Jason’s top takes of the week!
Jason Timpf breaks down the MVP race between Nikola Jokic and SGA, explains why the Cavs SPEED makes them nearly impossible to stop, cuts the Lakers some slack due to all their injuries, and he gives Steph Curry his flowers for his patience through the down years of the Golden State Warriors and discusses how they've emerged on the other side since the Jimmy Butler trade.
Timeline
4:00 - Start
4:15 - Jokic vs SGA for MVP?
12:00 - Cavs speed is lethal
29:00 - Injuries leave Lakers no margin for error
35:15 -Steph Curry’s renaissance
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(01:38):
Welcome to the Best of Hoops Tonight, featuring my top
takes from recent shows that I wanted to talk a little
bit about the Nicol Jokis, Schaguillos Alexander MVP debate. So
this ends up being a constant debate over the course
of the years because there is a lack of consistent criteria.
In my time following the NBA, everything shifts back and forth.
(02:01):
Different voters value different things. There are huge portions of
the voting base for MVP that like dramatically consider, like
seriously consider catch all metrics, which I vehemently disagree with.
I think it's a bad way to try to make
a decision of this caliber that involves such NBA history.
(02:22):
There are a lot of different things about the MVP
that I don't like, and that's why I don't spend
too much time talking about it. That said, I think
there's a specific issue arising here that is probably not
that should not be an issue involving whether or not
Yokic has a real case. Is Yokich the best player
in the NBA? Yes? Why because that sort of thing
is determined in the playoffs when we get to the playoffs.
(02:46):
Over the course of the last few years, Jokic is
the indomitable force that I've seen. He is the one
guy that reaches a level that no team can reach.
And even back in that twenty twenty three season, he
had a very very good defensive season, and he is
very good defensively on the way to the title that year.
Jo Kisch is the best player in the league. There's
nothing that Shae could do in the regular season context
(03:07):
to take that away. In my opinion, that's it. There
is this idea that Oklahoma City is overwhelmingly talented and
that's why they're winning. And as a result, a lot
of people are writing off Shay and it's like, Shay's
the guy that's on the overwhelmingly talented team. Jo Kich
is the guy that's carrying a bunch of bums. He's
the guy that deserves to win the MVP. Chet Holmgren's
(03:31):
been out most of the season. His secondary shot creator,
Jalen Williams, is very young by NBA standards. I saw
a lot of people saying, like, Shay is surrounded by
all this all world defensive talent. You're right, Shay is
surrounded by a very good defensive team. There's no offensive
player playing off of Shay that's as good as Jamal
Murray is. There's no shooter that plays for the thunder
(03:54):
who's as good as Michael Porter Junior is. They the
Denver's construct is built more around offensive talent. Ogoma City's
construct has built more around defensive talent. What Shay's job
this year has been has been to create every single
shot for his team throughout this entire season. With Jalen
Williams off the floor. Just playing with a bunch of
(04:18):
defensive minded young athletes, he's been able to consistently put
the ball in the basket and keep his team afloat
on the offensive end. And when you really get down
to it, they are eleven games better, eleven games better
in the standings than Denver. Do you have any idea
how much better Yokich would have to be than Shay
(04:40):
in the regular season context for eleven games to be overcome.
At the end of the day, to me, MVP should
come down to three factors. It should come down to
who's been the best player on the best team in
the league, so team success, value to your team, how
(05:00):
your team performs with or without you. And then lastly,
I personally think it should factor in somewhat what your
big picture reputation is in the league. Like if you're
a player that we know can't play in the playoffs
and is a merchant of regular season basketball, I think
that should factor in. If there's another player that's pretty
(05:21):
close but that's a proven we know this is one
of the dudes in the NBA when we get to
the playoffs, I do believe that should factor in. I
do think Jokic has an advantage in that case. I'd
even argue Jokic is more valuable to the Nuggets than
Shae is to the Thunder, although I think Shay is
a lot more valuable to the Thunder than people give
(05:43):
him credit for. They're a good team without Shay, they're
a fucking awesome team with Shae. He lifts them to
that level. I saw people say, like, oh, if you
take Yokic off the Nuggets, what does that team win
in take Shae off the Thunder? How many get there?
They're in the play it. So it really comes down
to that last piece, which is who's been the best team,
(06:06):
and there's just such a massive advantage there. The Nuggets
have very like the Nuggets have had substantial issues on defense.
They've consistently struggled against good teams in the league. They
have not been nearly as good as a basketball team
as the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the gap in value
and reputation between the two is too small in my
(06:27):
opinion to make up that gap, And it gets a
little bit deeper when you start to factor in the
reasons why Denver has struggled. Denver has been a bad
defense this year, and it's not all Jokicha's fault. I
don't want to sit there and make it seem like
that's the case. There are a lot of guys that
are struggling defensively on this team. Jamal can be a
problem at times, Michael Porter Junior can be a problem
(06:48):
at times. Aaron Gordon's been banged up all year. It
hasn't been as good defensively. The young guys, guys like
Julian Strather's been a disaster on defense at times this year.
There are other guys at fault, but there is a
simple concept, a simple reality about Denver's construct that limits
them on the defensive end of the floor. Jokic cannot
(07:09):
defend and drop coverage, and he cannot switch if he
defends in drop coverage. He's nowhere near good enough at
protecting the rim. A guy like that on his heels,
guys go right around into the basket, and if you
put him in space to switch, can't slide his feet
well enough. He'll just give up dribble penetration. So there's
like two coverages that the Nuggets can legitimately deploy, and
(07:31):
both of them involve putting two on the ball. They
can bring Yokic up to the level and they can
blitz with him. Those are really the only two things
they can do, and so they exist in rotation. They
exist in these four on threes off the ball, and
they're just not very good on the backside rotating out
(07:52):
of it. That is a reality of why Denver struggles
on the defensive end of the floor. Jokic is a
big part of it. That's why Phoenix continues to have
success against this team scoring the basketball, even though obviously
they've lost their last few against them. But Phoenix can score.
When the Lakers went in there and won, it was
(08:12):
just two on the ball, four on threes, easy, wide
open threes every single time down the floor. Their defense
struggles because their base concept demands excellent rotations on the
backside due to Jokic, and they haven't been very good
on the backside. I think that that is just too
big of a factor in a gap that is eleven
(08:34):
games wide in the standings for me to just be like, well,
Jokic is the best player in the world, so therefore
he deserves MVP. It's never been that way. The best
player in the world deserve MVP. Lebron would have ten
of them. MJ would have ten of them, it'd be
a completely different story. Kobe'd have five or six of them.
That's just not how it works. It's never been how
it works. Shay's having a nearly as good season as
(08:59):
Jokic for a much better team, and he may not
be as valuable to them as Yokic is, but he's
valuable enough that I think he deserves to be the
favorite to win MVP. At this point, there's what twenty
something games left. Maybe Shaye falls apart and Yokic is
amazing and Yokic snatches it, But if the season ends today,
I think Shaye deserves it, and I hope that he.
(09:21):
I hope that if the circumstances stay the same, that
he ends up getting it, because that's the way we've
done it throughout throughout NBA history. Once again, every time
I watch these kind of like middle tier teams in
the league, you know, I kind of I've talked about
this last night with Colin Coward, but like I kind
of view the inner circle of the NBA as like
(09:42):
five teams that I think have like a real chance
to win the title, and in no particular order, because
I'm gonna end up doing some stuff involving ordering them
over the course of the next month. Jackson and I
were talking this morning about doing very, very in depth
breakdowns specifically on the Inner Circle contenders, some film and stuff,
So we're thinking about doing that over the course of
(10:02):
the next month. But those five teams for me right now,
or in the Eastern Conference, Boston and Cleveland, and in
the Western Conference Oklahoma City, Denver and the Los Angeles Lakers.
If you look at those teams and you watch them
play every single night, there's a level of seriousness on
both ends of the floor and their execution and their
attention to detail and just their overall pursuit of maximizing
(10:23):
their talent and being the best basketball team that they
can be. And literally as soon as you go below that,
it's a drop off. Even with a team that has
a pretty damn good record like the New York Knicks,
they've been so inconsistent with their defensive execution this year.
Teams like Milwaukee, teams like Minnesota. There's so many teams
in that group that have been very, very inconsistent in
(10:45):
their attention to detail. The one team that's kind of
below there that I'm keeping my eye on, because I
don't really know where they're gonna fit. Once we see
a larger sample of them playing some tougher teams as
the Golden State Warriors, I think they have a chance
to enter into the inner circle. There are some teams
in that group that I think I am keeping my
eye on over the course of the final month to see.
But those are the five teams that I see, and
(11:05):
when you go beyond that, there's a pretty substantial drop
off in terms of just the level of serious basketball
that they play. I thought it was really interesting as
I started to dig through the numbers, like, if you
look at the margins, these are the areas where all
of the good teams are always good. The margins are
(11:25):
the little details that suck. They're hard to do, but
they're such an important part of winning basketball games, for instance,
taking care of the basketball and making sure you don't
give up points off of turnovers. The Thunder, the Calves,
and the Celtics are all top five and opponent points
off of turnovers, and the Lakers are top ten giving
up points off of offensive rebounds. The Calves and Celtics
(11:48):
are both in the top ten. The Thunder have always
been a bad defensive rebounding team. That's their Achilles heel.
So they're out of that group. But the Calves and
Celtics top ten, and the Lakers since January fifteenth, when
they kind of became a sit team, they're seventh in
that department giving up fast breakpoints. The Calves, the Celtics,
and the Thunder are all in the top eleven in
limiting opponents fast breakpoints. This is the Lakers Achilles heel.
(12:11):
That's where they always get beat. They're unathletic in transition
at times, cleaning the glasses. Overall transition defense stat, the Calves,
the Celtics, and the Thunder are all top ten. The
Lakers are top ten since January fifteenth. Makes in the
restricted area allowed so giving up easy baskets right underneath
the rim. The Calves, Celtics, and Thunder are all top ten.
The Lakers are seventh since January fifteenth, total number of
(12:34):
contested shots this year. This is a hustle stat on
NBA dot Com. The Calves, the Thunder, and the Celtics
are all in the top four. These are non negotiables.
If you want to be a serious basketball team, you
have to be committed to running the floor in transition,
making contact on box outs, competing for contested rebounds, making rotations,
(12:56):
putting your body on the line, making extra efforts contesting shots.
These are non negotiables and they're hard. I get it.
There's a reason why there's such a huge swath of
the league that's bad at this stuff on a nightly basis,
because it's eighty two games and you're all a bunch
of millionaires, and it's really really hard to get yourself
to compete at that level in a night in a
(13:17):
night out basis. That said, like I said, it's a
non negotiable if you want to get to the finish line,
if you want to get the Larry O'Brien Trophy. Every
time I watch the Bucks, they seem to be heavily
lacking in these areas. They are mediocre to bad in
every single one of those statistical categories that I listed,
except for defensive rebounding. It was jarring again to watch
(13:40):
as the Cavs just dominated this game by out running
the Bucks all over the floor twenty four easy points
in transition, countless possessions where they would defend well and
get a stop and rebound and run out the other
way and get an easy one against a Bucks team
that wasn't willing to run even in the half court.
It's the same sort of concept whether it was Darius
Garland or Don and Mitchell or somebody else creating that
(14:02):
initial advantage. The Calves just sliced and diced the Bucks
defense with these beautiful drive and kick sequences that often
ended in wide open looks for very good shooters. You
could literally see them repeatedly knifing through the lane, not
just on that initial drive but on closeouts, and as
a result, they're able to grow that advantage so that
(14:23):
first close out's only a little bit of a close out,
that second close outs more of a close out, the
third one no chance the dudes wide open. The Calves
generated twenty two unguarded catch and shoot jump shots in
this game. The Milwaukee Bucks generated just nine. That's the difference.
(14:43):
The Calves have this beautiful ability to slice and dice
defenses for these super high quality catch and shoot looks
and at the same time, on the other end of
the floor keep their defense out of rotation against Milwaukee.
And it's not just the commitment to running, it's the
commitment off the ball on defense to track king shooters
being sharp with your closeouts. Cleveland was so attentive and sharp.
(15:06):
Every catch and shoot look for Milwaukee felt like it
was smothered with a quick and reactive close out. How
many times did you see Torrian Prince in the game
kind of lingering around five six feet away from Max
Struce and just a quick swing pass and Max Struce
knocks down a shot. How many times did you see
Brook Lopez and Janisantana Kumbo just drifting off of Evan
Mobley and not in position to offer a closeout as
(15:28):
Evan Mobley made them pay knocking down that catch and
shoot on the weak side. Prince in particular had a
really enough rough night in this regard, but as a team,
the Bucks were not attentive in their off ball defense.
That's how you end up with such a huge chasm
in the overall number of wide open catch and shoot
shots that they generated. The Bucks have a lot of talent,
(15:51):
but you can't even get to the point where you're
able to weaponize that talent until you're willing to commit
to the hard work that is consistent winning basketball that
is required to get to that level. There are some
realities with the Bucks regarding their age in overall foot speed.
This is a size team, not a speed team. We're
going to talk about the difference between the two here
in a minute, but at the same time, every time
(16:13):
I watch them, there's just so much fat that can
be trimmed simple transition defense principles like stopping the ball,
stopping the basket, and getting matched up. There's a big
one late in the game where Tory and Prince left
a wide open shooter right at the top of the key.
The on defense in the half court like simple ideas
(16:33):
like making sure that when you're in help side defense,
positioning yourself in a way where you can see man
and ball, and make sure that if that pass goes,
you're already in the closeout while the ball's in the
air and you're there on the catch. These are details
that don't necessarily depend on their overall team speed that
can be cleaned up that they just haven't made the
requisite effort to do so. Now, getting to the game itself,
(16:55):
I want to talk about how the combination of speed
and jump shooting is what actually allows the Cleveland Cavaliers
to generate so many quality shots. This has been the
best offense in the NBA this year. They're actually almost
three points per one hundred possessions ahead of the second
place Boston Celtics. They're the only team in the league
getting over a one to twenty offensive rating. The Cavs
offense is unbelievable. Now, Like we talked about earlier, there's
(17:17):
a difference between size and speed. There are two easy
ways to get the defense into rotation through overwhelming speed
and overwhelming size. For overwhelming size, think like Jokic. Sure,
guys like Lebron James luka Don said Chason Tatum. Some
of these bigger, stronger players, they find a defender that's
too small to guard them. Then they pressure the rim
until they get easy twos, or they draw in that
(17:38):
second defender. Speed works the exact same way when you
have guards that through transition or through ball screens, against switches,
whatever it is. When they can consistently get screaming downhill
towards the rim, they either are going to get layups
or they're going to draw in multiple defenders. This is
the part of the Cavs roster construct that has really
shown through this year. And for the record, I was
(18:00):
originally a couple of years ago completely out on the
Darius Garland Donovan Mitchell Perry as like a foundation for
the Cavs. Why because it's two small guards, and when
you're building around two small guards, it just presents so
many issues for you on the defensive glass and just
on the defensive end in general. And by the way,
they still occasionally have rebounding issues and they still occasionally
(18:21):
have defense issues. But as Darius Garland has gotten healthy
this year and as he's blossomed into this like super
high level guard, we've gotten to see the other side
of that dynamic, which is that they do have overwhelming speed.
Garland this year, healthy with his legs underneath him, has
been one of my favorite players to watch in the
(18:42):
league this year because of his combination of speed and
handle in shot making and playmaking, which gives him the
ability to get wherever he wants to get on the floor.
His probing and transition off the dribble and in the
half court is responsible for so much of Cleveland's offensive success.
The Caves offense all year has been about two two
points better per one hundred possessions when Darius Garland is
(19:03):
on the floor versus off. Donovan Mitchell brings the same
thing He's not at the same level of quickness that
Darius Garland is at, but he's close, and he's bigger,
and he's more vertically athletic, and he's a better shot maker,
and he's got like a bunch of these really fancy
gatherer moves, like he's been putting on a clinic of
that like windmill over the top gather that Dwayne Wade popularized.
(19:25):
And then he's brought back the sham god with a
vengeance this year. He had another nasty one the other
nights or Donovan Mitchell's ball handling in the middle of
the floor has been unbelievable this year, but he also
has an amazing ability to get wherever he wants on
the floor. That's the initial first step for any driving
kick sequence. You've got to generate that initial advantage that
(19:46):
compromises the defense and generates those kickout opportunities for your
spot up guys. From there, they just have a bunch
of guys who are awesome at playing drive and kick basketball.
Max Tru's lightning quick release can do it on the
move and is a really good driving kick player, can
make basic driving kick reads. Dean Wade is good at
it too, DeAndre Hunter has been brilliant so far as
(20:08):
a calv as a spot up guy, as a guy
who can do some advanced scoring in the mid range,
attacking closeouts. Ti Jerome is good at it, Sam Merrill's
good at it. Mitchell and Garland can both do it
when they're off the ball. Just give you an idea.
Here are some spot up efficiency numbers for Calves players
according to Synergy. DeAndre Hunter one point three seven points
(20:28):
per possession. That's outrageous. Ty Jerome one point three to
six points per possession. That's outrageous. Craig Porter, obviously in
a smaller role, one point two eight points per possession.
Max Strew's one point twenty four, Donovan Mitchell one point
one eight, Sam Marril one point one five. They have
six players logging over one point one five points per
possession and spot up situations. As a team, they get
(20:51):
one point one point one points per any spot up possession.
Only the Celtics in the NBA are better at converting
spot possessions than the Cleveland Cavaliers, and they generate so
many of them on the strength of their speed. It's
that combination speed which is necessary to consistently get the
defense in rotation and then having players that can extend
(21:14):
advantages and pay them off. I wanted to just very
briefly talk about the Lakers and no loss in Brooklyn
last night. I'm not worried about it at all. There's
(21:35):
not much margin for error with the injuries. Like you
have no Lebron, no Rui, Hachi Mura, no Jackson Hayes,
and no Dorian Finney Smith. That's four of your core
eight playoff rotation players. Lebron's your second best player, Rui's
probably your fourth best player. So like, you don't have
much margin for error when you're down that many guys.
(21:58):
So if Austins and Luka Doncic are also gonna shoot
eleven for forty from the field, you're gonna have a
hard time beating anyone. Right, It's just there's too much
going against you in that sort of situation, and so
some of this, like, honestly, it's just a really bad
confluence of events. So Lebron happens to suffer his first
(22:19):
injury of the year when you're already down two forwards
and your starting center right Luca happens to be having
one of the worst shot making stretches of his career,
which we'll get to in a second. And Austin Reeves
has always been a guy that takes a little bit
of time to get his rhythm when he's been out
of the lineup for a little bit, And so Austin's
really struggling because he's been out of the lineup and
he's been out a rhythm. Luca's having this like brutal
(22:42):
shot making stretch where he can't make any of the
jump shots that he typically makes in his it throughout
the rest of his career, and you're just absolutely brutalized
by injuries in the front court. It's just a rough spot, right,
And I actually kind of view it as a blessing
in disguise because the team had been winning a lot. Obviously,
they've been the best team in the league for almost
(23:03):
two months, so like it's one of those things where
you had a little bit of slippage in your execution
against Boston, right, And souse JJ was able to use
the Brooklyn loss last night to just basically rip his
team a new one and essentially like use it as
a motivator to refocus the team. Like it's not a
big deal that they lost to the Nets. It's not
(23:26):
going to be some sort of dramatic issue with where
they're at in the standings. Like, I don't necessarily think
getting any specific seed other than staying out of the
play in matters. I think getting to the getting the
April healthy is really all that matters, and so it's
more important for you to be sharp. And so if
you drop a game against the Nets, that is just
a confluence of events, and you lose against the defending
(23:47):
champions on their home floor, in a game where a
bunch of down two starters and a bunch of other
things don't go your way, it's really nothing to overreact to.
But JJ can package that as a message to put
in front of the Lakers, like, we have to be
better at this stuff, because guess what, if they want
to win the trophy, they do kind of have to
be better at that stuff. And it's just a perfect
excuse to use as a motivator for this team. The
(24:11):
part that I want to keep an eye on, though,
is Luca's shot making, because like, this is the part
that has me most excited about the ultimate potential of
this team. Austin's been out, he'll eventually get it. Back.
That will go a long way towards helping this team.
But we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of
how good the Lakers can be when Luca is Luca.
(24:31):
Here's a crazy stat to demonstrate for you guys, the
gap in shot making ability between this version of Luka
Doncic in the version of Luka Doncic that took the
Dallas Mavericks to the finals last year. In twelve games
with the Lakers, Luca has managed to make at least
ten field goals twice in twelve games. Last year with
(24:53):
the Dallas Mavericks, in seventy games, he made at least
ten shots fifty times fifty of the seventy games. That's
the level of shot making that Luca can still get
to relative to where he's been with the Lakers. That's
where the excitement comes. Do I think the Lakers are
actually the best defense in the NBA? No, they've been
(25:16):
defending like that, but I don't actually think they're the
best defense in the NBA. My guess is they're somewhere
in the five to ten range given the type of
personnel that they have, But they can be so so,
so much better on offense. That is the side of
the floor that they can make dramatic improvements through simplifying
some of their spacing principles. JJ's been talking a lot
(25:38):
about this. I'm not going to get into it today,
but one of our next few Laker videos, I'll do
a deeper dive into just like how spacing is supposed
to work and why JJ's been harping on that so much.
It mostly has to do with putting guys in the
right spots so that you're tilting the offense to get
the kinds of shots you want from the players that
you want. That's basically the main purpose of spacing, right.
(26:00):
There's a lot of improvement that they can still make
on that end, but just Luca getting back to where
he can be as a shot maker while Lebron and
Austin are both healthy and in rhythm, will go a
long way towards lifting this team to a more elite
level on the offensive end of the floor. And that's
why I'm not really concerned. I saw enough in the
Boston game to think that they can beat Boston. I'm
gonna pick Boston. I think everybody should pick Boston against everyone.
(26:24):
They're just the safer bet but I saw enough in
that game from Luca and Lebron attacking the Boston Smalls
to go like, oh, like, I think they can win
that series. When I was scouting the Dallas Boston series
last year, I literally came on the show in my
series preview and said, I think Boston's gonna blow him out.
I didn't see a pathway because of some specific issues
(26:44):
with the matchups and the inability that Dallas had to
create space because of their non shooters on the floor.
They're pour above the break shooters in the way that
they could sit rim protection under the basket. The difference
with the Lakers is when they're healthy and they have
Hatchamura in the lineup and Dorian Finney Smith, they don't
have a single player in that five man grouping that
(27:05):
you can help off of, and so they should be
able to create more space. Lebron and Lucas should be
able to punish the Smalls. Again, it was a loss.
There was a lot of disappointment there, and I think
they played well. Luca looked bad for most of that game.
There's a lot of negatives, but I saw enough out
of that to be like, oh, I think they can
beat Boston. That was an encouraging thing for me. The
Nets game was literally a confluence of events. I'm not
(27:27):
worried about it, but it's a nice opportunity for JJ
to refocus the team, and it's a reminder for you
guys that Luca can still come so so so far
as a shot maker. A brutal from Austin and Luca
last night eleven for forty from the field that they're
not going to shoot like that very often. Steph played
on some really talented teams in the heart of his
(27:47):
prime with the Golden State Warriors, but it's been brutal
over the last five years. In the twenty twenty two
title run, the Warriors had a championship level roster, but
there wasn't much margin for air. Those of you guys
listen to the show at the time, We'll remember none
of their young players were in their rotation. Even I
was advocating for Joe lacub and Bob Myers to cash
(28:08):
them in, to trade them to create more margin for
error in that particular playoff runt. In the short term,
Joe lacob and Bob Myers were proven right because that
team was good enough to win the championship. But the
story in the long run is more complicated. It's become
precarious because none of that young talent ended up being
(28:30):
a foundational, cornerstone type of talent. James Wiseman was a
complete bust, Jonathan Kaminga proved to be super raw, and
guess what now, Jonathan Minga's do a massive payday. And
as soon as you start talking about Jonathan Kaminga as
a thirty plus million dollar player, it becomes a more
complicated discussion for any basketball team. And I like Moses Moody.
(28:50):
I think he's a useful young player, but he's a
role player. And then things got compounded as Andrew Wiggins
failed to ever get back to the level he was
at in twenty twenty two. So the result was a
limited Warriors roster that didn't really accomplish much over the
next two and a half years, and honestly got pretty
sad as you looked around the rest of the league
at the other sets of stars. I used to earlier
(29:12):
in the year, I'd do this in the show. I
would just list out the shop creators on every other
team in the West, and it was crazy, like you know, okay,
see it's Shay and j dub and Chet. If you
go to Denver, it's Jokichen Murray, It's John Morant and
Jaron Jackson. It's Lebron James and Anthony Davis. It's Anthony
Edwards and Julius Randall. It's Kevin Durant and Devin Booker.
It's Darren Fox and demartiros And it's Kyrie Irving and
(29:35):
Luka Donca. Even James Harden had Norm Powell, who was
great while Kawhi was out. Fred van Vliet with the
Houston Rockets had Jalen Green and Opera and Shanggun and
Steph Curry had Andrew Wiggins and Buddy Heel and like, look,
I Andrew Wiggins got to a really high level in
the twenty twenty two season. I thought he was, you know,
he's never been back at that level, but I thought
he was really really good in that in that playoff run.
(29:57):
But like that's a lot to ask. Steph hurried to
overcome and like to make matters even worse. The roster
limitations made them look bad. As they looked bad, everyone
decided they were bad. As everyone decided they were bad,
a lot of people just decided the trade wasn't worth it,
(30:18):
so they passed on Ogan and Obi, and they passed
on Pascal Siaka. And I mean they may not have
been able to afford Mikael Bridges with how expensive it was,
but they just started passing on guys. Even in the
early part of the year, when Jimmy Butler and Zach
Lavine were available. I had been hearing that the Warriors
were not interested in those two, that they were holding
out for Kevin Duran or Lebron James in a trade.
(30:39):
They didn't want to have a flawed star. Why because
they thought they were bad all because of a roster imbalance.
And part of the issue at that point is they
had waited so long that their young players had lost
some value relative to what it was in twenty twenty two.
Johnathan Comingia in twenty twenty two, three years left on
a rookie deal, young raw prospect, has a lot of intrigue.
(31:03):
Trade for Johnathan Comingia when you gotta pay him, it's
a completely different story. It really looked bleak, and you
could see it in Steph's body language at times. He's
one of the great competitors in this league, and he
was losing belief that he'd ever get a chance to
truly compete for a championship again. There was even a
press conference where Steph sounded so dejected and made comments
(31:25):
surrounding the trade deadline that were so like bizarrely defeated
sounding that he had to come out for his next
press conference and remind everybody that he's a competitor that
wants to win a title. But then opportunity knocked. I
don't know if it was the Luca trade that kicked
them into gear or something else, or just their urgency
of the moment, but shortly after the Luca trade it
was announced that there's a lot of intentionality behind Golden
(31:50):
State's pursuit of a star to bring next to Steph.
They end up pulling the trigger on Jimmy Butler, who
had done his part by acting so crazy and playing
so poorly that he had tanked his value down to
where he became a very achievable target for Golden State
without having to give up much more than some salary
filler to pick. One of the main reasons why I
was such a big believer in a Jimmy Butler trade
(32:13):
was that the Warriors were really good in a lot
of areas. I talked a lot in the early part
of the year about how they had a ton of
team speed, which is how they are so excellent defensively.
Another great rotation team. They were top ten defense all year.
Steph had shown signs of his superstar upside in some
high profile games. As a matter of fact, the Warriors
(32:34):
all year, even before the trade, were one of the
best teams in the league against the best teams in
the league. Some signature wins a win in Boston against
the Celtics, two wins against Oklahoma City Thunder. They had
shown some real upside. They also had way more role
player talent than they actually needed. They had fifteen guys
who can play. They just needed someone to take on
(32:56):
the responsibilities of a secondary star, and Jimmy Butler did
that immediately. He fit the offense both with Steph and
without Steph. They got even better defensively, and it shortened
the rotation. It cut down on the number of options
Steve Kerk had. It gave guys more consistent roles. Crystallized
roles for guys like Moses Moody and Brandon Pajemsky have
(33:18):
been great with the starters but most importantly, it awakened
a sleeping giant Steph had been clearly holding something in
reserve as the team was floundering in mediocrity, and the
belief that his team could actually reach the mountaintop unlocked
his ceiling. Since the Jimmy Butler trade in fourteen games,
(33:39):
averaging thirty points per game, fifty forty two ninety two splits,
sixty nine percent true shooting, again, thirty points on sixty
nine percent tru shooting since Jimmy joined the team, his
MVP season was thirty points on sixty seven percent trough shooting.
Like it's insane. They're twelve to two in those games.
They look like a bona fide championship contender. He was
(34:02):
one of the game's greatest players, hiding in playing sight
completely like written off due to one roster weakness, an
imbalance between role player talent and shot creation talent, one
that frankly was obvious to everyone in the world watching
this team over the last couple of years. But they
took care of it. And now we're gonna get to
(34:24):
see what I wanted to see so badly out of
a Jimmy Butler trade. And that's Steph Curry playing in
meaningful basketball games, which I'm very excited for. Volume 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
(34:46):
supporting us, but if you could take a minute to
do that, I'd really appreciate it.
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(01:38):
Welcome to the Best of Hoops Tonight, featuring my top
takes from recent shows that I wanted to talk a little
bit about the Nicol Jokis, Schaguillos Alexander MVP debate. So
this ends up being a constant debate over the course
of the years because there is a lack of consistent criteria.
In my time following the NBA, everything shifts back and forth.
(02:01):
Different voters value different things. There are huge portions of
the voting base for MVP that like dramatically consider, like
seriously consider catch all metrics, which I vehemently disagree with.
I think it's a bad way to try to make
a decision of this caliber that involves such NBA history.
(02:22):
There are a lot of different things about the MVP
that I don't like, and that's why I don't spend
too much time talking about it. That said, I think
there's a specific issue arising here that is probably not
that should not be an issue involving whether or not
Yokic has a real case. Is Yokich the best player
in the NBA? Yes? Why because that sort of thing
is determined in the playoffs when we get to the playoffs.
(02:46):
Over the course of the last few years, Jokic is
the indomitable force that I've seen. He is the one
guy that reaches a level that no team can reach.
And even back in that twenty twenty three season, he
had a very very good defensive season, and he is
very good defensively on the way to the title that year.
Jo Kisch is the best player in the league. There's
nothing that Shae could do in the regular season context
(03:07):
to take that away. In my opinion, that's it. There
is this idea that Oklahoma City is overwhelmingly talented and
that's why they're winning. And as a result, a lot
of people are writing off Shay and it's like, Shay's
the guy that's on the overwhelmingly talented team. Jo Kich
is the guy that's carrying a bunch of bums. He's
the guy that deserves to win the MVP. Chet Holmgren's
(03:31):
been out most of the season. His secondary shot creator,
Jalen Williams, is very young by NBA standards. I saw
a lot of people saying, like, Shay is surrounded by
all this all world defensive talent. You're right, Shay is
surrounded by a very good defensive team. There's no offensive
player playing off of Shay that's as good as Jamal
Murray is. There's no shooter that plays for the thunder
(03:54):
who's as good as Michael Porter Junior is. They the
Denver's construct is built more around offensive talent. Ogoma City's
construct has built more around defensive talent. What Shay's job
this year has been has been to create every single
shot for his team throughout this entire season. With Jalen
Williams off the floor. Just playing with a bunch of
(04:18):
defensive minded young athletes, he's been able to consistently put
the ball in the basket and keep his team afloat
on the offensive end. And when you really get down
to it, they are eleven games better, eleven games better
in the standings than Denver. Do you have any idea
how much better Yokich would have to be than Shay
(04:40):
in the regular season context for eleven games to be overcome.
At the end of the day, to me, MVP should
come down to three factors. It should come down to
who's been the best player on the best team in
the league, so team success, value to your team, how
(05:00):
your team performs with or without you. And then lastly,
I personally think it should factor in somewhat what your
big picture reputation is in the league. Like if you're
a player that we know can't play in the playoffs
and is a merchant of regular season basketball, I think
that should factor in. If there's another player that's pretty
(05:21):
close but that's a proven we know this is one
of the dudes in the NBA when we get to
the playoffs, I do believe that should factor in. I
do think Jokic has an advantage in that case. I'd
even argue Jokic is more valuable to the Nuggets than
Shae is to the Thunder, although I think Shay is
a lot more valuable to the Thunder than people give
(05:43):
him credit for. They're a good team without Shay, they're
a fucking awesome team with Shae. He lifts them to
that level. I saw people say, like, oh, if you
take Yokic off the Nuggets, what does that team win
in take Shae off the Thunder? How many get there?
They're in the play it. So it really comes down
to that last piece, which is who's been the best team,
(06:06):
and there's just such a massive advantage there. The Nuggets
have very like the Nuggets have had substantial issues on defense.
They've consistently struggled against good teams in the league. They
have not been nearly as good as a basketball team
as the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the gap in value
and reputation between the two is too small in my
(06:27):
opinion to make up that gap, And it gets a
little bit deeper when you start to factor in the
reasons why Denver has struggled. Denver has been a bad
defense this year, and it's not all Jokicha's fault. I
don't want to sit there and make it seem like
that's the case. There are a lot of guys that
are struggling defensively on this team. Jamal can be a
problem at times, Michael Porter Junior can be a problem
(06:48):
at times. Aaron Gordon's been banged up all year. It
hasn't been as good defensively. The young guys, guys like
Julian Strather's been a disaster on defense at times this year.
There are other guys at fault, but there is a
simple concept, a simple reality about Denver's construct that limits
them on the defensive end of the floor. Jokic cannot
(07:09):
defend and drop coverage, and he cannot switch if he
defends in drop coverage. He's nowhere near good enough at
protecting the rim. A guy like that on his heels,
guys go right around into the basket, and if you
put him in space to switch, can't slide his feet
well enough. He'll just give up dribble penetration. So there's
like two coverages that the Nuggets can legitimately deploy, and
(07:31):
both of them involve putting two on the ball. They
can bring Yokic up to the level and they can
blitz with him. Those are really the only two things
they can do, and so they exist in rotation. They
exist in these four on threes off the ball, and
they're just not very good on the backside rotating out
(07:52):
of it. That is a reality of why Denver struggles
on the defensive end of the floor. Jokic is a
big part of it. That's why Phoenix continues to have
success against this team scoring the basketball, even though obviously
they've lost their last few against them. But Phoenix can score.
When the Lakers went in there and won, it was
(08:12):
just two on the ball, four on threes, easy, wide
open threes every single time down the floor. Their defense
struggles because their base concept demands excellent rotations on the
backside due to Jokic, and they haven't been very good
on the backside. I think that that is just too
big of a factor in a gap that is eleven
(08:34):
games wide in the standings for me to just be like, well,
Jokic is the best player in the world, so therefore
he deserves MVP. It's never been that way. The best
player in the world deserve MVP. Lebron would have ten
of them. MJ would have ten of them, it'd be
a completely different story. Kobe'd have five or six of them.
That's just not how it works. It's never been how
it works. Shay's having a nearly as good season as
(08:59):
Jokic for a much better team, and he may not
be as valuable to them as Yokic is, but he's
valuable enough that I think he deserves to be the
favorite to win MVP. At this point, there's what twenty
something games left. Maybe Shaye falls apart and Yokic is
amazing and Yokic snatches it, But if the season ends today,
I think Shaye deserves it, and I hope that he.
(09:21):
I hope that if the circumstances stay the same, that
he ends up getting it, because that's the way we've
done it throughout throughout NBA history. Once again, every time
I watch these kind of like middle tier teams in
the league, you know, I kind of I've talked about
this last night with Colin Coward, but like I kind
of view the inner circle of the NBA as like
(09:42):
five teams that I think have like a real chance
to win the title, and in no particular order, because
I'm gonna end up doing some stuff involving ordering them
over the course of the next month. Jackson and I
were talking this morning about doing very, very in depth
breakdowns specifically on the Inner Circle contenders, some film and stuff,
So we're thinking about doing that over the course of
(10:02):
the next month. But those five teams for me right now,
or in the Eastern Conference, Boston and Cleveland, and in
the Western Conference Oklahoma City, Denver and the Los Angeles Lakers.
If you look at those teams and you watch them
play every single night, there's a level of seriousness on
both ends of the floor and their execution and their
attention to detail and just their overall pursuit of maximizing
(10:23):
their talent and being the best basketball team that they
can be. And literally as soon as you go below that,
it's a drop off. Even with a team that has
a pretty damn good record like the New York Knicks,
they've been so inconsistent with their defensive execution this year.
Teams like Milwaukee, teams like Minnesota. There's so many teams
in that group that have been very, very inconsistent in
(10:45):
their attention to detail. The one team that's kind of
below there that I'm keeping my eye on, because I
don't really know where they're gonna fit. Once we see
a larger sample of them playing some tougher teams as
the Golden State Warriors, I think they have a chance
to enter into the inner circle. There are some teams
in that group that I think I am keeping my
eye on over the course of the final month to see.
But those are the five teams that I see, and
(11:05):
when you go beyond that, there's a pretty substantial drop
off in terms of just the level of serious basketball
that they play. I thought it was really interesting as
I started to dig through the numbers, like, if you
look at the margins, these are the areas where all
of the good teams are always good. The margins are
(11:25):
the little details that suck. They're hard to do, but
they're such an important part of winning basketball games, for instance,
taking care of the basketball and making sure you don't
give up points off of turnovers. The Thunder, the Calves,
and the Celtics are all top five and opponent points
off of turnovers, and the Lakers are top ten giving
up points off of offensive rebounds. The Calves and Celtics
(11:48):
are both in the top ten. The Thunder have always
been a bad defensive rebounding team. That's their Achilles heel.
So they're out of that group. But the Calves and
Celtics top ten, and the Lakers since January fifteenth, when
they kind of became a sit team, they're seventh in
that department giving up fast breakpoints. The Calves, the Celtics,
and the Thunder are all in the top eleven in
limiting opponents fast breakpoints. This is the Lakers Achilles heel.
(12:11):
That's where they always get beat. They're unathletic in transition
at times, cleaning the glasses. Overall transition defense stat, the Calves,
the Celtics, and the Thunder are all top ten. The
Lakers are top ten since January fifteenth. Makes in the
restricted area allowed so giving up easy baskets right underneath
the rim. The Calves, Celtics, and Thunder are all top ten.
The Lakers are seventh since January fifteenth, total number of
(12:34):
contested shots this year. This is a hustle stat on
NBA dot Com. The Calves, the Thunder, and the Celtics
are all in the top four. These are non negotiables.
If you want to be a serious basketball team, you
have to be committed to running the floor in transition,
making contact on box outs, competing for contested rebounds, making rotations,
(12:56):
putting your body on the line, making extra efforts contesting shots.
These are non negotiables and they're hard. I get it.
There's a reason why there's such a huge swath of
the league that's bad at this stuff on a nightly basis,
because it's eighty two games and you're all a bunch
of millionaires, and it's really really hard to get yourself
to compete at that level in a night in a
(13:17):
night out basis. That said, like I said, it's a
non negotiable if you want to get to the finish line,
if you want to get the Larry O'Brien Trophy. Every
time I watch the Bucks, they seem to be heavily
lacking in these areas. They are mediocre to bad in
every single one of those statistical categories that I listed,
except for defensive rebounding. It was jarring again to watch
(13:40):
as the Cavs just dominated this game by out running
the Bucks all over the floor twenty four easy points
in transition, countless possessions where they would defend well and
get a stop and rebound and run out the other
way and get an easy one against a Bucks team
that wasn't willing to run even in the half court.
It's the same sort of concept whether it was Darius
Garland or Don and Mitchell or somebody else creating that
(14:02):
initial advantage. The Calves just sliced and diced the Bucks
defense with these beautiful drive and kick sequences that often
ended in wide open looks for very good shooters. You
could literally see them repeatedly knifing through the lane, not
just on that initial drive but on closeouts, and as
a result, they're able to grow that advantage so that
(14:23):
first close out's only a little bit of a close out,
that second close outs more of a close out, the
third one no chance the dudes wide open. The Calves
generated twenty two unguarded catch and shoot jump shots in
this game. The Milwaukee Bucks generated just nine. That's the difference.
(14:43):
The Calves have this beautiful ability to slice and dice
defenses for these super high quality catch and shoot looks
and at the same time, on the other end of
the floor keep their defense out of rotation against Milwaukee.
And it's not just the commitment to running, it's the
commitment off the ball on defense to track king shooters
being sharp with your closeouts. Cleveland was so attentive and sharp.
(15:06):
Every catch and shoot look for Milwaukee felt like it
was smothered with a quick and reactive close out. How
many times did you see Torrian Prince in the game
kind of lingering around five six feet away from Max
Struce and just a quick swing pass and Max Struce
knocks down a shot. How many times did you see
Brook Lopez and Janisantana Kumbo just drifting off of Evan
Mobley and not in position to offer a closeout as
(15:28):
Evan Mobley made them pay knocking down that catch and
shoot on the weak side. Prince in particular had a
really enough rough night in this regard, but as a team,
the Bucks were not attentive in their off ball defense.
That's how you end up with such a huge chasm
in the overall number of wide open catch and shoot
shots that they generated. The Bucks have a lot of talent,
(15:51):
but you can't even get to the point where you're
able to weaponize that talent until you're willing to commit
to the hard work that is consistent winning basketball that
is required to get to that level. There are some
realities with the Bucks regarding their age in overall foot speed.
This is a size team, not a speed team. We're
going to talk about the difference between the two here
in a minute, but at the same time, every time
(16:13):
I watch them, there's just so much fat that can
be trimmed simple transition defense principles like stopping the ball,
stopping the basket, and getting matched up. There's a big
one late in the game where Tory and Prince left
a wide open shooter right at the top of the key.
The on defense in the half court like simple ideas
(16:33):
like making sure that when you're in help side defense,
positioning yourself in a way where you can see man
and ball, and make sure that if that pass goes,
you're already in the closeout while the ball's in the
air and you're there on the catch. These are details
that don't necessarily depend on their overall team speed that
can be cleaned up that they just haven't made the
requisite effort to do so. Now, getting to the game itself,
(16:55):
I want to talk about how the combination of speed
and jump shooting is what actually allows the Cleveland Cavaliers
to generate so many quality shots. This has been the
best offense in the NBA this year. They're actually almost
three points per one hundred possessions ahead of the second
place Boston Celtics. They're the only team in the league
getting over a one to twenty offensive rating. The Cavs
offense is unbelievable. Now, Like we talked about earlier, there's
(17:17):
a difference between size and speed. There are two easy
ways to get the defense into rotation through overwhelming speed
and overwhelming size. For overwhelming size, think like Jokic. Sure,
guys like Lebron James luka Don said Chason Tatum. Some
of these bigger, stronger players, they find a defender that's
too small to guard them. Then they pressure the rim
until they get easy twos, or they draw in that
(17:38):
second defender. Speed works the exact same way when you
have guards that through transition or through ball screens, against switches,
whatever it is. When they can consistently get screaming downhill
towards the rim, they either are going to get layups
or they're going to draw in multiple defenders. This is
the part of the Cavs roster construct that has really
shown through this year. And for the record, I was
(18:00):
originally a couple of years ago completely out on the
Darius Garland Donovan Mitchell Perry as like a foundation for
the Cavs. Why because it's two small guards, and when
you're building around two small guards, it just presents so
many issues for you on the defensive glass and just
on the defensive end in general. And by the way,
they still occasionally have rebounding issues and they still occasionally
(18:21):
have defense issues. But as Darius Garland has gotten healthy
this year and as he's blossomed into this like super
high level guard, we've gotten to see the other side
of that dynamic, which is that they do have overwhelming speed.
Garland this year, healthy with his legs underneath him, has
been one of my favorite players to watch in the
(18:42):
league this year because of his combination of speed and
handle in shot making and playmaking, which gives him the
ability to get wherever he wants to get on the floor.
His probing and transition off the dribble and in the
half court is responsible for so much of Cleveland's offensive success.
The Caves offense all year has been about two two
points better per one hundred possessions when Darius Garland is
(19:03):
on the floor versus off. Donovan Mitchell brings the same
thing He's not at the same level of quickness that
Darius Garland is at, but he's close, and he's bigger,
and he's more vertically athletic, and he's a better shot maker,
and he's got like a bunch of these really fancy
gatherer moves, like he's been putting on a clinic of
that like windmill over the top gather that Dwayne Wade popularized.
(19:25):
And then he's brought back the sham god with a
vengeance this year. He had another nasty one the other
nights or Donovan Mitchell's ball handling in the middle of
the floor has been unbelievable this year, but he also
has an amazing ability to get wherever he wants on
the floor. That's the initial first step for any driving
kick sequence. You've got to generate that initial advantage that
(19:46):
compromises the defense and generates those kickout opportunities for your
spot up guys. From there, they just have a bunch
of guys who are awesome at playing drive and kick basketball.
Max Tru's lightning quick release can do it on the
move and is a really good driving kick player, can
make basic driving kick reads. Dean Wade is good at
it too, DeAndre Hunter has been brilliant so far as
(20:08):
a calv as a spot up guy, as a guy
who can do some advanced scoring in the mid range,
attacking closeouts. Ti Jerome is good at it, Sam Merrill's
good at it. Mitchell and Garland can both do it
when they're off the ball. Just give you an idea.
Here are some spot up efficiency numbers for Calves players
according to Synergy. DeAndre Hunter one point three seven points
(20:28):
per possession. That's outrageous. Ty Jerome one point three to
six points per possession. That's outrageous. Craig Porter, obviously in
a smaller role, one point two eight points per possession.
Max Strew's one point twenty four, Donovan Mitchell one point
one eight, Sam Marril one point one five. They have
six players logging over one point one five points per
possession and spot up situations. As a team, they get
(20:51):
one point one point one points per any spot up possession.
Only the Celtics in the NBA are better at converting
spot possessions than the Cleveland Cavaliers, and they generate so
many of them on the strength of their speed. It's
that combination speed which is necessary to consistently get the
defense in rotation and then having players that can extend
(21:14):
advantages and pay them off. I wanted to just very
briefly talk about the Lakers and no loss in Brooklyn
last night. I'm not worried about it at all. There's
(21:35):
not much margin for error with the injuries. Like you
have no Lebron, no Rui, Hachi Mura, no Jackson Hayes,
and no Dorian Finney Smith. That's four of your core
eight playoff rotation players. Lebron's your second best player, Rui's
probably your fourth best player. So like, you don't have
much margin for error when you're down that many guys.
(21:58):
So if Austins and Luka Doncic are also gonna shoot
eleven for forty from the field, you're gonna have a
hard time beating anyone. Right, It's just there's too much
going against you in that sort of situation, and so
some of this, like, honestly, it's just a really bad
confluence of events. So Lebron happens to suffer his first
(22:19):
injury of the year when you're already down two forwards
and your starting center right Luca happens to be having
one of the worst shot making stretches of his career,
which we'll get to in a second. And Austin Reeves
has always been a guy that takes a little bit
of time to get his rhythm when he's been out
of the lineup for a little bit, And so Austin's
really struggling because he's been out of the lineup and
he's been out a rhythm. Luca's having this like brutal
(22:42):
shot making stretch where he can't make any of the
jump shots that he typically makes in his it throughout
the rest of his career, and you're just absolutely brutalized
by injuries in the front court. It's just a rough spot, right,
And I actually kind of view it as a blessing
in disguise because the team had been winning a lot. Obviously,
they've been the best team in the league for almost
(23:03):
two months, so like it's one of those things where
you had a little bit of slippage in your execution
against Boston, right, And souse JJ was able to use
the Brooklyn loss last night to just basically rip his
team a new one and essentially like use it as
a motivator to refocus the team. Like it's not a
big deal that they lost to the Nets. It's not
(23:26):
going to be some sort of dramatic issue with where
they're at in the standings. Like, I don't necessarily think
getting any specific seed other than staying out of the
play in matters. I think getting to the getting the
April healthy is really all that matters, and so it's
more important for you to be sharp. And so if
you drop a game against the Nets, that is just
a confluence of events, and you lose against the defending
(23:47):
champions on their home floor, in a game where a
bunch of down two starters and a bunch of other
things don't go your way, it's really nothing to overreact to.
But JJ can package that as a message to put
in front of the Lakers, like, we have to be
better at this stuff, because guess what, if they want
to win the trophy, they do kind of have to
be better at that stuff. And it's just a perfect
excuse to use as a motivator for this team. The
(24:11):
part that I want to keep an eye on, though,
is Luca's shot making, because like, this is the part
that has me most excited about the ultimate potential of
this team. Austin's been out, he'll eventually get it. Back.
That will go a long way towards helping this team.
But we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of
how good the Lakers can be when Luca is Luca.
(24:31):
Here's a crazy stat to demonstrate for you guys, the
gap in shot making ability between this version of Luka
Doncic in the version of Luka Doncic that took the
Dallas Mavericks to the finals last year. In twelve games
with the Lakers, Luca has managed to make at least
ten field goals twice in twelve games. Last year with
(24:53):
the Dallas Mavericks, in seventy games, he made at least
ten shots fifty times fifty of the seventy games. That's
the level of shot making that Luca can still get
to relative to where he's been with the Lakers. That's
where the excitement comes. Do I think the Lakers are
actually the best defense in the NBA? No, they've been
(25:16):
defending like that, but I don't actually think they're the
best defense in the NBA. My guess is they're somewhere
in the five to ten range given the type of
personnel that they have, But they can be so so,
so much better on offense. That is the side of
the floor that they can make dramatic improvements through simplifying
some of their spacing principles. JJ's been talking a lot
(25:38):
about this. I'm not going to get into it today,
but one of our next few Laker videos, I'll do
a deeper dive into just like how spacing is supposed
to work and why JJ's been harping on that so much.
It mostly has to do with putting guys in the
right spots so that you're tilting the offense to get
the kinds of shots you want from the players that
you want. That's basically the main purpose of spacing, right.
(26:00):
There's a lot of improvement that they can still make
on that end, but just Luca getting back to where
he can be as a shot maker while Lebron and
Austin are both healthy and in rhythm, will go a
long way towards lifting this team to a more elite
level on the offensive end of the floor. And that's
why I'm not really concerned. I saw enough in the
Boston game to think that they can beat Boston. I'm
gonna pick Boston. I think everybody should pick Boston against everyone.
(26:24):
They're just the safer bet but I saw enough in
that game from Luca and Lebron attacking the Boston Smalls
to go like, oh, like, I think they can win
that series. When I was scouting the Dallas Boston series
last year, I literally came on the show in my
series preview and said, I think Boston's gonna blow him out.
I didn't see a pathway because of some specific issues
(26:44):
with the matchups and the inability that Dallas had to
create space because of their non shooters on the floor.
They're pour above the break shooters in the way that
they could sit rim protection under the basket. The difference
with the Lakers is when they're healthy and they have
Hatchamura in the lineup and Dorian Finney Smith, they don't
have a single player in that five man grouping that
(27:05):
you can help off of, and so they should be
able to create more space. Lebron and Lucas should be
able to punish the Smalls. Again, it was a loss.
There was a lot of disappointment there, and I think
they played well. Luca looked bad for most of that game.
There's a lot of negatives, but I saw enough out
of that to be like, oh, I think they can
beat Boston. That was an encouraging thing for me. The
Nets game was literally a confluence of events. I'm not
(27:27):
worried about it, but it's a nice opportunity for JJ
to refocus the team, and it's a reminder for you
guys that Luca can still come so so so far
as a shot maker. A brutal from Austin and Luca
last night eleven for forty from the field that they're
not going to shoot like that very often. Steph played
on some really talented teams in the heart of his
(27:47):
prime with the Golden State Warriors, but it's been brutal
over the last five years. In the twenty twenty two
title run, the Warriors had a championship level roster, but
there wasn't much margin for air. Those of you guys
listen to the show at the time, We'll remember none
of their young players were in their rotation. Even I
was advocating for Joe lacub and Bob Myers to cash
(28:08):
them in, to trade them to create more margin for
error in that particular playoff runt. In the short term,
Joe lacob and Bob Myers were proven right because that
team was good enough to win the championship. But the
story in the long run is more complicated. It's become
precarious because none of that young talent ended up being
(28:30):
a foundational, cornerstone type of talent. James Wiseman was a
complete bust, Jonathan Kaminga proved to be super raw, and
guess what now, Jonathan Minga's do a massive payday. And
as soon as you start talking about Jonathan Kaminga as
a thirty plus million dollar player, it becomes a more
complicated discussion for any basketball team. And I like Moses Moody.
(28:50):
I think he's a useful young player, but he's a
role player. And then things got compounded as Andrew Wiggins
failed to ever get back to the level he was
at in twenty twenty two. So the result was a
limited Warriors roster that didn't really accomplish much over the
next two and a half years, and honestly got pretty
sad as you looked around the rest of the league
at the other sets of stars. I used to earlier
(29:12):
in the year, I'd do this in the show. I
would just list out the shop creators on every other
team in the West, and it was crazy, like you know, okay,
see it's Shay and j dub and Chet. If you
go to Denver, it's Jokichen Murray, It's John Morant and
Jaron Jackson. It's Lebron James and Anthony Davis. It's Anthony
Edwards and Julius Randall. It's Kevin Durant and Devin Booker.
It's Darren Fox and demartiros And it's Kyrie Irving and
(29:35):
Luka Donca. Even James Harden had Norm Powell, who was
great while Kawhi was out. Fred van Vliet with the
Houston Rockets had Jalen Green and Opera and Shanggun and
Steph Curry had Andrew Wiggins and Buddy Heel and like, look,
I Andrew Wiggins got to a really high level in
the twenty twenty two season. I thought he was, you know,
he's never been back at that level, but I thought
he was really really good in that in that playoff run.
(29:57):
But like that's a lot to ask. Steph hurried to
overcome and like to make matters even worse. The roster
limitations made them look bad. As they looked bad, everyone
decided they were bad. As everyone decided they were bad,
a lot of people just decided the trade wasn't worth it,
(30:18):
so they passed on Ogan and Obi, and they passed
on Pascal Siaka. And I mean they may not have
been able to afford Mikael Bridges with how expensive it was,
but they just started passing on guys. Even in the
early part of the year, when Jimmy Butler and Zach
Lavine were available. I had been hearing that the Warriors
were not interested in those two, that they were holding
out for Kevin Duran or Lebron James in a trade.
(30:39):
They didn't want to have a flawed star. Why because
they thought they were bad all because of a roster imbalance.
And part of the issue at that point is they
had waited so long that their young players had lost
some value relative to what it was in twenty twenty two.
Johnathan Comingia in twenty twenty two, three years left on
a rookie deal, young raw prospect, has a lot of intrigue.
(31:03):
Trade for Johnathan Comingia when you gotta pay him, it's
a completely different story. It really looked bleak, and you
could see it in Steph's body language at times. He's
one of the great competitors in this league, and he
was losing belief that he'd ever get a chance to
truly compete for a championship again. There was even a
press conference where Steph sounded so dejected and made comments
(31:25):
surrounding the trade deadline that were so like bizarrely defeated
sounding that he had to come out for his next
press conference and remind everybody that he's a competitor that
wants to win a title. But then opportunity knocked. I
don't know if it was the Luca trade that kicked
them into gear or something else, or just their urgency
of the moment, but shortly after the Luca trade it
was announced that there's a lot of intentionality behind Golden
(31:50):
State's pursuit of a star to bring next to Steph.
They end up pulling the trigger on Jimmy Butler, who
had done his part by acting so crazy and playing
so poorly that he had tanked his value down to
where he became a very achievable target for Golden State
without having to give up much more than some salary
filler to pick. One of the main reasons why I
was such a big believer in a Jimmy Butler trade
(32:13):
was that the Warriors were really good in a lot
of areas. I talked a lot in the early part
of the year about how they had a ton of
team speed, which is how they are so excellent defensively.
Another great rotation team. They were top ten defense all year.
Steph had shown signs of his superstar upside in some
high profile games. As a matter of fact, the Warriors
(32:34):
all year, even before the trade, were one of the
best teams in the league against the best teams in
the league. Some signature wins a win in Boston against
the Celtics, two wins against Oklahoma City Thunder. They had
shown some real upside. They also had way more role
player talent than they actually needed. They had fifteen guys
who can play. They just needed someone to take on
(32:56):
the responsibilities of a secondary star, and Jimmy Butler did
that immediately. He fit the offense both with Steph and
without Steph. They got even better defensively, and it shortened
the rotation. It cut down on the number of options
Steve Kerk had. It gave guys more consistent roles. Crystallized
roles for guys like Moses Moody and Brandon Pajemsky have
(33:18):
been great with the starters but most importantly, it awakened
a sleeping giant Steph had been clearly holding something in
reserve as the team was floundering in mediocrity, and the
belief that his team could actually reach the mountaintop unlocked
his ceiling. Since the Jimmy Butler trade in fourteen games,
(33:39):
averaging thirty points per game, fifty forty two ninety two splits,
sixty nine percent true shooting, again, thirty points on sixty
nine percent tru shooting since Jimmy joined the team, his
MVP season was thirty points on sixty seven percent trough shooting.
Like it's insane. They're twelve to two in those games.
They look like a bona fide championship contender. He was
(34:02):
one of the game's greatest players, hiding in playing sight
completely like written off due to one roster weakness, an
imbalance between role player talent and shot creation talent, one
that frankly was obvious to everyone in the world watching
this team over the last couple of years. But they
took care of it. And now we're gonna get to
(34:24):
see what I wanted to see so badly out of
a Jimmy Butler trade. And that's Steph Curry playing in
meaningful basketball games, which I'm very excited for. Volume 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
(34:46):
supporting us, but if you could take a minute to
do that, I'd really appreciate it.
Host
Jason Timpf
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