October 31, 2024 • 48 mins
Jason Timpf reacts to Chet Holmgren and the Oklahoma City Thunder's 105-93 win over Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs. Jason discusses what's wrong with Wemby to start this season, how Chet Holmgren has gotten off to a hot start, and what's next for both teams moving forward. Later, Jason discusses the undefeated start for Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, and the Cleveland Cavaliers before getting into an NBA mailbag. Should Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors pursue a trade to become legitimate NBA Finals contenders?
Timeline:
4:00 - Introduction
5:00 - Spurs-Thunder
25:15 - Cavaliers hot start
42:00 - Mailbag
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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dot co. Slash b Ball. All right, welcome to hoo
(01:54):
tonight here at the Volume. Happy Thursday, everybody. I'll ball
if you guys are having a great week. So bar
got a jpackshow for you today. We're gonna hit the
showdown between Chet Holmgren and Victor Weiman Ya I'm a yesterday,
talk a little bit about the thunder to this point
in the season at large, and then after that we're
gonna do a deep dive into the Cleveland Cavaliers, who
are five and zero have the number one offense in
the NBA in three significant changes to the way they
(02:17):
play compared to last year that we're gonna break down. Then, also,
we have a mail bag at the tail end of
the show, got about a half dozen questions. We're gonna
be hitting some of the other teams around the league.
You guys have the drop before we get started. Subscribed
to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels. You don't miss any
more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter, Underscore Jason Altis,
You guys, don't miss show announcement sont forget about a
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(02:38):
don't forget. It's also helpful for you leave a rating
and a review on that front. And the last, but
not least, keep dropping mail bag questions in those YouTube comments.
I'm gonna try to get to at least one mail
bag a week over the course of the season. We're
going kind of short on today's mail bag just because
I'm in a little bit of a time crunch, but
I'm gonna try to get to a good sized mail
bag at least once a week. All right, Spurs Thunder.
So from the opening, tip Chat and Wenby were going
(03:00):
at it. There was a kind of a set play
where they were trying to get a lob to get
Wemby towards the rim, and Chet just swatted it off
the glass and then turned around and walled up on
Jeremy Sohan at the rim and had a defensive play.
Victor Webby Yama took like a pretty aggressive step back
three over Chet. In a little bit later in the
first half, Chet tried to like throw a lob off
(03:21):
the glass to himself to look for the highlight of
the century on Victor Webbin Yama, which I admire the ambition,
but you know, really Chet just kicked his ass. Wenby
was being aggressive too, but he's just not playing very
well yet to start this year. We're gonna talk a
little bit more about that later. But Oklahoma City was
consistently guarding him with power wings instead of putting Chet
on him, so like Jalen Williams started the game on
(03:43):
him a lot of Alex Caruso when he came off
the bench to like the idea there is, we can't
contest you up high, so why don't we bother you
down low? Right? And there's actually a male bad question
I have today that gets a little deeper into this
concept of attacking the base or attacking the basketball to
try to disrupt rhythm rather than trying to contest shots
up top. And when it comes to Victor in particular,
(04:06):
he's struggling right now because he's a little thin, struggles
to maintain his base, and he hasn't been very strong
with the ball this year. This is something I've talked
about a few times on the show, the idea of
Victor just kind of like losing control of the basketball
by exposing it and people being able to easily knock
it away. This was something that happened a lot to
Dirk Mimitski. If you guys remember in the early part
of his prime, where teams basically were like, instead of
(04:27):
putting centers on this guy or big old power forwards,
why don't we try guarding him with wings and try
to get up underneath him, disrupt his base and attack
the pocket at the pocket right. And if you guys remember,
the way that Dirk became really good at beating that
specific type of defensive strategy was he got really good
at fighting for positions. We could get his catches where
he wanted. He became very strong with the ball. And
(04:49):
again that's where it's like, like I talked about earlier,
instead of exposing the basketball, everything's tight and close to
the chest, two hands on the ball, being very strong
with the basketball to prevent being a and then deadly
over the top shooting. So if you ever got a
little bit of space with a jab, or if the
dude did give him a little bit of space, he
could very quickly get up into a shooting pocket and
(05:09):
get a shot off. And then lastly, leveraging body position
for drives, he would just feel what shoulder you're on,
and he would spin off or he'd do a quick
rip in a certain direction. And so he actually got
very very good at scoring against smaller defenders, and that
was what kind of unlocked that later phase of his
prime where he became one of the most dominant scorers
in the league. And so that's going to be a
(05:30):
coverage that I think Victor is going to deal with
a lot here early on, as teams are testing his
ability to maintain his base and to take care of
the basketball, and he's just going to have to get
so much better at those specific details to counter that.
Chet is just in general so much further along in
his development. The Victor women Yama, the gap between a
twenty year old and a twenty two year old on
(05:51):
the basketball court is probably the largest two year development
gap in the sport. That's when you really start to
grow into your body and become and also it's like
your first experience playing against real pros, that's when you learn,
right Like, Chet has an extra year of NBA strength
and conditioning under his belt, he has an extra year
of working out with pros, like he spent an entire
(06:12):
summer working out with KD. He's just a better basketball
player right now, and that's to be expected. But obviously
Victor has a chance to close that gap. But Chet
kicked his ass yesterday. Because Chet's a better player. Obviously
Oklahoma City is a better team. But at this phase,
like Chet is playing better basketball right now, Victor, there's
all this potential, there's all this upside that he can
get to. And I wouldn't be surprised if by the
(06:34):
end of the season Victor starts to more accurate, accurately
represent you know what we expect from him. This is everyone.
Everyone's capable of having a bad four game stretch, right, Like,
everyone's capable of that, but Chet right now just looks
a little bit older, a little bit more developed, and
I thought that was on display in the game last night.
He's Chet's defending at a preposterously high level right now.
(06:55):
He's averaging five stocks per game. He's being way more
physically aggressive this year, leveraging his athletic gifts, especially in transition.
He runs the floor super super well. Remember that was
how he beat Jokic in the first game of the season,
just by running him up and down the floor. Twenty
seven percent of Chet's points to this point in the
year have come in transition. The Thunder also clearly allowing
(07:20):
him to be more aggressive in their offense. His usage
rate is up five percent from last year, a lot
more opportunity to run action in the half court. He's
running about three pick and rolls, ISOs and post ups
per game including passes this year. That's up about twenty
percent from what he was doing last year. He did
struggle to shoot the ball in the first two games
of the year, but he's six for eight from three
(07:41):
over the course of his last two games. And the
big one is he's doing so much better attacking closeouts.
When he catches on the perimeter and he's got a
bigger guy closing out at him. He's doing such a
nice job of beating that guy off the dribble and
making quick scoring moves. Last year, Check converted spot up
opportunities at one point zero three points per possession. This
(08:02):
year he's doing it at one point five to four
points per possession. Now, obviously won't stay that high, but
he's been so much better at scoring with an advantage
so far this year. Simple moves with simple counters. There
was a couple plays in the Spurs game that I
thought demonstrated this drove right got cut off, kind of
just quickly pivoted over his right shoulder, made a little
(08:24):
short seven footer in the light. Simple concept, right hard
drive to the right, cut me off, I'm gonna make
a counter move. There was another play where he was
going downhill at Zach Collins and Zak Collins was really
on his heels and overplaying Chet's right hand drive, and
so Check just went into a hard spin move and
then right up to the basket with his left hand
and finish. That was something he struggled with last year,
(08:45):
Just quick scoring moves off the dribble that he's doing
really really well to start this year. Remember, spacing is
not just about making threes. It's about off ball scoring.
It's about taking an advantage and turning it into points.
Everyone thinks that that just means knocking down a shot
off to catch. It can mean so many different things
in terms of maintaining your threat off the ball. If
(09:07):
you never take a catch and shoot three, but you
managed to successfully turn every catch at the three point
line into points, somehow, you're still providing spacing because teams
are not going to want to leave you open for
that specific reason. Right. Obviously, it's a combination of all
those different things. But Chet's just doing a really nice
job driving closeouts this year. Now again, this is all
(09:28):
very small sample size. Chet has been playing though so
far this year right around that like kind of top
fifteen level. He's averaging twenty three points in eleven rebounds
on sixty six percent true shooting, with truly elite rim
protection and some real defensive versatility five stocks per game.
With his super low foul rate, he's committing just two
(09:49):
point six fouls per thirty six minutes. He's been one
of the best two way players in the league this year.
Now again, We'll see how it goes over the large sample.
I do think Victor is going to be a better
player and in the long run. But Chet is playing
better basketball to start this year, and he's playing better
basketball not just than Wemby, but then a lot of
players in the NBA that I had ranked above him
(10:11):
coming into the season. I'm really really curious to see
how well he can maintain that, because if he can
maintain that level of play, we're talking about a really
dangerous team and a team that presents some specific issues
to a team like the Boston Celtics if they were
to meet in the NBA Finals. Looking around the rest
of the roster, Chayes off to a rough start this year,
but it's mostly because of his jump shot. He looks
just as quick and dynamic off the bounce as ever,
(10:34):
if not even a bit more so. But he's really
trying to build up this pull up three part of
his game. To give you a basic idea of how
much he's like really trying to add this to his game.
Last year, he took about two and a half pull
up threes per game. This year, he's taken about six
and a half, So he's basically doubling his pull up
three point shot volume, and he's experiencing experiencing some growing
(10:57):
pains as he tries to build that out. I've talked
read this on the show before, but there's a process
to adding something to your game as a basketball player,
and each step of the process comes with a part
where it looks ugly. So, for instance, starts with a
loan in the gym. You're in the gym with a rebounder,
taking step back threes, taking off the dribble threes. Right
at first, it's gonna look ugly, but eventually you're gonna
(11:19):
get really good at it, and you're gonna be like, Okay,
I think I'm ready to try this against the defender.
Then you start working one on ones and you're working
that same step back three or that high hesitation three
going left and right, whatever the combinations you're working on,
and there will be a phase where it looks ugly
against defense because that defender is gonna be disrupting your
rhythm and doing all these little things to make it
harder on you. Right, But eventually you're gonna get really
(11:39):
good at that. Then the next phase is like in practice,
when you're playing five on five and testing it there,
and there's gonna be a phase where it looks ugly because
it's different than what you're used to doing in the
flow of five out five on five games, right, But
eventually you get to the point where you're really good
at it, and then you start trying to leverage it
in actual games. But even then there's usually a phase
at the beginning where it's like, try this new move.
(12:00):
I'm trying this new thing. I'm doing it in games
and it's not working right now, but you have to
stick with it. And I think that's just kind of
part of the process here, Like a lot of guys
for the Spur or for the Thunder are trying to
increase their pull up three point volume. Jalen Williams basically
doubling his pull up three point volume. There's been some
growing pains there, right, Like, that's kind of part of
that journey. I don't really get concerned about it until
(12:23):
you start to enter into that Jason Tatum territory where
it's like, Okay, now we have three consecutive full seasons
of him being pretty bad at pull up jump shooting,
and yet he's still trying. But even then, here we
are this year, albeit very small sample size, but Tatum's
getting one point two to two points per pull up
jump shots so far this year. So if it comes
together and it turns into a reliable thing for him
(12:45):
in the long run, like I would argue even the
three years of him being a bad pull up shooter
were worth it, right, So, like it's all part of
investing in long term skill development. It's clear that that's
what Shay is working on. Jalen Williams, same sort of thing.
He's just eleven for thirty eight on jump shot this year.
By the way, the Thunder as a team are really
struggling to shoot the ball, which we'll get two in
a second, but the Jalen Williams struggling to make jump shots.
(13:08):
He's also doubled his pull up three point shot volume,
and he's not making them right now. But he's been
so good in so many other ways, Like he's rebounding
super well this year. He's averaging six assists per game
here in the early part of the season. I'm not
worried about Jalen in the long run. And again you're four. No,
that's a scary thing about all of this, Like they're
not shooting well and they're four to O, and to me,
it's mostly about shots selection. They're actually shooting over forty
(13:30):
percent on unguarded catch and shoot jump shots and they're
getting one point two to one points per attempt in
those situations, which is great, right, but they have several
guys working on their pull up jump shots, and their
pull up jump shots are not going in right now,
and they're taking a lot of contested catch and shoot
threes that are not going in. They've taken fifty contested
catch and shoot threes this season and they're shooting just
(13:51):
twenty two percent on them. I do think they'll be
fine in the long run. But the real story of
this game, the thing that really stood out to me
just watching this in the Thunder play is just the
gap in young talent. Like the Thunder just have so
many good young players in their system. We talked about
Jaylen Williams, we talked about Chet Holmer, when we talked
about Shay Gills as Alexander right, but like Aaron Wiggins
(14:12):
is like a rock solid three and D wing with
some real off the dribble pop. And again he's another
guy that's not shooting the three well to start the year.
But he's a career thirty nine percent three point shoot.
I'm not worried about it. Kase On Wallace just a
really good ball pressure guard. Like Kayseon Wallace sparked the
run at the end of that Atlanta game. If you
guys remember, Atlanta took a lead on offensive rebound put
back in the early fourth quarter, and then kayse On
(14:32):
Wallace really started to get up in Trey Young's jersey
and forced a couple of back to back turnovers. They
started to get out and transition, and they blew that
game open immediately, in large part because of kayse On
Wallace's ball pressure. He also can shoot the ball extremely well.
He's also a guy that can really score well on
rolls to the rim or cuts to the rim. He
can shoot the ball really well. He's a good screen center.
(14:52):
Like there's so many different things that Kayson Wallace does
really well. Isaiah Joe shoots the seams off the basketball.
Aj Mitchell, the latest rookie for Oklahoma City to look
good in their system, had twelve points and two steals
last night. It's just this like one after the other
of like really good, interesting young players that are coming
up through Oklahoma City system. Meanwhile, you just suppose it
(15:12):
with the Spurs young talent, and there just doesn't seem
to be nearly as many exciting options. Like I like
Devin Vassel. I'm really excited to see what he can
do when he gets back on the floor this year,
but like you know, we'll see, it remains to be seen.
If he has that all star upside. That's probably the
biggest swing factor in the Spurs development over the next
few years. I like Jeremy Sohan as a versatile forward,
and he's putting on some putting up some solid box
(15:34):
score numbers. But I have a hard time figuring out
where Jeremy Sohan fits in a good NBA offense. And
I know that sounds absurd. He's averaging what nineteen points
a game on fifty percent shooting or something like that
this year, but it's in the context of a bad offense.
And that's where it gets tricky, because he really can't shoot,
and he really can't make contested shots around the rim.
So it's hard for me to envision him having like
(15:56):
an easy role in a really good offense. Even if
you're a great, dirty work player that can do all
these different things. Like we've just seen how many times
over the course of NBA history these types of forwards
get completely ignored by good defenses and high leverage situations.
It's still early, we'll see what happens in the long run,
but the context of Jeremy Sohan's scoring right now is
(16:18):
not something that I think fits into a good offense.
And that's something that concerns me. Other young guys like
Trey Jones, he's fine, good player, right, like Keldon Johnson,
good athlete. With him, it's the kind of like feel
for the game stuff that's always bothered me. But like
Malachi Brandam, Julian Champagne, Stefan Castle, who's just struggling to
shoot the ball to start this year. But like, none
(16:39):
of those guys are really popping the way that Oklahoma
City's guys are popping. And that's like directly manifesting and
how easy it is for Oklahoma City to win basketball games.
The offensive end is just so bad for the Spurs.
They have a one zero four offensive rating. Only the
Jazz have been worse. They can't shoot the ball, they're
not a good ball handling team, They're not a good
feel for the game team. Chris Paul hasn't helped the
(17:00):
offense much at all. He just doesn't threaten the defense
enough as a scorer to really get defenses to react
to him. He's not setting up Victor wemen Yama with
the quality opportunities I was hoping he would. The Spurs
have just a one oh one offensive rating with CP
three on the floor. They've actually been better with him
off the floor. So like, I'm just really curious to
see what this all looks like in two to three years,
(17:21):
Like who who among this group does the front office
view as foundational pieces next to Victor wemen Yama. I'm
really curious to see Devin Vessel again is going to
be the big swing factor to see where this team
can get to. And again on the Wemby front, all
about strength and shooting, strength in his base, strength with
the basketball and really working on that. It looks like
he's clearly trying to become a perimeter score. It seems
(17:43):
to be his approach to the game. But right now
he just doesn't shoot the ball well enough. And again,
anybody can play poorly for four games, let's give it
some time. I ranked Victor Wemenyam the eighteenth in my
player rankings before the season, because I obviously view him
substantially better than what he has shown to this point.
But he's just not playing well. And right now, the
Spurs look like a bad basketball team, and I'm curious
to see how that shapes out over the course of
(18:05):
the rest of the season. All right, let's move on
to the Cleveland Cavaliers five and up. To start the year,
the first three games were against some bad teams, so
(18:26):
I was waiting to see what they looked like against
a tougher stretch of their schedule. But then they went
into New York and they beat the Knicks with a
really impressive late third quarter early fourth quarter run. And
then they beat the living shit out of the Lakers
last night. Lakers fans, if you want to hear what
I thought about their side of that game. I have
a couple of thoughts about it that I'm going to
share in the mailbag, So just kind of hang out
towards the end. But there are three main differences that
(18:48):
I'm noticing between this year's Cleveland Cavaliers team and last
year's Cavaliers team. The first one is the obvious one.
They are playing so so so much faster. They're trying
to leverage misses in turnovers into fast break basketball, and again,
it's just a very basic basket on a very basic level,
it's the concept that every you know, how like I
(19:10):
talked about the king of the court concept with my
high school kids and the idea of like how much
more efficient they are scoring the basketball when a defenders
sprinting at them versus one a defenders standing in its
stance in front of them. Like that is a simple
mathematical concept where it's like, we want to try to
avoid as many of these one on one situations with
a set defender as possible, and we want to create
(19:31):
as many opportunities with the defender sprinting at our offensive
players as possible. We want to create as many of
those advantage situations as possible because on a very mathematical level,
we just score more points per opportunity in those situations
than when we're going against the set defense. That same
concept translates to transition basketball. Every NBA team is substantially
more efficient in transition than they are in the half court,
(19:54):
and so every opportunity you have to get out in
transition you need to take advantage of it. Now there's
a personnel ele to it. If you don't have fast players,
you're not going to do a ton of scoring in transition, right,
Like the defense will just beat you back and then
you'll end up inefficient in transition and that will defeat
the purpose. Right. But like, if you have the personnel
to run, you should look to run as much as possible.
(20:15):
And if you are not, you are missing on an
opportunity to build margin within your basketball team. And again,
like this is something that jab bigger staff was just
not capitalizing on. This is a team that should be running.
Jared Allen mobile for a big Evan Mobley, one of
the most mobile bigs in the league, Garland Mitchell. These
guys are fast, they have speed. They should be playing
(20:35):
fast and they just weren't. Here are a couple of
stats to demonstrate just how much of a difference Kenny
Atkinson has made in the transition play for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Last year, they were eighth in pace or excuse me,
last year they were twenty fourth in pace. This year
they're eighth in pace. Last year they were twelve in
fast break points scored. This year they are third in
(20:56):
fast break points scored. Last year, they were seventeenth in
total transition points scored per game. This year they're fifth
in total transition point scored per game. Last year there
were seventh in transition efficiency. This year they are second
in transition efficiency, so top ten across the board and
top five for the most part in every transition offense category,
(21:16):
when they were a middle to below average team in
the pack of NBA teams last year in those categories,
just by simply changing their approach. And again, this is
a concept I've been talking about a ton on this show.
The base level of basketball is half court offense. And
the reason why I focus on that so much is
that when you get to the later phases of the playoffs,
(21:37):
everybody's good, so it's harder to gain margin or to
gain ground on the margins because everybody's well coached, everybody
plays super hard, everybody is sharp and disciplined, and so
then like those half court battles become so much more important.
But in the large sample, when you're playing eighty two games,
and especially when you're looking for opportunities to make quick
work of lesser playoff teams in the early rounds, where
(22:00):
building margin can help, how do you build margin, win
on the specific details that are outside of that half
court basketball. Are you winning in transition on offense? Are
you winning in transition on defense? Like are you getting
back right? Like? Are you generating extra possessions on the
offensive glass? Are you generating transition opportunities and extra possessions
off of turnovers? Like all of these different things that
(22:22):
you can do in the game that build margin, right,
And like this is a classic example of like, this
was a mediocre offense last year. Now they're the number
one offense in the league. And there's another concept we're
going to talk about with Evan Mobley in a minute,
But a big part of that is they're just getting
easier opportunities in transition as much as they possibly can,
which is something that JB. Bickerstaff was just not taking
(22:44):
advantage of two on defense. They are doing a lot
more switching. Kenny Atkinson was an assistant with the Warriors
for a while before this, and Steve Kerr has been
a huge proponent of switching, was one of the original
guys in the league that really leaned into it a lot, right,
So it's not hard to believe why Kenny Atkinson has
kind of taking that ideology into Cleveland. But specifically, what
(23:06):
Steve Kerr is a proponent of is switching containing the
ball with limited help in playing passing lanes instead of overhelping.
Why because, yeah, you're gonna have possessions where you give
up a bucket in a one on one situation. But
if that guy contains the basketball and forces him to
pick up his dribble, then he's got to turn and
start pivoting around and looking for places to throw the
(23:27):
ball when everyone's in a passing lane instead of overhelping.
Those passing reads aren't there. And a lot of times,
especially if the on ball defender starts poking at the
ball and starts pressuring, that guy will rush a pass.
And that is when you're in the passing lane and
you force a turnover and you start to get out
in transition. He has brought that same philosophy. Kenny Atkinson
has brought that same philosophy to the Caves and it's
(23:48):
been a huge boost for them. Last year, they were
forcing the eighteenth most turnovers in the league. This year,
they're forcing the fourth most turnovers in the league, and
they are number one in the entire NBA so far
in points off of turnovers per game, where last year
they were twelve. Again, if you switch and you contain
and you play passing lanes, you start to get deflections
and turnovers. That's when you get out in transition. The
(24:10):
Lakers game was a classic example of this. They forced
six turnovers in the first quarter and scored on every
single one of them, and five of them were threes.
They had seventeen points in a single quarter just off
the strength of their defense, forcing turnovers in running the floor.
Seventeen points. That's a huge boost to any offense. So
(24:32):
one playing in transition as much as possible. Two more
switching which is allowing them to force more turnovers, and
then three much more involvement of Evan Mobley in the offense.
This is a concept we actually talked about when we
talked some calvs. Was it on Monday this week? Yeah,
I think it was on Monday this week. That was
in the Monday show when we did the Stock Rising
(24:53):
Stock Falling, I talked about Evan Mobley's on ball creation.
We did some film in that one as well, but
the general like kind of quick synopsis of it. I
did a real deep dive on it earlier this week,
but The basic concept there is Evan Mobley's being guarded
by Ford, who typically doesn't have to navigate screens, and
guard setting screens. The guard defender is now navigating as
(25:14):
a screen defender, which is something that guards don't typically
need to do. And for the most part, teams are
going to hedge in situations like that. So if they
don't hedge, Evan Mobley can turn the corner because his
man is set. The guard is setting a screen on
the big forward who's not gonna navigate the screen well,
and he's gonna get down. Hell, one of two things
is gonna happen. Either the Ford's gonna die on the
(25:35):
screen now Evan Mobley's going to the rim, or two,
the forward's gonna have to go way under the screen.
Now Evan Mobley can get a runway either to take
a pull up jump shot, which he's making more frequently
this year, or to get ahead of Steam so that
he can get deeper post position for his little short
hook shots and floaters over the top. Right. That's the
first part of it, But the second big part of
it is like getting the defense in rotation, like if
(25:58):
the defender hedges, like in the Knicks game, For instance,
in the early fourth quarter stretch, they were spaming like
a horn set where they were having Merrill set that
inverted screen for Mobili and then popping out to the
three point line. They got a wide open three for
George kniing out of that because Mobley drove on the hedge,
flipped it back to Meryl, rotate, rotate wide open three
(26:18):
to George's kneeing in the corner, and he knocks it down.
And the most important thing here is it gives them
variety that they did not have in the past. It's
leveraging Evan Mobley's strengths, and Evan Mobley has some weaknesses, right,
Like we've talked about this a lot. Scoring on the
role has been a little bit of an issue for
him over the years, and finishing at the rim with
anything that's not a dunk has been an issue. But like,
he's kind of a decent jump shooter. And then two,
(26:38):
he like is pretty good at playmaking off the bouts.
And so you're leveraging those specific gifts with those inverted actions,
and most importantly, it's adding variety to your offense. This
allows Donovan Mitchell to conserve energy that knicks game Evan Mobley.
They ran that action for three four times in a
row to start the quarter. That allowed Devin Donald Mitchell
(27:00):
to basically just spot up on the right side of
the floor. Then when that action started to get controlled
a little bit by the Knicks, then Donovan Mitchell started
hitting the Jets and he had like a lot more burst.
He had this like crazy, just one on one drive
on Michale Bridges where he got all the way to
the rim and laid it up like that makes Donovan
Mitchell's job easier because he doesn't have to do as
much and he could pick his spots more and be
(27:20):
more athletic when he's actually picking his spots. Then all
of a sudden, Darius Garland checks in. Darius Garland on
one of his best games as a pro against the Knicks,
and he just eviscerates the Knicks with a bunch of
downhill burst and over the top shot making and so
like again, that's the beautiful thing. Though offensive variety is
the key to matchup versatility. A lot of teams have
(27:41):
a lot of guards that guard guards well, and then
there are a lot of other teams that have a
lot of excellent front court defenders. It's exceedingly rare for
a team to have elite defenders at every position. And
so when you've got Darius Garland who brings a certain
type of style to the guard position, and Donovan Mitchell
who bring a different type of style to the guard position,
(28:02):
and then Evan Mobley who brings the ability to generate
some offense by getting the defense in rotation and scoring
a little bit for himself. In these inverted actions, you
just add more variety so that you can cater whatever
you're doing to the opponent that you're playing. That is
what gives you that matchup versatility. But so those are
the three main things that are really turning things around
for the Calves this season. They're just playing so much faster.
(28:24):
They're doing more switching, which is allowing them to force
more turnovers, which, by the way, they are leveraging into
more transition scoring. And then three a lot more involvement
of Evan Mobley in the offense. Still early in some
really tough games coming up for the Calves. They play
Orlando next. That's a tough matchup for them because they
do have really good front court defenders and really good
guard defenders, and they have a lot of size to
(28:46):
look to attack the smaller Cleveland perimeter players. That's gonna
be a tough one. Then they go to Milwaukee, and
then they play Milwaukee again at home. I actually like
Cleveland's matchup with Milwaukee because Milwaukee's another team that is
lazy and slow, and so they should just be able
to cook them in transition. I wouldn't be surprised if
they go too to zero in those two games, but
we'll see. Then they go to New Orleans to play
(29:07):
the Pelicans, who've been really struggling to start the year.
Then they played the Golden State Warriors, which will be
another really interesting type of matchup because they do have
Draymond Green to leverage against someone like in Evan Mobley,
but also have the guard defenders to hang with Cleveland's guards.
So we're gonna learn a lot about the Cavs Rosher
over the course of the next five games. All right,
(29:44):
let's move on to our mailbag. I had a bunch
of questions around this kind of theme, but I just
picked one for you guys. What is it with the
all knowing talking head keep insisting that teams have to
trade away a bunch of highly promising players in order
to become competitive. We heard the same thing from endless
(30:06):
sports commentators about the twenty twenty two Warriors. Let's not
forget that the Warriors came within a hair's breadth of
trading Clay for Kevin Love, and that they tried and
failed to trade Steph for Andrew Boget. And now here
you are almost raving about how much better the Warriors
are this season than you expected, but still insisting that
they get rid of several players in exchange for some
magic bullet, even though the season is only four games
old and no one knows just how good this incredibly
(30:29):
deep team will be, or with the ceiling for some
of their younger players who just keep getting better every year,
drives me crazy. But I had dozens of Warriors fans
complaining about the idea that I say that they need
to trade a couple of things. First of all, you're right,
it's only been four games, so I'm not saying they
should trade make a trade right now. I think it's
a deadline deal like that you wait till the deadline,
(30:50):
like I for the exactly because like, here's the thing,
if you get fifty games under your belt and Buddy
healed is like still averaging twenty something points per game
and shooting in the high forties from three, Then maybe
it is that Steve Kerr unlocked Buddy Heeld and there's
your secondary shot creator. Like, let's see, it's only been
four games and he's shooting over fifty percent from three.
I have a hard time believing that's going to stay
(31:11):
that hot throughout the remainder of this season. No one
shoots high volume mid fifties from three, not in the
history of the league, right, So, like there's that element
to it too. You don't know what stars are available yet,
like you gotta wait to see what it is. But
there's a very specific reason why I've been advocating for this.
First of all, this is not the twenty twenty two Warriors.
The twenty twenty two Warriors had Jordan Poole, a better
(31:34):
version of Andrew Wiggins, and Klay Thompson. All three of
those guys are better offensive players than anybody on the
Warriors roster right now not named Steph Kurk. Now, again,
we'll see if Buddy Heel just suddenly transforms into an
all star level guard, then we need to have a
different conversation but now you're leveraging four games of evidence
versus I mean, Buddy's been in the league a decade
(31:55):
or close something like that. So like, let's wait to
see more before we jump on that boat. But there's
a very specific reason why I've been talking about this.
I broke it down for you guys the other day.
But the Warriors, their second and tertiary secondary and tertiary
shock creators are not nearly at the same level as
the West of the rest of the Western Conference. There's
been a very specific thing that has taken place over
(32:16):
the course of this year. They've beaten the shit out
of bad teams. And by the way, the Pelicans they
made a trade where they sent out two high level
role players and Larry Nnts and Dyson Daniels to Atlanta
and they got back to Jonte Murray, an All star
level guard who hasn't played yet this year because he's hurt.
So like the like, they're a team that is in
(32:39):
a crisis of talent at this point. They're nowhere near
as good defensively as they were last year. They were
supposed to get this offensive boost, they haven't gotten it yet.
Like it's a good win. Their quality wins. If you
win down players the way you have against the Pelicans,
Warriors fans should be through the roof of static. I'm
not trying to undercut that, but what I'm saying is
(32:59):
you're not playing that limited version of the Pelicans. When
you get to the postseason, there are better teams out there.
You guys have played one really good defense so far
this year the Clippers, and your offense stalled out and
you lost, Like even when Steph got hurt, you were
down double figures. So like that's kind of the main
thing that I'm getting at here. The Warriors have demonstrated
through the four or five games or whatever they've played,
(33:22):
they they have let they've demonstrated that they have an
extremely high floor and that will beat the injured Pelicans
and the Blazers and the Jazz, and that's gonna beat
the shit out of all the bad teams in the league.
I've said that from the beginning. I am very very
confident in this Warriors team ability to maintain a good
(33:44):
record through just a very strong institutional basketball character and
lots and lots of speed, like we've talked about so much.
Like I think they're gonna win plenty of games. That's
not the issue. But you will play better teams. The
Western Conference is stacked with really good teams, really good defenses.
The Eastern Conference is really good defense. You guys are
gonna play the Celtics here, and I want to say,
(34:06):
like less than a week. So like there's a lot,
there's a lot more to this journey than we've seen
to this point. And all I'm saying is you're uniquely equipped.
You had no Wiggins, no d Anthony Melton, no Steph
and you beat the Pelicans. I didn't watch last night's game,
but I watched the first one of the two, and
I think all three guys were out again for that one.
(34:27):
But like the point is is, like you're you're deep.
You can afford to lose a couple of guys. Jason,
I don't want to trade cominga Moody, Fine, don't trade
comminga Moody. Trade different guys and include draft compensation whatever
it is you want to do. That's fine. But you
have like thirteen rotation players and you have this incredibly
(34:48):
high floor. You have some assets, draft assets that you
can send out in a deal, and right now you
need a more reliable secondary shot creator, if you're gonna
hang with the better teams in the West. Like, I
am super optimistic about this Warriors team in the big
picture because of how high their floor is, but I
don't think they have enough offensive talent to truly hang
(35:08):
with the top teams in the league. So then again,
you got to ask yourself what you want. If what
you want as a team is to be the feisty
young team that plays super hard and wins against all
the bad teams, cool, but then there's not a very
high ceiling there, and like I know, like, guys, this
is not the twenty twenty two Warriors. That's not what
this team is. That the twenty twenty two Warriors had
(35:29):
more firepower than this team. Steph was a better version
of himself, Clay was still playing at a pretty high
level at that point in time. Andrew Wiggins was the best.
It was the best season Andrew Wiggins ever had in
his entire career. Like, there's Jordan Poole got a thirty
million dollar annual deal out of what he did in
that season. So like, let's just be real for a second,
(35:50):
Like this team is very deep, tons of hard working
role players, they're young, they're fast, they're feisty. There's a
lot of good but they've been beating up on some
bad teams. I think if they want to contend, that's
what you got to ask yourself, do you want to contend?
Because if you want to contend, Steph needs a number
(36:12):
two that he can count on night in and night
out to give him twenty plus points without fail efficiently
and in a way that actually fits well with their
core lineup. So the Jonathan kaminga stuff like it a
stretch last year where he scored twenty plus like a
bunch of times in a row. But it's like, do
they trust him on defense? Do they trust him when
Steph is on the floor when they're really running their offense?
(36:34):
Do they trust him not to make stupid decisions? Right? Like,
that's kind of the thing that I'm talking about. I
don't know what that player is. I'm not saying you
make that deal now, it's a deal for February. But
if this team, the exciting thing is you have thirteen
rotation players, you can afford to package three rotation players
and draft compensation to somebody else for a high level
(36:56):
player that will then bring you back a deep team
that has Steph and a legit number two and a
much better chance to contend this year. That's the type
of question you got to ask yourself again, Let's see
what happens. Like, we'll see if guys, I'll be right
there with you if you start beating the shit out
of the good teams too, if you start like if
(37:16):
you beat Boston and you beat Denver and you beat
Oklahoma City, and it's just like, oh my goodness, this
is something special here. Yeah, I'm not going to be
advocating for a trade anymore, but I'm saying I don't
think that's going to happen. This is a really exciting story.
But there are a lot of teams that have a
lot more firepower in the NBA than the Golden State Warriors,
(37:37):
and when they run into them, their offensive limitations I
expect will show just like they did in the Clippers
game earlier this year, which is the one really good
defense that they've played to this point in the season. Hello, Jason,
what do you think might who do you think might
be the next Derek White or PJ Washington that can
help it contender, reach reach the finals, or win a
title in twenty twenty five. This is an interesting question,
(37:59):
and so again we're lon that guys here that are
like good defensive players that can guard multiple positions, but
that are also useful within the context of a team offense.
And the four names that I wrote down, and there's
probably a bunch more of these, I just wanted to
come up with some off the top of my head.
But Bill Bill Alkolabali with Washington had an amazing game
(38:19):
last night, did an incredible job defensively on Trey Young.
That's a that's the type of guy that like legitimately
just does so much dirty work that he just raises
the floor of your team substantially. Ryan Dunn and we
talked a lot about with the Phoenix Suns the other day.
Cassan Wallace is another guy with Oklahoma City, his unique
ability to really guard the ball but also be this
(38:42):
like kind of cog in an offense that can shoot, screen, cut,
finished around the room, all that stuff. And then Dyson
Daniels is another guy who's been doing a really good
job for the Atlanta Hawks. I think all all four
of those guys are guys that I'd keep an eye
on as guys that will play big roles on really
good teams in the future. Lots of Laker related questions.
The this was a question about the I want to
(39:05):
say this was the Cavs game. This game was a
hard watch. Not gonna lie. D Lo kept getting burned
all game. Transition d was embarrassing. No one was boxing
out or grabbing rebounds. I'm trying to give them the
benefit of the doubt because it's a new system, but
we'll see if they can get it together. So really
ugly game for the Lakers last night. I too, am
trying to cut them some slack in the sense that
it was your fourth game, your fourth game in six nights,
(39:27):
you're traveling across the country. It was less than forty
eight hours of rest because they went from a seven
pm game time to a four pm game time in
Pacific time, right, so you're turning around really quickly with travel.
Lebron is old. That's a lot of basketball for an
old guy to play in a short period of time.
And they've been really sharp for the other four games.
(39:49):
So like, I'm trying to cut them some slack too,
but I'm not gonna lie. That was a pretty depressing
performance in Cleveland. It looked like the team from last
year in December where there was like almost like a
lifeless a quality and an unwillingness to fight. But I'm
trying to just crumple that game and throw it away.
And the main reason why is because there literally wasn't
a single Laker who played well. Anthony Davis played like
(40:12):
he's been playing like the best player in the world
for the first four games, played so bad. Yesterday, Jared
Allen whooped his ass. There was this weird play in
the first half where Jared Allen accidentally caught him in
the face with his forearm, and ad just like from
that point forward, just like mentally checked out of the
game like it was crazy. And then Lebron James like
he put up box score numbers, but I thought he
(40:32):
was really bad in this game. Austin Reeves is really
bad in this game. Is throwing the ball away all
over the place. Dangelo Russell once again just not hitting
enough shots to justify the fact that he's getting relentlessly
attacked on defense every single time down the floor. Is
a third straight game where he just got absolutely barbecued.
Ruly had a rough game as well, once again still
trying to dunk on everybody underneath the basket, which isn't working.
(40:54):
There was a lot of stuff with their spacing that
was off the Like everyone was like, oh, Dalton connect,
he had eighteen points. I thot d was awful in
the times when the game was actually within reach. He's
played two really bad games in a row. Everyone played poorly.
There wasn't a single Laker I could point to and
be like, you know, he played well today, and usually
that is Usually you drop a game on the road
and it's like, well, hey, so and so had a
good game. This other dude off the bench played really well. Like, no,
(41:16):
every Laker played poorly, So I'm trying to just crumple
it up and throw it away. Here's the thing, Like,
this is part of the this is part of basketball. Right,
Like the Lakers are not as good as the Boston Celtics,
to be clear, but the Boston Celtics similarly went in Indiana
it yesterday and found themselves down twenty plus, right, Like
that's the NBA is so good and there's so much talent,
(41:36):
and teams are so fast now and they play with
so much pace because all the coaches have figured out
that you want to play with the pace that like
you show up on the road in front of a
Bracus crowd and they're playing hard. It's like a Buzzsot's
really really hard to win those games. And so like
the thing is, though, is Boston can afford, because of
their talent level, to have a certain amount of you know,
(41:56):
lackadaisical performances that pop up from time to time. And
even in that game, they said overtime, they had a
good chance to come back and win that one, right,
But like for the Lakers, you're not as talented. You
have to be super sharp, you have to establish really
good habits throughout the season. So I'm okay with what
happened last night as long as that's few and far between.
Like the personnel limitations on display, like the d LO
(42:17):
just constantly getting attacked. That's a real problem. They're gonna
have to figure that out. We'll talk about that a
little bit more here in a second. But like, as
a matter of fact, I got another question here, what
do you think about Ruey Hachamura's contributions this season? All
last season on the The Lakers Nation preseason podcast, you've
seem really low on RUI. Now, we needed to upgrade
those two wing spots between Austin at the one and
Lebron and ad at the four or five. As Rui's
(42:39):
performance throughout the start the start of the season changed
your mind, I think that they're fine at that position
with the development of Ruiy over the course of this year,
but that two spot desperately needs to be upgraded with
a real athlete that can guard Austin. Reeves can't guard
Donovan Mitchell. It's too much to ask. He needs to
guard a Darius Garland level offensive player. Right you need
(43:02):
a real athlete to put in that specific situation. You
can't have a defender on the floor that every single
time the offense puts them in an action they get
a bucket or a foul out of it. That's what
they're getting with d LO right now. It's a huge problem.
So there are some personnel weaknesses that the Lakers need
to address. But sometimes you just have a shitty night
in the NBA, and I thought that's what happened to
(43:22):
the Lakers last night. The key is they need to
be few and far between. I want to see them
go into Toronto, take care of business. Go into Detroit,
take care of business, Go get a win in Memphis.
No one's going to give a shit that you had
a bad night in Cleveland. It's about that being the
exception and not the normal thing that you're running into.
(43:42):
All Right, two last questions, both from the same guy,
just actually more on a personal level with me. When
you play basketball, what's usually your role on defense or
your point of attack perimeter defender or wing defender, or
you considered a big at six ' six, since there
probably isn't that many big guys. So on my men's
league team, we have a lot of of guys who
played Division one overseas professionally, things along those lines. And
(44:05):
we have a big guy on our team named Aaron
Anderson who played professionally overseas, and he's about my size
and he played big his entire career. So like, fortunately
with that group, I get to leverage more as a
perimeter defender. I am at my best guarding on the
perimeter because I have really long arms and I can
move my feet pretty well. But like typically when I
(44:26):
go play pick up, I almost always have to guard
the big just because like you said, there's just not
that many big guys in the city. And I weigh
two hundred and thirty pounds and so I'm just the
best option to throw at people like that. But like
on defense, like when I was at Arizona Christian my
last year, this is how I stayed in the rotation.
I was a scorer in junior college and average double
figures and had a bunch of twenty plus point games,
(44:49):
and I had a career hide over thirty. But like
that was at a lower level of basketball. And then
I went to play Anaia and I was playing with
two All American guards. I was not good enough to
get action run for me, and all the action was
being run for the guards for good reason. They were
much better basketball players than me, right, or at least
like they were certainly better offensive basketball players than me.
(45:11):
And so the way I stayed in the rotation on
that team was I just became the team's best wing defender.
And so like I just watched a bunch of film
on every single guard that we would be playing in
any particular game and try to figure out their tendencies.
And I just really channeled my abilities in the direction
of perimeter defense, and I was actually able to maintain
a role on that team within that context. That's always
(45:34):
been like I would actually argue when I was in college,
that was the one thing I was really really good at.
Even when I scored a lot of it was like
bad team scoring. Like I could shoot, but I was very,
very streaky. So I'd have games where I shot super
well and scored a bunch of points, and then I
have games where I couldn't make shit right, So like
that was kind of fool's gold in a lot of ways.
I was a limited ball handler and I didn't see
(45:55):
the floor well when I was younger. So like, even
though I had a bunch of big scoring games, a
limited offensive player at that point in time, but I
was big, I was athletic, I could guard. That was
like the one thing I could really do at a
high level when I was in college. Now that I've
gotten older, I'm so much better on the offensive end
of the floor, and I've developed a lot in that way.
But when I was in college, that was the way
that I was deployed. Last one, what's your vertical jump?
(46:19):
So I was two hundred and five pounds when I
was playing in junior college, and I was freaky athletic,
like elbows above the rim, freaky athletic. But then I
had a foot injury. And when the foot injury happened,
I spent the entire rehab doing upper body lifting and
I put on like twenty pounds of muscle. And when
I came back, I was still a very good athlete
and it was worth it because I'm a much better
basketball player because of my strength. But I kind of
(46:41):
lost that like crazy over the rim ability. I'm still
a good athlete still to this day. I can I
can jump and dunk pretty well. But like every once
in a while, I'll see a video of me when
I was younger, before the foot injury, playing and I'm
like holy shit, because I was like I was just
skinny and I had, you know, super long arms, and
(47:01):
I could like just fly in a way that I
couldn't I can't at this point in my life. But
the big thing is I'm thirty three now and like
like I'm about to go play basketball later today, and
like I we'll see how I feel. Like I went
out there on Tuesday, I wasn't feeling great. Like That's
It's always like on any given day, I might feel great,
i might feel absolutely terrible. But that's just kind of
(47:22):
the journey as you as you start to put the
miles on. All right, guys, that is all I have
for today. All of the concepts I talked about today,
I clipped six different clips, but it's just not enough
for TIMPs tape episodes. I'm gonna save that for tomorrow.
So tomorrow we'll do some game breakdowns. We'll do another
TIMPs tape. There's always. I sincerely appreciate you guys for
supporting the show, and I will see you then the volume.
(47:45):
What's up, guys, theres always. I appreciate you for listening
to and supporting OOPS tonight. It would actually be really
helpful for us if you guys would take a second
and leave a rating and a review. As always, I
appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take
a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.
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(01:54):
tonight here at the Volume. Happy Thursday, everybody. I'll ball
if you guys are having a great week. So bar
got a jpackshow for you today. We're gonna hit the
showdown between Chet Holmgren and Victor Weiman Ya I'm a yesterday,
talk a little bit about the thunder to this point
in the season at large, and then after that we're
gonna do a deep dive into the Cleveland Cavaliers, who
are five and zero have the number one offense in
the NBA in three significant changes to the way they
(02:17):
play compared to last year that we're gonna break down. Then, also,
we have a mail bag at the tail end of
the show, got about a half dozen questions. We're gonna
be hitting some of the other teams around the league.
You guys have the drop before we get started. Subscribed
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(02:38):
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not least, keep dropping mail bag questions in those YouTube comments.
I'm gonna try to get to at least one mail
bag a week over the course of the season. We're
going kind of short on today's mail bag just because
I'm in a little bit of a time crunch, but
I'm gonna try to get to a good sized mail
bag at least once a week. All right, Spurs Thunder.
So from the opening, tip Chat and Wenby were going
(03:00):
at it. There was a kind of a set play
where they were trying to get a lob to get
Wemby towards the rim, and Chet just swatted it off
the glass and then turned around and walled up on
Jeremy Sohan at the rim and had a defensive play.
Victor Webby Yama took like a pretty aggressive step back
three over Chet. In a little bit later in the
first half, Chet tried to like throw a lob off
(03:21):
the glass to himself to look for the highlight of
the century on Victor Webbin Yama, which I admire the ambition,
but you know, really Chet just kicked his ass. Wenby
was being aggressive too, but he's just not playing very
well yet to start this year. We're gonna talk a
little bit more about that later. But Oklahoma City was
consistently guarding him with power wings instead of putting Chet
on him, so like Jalen Williams started the game on
(03:43):
him a lot of Alex Caruso when he came off
the bench to like the idea there is, we can't
contest you up high, so why don't we bother you
down low? Right? And there's actually a male bad question
I have today that gets a little deeper into this
concept of attacking the base or attacking the basketball to
try to disrupt rhythm rather than trying to contest shots
up top. And when it comes to Victor in particular,
(04:06):
he's struggling right now because he's a little thin, struggles
to maintain his base, and he hasn't been very strong
with the ball this year. This is something I've talked
about a few times on the show, the idea of
Victor just kind of like losing control of the basketball
by exposing it and people being able to easily knock
it away. This was something that happened a lot to
Dirk Mimitski. If you guys remember in the early part
of his prime, where teams basically were like, instead of
(04:27):
putting centers on this guy or big old power forwards,
why don't we try guarding him with wings and try
to get up underneath him, disrupt his base and attack
the pocket at the pocket right. And if you guys remember,
the way that Dirk became really good at beating that
specific type of defensive strategy was he got really good
at fighting for positions. We could get his catches where
he wanted. He became very strong with the ball. And
(04:49):
again that's where it's like, like I talked about earlier,
instead of exposing the basketball, everything's tight and close to
the chest, two hands on the ball, being very strong
with the basketball to prevent being a and then deadly
over the top shooting. So if you ever got a
little bit of space with a jab, or if the
dude did give him a little bit of space, he
could very quickly get up into a shooting pocket and
(05:09):
get a shot off. And then lastly, leveraging body position
for drives, he would just feel what shoulder you're on,
and he would spin off or he'd do a quick
rip in a certain direction. And so he actually got
very very good at scoring against smaller defenders, and that
was what kind of unlocked that later phase of his
prime where he became one of the most dominant scorers
in the league. And so that's going to be a
(05:30):
coverage that I think Victor is going to deal with
a lot here early on, as teams are testing his
ability to maintain his base and to take care of
the basketball, and he's just going to have to get
so much better at those specific details to counter that.
Chet is just in general so much further along in
his development. The Victor women Yama, the gap between a
twenty year old and a twenty two year old on
(05:51):
the basketball court is probably the largest two year development
gap in the sport. That's when you really start to
grow into your body and become and also it's like
your first experience playing against real pros, that's when you learn,
right Like, Chet has an extra year of NBA strength
and conditioning under his belt, he has an extra year
of working out with pros, like he spent an entire
(06:12):
summer working out with KD. He's just a better basketball
player right now, and that's to be expected. But obviously
Victor has a chance to close that gap. But Chet
kicked his ass yesterday. Because Chet's a better player. Obviously
Oklahoma City is a better team. But at this phase,
like Chet is playing better basketball right now, Victor, there's
all this potential, there's all this upside that he can
get to. And I wouldn't be surprised if by the
(06:34):
end of the season Victor starts to more accurate, accurately
represent you know what we expect from him. This is everyone.
Everyone's capable of having a bad four game stretch, right, Like,
everyone's capable of that, but Chet right now just looks
a little bit older, a little bit more developed, and
I thought that was on display in the game last night.
He's Chet's defending at a preposterously high level right now.
(06:55):
He's averaging five stocks per game. He's being way more
physically aggressive this year, leveraging his athletic gifts, especially in transition.
He runs the floor super super well. Remember that was
how he beat Jokic in the first game of the season,
just by running him up and down the floor. Twenty
seven percent of Chet's points to this point in the
year have come in transition. The Thunder also clearly allowing
(07:20):
him to be more aggressive in their offense. His usage
rate is up five percent from last year, a lot
more opportunity to run action in the half court. He's
running about three pick and rolls, ISOs and post ups
per game including passes this year. That's up about twenty
percent from what he was doing last year. He did
struggle to shoot the ball in the first two games
of the year, but he's six for eight from three
(07:41):
over the course of his last two games. And the
big one is he's doing so much better attacking closeouts.
When he catches on the perimeter and he's got a
bigger guy closing out at him. He's doing such a
nice job of beating that guy off the dribble and
making quick scoring moves. Last year, Check converted spot up
opportunities at one point zero three points per possession. This
(08:02):
year he's doing it at one point five to four
points per possession. Now, obviously won't stay that high, but
he's been so much better at scoring with an advantage
so far this year. Simple moves with simple counters. There
was a couple plays in the Spurs game that I
thought demonstrated this drove right got cut off, kind of
just quickly pivoted over his right shoulder, made a little
(08:24):
short seven footer in the light. Simple concept, right hard
drive to the right, cut me off, I'm gonna make
a counter move. There was another play where he was
going downhill at Zach Collins and Zak Collins was really
on his heels and overplaying Chet's right hand drive, and
so Check just went into a hard spin move and
then right up to the basket with his left hand
and finish. That was something he struggled with last year,
(08:45):
Just quick scoring moves off the dribble that he's doing
really really well to start this year. Remember, spacing is
not just about making threes. It's about off ball scoring.
It's about taking an advantage and turning it into points.
Everyone thinks that that just means knocking down a shot
off to catch. It can mean so many different things
in terms of maintaining your threat off the ball. If
(09:07):
you never take a catch and shoot three, but you
managed to successfully turn every catch at the three point
line into points, somehow, you're still providing spacing because teams
are not going to want to leave you open for
that specific reason. Right. Obviously, it's a combination of all
those different things. But Chet's just doing a really nice
job driving closeouts this year. Now again, this is all
(09:28):
very small sample size. Chet has been playing though so
far this year right around that like kind of top
fifteen level. He's averaging twenty three points in eleven rebounds
on sixty six percent true shooting, with truly elite rim
protection and some real defensive versatility five stocks per game.
With his super low foul rate, he's committing just two
(09:49):
point six fouls per thirty six minutes. He's been one
of the best two way players in the league this year.
Now again, We'll see how it goes over the large sample.
I do think Victor is going to be a better
player and in the long run. But Chet is playing
better basketball to start this year, and he's playing better
basketball not just than Wemby, but then a lot of
players in the NBA that I had ranked above him
(10:11):
coming into the season. I'm really really curious to see
how well he can maintain that, because if he can
maintain that level of play, we're talking about a really
dangerous team and a team that presents some specific issues
to a team like the Boston Celtics if they were
to meet in the NBA Finals. Looking around the rest
of the roster, Chayes off to a rough start this year,
but it's mostly because of his jump shot. He looks
just as quick and dynamic off the bounce as ever,
(10:34):
if not even a bit more so. But he's really
trying to build up this pull up three part of
his game. To give you a basic idea of how
much he's like really trying to add this to his game.
Last year, he took about two and a half pull
up threes per game. This year, he's taken about six
and a half, So he's basically doubling his pull up
three point shot volume, and he's experiencing experiencing some growing
(10:57):
pains as he tries to build that out. I've talked
read this on the show before, but there's a process
to adding something to your game as a basketball player,
and each step of the process comes with a part
where it looks ugly. So, for instance, starts with a
loan in the gym. You're in the gym with a rebounder,
taking step back threes, taking off the dribble threes. Right
at first, it's gonna look ugly, but eventually you're gonna
(11:19):
get really good at it, and you're gonna be like, Okay,
I think I'm ready to try this against the defender.
Then you start working one on ones and you're working
that same step back three or that high hesitation three
going left and right, whatever the combinations you're working on,
and there will be a phase where it looks ugly
against defense because that defender is gonna be disrupting your
rhythm and doing all these little things to make it
harder on you. Right, But eventually you're gonna get really
(11:39):
good at that. Then the next phase is like in practice,
when you're playing five on five and testing it there,
and there's gonna be a phase where it looks ugly because
it's different than what you're used to doing in the
flow of five out five on five games, right, But
eventually you get to the point where you're really good
at it, and then you start trying to leverage it
in actual games. But even then there's usually a phase
at the beginning where it's like, try this new move.
(12:00):
I'm trying this new thing. I'm doing it in games
and it's not working right now, but you have to
stick with it. And I think that's just kind of
part of the process here, Like a lot of guys
for the Spur or for the Thunder are trying to
increase their pull up three point volume. Jalen Williams basically
doubling his pull up three point volume. There's been some
growing pains there, right, Like, that's kind of part of
that journey. I don't really get concerned about it until
(12:23):
you start to enter into that Jason Tatum territory where
it's like, Okay, now we have three consecutive full seasons
of him being pretty bad at pull up jump shooting,
and yet he's still trying. But even then, here we
are this year, albeit very small sample size, but Tatum's
getting one point two to two points per pull up
jump shots so far this year. So if it comes
together and it turns into a reliable thing for him
(12:45):
in the long run, like I would argue even the
three years of him being a bad pull up shooter
were worth it, right, So, like it's all part of
investing in long term skill development. It's clear that that's
what Shay is working on. Jalen Williams, same sort of thing.
He's just eleven for thirty eight on jump shot this year.
By the way, the Thunder as a team are really
struggling to shoot the ball, which we'll get two in
a second, but the Jalen Williams struggling to make jump shots.
(13:08):
He's also doubled his pull up three point shot volume,
and he's not making them right now. But he's been
so good in so many other ways, Like he's rebounding
super well this year. He's averaging six assists per game
here in the early part of the season. I'm not
worried about Jalen in the long run. And again you're four. No,
that's a scary thing about all of this, Like they're
not shooting well and they're four to O, and to me,
it's mostly about shots selection. They're actually shooting over forty
(13:30):
percent on unguarded catch and shoot jump shots and they're
getting one point two to one points per attempt in
those situations, which is great, right, but they have several
guys working on their pull up jump shots, and their
pull up jump shots are not going in right now,
and they're taking a lot of contested catch and shoot
threes that are not going in. They've taken fifty contested
catch and shoot threes this season and they're shooting just
(13:51):
twenty two percent on them. I do think they'll be
fine in the long run. But the real story of
this game, the thing that really stood out to me
just watching this in the Thunder play is just the
gap in young talent. Like the Thunder just have so
many good young players in their system. We talked about
Jaylen Williams, we talked about Chet Holmer, when we talked
about Shay Gills as Alexander right, but like Aaron Wiggins
(14:12):
is like a rock solid three and D wing with
some real off the dribble pop. And again he's another
guy that's not shooting the three well to start the year.
But he's a career thirty nine percent three point shoot.
I'm not worried about it. Kase On Wallace just a
really good ball pressure guard. Like Kayseon Wallace sparked the
run at the end of that Atlanta game. If you
guys remember, Atlanta took a lead on offensive rebound put
back in the early fourth quarter, and then kayse On
(14:32):
Wallace really started to get up in Trey Young's jersey
and forced a couple of back to back turnovers. They
started to get out and transition, and they blew that
game open immediately, in large part because of kayse On
Wallace's ball pressure. He also can shoot the ball extremely well.
He's also a guy that can really score well on
rolls to the rim or cuts to the rim. He
can shoot the ball really well. He's a good screen center.
(14:52):
Like there's so many different things that Kayson Wallace does
really well. Isaiah Joe shoots the seams off the basketball.
Aj Mitchell, the latest rookie for Oklahoma City to look
good in their system, had twelve points and two steals
last night. It's just this like one after the other
of like really good, interesting young players that are coming
up through Oklahoma City system. Meanwhile, you just suppose it
(15:12):
with the Spurs young talent, and there just doesn't seem
to be nearly as many exciting options. Like I like
Devin Vassel. I'm really excited to see what he can
do when he gets back on the floor this year,
but like you know, we'll see, it remains to be seen.
If he has that all star upside. That's probably the
biggest swing factor in the Spurs development over the next
few years. I like Jeremy Sohan as a versatile forward,
and he's putting on some putting up some solid box
(15:34):
score numbers. But I have a hard time figuring out
where Jeremy Sohan fits in a good NBA offense. And
I know that sounds absurd. He's averaging what nineteen points
a game on fifty percent shooting or something like that
this year, but it's in the context of a bad offense.
And that's where it gets tricky, because he really can't shoot,
and he really can't make contested shots around the rim.
So it's hard for me to envision him having like
(15:56):
an easy role in a really good offense. Even if
you're a great, dirty work player that can do all
these different things. Like we've just seen how many times
over the course of NBA history these types of forwards
get completely ignored by good defenses and high leverage situations.
It's still early, we'll see what happens in the long run,
but the context of Jeremy Sohan's scoring right now is
(16:18):
not something that I think fits into a good offense.
And that's something that concerns me. Other young guys like
Trey Jones, he's fine, good player, right, like Keldon Johnson,
good athlete. With him, it's the kind of like feel
for the game stuff that's always bothered me. But like
Malachi Brandam, Julian Champagne, Stefan Castle, who's just struggling to
shoot the ball to start this year. But like, none
(16:39):
of those guys are really popping the way that Oklahoma
City's guys are popping. And that's like directly manifesting and
how easy it is for Oklahoma City to win basketball games.
The offensive end is just so bad for the Spurs.
They have a one zero four offensive rating. Only the
Jazz have been worse. They can't shoot the ball, they're
not a good ball handling team, They're not a good
feel for the game team. Chris Paul hasn't helped the
(17:00):
offense much at all. He just doesn't threaten the defense
enough as a scorer to really get defenses to react
to him. He's not setting up Victor wemen Yama with
the quality opportunities I was hoping he would. The Spurs
have just a one oh one offensive rating with CP
three on the floor. They've actually been better with him
off the floor. So like, I'm just really curious to
see what this all looks like in two to three years,
(17:21):
Like who who among this group does the front office
view as foundational pieces next to Victor wemen Yama. I'm
really curious to see Devin Vessel again is going to
be the big swing factor to see where this team
can get to. And again on the Wemby front, all
about strength and shooting, strength in his base, strength with
the basketball and really working on that. It looks like
he's clearly trying to become a perimeter score. It seems
(17:43):
to be his approach to the game. But right now
he just doesn't shoot the ball well enough. And again,
anybody can play poorly for four games, let's give it
some time. I ranked Victor Wemenyam the eighteenth in my
player rankings before the season, because I obviously view him
substantially better than what he has shown to this point.
But he's just not playing well. And right now, the
Spurs look like a bad basketball team, and I'm curious
to see how that shapes out over the course of
(18:05):
the rest of the season. All right, let's move on
to the Cleveland Cavaliers five and up. To start the year,
the first three games were against some bad teams, so
(18:26):
I was waiting to see what they looked like against
a tougher stretch of their schedule. But then they went
into New York and they beat the Knicks with a
really impressive late third quarter early fourth quarter run. And
then they beat the living shit out of the Lakers
last night. Lakers fans, if you want to hear what
I thought about their side of that game. I have
a couple of thoughts about it that I'm going to
share in the mailbag, So just kind of hang out
towards the end. But there are three main differences that
(18:48):
I'm noticing between this year's Cleveland Cavaliers team and last
year's Cavaliers team. The first one is the obvious one.
They are playing so so so much faster. They're trying
to leverage misses in turnovers into fast break basketball, and again,
it's just a very basic basket on a very basic level,
it's the concept that every you know, how like I
(19:10):
talked about the king of the court concept with my
high school kids and the idea of like how much
more efficient they are scoring the basketball when a defenders
sprinting at them versus one a defenders standing in its
stance in front of them. Like that is a simple
mathematical concept where it's like, we want to try to
avoid as many of these one on one situations with
a set defender as possible, and we want to create
(19:31):
as many opportunities with the defender sprinting at our offensive
players as possible. We want to create as many of
those advantage situations as possible because on a very mathematical level,
we just score more points per opportunity in those situations
than when we're going against the set defense. That same
concept translates to transition basketball. Every NBA team is substantially
more efficient in transition than they are in the half court,
(19:54):
and so every opportunity you have to get out in
transition you need to take advantage of it. Now there's
a personnel ele to it. If you don't have fast players,
you're not going to do a ton of scoring in transition, right,
Like the defense will just beat you back and then
you'll end up inefficient in transition and that will defeat
the purpose. Right. But like, if you have the personnel
to run, you should look to run as much as possible.
(20:15):
And if you are not, you are missing on an
opportunity to build margin within your basketball team. And again,
like this is something that jab bigger staff was just
not capitalizing on. This is a team that should be running.
Jared Allen mobile for a big Evan Mobley, one of
the most mobile bigs in the league, Garland Mitchell. These
guys are fast, they have speed. They should be playing
(20:35):
fast and they just weren't. Here are a couple of
stats to demonstrate just how much of a difference Kenny
Atkinson has made in the transition play for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Last year, they were eighth in pace or excuse me,
last year they were twenty fourth in pace. This year
they're eighth in pace. Last year they were twelve in
fast break points scored. This year they are third in
(20:56):
fast break points scored. Last year, they were seventeenth in
total transition points scored per game. This year they're fifth
in total transition point scored per game. Last year there
were seventh in transition efficiency. This year they are second
in transition efficiency, so top ten across the board and
top five for the most part in every transition offense category,
(21:16):
when they were a middle to below average team in
the pack of NBA teams last year in those categories,
just by simply changing their approach. And again, this is
a concept I've been talking about a ton on this show.
The base level of basketball is half court offense. And
the reason why I focus on that so much is
that when you get to the later phases of the playoffs,
(21:37):
everybody's good, so it's harder to gain margin or to
gain ground on the margins because everybody's well coached, everybody
plays super hard, everybody is sharp and disciplined, and so
then like those half court battles become so much more important.
But in the large sample, when you're playing eighty two games,
and especially when you're looking for opportunities to make quick
work of lesser playoff teams in the early rounds, where
(22:00):
building margin can help, how do you build margin, win
on the specific details that are outside of that half
court basketball. Are you winning in transition on offense? Are
you winning in transition on defense? Like are you getting
back right? Like? Are you generating extra possessions on the
offensive glass? Are you generating transition opportunities and extra possessions
off of turnovers? Like all of these different things that
(22:22):
you can do in the game that build margin, right,
And like this is a classic example of like, this
was a mediocre offense last year. Now they're the number
one offense in the league. And there's another concept we're
going to talk about with Evan Mobley in a minute,
But a big part of that is they're just getting
easier opportunities in transition as much as they possibly can,
which is something that JB. Bickerstaff was just not taking
(22:44):
advantage of two on defense. They are doing a lot
more switching. Kenny Atkinson was an assistant with the Warriors
for a while before this, and Steve Kerr has been
a huge proponent of switching, was one of the original
guys in the league that really leaned into it a lot, right,
So it's not hard to believe why Kenny Atkinson has
kind of taking that ideology into Cleveland. But specifically, what
(23:06):
Steve Kerr is a proponent of is switching containing the
ball with limited help in playing passing lanes instead of overhelping.
Why because, yeah, you're gonna have possessions where you give
up a bucket in a one on one situation. But
if that guy contains the basketball and forces him to
pick up his dribble, then he's got to turn and
start pivoting around and looking for places to throw the
(23:27):
ball when everyone's in a passing lane instead of overhelping.
Those passing reads aren't there. And a lot of times,
especially if the on ball defender starts poking at the
ball and starts pressuring, that guy will rush a pass.
And that is when you're in the passing lane and
you force a turnover and you start to get out
in transition. He has brought that same philosophy. Kenny Atkinson
has brought that same philosophy to the Caves and it's
(23:48):
been a huge boost for them. Last year, they were
forcing the eighteenth most turnovers in the league. This year,
they're forcing the fourth most turnovers in the league, and
they are number one in the entire NBA so far
in points off of turnovers per game, where last year
they were twelve. Again, if you switch and you contain
and you play passing lanes, you start to get deflections
and turnovers. That's when you get out in transition. The
(24:10):
Lakers game was a classic example of this. They forced
six turnovers in the first quarter and scored on every
single one of them, and five of them were threes.
They had seventeen points in a single quarter just off
the strength of their defense, forcing turnovers in running the floor.
Seventeen points. That's a huge boost to any offense. So
(24:32):
one playing in transition as much as possible. Two more
switching which is allowing them to force more turnovers, and
then three much more involvement of Evan Mobley in the offense.
This is a concept we actually talked about when we
talked some calvs. Was it on Monday this week? Yeah,
I think it was on Monday this week. That was
in the Monday show when we did the Stock Rising
(24:53):
Stock Falling, I talked about Evan Mobley's on ball creation.
We did some film in that one as well, but
the general like kind of quick synopsis of it. I
did a real deep dive on it earlier this week,
but The basic concept there is Evan Mobley's being guarded
by Ford, who typically doesn't have to navigate screens, and
guard setting screens. The guard defender is now navigating as
(25:14):
a screen defender, which is something that guards don't typically
need to do. And for the most part, teams are
going to hedge in situations like that. So if they
don't hedge, Evan Mobley can turn the corner because his
man is set. The guard is setting a screen on
the big forward who's not gonna navigate the screen well,
and he's gonna get down. Hell, one of two things
is gonna happen. Either the Ford's gonna die on the
(25:35):
screen now Evan Mobley's going to the rim, or two,
the forward's gonna have to go way under the screen.
Now Evan Mobley can get a runway either to take
a pull up jump shot, which he's making more frequently
this year, or to get ahead of Steam so that
he can get deeper post position for his little short
hook shots and floaters over the top. Right. That's the
first part of it, But the second big part of
it is like getting the defense in rotation, like if
(25:58):
the defender hedges, like in the Knicks game, For instance,
in the early fourth quarter stretch, they were spaming like
a horn set where they were having Merrill set that
inverted screen for Mobili and then popping out to the
three point line. They got a wide open three for
George kniing out of that because Mobley drove on the hedge,
flipped it back to Meryl, rotate, rotate wide open three
(26:18):
to George's kneeing in the corner, and he knocks it down.
And the most important thing here is it gives them
variety that they did not have in the past. It's
leveraging Evan Mobley's strengths, and Evan Mobley has some weaknesses, right,
Like we've talked about this a lot. Scoring on the
role has been a little bit of an issue for
him over the years, and finishing at the rim with
anything that's not a dunk has been an issue. But like,
he's kind of a decent jump shooter. And then two,
(26:38):
he like is pretty good at playmaking off the bouts.
And so you're leveraging those specific gifts with those inverted actions,
and most importantly, it's adding variety to your offense. This
allows Donovan Mitchell to conserve energy that knicks game Evan Mobley.
They ran that action for three four times in a
row to start the quarter. That allowed Devin Donald Mitchell
(27:00):
to basically just spot up on the right side of
the floor. Then when that action started to get controlled
a little bit by the Knicks, then Donovan Mitchell started
hitting the Jets and he had like a lot more burst.
He had this like crazy, just one on one drive
on Michale Bridges where he got all the way to
the rim and laid it up like that makes Donovan
Mitchell's job easier because he doesn't have to do as
much and he could pick his spots more and be
(27:20):
more athletic when he's actually picking his spots. Then all
of a sudden, Darius Garland checks in. Darius Garland on
one of his best games as a pro against the Knicks,
and he just eviscerates the Knicks with a bunch of
downhill burst and over the top shot making and so
like again, that's the beautiful thing. Though offensive variety is
the key to matchup versatility. A lot of teams have
(27:41):
a lot of guards that guard guards well, and then
there are a lot of other teams that have a
lot of excellent front court defenders. It's exceedingly rare for
a team to have elite defenders at every position. And
so when you've got Darius Garland who brings a certain
type of style to the guard position, and Donovan Mitchell
who bring a different type of style to the guard position,
(28:02):
and then Evan Mobley who brings the ability to generate
some offense by getting the defense in rotation and scoring
a little bit for himself. In these inverted actions, you
just add more variety so that you can cater whatever
you're doing to the opponent that you're playing. That is
what gives you that matchup versatility. But so those are
the three main things that are really turning things around
for the Calves this season. They're just playing so much faster.
(28:24):
They're doing more switching, which is allowing them to force
more turnovers, which, by the way, they are leveraging into
more transition scoring. And then three a lot more involvement
of Evan Mobley in the offense. Still early in some
really tough games coming up for the Calves. They play
Orlando next. That's a tough matchup for them because they
do have really good front court defenders and really good
guard defenders, and they have a lot of size to
(28:46):
look to attack the smaller Cleveland perimeter players. That's gonna
be a tough one. Then they go to Milwaukee, and
then they play Milwaukee again at home. I actually like
Cleveland's matchup with Milwaukee because Milwaukee's another team that is
lazy and slow, and so they should just be able
to cook them in transition. I wouldn't be surprised if
they go too to zero in those two games, but
we'll see. Then they go to New Orleans to play
(29:07):
the Pelicans, who've been really struggling to start the year.
Then they played the Golden State Warriors, which will be
another really interesting type of matchup because they do have
Draymond Green to leverage against someone like in Evan Mobley,
but also have the guard defenders to hang with Cleveland's guards.
So we're gonna learn a lot about the Cavs Rosher
over the course of the next five games. All right,
(29:44):
let's move on to our mailbag. I had a bunch
of questions around this kind of theme, but I just
picked one for you guys. What is it with the
all knowing talking head keep insisting that teams have to
trade away a bunch of highly promising players in order
to become competitive. We heard the same thing from endless
(30:06):
sports commentators about the twenty twenty two Warriors. Let's not
forget that the Warriors came within a hair's breadth of
trading Clay for Kevin Love, and that they tried and
failed to trade Steph for Andrew Boget. And now here
you are almost raving about how much better the Warriors
are this season than you expected, but still insisting that
they get rid of several players in exchange for some
magic bullet, even though the season is only four games
old and no one knows just how good this incredibly
(30:29):
deep team will be, or with the ceiling for some
of their younger players who just keep getting better every year,
drives me crazy. But I had dozens of Warriors fans
complaining about the idea that I say that they need
to trade a couple of things. First of all, you're right,
it's only been four games, so I'm not saying they
should trade make a trade right now. I think it's
a deadline deal like that you wait till the deadline,
(30:50):
like I for the exactly because like, here's the thing,
if you get fifty games under your belt and Buddy
healed is like still averaging twenty something points per game
and shooting in the high forties from three, Then maybe
it is that Steve Kerr unlocked Buddy Heeld and there's
your secondary shot creator. Like, let's see, it's only been
four games and he's shooting over fifty percent from three.
I have a hard time believing that's going to stay
(31:11):
that hot throughout the remainder of this season. No one
shoots high volume mid fifties from three, not in the
history of the league, right, So, like there's that element
to it too. You don't know what stars are available yet,
like you gotta wait to see what it is. But
there's a very specific reason why I've been advocating for this.
First of all, this is not the twenty twenty two Warriors.
The twenty twenty two Warriors had Jordan Poole, a better
(31:34):
version of Andrew Wiggins, and Klay Thompson. All three of
those guys are better offensive players than anybody on the
Warriors roster right now not named Steph Kurk. Now, again,
we'll see if Buddy Heel just suddenly transforms into an
all star level guard, then we need to have a
different conversation but now you're leveraging four games of evidence
versus I mean, Buddy's been in the league a decade
(31:55):
or close something like that. So like, let's wait to
see more before we jump on that boat. But there's
a very specific reason why I've been talking about this.
I broke it down for you guys the other day.
But the Warriors, their second and tertiary secondary and tertiary
shock creators are not nearly at the same level as
the West of the rest of the Western Conference. There's
been a very specific thing that has taken place over
(32:16):
the course of this year. They've beaten the shit out
of bad teams. And by the way, the Pelicans they
made a trade where they sent out two high level
role players and Larry Nnts and Dyson Daniels to Atlanta
and they got back to Jonte Murray, an All star
level guard who hasn't played yet this year because he's hurt.
So like the like, they're a team that is in
(32:39):
a crisis of talent at this point. They're nowhere near
as good defensively as they were last year. They were
supposed to get this offensive boost, they haven't gotten it yet.
Like it's a good win. Their quality wins. If you
win down players the way you have against the Pelicans,
Warriors fans should be through the roof of static. I'm
not trying to undercut that, but what I'm saying is
(32:59):
you're not playing that limited version of the Pelicans. When
you get to the postseason, there are better teams out there.
You guys have played one really good defense so far
this year the Clippers, and your offense stalled out and
you lost, Like even when Steph got hurt, you were
down double figures. So like that's kind of the main
thing that I'm getting at here. The Warriors have demonstrated
through the four or five games or whatever they've played,
(33:22):
they they have let they've demonstrated that they have an
extremely high floor and that will beat the injured Pelicans
and the Blazers and the Jazz, and that's gonna beat
the shit out of all the bad teams in the league.
I've said that from the beginning. I am very very
confident in this Warriors team ability to maintain a good
(33:44):
record through just a very strong institutional basketball character and
lots and lots of speed, like we've talked about so much.
Like I think they're gonna win plenty of games. That's
not the issue. But you will play better teams. The
Western Conference is stacked with really good teams, really good defenses.
The Eastern Conference is really good defense. You guys are
gonna play the Celtics here, and I want to say,
(34:06):
like less than a week. So like there's a lot,
there's a lot more to this journey than we've seen
to this point. And all I'm saying is you're uniquely equipped.
You had no Wiggins, no d Anthony Melton, no Steph
and you beat the Pelicans. I didn't watch last night's game,
but I watched the first one of the two, and
I think all three guys were out again for that one.
(34:27):
But like the point is is, like you're you're deep.
You can afford to lose a couple of guys. Jason,
I don't want to trade cominga Moody, Fine, don't trade
comminga Moody. Trade different guys and include draft compensation whatever
it is you want to do. That's fine. But you
have like thirteen rotation players and you have this incredibly
(34:48):
high floor. You have some assets, draft assets that you
can send out in a deal, and right now you
need a more reliable secondary shot creator, if you're gonna
hang with the better teams in the West. Like, I
am super optimistic about this Warriors team in the big
picture because of how high their floor is, but I
don't think they have enough offensive talent to truly hang
(35:08):
with the top teams in the league. So then again,
you got to ask yourself what you want. If what
you want as a team is to be the feisty
young team that plays super hard and wins against all
the bad teams, cool, but then there's not a very
high ceiling there, and like I know, like, guys, this
is not the twenty twenty two Warriors. That's not what
this team is. That the twenty twenty two Warriors had
(35:29):
more firepower than this team. Steph was a better version
of himself, Clay was still playing at a pretty high
level at that point in time. Andrew Wiggins was the best.
It was the best season Andrew Wiggins ever had in
his entire career. Like, there's Jordan Poole got a thirty
million dollar annual deal out of what he did in
that season. So like, let's just be real for a second,
(35:50):
Like this team is very deep, tons of hard working
role players, they're young, they're fast, they're feisty. There's a
lot of good but they've been beating up on some
bad teams. I think if they want to contend, that's
what you got to ask yourself, do you want to contend?
Because if you want to contend, Steph needs a number
(36:12):
two that he can count on night in and night
out to give him twenty plus points without fail efficiently
and in a way that actually fits well with their
core lineup. So the Jonathan kaminga stuff like it a
stretch last year where he scored twenty plus like a
bunch of times in a row. But it's like, do
they trust him on defense? Do they trust him when
Steph is on the floor when they're really running their offense?
(36:34):
Do they trust him not to make stupid decisions? Right? Like,
that's kind of the thing that I'm talking about. I
don't know what that player is. I'm not saying you
make that deal now, it's a deal for February. But
if this team, the exciting thing is you have thirteen
rotation players, you can afford to package three rotation players
and draft compensation to somebody else for a high level
(36:56):
player that will then bring you back a deep team
that has Steph and a legit number two and a
much better chance to contend this year. That's the type
of question you got to ask yourself again, Let's see
what happens. Like, we'll see if guys, I'll be right
there with you if you start beating the shit out
of the good teams too, if you start like if
(37:16):
you beat Boston and you beat Denver and you beat
Oklahoma City, and it's just like, oh my goodness, this
is something special here. Yeah, I'm not going to be
advocating for a trade anymore, but I'm saying I don't
think that's going to happen. This is a really exciting story.
But there are a lot of teams that have a
lot more firepower in the NBA than the Golden State Warriors,
(37:37):
and when they run into them, their offensive limitations I
expect will show just like they did in the Clippers
game earlier this year, which is the one really good
defense that they've played to this point in the season. Hello, Jason,
what do you think might who do you think might
be the next Derek White or PJ Washington that can
help it contender, reach reach the finals, or win a
title in twenty twenty five. This is an interesting question,
(37:59):
and so again we're lon that guys here that are
like good defensive players that can guard multiple positions, but
that are also useful within the context of a team offense.
And the four names that I wrote down, and there's
probably a bunch more of these, I just wanted to
come up with some off the top of my head.
But Bill Bill Alkolabali with Washington had an amazing game
(38:19):
last night, did an incredible job defensively on Trey Young.
That's a that's the type of guy that like legitimately
just does so much dirty work that he just raises
the floor of your team substantially. Ryan Dunn and we
talked a lot about with the Phoenix Suns the other day.
Cassan Wallace is another guy with Oklahoma City, his unique
ability to really guard the ball but also be this
(38:42):
like kind of cog in an offense that can shoot, screen, cut,
finished around the room, all that stuff. And then Dyson
Daniels is another guy who's been doing a really good
job for the Atlanta Hawks. I think all all four
of those guys are guys that I'd keep an eye
on as guys that will play big roles on really
good teams in the future. Lots of Laker related questions.
The this was a question about the I want to
(39:05):
say this was the Cavs game. This game was a
hard watch. Not gonna lie. D Lo kept getting burned
all game. Transition d was embarrassing. No one was boxing
out or grabbing rebounds. I'm trying to give them the
benefit of the doubt because it's a new system, but
we'll see if they can get it together. So really
ugly game for the Lakers last night. I too, am
trying to cut them some slack in the sense that
it was your fourth game, your fourth game in six nights,
(39:27):
you're traveling across the country. It was less than forty
eight hours of rest because they went from a seven
pm game time to a four pm game time in
Pacific time, right, so you're turning around really quickly with travel.
Lebron is old. That's a lot of basketball for an
old guy to play in a short period of time.
And they've been really sharp for the other four games.
(39:49):
So like, I'm trying to cut them some slack too,
but I'm not gonna lie. That was a pretty depressing
performance in Cleveland. It looked like the team from last
year in December where there was like almost like a
lifeless a quality and an unwillingness to fight. But I'm
trying to just crumple that game and throw it away.
And the main reason why is because there literally wasn't
a single Laker who played well. Anthony Davis played like
(40:12):
he's been playing like the best player in the world
for the first four games, played so bad. Yesterday, Jared
Allen whooped his ass. There was this weird play in
the first half where Jared Allen accidentally caught him in
the face with his forearm, and ad just like from
that point forward, just like mentally checked out of the
game like it was crazy. And then Lebron James like
he put up box score numbers, but I thought he
(40:32):
was really bad in this game. Austin Reeves is really
bad in this game. Is throwing the ball away all
over the place. Dangelo Russell once again just not hitting
enough shots to justify the fact that he's getting relentlessly
attacked on defense every single time down the floor. Is
a third straight game where he just got absolutely barbecued.
Ruly had a rough game as well, once again still
trying to dunk on everybody underneath the basket, which isn't working.
(40:54):
There was a lot of stuff with their spacing that
was off the Like everyone was like, oh, Dalton connect,
he had eighteen points. I thot d was awful in
the times when the game was actually within reach. He's
played two really bad games in a row. Everyone played poorly.
There wasn't a single Laker I could point to and
be like, you know, he played well today, and usually
that is Usually you drop a game on the road
and it's like, well, hey, so and so had a
good game. This other dude off the bench played really well. Like, no,
(41:16):
every Laker played poorly, So I'm trying to just crumple
it up and throw it away. Here's the thing, Like,
this is part of the this is part of basketball. Right,
Like the Lakers are not as good as the Boston Celtics,
to be clear, but the Boston Celtics similarly went in Indiana
it yesterday and found themselves down twenty plus, right, Like
that's the NBA is so good and there's so much talent,
(41:36):
and teams are so fast now and they play with
so much pace because all the coaches have figured out
that you want to play with the pace that like
you show up on the road in front of a
Bracus crowd and they're playing hard. It's like a Buzzsot's
really really hard to win those games. And so like
the thing is, though, is Boston can afford, because of
their talent level, to have a certain amount of you know,
(41:56):
lackadaisical performances that pop up from time to time. And
even in that game, they said overtime, they had a
good chance to come back and win that one, right,
But like for the Lakers, you're not as talented. You
have to be super sharp, you have to establish really
good habits throughout the season. So I'm okay with what
happened last night as long as that's few and far between.
Like the personnel limitations on display, like the d LO
(42:17):
just constantly getting attacked. That's a real problem. They're gonna
have to figure that out. We'll talk about that a
little bit more here in a second. But like, as
a matter of fact, I got another question here, what
do you think about Ruey Hachamura's contributions this season? All
last season on the The Lakers Nation preseason podcast, you've
seem really low on RUI. Now, we needed to upgrade
those two wing spots between Austin at the one and
Lebron and ad at the four or five. As Rui's
(42:39):
performance throughout the start the start of the season changed
your mind, I think that they're fine at that position
with the development of Ruiy over the course of this year,
but that two spot desperately needs to be upgraded with
a real athlete that can guard Austin. Reeves can't guard
Donovan Mitchell. It's too much to ask. He needs to
guard a Darius Garland level offensive player. Right you need
(43:02):
a real athlete to put in that specific situation. You
can't have a defender on the floor that every single
time the offense puts them in an action they get
a bucket or a foul out of it. That's what
they're getting with d LO right now. It's a huge problem.
So there are some personnel weaknesses that the Lakers need
to address. But sometimes you just have a shitty night
in the NBA, and I thought that's what happened to
(43:22):
the Lakers last night. The key is they need to
be few and far between. I want to see them
go into Toronto, take care of business. Go into Detroit,
take care of business, Go get a win in Memphis.
No one's going to give a shit that you had
a bad night in Cleveland. It's about that being the
exception and not the normal thing that you're running into.
(43:42):
All Right, two last questions, both from the same guy,
just actually more on a personal level with me. When
you play basketball, what's usually your role on defense or
your point of attack perimeter defender or wing defender, or
you considered a big at six ' six, since there
probably isn't that many big guys. So on my men's
league team, we have a lot of of guys who
played Division one overseas professionally, things along those lines. And
(44:05):
we have a big guy on our team named Aaron
Anderson who played professionally overseas, and he's about my size
and he played big his entire career. So like, fortunately
with that group, I get to leverage more as a
perimeter defender. I am at my best guarding on the
perimeter because I have really long arms and I can
move my feet pretty well. But like typically when I
(44:26):
go play pick up, I almost always have to guard
the big just because like you said, there's just not
that many big guys in the city. And I weigh
two hundred and thirty pounds and so I'm just the
best option to throw at people like that. But like
on defense, like when I was at Arizona Christian my
last year, this is how I stayed in the rotation.
I was a scorer in junior college and average double
figures and had a bunch of twenty plus point games,
(44:49):
and I had a career hide over thirty. But like
that was at a lower level of basketball. And then
I went to play Anaia and I was playing with
two All American guards. I was not good enough to
get action run for me, and all the action was
being run for the guards for good reason. They were
much better basketball players than me, right, or at least
like they were certainly better offensive basketball players than me.
(45:11):
And so the way I stayed in the rotation on
that team was I just became the team's best wing defender.
And so like I just watched a bunch of film
on every single guard that we would be playing in
any particular game and try to figure out their tendencies.
And I just really channeled my abilities in the direction
of perimeter defense, and I was actually able to maintain
a role on that team within that context. That's always
(45:34):
been like I would actually argue when I was in college,
that was the one thing I was really really good at.
Even when I scored a lot of it was like
bad team scoring. Like I could shoot, but I was very,
very streaky. So I'd have games where I shot super
well and scored a bunch of points, and then I
have games where I couldn't make shit right, So like
that was kind of fool's gold in a lot of ways.
I was a limited ball handler and I didn't see
(45:55):
the floor well when I was younger. So like, even
though I had a bunch of big scoring games, a
limited offensive player at that point in time, but I
was big, I was athletic, I could guard. That was
like the one thing I could really do at a
high level when I was in college. Now that I've
gotten older, I'm so much better on the offensive end
of the floor, and I've developed a lot in that way.
But when I was in college, that was the way
that I was deployed. Last one, what's your vertical jump?
(46:19):
So I was two hundred and five pounds when I
was playing in junior college, and I was freaky athletic,
like elbows above the rim, freaky athletic. But then I
had a foot injury. And when the foot injury happened,
I spent the entire rehab doing upper body lifting and
I put on like twenty pounds of muscle. And when
I came back, I was still a very good athlete
and it was worth it because I'm a much better
basketball player because of my strength. But I kind of
(46:41):
lost that like crazy over the rim ability. I'm still
a good athlete still to this day. I can I
can jump and dunk pretty well. But like every once
in a while, I'll see a video of me when
I was younger, before the foot injury, playing and I'm
like holy shit, because I was like I was just
skinny and I had, you know, super long arms, and
(47:01):
I could like just fly in a way that I
couldn't I can't at this point in my life. But
the big thing is I'm thirty three now and like
like I'm about to go play basketball later today, and
like I we'll see how I feel. Like I went
out there on Tuesday, I wasn't feeling great. Like That's
It's always like on any given day, I might feel great,
i might feel absolutely terrible. But that's just kind of
(47:22):
the journey as you as you start to put the
miles on. All right, guys, that is all I have
for today. All of the concepts I talked about today,
I clipped six different clips, but it's just not enough
for TIMPs tape episodes. I'm gonna save that for tomorrow.
So tomorrow we'll do some game breakdowns. We'll do another
TIMPs tape. There's always. I sincerely appreciate you guys for
supporting the show, and I will see you then the volume.
(47:45):
What's up, guys, theres always. I appreciate you for listening
to and supporting OOPS tonight. It would actually be really
helpful for us if you guys would take a second
and leave a rating and a review. As always, I
appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take
a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.
Host
Jason Timpf
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