Hoops Tonight - NBA Power Rankings: Celtics RECLAIM #1, Curry & Warriors TOP 5, Giannis & Bucks BACK - Hoops Tonight with Jason Timpf

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume. The ever its NBA Cup is here and
you can win big getting in on the action at
DraftKings sports Book, an official sports betting partner of the NBA.
All thirty teams split into six groups every Tuesday and Friday,
playing for the right to advance in the single elimination
in season tourney culminating in the NBA Cup Championship in Vegas.
We have a new favorite on DraftKings. The New York

(00:21):
Knicks are actually favored to win the NBA Cup right
now at plus five hundred, with the Cleveland Cavaliers with
the second best odds at plus five fifty. First time,
here's something special just for you new DraftKings customers. Bet
five dollars to get one hundred and fifty in bonus
bets if your bet wins. Score big with DraftKings Sportsbook,
every point counts. Download the Draft Kings Sportsbook app and
use code hoops that's h oops, that's code hoops for

(00:45):
new customers to get one fifty in bonus bets if
your bet wins when you bet just five bucks only
on DraftKings. The crown is yours. Gambling problem called one
eight hundred gambler in New York called eight seven seven
eight hope n why or text hope N y to
four to six three sixt nine. In Connecticut, help was
available for problem gambling called eight eight eight seven eight
nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG dot org.

(01:09):
Please play responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino and Resort
in Kansas twenty one plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction,
Void and Ontario. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty
eight hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources,
see dkang dot co. Slash b ball. All right, welcome

(01:38):
to hoop Tonight here at the volume. Happy Monday, everybody,
op ball. If you guys had an incredible weekend, got
a jam packed show for you today. We're just doing
power rankings, but I have four additional teams I'm gonna
hit in addition to those ten, either mixed in or separately,
So we're gonna be hitting on fourteen different NBA teams today.
You guys have the joke before we get started. To
subscribe to the hoops Tonight YouTube channels you don't miss
any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at

(01:59):
underscored JSNLT, so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't
forget about a podcast feed wherever you get your podcast
and our Hoops Tonight, don't forget it's helpful if you
also leave a rating and a review on that front.
We also have brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram,
and Facebook for the Hoops Tonight channels where we're going
to be releasing some reels and things along those lines.
To make sure you follow there and then keep dropping
mail bag questions in the YouTube comments. We do mail

(02:20):
bags every Friday throughout the NBA season, and the last
not at least before we get started. I want to
talk about game time. This is a company I believe in.
I have personally used their product many times in the past.
I think they give the best experience when it comes
to buying and selling tickets, and now is it better
time than ever to get out and go see an event.
Between the NFL being in full swing, college football being

(02:41):
in full swing. College basketball is now in full swing,
the NBA is in full swing, hockey's in full swing.
We have concerts, we have comedy shows, and even though
watching on our couch is what we get used to
there's still nothing like being there in person in the arena,
experiencing the environment in that way. This is where you
guys need to head over to Game Time. They have
an incredible experience. You can check out f use two taps.
You get all in pricings. You know what you're paying

(03:03):
for before you go to check out. You also get
a view of your seat within the app, so you
know what you're getting for your money. They also have
a new program called game Time Picks where they curate
the feeds. Instead of going to an event and getting
inundated by thousands of tickets, they will just show you
the best deals at that specific event. To make that
process easier for you. Take the guesswork out of buying

(03:24):
tickets with game Time Picks. Download the game Time app,
created an account and use code hoops for twenty dollars
off your first purchase terms apply again, create an account
and redeem code hoops. That's hoops for twenty dollars off.
Download Game Time today. What time is it? Game Time?
All right, let's talk some basketball. So getting into our poweranks.
Remember when it comes to my power rankings, this is

(03:47):
not intended to be contender rankings. This is not even
intended to be a look at the entire season. It's
a combination of what you've accomplished over the course of
the season and how you've been playing as of late.
And in this list, especially towards the bottom, when we
get into that seven, eight, nine, ten, I'm going to
use it as an opportunity to highlight teams that are

(04:09):
playing well as of late. This perfect example of this
here in the early season is my number ten today,
the Milwaukee Bucks. This is a team that started too
and eight, so they shouldn't be in the ten spot
by the grand scheme of the league. However, they've won
six of their last seven. They're playing really good basketball

(04:29):
as of late. So I want to use our power
rankings as an opportunity to shine a light on Milwaukee
and talk a little bit about them. I always just
have to throw that out there as a disclaimer, because
it's like with player rankings. Everybody uses different rules with
their player rankings. Everybody uses different rules even when they're
ranking teams. Some people don't factor in the playoffs. Some
people are just talking standings. It gets complicated. So I
try to give you guys my criteria up front and

(04:51):
again I'm primarily using the power rankings as an opportunity
to highlight who's been playing well as of late. Lakers
fan not in the list today because of the back
to back losses. You have the sixth best record in
the league. I understand that that'll put you on this
list in a lot of different circumstances, but I'm using
it to shine the light on these other teams. I

(05:12):
do want to talk a little bit about the Lakers
in their Magic and Nuggets game, but we're going to
do that at the very end of today's video. All right,
let's get it into Milwaukee. So when the Bucks were
down two and eight, I said that the season wasn't
even close to being over because of two reasons. The
East is incredibly weak, so you're always like two good
weeks from being right back in the mix of things.
And then they were about to head into a very

(05:33):
easy stretch of their schedule. And now they've won six
out of seven since their two and eight start. Now
now just one game below five hundred, they're already completely
above the play in, sitting at number six in the
Eastern Conference, and they're just two back in the lost
column of the Orlando Magic at the three seed in
the East. That's how quickly things turned around for the

(05:54):
Milwaukee Bucks. Since November twelfth, which is the start of
this six out of seven stretch, the Milwaukee Bucks are
ninth in offense, eighth in defense, fifth in net rating.
They are still struggling on the glass a little bit,
and they're struggling in transition. But again, one of the
things that happens when you run into the lighter stretches
of the schedule, especially for these older, slower teams, Teams
like Milwaukee. Teams like the Lakers are a good example

(06:16):
of this, right when you run into some of these teams,
even though they're not as talented, they're very young and
athletic and so like. It's not exactly shocking to me
that they would struggle in transition and on the glass
and this matchup even though they've been winning the scoreboard battle,
if that makes sense. Giannis in this street thirty three points,
eleven rebounds, and eight assists. How's that for apex superstar play,

(06:38):
all on sixty one percent from the field. But really
he's turned it up in terms of his overall level
of engagement on the defensive end of the floor. He
was not having a good defensive start to the season,
either him or Brook. Both of them have been amazing
in this span and it's still just super scary. When
the two of them are at their best on the
defensive end of the floor. They compliment each other really well,
right because Brook is big long as great defense of instincts,

(07:00):
you can do a lot of work to protect the rim.
Giannis has the unique ability to cover ground at such
an insane rate of speed that he can be in
two places at once. He can help hard somewhere while
still shutting something down on the other end of the
play at a big moment, like that in the Rockets
game last week. Right, So, like those two, getting back
to that level on defense has gone a long way

(07:21):
to re anchoring things on that end of the floor.
Giannis is just playing at an insanely high level right now.
I'd have him at second in MVP voting if I
had to send in a vote today. A couple of
guys who've gotten their shooting going finally that needed to
get it going, specifically Gary Trent and Brook Lopez. Them
struggling early in the year was causing their offense to sputter,
and when your offense is sputtering and you're not guarding
the way they were to start to year. That's how

(07:42):
you can start dropping games to bad teams pretty quickly.
And one of the other things that's helped is they've
kind of figured out their primary point of attack role,
at least the best they can do it within this group,
which is like starting games with Andre Jackson just a
bigger athlete, right, and then bringing in AJ Green to
do a lot of work on the ball on the
best guard of the other team, which is giving them
at least a higher floor on the defensive end of

(08:04):
the four. Again, Andre is a better athlete than AJ,
but they've both been bringing both Like Andre's been shooting
the ball pretty well and AJ has been defending pretty well, right,
So like the two of them have brought some stability
to that position. And here's the thing. The Bucks may
be playing a light schedule, but they're finally playing a
better brand of basketball and that will carry over when

(08:24):
you get into the tougher opponents down the line. And again,
the situation in the standings appears to have brought the
urgency that they were missing early in the season, and
now they seem to be back on the right track
at number nine the New York Knicks, as their super
weird start to the season continues. They went four in
a row, including a dominant win in Phoenix, and I
know they don't have kd or Bradley Beal at that

(08:46):
point in time, but still a big win on the road.
Right then they go into Utah, the team that I
think is the worst team in the Western Conference, and
suffer one of the worst losses that any NBA team
has had this year. Utah controlled that game from start
to finish. The Knicks weren't playing a defense until it
was too late. That point, they were confident. Colin Sexton
put them away with a bunch of three point shots
in the fourth quarter. They had a rough shooting night

(09:07):
in that game as well, but it was It was
an ugly loss for the Knicks, but they have been
playing good ball as of late. The offense has been
humming at a super high level. In their last five games.
They have a one twenty six offensive rating, which is
obviously off the charts. Og Nanobi has been shooting the
ball super well and confidently stepping into more complicated shots
off the bounce, like dribble combinations into shots. He's been

(09:30):
putting the ball on the floor well against closeouts all year.
He's converting spot ups at one point one point eight
points per possession, which is really good. And OG's doing
some damage in the post. He's personally shooting nine for
fourteen from the field there and he's run twenty four
post ups so far this year, getting one point twenty
nine points per possessions. Basically twice a game or once
a half, they can go to Og in the block

(09:50):
and they're getting good production out of that. He's had
at least twenty four points in five of the last
eight games. That's a pretty big little scoring stretch there
from og Ananoby. The defense is still really bad, Like
even during the four game winning streak, the Knicks were
giving up one hundred and nineteen points per one hundred possessions.
And again in that stretch they played Washington, Brooklyn twice,

(10:11):
and Phoenix without Kevin Durant or Bradley Beal. So the
defense is just not where it needs to be. Like,
there are two serious teams, two teams with real ambitions
this year that are in the bottom ten of defensive rating,
and it's the Lakers and the Knicks. When I look
at the Lakers, it makes so much sense to me
because they're just so unathletic on the perimeter that they're

(10:32):
just going to be in a lot of situations where
they're compromising in rotation and they're just going to be struggling. Right.
They're also a team that tries to outscore people like
the Knicks, but they have real athleticism issues on the perimeter.
The Knicks don't. They have a ton of perimeter defense,
and they've been a good paint defense. This is a
crazy thing. There's been all this, like all these like
stats thrown around as like oh, Carl Town's rim defensive

(10:53):
field goal percentage, which that kind of stuff all has
flaws anyway, but they've been fine in the paint. They're
allowing the ninth fewest points in the paint per game.
They've allowed the sixth fewest made restricted area of field
goals per game. They allow opponents to shoot just sixty
five percent in the restricted area, which is solid, that's
like league average this year. So like it's going wrong
for them on the perimeter, and that's the confusing part

(11:15):
to me. With a roster that has three very good
defenders playing at the two three and four and some
quick defenders that come in off the bench. So let's
talk about it in some more detail. They're allowing the
fourth most made threes per game, the sixth most attempts,
and the sixth worst percentage that they are allowing two opponents,

(11:36):
So they're getting slice and diced at the three point line.
I dug into a bunch of film this morning to
try to kind of figure out where it's going wrong
for the Knicks at the three point line. And really,
there's there's some effort stuff that is always like part
of every team's defensive film. Like it's the NBA regular season,
there's day two games. You can cherry pick clips from

(11:56):
any team around the league to make them look really
bad just by hunting down the pass essions where they're
not particularly engaged or locked in, right, Like that's kind
of the name of the game when it comes to
the NBA regular season, right, So like some of it
is that, And yeah, they'll lose shooters in transition from
time to time, or like a good defender like Josh Harden,
mckaal bridge is og and ob will lose contain of
the ball just by not sliding their feet very well.

(12:16):
And they'll end up in rotation and something bad will happen.
But that's effort stuff, and I'm not super worried about
that in the long run. And again, like especially I
was talking about bad defense, like the East is so
brutally weak, Like I pulled this up today, I uh,
the let me pull up the number, because this was
like legitimately shocking to me. In head to head matchups
between the East and the Western Conference this year, the

(12:39):
West is forty four and twenty five. For perspective, that's
the second highest interconference win percentage in league history. The
only time another conference dominated the other conference at a
higher rate than the West is doing to the East
this year was in nineteen sixty when the Eastern Conference
won seventy one percent of their games against the West. So,
like is really weak, and like, these teams in the

(13:02):
East are playing the vast majority of their schedule against
the Eastern Conference, and so there are a lot of
stretches where like they're just gonna be bored teams that
are up at the top part of the Eastern Conference.
They're not going to be playing their best basketball all
the time because they're not gonna be getting challenged all
the time. So like some of that we have to
set aside when I'm looking for schematic reasons like personnel

(13:24):
weaknesses or schematic reasons where I'm seeing things fall apart
for the Knicks on the perimeter in their defense, there's
two things that stand out to me. One in general
and unwillingness to switch. And this is something I've been
talking about all season, but like in the Jazz Game
in particular, they would not switch oj Anobi or Michale
Bridges off of Lori market and unless they absolutely had to,

(13:45):
And so in a lot of cases their guard would
just run up set a decent pick and like a
guy like a Lourie would just fly off of the
screen because Mikhale or Og would get picked and he'd
just come off and shoot a three. Or they do
a lot of inverted action where they would just have
Lori come up and set the screen and Jalen Brunson
would be guarding like someone like Johnny Jusang or someone

(14:07):
like Keante George, and he would just dribble off and
because Og and McHale aren't switching or helping, they would
just step into wide open threes off the dribble and
knock it down. There's a little bit of like overhelp
stuff going on to where guys get sucked into the
lane too far. So some of this is schematic, Like
to me, we see so many of these defenses around
the league between teams like Golden State, Boston and Cleveland.

(14:29):
Teams have some similar personnel on the perimeter to what
the Knicks have. And what they do is they do
a lot of switching and then they trust their guys
to contain. They'll dig down and recover. They'll occasionally break
out an aggressive look. They might blitz on occasion to
try to speed the game up or to try to
force some turnovers and get out in transition. But they switch,
they contain, they play passing lanes, and they take away

(14:51):
those easy drive and kick threes that you can get
in those situations. And like there's a lot of it's
a combination of two things. It's the unwillingness to switch,
and then it's the attacking of the entry points. And
this is happening with Kat, this is happening with Jalen
Brunston pretty consistently, teams just getting them involved in the
screening action. And my thing is like a lot of
the problem there is they're still not switching. Like, if

(15:12):
you switch that action, do you give up a mismatch
and do you have to load up and have to
plan for it? Sure? Can you possibly end up with
some problems on the offensive glass, sure, but none of
that is as bad as letting good shooters walk into
wide open threes, which has been something that has consistently
torched the Knicks all season long. And so like my
thing is, like I would just be a little bit

(15:32):
more willing to switch, especially when you have that off
ball speed when you need to help and rotate, you
have the personnel to be able to do that well.
And so like closing up some of the automatic openings
that open up by virtue of them not being willing
to switch, and then just in general better effort than
they've been giving, I think we'll go a long way
towards helping close things up for them on the perimeter.

(15:52):
But like, again, schematically, this to me feels like a
team that should play a little bit more on defense,
like a team like the Warriors, or a team like
the Calves, or a team like Boston where it's a
little bit more switching, a little bit more containing instead
of constantly asking guys to navigate screens, which again they
can do, and they can do effectively. I think McHale
bridges and ogn andob well McHale more than og but

(16:13):
they both have that ability. But it's just a lot
to ask, and you have the personnel to be able
to make things a little bit easier on them. Again,
it's about leveraging the strength of your team. The strength
of your team is you have really strong and versatial
defensively at the two through four spots. Lean into that
as much as possible as you can. Again, the Knicks
are on the right track, but they still have a
long way to go at this point. Number eight the

(16:46):
Denver Nuggets. Two in one week gets them to nine
and six. They're currently holding down the sixth seed in
the Western Conference. They got revenge on Memphis in a
game that Michael Porter Junior and Jamal Murray combined for
fifty one points. They lost to Dallas and Yokic's return
to zoom in on this game, and it's gonna be
a little bit of Dallas mixed in with Denver here.
This is one of those four extra teams that I'm
hitting today. The Dallas game was a really rough Jamal

(17:08):
Murray game. He was four for sixteen from the field
and repeatedly got cooked down the stretch. A couple of
big driving layups that he gave up to PJ. Washington,
once where he went right around him, once where he
went right through him. And then the play that iced
the game, a possession where Jamal overhelped a little bit
on a roll and then had to threw a bad
close out at Najie Marshall and gave him an easy
driving bank shot that ended up icing that game. Otherwise

(17:30):
Denver would have had a three in oher week. And
so let's switch over to Dallas for a second. Here,
tip of the cap to them. They've been playing some
decent basketball without Luca. They had seven players in double
figures in that Denver game, and a lot of the
stuff that I talked about over the summer is starting
to come to fruition for them without Luca, which is
their aggregate ball handling. This is a roster that has
a lot of offensive skill like Kyrie, can make plays

(17:52):
with the balls, can make plays with the ball. Kyrie
can make plays with the ball, can make plays with
the ball. Clay Clay had a rough game but he
can make plays. Quinton Grimes can make plays, right, Spencer Dinwood,
he can make plays. He's shown a lot of really
high level shot making over this recent stretch. Jayden Hardy
can make plays. Najie Marshall, who's amazing in the Denver game. So, like,

(18:13):
they have just a lot of guys that can do
stuff with the basketball and the dagger possession. And this
is a set that they've been running primarily with Luca
off the floor this year, but it's something I'd like
to see them run more. Is okay? So Dallas is
up one seventeen to one to fifteen with just under
a minute left, and they're running that like stuff where
they throw the ball to Derek Lively at the top
of the key and they have the guards like kind

(18:35):
of like screen for each other and then whirl around
him right. And on this sequence there's multiple guys running
off of Derek Lively. The first guy runs off, it's
Kyrie Irving and Derek Glive is holding the ball and
he looks and Kyrie's well guarded. It's not there, right.
The second guy that comes off was Quintin Grimes. And
when Quentin Grimes comes off, Jokic ends up because Derek

(18:57):
Glivey actually pitches the ball to Derek, Jokic has to
show high. So Yoki shows high and now there's two
on the ball. And as there's two on the ball,
this one Lively rolls on. And when Lively rolls, that's
what drags Jamal Murray just barely into the lane to
throw a little bit of extra help on that Lively role, which,

(19:19):
by the way, was a mistake. But as I talk
about you run offense to get the defense to make mistake,
that's literally the reason why you do it. So because
Jamal helps a little bit on that role, Naje kind
of relocates over to the top of the key Quintin
pitches it to him. Then that's what gives Najie Marshall
the opportunity to attack the closeout where he drives and
he hits the little bank shot high off the glass.
So again it's like there's multiple threats weaponizing the passing

(19:42):
ability of Derek Lively to get great shots. Again, the
ball and player movement for this team has been really
good for the Luca injury. When Luca comes back, he
needs to play in that style at least some of
the time, because this needs to be a punch that
you have. Yes, you want to be able to go, oh,
we're just gonna spam Luca double drag or or spain
pick and roll or whatever it is you want to
do to really leverage Luca's slow down, surgical offensive skill.

(20:07):
But you also want to be able to have this punch,
the punch that they've been riding to some pretty impressive
wins without look of this year, which is the everyone's
eating kind of look, right, and I think that that's
been really encouraging. But back over to Dallas or Denver,
excuse me, so on the tail end of the back
to back, Denver gets back on track with a dominant
win over the Los Angeles Lakers. Nicole Jokicz just kicked

(20:29):
the living shit out of Anthony Davis in this game,
which was a big reversal from the dynamic that took
place in the first round last year, where Lebron and
Ad kind of went toe to toe with Jokich and
Jamal Murray. The Lakers completely fell apart right before halftime
and never recovered. I'm going to do a Laker segment
at the tail end of the show, and we'll talk
some more about that game, because it was a lot
of good Denver, but it was also like just a

(20:50):
really weird stretch of basketball. So we'll get into that
when we talk Lakers at the tail end of the show.
But the short version is is that the Nuggets just
have an insane mental advantage over the Lakers. Are loaded
with super confident and talented offensive players. Again, they're fourth
in offense on the season. They just played a magic
team two nights earlier that is much much better defensively

(21:12):
than Denver is, and they hung a one to twenty
offensive rating on them, Like that's how good the Laker
offense is. And Denver had them looking despondent in the
third quarter. Not a single one of them looked confident,
not a single one of them was in rhythm. It
was actually crazy what they did to them. And that
is the mental dynamic ap play. When you make a
team play uncharacteristic basketball, that's when the mental aspect starts

(21:37):
to feed into things. Right. There are physical advantages, like
actual talent advantages, which are obviously part of the deal here,
but those physical and talented advantages have manifested so many
times in this matchup over the last three years that
it's really starting to sit and affect the confidence of
the Lakers in this matchup. And I thought that was
really fascinating because again, that's the same Lakers team that

(22:00):
diced up the Orlando Magic, a very very very good
top tier defense in this league two nights earlier, and
they had fifteen points over a fifteen minute span over
the second, third, and fourth quarters in the Denver game. Like,
that's the type of mental advantage that Denver has in
this matchup. Russell Westbrook had his way with the unathletic
Laker guards had a big time revenge game in that one.

(22:22):
It was just a complete and total outclassing. And so
everything is looking pretty good for the Nuggets overall. My
only concern with them is the Jamal Murray piece. Now,
unathletic guards all around the league are struggling in a
lot of ways this year as the game has changed
and become more fast and more spread out, both in
transition and in the half court. But like Denver beats Dallas,
if Jamal doesn't just get repeatedly cooked in space at

(22:45):
the tail end of that game, and like it wasn't
just Kyrie cooking him, it was guys like PJ. Washington
going right around him or threw him bench guards like
Naji Marshall, and then on the other end of the floor,
he just hasn't been good enough offensively to make up
for it. Right, Like, he had less than fifteen points
in a game this season more times then he's had
twenty or more points. Again, he's had more games where

(23:07):
he had fifteen or fewer points than he had twenty
or more. That's not the same Jamal Murray that they
won the championship with. He shot forty percent from the
field or worse in half of his games this season.
And here's the thing, Like Jokic is playing at a
level that is somewhat rare in NBA history. He's dominant
every single night. So like he's got to get it

(23:27):
together and he's got to meet Jokic as close to
the level that he's capable of getting to as possible,
because it's just with Yoki's playing at this level, you
have a legit chance to get another trophy and they're
gonna need more out of Jamal to get to that point.
One last Nuggets shout out the athletes Christian Brown and
Peyton Watson in addition to making shots and defending and
rebounding and doing all the things that they do at

(23:47):
such a high level to help his team win, you
can also literally see Jokic gaining trust in them. I
watched the Nuggets, I've watched the Denver or the Dallas
game in particular. I was really impressed by like some
of these possessions where Yokic was in deep, like had
the ball getting over to his left shoulder to where

(24:08):
he could go to that hook that he makes sixty
five seventy percent of the time, and like could have
shot it, but saw a defender like leaning pretty far
in off of Peyton Watson or Christian Brown and like
made the kickout pass. That's trust, right, because if the
roles are reversed and that's a player that Jokic doesn't trust,
he's gonna try to shoot over that, right. That's a

(24:30):
shot that he feels like he can get to. And
I just I've seen like it just a gaining momentum
in the partnership between Jokic and Peyton Watson and Christian Brown.
They just look like they're starting to get that sort
of basketball chemistry and Yokic is starting to trust them.
On a high level. So like that that I think
is encouraging on the Denver front. Number seven, the Los

(24:51):
Angeles Clippers. How about a four and ah week. They've
won five in a row overall, They're now to eleven
and seven. They are the five seed out in the
Western Conference against legitimately tough schedule. They beat the Warriors.
They they're the only team to beat the Orlando Magic
since November sixth, and they beat the Kinks. They're second
in defense and second in rebounding over this stretch, no

(25:12):
surprise with the absurd amount of defensive talent and athleticism
that they have. And the crazy thing is James Harden
still hasn't really got it going. And like some of
it is the personnel they're playing right, Like, the Clippers
are playing a lot of defensive minded groups, and that's
going to make it easier for teams to load up
on James Harden. He's not going to have some majestically
you know, efficient season this year, but I do think
he's capable of playing harder, or excuse me, capable of

(25:34):
playing better than he has to this point in the season.
And that's encouraging. The formula is working. They have six
players averaging double figures during the win streak. James is
making enough plays, and Norm Powell continues to hit just
like every single big shot that the team needs him
to hit in big moments at the end of games.
I've been right about some things to start this year,
and I've been wrong about others, obviously, but this is
a team that I was right about, and it's starting

(25:55):
to like cement my basketball worldview as it pertains to
perimeter athleticism being the best foundational strength for an NBA
basketball team to have. Moving on number six, the Houston
Rockets two and two week, they lost a heartbreaker to
Milwaukee in a game where you got to see kind
of the best and worst of the Rockets on both
ends of the floor right like incredible defense, so basically

(26:18):
the only team that has made Gianna's struggle as of late.
They were forcing turnovers, they were getting out in transition.
In that matchup, Fred van Vliet had some stretches of
really surgical half court offense, but they just had too
many stretches where their offense bogged down and at the
tail end of the game, Milwaukee just found a matchup
that they liked and it was a speed matchup. They
liked Damian Lizard against Stillon Brooks, and he was able
to beat him off the dribble twice, once to draw

(26:39):
foul and once they had the layup that ended up
winning the game. Then ended up being what went south
for the Rockets, but they got back on track by
putting Tyres Halliburton and Ben matherin in jail as they
blew out the Pacers, and then they split a baseball
series with Portland. And by the way, Portland is feisty.
They've won four games against teams that are five hundred
or better. For perspective, that's the same as Cleveland. Cleveland

(27:00):
has four wins against teams that are five hundred better,
so does Portland, and Boston only has three. So like
Portland's feisty, they've proven that they can beat good teams
on any given night. And that's a good Rockets team.
Like a good Rockets team, that's been a big problem
around the league. And against seven and three against teams
that are five hundred are better this year are the
Houston Rockets. That was a big time win for the

(27:22):
Portland Trailblazers. But anyway, the Rockets are sitting at twelve
and six. They're third in the Western Conference seven and
three against teams that are five hundred are better fifteenth
in offense, second in defense, fourth in net rating. I
basically look at them as like a better deeper version
of the Los Angeles Clippers, who, by the way, the
Rockets beat twice in a row earlier this season. Number
five the Orlando Magic. They've won eight out of nine,

(27:45):
some really nice wins against the Pacers and against the Suns,
and then stole a game against the Lakers on Thursday.
Got some help from Anthony Davis and that one who
like this is crazy. I was at a friends giving
thing that night, and I had been kind of monitoring
the game, and when Lebron got the rebound and the
kick ahead pass to a d and the final minute
for the dunk, I was like, Oh, this game's over,

(28:06):
and I like put my phone away and started just
like enjoying the night. And then I get a text
message from Logan Swam, our head of content here at
the Volume, who's also a diehard Lakers fan, and he's like,
worst loss of the or of the Lebron ad era,
And I'm like, what, how did they lose? How did
they lose that game, that's not possible, Like they won
that game. I watched it, you know, and then go
check my phone and ad misses three free throws in

(28:27):
the final minute as Franz Wagner hits a dagger step
back three over Cam Reddish at the top of the
key in the magic of eight out of nine, and
that seemed to like send the Lakers into a little
bit of a spiral too, which we're going to get
into them later. But the formula for Orlando has been defense.
In Franz Wagner right, they have a one o two
defensive rating in this eight game stretch, which is even
better than they were earlier in the season. Jalen Suggs

(28:49):
is like he's like a lockdown corner. It's like Patrick's certain,
like you just put him on the other team's best
guard and he just takes him out of the game.
He like annihilated Austin Reeve in that Thursday night game,
and that like here's the thing, Like the Lakers have
some issues with athletic guards, but like Austin usually finds
a way to at least be pretty good even against

(29:10):
athletic mismatches. And Jalen Suggs just literally removed him from
the game, had him complaining at the refs all night.
It was just a really impressive performance from Jalen Suggs.
They had a really nice offensive night. Two shot the
three well and then was overpowering guards to get to
spots in the short and mid range as well. And
then as a unit, they just have so much size
in athleticism, which helps them navigate the Lebron and Ad issue,

(29:31):
but just other big front lines around the league. And
then Franz Wagner has just been playing at a superstar
level during this eight game stretch twenty nine seven and
seven over an eight game stretch on fifty nine percent
true shooting. That's not just good, that's special. That's like
at the top tier of forward, you know, kind of

(29:51):
like multifaceted, you know, Swiss Army knife type of forward
play that you get out of this league. That's really
really good stuff there from Franz. He's kicking teams apart
and pick and roll. I talked about this last week,
but like really likes to work around that like elbow
area where like he'll snake the ball screen and kind
of work in that area and wait for someone to
just kind of come in too far and he'll throw

(30:11):
kickout passes. He can score in the mid range. He's
been picking on switches with his size and his ability
to shoot over the top. Is just a really nice
shot creation season for him. So far, he's run three
hundred and ten pick and rolls, ISOs and post ups
including passes, and he's generated three hundred and nineteen points.
That's one point zero three points per possession. And again
on a team where without Palo he's clearly at the

(30:34):
top of the scouting report, doesn't have a reliable number
two and isn't exactly surrounded by a ton of offensive talent,
so like a high volume to be generating shots the
way that he has this year is really impressive. Like, guys,
Moe Wagner is the second leading Magic score over the
course of this eight game stretch, So like that's really
really high level play from the Orlando Magic and Franz

(30:54):
is hooping looks super confident when he's in control of
the game. I've been really impressed by them over the
course the last couple of weeks. Number four, the Golden
State Warriors, they've had a two and two week. They
lost to the Clippers in a game that looks just
like the last time the Warriors played the Clippers, like
all of the Warriors guards other than staff struggled, and
They're offense sputtered and ended up being a loss. They

(31:15):
got back on track with two wins against Atlanta in
New Orleans. Andrew Wiggins was awesome in those two games.
He had fifty seven points in the two games. We're
gonna talk about Andrew here in just a second. But
then they're up ten going into the fourth quarter in
San Antonio and Victor win Minyama happened just completely dominated
the game on both ends. He had multiple out of
area blocks where he's seeming like somebody looked like they

(31:37):
were open and he just like Moses Moody had one
where it looked like he got an offensive rebound put
back and he just turned over his left shoulder to
shoot a hook and Victor was like behind the backboard
and he just and like it looked like he was
out of balance and he just kind of like came
up and swallowed the shot up and threw it out
to Stephan Castle. He had another one where Lindy Waters
was driving and it looked like Victor was on the
weak side and it looked like he was out of

(31:58):
the play. He just came flying in and swatted Lindy
Waters off the glass. Lindy missed two easy kickout reads
in the in crunch time. That was one thing that
I that stood out to me where I was like,
when when the defense is really overplaying those drives, that's
where you got to take those kickouts when they're available.
There was a like a wide open Angrew Wiggins on
one of them that he overlooked. It just there's little

(32:18):
a couple of bad decisions there down the stretch, but
Victor was incredible on defense and then on offense. He
was driving to the rim and getting layups. He had
a driving feed to Julian Champagne cutting out of the
right corner that was just such an incredible feel and
touch pass, like he threw it like way before it
was even a time for him to jump. It just
kind of like landed perfectly in the spot for Julian

(32:39):
just to go up and dunk it easy. It was
just such a pass that demonstrates Victor's feel for the game.
And then he got a shotgoing, which was funny because
to start the fourth quarter he had like a couple
of really bad misses from three, like one where he
damn near put a hole in the backboard and I'm like,
oh man, Like, Victor's really at a rhythm. And then
he gets an easy, little like eighteen footer at the

(32:59):
right l out of a ball screen with Chris Paul
there where he's wide open and it's a super easy
up and down in rhythm, knocks it down and it
was like the floodgates open. And then suddenly he was
just hitting every three that he took and just completely
dominate the game down the stretch. And then he also
got a major contribution out of Stefan Castle, who is
one of my favorite guys coming out of the draft,
and he continues to just look look amazing. He had

(33:21):
a huge driving finish against Kavan Looney on a switch.
I clipped this play and put it on my Twitter feed,
where again he does a sweeping crossover, but it's not
the dribble that impresses me. He takes a hard There's
there's two plays down the stretch that game that I
would look at if you're a Spurs fan. It's the
left to right crossover on Kevon Looney and then it's

(33:41):
the play where he drove by Draymond Green at the
top of the key and drew a foul, and both
of them started out of a high hesitation in the
left hand and you could tell like it actually came
out of order, like the Looney crossover was actually before
the Draymond play. But it's interesting because they set each
other up in their own way so like and the
Draymond play sits in a high hesitation and then just

(34:03):
launches himself forward going left and he comes to almost
a complete stop in the hesitation, and then the first
step is lightning quick, and Draymond has no choice but
to just wrap him up and foul him basically right.
And then on the Looney play, it's the exact same thing.
He launches himself on a left drive out of the

(34:24):
high hesitation and then right on his left foot plants,
he whips it across back to the right, and now
he's going to the right and he doests loony and
if you watch Loony, Looney does like a full two
foot hop over to cut off that left hand drive,
and like that's what makes again, it's the simple concept, right,
It's the most of the best scores in the world
don't have like seventeen different moves that they use all

(34:46):
the time, like most of the best scores in the world.
It's like move countermove, Like I have a right shoulder fade,
left shoulder fade, which everyone you overplay, I'm going the
other way and if you ever play the jumper, I'm
stepping through right or like in this case, like the
Stefan Castle just gets a nasty high hesitation jumps. And
by the way, he had a huge three at the
top of the key down the stretch in this game.
But if he can get into high hesitation and he

(35:06):
can shoot, and he can throw a hard drive to
the left and then he has a nasty crossover to
the right, Like that's literally all it takes. As long
as all three are real threats, that's all it takes.
You don't need anything more than that. Everything else is
just fluff, right, And I think he also did an
incredible job on Steph Curry all night long. That was

(35:29):
the weird thing about the Spurs game, Like Steph just
couldn't make a shot all night long. But Stefan Castle
just just really, really, really impressive start to this season
for a rookie and quick note on the Spurs before
we move on back to the Warriors. I mean, Stefan
Castle's rise so quickly in the early phase of his
career just gives the Spurs such an interesting core, which
is not how I felt coming into the season. At first.

(35:51):
I'm like, Okay, you have Victor, you have Devin Vessel,
not really sure what he's going to be, right, and
then Jeremy sohon Right, like is this really clunky fit
because like really inconsistent shooter and decision maker. Right, but
he's like the very good defensive player and has like
a knack for scoring the ball, even at least he's
shown it this year, even though like he can be
limited in some other offensive ways. So like it's kind

(36:13):
of like a really weird forward. And then like a
guard that we just don't know what he is, but
like Stefan Castle is so obviously very good. Like I
can already tell what Steph Castle's going to be. He's
going to be a very good guard defender that can
shoot and score off the bounce like that. That's like automatic,
great foundational guard. I think Spurs fans should be like

(36:38):
incredibly excited about Stefan Castle because now I look at
it as like Victor and Steph and then we'll see
what happens with Devin Vessel and Jeremy Sohan, but because
they're kind of like teared down, because I know what
Stefan Castle's going to be and I know how well
that works in the modern NBA, Like, it just makes
me feel infinitely more confident about this group moving forward.

(37:01):
And I mean, like the arena was on fire in
that fourth quarter when Steph Castle and Victor wimen Yama
took that game over. It was an unreal energy and
you can really feel the momentum gaining with this the
San Antonio Spurs back to the Warriors. Though you blew
a game on the road, it happens Steph had a
really bad game. You didn't get much from anybody not
named Wiggins, which has become a recurring theme. So I

(37:22):
want to talk about Wiggins for a second. This is
where we're gonna go positive for the Warriors. That was Wiggins'
fourth straight twenty point game. He never did it more
than two times in a row last year. In fact,
the last time Andrew Wiggins played in four consecutive games
and scored at least twenty points in all of them.
Was May of twenty twenty one in the COVID season,

(37:45):
towards the tail end of the regular season. And again,
that was a year when there was like a lot
of roster issues with the Warriors and he had to
be more aggressive. Right He's over sixty percent true shooting
for the first time ever. He's having the best three
point shooting season of his career. He's having the best
free throw shooting season of his career. His touch is
just at a better spot where it's than it's ever been,

(38:07):
all while providing excellent defense on the perimeter. I think
he's out playing many of his peers at his position
around the league. And again, like I talked about this
a little bit in the mailbag on Friday, Like I uh,
when I talk about potential trades for the Warriors, it's
not about now. This is not a Warriors team that's
looking to make a trade right now. I think they'd
be stupid too. This is a team that should not
make a single trade until maybe early February, maybe not

(38:30):
at all, But when they get to February, you make
that call. But if Andrew Wiggins is going to play
like one of the better forwards in the league. Then
you just got the guy that you would hunt in
the trade market anyway. Right, this is what I said
they needed. They needed a reliable twenty plus point per
game efficient score at the forward position. If Andrew Wiggins

(38:50):
becomes that or regains that footing in this league, it's
not just about him being untradeable. It's just there's no
reason to make a trade anymore because Andrew Wiggins has
become the guy that you needed in that support role.
I mean, here's the thing. You'll lose in that game
because Steph is bad. And like for the vast majority,
the only team in the league that can really afford

(39:11):
consistently for their best player to have a bad game
is the Boston Celtics because they have so much talent.
But like most of the teams in the league are
in a struggle with their best player struggles. And that's
all that happened in San Antonio last night. But like,
really really impressive stretch of basketball from Andrew Wiggins. The
schedule for the Warriors is getting a little intense, though.
I wanted to go over this because I just think
this is fascinating. This is one of the toughest stretches

(39:33):
of schedule, extended stretches of schedule that I've seen for
an NBA team, emphasized by a couple of tough Eastern
Conference opponents and just an incredibly stacked West. But they
have an easy one against Brooklyn at home is their
next game. But after that home for OKC at Phoenix,
who will have Kadie and Bradley Beilback at Denver Houston,

(39:54):
who is both really good and a team that matches
up physically with Golden State. Well, Minnesota, Minnesota again, then Memphis,
then Minnesota again in Memphis. That's a couple of weeks
from now, so they could be healthier and have more
guys in the lineup right then Indiana, then the Lakers,
then the Clippers, then the Suns again, then the Calves,

(40:18):
then the Sixers, and that's like roughly a month from now,
so they could be healthier then the Grizzlies, than the
Kings and the Heat. So like there, the Warriors are
heading into basically a month plus of like playing a
good team every single night. And so we're gonna learn
a lot about the Warriors over this stretch and just
how capable this roster is of shouldering the load that

(40:39):
they're gonna need to shoulder in order to get what
they want to get done this year. Number three, They'laoma
City Thunder one in one week. They haven't played since
the twentieth, which is weird. They only had two games

(41:01):
last week. They lost at San Antonio, really bad loss,
no victor women Yama. In that game, they completely lost
control of the game over a matter of minutes. In
the early third quarter. The Spurs were playing through Zach
Collins in the post, just posting up smaller Thunder players
and he was either just going through them or drawing
a second defender and dropping off for a guy underneath
the rim. And then they just had like a really
bad stretch of shot selection from Jalen Williams and Shay

(41:23):
Gilders Alexander. They went down by sixteen in like kind
of the mid third, and then they were chasing their
tail the rest of the game, never regained control. They
actually went down by twenty one in the fourth quarter.
So lost in San Antonio, really bad loss for the Thunder,
But then they bounced back with a win against Portland.
Jalen Williams had thirty in that one. Jalen Williams has
been hooping, by the way, in his last six games,
he's averaging twenty six points, seven rebounds, and six assists

(41:44):
on fifty five percent from the field, forty percent from three,
and one hundred percent from the line. Very good basketball
from Jalen Williams. But I want to zero in on
the shot selection piece for a second, because the Thunder
are underachieving on offense. That goes to say that. That
goes without saying. They're twelfth in offense right now, which
doesn't make any sense given the type of personnel that

(42:04):
they have, especially with them having played small as much
as they have, which in theory should open things up
for your spacing and you're driving kick game, right. But
I want to zero in on this for a second
because the Thunder are awesome. They're gonna win plenty of games.
They're not gonna be a team that struggles in the standings.
They're tied for the one seed in the West despite
chat Holmer and getting hurt and some pretty rough injury

(42:26):
luck down the roster, right, So this is not like
a gloom and doom Thunder tick. But what Oklahoma City
is going through actually reminds me in a lot of
ways of what the Celtics went through a few years back,
And there are some other parallels there too, Like they
have enormous amounts of talent, specifically a few guys that
are still just barely scratching the surface of what they're
capable of, but in like kind of like a situation

(42:50):
where their best player is mature for his age, Like
Tatum and Shay both kind of remind me of each
other in the sense that, like they're in their mid twenties,
but they carry themselves like guys in their thirties. It
like they just act like grown adults and they don't
make a lot of like kind of the immature mistakes
that younger stars around the league make, right, and so
like there's some parallels there, but it extends. I'm more

(43:11):
referring to the shot selection piece. To be clear, before
we get into this, every team goes through stretches where
they take bad shots. It's part of the game. The
game is about rhythm. You're constantly like chasing a good
rhythm or when you're in a bad rhythm, trying to
get it back right. You're trying to extend a good
rhythm or get out of a bad rhythm right like
that's part of the game. The best teams are just

(43:35):
able to identify when they're in bad rhythm. Hey guys,
we're taking bad shots. Let's refocus. Let's get this figured out. Right,
The good teams quickly regain control compared to the bad teams.
The Celtics used to be a team that would win
plenty of games, but with bad process, their talent was
the enemy of their success sometimes, right, Like, great players
have an issue where they can just get a decent

(43:58):
shot whenever they want, Right, Like, you're staring down a
defensive player and you're Jason Tatum, Like he can just
do a pound dribble between his legs and get a
pretty decent look at a twenty five foot or off
the bounce. Jalen Brown can wherever he is on the
floor just elevate and shoot because he's one of the

(44:19):
best athletes in the league. Derek White needs very little
space to get a shot off. They had this problem
early on where their talent was the enemy of their
success because like, it takes patience and maturity to turn
down those shots and only take them when you absolutely
have to, because you're working as hard as you can

(44:40):
to generate great shots right. That's the situation that Oklahoma
City is in now, because like they're at this point
now where they are just taking the shot that makes
the most sense within that immediate moment for that talented player.
In that run against the Spurs, the U when they
lost control of that game, Jalen Williams like really tough,

(45:03):
contested sixteen footer along the baseline early in the shot clock,
like lou Dort contested catch and shoot three on the
right wing, when like they didn't even try to run
any action. It was just like a kickout and he
just shot it. Like there's just these too many possessions
in a row where they just don't hunt the great
shots that they're capable of getting with the talent that

(45:24):
they have. What happened with Boston over the course of
the last few years, you could see a shift in
their maturity. It wasn't just the influx of Drew Holliday
and chrisops Porzingis. Yeah, those guys are awesome and they help,
but Porzingis missed most of the playoffs last year, and
Drew is better than Marcus Smart, but Marcus Smart is
also really good. It was a modest upgrade of Marcus Smart.

(45:47):
The biggest change in the Boston Celtics over the last
couple of years is their ability to manage the flow
of basketball games, to identify when they're taking bad shots,
when they're in bad rhythm and they need to lock
in and execute at a higher level, identifying like, guys,
we're bullshitting right now, we need to get it together.
They've just gotten so much better at making the ugly
stretches fewer, shorter, and further between. Like that is where

(46:12):
things turned around for the Boston Celtics. So okay, see
to me, feels like where Boston was a few years
ago in the sense that they have a tendency to
lose control of games as decision makers, and they struggle
to settle down and execute from time to time, and
again it won't show in the standings. They're too talented
to drop a bunch of games. It didn't even show
in the offensive rating for the Celtics back in the

(46:32):
day like it's actually showing for Oklahoma City, which means
they're maybe even further behind in that regard. But like
the court, at its core, the strength of the Thunder
is their aggregate offensive talent. They can space you out
and pick you apart for great shots. That is their strength,
and at a certain point they will need to get
better at that specific process. Maybe it'll be this year,

(46:55):
maybe it won't be this year. But if it's not
this year, then they have the potential to get beat
team that isn't as talented as they are in an
earlier playoff round than they would like. They were more
talented than the Dallas Mavericks last year. They were just
younger and less mature. And remember the big thing that
I talked about in that series was rim decisions. They
kept driving into the paint and challenging Dallas's rim protectors

(47:18):
instead of making the kickout passes that were available in
chasing down those great shots. What does that remind you of?
Do you guys remember that Celtics Bucks series in twenty
twenty two. That entire series hinged back and forth on
the Celtics foolishly challenging Brook Lopez at the rim instead
of making the right decision when they got there. This
is all part of that process of growing up as

(47:39):
a basketball team and growing up as a basketball player,
and I do think that that's been an interesting kind
of subplot in this last year and a half for
the Oklahoma City Thunder Number two the Cleveland Cavaliers two
in one week. They lost in the Boston Showdown, then
they got back on track with two wins against easy
opponents in Toronto and New Orleans. Those two teams have
eight wins combined, so nice little get back games for Cleveland.

(48:00):
Ty Jerome was insane in both games. How about fifty
five points in the two game set for ty Jerome
as he continues to make his case as maybe the
best backup point guard in the league. I didn't think
the Celtics game was as encouraging of a loss as
many Celtics fans thought. I thought Boston basically controlled that
entire game. Like anytime Cleveland threatened to take a lead,
it just felt like Boston was able to immediately regain control.

(48:23):
I thought they had more advantages. I thought the entry
points that we discussed with Cleveland were that we anticipated
coming into this matchup, were all real problems that the
Cavs didn't really have great answers for now. That's not
to say that Cleveland is fraudulent or anything like that.
I think they're still easily the second best team in
the Eastern Conference. At this point, I just thought it
was clear that Boston was at a level above them.
Cleveland does have some tougher matchups in December. They have

(48:47):
Boston again on the first. I think Cleveland will probably
get that one, Denver on the fifth, Denver again on
the twenty seventh, Then they have Milwaukee later in the month,
and at the end of this month they have Golden
State and the Lakers. Some tougher games for Cleveland coming
up in the month of December where we'll see them
push a little bit. Number one back on top, very

(49:08):
much in a look like the champion type of week.
The Boston Celtics, who went three and zero wins over
the undefeated Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Minnesota Timberwolves. We talked
about the Cavs game earlier. I won't get into it.
The Minnesota game really crazy, Like Jalen Brown just comes
out going absolutely berserk. It's five straight threes to start
the game. It's funny. The Timberwolves announcers were like complaining
the color commentator I'm not sure his name was saying like, literally,

(49:31):
I would give him that shot. He kept like quoting
his percentages he's shooting, you know, twenty five percent on
these all over the course of this season. Literally said
the phrase literally I would give him that shot end quote.
And when I heard that, I'm like, he's Jalen Brown.
Why are you You're gonna give Jalen Brown wide open
shots just because he's struggled a little bit to start

(49:53):
this season. Like that was one insane to me, and
two like a complete lack of understanding of the fact that,
like basketball doesn't just come down to read the basketball
reference page, Like Jalen Brown's a good shooter, he's just
not shooting well, and so if you let him get going,
he can still get going at any given time. And
for the record, I like some of the threes he

(50:14):
hit were pretty heavily contested too, so like some of
it is like Jalen Brown just made shots. But I
just thought it was funny when the Wolves announcers were
going off about that, because I'm like, he's Jalen Brown.
You're not ignoring Jared Vanderbilt up there, you know what
I mean. But Minnesota battle for most of the first half.
Boston had a really dominant stretch to start the third quarter.
On both ends of the floor. They completely locked down

(50:34):
Minnesota's offense. They held him to just two points in
a nearly six minute span covering the last minute of
the second quarter. In the first few minutes of the
third quarter, Tatum went off in that span. He scored
assisted on four threes. In the early third quarter, the
Celtics got super hot. They ended up going up by nineteen.
Then Minnesota kind of grinded their way back into it.
Anthony Edwards continues to shoot the damn seams off the basketball.

(50:55):
He hit six threes in this game. He had a
wide open look with just under a minute or just
over a minute left that would have given Minnesota the lead,
and he missed it. But he's at one point nine
points per jump shot on two hundred and twenty nine
attempts to start the year, one point one to three
points per pull up jump shot at one hundred and
seventy one attempts to start the year. He's just going

(51:15):
to be outrageously good in the long run because of
how good of a jump shooter he's made himself. But overall,
I came away feeling really good about Boston after that game.
I thought the third quarter was a great example of
the fact that they can still be downright stifling on
defense when they need to be or when they want
to be. Even without Porzingis, I thought that they played great.
I thought they played like really mature, grown up offense

(51:37):
down the stretch, Like they found the matchup they liked,
which was Nikkeil Alexander Walker, and they just kept going
to Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum down on the block
against Nikile Alexander Walker and got a couple of key
buckets there. Now, Minnesota put them in some tough spots
too in crunch time big, but they're very good defense,
Like Minnesota hasn't defended super well to start this year,
but they still have a nasty defensive punch when they
want to. And they got some big stops and forced

(52:00):
bad misses, and honestly, that's kind of like how games
like that go. Like they're super physical and ugly because
there's so many good perimeter defenders on the floor. And
Ant made six threes in the game, and his last
two threes like barely graze the front of the rim
because it's everyone's tired. It's hard to hit shots in
a game like that, right, especially down the stretch. And
like Tatum, Matt's some bad misses in crunch time too,

(52:20):
that's kind of just how it goes. But Boston made
more plays when they needed to and anyway, I just
think this week had a lot of great examples of
what separates Boston from the rest of the league. They
play great basketball on both ends more frequently than everyone
else does. It really is that simple. And then allegedly
they're getting Chris hops porzingis back tonight, so another exciting
sign for Celtics fans. And that's it for the Power rankings.

(52:41):
Before we get out here, I want to talk Lakers
for just a couple of minutes. This segment is more
directed towards Laker fans because I want to bring some
positivity because I've seen on Twitter it's very gloom and
doom for Laker fans right now, and I can understand
why you would feel that way. Like the Thursday Saturday
set between Orlando knowing Denver was an absolute disaster, right Like,

(53:03):
you play well enough to beat Orlando, but ad misses
three free throws in the final minute, so you lose.
That's a catastrophe. Right Then in the Denver game, Dalton
connect gets a dunk with two minutes left in the
first half and you're up by ten on the Denver Nuggets,
and then your entire team simultaneously enters a funk and
they cannot score. The Lakers scored fifteen points total over

(53:26):
a fifteen minute span between the second, third, and fourth quarters,
and then you end up getting blown out like literally
a thirty five point turnaround in the same game. So look,
I get it. Losses are losses under any circumstances, and
these two were particularly bad. But here's why I'm not
getting too worked up about it. First of all, I
thought the Orlando game was actually a night where the
Lakers showed a lot of heart. Those of you guys

(53:48):
who listened to the mailbag on Friday, I told you guys,
I was worried about that game before it started. Orlando
is a tough matchup for the Lakers because they have big,
physical guards that always give issues to guys like Dlo
and Austin, and they're huge on the front line to
confront the lebron ad problem. And in general, they're just
really young and fast and they run really hard, which
is the kind of thing that has given the older,
slower Lakers issues. Right, and the Lakers were down both

(54:12):
of their forwards, like Ruey Hatchamura and Jared Vanderbilt were out.
So like, the entire roster is basically guards, limited centers,
and Lebron and Ad that is basically what you're going
to war with in a very very physical matchup, and
Lebron and Ad just stepped up to that challenge and
they kicked ass They had seventy points, nineteen rebounds, and
nine assists in four blocks between the two of them.

(54:33):
They both just made a huge play after huge play
down the stretch to put themselves into position to win,
and then Ad misses three free throws in the final
minute and you lose. Like it really fucking sucks, I
get it, But they played some pretty good basketball against
a Magic team that is a bad matchup for them
while being down both of their forwards, and they did
play well enough to win that game. So like, I

(54:55):
actually left that game feeling better about the team. There
are still some problems, right, Like Austin Reeves was a
disaster in that game. He was just three for twelve,
but that's kind of what Jalen Suggs can do to
opposing guards. And also Austin usually finds a way to
at least be pretty good even against the athletic team.
So like I thought, it was like fifty percent Suggs
is awesome and fifty percent Austin just had a bad night.

(55:17):
Delo was really bad in that game, but he's always
really bad against big athletic teams. It's like clockwork every
single time he struggles defensively on the glass and he
can't shoot. I remember it was like early last year.
Petezeis from Laker Film pointed this out, and I thought
it was really fascinating. He talked about how like in
super athletic games, Delo tends to have bad misses from three,

(55:40):
Like he has kind of like a smooth rhythm on
his jump shot, and when he's playing against a team
where he doesn't feel rushed, he can shoot the ball
pretty well, though he's shot poorly all year this year,
But when he runs into athletic teams, like he starts
rushing things a little bit, and he will have awful
misses for a really good shooter. And like he had
an air ball in the Orlando game, he had a
couple other shots that like barely grazed the side of
the rim, like de Lo fell apart. But the point

(56:01):
is we already knew that about d LO. So, like
I was discouraged about the loss obviously, Like I told
you guys, I even turned the game off. I was like,
Lakers got this one. I'm done. And then I got
a text message from my boss who's a Lakers fan,
and he's like, that was the worst loss ever and
I couldn't believe it. Right, So, like it's discouraging, But
it was a night where I actually ended up being

(56:21):
more encouraged about the Lakers in the big picture because
Lebron and ad were able to meet the challenge and
they played well enough to be to beat a team
that most teams are losing to right now. Right the
Denver game, was it indicative of a mental advantage that
the Nuggets have over the Lakers. Yeah, will the Lakers
need to overcome that in order to ever truly compete
with Denver in a playoff series, for sure, But that

(56:46):
singular regular season game was just weird in my opinion,
Like basketball is all about rhythm and flow. The highs
are like the balls popping around. Everything just feels natural
and smooth, are making shots, They're always in the right spot.
It just there's just like a rhythm and flow when

(57:06):
the offense is really clicking, right, and then what do
the lows look like? Like spacing gets a little funky
because guys aren't making the right raids. When they're moving,
you'll start batching like passes, like like how many times
on that third quarter stretch did you see Like the
Lakers botched like regular like swing passes, not even for turnovers,
just like throw a bad pass and the guy has
to like fumble it around and regain control before they

(57:27):
can get back into the offense. Like you're sloppy with
the ball, you're sloppy with your spacing. No one can
make a shot. Everyone looks lifeless, and it like that's
what the low looks like. Right, But there's a spectrum, right,
there's a spectrum of rhythm with the absolute peak and
then the absolute basement, right, And we saw both in
the last week, like the the Memphis game in the

(57:50):
second half, or no is the Pelicans game in the
second half like and again different level defense, but like
they they were in that second half, they were just
peaking on the offensive end of the floor. And then
the Denver game they completely fall apart, and oh yeah,
the Pelicans are a bad defense. They played against the
Orlando Magic, who are a much much, much better defense
than the Denver Nuggets, and they hung a one to

(58:10):
twenty offensive rating on them, Like the Lakers can score
against elite defenses too. That's not an issue. The point
is there's a spectrum, and what you saw in the
second half of that Denver game, in the final minute
or two of the second quarter, what you saw was
the absolute bottom of that spectrum. That was potentially the
worst offensive rhythm I've seen the Lakers have in the

(58:34):
Lebron and ad era relative to the talent that was
on the floor. There have been some stretches where the
Laker offense looked really bad, but they were decimated by
injuries or much more limited rosters. This is a really
good group of offensive players that the Lakers have, that
are all super confident, and again two nights earlier, just
hung a one to twenty on a better defense and

(58:54):
they just fell apart. They completely lost their rhythm and
flow and they got discouraged. And yet even with the
mental advantage that Denver has, there was also just like
that was the worst end of that spectrum that you
can see. It happens. It's part of the game. It's
a particularly bad example of it, but it's just part
of the game. Even looking at the Lebron and Ad element, Like,

(59:16):
guess what, Like Lebron and AD they're capable of playing
a lot better against Denver, how do we know? We
just saw them do it in a more intense context
in the playoffs. Lebron and AD were both awful in
the Denver game. It happens, So just scrap it at Like, yes,
they have to figure out the Denver matchup, there's no

(59:37):
doubt about that. But like we already knew that. We
knew that coming in. It was a bad night. So like,
I'm not as low about these two particular games from
over the weekend as a lot of other Laker fans are.
In the big picture, do the Lakers have personnel issues? Yes,
they are not athletic enough on the perimeter. It's killing
them on defense and in transition and on the offensive glass.
It's something they'll need to fix. They need to turn

(59:58):
d Lo and gave Prefer into bigger, better, more skilled athletes.
It will probably take at least one of their first
round picks, if not both of them. But we already
knew that. We knew that in training camp. The Lakers
have a different problem, yes, but we already knew that.
And these were all problems that we knew wouldn't actually
get solved until we get closer to February anyway, And

(01:00:19):
in the meantime, you're ten and six, you have the
sixth best record in the entire NBA. You're fine, This
sky's not falling, Okay, everything is on track. What did
I say from the start of the year, You just
need to win five out of eight, five out of eight,
five out of eight. That's gonna keep you afloat in
the standings. They've won five out of eight twice. Now,
gonna be fun a week though for the Lakers. They
have Phoenix on the road tomorrow night. We're gonna I'm

(01:00:40):
gonna be covering that game. It'll either be live on
YouTube or go up the next morning, but I will
be working that night to cover that game. Then they
go on the road to San Antonio, who continues to
be super feisty, and they played a tough game there
a couple of weeks ago. And then Oklahoma City in
LA on Thursday, So got a chance to re establish
yourself if you go two and one in that group,
like if you if you go three and oh, you're in.
But if you go two and one in that group

(01:01:01):
of games, then you re establish yourself as one of
the really good teams in the league and you're in
good shape. So I'm not as gloom and doom on
the Lakers as many Lakers fans are. All right, guys,
It's all I have for today. Is always as sincerely
appreciate you guys for supporting the show. Quick scheduling note,
I'm going tomorrow morning with just a couple game breakdowns
and some film like I always do. Then tomorrow night
I'm covering Suns, Lakers, and a bunch of other NCS

(01:01:22):
and tournament games that will either go up that night
or the following morning. But I'm also recording a I'm
either going to do a mail bagger. I'm having Sam
Vicini on and that's going to run on Friday. Then
we're gonna be taking obviously Thursday off for Thanksgiving, So
that gives you a little scheduling up date for the
rest of the week. But as always, I appreciate you
guys for supporting me. They'll see you next time. The volume.

(01:01:44):
What's up guys, 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.

All Episodes

Hoops Tonight - NBA Power Rankings: Celtics RECLAIM #1, Curry & Warriors TOP 5, Giannis & Bucks BACK

Episode Transcript

Host

Jason Timpf

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Monster: BTK

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Hoops Tonight - NBA Power Rankings: Celtics RECLAIM #1, Curry & Warriors TOP 5, Giannis & Bucks BACK