November 27, 2024 • 47 mins
Jason Timpf reacts to Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, Bradley Beal, and the Phoenix Suns' dominant 127-100 win over LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Cup. Later, Jason discusses Damian Lillard and the Milwaukee Bucks' win over Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat without Giannis Antetokounmpo as well as the Houston Rockets' win over Anthony Edwards and the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Timeline:
4:00 - Introduction
5:45 - Lakers/Suns
43:30 - Bucks/Heat
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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The volume.
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(01:38):
to tonight. You're at the volume heavy Tuesday, everybody of Bath.
You guys are having a great start to your week.
Got a jam packshow for you tonight as we get
through one of the final few nights of the in
season tournament woll Play games, We're gonna be covering three
games from tonight. The Suns get a dominant win against
the Lakers in the return of Kevin Durant and Bradley
Beal to the lineup. There now nine to one with
(01:59):
KD in the lineup this year. We're gonna do a
deep dive into that game on the perspective of both
teams of Lakers. Back to Mack games where they looked
pretty sharp in the first half and then just completely
decomposed in the second half. I want to get into
that concept a little bit. After that, without Giannis, the
Bucks go into Miami and beat the Heat. I want
to talk about some of the chess match that was
(02:20):
taking place down the stretch of that game, and talk
a little bit about the struggles that the Miami Heat
have been having to this point in the season. And then,
by far what I thought that was the most entertaining
game of the night, the Houston Rockets in the Minnesota
Timberwolves had a knockdown, drag out fistfight of a game
that ended up going to overtime off of a huge
steal from a men Thompson that extended the game. We're
(02:40):
gonna be breaking that game down from the perspective of
both teams. So lots of basketball to get into tonight.
You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribed
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Don't forget it's helpful if you leave a rating and
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(03:01):
Tonight channel where we're going to be releasing additional content,
so make sure you guys follow us there, and last,
but not at least, keep dropping mail bag questions and
the YouTube comments. Every Friday throughout the regular season, we
record a mailbag episode and I take the questions from
the YouTube comments. All right, guys, let's talk some basketball.
So a huge win for the Suns, dominant left no
doubt to improve to nine to one with Kevin Durant
(03:25):
in the lineup. We're going to talk a little bit
about the formula for this Sun's team, and it obviously
relies a lot on their total amount of aggregate offensive skill,
right Like, if you take Bradley Beal and Kevin Durant
out of the equation and you take some defensive specialists
and start asking them to do more with the basketball,
you're going to have some struggles. And the Suns obviously
struggled quite a bit with KD out, But there's a
(03:45):
formula that works when they have all of their guys,
and you saw an excellent example of it there in
that third quarter run. I really want to shine a
light on Devin Booker and use of Nurkic here, because
I thought they were the two primary driving forces behind
that run. Nurkic was incredible the entire run. He's had
a rough season, that's been a lot of like pretty
(04:06):
bad basketball from Musif durkicch for the most part this year,
but I thought he dominated in his role tonight. He
was setting massive screens to help free up Devin Booker.
The Lakers do a lot of switching on defense as
one of the big differences between them this year and
then last year under JJ Reddick, and he was repeatedly
just going right through Ruyachimura's chest to finish easy shots
(04:27):
one on one in the post, or catching deep position
against Cam Reddish and finishing with and one's just really
simple effective post moves and making layups, which has always
been a little bit of an adventure for Useuf Nurkics.
But he finished with a double double. He was plus
twenty and twenty seven minutes. We're getting I thought he
kind of outplayed Anthony Davis in the second half of
this game, it was a big time night for Musif Durkic.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And then Devin Booker.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Like in the first half, he wasn't quite getting as
much separation as he needed from Austin Reeves, but he
started to get much better separation from Austin in that
third core, not just from the monster screens. The use
of Nurkic absolutely leveled Austin on one of them there
along the left wing, but it also was with his
dribble combinations just a little bit more oomph into every move.
(05:11):
He had a little step back against Austin along the
baseline on the left side where you can tell Devin
was like, this is a scrappy dude.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
I need to get a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Space and a little bit more lift, And even though
Austin got a decent contest on it, Devin was able
to get enough separation to knock a big shot down,
hit a bunch of big jump shots in this game.
Didn't have a massive scoring night or anything like that,
but he was the driving force behind the key run
of the game there in the third quarter. And again,
like we talked about earlier, we'll talk about that later
(05:40):
with the Lakers, but they kind of like go to
the rope. And this is a Laker team that's a
little just in the last week, has been a little
fragile when things don't go their way, and so you
put together a good stretch of basketball against them, they
have a tendency to fall apart, and that's what they did,
and the Suns ended up getting out of there with
a blowout win. The Suns were pretty much dominating their
matchups down the roster in the second half. I thought
(06:02):
Nurkic outplayed Anthony Davis in that third quarter. Like I
mentioned earlier, Bradley Beal was cooking Dalton connect all night
the uh. One of the things too, that both Bradley
Beal and Devin Booker were able to do against Max
Christi too, is like Max Christy just has this tendency
to give ground on any sort of like bump move,
and then when they go into their pull ups, Max
(06:23):
always tries to meet them up high, like at the
top of the shot. And like I've talked about this
a lot on the show. When you're dealing with the
best pull up jump shooters in the league, the professional scores,
they have been shooting shots with hands in their face
their entire life. That's not what bothers them. You have
to find a way to disrupt their rhythm before the shot,
and the Lakers just don't have a Like Like, Max
(06:45):
is one of the better perimeter athletes on the team,
and he's just pretty light, pretty top heavy, doesn't hold
his ground well, doesn't do a good job of disrupting rhythm,
and so he can struggle against guys that aren't, you know,
dealing with some sort of significant size disadvantage. Max pretty
good job against smaller guards, but he can really struggle
against those bigger shot creators. Right, And like it was
just a down the roster out classing, Right, Like Austin
(07:08):
got the better of Devin Booker in the first half,
but then Booker ended up getting much better of Austin
in the second half. Right, Like Katie and Lebron weren't
matched up with each other as much, but I thought
Katie was much much better than Lebron tonight. Like Lebron's
been pretty bad by his standards for a while now,
but we'll talk about that here in a little bit.
But again, like a lot of times, when it comes
down to these games, it's about like everybody's going into
(07:30):
the event with a job. Like the shot creators have
a job, the defensive specialists have a job, the connective
pieces on offense have a job.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Everybody's got a job.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I talk about the list of responsibilities on a basketball
court that it has to be attained by or taking
care of by the five players that are on the floor,
and like, the Suns just did a better job down
the roster of doing their jobs than the Lakers players did.
They dominated in the half court sharper action and better
quicker decisions. They won the fast break points battle seventeen
(07:59):
to five, one of the big differences in this game.
He scored nineteen points off of Lakers turnovers, which continues
to be an issue for them. Again with the Lakers
physical ball pressure, run in transition, You're gonna generate a
lot of margin there because this is a team that
is really, really sloppy in those two specific areas just
handling ball pressure, handling physical perimeter defense, and running back
(08:21):
in transition.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
They just don't run.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
This is a team that has is limited in athleticism
as is, and their second best star is a guy
that likes to chill for the most part. Over the
course of the regular season, at least at this part
this portion of the regular season. And so there's a
game plan advantage with the Lakers if you take advantage
of it, play physical defense, you leverage your athletic gifts
on the perimeter to force turnovers and then run the
(08:43):
damn ball down the floor. I just in general, I
thought the Suns just showed better fight and competitiveness throughout
the game. And then we get beyond that to the formula,
the formula that has worked really well for them this year,
going nine to one in games that Kevin Durant has
played in. And it's a simple concept, and I think
Mike Budenholzer has done a good job of streamlining it.
But it's essentially the concept of advantage creation combined with
(09:06):
smart spacing and then making the correct reads when you
have those advantage situations. Right, So like when you've got
a guy like Nurkisch who sets really good screens, and
you've got a trio of ball handlers, and I mean,
Bradley Beal is not going to bring two to the
ball as often, but at least Devin Booker and Kevin
Durant are going to pretty consistently at least bring the
(09:28):
screen defender up pretty high in the action, and like
one of the flip sides is like this is Nurkic
helps a lot in this regard. The Suns have personnel
to beat switches on both sides of the switch, right,
So like if you end up running action and you
get Ruey Hachimura switched on the use of Nurkic, you
can throw the ball down to the block to him
when he's sharper and when he's making his lips right.
(09:49):
And then but on the flip side of that, like
kd and Devin Booker can take their pick of Dalton
connector D'Angelo Russell and take those guys to their sweet
spots and go to work on them, right. So, like
you try not to switch, and if you're gonna try
to keep Cam b Reddish or one of your better
perimeter defenders on a Kevin Durant or on a Devin
Booker in those moments, you're gonna have to show on
(10:10):
the screens because you know Nurkic is setting really good
screens to get separation from those guys, and they're just
gonna walk into pull up jump shots and beat you.
So you end up showing up at the level right,
and so by virtue of bringing two to the ball
in actions where guys are chasing over screens or eventually
bringing two to the ball again, the Lakers were content
to just die on an island tonight. But like, if
(10:31):
you have a guy that consistently can beat one on
one matchups, you can bring two to the ball even
without having to have a screen. And then from there
it's about having your guys in spaces where they can
be immediate threats. So you want to have the guy
that's catching that first pass to be a guy that
makes the quick decision to see where the defense is
overcompensating in their rotation, and generally speaking, it's gonna get
(10:52):
worked around to the weak side corner. The vast majority
of teams the weekside corner or the weak side wing right.
Good defenses will make you take a week side wing.
Bad defenses will give up a weak side corner three right,
Because just imagine this scenario where Kevin Durantz dribbling up
the right side of the floor and he gets ball
screen from use of Nurkic. It's being iced, but Katie's
(11:12):
bringing the defender up to the level, and so Nurkic
kind of short rolls. Right, Nurki short rolls and Katie
hits him. You have a three on two on the
weak side. Right, you have the two defenders that were
guarding the guy on the weak side wing and the
guy in the weak side corner, and then you have
Nurkic rolling to the basket. Really bad teams they'll just
show with the low man the guy who's guarding the
guy in the weak side corner, and then it's just
(11:33):
an easy skip pass to the corner three. They're really
good teams will have another rotation coming down from the
wing to take away that corner three and force you
to make that pass up to the wing. But it's
just a bunch of really smart offensive players that can
quickly process the advantage that's in front of them, and
a bunch of guys who can pay it off by
either knocking down catch and shoot threes, driving closeouts, or
as we talked about earlier, being able to beat switches
(11:56):
that occur in those situations, also attacking the offensive glass
as a way to take advantage of it. Tea that
is in rotation, But the formula is there. They just
have all of the talent they need to consistently to
consistently generate great shots. And then on defense, like you know,
they obviously have some personnel limitations there, but it's and
this is something I'm gonna talk about a little bit
with JJ Redick in a little bit, But like, find
(12:16):
something you can be good at, right, Like the Suns
are never going to be a dominant paint defense, right
they just don't have the personnel for that, or at
least like they could be abdominant paint defense, but it
would be at the expense of giving up the three
point line. But the way that the Sons have approached
it this year, I've been, in general really impressed by
Phoenix's closeouts, just how quickly they get out to the
(12:36):
perimeter and chase guys off the three point line. It
disrupts rhythm. Like the Lakers got some good looks from
three in the late third quarter early fourth quarter that
didn't go down, but it was after the game was
already out of reach, and the Suns kind of relaxed
a little bit, and none of their shooters were confident
or in rhythm at that point because they weren't getting
good looks in the early part of the game. Again, like,
(12:57):
if you think about it from an analytics standpoint, if
you're bad defensively in terms of your personnel, and these
are two teams that if you're ranking teams in their
overall defensive personnel, the Suns and the Lakers are gonna
be pretty far down in the list compared to the
other you know, ambitious teams in the league this year
that are trying to win the title. Right, And so
if you have limited personnel, then analytically there are shots
(13:20):
that are more valuable.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Than others on the court.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
You know, Like I would argue that you should get
back in transition no matter what, because that's when teams
are most efficient. So like, if you're bad transition defense,
I feel like that's just something that you have to
find a way to rectify, regardless of your personnel.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
But like beyond transition, when you get into the half court,
it's like the two most efficient shots in the game
are shots at the rim and wide open catch and
shoot threes, right, So like those are the two shots
that if like you're gonna be bad at everything, you
might as well take one of those away. You know,
find a way to take one of those types of
shots and remove them from the equation, you might get
(13:56):
shredded in the other area by virtue of just taking
away one of the two most efficient shots that exists
on the basketball court. You can raise your floor on
the defensive end of the floor, and the Suns at
the very least do a decent job of chasing teams
off the three point line. And so there you go.
You got a good formula on both ends. And then,
as we've seen before the injuries that hit them earlier
(14:17):
this year, at the end of games, KD is just
walking teams down in clutch situations, just getting great shots consistently.
He's been one of the big guys that kind of
like leverages his defensive talents at the end of games
two to get key stops. But like, the formula is there,
and I'm really really excited to watch this team now
that they're healthy again. A great win for the Suns
(14:39):
to get back on track on the Lakers' front. This
is the second strike game where they look like they
kind of lost their will to fight in the second half,
which is super weird.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
I did a little video after the.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
After the Nuggets game where I talked about how, like, hey,
this kind of stuff can happen. Like, the reality is
in an eighty two game regular season, everybody has stretches
where they play poorly.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
It's just a fact of life.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Even the Boston Celtics last year, who have been probably
the most dominant regular season team in the last it's
like since the Golden State Warriors, you know, with KD
and Steph Right. So, like you have this really damn
good regular season team with Boston, and they dropped a
couple of big games in a row at the tail
end of the year where they like got outscored. They
(15:28):
blew a twenty point lead in the fourth quarter against
the Cavs. That was the Max Strews game winner game,
and I think that was the one where Jason Tatum
missed a little fadeaway jump shot over Darius Garland at
the elbow. And then a couple of nights later they
ended up losing to Denver, Right, and that was obviously
a concern because Boston had struggled against the top of
the West throughout the regular season. So like if you
zoom in on any stretch of games, you can find
(15:49):
even the best teams in the league will play some
bad basketball for a certain amount of time, and so,
like you know, in the big picture, that's why I'm
I'm a believer in like not panicking, not overreacting to
any singular stretch of games, because the eighty two game
grind as long, and it takes a lot of mental
toughness and a lot of resilience to fight through those stretches, right,
(16:11):
and the Lakers are clearly in one of those stretches
right now. The difference is that it ended up being
a a little bit tougher of a stretch than I thought,
in the sense that the Denver game to me looked
like an outlier. The Orlando Magic game was a game
I thought the Lakers played great against a team that
athletically is kind of a mismatch for them. Lebron and
ad were awesome, and they battled and they got a
(16:32):
win until Anthony Davis missed three free throws in the
final minute, right, So, like they didn't get a win.
That's heartbreaking, But there's a lot of good basketball there, right,
not anything to get too worked up about. And then
you completely shit the bed in the third quarter against Denver.
So it's like one of those things where you don't
want to overreact to it. But then I talked about
in that second half against Denver how it was their
(16:54):
offense that seemingly completely lost any sense of rhythm and flow,
and every single player on the floor looked like they
lost their confidence, like they'd lost their mojo. There was
no like passion even behind the way they were playing.
What scares the hell out of me is that's exactly
what happens tonight with the Suns. Like you're right there
(17:16):
in the first half, Austin goes on a crazy run
at the end of the second quarter that gets you
back within two points, and then you come out in
the third quarter and you're just lifeless. And again it's
like they get hit in the mouth by a couple
of shots, right, so you end up falling down by seven,
nine points.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Whatever, like get it together.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
But then they were coming out of those timeouts just
the same lifeless team that we saw in that second
half against Denver. And so like, again, you're ten and seven.
I still don't think you should panic. We'll get a
little bit further into that in a minute. What is
(18:03):
going wrong with the Lakers right now? Why do they
look like a team that is not just bad in
these second halves, but is lifeless, like utterly lifeless, looking
like they have lost the will to fight. My working
theory right now is that it has a lot to
do with the fact that Lebron James, their second best player,
is just playing really poorly by his standards right now.
(18:24):
Yet eighteen points, eight rebounds in tennisiss fine stat line.
He was seven for sixteen with five turnovers, and again,
it's about the standard. The Lebron James that we saw
from you know, roughly mid January through the end of
that first round series against Denver last year was one
of the five best players in the world. He was like,
I can't remember the numbers off the top of my head,
(18:45):
but it was something crazy like twenty eight eight and
ten on like sixty seven percent true shooting over a
massive span. Lebron was was playing at an insanely high level.
It wasn't like we always kind of think about Lebron
as a player that so much little little basketball things
that win games, but like Lebron was also bringing top tier,
(19:07):
superstar level production at the tail end of last season,
right that formula works with this team for a pretty
high floor. When Ad is the guy that he's been
all year and By the way, a lot of people
are like, oh, AD's having this big, crazy bounce back season.
Anthony Davis was kicking ass the entire second half of
last season. I've been saying that all year, like pretty
(19:28):
much from mid January through the first round series against Jokich,
Anthony Davis was playing at that insanely high level. And
to start this year, Ad has for the most part
been there. He was really bad in the Denver game.
He's had his bad nights, but he's for the most part,
has been there. Lebron is in an extended stretch where
he hasn't been And there have been like three or
four games where he's been at that level, but the
(19:50):
rest of them he just hasn't been. In the five
games coming into tonight, he was at twenty two eight
and nine. Here were shooting splits. We're at twenty two
eight to nine, five point four turnovers per game, forty
eight percent from the field, thirty five percent from three
(20:11):
to sixty three percent of the line. That's that's not
even that's not a top twenty player in the league
right now. Again, just forget about the idea of what
Lebron's gonna be. I think Lebron is gonna be fine.
I'm not worried about Lebron in the big picture, Like
he kind of has a stretch like this every year
at this phase of his career, and in the I
am of the opinion that as long as he doesn't
(20:33):
suffer an injury, when we get into March or April,
he's gonna look like Lebron James. It's not a big
picture problem in my opinion. It is a short term problem.
Though You're in a really tough stretch to your schedule.
You got some of the easy stretch out of the
way early. Now it's like, guess what's waiting for you
right around the corner. A Spurs team in San Antonio
(20:53):
that's been pretty damn tough to beat at home. An
Oklahoma City team coming into Los Angeles on Friday, and
it doesn't get any easier from there. And like the
reality is is this roster does have limitations, especially when
Jared Vanderbilt is out. Those limitations are they are very
unathletic on the perimeter. And like one of the things
(21:14):
with Lebron is like Lebron has a tendency to chill
in some ways. He'll chill on the defensive end in
his rotations, he'll be sloppy with his mental focus. That's
the turnover thing. Like Lebron is too good of a
basketball player to be this sloppy with the basketball. It
is a mental focus thing. He is not locked in
the way that he needs to be. But like the
(21:35):
big issue is Lebron at this phase of his career
doesn't engage himself athletically as much in regular season games.
But that's okay because he did the same thing last
year for big stretches as well. The difference was as
he was pouring in twenty eight points a game hyper
efficiently and was dishing out tennis sis snite and wasn't
turning the ball over this much. So Lebron was bringing
(21:57):
so much good with his making and his skill overall
and his ability to surgically pick apart teams in the
half court that even though that if he skipped a
low man rotation or didn't fight for a defensive rebound,
it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
The end of the world.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
But when you combine him being a really limited offensive
player right now compared to his standard, while also being
really unfocused in terms of his decision making, while also
not engaging himself athletically on a team that is starving
for athleticism, you're going to continue to have issues. And
(22:33):
so like, in the big picture, I'm not worried about Lebron,
but in the short term, this is a tough stretch
of schedule and I don't know that they can win
many times without Lebron meeting Anthony Davis at least near
the level that he's at. Even just as like decision makers,
the Lakers perimeter players are all pretty inconsistent to varying degrees.
(22:55):
Lebron needs to be the guy that brings consistency to
their perimeter decision making and their pre or firepower, and
he just hasn't been.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
You know, it's funny.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
We talk a lot about like teams records, and we
hyper focus on role players, and we hyper focus on scheme,
and we hyper focus on you know, strength of schedule
and all these like different issues. But nine times out
of ten, it comes down to, like, are your stars
playing really really well or are they struggling. We're gonna
talk about the minding heat here in a few minutes.
Most of their issues come down to the fact that
(23:25):
Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo are combining to average just
a few more points than Anthony Davis is averaging by himself.
They're not getting production star production from their stars. So
you can talk about Terry Rogier and you can talk
about like, oh man, these these you know, kilolware minutes
are rough or whatever it is that your issue is,
but like, it doesn't really matter if your stars aren't
(23:46):
playing at a superstar level. One of the things I
talk about all the time is like, when superstars play
at a superstar level, they eat up so much responsibility
on both ends that it actually rafts these really small
and achievable roles for the role players. Like if you've
(24:06):
got an offensive star who is consistently bringing two to
the ball because he's a devastating offensive weapon, all of
a sudden, you can see some pretty mediocre role players
around the league look good because they're consistently getting great advantages. Right,
(24:28):
But if those stars aren't playing super well and they
aren't lighting the world on fire in single coverage situations
or against traditional coverages, then you aren't gonna load up
on them the way you need to, and those guys
aren't gonna get great advantages off the ball and then
guess what they're gonna start looking like pretty limited role players.
(24:48):
Same thing goes on the defensive end of the floor.
I'm gonna talk about this again with the Bucks here
in a minute. Jannison Brook Lopez have leveraged themselves defensively
at a much higher level over the course of the
last couple of weeks some real throwback games between those
two guys. Brooke had another ridiculous block on a Tyler
(25:09):
Harrow step back three along the right wing tonight. Because
of that, the Bucks have looked sharper defensively. But it's
not just because those two. When the Bucks back line
is flying around and making all these plays, it crafts
small achievable roles for your defensive players, and then suddenly
(25:32):
guys like Andre Jackson and aj Green and everyone else
playing defensive roles for Milwaukee looks like they're a little
bit more, you know, in their wheelhouse, something they can manage, right.
It's the same thing on both ends of the floor.
And when you look at the Lakers, it's like when
Lebron James and Anthony Davis are not bringing truly elite
(25:56):
play on both.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Ends of the floor.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Between the two of them, you're gonna start to say,
see some limitations within the Lakers role players. I'm always
more willing to point the finger at the Stars because
they are the guys that make tons and tons of money,
and they are the guys that have the reputation and
are held to a different standard. I don't think it
makes a ton of sense to look at an eight
(26:18):
million dollar player and be like, man, he's so inconsistent. Yeah,
that's why he makes eight million dollars. Like, that's the point.
You have two guys that make fifty, they got to
do a lot so that the guys that don't make
fifty can can have manageable roles. And again I'm referring
to Lebron and Ad as a duo. Lebron is the
(26:40):
main guy that's struggling. AD has been pulling his weight
for the most part this year, but he's been really
AD's two back to back really bad second alps, and
those are when things fell apart. In fact, Ad has
been so good this year that he's been able to
overcome most of Lebron's issues, But in the stretches where
Ad has been bad, Like think about the stretches when
Ad has been really bad second half again against Denver,
(27:03):
they get blown out. Second half against the Suns, they
get blown out. First half against Cleveland when Jared Allen
ate his lunch, they get blown out. So like again,
it's mostly the start the superstar play that I believe
is the issue behind this team that's leading to their funk.
A couple other small things. The starting lineup piece. I
understood the reasoning behind going to Cam Reddish mostly had
(27:27):
to do with the fact that Delo wasn't playing well.
Like the Austin Delo Ruey Lebron a D lineup works.
Just Delo was playing bad basketball, and I understood the
reason why you went to look at the Cam Reddish piece.
But Ruey's not playing good basketball right now, in large
part because he just came back from an injury and
he's working his way back into rhythm. And so because
Rui's not playing good basketball, and Cam is not playing
(27:49):
good basketball, or Cam has his offensive limitations and Lebron's
having a slump, now, all of a sudden, a starting
lineup for the Lakers that's been really good offensively for
a long time has not looked very good.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
And so I don't know how you can pull it off.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
I would even consider just putting in Dalton straight up
for Cam and just going back to the way things were,
or even even going with d Lo or going with
de Lo and Dalton. But at this point, the offense
has to get going. Offense is what gives this team life.
Offense is what gets this team to play hard. Offense
is what gets this team to run the floor. They
get energized when they're scoring. And so with that being
(28:25):
the case, I think you've got to inject some more
offensive firepower into the starting lineup with either d Lo
or Dalton or both. They just got to find a
way to do that. And then lastly, JJ in his scheme,
JJ's been doing a lot of switching, and in the switching,
they've been giving up a lot of different issues, a
lot of offensive glass stuff. This is a This is
(28:46):
a defensive rebounding lineup. That a lineup that struggled the
defensive rebound which, by the way, the Austin Delo Lebron
ad Ruey lineup last year defensive rebounded really well. So
like they're capable of rebounding better. A big part of
it is switching. When Anthony Davis gets switched out onto
the perimeter, who's on the back line lazy Lebron and
(29:08):
Ruey who doesn't rebound. You see how that can be
an issue. So like, I think at a certain point,
JJ's got to look at the data here and be like,
we are a bottom three defense that can't rebound, So
maybe the switching needs to be something that we take
a different look at. It's a delicate balance. It's the
same thing with the starting lineup, because like, you never
want to bail on things just because they're not going
(29:28):
your way in a small sample, because sometimes basketball concepts
take time to flush out, takes time for teams to
pick up the habits and to get better, right uht.
The Lakers offense last year is a great example of that.
The five out stuff looked terrible at the start of
the year. It was unguardable in the second half of
the year. So like, at a certain point, like there's
a delicate balance between bailing on something, but like I
(29:50):
wonder when JJ is going to look at this data
and go like, all right, this isn't working. We need
to try something. And the lastly on the Lakers, there
was a comment that I received on Twitter from someone
who listened to the video that I did referencing me saying,
don't panic. Here's the thing that's still what you do.
You don't panic because you're ten and seven. Yeah, you're
(30:10):
playing shit basketball and there's a bunch of good teams
coming to town or vice versa. So yeah, you're in
some trouble, but thankfully you bank some wins, so the
world's not crumbling around you. Here's the reality. You're playing
shit basketball. Helps not coming. Yeah, the Lakers will hopefully
make a trade this year, but it's probably not gonna
(30:31):
happen until closer to February, which means you've got twenty
thirty games here where you got to figure your shit out.
This be an active participant in your own survival. No
one is coming to help you. So you don't panic.
You identify what you're doing poorly, and you find a
way to try to fight it, and you fight like
hell until you find some relief, whether that's Jared Vanderbilt
(30:53):
coming back, Lebron James getting his legs back underneath him,
or a trade, whatever it ends up being, you've got
to fight until then. I've seen that Lakers teams do
it before. The Russell Westbrook Lakers fought like hell until
they traded Russ and then they ended up making a
run to the Western Conference finals. That's the type of
spirit that they need to see, that I need to see.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
And if there's.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Anything that I'm really disappointed about, it's just the overall
fight that they showed in the second half over the
last two games. All Right, Bucks heat Dame got super
(31:37):
hot from three. Early in this game, they were spamming
double dragged with Brook Lopez in a guard and you know,
three man action is kind of like the foundational concept
between most of what NBA teams do right now. Right, So,
like you can imagine a horn set where you have
two guys at the elbows and a guy at the
top of the key. It's like pass the ball to
one guy at the elbow, and then there's some sort
of screening action between the other two guys. There's like
(31:59):
some sort of interchange between those three guys. Stack, pick
and roll just a ball screen, but we're bringing a
shooter into the action and we're backscreening for the role
man as he's going, so he's interchanging to the top
of the key. Once again, three players all the threat. Right,
you have a lot of like the all of the
stuff that like Dallas has been doing, the Lakers been
doing this too. A lot of teams are doing this
(32:20):
stuff where they use their center as the passing folkrum
at the top of the key, where they just enter
the ball to the top of the key, and then
you have your two guards like screen for each other,
and then cut off and try to make something happen there.
Once again, three players all in some sort of like interchange.
Double drag is nothing but a couple of screens where
one guy rolls to the basket, so it's two staggered
ball screens. The better athlete typically rolls, the better shooter
(32:43):
typically pops. But the whole point of running a three
man action is to take what is a simple decision
and turn it into a complicated decision. So if like
two guys interchange, it's just you get him, I get him.
We're good, right a ball screen, Well I'm in a drop.
Oh we're switching. Oh I'm blitzing. Oh I'm hedging whatever
(33:03):
it is. Oh I'm going under. There's just pretty simple
decision making process. As soon as you bring that third
guy into the equation, you can start to force teams
to make some mistakes and Dame was just constantly finding
the mistake in Miami's approach to that double drag at
the top of the key. So it was usually somebody
like aj Greener, Andre Jackson and Brook Lopez setting the
(33:25):
two picks, and then essentially as Dame is coming off
to his left hand side, there's usually a guard guard
switch in there somewhere. Usually the guy who's guarding Dame
is going to pass him off to the guy who's
guarding the other guard.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
But then there's also like.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
A drop coverage element sometimes because even that second guard
can get screened, and then the guy who's guarding the
big man who's rolling might sit there in a drop
and Dame beat every variation of it. There was a
time where he came off of the double drag and
Bam was too far back in a drop because the
second guy got screened, and he just walked into a three.
(34:00):
There was a time that Bam said, Ah, screw it,
I'm just gonna switch, and he switched, and he was
sitting too far back on his heels, and Dame just
went to a little step back to his right and
knocked it down. There was another play in the second
half where it was just a straight up one on
one situation with Bam and Dame, and Bam was just
just overplaying the drive and Dame, who'd had hit like
six or seven threes at that point, was just able
(34:20):
to easy step back going to his left and knock
down a three point shot. But like Bam was sitting
too far back on his switches. There was a play
where Kevin Love was in the game where like the
other guard who was switching was waiting on the other
side of the second screen. So what did Dame do.
He just came off the first screen, and when he
came off the first screen, he just kind of settled
into that soft spot right there in the middle of
the action and rose up and knocked it down. But
(34:42):
Dame just got blazing hot from three just by spamming
the same action that double drag at the top of
the key, and then from there Miami basically had no
choice but to start double teaming him because at that
point he was in rhythm. He hit the shot over
Jimmy where like step back on the left wing of
pump fake, Jimmy did everything right, broke his rhythm and
he just kind of leaned back and reloaded and just
kind of knocked it down off of the pump fake
(35:05):
like he just had it going too much. So they
had to start double teaming, and it worked and it
got them back in the game. I thought the Bucks
were a little slow with their processing. And then one
of the big things that you have to do when
you're beating a blitz or a double team is you
got to get the ball on time and on target.
Like to put it simply, if I ask you to
guard me and you're fifteen feet away and before you
(35:27):
run at me, you have to throw me a chest
pass right into my shooting pocket, You're not gonna be
able to guard me, like I'm either gonna shoot it,
or if you sprint, like hell, I'm just gonna go
right around you, right. But if you throw me a
bad pass, like if you throw me a bounce pass,
you know, three feet off to my left, or if
I have to like go way down to grab it,
or it's just it's difficult for me to catch all
of a sudden, that fifteen foot close out for you
(35:49):
become something that's more achievable. And like the Bucks were
just throwing some sloppy passes, and like those four on
threes were quickly turning into situations where there was no advantage,
and so Miami started to get now transition. They had
fifteen transition points in the second half. They had a
really rough jump shooting first half, and they finally started
to make some jump shots in the second half. Terry
Rogier in particular, hit three threes and a long two
(36:10):
in that half, and so they were able to just
kind of slowly but methodically work their way into game
by doubling Dame getting out in transition. Jimmy was able
to drop his shoulder on that left lane line drive
and get to the basket a couple of times. In
the third quarter. They get themselves back into a game,
and now it's a crunch Time game. But in the
Crunch Time game, it was fascinating because Dame is again
(36:31):
the superstar for the Bucks. Like we talked about in
that segment earlier about your superstar doing his job, we
saw a massive mismatch in the quality of superstar playing
Crunch Time. Dame, because of everything he did in the
earlier phase of the game, was consistently bringing two to
the ball, so they were able to pass out of it.
And guess who ended up getting hot in crunch time.
AJ Green hit three threes in the second half, had
(36:53):
a big one off of a double team, and then
a ridiculously tough one, a tough one on the left
wing where one of those sloppy passing sequences from the
Bucks had AJ Green with Terry Rozier in like a
straight up loaded situation late clock and aj did like
a hard rip to the like kind of like a
pullover to his right and then a rip, a hard
rip to the left and was able to get enough
(37:15):
separation from separation from from Tyler Harrow to just rise
up and knock down a huge just a huge bucket
from AJ Green. He's been awesome. We'll talk about him
here in a minute. But like Dame, was able to
generate quality shots by virtue of his threat by bringing
two guys to the ball, and on the other end
of the floor, they just the heat. Can't get anything
out of Jimmy and Bam. Jimmy and Bam combined for
(37:37):
five points in the fourth quarter. The two of them
on the season are combining to average thirty six points
per game. It's just not gonna get it done, like
I talked about it earlier, and I'm not gonna get
too much deeper in it now, but like, don't look
any further off your Miami Heat fan. Then the fact
that your stars are not providing superstar level production and
(37:58):
when they're not, like and again, BAM's not a superstar
level player, but he's close, and like, if he's not
going to play up to that level, if Jimmy and
Bam are, if neither of them are going to play
at a top twenty five level, then you're you're not
gonna win many games in the NBA with how much
talent there is right now. And that ended up being
the difference in the game is there was a little
(38:18):
bit of a faux pause. Andre Jackson like panicked and
turned it over, and they ended up giving up a
three to Terry Rozier in transition, and so Miami did
end up getting a better chance to try to steal
that game. But like the Bucks were up four l A,
they should have put it away easier than they did,
because once again, Dame was able to provide the superstar
impact of bringing two to the ball and Jimmy and
(38:39):
Bam couldn't do anything on the offensive end down the
stretch of that game. The Bucks have now won five
in a row seven out of eight, and again that
one loss in there was that Giannis foul of LaMelo ball.
They've had over a twenty before tonight's game because Giannis
didn't play tonight, they had over one hundred and twenty
points in three consecutive games. In the previous three games,
and again, like early in the season, it wasn't just
(39:00):
the defense. The offense where it wasn't where it needed
to be, but like getting you're getting the offensive burst.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Now.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
We talked about Brooke and Giannis earlier and how they're
establishing kind of like a really high floor for this defense,
and then AJ Green and Andre Jackson there. I'm of
the opinion AJ Green should start. I think the reason
Docks leaning and Andre Jackson is he's bringing a little
bit more like full court pressure to just kind of
like disrupt rhythm. But Aj, I think is a pretty
damn good point of attack defender. Sides his feet well,
(39:28):
gets over screens well, He's got a really strong like
build in low center of gravity, so he absorbs contact
well like and he's just a better offensive player. But like,
those two guys are are providing forty eight minutes of
pretty decent quality perimeter defense. I mean they played they
close both of them together tonight, obviously with Giannis out
of the lineup. So like starting to look like a
(39:48):
serious basketball team in Milwaukee after not looking like a
serious basketball team in the in the early stretch of
the year. Not gonna spend too much time on Rockets bowlves,
but it was a really really fun game. The the
Rockets were really bogging down Minnesota's offense in the first
three quarters. In Minnesota's offense has a boatload of issues.
I'm gonna get into that here in just a minute,
(40:09):
but it turned into this really interesting, like crunch time
battle because the Wolves just kind of methodically took control
of the game, just slowly chopped away and ended up
taking control of the game. And they really should have
won this one. Rob Dillingham had a really bad turnover
against the men Thompson that ended up leading to a
layup that tied the game. And then Anthony Edwards missed
(40:30):
two wide open threes and he had like a little
bank shot that he shot at the buzzer that hit
every part of the rim and didn't go down. So
like it it got to be a discouraging one for
Wolves fans. Because it felt like a game that they
should should have won. But what was really fascinating down
the stretch in the fourth quarter when the Wolves were
taking control up until the final minute, it was kind
of a formula that I liked in the sense that, like,
(40:53):
it's kind of ugly and clunky, but Ant and Julius
are guys that have a lot of physical advantages against
the guys that are guarding them, and they can get
to their spots. And so as long as the Wolves
can tighten the screws on the defensive end of the
floor and get stops and Julius can generate some pretty
(41:15):
solid looks down the stretch of a game. And it
was kind of impressive as they kind of worked their
way back into it. It has like three or four
plays a game now where he just snakes through like
four bodies and gets to the basket for.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
An and one.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Now he shouldn't have to stake through four bodies, which
we'll get to in a minute. But anyway, Rob Dillingham
has the turnover on the right wing, a men Thompson
ends up getting the transition layup, Anthony Everards misses the
little banking floater and we end up going to overtime,
and in overtime a really good defensive stretch where Dylan
Brooks got a bunch of key stops and the Rockets
(41:48):
started to get out in transition, they had eight points
in fast break situations just in the ot period. A
Men Thompson, who got the huge deal against Rob Dillingham,
hit a massive three on the right wing, and then
Alpert and Saning Goudo several occasions in the game was
just going right at Rudy Gobert, which I thought was
really fascinating. Was able to get to a nice little
(42:10):
left shoulder hook that iced things and the Rockets ended
up stealing that game from the Wolves. I've talked quite
a bit about the Rockets in the last week, so
you guys can go to my channel to find some
of that content in the Power Inkings video, and then
we did a deep dive on the Rockets. I think
it was after the Bucks game if I remember correctly.
Last week. I want to talk a little bit about
the Wolves though specifically and their issues was shooting. So
(42:31):
one of the things that happened at the tail end
of this game was mostly Jabari Smith Junior, but as a
couple other guys, they would put a defender on Jada
McDaniels and just ignore him and just offer help everywhere.
And Jaden, i think, went four for sixteen from the field,
couldn't make a three point shot to save his life.
Multiple beautiful, completely uncontested three point looks in crunch time,
(42:53):
and none of them were close. There was a play
where had this like crazy slithering drive and like whipped
a beautiful left handed cross court passed to hit Jaden
right in the shooting pocket in the right corner, and
it was a brick. And like I've been saying a
lot on my show that I love Anthony Edwards. He's
(43:14):
probably my favorite young prospect in the league, and I'm
rooting for him in a big way. But like, I
believe in the Wolves less this year than I ever have,
and I hate this roster construct. And one of the
big reasons why is, like, again, play into your stars strengths.
Anthony Edwards is over two hundred jump shots this year,
(43:34):
damn near one point two points per attempt. He is
a really good jump shooter. That is something that I've
emphasized as a piece of his growth that I believe
is real. And I think He's demonstrated that over a
pretty massive sample size between last year's playoffs, the stuff
with Team USA this summer, and the stuff with the
Wolves this year. But his absolute superstar superpower is nobody
(43:56):
can guard this dude. No one can keep him in front,
and yet every time he beats his man off the dribble,
he's got to slither through three or four help defenders
to get anything off at the rim. And it's because
you're closing out short, if not outright ignoring Jaden McDaniels,
you're closing out short on Julius Randall and Rudy Gobert
(44:18):
can hardly catch the damn ball, let alone put it
in the basket. It is such a flawed construct and
like every game with the Wolves is so ugly. And
for the record, I understand there's another side to this,
which is they have the defensive personnel to cause some
real problems for teams, But like, ultimately, ultimately, I think
(44:39):
if you're going to get the best out of Anthony
Edwards and what this offense can be, and even taking
it a step further with Julius Randall is a guy
who can really beat matchups and use his athletic tools
to pressure the rim. You gotta get some guys who
can hit some shots in this lineup. And like, I
don't know what's going on with Jade McDaniels because the
development is just stalled out. Like in this league, if
(45:02):
you're just a non threat, it becomes pretty difficult to
consider you to be a reliable rotation piece. He's looking
a lot closer to Jared Vanderbilt than he is prime
McHale Bridges, and that concerns me because I don't know.
I don't know that there's a good solid for that
(45:22):
other than ant takes eleven three is a game and
hopefully makes five of them. But that was a really
entertaining game. That was probably the game that I enjoyed
most watching tonight. That's all I have for tonight is
always sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting
the show. I recorded over an hour with Sam Vessini
earlier this afternoon, talking a bunch of stuff about the
contenders at the top of the league.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
I think we're running that on Wednesday. I feel bad
for you.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
Guys because I did a I did a for your
regular guys who listened to all of our episodes. I
did a I worked four hours this morning on a
video with the film breakdown of Nicks of Nick Nuggets
and recorded the whole damn thing, and then my computer
had some sort of glitch where my camera wasn't or
where my camera was glitching, and the mic was glitching,
(46:06):
and we had to scrap the whole damn thing. So
that's why we didn't have a new episode this morning.
I apologize, trust me, no one's more irritated than I
am about that. But we do have more content coming
out with Sam Vassini. Every year for Thanksgiving, we take Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
Saturday Sunday off me and our whole team so that
we could take a little break before we get into
the n season tournament. So no new content after the
(46:26):
Sam Vasini video until our Power Rankings video on Monday.
But once we get to the Power Rankings video on Monday,
it's grind time and you guys can count on that
same Monday through Friday schedule basically through to the All
Star break again. I sincerely appreciate you guys for rocking
with me and rocking with the show. If you have
an opportunity to spend some time with family and food
this holiday. I hope you guys enjoy it and I'll
(46:46):
see you guys with Sam and then on Monday.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
For some power rankings the volume. What's up guys?
Speaker 2 (46:54):
As 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.
The volume.
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(01:38):
to tonight. You're at the volume heavy Tuesday, everybody of Bath.
You guys are having a great start to your week.
Got a jam packshow for you tonight as we get
through one of the final few nights of the in
season tournament woll Play games, We're gonna be covering three
games from tonight. The Suns get a dominant win against
the Lakers in the return of Kevin Durant and Bradley
Beal to the lineup. There now nine to one with
(01:59):
KD in the lineup this year. We're gonna do a
deep dive into that game on the perspective of both
teams of Lakers. Back to Mack games where they looked
pretty sharp in the first half and then just completely
decomposed in the second half. I want to get into
that concept a little bit. After that, without Giannis, the
Bucks go into Miami and beat the Heat. I want
to talk about some of the chess match that was
(02:20):
taking place down the stretch of that game, and talk
a little bit about the struggles that the Miami Heat
have been having to this point in the season. And then,
by far what I thought that was the most entertaining
game of the night, the Houston Rockets in the Minnesota
Timberwolves had a knockdown, drag out fistfight of a game
that ended up going to overtime off of a huge
steal from a men Thompson that extended the game. We're
(02:40):
gonna be breaking that game down from the perspective of
both teams. So lots of basketball to get into tonight.
You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribed
to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels. You don't miss any
more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLTS.
You guys, don't mi sho announcements dot forget about a
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Don't forget it's helpful if you leave a rating and
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media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for the Hoops
(03:01):
Tonight channel where we're going to be releasing additional content,
so make sure you guys follow us there, and last,
but not at least, keep dropping mail bag questions and
the YouTube comments. Every Friday throughout the regular season, we
record a mailbag episode and I take the questions from
the YouTube comments. All right, guys, let's talk some basketball.
So a huge win for the Suns, dominant left no
doubt to improve to nine to one with Kevin Durant
(03:25):
in the lineup. We're going to talk a little bit
about the formula for this Sun's team, and it obviously
relies a lot on their total amount of aggregate offensive skill,
right Like, if you take Bradley Beal and Kevin Durant
out of the equation and you take some defensive specialists
and start asking them to do more with the basketball,
you're going to have some struggles. And the Suns obviously
struggled quite a bit with KD out, But there's a
(03:45):
formula that works when they have all of their guys,
and you saw an excellent example of it there in
that third quarter run. I really want to shine a
light on Devin Booker and use of Nurkic here, because
I thought they were the two primary driving forces behind
that run. Nurkic was incredible the entire run. He's had
a rough season, that's been a lot of like pretty
(04:06):
bad basketball from Musif durkicch for the most part this year,
but I thought he dominated in his role tonight. He
was setting massive screens to help free up Devin Booker.
The Lakers do a lot of switching on defense as
one of the big differences between them this year and
then last year under JJ Reddick, and he was repeatedly
just going right through Ruyachimura's chest to finish easy shots
(04:27):
one on one in the post, or catching deep position
against Cam Reddish and finishing with and one's just really
simple effective post moves and making layups, which has always
been a little bit of an adventure for Useuf Nurkics.
But he finished with a double double. He was plus
twenty and twenty seven minutes. We're getting I thought he
kind of outplayed Anthony Davis in the second half of
this game, it was a big time night for Musif Durkic.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And then Devin Booker.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Like in the first half, he wasn't quite getting as
much separation as he needed from Austin Reeves, but he
started to get much better separation from Austin in that
third core, not just from the monster screens. The use
of Nurkic absolutely leveled Austin on one of them there
along the left wing, but it also was with his
dribble combinations just a little bit more oomph into every move.
(05:11):
He had a little step back against Austin along the
baseline on the left side where you can tell Devin
was like, this is a scrappy dude.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
I need to get a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Space and a little bit more lift, And even though
Austin got a decent contest on it, Devin was able
to get enough separation to knock a big shot down,
hit a bunch of big jump shots in this game.
Didn't have a massive scoring night or anything like that,
but he was the driving force behind the key run
of the game there in the third quarter. And again,
like we talked about earlier, we'll talk about that later
(05:40):
with the Lakers, but they kind of like go to
the rope. And this is a Laker team that's a
little just in the last week, has been a little
fragile when things don't go their way, and so you
put together a good stretch of basketball against them, they
have a tendency to fall apart, and that's what they did,
and the Suns ended up getting out of there with
a blowout win. The Suns were pretty much dominating their
matchups down the roster in the second half. I thought
(06:02):
Nurkic outplayed Anthony Davis in that third quarter. Like I
mentioned earlier, Bradley Beal was cooking Dalton connect all night
the uh. One of the things too, that both Bradley
Beal and Devin Booker were able to do against Max
Christi too, is like Max Christy just has this tendency
to give ground on any sort of like bump move,
and then when they go into their pull ups, Max
(06:23):
always tries to meet them up high, like at the
top of the shot. And like I've talked about this
a lot on the show. When you're dealing with the
best pull up jump shooters in the league, the professional scores,
they have been shooting shots with hands in their face
their entire life. That's not what bothers them. You have
to find a way to disrupt their rhythm before the shot,
and the Lakers just don't have a Like Like, Max
(06:45):
is one of the better perimeter athletes on the team,
and he's just pretty light, pretty top heavy, doesn't hold
his ground well, doesn't do a good job of disrupting rhythm,
and so he can struggle against guys that aren't, you know,
dealing with some sort of significant size disadvantage. Max pretty
good job against smaller guards, but he can really struggle
against those bigger shot creators. Right, And like it was
just a down the roster out classing, Right, Like Austin
(07:08):
got the better of Devin Booker in the first half,
but then Booker ended up getting much better of Austin
in the second half. Right, Like Katie and Lebron weren't
matched up with each other as much, but I thought
Katie was much much better than Lebron tonight. Like Lebron's
been pretty bad by his standards for a while now,
but we'll talk about that here in a little bit.
But again, like a lot of times, when it comes
down to these games, it's about like everybody's going into
(07:30):
the event with a job. Like the shot creators have
a job, the defensive specialists have a job, the connective
pieces on offense have a job.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Everybody's got a job.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I talk about the list of responsibilities on a basketball
court that it has to be attained by or taking
care of by the five players that are on the floor,
and like, the Suns just did a better job down
the roster of doing their jobs than the Lakers players did.
They dominated in the half court sharper action and better
quicker decisions. They won the fast break points battle seventeen
(07:59):
to five, one of the big differences in this game.
He scored nineteen points off of Lakers turnovers, which continues
to be an issue for them. Again with the Lakers
physical ball pressure, run in transition, You're gonna generate a
lot of margin there because this is a team that
is really, really sloppy in those two specific areas just
handling ball pressure, handling physical perimeter defense, and running back
(08:21):
in transition.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
They just don't run.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
This is a team that has is limited in athleticism
as is, and their second best star is a guy
that likes to chill for the most part. Over the
course of the regular season, at least at this part
this portion of the regular season. And so there's a
game plan advantage with the Lakers if you take advantage
of it, play physical defense, you leverage your athletic gifts
on the perimeter to force turnovers and then run the
(08:43):
damn ball down the floor. I just in general, I
thought the Suns just showed better fight and competitiveness throughout
the game. And then we get beyond that to the formula,
the formula that has worked really well for them this year,
going nine to one in games that Kevin Durant has
played in. And it's a simple concept, and I think
Mike Budenholzer has done a good job of streamlining it.
But it's essentially the concept of advantage creation combined with
(09:06):
smart spacing and then making the correct reads when you
have those advantage situations. Right, So like when you've got
a guy like Nurkisch who sets really good screens, and
you've got a trio of ball handlers, and I mean,
Bradley Beal is not going to bring two to the
ball as often, but at least Devin Booker and Kevin
Durant are going to pretty consistently at least bring the
(09:28):
screen defender up pretty high in the action, and like
one of the flip sides is like this is Nurkic
helps a lot in this regard. The Suns have personnel
to beat switches on both sides of the switch, right,
So like if you end up running action and you
get Ruey Hachimura switched on the use of Nurkic, you
can throw the ball down to the block to him
when he's sharper and when he's making his lips right.
(09:49):
And then but on the flip side of that, like
kd and Devin Booker can take their pick of Dalton
connector D'Angelo Russell and take those guys to their sweet
spots and go to work on them, right. So, like
you try not to switch, and if you're gonna try
to keep Cam b Reddish or one of your better
perimeter defenders on a Kevin Durant or on a Devin
Booker in those moments, you're gonna have to show on
(10:10):
the screens because you know Nurkic is setting really good
screens to get separation from those guys, and they're just
gonna walk into pull up jump shots and beat you.
So you end up showing up at the level right,
and so by virtue of bringing two to the ball
in actions where guys are chasing over screens or eventually
bringing two to the ball again, the Lakers were content
to just die on an island tonight. But like, if
(10:31):
you have a guy that consistently can beat one on
one matchups, you can bring two to the ball even
without having to have a screen. And then from there
it's about having your guys in spaces where they can
be immediate threats. So you want to have the guy
that's catching that first pass to be a guy that
makes the quick decision to see where the defense is
overcompensating in their rotation, and generally speaking, it's gonna get
(10:52):
worked around to the weak side corner. The vast majority
of teams the weekside corner or the weak side wing right.
Good defenses will make you take a week side wing.
Bad defenses will give up a weak side corner three right,
Because just imagine this scenario where Kevin Durantz dribbling up
the right side of the floor and he gets ball
screen from use of Nurkic. It's being iced, but Katie's
(11:12):
bringing the defender up to the level, and so Nurkic
kind of short rolls. Right, Nurki short rolls and Katie
hits him. You have a three on two on the
weak side. Right, you have the two defenders that were
guarding the guy on the weak side wing and the
guy in the weak side corner, and then you have
Nurkic rolling to the basket. Really bad teams they'll just
show with the low man the guy who's guarding the
guy in the weak side corner, and then it's just
(11:33):
an easy skip pass to the corner three. They're really
good teams will have another rotation coming down from the
wing to take away that corner three and force you
to make that pass up to the wing. But it's
just a bunch of really smart offensive players that can
quickly process the advantage that's in front of them, and
a bunch of guys who can pay it off by
either knocking down catch and shoot threes, driving closeouts, or
as we talked about earlier, being able to beat switches
(11:56):
that occur in those situations, also attacking the offensive glass
as a way to take advantage of it. Tea that
is in rotation, But the formula is there. They just
have all of the talent they need to consistently to
consistently generate great shots. And then on defense, like you know,
they obviously have some personnel limitations there, but it's and
this is something I'm gonna talk about a little bit
with JJ Redick in a little bit, But like, find
(12:16):
something you can be good at, right, Like the Suns
are never going to be a dominant paint defense, right
they just don't have the personnel for that, or at
least like they could be abdominant paint defense, but it
would be at the expense of giving up the three
point line. But the way that the Sons have approached
it this year, I've been, in general really impressed by
Phoenix's closeouts, just how quickly they get out to the
(12:36):
perimeter and chase guys off the three point line. It
disrupts rhythm. Like the Lakers got some good looks from
three in the late third quarter early fourth quarter that
didn't go down, but it was after the game was
already out of reach, and the Suns kind of relaxed
a little bit, and none of their shooters were confident
or in rhythm at that point because they weren't getting
good looks in the early part of the game. Again, like,
(12:57):
if you think about it from an analytics standpoint, if
you're bad defensively in terms of your personnel, and these
are two teams that if you're ranking teams in their
overall defensive personnel, the Suns and the Lakers are gonna
be pretty far down in the list compared to the
other you know, ambitious teams in the league this year
that are trying to win the title. Right, And so
if you have limited personnel, then analytically there are shots
(13:20):
that are more valuable.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Than others on the court.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
You know, Like I would argue that you should get
back in transition no matter what, because that's when teams
are most efficient. So like, if you're bad transition defense,
I feel like that's just something that you have to
find a way to rectify, regardless of your personnel.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
But like beyond transition, when you get into the half court,
it's like the two most efficient shots in the game
are shots at the rim and wide open catch and
shoot threes, right, So like those are the two shots
that if like you're gonna be bad at everything, you
might as well take one of those away. You know,
find a way to take one of those types of
shots and remove them from the equation, you might get
(13:56):
shredded in the other area by virtue of just taking
away one of the two most efficient shots that exists
on the basketball court. You can raise your floor on
the defensive end of the floor, and the Suns at
the very least do a decent job of chasing teams
off the three point line. And so there you go.
You got a good formula on both ends. And then,
as we've seen before the injuries that hit them earlier
(14:17):
this year, at the end of games, KD is just
walking teams down in clutch situations, just getting great shots consistently.
He's been one of the big guys that kind of
like leverages his defensive talents at the end of games
two to get key stops. But like, the formula is there,
and I'm really really excited to watch this team now
that they're healthy again. A great win for the Suns
(14:39):
to get back on track on the Lakers' front. This
is the second strike game where they look like they
kind of lost their will to fight in the second half,
which is super weird.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
I did a little video after the.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
After the Nuggets game where I talked about how, like, hey,
this kind of stuff can happen. Like, the reality is
in an eighty two game regular season, everybody has stretches
where they play poorly.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
It's just a fact of life.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Even the Boston Celtics last year, who have been probably
the most dominant regular season team in the last it's
like since the Golden State Warriors, you know, with KD
and Steph Right. So, like you have this really damn
good regular season team with Boston, and they dropped a
couple of big games in a row at the tail
end of the year where they like got outscored. They
(15:28):
blew a twenty point lead in the fourth quarter against
the Cavs. That was the Max Strews game winner game,
and I think that was the one where Jason Tatum
missed a little fadeaway jump shot over Darius Garland at
the elbow. And then a couple of nights later they
ended up losing to Denver, Right, and that was obviously
a concern because Boston had struggled against the top of
the West throughout the regular season. So like if you
zoom in on any stretch of games, you can find
(15:49):
even the best teams in the league will play some
bad basketball for a certain amount of time, and so,
like you know, in the big picture, that's why I'm
I'm a believer in like not panicking, not overreacting to
any singular stretch of games, because the eighty two game
grind as long, and it takes a lot of mental
toughness and a lot of resilience to fight through those stretches, right,
(16:11):
and the Lakers are clearly in one of those stretches
right now. The difference is that it ended up being
a a little bit tougher of a stretch than I thought,
in the sense that the Denver game to me looked
like an outlier. The Orlando Magic game was a game
I thought the Lakers played great against a team that
athletically is kind of a mismatch for them. Lebron and
ad were awesome, and they battled and they got a
(16:32):
win until Anthony Davis missed three free throws in the
final minute, right, So, like they didn't get a win.
That's heartbreaking, But there's a lot of good basketball there, right,
not anything to get too worked up about. And then
you completely shit the bed in the third quarter against Denver.
So it's like one of those things where you don't
want to overreact to it. But then I talked about
in that second half against Denver how it was their
(16:54):
offense that seemingly completely lost any sense of rhythm and flow,
and every single player on the floor looked like they
lost their confidence, like they'd lost their mojo. There was
no like passion even behind the way they were playing.
What scares the hell out of me is that's exactly
what happens tonight with the Suns. Like you're right there
(17:16):
in the first half, Austin goes on a crazy run
at the end of the second quarter that gets you
back within two points, and then you come out in
the third quarter and you're just lifeless. And again it's
like they get hit in the mouth by a couple
of shots, right, so you end up falling down by seven,
nine points.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Whatever, like get it together.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
But then they were coming out of those timeouts just
the same lifeless team that we saw in that second
half against Denver. And so like, again, you're ten and seven.
I still don't think you should panic. We'll get a
little bit further into that in a minute. What is
(18:03):
going wrong with the Lakers right now? Why do they
look like a team that is not just bad in
these second halves, but is lifeless, like utterly lifeless, looking
like they have lost the will to fight. My working
theory right now is that it has a lot to
do with the fact that Lebron James, their second best player,
is just playing really poorly by his standards right now.
(18:24):
Yet eighteen points, eight rebounds in tennisiss fine stat line.
He was seven for sixteen with five turnovers, and again,
it's about the standard. The Lebron James that we saw
from you know, roughly mid January through the end of
that first round series against Denver last year was one
of the five best players in the world. He was like,
I can't remember the numbers off the top of my head,
(18:45):
but it was something crazy like twenty eight eight and
ten on like sixty seven percent true shooting over a
massive span. Lebron was was playing at an insanely high level.
It wasn't like we always kind of think about Lebron
as a player that so much little little basketball things
that win games, but like Lebron was also bringing top tier,
(19:07):
superstar level production at the tail end of last season,
right that formula works with this team for a pretty
high floor. When Ad is the guy that he's been
all year and By the way, a lot of people
are like, oh, AD's having this big, crazy bounce back season.
Anthony Davis was kicking ass the entire second half of
last season. I've been saying that all year, like pretty
(19:28):
much from mid January through the first round series against Jokich,
Anthony Davis was playing at that insanely high level. And
to start this year, Ad has for the most part
been there. He was really bad in the Denver game.
He's had his bad nights, but he's for the most part,
has been there. Lebron is in an extended stretch where
he hasn't been And there have been like three or
four games where he's been at that level, but the
(19:50):
rest of them he just hasn't been. In the five
games coming into tonight, he was at twenty two eight
and nine. Here were shooting splits. We're at twenty two
eight to nine, five point four turnovers per game, forty
eight percent from the field, thirty five percent from three
(20:11):
to sixty three percent of the line. That's that's not
even that's not a top twenty player in the league
right now. Again, just forget about the idea of what
Lebron's gonna be. I think Lebron is gonna be fine.
I'm not worried about Lebron in the big picture, Like
he kind of has a stretch like this every year
at this phase of his career, and in the I
am of the opinion that as long as he doesn't
(20:33):
suffer an injury, when we get into March or April,
he's gonna look like Lebron James. It's not a big
picture problem in my opinion. It is a short term problem.
Though You're in a really tough stretch to your schedule.
You got some of the easy stretch out of the
way early. Now it's like, guess what's waiting for you
right around the corner. A Spurs team in San Antonio
(20:53):
that's been pretty damn tough to beat at home. An
Oklahoma City team coming into Los Angeles on Friday, and
it doesn't get any easier from there. And like the
reality is is this roster does have limitations, especially when
Jared Vanderbilt is out. Those limitations are they are very
unathletic on the perimeter. And like one of the things
(21:14):
with Lebron is like Lebron has a tendency to chill
in some ways. He'll chill on the defensive end in
his rotations, he'll be sloppy with his mental focus. That's
the turnover thing. Like Lebron is too good of a
basketball player to be this sloppy with the basketball. It
is a mental focus thing. He is not locked in
the way that he needs to be. But like the
(21:35):
big issue is Lebron at this phase of his career
doesn't engage himself athletically as much in regular season games.
But that's okay because he did the same thing last
year for big stretches as well. The difference was as
he was pouring in twenty eight points a game hyper
efficiently and was dishing out tennis sis snite and wasn't
turning the ball over this much. So Lebron was bringing
(21:57):
so much good with his making and his skill overall
and his ability to surgically pick apart teams in the
half court that even though that if he skipped a
low man rotation or didn't fight for a defensive rebound,
it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
The end of the world.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
But when you combine him being a really limited offensive
player right now compared to his standard, while also being
really unfocused in terms of his decision making, while also
not engaging himself athletically on a team that is starving
for athleticism, you're going to continue to have issues. And
(22:33):
so like, in the big picture, I'm not worried about Lebron,
but in the short term, this is a tough stretch
of schedule and I don't know that they can win
many times without Lebron meeting Anthony Davis at least near
the level that he's at. Even just as like decision makers,
the Lakers perimeter players are all pretty inconsistent to varying degrees.
(22:55):
Lebron needs to be the guy that brings consistency to
their perimeter decision making and their pre or firepower, and
he just hasn't been.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
You know, it's funny.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
We talk a lot about like teams records, and we
hyper focus on role players, and we hyper focus on scheme,
and we hyper focus on you know, strength of schedule
and all these like different issues. But nine times out
of ten, it comes down to, like, are your stars
playing really really well or are they struggling. We're gonna
talk about the minding heat here in a few minutes.
Most of their issues come down to the fact that
(23:25):
Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo are combining to average just
a few more points than Anthony Davis is averaging by himself.
They're not getting production star production from their stars. So
you can talk about Terry Rogier and you can talk
about like, oh man, these these you know, kilolware minutes
are rough or whatever it is that your issue is,
but like, it doesn't really matter if your stars aren't
(23:46):
playing at a superstar level. One of the things I
talk about all the time is like, when superstars play
at a superstar level, they eat up so much responsibility
on both ends that it actually rafts these really small
and achievable roles for the role players. Like if you've
(24:06):
got an offensive star who is consistently bringing two to
the ball because he's a devastating offensive weapon, all of
a sudden, you can see some pretty mediocre role players
around the league look good because they're consistently getting great advantages. Right,
(24:28):
But if those stars aren't playing super well and they
aren't lighting the world on fire in single coverage situations
or against traditional coverages, then you aren't gonna load up
on them the way you need to, and those guys
aren't gonna get great advantages off the ball and then
guess what they're gonna start looking like pretty limited role players.
(24:48):
Same thing goes on the defensive end of the floor.
I'm gonna talk about this again with the Bucks here
in a minute. Jannison Brook Lopez have leveraged themselves defensively
at a much higher level over the course of the
last couple of weeks some real throwback games between those
two guys. Brooke had another ridiculous block on a Tyler
(25:09):
Harrow step back three along the right wing tonight. Because
of that, the Bucks have looked sharper defensively. But it's
not just because those two. When the Bucks back line
is flying around and making all these plays, it crafts
small achievable roles for your defensive players, and then suddenly
(25:32):
guys like Andre Jackson and aj Green and everyone else
playing defensive roles for Milwaukee looks like they're a little
bit more, you know, in their wheelhouse, something they can manage, right.
It's the same thing on both ends of the floor.
And when you look at the Lakers, it's like when
Lebron James and Anthony Davis are not bringing truly elite
(25:56):
play on both.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Ends of the floor.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Between the two of them, you're gonna start to say,
see some limitations within the Lakers role players. I'm always
more willing to point the finger at the Stars because
they are the guys that make tons and tons of money,
and they are the guys that have the reputation and
are held to a different standard. I don't think it
makes a ton of sense to look at an eight
(26:18):
million dollar player and be like, man, he's so inconsistent. Yeah,
that's why he makes eight million dollars. Like, that's the point.
You have two guys that make fifty, they got to
do a lot so that the guys that don't make
fifty can can have manageable roles. And again I'm referring
to Lebron and Ad as a duo. Lebron is the
(26:40):
main guy that's struggling. AD has been pulling his weight
for the most part this year, but he's been really
AD's two back to back really bad second alps, and
those are when things fell apart. In fact, Ad has
been so good this year that he's been able to
overcome most of Lebron's issues, But in the stretches where
Ad has been bad, Like think about the stretches when
Ad has been really bad second half again against Denver,
(27:03):
they get blown out. Second half against the Suns, they
get blown out. First half against Cleveland when Jared Allen
ate his lunch, they get blown out. So like again,
it's mostly the start the superstar play that I believe
is the issue behind this team that's leading to their funk.
A couple other small things. The starting lineup piece. I
understood the reasoning behind going to Cam Reddish mostly had
(27:27):
to do with the fact that Delo wasn't playing well.
Like the Austin Delo Ruey Lebron a D lineup works.
Just Delo was playing bad basketball, and I understood the
reason why you went to look at the Cam Reddish piece.
But Ruey's not playing good basketball right now, in large
part because he just came back from an injury and
he's working his way back into rhythm. And so because
Rui's not playing good basketball, and Cam is not playing
(27:49):
good basketball, or Cam has his offensive limitations and Lebron's
having a slump, now, all of a sudden, a starting
lineup for the Lakers that's been really good offensively for
a long time has not looked very good.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
And so I don't know how you can pull it off.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
I would even consider just putting in Dalton straight up
for Cam and just going back to the way things were,
or even even going with d Lo or going with
de Lo and Dalton. But at this point, the offense
has to get going. Offense is what gives this team life.
Offense is what gets this team to play hard. Offense
is what gets this team to run the floor. They
get energized when they're scoring. And so with that being
(28:25):
the case, I think you've got to inject some more
offensive firepower into the starting lineup with either d Lo
or Dalton or both. They just got to find a
way to do that. And then lastly, JJ in his scheme,
JJ's been doing a lot of switching, and in the switching,
they've been giving up a lot of different issues, a
lot of offensive glass stuff. This is a This is
(28:46):
a defensive rebounding lineup. That a lineup that struggled the
defensive rebound which, by the way, the Austin Delo Lebron
ad Ruey lineup last year defensive rebounded really well. So
like they're capable of rebounding better. A big part of
it is switching. When Anthony Davis gets switched out onto
the perimeter, who's on the back line lazy Lebron and
(29:08):
Ruey who doesn't rebound. You see how that can be
an issue. So like, I think at a certain point,
JJ's got to look at the data here and be like,
we are a bottom three defense that can't rebound, So
maybe the switching needs to be something that we take
a different look at. It's a delicate balance. It's the
same thing with the starting lineup, because like, you never
want to bail on things just because they're not going
(29:28):
your way in a small sample, because sometimes basketball concepts
take time to flush out, takes time for teams to
pick up the habits and to get better, right uht.
The Lakers offense last year is a great example of that.
The five out stuff looked terrible at the start of
the year. It was unguardable in the second half of
the year. So like, at a certain point, like there's
a delicate balance between bailing on something, but like I
(29:50):
wonder when JJ is going to look at this data
and go like, all right, this isn't working. We need
to try something. And the lastly on the Lakers, there
was a comment that I received on Twitter from someone
who listened to the video that I did referencing me saying,
don't panic. Here's the thing that's still what you do.
You don't panic because you're ten and seven. Yeah, you're
(30:10):
playing shit basketball and there's a bunch of good teams
coming to town or vice versa. So yeah, you're in
some trouble, but thankfully you bank some wins, so the
world's not crumbling around you. Here's the reality. You're playing
shit basketball. Helps not coming. Yeah, the Lakers will hopefully
make a trade this year, but it's probably not gonna
(30:31):
happen until closer to February, which means you've got twenty
thirty games here where you got to figure your shit out.
This be an active participant in your own survival. No
one is coming to help you. So you don't panic.
You identify what you're doing poorly, and you find a
way to try to fight it, and you fight like
hell until you find some relief, whether that's Jared Vanderbilt
(30:53):
coming back, Lebron James getting his legs back underneath him,
or a trade, whatever it ends up being, you've got
to fight until then. I've seen that Lakers teams do
it before. The Russell Westbrook Lakers fought like hell until
they traded Russ and then they ended up making a
run to the Western Conference finals. That's the type of
spirit that they need to see, that I need to see.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
And if there's.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Anything that I'm really disappointed about, it's just the overall
fight that they showed in the second half over the
last two games. All Right, Bucks heat Dame got super
(31:37):
hot from three. Early in this game, they were spamming
double dragged with Brook Lopez in a guard and you know,
three man action is kind of like the foundational concept
between most of what NBA teams do right now. Right, So,
like you can imagine a horn set where you have
two guys at the elbows and a guy at the
top of the key. It's like pass the ball to
one guy at the elbow, and then there's some sort
of screening action between the other two guys. There's like
(31:59):
some sort of interchange between those three guys. Stack, pick
and roll just a ball screen, but we're bringing a
shooter into the action and we're backscreening for the role
man as he's going, so he's interchanging to the top
of the key. Once again, three players all the threat. Right,
you have a lot of like the all of the
stuff that like Dallas has been doing, the Lakers been
doing this too. A lot of teams are doing this
(32:20):
stuff where they use their center as the passing folkrum
at the top of the key, where they just enter
the ball to the top of the key, and then
you have your two guards like screen for each other,
and then cut off and try to make something happen there.
Once again, three players all in some sort of like interchange.
Double drag is nothing but a couple of screens where
one guy rolls to the basket, so it's two staggered
ball screens. The better athlete typically rolls, the better shooter
(32:43):
typically pops. But the whole point of running a three
man action is to take what is a simple decision
and turn it into a complicated decision. So if like
two guys interchange, it's just you get him, I get him.
We're good, right a ball screen, Well I'm in a drop.
Oh we're switching. Oh I'm blitzing. Oh I'm hedging whatever
(33:03):
it is. Oh I'm going under. There's just pretty simple
decision making process. As soon as you bring that third
guy into the equation, you can start to force teams
to make some mistakes and Dame was just constantly finding
the mistake in Miami's approach to that double drag at
the top of the key. So it was usually somebody
like aj Greener, Andre Jackson and Brook Lopez setting the
(33:25):
two picks, and then essentially as Dame is coming off
to his left hand side, there's usually a guard guard
switch in there somewhere. Usually the guy who's guarding Dame
is going to pass him off to the guy who's
guarding the other guard.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
But then there's also like.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
A drop coverage element sometimes because even that second guard
can get screened, and then the guy who's guarding the
big man who's rolling might sit there in a drop
and Dame beat every variation of it. There was a
time where he came off of the double drag and
Bam was too far back in a drop because the
second guy got screened, and he just walked into a three.
(34:00):
There was a time that Bam said, Ah, screw it,
I'm just gonna switch, and he switched, and he was
sitting too far back on his heels, and Dame just
went to a little step back to his right and
knocked it down. There was another play in the second
half where it was just a straight up one on
one situation with Bam and Dame, and Bam was just
just overplaying the drive and Dame, who'd had hit like
six or seven threes at that point, was just able
(34:20):
to easy step back going to his left and knock
down a three point shot. But like Bam was sitting
too far back on his switches. There was a play
where Kevin Love was in the game where like the
other guard who was switching was waiting on the other
side of the second screen. So what did Dame do.
He just came off the first screen, and when he
came off the first screen, he just kind of settled
into that soft spot right there in the middle of
the action and rose up and knocked it down. But
(34:42):
Dame just got blazing hot from three just by spamming
the same action that double drag at the top of
the key, and then from there Miami basically had no
choice but to start double teaming him because at that
point he was in rhythm. He hit the shot over
Jimmy where like step back on the left wing of
pump fake, Jimmy did everything right, broke his rhythm and
he just kind of leaned back and reloaded and just
kind of knocked it down off of the pump fake
(35:05):
like he just had it going too much. So they
had to start double teaming, and it worked and it
got them back in the game. I thought the Bucks
were a little slow with their processing. And then one
of the big things that you have to do when
you're beating a blitz or a double team is you
got to get the ball on time and on target.
Like to put it simply, if I ask you to
guard me and you're fifteen feet away and before you
(35:27):
run at me, you have to throw me a chest
pass right into my shooting pocket, You're not gonna be
able to guard me, like I'm either gonna shoot it,
or if you sprint, like hell, I'm just gonna go
right around you, right. But if you throw me a
bad pass, like if you throw me a bounce pass,
you know, three feet off to my left, or if
I have to like go way down to grab it,
or it's just it's difficult for me to catch all
of a sudden, that fifteen foot close out for you
(35:49):
become something that's more achievable. And like the Bucks were
just throwing some sloppy passes, and like those four on
threes were quickly turning into situations where there was no advantage,
and so Miami started to get now transition. They had
fifteen transition points in the second half. They had a
really rough jump shooting first half, and they finally started
to make some jump shots in the second half. Terry
Rogier in particular, hit three threes and a long two
(36:10):
in that half, and so they were able to just
kind of slowly but methodically work their way into game
by doubling Dame getting out in transition. Jimmy was able
to drop his shoulder on that left lane line drive
and get to the basket a couple of times. In
the third quarter. They get themselves back into a game,
and now it's a crunch Time game. But in the
Crunch Time game, it was fascinating because Dame is again
(36:31):
the superstar for the Bucks. Like we talked about in
that segment earlier about your superstar doing his job, we
saw a massive mismatch in the quality of superstar playing
Crunch Time. Dame, because of everything he did in the
earlier phase of the game, was consistently bringing two to
the ball, so they were able to pass out of it.
And guess who ended up getting hot in crunch time.
AJ Green hit three threes in the second half, had
(36:53):
a big one off of a double team, and then
a ridiculously tough one, a tough one on the left
wing where one of those sloppy passing sequences from the
Bucks had AJ Green with Terry Rozier in like a
straight up loaded situation late clock and aj did like
a hard rip to the like kind of like a
pullover to his right and then a rip, a hard
rip to the left and was able to get enough
(37:15):
separation from separation from from Tyler Harrow to just rise
up and knock down a huge just a huge bucket
from AJ Green. He's been awesome. We'll talk about him
here in a minute. But like Dame, was able to
generate quality shots by virtue of his threat by bringing
two guys to the ball, and on the other end
of the floor, they just the heat. Can't get anything
out of Jimmy and Bam. Jimmy and Bam combined for
(37:37):
five points in the fourth quarter. The two of them
on the season are combining to average thirty six points
per game. It's just not gonna get it done, like
I talked about it earlier, and I'm not gonna get
too much deeper in it now, but like, don't look
any further off your Miami Heat fan. Then the fact
that your stars are not providing superstar level production and
(37:58):
when they're not, like and again, BAM's not a superstar
level player, but he's close, and like, if he's not
going to play up to that level, if Jimmy and
Bam are, if neither of them are going to play
at a top twenty five level, then you're you're not
gonna win many games in the NBA with how much
talent there is right now. And that ended up being
the difference in the game is there was a little
(38:18):
bit of a faux pause. Andre Jackson like panicked and
turned it over, and they ended up giving up a
three to Terry Rozier in transition, and so Miami did
end up getting a better chance to try to steal
that game. But like the Bucks were up four l A,
they should have put it away easier than they did,
because once again, Dame was able to provide the superstar
impact of bringing two to the ball and Jimmy and
(38:39):
Bam couldn't do anything on the offensive end down the
stretch of that game. The Bucks have now won five
in a row seven out of eight, and again that
one loss in there was that Giannis foul of LaMelo ball.
They've had over a twenty before tonight's game because Giannis
didn't play tonight, they had over one hundred and twenty
points in three consecutive games. In the previous three games,
and again, like early in the season, it wasn't just
(39:00):
the defense. The offense where it wasn't where it needed
to be, but like getting you're getting the offensive burst.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Now.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
We talked about Brooke and Giannis earlier and how they're
establishing kind of like a really high floor for this defense,
and then AJ Green and Andre Jackson there. I'm of
the opinion AJ Green should start. I think the reason
Docks leaning and Andre Jackson is he's bringing a little
bit more like full court pressure to just kind of
like disrupt rhythm. But Aj, I think is a pretty
damn good point of attack defender. Sides his feet well,
(39:28):
gets over screens well, He's got a really strong like
build in low center of gravity, so he absorbs contact
well like and he's just a better offensive player. But like,
those two guys are are providing forty eight minutes of
pretty decent quality perimeter defense. I mean they played they
close both of them together tonight, obviously with Giannis out
of the lineup. So like starting to look like a
(39:48):
serious basketball team in Milwaukee after not looking like a
serious basketball team in the in the early stretch of
the year. Not gonna spend too much time on Rockets bowlves,
but it was a really really fun game. The the
Rockets were really bogging down Minnesota's offense in the first
three quarters. In Minnesota's offense has a boatload of issues.
I'm gonna get into that here in just a minute,
(40:09):
but it turned into this really interesting, like crunch time
battle because the Wolves just kind of methodically took control
of the game, just slowly chopped away and ended up
taking control of the game. And they really should have
won this one. Rob Dillingham had a really bad turnover
against the men Thompson that ended up leading to a
layup that tied the game. And then Anthony Edwards missed
(40:30):
two wide open threes and he had like a little
bank shot that he shot at the buzzer that hit
every part of the rim and didn't go down. So
like it it got to be a discouraging one for
Wolves fans. Because it felt like a game that they
should should have won. But what was really fascinating down
the stretch in the fourth quarter when the Wolves were
taking control up until the final minute, it was kind
of a formula that I liked in the sense that, like,
(40:53):
it's kind of ugly and clunky, but Ant and Julius
are guys that have a lot of physical advantages against
the guys that are guarding them, and they can get
to their spots. And so as long as the Wolves
can tighten the screws on the defensive end of the
floor and get stops and Julius can generate some pretty
(41:15):
solid looks down the stretch of a game. And it
was kind of impressive as they kind of worked their
way back into it. It has like three or four
plays a game now where he just snakes through like
four bodies and gets to the basket for.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
An and one.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Now he shouldn't have to stake through four bodies, which
we'll get to in a minute. But anyway, Rob Dillingham
has the turnover on the right wing, a men Thompson
ends up getting the transition layup, Anthony Everards misses the
little banking floater and we end up going to overtime,
and in overtime a really good defensive stretch where Dylan
Brooks got a bunch of key stops and the Rockets
(41:48):
started to get out in transition, they had eight points
in fast break situations just in the ot period. A
Men Thompson, who got the huge deal against Rob Dillingham,
hit a massive three on the right wing, and then
Alpert and Saning Goudo several occasions in the game was
just going right at Rudy Gobert, which I thought was
really fascinating. Was able to get to a nice little
(42:10):
left shoulder hook that iced things and the Rockets ended
up stealing that game from the Wolves. I've talked quite
a bit about the Rockets in the last week, so
you guys can go to my channel to find some
of that content in the Power Inkings video, and then
we did a deep dive on the Rockets. I think
it was after the Bucks game if I remember correctly.
Last week. I want to talk a little bit about
the Wolves though specifically and their issues was shooting. So
(42:31):
one of the things that happened at the tail end
of this game was mostly Jabari Smith Junior, but as a
couple other guys, they would put a defender on Jada
McDaniels and just ignore him and just offer help everywhere.
And Jaden, i think, went four for sixteen from the field,
couldn't make a three point shot to save his life.
Multiple beautiful, completely uncontested three point looks in crunch time,
(42:53):
and none of them were close. There was a play
where had this like crazy slithering drive and like whipped
a beautiful left handed cross court passed to hit Jaden
right in the shooting pocket in the right corner, and
it was a brick. And like I've been saying a
lot on my show that I love Anthony Edwards. He's
(43:14):
probably my favorite young prospect in the league, and I'm
rooting for him in a big way. But like, I
believe in the Wolves less this year than I ever have,
and I hate this roster construct. And one of the
big reasons why is, like, again, play into your stars strengths.
Anthony Edwards is over two hundred jump shots this year,
(43:34):
damn near one point two points per attempt. He is
a really good jump shooter. That is something that I've
emphasized as a piece of his growth that I believe
is real. And I think He's demonstrated that over a
pretty massive sample size between last year's playoffs, the stuff
with Team USA this summer, and the stuff with the
Wolves this year. But his absolute superstar superpower is nobody
(43:56):
can guard this dude. No one can keep him in front,
and yet every time he beats his man off the dribble,
he's got to slither through three or four help defenders
to get anything off at the rim. And it's because
you're closing out short, if not outright ignoring Jaden McDaniels,
you're closing out short on Julius Randall and Rudy Gobert
(44:18):
can hardly catch the damn ball, let alone put it
in the basket. It is such a flawed construct and
like every game with the Wolves is so ugly. And
for the record, I understand there's another side to this,
which is they have the defensive personnel to cause some
real problems for teams, But like, ultimately, ultimately, I think
(44:39):
if you're going to get the best out of Anthony
Edwards and what this offense can be, and even taking
it a step further with Julius Randall is a guy
who can really beat matchups and use his athletic tools
to pressure the rim. You gotta get some guys who
can hit some shots in this lineup. And like, I
don't know what's going on with Jade McDaniels because the
development is just stalled out. Like in this league, if
(45:02):
you're just a non threat, it becomes pretty difficult to
consider you to be a reliable rotation piece. He's looking
a lot closer to Jared Vanderbilt than he is prime
McHale Bridges, and that concerns me because I don't know.
I don't know that there's a good solid for that
(45:22):
other than ant takes eleven three is a game and
hopefully makes five of them. But that was a really
entertaining game. That was probably the game that I enjoyed
most watching tonight. That's all I have for tonight is
always sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting
the show. I recorded over an hour with Sam Vessini
earlier this afternoon, talking a bunch of stuff about the
contenders at the top of the league.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
I think we're running that on Wednesday. I feel bad
for you.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
Guys because I did a I did a for your
regular guys who listened to all of our episodes. I
did a I worked four hours this morning on a
video with the film breakdown of Nicks of Nick Nuggets
and recorded the whole damn thing, and then my computer
had some sort of glitch where my camera wasn't or
where my camera was glitching, and the mic was glitching,
(46:06):
and we had to scrap the whole damn thing. So
that's why we didn't have a new episode this morning.
I apologize, trust me, no one's more irritated than I
am about that. But we do have more content coming
out with Sam Vassini. Every year for Thanksgiving, we take Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
Saturday Sunday off me and our whole team so that
we could take a little break before we get into
the n season tournament. So no new content after the
(46:26):
Sam Vasini video until our Power Rankings video on Monday.
But once we get to the Power Rankings video on Monday,
it's grind time and you guys can count on that
same Monday through Friday schedule basically through to the All
Star break again. I sincerely appreciate you guys for rocking
with me and rocking with the show. If you have
an opportunity to spend some time with family and food
this holiday. I hope you guys enjoy it and I'll
(46:46):
see you guys with Sam and then on Monday.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
For some power rankings the volume. What's up guys?
Speaker 2 (46:54):
As 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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