannot just come out and play
(10:54):
like that from the jump. He invests in the simple
decision making throughout the first three quarters. Then he hits
the Jets down the stretch and delivers the knockout punch.
That's why he won Clutch Player of the Year award.
He won. Excuse me, he made fifty two clutch field
goals this year in the regular season that led the
entire NBA. He shot fifty two percent on those clutch shots.
(11:14):
He had twenty eight assists to just eight turnovers in
clutch situations, and the Knicks as a team had a
nineteen to twelve record in clutch games, which was the
fifth best win percentage in clutch situations in the entire NBA,
and then extended into the playoffs for once again, Brunson
was a monster down the stretch of games. He made
seventeen clutch shots, which led the playoff field, and his
(11:35):
team went seven to four in clutch playoff games, which
was the fourth best clutch win percentage of any playoff team.
So let's now dive into Now we've gone over a
bunch of the numbers, let's dive into the specifics of
Jalen Brunson's skill set and how it manifests in various
play types throughout the Knicks offense. So, first of all,
he was an elite high volume pick and roll player.
(11:56):
Last year, he ran sixteen hundred and thirty seven pick
and roles including passes, generating seventeen hundred and seventy two points.
That was one point zero eight points per possession, which
is well above average. Out of the thirteen players to
run at least a thousand pick and rolls last year,
you ain'd sixth on that list, so firmly in that
group of high volume, high efficiency pick and roll shot
(12:18):
creators in the NBA started with excellent shot making. And
again this is this is Brunson's calling card. Like if
he was this and being a you know, a Luka
Doncic level passer, he'd be one of the top three
or four players in the game. But he is absolutely
one of the very best scores and shot makers in
the NBA. He starts with pull up three. So in
pick and roll we kind of work through a progression, right,
(12:39):
like if the guy dies on the screen, or if
you can get him set up on the screen a
certain way to get separation, there's a pull up three
to be had there. If he chases you over the
top and you get good screen on him, there's mid
range scoring, right, there's pull up midi's, there's floaters, things
along those lines. If the guy stays attached in funnels
you towards the basket, there's closer range floaters, there's layups,
and then of course, as the defense rea you, there's
(13:00):
the playmaking piece out of it. That is the progression
of pick and roll, starting with pull up threes, super
high volume, one hundred and forty six of them in
Pick and Roll last year. So this is strictly threes,
pulling up out of pick and roll thirty eight percent,
which is awesome. That's an incredible number. Watch the tape.
He's just really good at setting up his man for
screens ree screens before on the first screen, just again
(13:23):
hiding like he's gonna go one way, setting up his
body and his face. We're gonna talk a lot about
his ball handling fakes later, but like him setting up
his man like he's gonna go one way and then
coming back the other way. Or if he plans on
coming off of a screen this way, he might make
an aggressive move that way to try to get the
defender to cut him off that way, which then puts
him in trail positions so that he can catch him
on the screen. It's an art form getting your defender
(13:46):
set up for the screen. It's every bit as important
as the screener's job. You've got to get the defender
into position where it's very easy to screen him. And
so he would use that to get that initial separation,
and he'd shoot thirty eight percent from three then deadly
mid to short range scoring. He was fifty two percent
on jump shots inside of seventeen feet, and he was
(14:09):
fifty two percent on floaters all on over two hundred
attempts in each category. That really, if you're asking, how
is it that Jalen Brunson is such an effective crunch
time score, it's that. It's we talk about this NonStop.
It's been one of the main talking points we've used
with respect to guys like Jokic, Shake Gildas, Alexander, Kevin Durant.
(14:31):
If you have a shot that you can get to,
a perimeter shot, meaning even if they pack the paint,
you can still get to it, and if you can
make it more than half the time, that is what
drives elite crunch time scoring. And Jalen Brunson with the
floater and with the jumper inside of seventeen feet was
a healthy chunk over fifty percent on massive volume. That
(14:53):
there's only a handful of guys in the entire league
that can do that. Jalen Brunson's one of them. That's
what makes him such reliable crunch time score. Then for
a small guard, he's excellent at making layups. He was
sixty percent this year on two hundred and seventy five
layup attempts. That's a truly very impressive number for a
(15:13):
small guard. And then Lastly, he has a gift for
getting defenders out of position in drawing fouls. He uses
a lot of what I would consider to be non
basketball plays, low gathers, awkward shooting angles, awkward driving angles,
things along those lines. But I'm gonna say what I
always say about this sort of thing. I hate that shit,
even on the team I root for. I hate when
(15:34):
Luca does it. I hate when Austin Reeves does it.
I think it's bad for the game. Ideally, within the
next five to ten years, non basketball plays would be
legislated out. But my beef with it centers around the NBA,
not on the players. It's the NBA and their inability
to stop rewarding players for it. As far as I'm concerned,
(15:55):
the players are just competitors and they're looking for every
single competitive edge they can get, and if the refs
are going to give them points for doing these things,
they're gonna view it as an opportunity to score more points,
which is gonna give them an opportunity to win basketball game.
So I don't blame the players for it. I hate it.
I don't think it's fun to watch. They are inconsistencies
(16:15):
there that drive me crazy. But I don't blame the players,
I blame the league. The playmaking stuff with Brunson is
mostly just about reacting to what the defense is giving him.
I watch a bunch of Brunson pick and roll tape
this morning, and there's very little of what we would
consider to be highlight material. Like he'll throw the occasional
(16:36):
no look back door pass to a guy as he
looks off a help defender and hits a cutter, or
he'll whip a cross court pass every once in a while.
But you're not gonna see, you know, when you watch
some of the higher level playmakers in our game, the
two top tier playmakers, you're not gonna see five or
six of these like beautiful anticipatory passers per game. Like
(16:56):
he's more of a reactionary passer than he is an
anticipatory passer. That said, he's a very good reactionary passer.
He doesn't turn the ball over much for a guy
who uses the ball as much as he does, and
he's good at taking easy reads when they're available, which
again is what game management is. That's all being a
(17:17):
point guard is, fundamentally at an extraordinary level. It's that
anticipatory passing, but at a fundamental level, it's just about
taking what the defense gives you, over and over and
over again. If he sees a guy digging down to
the nail, he'll throw a swing pass to the opposite wing.
If the screen defender sticks to him in a ball
screen with Cat, he'll pitch it back to Kat in
(17:38):
the pick and pop. If he gets into the lane
and Og Andnobi's man steps in to help, he's gonna
swing it out to the corner to Og so that
he can attack. That level of playmaking is plenty to
make Jalen Brunson one of the best pick and roll
players in the league because he's such a gifted scorer.
He's one of the very best scorers in the NBA,
(17:59):
and he's got enough of that playmaking ability to make
him one of the best pick and roll players in
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Slash audio with Brunson in Pick and Roll was with blitzes.
(19:48):
There were eight players in the NBA who faced at
least fifty blitzes last year, according to Synergy. In Brunson's
blitzes generated just zero point six y eight point possession,
which was far and away the worst mark on that list.
He was a little sped up in those situations, He
was a little turnover prone. He turned the ball over
about eighteen percent of the time in those situations, and
(20:11):
Brunson kind of just struggled to get the ball out
to the right guy with enough accuracy so that he
can beat the defense. Like a lot of times, like
a deflected pass or a pass that's a little off
target will force the guy who has to go get
it to like lunge or take steps away from the
attack zone to go get the ball. Which then just
gives the defense time to recover. And so as a team,
(20:33):
the Knicks just weren't very good at handling that, but
Brunson in particular struggled a little bit. It's not terribly
uncommon to see some smaller players struggle with blitzes just
because of all the length that they have to deal with.
You're gonna see a lot of the bigger players handle
it better. I always want like Kevin Duran often would
be able to just outreach everybody over the top and
just dump it off to the role man. Luca is
(20:53):
really good at that as well. It's just kind of
tough for smaller guards in that situation. Brunson was excellent
one on one situations last year well, four hundred and
twenty three ISOs and post ups four hundred and fifty
nine points. That's one point zero nine points per possession,
which is elite. Jalen Brunson has a truly remarkable gift
for getting defenders out of position and forgetting separation on
(21:16):
dribble drives. It's a combination of a couple of different things. One,
he is very good in terms of his start stop quickness.
We're gonna talk a lot about you know, I've talked
a lot about over the course of the last several years,
the idea of like when it comes to guys like Luca,
I think Shake Guil just Alexander kind of falls into
this mix. To Jalen Brunson, guys they have like one
(21:38):
defining athletic trait, right Like for Luca, it's that he's big.
He's just so big as a ball handler that if
he gets any angle on you, you're just done because he
can just use that shoulder to shield you off. Shake
Guild is Alexander. It's these like weird long steps that
he can make. He has like really strong hamstrings, and
he can just when he makes that first that he
(22:00):
covers so much ground and it just kind of makes
them really difficult to deal with athletically in that way.
Jalen Brunson, it starts stop quickness. He does have a
quick first step. That's the foundational trade. But none of
those three guys are what we would consider to be
like top tier athletes, right Like Shake Gilles, Alexander is
(22:21):
far from an Anthony Edwards, Luka Doncic is far from
a Lebron James and Jalen Brunson is far from a
Derek Rose, But all three of those guys are profoundly
impactful one on one players. Why is that It's because
at their core they are incredibly fundamentally sound. These are
(22:42):
the kinds of guys that actually makes the most sense
for you to watch as a young basketball player and
to try to emulate. For Shake Gil just Alexander, it's
dribbling through contact and the ability to relentlessly chain together
counter moves. We've talked about this, like every move is
connected to a counter So a lot of times, even
if you slide your feet right and you get in
(23:03):
front of Shay, he's just going the other way and
you gotta get in front of him again, and then
he's gonna go the other way and he's gonna He's
just he's so good at chaining together dribble combinations that
like it's kind of just a perpetual motion that's impossible
to stay in front of. You. Look at a guy
like Luca. I think Luca and Jalen Brunson both kind
of fit this mold where it's the incredible change of
(23:23):
pace and the selling of moves. All change of paces
is come to a complete stop and freeze the defender,
then hit the jets. If you can change pace, you
can get defenders to freeze. And if you can get
defenders to freeze, you have an opportunity to beat them
to a spot on offense. And then the second piece
of it is that selling of every single part of
(23:45):
every single move. Jalen Brunson. I was watching, you know,
I was watching a ton of film of him this morning.
It's amazing how many simple moves he'll use. He's not
These guys aren't gonna do Kyrie Irving wicked ball handling.
What they are gonna do is a very simple move,
very well executed. Jalen Brunson will hit really hard in
(24:06):
and out dribbles. He'll be sitting in that left hand
and it's an in and out dribble where on the
in and out when he turns his head, his hips,
his shoulders, his eyes, everything is facing towards the left
and then he brings it across. It's a very simple move.
But if you sell it with your body and you
sell it with your eyes, it's gonna work. If I'm
staring right at you and I just go like that,
if I just do an in and out dribble, it
(24:28):
ain't gonna work. You're not gonna buy into that fake, right.
It doesn't matter if I do the most wicked side
to side crossover of all time if I don't sell
the move. Jalen Brunson's awesome at this one too. He'll
sit with the ball high in his left hand and
then he'll just cross over. It's like just a little
snatch cross and he can cause a lot of problems
in ball screens with that. When he sets up like
(24:49):
he's gonna go to a ball screen, waits for the
defender to get into position to chase over the top,
and then he'll whip it across right as the defender
buys into it. It's simple, it's fundamental. There's not a
whole lot of like you know, jaw dropping highlight reel
material there in terms of ball handling, but it's damn effective.
And it's because of that simple, fundamental approach to change
(25:14):
of pace into selling every single part of your moves
and then from there and again, lastly, I just want
to say, like that's why young players need to emulate them, Like,
regardless of what level you're trying to play, if you're
trying to play in high school, if you're trying to
play in college, you're trying to play in the pros,
relative to whatever level of natural ability you have. These
(25:36):
are guys that are not considered to be top tier athletes,
that are consistently making top tier athletes look stupid with
what they can do on offense. These are things that
all of you can learn. These are things where like
if you're trying to just play point guard on your
high school team and you're five eight and you're not
overly quick, if you emphasize these fundamental things and skill development,
(25:59):
even you can barbecue good athletes at the high school level.
It's a little tougher as you go up and you
need to have some trait that separates you in some way,
shape or form. But at the at any level, and
a mediocre athlete can be a damn effect a damned
defective offensive player just by breeding these kind of fundamental
approaches to your ball handling and footwork. From there, it's
(26:23):
really the versatility of finishing moves. For Jalen, he isn't
just like a like most small guards are like forward
facing jump shooters, so they're gonna, you know, shoot out
of a high hesitation. They might hit an in and
out dribble. They might hit a side step one way
or the other, but there's kind of like all forward
facing moves. Right. One of the things that makes Jalen
(26:45):
Brunson a really impactful shot maker is he can shoot
over both shoulders, Like he can get into your body
and bump you and then fade over his right shoulder
or fade over his left shoulder. Most small guards can't
do that. He can take you down to the post.
Jalen Brunson can score out of the post. That's something
that a lot of smaller guards won't look to do.
He can shoot turnarounds. He can occasionally go to a
(27:06):
little hook shot out of there that he can make.
There is a diversity of shot making ability in and out,
going right, in and out, going left side step, going
right side step, going left, hard step back, turn around
over his right shoulder, turn around over his left shoulder,
one legged, fade away, hook shot over his right shoulder.
He's got all of that in the bag, and so
that allows him to kind of pick and choose the
(27:28):
appropriate finishing move for the separation that he gets and
for the type of defender that he's going after. And
that kind of gives him just the versatility to be
a super, super impactful scorer in this league. In a
lot of ways, even though their games look different, Jalen
Brunson reminds me of the Damian Lillard of this era.
(27:50):
Clearly not one of the top tier stars in the league,
but firmly in that second tier. A guy who has
established himself as one of the best scorers in basketball,
one of the best clutch players in basketball, and with
enough development as a playmaker to be an excellent game manager.
A guy who could clearly lead a championship offense if
surrounded by enough talent. But I actually think Brunson has
(28:14):
won additional leg up on a guy like a Damian
Lillard in his era. To be clear, no one's gonna
get up here and try to say that Jalen Brunson
is a good defender and he cannot also be lazy
sometimes in the regular season, which especially in the context
of Karl Anthony Towns, can be damaging to a team's defense.
But I do think that Jalen Brunson is the kind
(28:36):
of guy that you can build a functional playoff defense
around with the right personnel, And I do think that's
a separator for him compared to many of the other
small guards in NBA history, even a guy like Damian Lillard.
As I've talked about a lot on this show, there
are two different types of bad defenders. Guys who struggle
(28:57):
physically in guys who struggle mentally. Now, if you're both,
you're dead on arrival. But if you struggle physically, there's
a certain amount of like I can prepare for that,
I can game plan around your physical limitations. But mistake
making breaks a game plan. Mistake making I can't prepare for.
(29:18):
How do I plan If what I tell you to
do in the game plan, I can't count on you
to do. Jalen Brunson's gonna give up layups and slips
on hedges sometimes when he's throwing a hedge, and yeah,
when he's lazy. Sometimes he won't sprint fast enough out
of a rotation. And sometimes those sorts of things can
cause issues. But in a big spot, in a big
(29:41):
playoff game, I feel like Jalen Brunson will at least
stick to the game plan and do his job. That
to me is the bare minimum of what you have
to be to be able to build a functional playoff defense.
Around somebody. Take like a guy like Karl Anthony Towns's
account example, a guy who's very prone to mental mistakes,
(30:04):
even a guy like Carol Town's on the twenty twenty
four Timberwolves an elite defense, Their defense posted a one
twenty defensive rating in that playoff run when Gobert was
off the floor and kat was on. Now, just that
was with elite perimeter defenders next to him Jad McDaniels
(30:28):
and Kyle Anderson, Nakil, Alexander Walker and Anthony Edwards. We
were he was surrounded and anchored by elite athletes on
the perimeter, and they could not get stops in the postseason.
You can't build a functional defensive scheme around a defender
who's prone to too many mental mistakes. Jalen Brunston can
(30:49):
be lazy sometimes, especially in the regular season, and he
certainly has his physical limitations, but he competes and he
will execute his part of the game plan and which
I think makes him at least a higher floor defender
than many of his small guard peers in recent eras.
And again, like I'm not trying to say that Jalen's
(31:10):
a good defender. I'm just saying he's a more functional
playoff defender than many of his peers. In recent years,
Jalen Brunton has become one of the best offensive players
in the game today. He's an elite scorer who becomes
absolutely deadly in crunch time. He's a willing passer and
game manager, and with enough of an attention to detail
to at least make him workable on the defensive end
(31:32):
of the floor. So he comes in at number nine
on this year's list. All right, before we get out
of here today, Denzel Washington had a hell of a
quote the other day, went on I can't remember which
show he went on, as something on ESPN. He said,
everyone everybody's got an opinion. In fact, we live in
a world of opinionaires. They're all on the shows, a
(31:54):
bunch of the guys a couple that have played, but
most of them who haven't, who have an opinion about
what something should be when they haven't done it. Those
who can do, those who can't talk about those who can,
those who have know what they're talking about. Those who
haven't don't period. That's how I feel about that. This
(32:18):
is one of my biggest pet peeves about the way
athletes in particular act when it comes to the media. Obviously,
Denzel is not an athlete, but this is a take
that we've seen many athletes pair over the years. First
and foremost, I despise the gatekeeping element of this. I
love basketball so much and the game has been very
(32:41):
good to me. It paid for my college, It helped
me see much of the United States at a young age.
It helped me to enjoy some of the greatest experiences
of my life. Like I, every once in a while,
you just sit down and reminisce and I think about, like,
you know, maybe a huge dunk that I had in
a big spot, or a clutch shot that I hit,
(33:04):
or you know, a hot streak where I could miss
for a little while. You think about those moments, and
there are literally some of the coolest moments of my life.
I think about, you know, when you get a big
dunk on the road, like a real dunk that shocks
everybody and you hear that sound go through the arena's.
I could never describe it to you, guys. It's just
(33:25):
one of the coolest feelings that you could ever experience
as a human. And I think about it all the time.
I miss it. I miss playing in those environments and
getting to experience those things. The game of basketball has
been very, very good to me. But I'm not selfish
enough or closed minded enough to think that I'm the
only guy who loves basketball or girl who loves basketball
(33:48):
out there, or that you have to have played the
game to love basketball. That makes no sense. I'm super lucky.
I was born into a six to six frame. I've
got a six to ten wingspan and a good amount
of natural athletic ability. I also worked very hard, and
I'm proud of the player that I've become over the years,
(34:09):
especially as an adult. But I also know that I'm
very lucky. There are people out there who love the
game every bit as much as I do, but that
didn't get the opportunity to pursue it the way that
I did. Who am I to say that that person
isn't allowed to love the game, or to watch the game,
(34:30):
or to study the game, or to talk about the game,
or to write about the game. I have learned so
much over the years from people who have never played
the game. In many cases, for those people, their love
of the game in the absence of being able to
play it manifests in what it takes to pour their
(34:51):
heart and soul into the study of the game. It's
all about perspective. Everyone has unique perspective. Yes, a current
or former NBA player can provide a certain perspective on
the game that we could never provide. Even a guy
like me who played but didn't play at the NBA level,
I can't provide some of the perspective that current or
(35:14):
former NBA players can provide. But we each have our
own unique angle, and that angle manifests out of our
love for the game. Mine will include some references to
my playing experience, but guys, like if you ask me,
my playing experience is actually a very small portion of
(35:37):
what I would think this show kind of comes out of.
I think it mostly comes out of a love for
the game and studying the game. I know a hell
of a lot more about basketball now than I did
the last time I suit it up in a college
basketball uniform. Maybe there's a man or a woman out
there who provides unique analytical perspective that comes from a
(36:01):
high level understanding of advanced statistics. There are lots of
guys out there, lots of girls out there that haven't played,
but make us all smarter about the game. Maybe there's
a man or a woman out there who's excellent with
advanced schematics. I look at guys like cranzeus mc basketball
covers the Lakers does an incredibly good job of giving
(36:24):
us a detailed understanding of actions, encounters on both ends
of the floor or half court hoops. He's a college
coach who will post entire playbooks of NBA teams for
us to study. That's an immense value. There are men
and women who provide excellent basketball perspective on fundamentals and
(36:46):
can explain complicated things on a granular level for fans.
I think Pete Zais covers the Lakers as an example
of this type of guy. I learned so much about
how modern NBA fundamentals work from Pete. Zach Lowe on
a national scale as an example of this kind of guy.
There are men and women who do an excellent job
(37:07):
covering the league from the standpoint of reporting. Mark Stein
is an incredible example. I highly recommend all of you
guys subscribe to Mark Stein's substack. It's an excellent way
to just get kind of like a regular newsletter where
you can stay up to speed on what's happening around
the NBA. It's not just disrespectful or inappropriate to discount
(37:30):
these people just because they haven't played in the NBA.
It's also frankly stupid. You're an idiot if you don't
think someone like Kaitlyn Cooper, who does a phenomenal job
covering the Indiana Pacers, You're an idiot. If you don't
think Kaitlyn Cooper can teach you something about NBA basketball,
you are limiting your own ability to learn at that point.
(37:52):
And frankly, while there are many current and former NBA
players who are doing great work, I want to emphasize
that there are many who do great work, there are
also many current and former players who are doing shitty work,
doing very little prep and just getting on camera and
talking shit. Literally everything that Denzel was criticizing I've seen
(38:15):
professional athletes do in the media. Yeah, Jason, but what
about the talking heads? Even those people carry great value.
In my opinion, Bill Simmons is one of the great
storytellers who covers the NBA. I don't agree with everything
Bill says, but he's so important to the NBA media
landscape with his ability to add like historical aura to
(38:38):
each season. He brings like a certain drama element that
I think is actually important. It's part of like how
we all fell in love with the game as kids.
You know, it's funny you get to be older and
you focus on that stuff a little less, But like
that is the stuff that gets you to romanticize basketball,
to romanticize the NBA and love it so much when
(39:01):
you're younger. That's important. Colin Coward his ability to tie
things to day to day life in a way that
we can all relate to. Still to this day, I
regularly a few times a week listen to Colin Coward's
opening monologue on The Herd. It's easy to listen to.
I can relate it to my everyday life, and you
can just feel his passion and love for it pouring
(39:22):
out of it. These people don't put up big numbers
by accident. They capture people's attention with their perspective that
flows out of their love for what they do. So
I totally disagree with Denzel's perspective here. I think sports
(39:43):
media is in a better place than ever before. It's
more of a meritocracy than ever before. Any single one
of you who has valuable perspective, can buy inexpensive equipment,
record content, post a YouTube or to social media, and
if you capture pe pople's attention, you'll get a natural
push from the algorithm, and you will build an audience,
(40:05):
and you will have success that has made it so
that there is more to choose from than ever before.
For instance, Stephen A. Smith is not my cup of tea.
I have a remarkable respect for him as a talent.
I think he's a legend, but I don't personally enjoy
(40:27):
his content. I don't have to watch Stephen A. Smith
like I literally don't ever have to watch him. If
I don't want to, I can pick whatever I want.
If you're in the mood for deeply analytical content, it's
out there. If you're in the mood for something analytical
(40:48):
but more easily digestible, it's out there. If you're into storytelling,
it's out there. If you're into the historian element, the drama,
the intro, it's out there. The reporting it's out there.
And guess what, if you want to listen to a
former player who can offer their unique perspective from having
(41:10):
played in the NBA, you can find that out there too.
So let's stop gatekeeping basketball, and let's stop gatekeeping whatever
sport it is you love. I don't own the rights
to love basketball. Neither does Kevin Durant, Neither does Draymond Green,
neither does Kaitlin Cooper or Zach Low. If you love
(41:31):
it and you put in the work and you have
something of value to offer, I encourage all of that
from flooding our marketplace. The more there is, the better
it is for all of us. You all have every
right to love the game, and if you love it
enough to want to talk about it, you should go
after it. And I think attempts to stifle those folks,
(41:53):
or belittle those folks, or gatekeep those folks is incredibly
lame to me. All Right, guys, that's all I have
for today. As always, as sincerely appreciate you guys for
supporting me and supporting the show. We will be back
on Friday with our next mailbag. I will see you
guys day
The volume. All right, Well, good to Hoops Tonight. You're
at the volume heavy Wednesday. Everybody up. All of you
guys are having a great week. We are continuing our
top ten in our player rankings today with number nine
(00:24):
Jalen Brunson. We're gonna be doing a deep dive on
Jalen what he does for this New York Knicks team.
At the tail end of the show today, Denzel Washington
came out and was pretty critical of the current state
of sports media, and as you guys know, it followed
me over the years. I'm bullish on the current state
of sports media. I think it's been a better situation
(00:45):
than we've ever had before, and so I have some
comments on that as well. At the tail end of
the show, you guys know the joke before we started.
Subscribe to Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss
any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter, underscore
JCNLT so you guysn't missho announcements. Don't forget about our
podcast feed where you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight.
It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and
a review on that front. Jackson is doing incredible work
on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
(01:06):
Make sure you guys follow us there for content throughout
the remainder of the season. And last but not least, if
you disagree with any of these rankings in any way,
shape or form, please go in the YouTube comments here
right mail bag with a colon and then explain just
in an elevator pitch why you disagree with the ranking,
make a basketball case, and then on Fridays throughout the
remainder of this list. We have plenty of time about
(01:28):
another month or so over the course of this offseason
where we'll be covering these guys. Drop your arguments and
we'll get to them in our Friday mail bags throughout
the remainder of this series. All right, let's talk some basketball.
So for Jalen Brunson at number nine, this is his
first appearance in the top ten since we started doing
this Hoops Tonight Top twenty five list, which I believe
(01:49):
this is our fourth time doing it if I remember correctly.
Last year in review, for Jalen Brunson, sixty five games played,
basically played in every game outside of a stretch late
in the season after he sprained his ankle in a
game against the Los Angeles Slikers, in a game where
he was playing the best, some of the best basketball
of his career in that stretch and was just absolutely
torching the Lakers before he suffered that ankle injury. His
(02:12):
averages this season twenty six points per game, three rebounds,
and seven assists one stock per game on zero point
nine steals per game. His percentages, he was forty nine
percent from the field, thirty eight percent from three to
eighty two percent from the line, a career high six
point nine free throw attempts per game, fifty five percent
in effective field goal percentage that's just field goal percentage
(02:34):
weighted for threes, and then sixty one percent in true shooting.
This was the first time in his career where he
averaged over twenty points per game and over sixty percent
true shooting, and that led to an award heavy season
for Brunson. He finished tenth in MVP voting, He made
the All Star team for the second consecutive year. He
was selected second team All NBA, and he won the
(02:57):
Clutch Player of the Year award. We're going to be
talking a lot Jalen Brunson as a clutch player in
today's show. He followed that up with a super impressive
playoff run. He averaged twenty nine points, three rebounds, and
seven assists. His efficiency took a small hit down to
fifty eight percent. That's still very respectable for playoff scoring,
and that's just a very impressive stat line any way
(03:18):
you try to slice it. Similar to Donovan Mitchell, Jalen
Brunson has established himself now after multiple years, as one
of the statistical monsters of the NBA playoffs. In his
three playoff runs since joining the Knicks, that's forty two games,
Jalen Brunson has averaged thirty points, four rebounds, and seven
assists per game on fifty seven percent true shooting. Again,
(03:41):
one of the statistical monsters of the NBA playoffs. Let's
start here with Jalen Brunson. Why do I have him
ranked ahead of a guy like Donovan Mitchell, for example,
or even some of the younger stars further down on
the list, guys like Cade Cunningham. It comes down to
exactly why I picked the Knicks to beat the Pistons
(04:01):
in that playoff series last year. If you guys remember
I predicted that it would be a tougher series, but
I predicted that the Knicks would end up winning because
of Jalen Brunson and his ability to be the superior
game manager. This was the exact same reason why I
picked Jalen Brunson and the Knicks to beat the Cleveland
Cavaliers a few years back, because I believed in Jalen
(04:24):
Brunson as a superior game manager. This is a concept
that we've talked about a lot over the course of
the last six months. The idea that in basketball games,
your job as a point guard or as a primary
initiator is not just to get to your thirty points,
but to generate a ton of shots, sometimes fifty sixty
(04:45):
seventy shots for your entire team for entire games. And
that's not just points and assists either. Sometimes that's just
creating an initial advantage that gets drove and kicked a
few times into some sort of easy shot that may
not manifest as an a This's this for a guy
like Jalen Broun Center for your primary shot creator, but
that is going to be berthed out of the initial
(05:07):
advantage that he creates. You generate that first closeout that
guy drives, it generates an even better spot up opportunity.
That guy drives it, maybe hits a cutter, maybe hits
a wide open shooter to end the sequence. The guy
who isn't going to get any credit for that is
the guy who's generated that first advantage when the reality
is that second guy may not be as good at
(05:28):
making an advantage without that first closeout coming out of him.
And that's why that role of shot creation is so valuable.
Just a simple stat to kind of demonstrate this relative
to a guy like Donovan Mitchell, Jalen Brunson passed out
of pick and roll almost nine hundred times this year.
It was the fourth most in the entire NBA. For perspective,
Donovan Mitchell did so five hundred and seventeen times. So
(05:49):
there's a huge gap and the just the embracing of
simple advantages. You know, there are some things that I
think the Knicks need to improve on as a team
on offense, I think they have another level they can
get to with their personnel, especially in the playoffs. Like
the Knicks were fifth in offensive rating in the regular
season this year, but their offense took a pretty substantial
(06:10):
dip in the postseason. They went down to it was
like right under one hundred and thirteen in offensive rating,
if I remember correctly. And part of the reason for
that is like there wasn't enough variety added in around
Jalen Brunson, so Jalen would wear down at times. I
didn't think that Tom Tabadeau did enough of a job
investing throughout the season on trying to come up with
more reliable ways to initiate offense. Take for example, like
(06:34):
Ogn and Obi posting up. They ran about one hundred
Ogn and Ob post ups in the regular season, and
that was an action that I wanted them to explore
more in the postseason. But when you only ran it
like a little over once a game in the regular season,
it's not established enough to be something that you can
really depend on. And if you maybe run two hundred
post ups for Ogn and Obi in the regular season,
(06:56):
or more actions where maybe an action that gets Og
and O become downhill off of some sort of designed
play to get him involved, or a three man action
with bridges and Anenobe and cat involved, something that has
Brunson where he can have about like ten to fifteen
more possessions a game where he can just go stand
in the corner instead of having to face ball pressure
(07:18):
and create that initial advantage that could just prevent him
from wearing down. And I did actually think that Brunson
wore down a little bit over the tail end of
that playoff run by Game six against Indiana. He looked
like at themhard, kind of had him in cuffs, And
a big part of that is just that he was
so worn down at that point in the postseason. I
don't blame that on Brunson. I think Brunson has done
a really nice job as a game manager at you know,
(07:40):
kind of embracing the easy stuff that's available throughout games.
We're going to talk about that more in a minute,
But overall, I think that if you invest more in
the regular season, I think this is going to be
a big part of Mike Brown's job there. If you
invest more in the regular season in establishing stuff so
that it can become more reliable in the postseason, so
(08:02):
that you have some more diversity, it'll prevent you from
kind of tanking as an offense the way that they did.
And again, it's not all ogn Andobi post ups, but
it's just finding, you know, three or four other ways
to initiate your offense, but actually running them hundreds and
hundreds of times in the regular season so that they
feel second nature. One of the things that I've noticed
(08:22):
over the course of my first several years covering the
NBA is that, like when you get into the postseason,
a lot of the cute shit that you do in
the regular season kind of stops working when you get
to the postseason. Because if you if you run something
fifty seventy five times, it can create some highlights and
make an interesting talking point in a team specific podcast.
But if it's not something that they're running hundreds of times,
(08:45):
it's not going to be something that they count on
that they can rely on when they get to the postseason.
And I do think that this Knicks roster has the
type of, you know, aggregate ball handling talent to add
a little bit more of that diversity, even just again
something simple like not having Brunson face as much ball
pressure as he faces over the course of games, just
getting them into more situations where they can get the
(09:08):
offense started in other ways. But compared to many of
his small guard peers, I think Brunson is just better
at being a point guard, like managing the flow of
games and running a team while also hitting the absurd
scoring tunnels. The title totals excuse me, and again it's
worth mentioning that the Knicks had the fifth best offense
(09:29):
in the NBA last year in the regular season. Despite
some of those issues that I talked about earlier. The
beautiful thing about Brunson's game management was his ability to
strangle the game as it progressed further into it. So,
for example, Jalen Brunson is a guy that we view
as one of the best clutch players in the NBA
Win's Clutch Player of the Year Award this year. We're
(09:50):
gonna go over some of the numbers later, but it's
not like Jalen Brunson was coming out the gates in
first quarters and playing the same way. He was easing
his way into games, taking advantage of more of those
easy available reads throughout the first three quarters, letting the
game kind of flow, and then he would hit the
Jets down the stretch because he knew it was more
realistic and more achievable for him to do it in
(10:11):
a shorter burst, hyper efficiently to push his team over
the top than it would be for him to try
to strangle games from start to finish. So, for example,
these are Jalen Brunson's usage rates from quarter to quarter
throughout the game. In the first quarter twenty seven point
eight percent. In the second quarter, twenty seven point seven
(10:32):
percent in the third quarter, twenty six point eight percent
in the fourth quarter, is usage rate would skyrocket to
thirty four percent. This is the This is a perfect
example of what I'm talking about when I say understanding
the flow of basketball games. Jalen Brunson is one of
the most surgical half court scorers that we have in
our league. But he cannot just come out and play
(10:54):
like that from the jump. He invests in the simple
decision making throughout the first three quarters. Then he hits
the Jets down the stretch and delivers the knockout punch.
That's why he won Clutch Player of the Year award.
He won. Excuse me, he made fifty two clutch field
goals this year in the regular season that led the
entire NBA. He shot fifty two percent on those clutch shots.
(11:14):
He had twenty eight assists to just eight turnovers in
clutch situations, and the Knicks as a team had a
nineteen to twelve record in clutch games, which was the
fifth best win percentage in clutch situations in the entire NBA,
and then extended into the playoffs for once again, Brunson
was a monster down the stretch of games. He made
seventeen clutch shots, which led the playoff field, and his
(11:35):
team went seven to four in clutch playoff games, which
was the fourth best clutch win percentage of any playoff team.
So let's now dive into Now we've gone over a
bunch of the numbers, let's dive into the specifics of
Jalen Brunson's skill set and how it manifests in various
play types throughout the Knicks offense. So, first of all,
he was an elite high volume pick and roll player.
(11:56):
Last year, he ran sixteen hundred and thirty seven pick
and roles including passes, generating seventeen hundred and seventy two points.
That was one point zero eight points per possession, which
is well above average. Out of the thirteen players to
run at least a thousand pick and rolls last year,
you ain'd sixth on that list, so firmly in that
group of high volume, high efficiency pick and roll shot
(12:18):
creators in the NBA started with excellent shot making. And
again this is this is Brunson's calling card. Like if
he was this and being a you know, a Luka
Doncic level passer, he'd be one of the top three
or four players in the game. But he is absolutely
one of the very best scores and shot makers in
the NBA. He starts with pull up three. So in
pick and roll we kind of work through a progression, right,
(12:39):
like if the guy dies on the screen, or if
you can get him set up on the screen a
certain way to get separation, there's a pull up three
to be had there. If he chases you over the
top and you get good screen on him, there's mid
range scoring, right, there's pull up midi's, there's floaters, things
along those lines. If the guy stays attached in funnels
you towards the basket, there's closer range floaters, there's layups,
and then of course, as the defense rea you, there's
(13:00):
the playmaking piece out of it. That is the progression
of pick and roll, starting with pull up threes, super
high volume, one hundred and forty six of them in
Pick and Roll last year. So this is strictly threes,
pulling up out of pick and roll thirty eight percent,
which is awesome. That's an incredible number. Watch the tape.
He's just really good at setting up his man for
screens ree screens before on the first screen, just again
(13:23):
hiding like he's gonna go one way, setting up his
body and his face. We're gonna talk a lot about
his ball handling fakes later, but like him setting up
his man like he's gonna go one way and then
coming back the other way. Or if he plans on
coming off of a screen this way, he might make
an aggressive move that way to try to get the
defender to cut him off that way, which then puts
him in trail positions so that he can catch him
on the screen. It's an art form getting your defender
(13:46):
set up for the screen. It's every bit as important
as the screener's job. You've got to get the defender
into position where it's very easy to screen him. And
so he would use that to get that initial separation,
and he'd shoot thirty eight percent from three then deadly
mid to short range scoring. He was fifty two percent
on jump shots inside of seventeen feet, and he was
(14:09):
fifty two percent on floaters all on over two hundred
attempts in each category. That really, if you're asking, how
is it that Jalen Brunson is such an effective crunch
time score, it's that. It's we talk about this NonStop.
It's been one of the main talking points we've used
with respect to guys like Jokic, Shake Gildas, Alexander, Kevin Durant.
(14:31):
If you have a shot that you can get to,
a perimeter shot, meaning even if they pack the paint,
you can still get to it, and if you can
make it more than half the time, that is what
drives elite crunch time scoring. And Jalen Brunson with the
floater and with the jumper inside of seventeen feet was
a healthy chunk over fifty percent on massive volume. That
(14:53):
there's only a handful of guys in the entire league
that can do that. Jalen Brunson's one of them. That's
what makes him such reliable crunch time score. Then for
a small guard, he's excellent at making layups. He was
sixty percent this year on two hundred and seventy five
layup attempts. That's a truly very impressive number for a
(15:13):
small guard. And then Lastly, he has a gift for
getting defenders out of position in drawing fouls. He uses
a lot of what I would consider to be non
basketball plays, low gathers, awkward shooting angles, awkward driving angles,
things along those lines. But I'm gonna say what I
always say about this sort of thing. I hate that shit,
even on the team I root for. I hate when
(15:34):
Luca does it. I hate when Austin Reeves does it.
I think it's bad for the game. Ideally, within the
next five to ten years, non basketball plays would be
legislated out. But my beef with it centers around the NBA,
not on the players. It's the NBA and their inability
to stop rewarding players for it. As far as I'm concerned,
(15:55):
the players are just competitors and they're looking for every
single competitive edge they can get, and if the refs
are going to give them points for doing these things,
they're gonna view it as an opportunity to score more points,
which is gonna give them an opportunity to win basketball game.
So I don't blame the players for it. I hate it.
I don't think it's fun to watch. They are inconsistencies
(16:15):
there that drive me crazy. But I don't blame the players,
I blame the league. The playmaking stuff with Brunson is
mostly just about reacting to what the defense is giving him.
I watch a bunch of Brunson pick and roll tape
this morning, and there's very little of what we would
consider to be highlight material. Like he'll throw the occasional
(16:36):
no look back door pass to a guy as he
looks off a help defender and hits a cutter, or
he'll whip a cross court pass every once in a while.
But you're not gonna see, you know, when you watch
some of the higher level playmakers in our game, the
two top tier playmakers, you're not gonna see five or
six of these like beautiful anticipatory passers per game. Like
(16:56):
he's more of a reactionary passer than he is an
anticipatory passer. That said, he's a very good reactionary passer.
He doesn't turn the ball over much for a guy
who uses the ball as much as he does, and
he's good at taking easy reads when they're available, which
again is what game management is. That's all being a
(17:17):
point guard is, fundamentally at an extraordinary level. It's that
anticipatory passing, but at a fundamental level, it's just about
taking what the defense gives you, over and over and
over again. If he sees a guy digging down to
the nail, he'll throw a swing pass to the opposite wing.
If the screen defender sticks to him in a ball
screen with Cat, he'll pitch it back to Kat in
(17:38):
the pick and pop. If he gets into the lane
and Og Andnobi's man steps in to help, he's gonna
swing it out to the corner to Og so that
he can attack. That level of playmaking is plenty to
make Jalen Brunson one of the best pick and roll
players in the league because he's such a gifted scorer.
He's one of the very best scorers in the NBA,
(17:59):
and he's got enough of that playmaking ability to make
him one of the best pick and roll players in
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Slash audio with Brunson in Pick and Roll was with blitzes.
(19:48):
There were eight players in the NBA who faced at
least fifty blitzes last year, according to Synergy. In Brunson's
blitzes generated just zero point six y eight point possession,
which was far and away the worst mark on that list.
He was a little sped up in those situations, He
was a little turnover prone. He turned the ball over
about eighteen percent of the time in those situations, and
(20:11):
Brunson kind of just struggled to get the ball out
to the right guy with enough accuracy so that he
can beat the defense. Like a lot of times, like
a deflected pass or a pass that's a little off
target will force the guy who has to go get
it to like lunge or take steps away from the
attack zone to go get the ball. Which then just
gives the defense time to recover. And so as a team,
(20:33):
the Knicks just weren't very good at handling that, but
Brunson in particular struggled a little bit. It's not terribly
uncommon to see some smaller players struggle with blitzes just
because of all the length that they have to deal with.
You're gonna see a lot of the bigger players handle
it better. I always want like Kevin Duran often would
be able to just outreach everybody over the top and
just dump it off to the role man. Luca is
(20:53):
really good at that as well. It's just kind of
tough for smaller guards in that situation. Brunson was excellent
one on one situations last year well, four hundred and
twenty three ISOs and post ups four hundred and fifty
nine points. That's one point zero nine points per possession,
which is elite. Jalen Brunson has a truly remarkable gift
for getting defenders out of position and forgetting separation on
(21:16):
dribble drives. It's a combination of a couple of different things. One,
he is very good in terms of his start stop quickness.
We're gonna talk a lot about you know, I've talked
a lot about over the course of the last several years,
the idea of like when it comes to guys like Luca,
I think Shake Guil just Alexander kind of falls into
this mix. To Jalen Brunson, guys they have like one
(21:38):
defining athletic trait, right Like for Luca, it's that he's big.
He's just so big as a ball handler that if
he gets any angle on you, you're just done because he
can just use that shoulder to shield you off. Shake
Guild is Alexander. It's these like weird long steps that
he can make. He has like really strong hamstrings, and
he can just when he makes that first that he
(22:00):
covers so much ground and it just kind of makes
them really difficult to deal with athletically in that way.
Jalen Brunson, it starts stop quickness. He does have a
quick first step. That's the foundational trade. But none of
those three guys are what we would consider to be
like top tier athletes, right Like Shake Gilles, Alexander is
(22:21):
far from an Anthony Edwards, Luka Doncic is far from
a Lebron James and Jalen Brunson is far from a
Derek Rose, But all three of those guys are profoundly
impactful one on one players. Why is that It's because
at their core they are incredibly fundamentally sound. These are
(22:42):
the kinds of guys that actually makes the most sense
for you to watch as a young basketball player and
to try to emulate. For Shake Gil just Alexander, it's
dribbling through contact and the ability to relentlessly chain together
counter moves. We've talked about this, like every move is
connected to a counter So a lot of times, even
if you slide your feet right and you get in
(23:03):
front of Shay, he's just going the other way and
you gotta get in front of him again, and then
he's gonna go the other way and he's gonna He's
just he's so good at chaining together dribble combinations that
like it's kind of just a perpetual motion that's impossible
to stay in front of. You. Look at a guy
like Luca. I think Luca and Jalen Brunson both kind
of fit this mold where it's the incredible change of
(23:23):
pace and the selling of moves. All change of paces
is come to a complete stop and freeze the defender,
then hit the jets. If you can change pace, you
can get defenders to freeze. And if you can get
defenders to freeze, you have an opportunity to beat them
to a spot on offense. And then the second piece
of it is that selling of every single part of
(23:45):
every single move. Jalen Brunson. I was watching, you know,
I was watching a ton of film of him this morning.
It's amazing how many simple moves he'll use. He's not
These guys aren't gonna do Kyrie Irving wicked ball handling.
What they are gonna do is a very simple move,
very well executed. Jalen Brunson will hit really hard in
(24:06):
and out dribbles. He'll be sitting in that left hand
and it's an in and out dribble where on the
in and out when he turns his head, his hips,
his shoulders, his eyes, everything is facing towards the left
and then he brings it across. It's a very simple move.
But if you sell it with your body and you
sell it with your eyes, it's gonna work. If I'm
staring right at you and I just go like that,
if I just do an in and out dribble, it
(24:28):
ain't gonna work. You're not gonna buy into that fake, right.
It doesn't matter if I do the most wicked side
to side crossover of all time if I don't sell
the move. Jalen Brunson's awesome at this one too. He'll
sit with the ball high in his left hand and
then he'll just cross over. It's like just a little
snatch cross and he can cause a lot of problems
in ball screens with that. When he sets up like
(24:49):
he's gonna go to a ball screen, waits for the
defender to get into position to chase over the top,
and then he'll whip it across right as the defender
buys into it. It's simple, it's fundamental. There's not a
whole lot of like you know, jaw dropping highlight reel
material there in terms of ball handling, but it's damn effective.
And it's because of that simple, fundamental approach to change
(25:14):
of pace into selling every single part of your moves
and then from there and again, lastly, I just want
to say, like that's why young players need to emulate them, Like,
regardless of what level you're trying to play, if you're
trying to play in high school, if you're trying to
play in college, you're trying to play in the pros,
relative to whatever level of natural ability you have. These
(25:36):
are guys that are not considered to be top tier athletes,
that are consistently making top tier athletes look stupid with
what they can do on offense. These are things that
all of you can learn. These are things where like
if you're trying to just play point guard on your
high school team and you're five eight and you're not
overly quick, if you emphasize these fundamental things and skill development,
(25:59):
even you can barbecue good athletes at the high school level.
It's a little tougher as you go up and you
need to have some trait that separates you in some way,
shape or form. But at the at any level, and
a mediocre athlete can be a damn effect a damned
defective offensive player just by breeding these kind of fundamental
approaches to your ball handling and footwork. From there, it's
(26:23):
really the versatility of finishing moves. For Jalen, he isn't
just like a like most small guards are like forward
facing jump shooters, so they're gonna, you know, shoot out
of a high hesitation. They might hit an in and
out dribble. They might hit a side step one way
or the other, but there's kind of like all forward
facing moves. Right. One of the things that makes Jalen
(26:45):
Brunson a really impactful shot maker is he can shoot
over both shoulders, Like he can get into your body
and bump you and then fade over his right shoulder
or fade over his left shoulder. Most small guards can't
do that. He can take you down to the post.
Jalen Brunson can score out of the post. That's something
that a lot of smaller guards won't look to do.
He can shoot turnarounds. He can occasionally go to a
(27:06):
little hook shot out of there that he can make.
There is a diversity of shot making ability in and out,
going right, in and out, going left side step, going
right side step, going left, hard step back, turn around
over his right shoulder, turn around over his left shoulder,
one legged, fade away, hook shot over his right shoulder.
He's got all of that in the bag, and so
that allows him to kind of pick and choose the
(27:28):
appropriate finishing move for the separation that he gets and
for the type of defender that he's going after. And
that kind of gives him just the versatility to be
a super, super impactful scorer in this league. In a
lot of ways, even though their games look different, Jalen
Brunson reminds me of the Damian Lillard of this era.
(27:50):
Clearly not one of the top tier stars in the league,
but firmly in that second tier. A guy who has
established himself as one of the best scorers in basketball,
one of the best clutch players in basketball, and with
enough development as a playmaker to be an excellent game manager.
A guy who could clearly lead a championship offense if
surrounded by enough talent. But I actually think Brunson has
(28:14):
won additional leg up on a guy like a Damian
Lillard in his era. To be clear, no one's gonna
get up here and try to say that Jalen Brunson
is a good defender and he cannot also be lazy
sometimes in the regular season, which especially in the context
of Karl Anthony Towns, can be damaging to a team's defense.
But I do think that Jalen Brunson is the kind
(28:36):
of guy that you can build a functional playoff defense
around with the right personnel, And I do think that's
a separator for him compared to many of the other
small guards in NBA history, even a guy like Damian Lillard.
As I've talked about a lot on this show, there
are two different types of bad defenders. Guys who struggle
(28:57):
physically in guys who struggle mentally. Now, if you're both,
you're dead on arrival. But if you struggle physically, there's
a certain amount of like I can prepare for that,
I can game plan around your physical limitations. But mistake
making breaks a game plan. Mistake making I can't prepare for.
(29:18):
How do I plan If what I tell you to
do in the game plan, I can't count on you
to do. Jalen Brunson's gonna give up layups and slips
on hedges sometimes when he's throwing a hedge, and yeah,
when he's lazy. Sometimes he won't sprint fast enough out
of a rotation. And sometimes those sorts of things can
cause issues. But in a big spot, in a big
(29:41):
playoff game, I feel like Jalen Brunson will at least
stick to the game plan and do his job. That
to me is the bare minimum of what you have
to be to be able to build a functional playoff defense.
Around somebody. Take like a guy like Karl Anthony Towns's
account example, a guy who's very prone to mental mistakes,
(30:04):
even a guy like Carol Town's on the twenty twenty
four Timberwolves an elite defense, Their defense posted a one
twenty defensive rating in that playoff run when Gobert was
off the floor and kat was on. Now, just that
was with elite perimeter defenders next to him Jad McDaniels
(30:28):
and Kyle Anderson, Nakil, Alexander Walker and Anthony Edwards. We
were he was surrounded and anchored by elite athletes on
the perimeter, and they could not get stops in the postseason.
You can't build a functional defensive scheme around a defender
who's prone to too many mental mistakes. Jalen Brunston can
(30:49):
be lazy sometimes, especially in the regular season, and he
certainly has his physical limitations, but he competes and he
will execute his part of the game plan and which
I think makes him at least a higher floor defender
than many of his small guard peers in recent eras.
And again, like I'm not trying to say that Jalen's
(31:10):
a good defender. I'm just saying he's a more functional
playoff defender than many of his peers. In recent years,
Jalen Brunton has become one of the best offensive players
in the game today. He's an elite scorer who becomes
absolutely deadly in crunch time. He's a willing passer and
game manager, and with enough of an attention to detail
to at least make him workable on the defensive end
(31:32):
of the floor. So he comes in at number nine
on this year's list. All right, before we get out
of here today, Denzel Washington had a hell of a
quote the other day, went on I can't remember which
show he went on, as something on ESPN. He said,
everyone everybody's got an opinion. In fact, we live in
a world of opinionaires. They're all on the shows, a
(31:54):
bunch of the guys a couple that have played, but
most of them who haven't, who have an opinion about
what something should be when they haven't done it. Those
who can do, those who can't talk about those who can,
those who have know what they're talking about. Those who
haven't don't period. That's how I feel about that. This
(32:18):
is one of my biggest pet peeves about the way
athletes in particular act when it comes to the media. Obviously,
Denzel is not an athlete, but this is a take
that we've seen many athletes pair over the years. First
and foremost, I despise the gatekeeping element of this. I
love basketball so much and the game has been very
(32:41):
good to me. It paid for my college, It helped
me see much of the United States at a young age.
It helped me to enjoy some of the greatest experiences
of my life. Like I, every once in a while,
you just sit down and reminisce and I think about, like,
you know, maybe a huge dunk that I had in
a big spot, or a clutch shot that I hit,
(33:04):
or you know, a hot streak where I could miss
for a little while. You think about those moments, and
there are literally some of the coolest moments of my life.
I think about, you know, when you get a big
dunk on the road, like a real dunk that shocks
everybody and you hear that sound go through the arena's.
I could never describe it to you, guys. It's just
(33:25):
one of the coolest feelings that you could ever experience
as a human. And I think about it all the time.
I miss it. I miss playing in those environments and
getting to experience those things. The game of basketball has
been very, very good to me. But I'm not selfish
enough or closed minded enough to think that I'm the
only guy who loves basketball or girl who loves basketball
(33:48):
out there, or that you have to have played the
game to love basketball. That makes no sense. I'm super lucky.
I was born into a six to six frame. I've
got a six to ten wingspan and a good amount
of natural athletic ability. I also worked very hard, and
I'm proud of the player that I've become over the years,
(34:09):
especially as an adult. But I also know that I'm
very lucky. There are people out there who love the
game every bit as much as I do, but that
didn't get the opportunity to pursue it the way that
I did. Who am I to say that that person
isn't allowed to love the game, or to watch the game,
(34:30):
or to study the game, or to talk about the game,
or to write about the game. I have learned so
much over the years from people who have never played
the game. In many cases, for those people, their love
of the game in the absence of being able to
play it manifests in what it takes to pour their
(34:51):
heart and soul into the study of the game. It's
all about perspective. Everyone has unique perspective. Yes, a current
or former NBA player can provide a certain perspective on
the game that we could never provide. Even a guy
like me who played but didn't play at the NBA level,
I can't provide some of the perspective that current or
(35:14):
former NBA players can provide. But we each have our
own unique angle, and that angle manifests out of our
love for the game. Mine will include some references to
my playing experience, but guys, like if you ask me,
my playing experience is actually a very small portion of
(35:37):
what I would think this show kind of comes out of.
I think it mostly comes out of a love for
the game and studying the game. I know a hell
of a lot more about basketball now than I did
the last time I suit it up in a college
basketball uniform. Maybe there's a man or a woman out
there who provides unique analytical perspective that comes from a
(36:01):
high level understanding of advanced statistics. There are lots of
guys out there, lots of girls out there that haven't played,
but make us all smarter about the game. Maybe there's
a man or a woman out there who's excellent with
advanced schematics. I look at guys like cranzeus mc basketball
covers the Lakers does an incredibly good job of giving
(36:24):
us a detailed understanding of actions, encounters on both ends
of the floor or half court hoops. He's a college
coach who will post entire playbooks of NBA teams for
us to study. That's an immense value. There are men
and women who provide excellent basketball perspective on fundamentals and
(36:46):
can explain complicated things on a granular level for fans.
I think Pete Zais covers the Lakers as an example
of this type of guy. I learned so much about
how modern NBA fundamentals work from Pete. Zach Lowe on
a national scale as an example of this kind of guy.
There are men and women who do an excellent job
(37:07):
covering the league from the standpoint of reporting. Mark Stein
is an incredible example. I highly recommend all of you
guys subscribe to Mark Stein's substack. It's an excellent way
to just get kind of like a regular newsletter where
you can stay up to speed on what's happening around
the NBA. It's not just disrespectful or inappropriate to discount
(37:30):
these people just because they haven't played in the NBA.
It's also frankly stupid. You're an idiot if you don't
think someone like Kaitlyn Cooper, who does a phenomenal job
covering the Indiana Pacers, You're an idiot. If you don't
think Kaitlyn Cooper can teach you something about NBA basketball,
you are limiting your own ability to learn at that point.
(37:52):
And frankly, while there are many current and former NBA
players who are doing great work, I want to emphasize
that there are many who do great work, there are
also many current and former players who are doing shitty work,
doing very little prep and just getting on camera and
talking shit. Literally everything that Denzel was criticizing I've seen
(38:15):
professional athletes do in the media. Yeah, Jason, but what
about the talking heads? Even those people carry great value.
In my opinion, Bill Simmons is one of the great
storytellers who covers the NBA. I don't agree with everything
Bill says, but he's so important to the NBA media
landscape with his ability to add like historical aura to
(38:38):
each season. He brings like a certain drama element that
I think is actually important. It's part of like how
we all fell in love with the game as kids.
You know, it's funny you get to be older and
you focus on that stuff a little less, But like
that is the stuff that gets you to romanticize basketball,
to romanticize the NBA and love it so much when
(39:01):
you're younger. That's important. Colin Coward his ability to tie
things to day to day life in a way that
we can all relate to. Still to this day, I
regularly a few times a week listen to Colin Coward's
opening monologue on The Herd. It's easy to listen to.
I can relate it to my everyday life, and you
can just feel his passion and love for it pouring
(39:22):
out of it. These people don't put up big numbers
by accident. They capture people's attention with their perspective that
flows out of their love for what they do. So
I totally disagree with Denzel's perspective here. I think sports
(39:43):
media is in a better place than ever before. It's
more of a meritocracy than ever before. Any single one
of you who has valuable perspective, can buy inexpensive equipment,
record content, post a YouTube or to social media, and
if you capture pe pople's attention, you'll get a natural
push from the algorithm, and you will build an audience,
(40:05):
and you will have success that has made it so
that there is more to choose from than ever before.
For instance, Stephen A. Smith is not my cup of tea.
I have a remarkable respect for him as a talent.
I think he's a legend, but I don't personally enjoy
(40:27):
his content. I don't have to watch Stephen A. Smith
like I literally don't ever have to watch him. If
I don't want to, I can pick whatever I want.
If you're in the mood for deeply analytical content, it's
out there. If you're in the mood for something analytical
(40:48):
but more easily digestible, it's out there. If you're into storytelling,
it's out there. If you're into the historian element, the drama,
the intro, it's out there. The reporting it's out there.
And guess what, if you want to listen to a
former player who can offer their unique perspective from having
(41:10):
played in the NBA, you can find that out there too.
So let's stop gatekeeping basketball, and let's stop gatekeeping whatever
sport it is you love. I don't own the rights
to love basketball. Neither does Kevin Durant, Neither does Draymond Green,
neither does Kaitlin Cooper or Zach Low. If you love
(41:31):
it and you put in the work and you have
something of value to offer, I encourage all of that
from flooding our marketplace. The more there is, the better
it is for all of us. You all have every
right to love the game, and if you love it
enough to want to talk about it, you should go
after it. And I think attempts to stifle those folks,
(41:53):
or belittle those folks, or gatekeep those folks is incredibly
lame to me. All Right, guys, that's all I have
for today. As always, as sincerely appreciate you guys for
supporting me and supporting the show. We will be back
on Friday with our next mailbag. I will see you
guys day
Hosts And Creators
Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre
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