February 7, 2025 • 49 mins
Jason Timpf reacts to a loaded slate of NBA games including LeBron James scoring 42 points in the Los Angeles Lakers' 120-112 win over Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, and the Golden State Warriors. How dangerous will this Lakers team be with an engaged LeBron James along with Luka Doncic and Mark Williams joining the mix. Later, Jason reacts to Kyrie Irving leading the Dallas Mavericks to a 127-120 win over Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics as well as Anthony Edwards' 41-point performance in the Minnesota Timberwolves' 127-114 win over Jalen Green's Houston Rockets. Later, Jason answers listener questions during an NBA mailbag segment!
Timeline:
4:15 - Introduction
6:00 - Warriors-Lakers
27:15 - Rockets-Timberwolves
31:45 - Mavericks-Celtics
38:00 - Magic-Nuggets
47:00 - NBA Mailbag
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume.
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dot co slash audio. All right, welcome to tonight. You're
at the volume. Happy Thursday, everybody hopeful. If you guys
(01:47):
are having a great week, got a jam packed show
for you tonight. We're hitting four games from the Thursday
nights late. Lebron just puts on an absolute masterclass against
the Golden State Warriors with forty two, seventeen and eight.
We're going to be breaking down that game from the
perspective of both teams. Anthony Edwards who's had a couple
of really explosive scoring games as of late, just goes
(02:08):
absolutely crazy on the Houston Rockets in the last eight
minutes of the fourth quarter. Another brilliant game from him.
I want to talk about some of the specific ways
his athleticism is so difficult to contend with. After that,
the Dallas Favericks beat the Boston Celtics in Boston tonight
as the Celtics continue their uneven play throughout the season,
and a really nice impressive version of small ball from Dallas.
(02:30):
They're going to be talking a lot about small ball
and what makes it work in tonight's show. And then lastly,
at the tail end, Nicole Jokic another triple double and
a win against the Orlando Magic. We're going to talk
about the concept of inverted pick and roll and what
makes that so difficult to guard as he was just
eviscerating the Orlando Magic big men in traffic by running
them through screens all night long. It's gonna be a
(02:51):
fun one. You guys are the job. Before we started
to subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels, you don't
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It's also super helpful if he leave a rating in
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us there. And the last about at least keep dropping
mail back questions. At the tail end of tonight's show,
(03:12):
We're gonna actually record our mailbag, So drop questions in
the chat and our producer Paul is gonna actually send
them to me and we'll hit about ten to fifteen
minutes for a worth of questions right at the tail
end of the show. All right, let's talk some basketball.
So I've been experiencing a bit of deja vus with
Lebron James as of late. I've been talking a lot
(03:34):
about this concept of belief and how much it matters
when you're trying to win a championship, because playing championship
basketball is hard. Have you seen Lebron take some hits
in the last few games. Have you seen him end
up on the ground, have you seen him skying for rebounds.
Have you seen him making low man rotations that he
wasn't making in the past. You're seeing Lebron like really
(03:55):
exert himself because it is hard, and you absolutely we
must believe that you can actually win the trophy in
order to get a level of desperate commitment to what
it takes to play winning basketball. I don't want to
sit here and pretend like Lebron has had no belief
all season, but we have to be honest. We've all
(04:16):
seen Lebron give poor defensive efforts where he literally looks
like he knows his team isn't very good. We've seen
him look dejected at times in the postgame locker room.
He's also had stretches where he's looked locked in and
played very well, but they've been fewer and further between
over the last couple of years as a in large
part because it hasn't. I mean, we all know this
(04:38):
Laker team. It's like, yeah, they got a chance. Maybe
if Lebron and Ad play amazing and some role players
out kick their coverage, so to speak, maybe they can
get it done. But there was never any like true
belief that there was this like clear championship ceiling there
for that team. This isn't just a locked in and
engaged Lebron we're seeing right now. This this is a
(05:00):
Lebron that actually truly believes he has a great chance
to win the title. And I'm actually excited, especially for
Lakers fans, because it's been a long time since we've
seen this. Last time we saw this guy was probably
twenty twenty one, right the year that they lost in
the first round of Phoenix. Lebron is one of the
greatest competitors of all time. Don't let the benevolent attitude
fool you. This guy is a maniacal competitor and when
(05:23):
he sees an opportunity, he locks in on it and
he's literally going to make sure that everything that he
can do in his power, everything in his control, he's
going to take care. Forty two seventeen and eight Tonight
one of the best rebounding games of the season from
Lebron as he's had to anchor these small ball groups
without centers. Just another level of shot creation we've seen
(05:44):
from him in the last couple of like the last
three four games, We're seeing incredible defensive rotations, communication, an
attention to detail, and his playmaking remember those stretches this
year where it kind of felt like Lebron was coasting
through games mental and just kind of throwing the ball
all over the court, and like he just didn't really
(06:04):
seem invested mentally in the game. Like he's looked so
laser focused every single time I've seen him in the
last week or so, and it just looks like a different,
more maniacally obsessively invested in this group version of Lebron James,
and that to me, he's exciting on a bunch of
(06:25):
different levels beyond just this is the guy that I
became such a big fan of growing up, and the
guy that dominated the league for a decade and a
really fun thing to watch when you're rooting for the
team that he's playing on. And so like, I'm just
excited to be a part of another opportunity to watch
Lebron James when he actually feels like he has a
(06:48):
real chance to win the title. I'm super excited to
see how it could potentially affect Luca. Luca's got a
lot of motivation right now, as he just had a
franchise pretty embarrassing fashion bail on him right at the
beginning of his prime and so he's gonna have a
certain amount of motivation from that. But I can't imagine
a better ecosystem to take Luka Dancij out of and
plug him into then the greatest basketball player of all time,
(07:12):
as mentally engaged, as physically engaged as he's been in
almost a half decade. And I think it's going to
bring a level out of both of these guys, Luca
to Lebron in the form of the belief that he
has reinstored for him, and Lebron to Luca in terms
of the example that he can set. And I think
it's gonna lead to some really special basketball from this group.
(07:34):
I want to zoom in on some x's and o's
from tonight. I want to talk about the concept of
small ball. You know, we're gonna be talking a lot
about Mark Williams over the course the next couple of weeks.
And for those of you guys who missed it, we
did a scouting report on Mark Williams earlier today, So
just go to our YouTube channel scroll a little bit
further back you can find the full breakdown of everything
Mark Williams. I'm not going to get into him tonight,
(07:54):
but one of the reasons why, like I didn't understand
a lot of pessimism coming out of that deal because
there's a lot of pessimismsunding. You know, Mark Williams is
not a good defender, and that's true. Mark Williams is
twenty three and he has absurd physical tools, but the
the guy, he just has a lot of work still.
He's pretty raw, needs a lot of work in terms
of rounding out what he needs to be a good
defensive player. And there will be games this year where
(08:16):
Mark Williams looks really bad on defense and the Lakers
defense looks really bad. But one of the reasons why
I wasn't super concerned about that was there was a
huge upside by making this kind of deal, by going
for a center that is on a cost controlled rookie
contract as opposed to a you know, an extension that's
(08:37):
a fifteen twenty twenty five million dollars deal, like a
guy like a Nicholas Claxton, a guy like Robert Williams,
a guy like Nikola Vucevich, a guy like Yaka pertl Right,
some of these other options that the Lakers were looking at.
By virtue of going for a cost controlled player and
the two options there obviously that we saw were Walker
Kessler and Mark Williams. By going after a guy like that,
(08:58):
you can just package a couple of them contracts. That's
what they did. They packaged Dalton connect And who, by
the way, was like periodically in the rotation for the
Lakers this year, but had his minutes messed with a lot.
And I was pretty consistent that I didn't think he
was a playoff rotation player yet, even though I believe
in him long term as an offensive prospect. But you
ship him out, you ship Cam Reddish out. You didn't
lose any of these same guys that have been playing
(09:21):
amazing basketball as of late. The only perimeter guy that's
like kind of a regular rotation player you lost is
Max Christy. He's a huge loss. Dallas fans are gonna
love him. But there's subtly underneath the surface here, even
dating back to the Knicks game when Anthony Davis didn't
even play, there is a group of seven guys here,
eight guys really if you count Jackson Hayes, who's been
(09:41):
playing some pretty damn special basketball. And it's because they
have more size on the perimeter, more defensive talent, more
rebounding talent more than we've seen on this roster before,
because Dorian Finney Smith came in in the deal, and
because Jared Vanderbilt's healthy now. So now you're seeing these
lineups that have Lebron James, Dorian Finney Smith, Ruey Hotchamura,
(10:03):
Jared Vanderbilt on the floor. And even the guards, guys
like Gave Vincent, guys like Austin Reeves, they compete, they
do their job. Austin was guarding tonight, gave Vincent was
guarding tonight. In order for small ball to work, there
has to be a commitment athletically to the details. You
need several things in order for small ball to work.
You need a shot creation because you're gonna create a
(10:25):
lot of space, and you're gonna have these good perimeter
players operating in space against a mismatch right, and you
need guys that can either consistently beat that coverage one
on one or consistently get the defense in rotation, either
by drawing a double team or by beating that guy
at the dribble and drawing in help from there. You
gotta have guys that can finish the play. Extended vantages, drive, closeouts,
(10:47):
play that driving kick sequence through to fruition for those
wide open catch and shoot threes and the stuff at
the rim. So that's what you need to make it
work on offense, and then on defense you have to
be able to switch, contain the ball, that crowding mismatches,
getting into passing lanes, making the floor feel smaller for
the player that's trying to attack your weakest defender, and
(11:08):
then out that you have to rebound you're smaller. Everyone's
got to crash, everyone's got to be flying in and
tapping at the ball, and there's just been excellent production
in every single one of those categories. Lebron and Austin
are just in one hell of a rhythm right now.
And like Austin had a nightmare shooting game, both of
(11:29):
them cooled off pretty bad in that second half, but
they still did enough. Both guys did a good job
getting to the foul line in the second half as
ways to kind of just squeeze extra points out. But
both of them were generating advantages, generating buckets for themselves
all like they've been playing just fantastic basketball over the
course of the last couple of weeks. And then off
(11:49):
of that, Gabe Vincent's hitting shots. Riachimura is making plays.
Jared Vanderbilt through his offensive rebounding and just his activity
is maintaining himself as a threat on the Dorian Finney
Smith knocking down shots. Everyone is doing their job within
that advantage, extending and play finishing, and then on defense,
just by virtue of having more good defenders on the floor,
(12:12):
by virtue of having more good defenders in the rotation,
there's just better talent in this switching scheme. Containing the
ball being in the right place, is making the efforts
you need to close out defensive possessions. And that's the
last part. Rebounding, they're gonna go small. You've got to
fly around for rebounds. Your perimeter players have to have
dominating rebounding efforts. Lebron James and Jared Vanderbilt too, forwards
(12:37):
had thirty one rebounds in this game, thirty one of them.
You want to know how small ball works when you
got guys that are small that play huge, and Jared
Vanderbilt and Lebron are two of those guys. Austin Reeves,
even your small guys have to battle. Austin Reeves only
had four rebounds, but he had two of the biggest
rebounding sequences of the night. What I thought was the
play of the game. This crazy play where it's a
(12:59):
high point right around the left lay line. Draymond's got
positioned on the rebound. Austin comes flying in and just
barely gets a piece of it, keeps it alive just
long enough for Jared Vanderbilt to get it. Jared Vanderbilt
can grabing go all night. He was getting rebounds and
instead of having to give the ball to someone to
run against ball pressure, he just would bring the ball
(13:20):
up to floor. Jared Vanderbilt huge defensive rebound, throws a
beautiful bounce pass in transition to Dorian Phinney Smith for
a dunk. A remarkable play that captures the difference in
the personality of this team compared to the pass because
of Dorian Phinney Smith coming in in the trade. Jared
Vanderbilt getting healthy. You just have more talent in those positions,
(13:41):
and your small guys are scrapping too. He also had
Austin got another huge contested rebound out of the left
kind of corner area, just running to a loose ball.
Loose ball that was going that way. No one was there.
Austin beat everybody there. Those are things. Those things are
non negotiable. When the Lakers switching defense look terrible, even
with Anthony David in the early parts of the season,
it mostly came down to that. It mostly came down
(14:04):
to guys not being willing to do that work. And
so that that is why I'm like kind of high
on the Mark Williams move because to me, this inevitably
is a small ball team. Maxi Kleiba is like a
really solid small ball center, a guy that like will
also be able to help anchor these minutes. He's not
going to be healthy until most likely early April, but
(14:26):
that's another option that continues to anchor that idea. We're
gonna talk about it in a minute, but they're a
buyout destination. There is potential for even more two way
talent to join this roster. And when I look at
the Mark Williams move, I look at it as like, Yeah,
there's gonna be lineups out there that are Luca at
the point with probably Austin and Mark Williams is going
(14:47):
to be out there and they're gonna run a lot
of pick and roll and they're gonna score a million points.
And they'll also give up a million points on the
other end. But like, those lineups will still be good
because they're going to be extremely difficult to guard. And
then they're also going to small ball looks. They're going
to be able to throw out lineups with Luca and
Lebron in Austin, but with Dorian Finney Smith and Vando
(15:08):
next to them, and they'll run spread ball screens with
Jared Vanderbilt or with Lebron and have Vanderbilt operate as
a cutter along the baseline, and those lineups will be
able to get enough stops because when Lebron is playing hard,
he's a very good defender. Dorian Phinney Smith very good defender.
Jared Vanderbilt is an amazing defender. Like, they're going to
(15:28):
have looks that they can go to. Now, are there
are there weaknesses here? Of course, they're a little thin
on the front line for massive centers. They're going to
struggle with Jokic type a type of bigs right, and
that arguably is the kind of player they should be
looking out in the looking for in the buyout market.
Is just the best, big, bruising type of center that
they can find. But like I look at this Lakers
(15:51):
team that has many different shapes that they can take.
They're playing such great basketball right now, and they managed
to pull this off without giving a way any of
those players that are playing such great basketball right now.
And then you're gonna bring in this Luca Mark Williams
dynamic that just gives you an entirely different punch that
you can throw. Not to mention, like, let's talk about
(16:12):
that second half. Lebron and Austin started to fatigue. The
Warriors went small. Guess what. The Warriors are the original
small ball team. They're very good at it too, and
they up to their defensive pressure, they up to their
rebounding effort, and they wore the Lakers down a little
bit in that second half. Obviously, there was a little
bit of the Lakers pulling back, and there's some of
(16:32):
that natural push and pull that happens in NBA regular
season games, but the actual tangible thing that was affecting
the Lakers was Lebron and Austin started to fatigue a
little bit. This is where Luka Doncic is like the
trump card for that. Luka Doncic is going to just
make everything so much easier in that situation where a
(16:54):
defense really tightens the screws and Lebron and Austin start
to show some of their lumps. Playing great, but Lebron's
forty and Austin obviously has some athletic limitations. Luca is
the second or third best basketball player on planet Earth,
and specifically because his superpower is you can't pressure him
(17:16):
and force him to speed up. You can't keep him
from getting to his spots. You can't keep him from
either getting a shot that he likes for himself or
a shot that he likes for someone else. And that
is going to add a layer of resilience to that
group as they go through stretches like what they did
in that second half. The Lakers are playing great basketball, man,
and they're the premier buyout destination in the league. I
(17:39):
literally can't even believe the reversal of fortune here over
the course of where I felt about this team over
the course of the last few months and where they're
at now. Obviously, I'm not going to make any sort
of declaration about where they land in my contender tier,
not until I see a lot of basketball with Luka
doncicin Mark Williams on the floor, certain point, I just
(18:00):
want to be like, let's not overthink it, guys, they're
gonna be really fucking good. Like they're they have this
incredible identity, and these two guys aren't even there yet.
And it's the walking thirty point triple double guy and
the dude who can go for twenty five and fifteen
on any given night, and and that's that's just a
(18:20):
massive influx of talent on the Warriors front. Obviously, we
didn't see Jimmy Butler in this game, and I thought
they've generally played pretty well. In the stretches of the
game where they had Steph Curry on the floor, they
were minus three and steps minutes. They got beat up
pretty bad by the starters in the opening stretch of
the game, but every other stretch of the game they
competed with the Lakers starters and played well. But then
(18:42):
you just kept going to these bench groups and it's
like Pat Spencer and Brandon Pajemski and it's like Pat
Spencer's a really cool story. I mean, I don't know
why the hell he went off the like off a
handle on that and one against Lebron like that was
that was a pretty funny sequence. But like, that's it.
Pat Spencer's a cool story. Probably shouldn't be the secondary
(19:04):
shot creator on your bench unit if you have serious
championship aspirations. Brandon Pazemski really like him as a prospect.
Had a rough shooting night tonight, especially at the foul line,
But he's a guy that does a lot of little
things well. Probably shouldn't be your primary shot creator on
a bench unit. And so like, this is the beauty
of having Jimmy Butler coming into this equation. In addition
(19:26):
to anchoring those starting units with more talent on both
ends of the floor, he just gives you a much
better chance to survive those minutes you watched them. You
saw they couldn't get good shots. That was the problem.
They scrapped and they made plays here and there, but
time and time again, that Laker defense was able to
contain those guys. And so that's exactly why I'm so
excited to see what Jimmy Butler looks like in this context.
(19:49):
Like Steph, what he take thirty took damn your forty
shots tonight, Like he's having to do everything right now,
And that's exactly why you had to do what you did.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yesterday.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
All right, let's move on to Anthony Edwards just absolutely
dominating the Houston Rockets. The Rockets are banged up when
they're playing their worst basketball this season right now, but
they had a lead at one point lead about eight
minutes left in the fourth quarter up until Anthony Edwards
came in and just completely eviscerated them. He has scored
sixteen points over the final eight minutes of the game.
The degree of difficulty on the work that he did
(20:34):
was off the charge. Remember, Houston is probably one of
the few teams in the league, probably the team that's
best equipped actually to handle Anthony Edwards's power In athleticism, again,
Anthony Ewards brings this unique combination of incredible athletic mobility,
but he's just built like a refrigerator, and so he's
just incredibly difficult to handle his like straight line power. Right.
(20:55):
But here's the thing, even though the Rockets have a
lot of athletes that have power like ant is just
a complete other level of athlete. In three plays that
I wanted to quickly kind of like highlight to demonstrate this,
he had an and one on Dylan Brooks coming down
the left lane line on like a eurostep where Dylan
Brooks went with the verticality, but he wanted to foul Ant,
(21:15):
so he came down on top of him as easy
call for the ref basically pushed Ant down backwards and
at like a forty five degree ankle from the angle
from the ground while falling down, somehow gets the strength
to literally get a line drive jump shot off that
bank's end. Just an incredible demonstration of strength that he has.
(21:36):
Then he has his play on the left corner area
after an offensive rebound where he's got Cam Whitmore on
his high side and Jalen Green in front of him. Again,
these are two A plus athletes that are bracketing Anthony
Edwards and basically a double team, but Ant is an
A plus plus plus athlete and he just ripped right
through them and got an easy and one layout. And
(21:57):
then lastly that step back three over Dylan Brooks. Ellen's
doing a great job playing the jump shot and getting it.
Still gets a great contest, but Ant just goes to
a shuffle stepide It's basically the step back with that
extra shuffle step at the end and takes like a
twenty seven footer with his momentum going away from the basket.
But his legs are so damn strong that he just
(22:18):
goes straight up and down and gets such great lift
that it's just this easy, breezy flip of the wrist
at the end. And he's become such a damn good
shooter that like, that's a good shot for him. This
is why I'm so high on Anthony Edwards in the
big picture. He has the physical tools to overcome literally
any surrounding circumstance. There isn't an athlete in the NBA
(22:41):
that can stop Anthony Edwards from at least getting a
decent look at a pull up jump shot. And again,
he's gotten so good at making them that even a
tough pull up jump shot is still a good look
for Anthony Edwards. When he combines that with improved playmaking,
improved defense, and honestly just a little bit Betters construction
to take advantage of his downhill ability, the sky is
(23:03):
the limit for this kid. I also wanted to shout
out Jalen Clark. He's been getting minutes over the last
couple of weeks with some injuries. He had seventeen points
tonight doing his job on offense beeding low man help
he had a steady dose of jack Landale, who was
playing backup center for the banged up Rockets scene tonight.
He had a steady dose of jack Landel on him,
and jack Landil was just helping everywhere, and so he
just kept ending up in the corner. He had three
(23:24):
three's out of the corner. He had a really nice
bucket on a back cut where jack Landiel was getting
ready to double team nase Red on a post up
and Jalen literally identified it and like looked like a
sprinter along the baseline eighteen foot from the basket, just
like waiting for the gun to fire, And as soon
as jack Landiel went to hard double, you just shot
down the baseline. And a lot of times you want
(23:45):
to do that as a as a smaller player simply
because you want to have a running start. Remember when
you play NBA two K, they had that vertical jump metric.
Like big guys can work out of the dunker spot
without much of a running start because they could just
get up off the grip so quick off two feet
and they have such a high standing reach. These athletes
that are on the perimeter, they need a running start
(24:06):
to be able to finish over bigger players around the basket.
I just thought he did a really nice job beating
that low man help. The Wolves have won seven out
of nine, and by the way, in that span, Anthony
Everwards is averaging thirty two points, six rebound, six assists
on sixty two percent true shooting six assists per game.
Made two beautiful feeds out of double teams late in
(24:28):
the game for a wide open three from Nasried at
the top key that he missed, and then another double
team that led to a wide open three for Mike
Conley that ended up making and that basically put the
gameway really special basketball from Anthony Edwards. Let's move on
to the Dallas Mavericks, who get a big win on
the road against the Boston Celtics. They pulled away with
a small ball group to end the first quarter, Kyrie Irving, Spencer, Dinwiddie, Olivia,
(24:52):
Maxon's prosper Max Christie fresh in from the Lakers, and
Naji Marshall, and as I talked about earlier, that can
work as long as your shot creators do a good
job of consistently scoring one on one or starting driving
kick sequences with advantage creation, and as long as you
have guys finishing plays by finishing those driving kick sequences.
(25:13):
And as long as on defense you can contain the
ball and you can rebound, you can win playing small ball,
and they just played better small ball than the Celtics
did in that end of the first quarter group, Jalen
Brown had a couple of bad turnovers trying to dribble
through traffic. He had to post up against Max Christie
right around like the semi circle. Max Christy's skinny, He's
(25:33):
a guy you can go through. Jalen settled for a
tough fade away and missed it. But on the other end,
Spencer Dinwiddie is attacking the rim. He gets two driving layups,
shoots a pull up three, but it comes after those
driving laps when he's in rhythm and he has more separation.
Spencer was great in this entire game, but it was
really good in that stretch starting driving kick sequences too.
(25:55):
Big time like dribble, penetration and spray out. Sometimes just
simple stuff like I've got a nice on the right wing,
we got a player on the left wing. We're in
four out one in spacing, which is pretty typical for
driving kick stuff. And the guy who's getting the left
wing is kind of sitting around the nail. Spencer just
takes two hard dribbles towards the middle, gets that guy
to commit, throws a swing pass its Naji Marshall pump
bake drive left. Naji Marshall ends up hitting a bucket.
(26:18):
Sometimes it can be something simple like that. When a
team is loading up on you, your job is just to
create the advantage so that the players off of you
can finish those plays. Right. Chris tops porzingis on the
other end, posting up. Naji Marshall settles for really tough
right shoulder fade away that he misses. Tatum comes in.
He's being really aggressive towards the rim in that late
(26:38):
first quarter stretch, but even he was sloppy. He missed
a couple of layups, he had a turnover. The mass
were just playing better small ball, and they just built
a nice little lead. They drove and kicked better, they
switched and contained the ball better, they rebounded better. They
just did a better job then the Celtics did, even
though the talent would lead you to believe that the
Celtics should. And this has been a recurring theme for
(27:01):
the Celtics and we're gonna talk about that in a minute.
But Dallas has played better than then tonight. Klay Thompson
was fantastic in this game. The Celtics were really hesitant
to switch with him all night. And this is a
acceptable strategy with shooters, like you can do the switching
thing for off ball action. But in theory it's great,
but there's just it leads to a lot of mistakes,
(27:22):
right Like if you switch and the guy passively switches,
meaning the guy that's switching on to the shooter just
as a step late, he can find some separation and
take a jump shot there. Sometimes people completely botch switches.
You can get separated and lose that connection body to
body and it can cause problems. But the problem is
if you stay attached and you lock and trail, that
puts you in the situation where you're vulnerable to drop
(27:44):
coverage shots. So if they're not switching and they have
their big sitting back and he's coming off of that action,
if the guy's in trail position, there's movement jump shots
that are open in the gap between the guy that's
chasing him and the guy that's sitting back there in
that drop coverage and it was weird because even there
are even a lot of sequences in off ball action
that didn't involve bigs where the Celtics were hesitant to
(28:08):
switch and they would just have like Derek White, stay
attached to him. But Clay was getting a lot of
opportunities against those Boston drop coverage looks, and he's still
one of the greatest movement shooters of all time, and
he just got hot, and he just eviscerated their drop
coverages all night with little movement jump shots in that
gap between the screen defender and the trailing defender. And
(28:30):
by the time Boston adjusted, they tried switching with the big,
they tried rotating off ball with a different perimeter player,
it just didn't matter because Clay was in too good
of a groove at that point. Twenty five in this game,
the MAVs led by as much as twenty seven in
this game, is a really nice win for them on
the road. And the Celtics are just so obviously so bored.
(28:52):
I was talking about this with a Lakers fan buddy
of mine earlier today, but like to me, the Celtics
are so obviously the least motivated team in the NBA.
This year, and they have such a difference between when
they play with force on both ends, when they're defending
like crazy, weaponizing their athleticism, and then on the other
(29:14):
end of the floor just attacking, attacking, attacking and getting
great shots and just picking teams apart, versus their like
games where they play with less force and it's like
they're just not defending the way that they're capable of
and they're settling for a lot of bad jump shots.
And it's been like a lot of both mixed in.
It's not even like, oh, here's ten good games, here's
(29:35):
ten shitty games. It's like they go into Cleveland and
put together one of their most complete efforts of the season,
and then they come home and lay an egg against
a Dallas Mavericks team that doesn't have Luca or Anthony
Davis and a Mavericks team that's spiraled without Luka Doncic
this season. And so, like again, I'm gonna say the
same thing I've been saying about it with the Celtics
(29:55):
all year long. I know that championship upside is in there.
I still believe in them. They's still my top tier
championship contender. I still have them above the Oklahoma City Thunder.
But the problem is is they're playing with fire by
playing a lot of bad basketball mixed in with good basketball.
When you play bad basketball, your habits aren't as sharp
as they are when you're consistently playing great basketball. If
(30:17):
your habits aren't as sharp, then when you run into
adversity in a big playoff game, you don't have the
same level of that habitual championship basketball that you can
lean back on to help survive those moments. It feels
a little bit like the Celtics are leaning on their
talent this year instead of their relentless execution, which is
how they won the title in addition to the talent
(30:37):
that they had. And so again, it's not over for them.
It's not like they're on a different tier than Oklahoma
City or Cleveland. I still view them as the clear
championship favorite, but we have to be honest about the
fact that they're playing with some fire this year. Lastly,
Tonight briefly on Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets. An absolute
masterclass from Nikole jokicch puts up twenty eight points, ten
(30:58):
rebounds in twelve assists thirty one minutes, did a ton
of damage as a pick and roll ball handler. In
tonight's game, he kept running goga bitadz through these inverted
ball screens all over the floor, a lot on the
right wing, a little bit at the top of the key.
And one of the things I talk about a lot
when it comes to inverted ball screens. And again for
those of you gus who don't understand what that is
is typically a ball screen is a perimeterive player handling
(31:19):
and a big player setting the screen, and an inverted
ball screen the big players handling, and you've got a
perimeterive player setting the screen. And what it does is
it reversus defensive roles. They're like, how many pick and
rolls have you watched in the NBA this year? And
most of them look roughly the same, right, like the
guards chasing over the top, the big is somewhere waiting
(31:39):
on the other end, either up at the level of
shitting further back in a drop coverage, and all of
them look the same. And they have a certain kind
of like pattern that these guards have done their entire lives,
and a certain pattern that these bigs have done their
entire lives. You know, how many ball screens NBA centers
(32:00):
have defended since they were playing high school basketball. Do
you know how many ball screens guards have defended since
they were playing high school basketball? Now, flip it and
the big guy is handling a ball handler through balls
through screens, and the small guy who's now in a
position to help is having to help on a massive
(32:22):
ball handler when he's never done that before, not in
any sort of substantial context. Right, and again, it was
so funny to watch Goga Patadze struggle with this comes
off of an inverted ball screen from Michael Porter Junior
in the first half along the right wing, and Gogo
Patazz goes under but he by the time he actually
(32:43):
meets Nikole Jokic, it's only like five feet from the rim.
Nikole Jokic has like what thirty forty pounds on him
and just has a head of steam and just easily
bumps into him, and Goga goes flying back and he
just gets an easy lap of Jokics running with ahead
of steam against a player five feet from the basket.
There's nobody in the league that could stop him there.
But like, how do you get Jokic into that situation
(33:04):
where he's running with the ball into a static player
or a backpedaling player five feet from the basket by
forcing that player to run through a screen that he
has no idea what to do. The had one in
the second half. Its top skey in the third quarter
where Goga goes to run over the top of the
screen and Jokic rejects the screen, and Goga literally had
(33:26):
his back turned to Jokic while Jokic was driving past
him the other way because he has no idea what
he's doing. He has never defended ball screens. He doesn't
know how to get that top foot over while keeping
his chest square to the defender. He doesn't know that.
You can't just commit to going over to the top
of the screen against any good ball handler, because so
(33:46):
many of those end up being rejected by the ball
handler as soon as they know you commit to the screen,
it's just cross right back over and you're going right
to the basket. But that's the beauty of the inverted
ball screen is it just puts defenders into compromising positions,
and in order for it to work, you need to
have a big that can both dribble, shoot and pass.
And you're not going to find a big an NBA
history that did that stuff better than Nicole Jokis. Brilliant
(34:09):
game from him. Michael Porter Junior also put up thirty
Really some of his best work. Just that every part
of his game going was doing a ton of work
off the dribble in the screening actions, just keeping his
dribble alive so that he could get to spots and
take advantage of people over pursuing him on screens. Made
great reads in his off screen possessions all night, Like
got free for a bunch of backdoor buckets, just like
(34:29):
it got a nasty dunk off one too, Just like
getting the defender to overplay the screen and then pushing
then just pushing him out of the way and going
back towards the basket, finding openings for threes in transition.
Just a really nice game for Michael Porter Junior. Nice
went for the Nuggets over a reeling Orlando Magic team.
(34:59):
All right, let's get into our male bad questions again.
We're gonna go for about ten to fifteen minutes and
then we'll be done here. From Doyle, I disagree with
you about the Jimmy trades. Steph isn't the one that
will benefit KAMINGA is going to be the true benefactor.
Love everything you do, Thank you. So I agree in principle,
just simply because that's what slotting is, right, Like, Steph
(35:22):
to me is not the same player he was in
twenty twenty one. And I want to be clear, like,
do I think Steph's efficiency will improve after Jimmy starts playing. Yes,
it will because he won't have to take as many
bad shots. But Steph does have a little bit of
an issue getting separation at this point in his career,
and that's a real thing. And a lot of Steph's
value at this point comes from just the way he's guarded,
(35:43):
which is something I spent a lot of time talking
about in the Jimmy Butler video on Wednesday Night, Like Steph,
Steph is going to be guarded in such a way
that he has such a high offensive floor even if
he does go you know, six for nineteen from three
or six for two, twenty for three, whatever it was
that he went tonight.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Right, But.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
The real problem for the Warriors was lower level offensive
players slotted into higher roles. Asking Dennis Andrew Wiggins Jonathan
Kaminga to be like reliable every night twenty point per
game guys. Jonathan Kaminga has been just as likely to
score twelve or fewer points this year as he is
to score twenty plus. Like that, that's not a good
(36:25):
spot for him at this phase in his career as
a young player. He doesn't need to be in a
doesn't need to be in a situation where he's being
depended on offensively. Jimmy Butler comes in. He is that
dependable high floor offensive player. All of a sudden, you
can kind of pick and choose who plays well. Every
great basketball team is the same story. It's you got
(36:46):
your reliable offensive guys, and then there's like five other
dudes where it's like who's got it tonight? And yeah,
on the nights where all five of them suck, it
can go dark for any team in the NBA. But
like sometimes these two guys get going, and then these
two guys get going, and then these three guys get going,
and it's like this guy is seventeen when he normally
averages eight, and this guy had twenty three tonight when
(37:07):
he normally averages fifteen. That sort of variety is like
totally normal. That is what you expect from those players.
They just can't be dependent on or you're gonna be
constantly you're gonna be constantly frustrated with what you get
out of it from TK. Assuming Luca, Austin Reeves, Lebron,
and Mark Williams are the four starters, who should be
(37:30):
the last starter? And why so? I thought a lot
about this. I expect JJ Reddick to go with Ruby Hachimura.
I would personally go with Dorian Finney Smith for a
very simple reason. I would want to deploy him against
the opponent's best perimeter player, and then I would effectively
have Austin Reeves defending as a defending the second best
(37:50):
perimeter player. Luca is defending your third best perimeter player.
Lebron's your low man. Mark Williams is in ball screens, right,
So like that to me makes the most sense. If
you bring Ruby Hotchi Mura in, you're probably going to
more of a switching look, and that's just not gonna
be good because that's going to put Mark Williams on
the perimeter a lot. Charlotte almost exclusively used Mark Williams
in a deep drop because he sucks at defending on
(38:11):
the perimeter. He's not good at defending around the basket either,
but at least around the basket. He's going to block
some shots. His size can be a problem, and he's
a very good defensive rebounder. Right, So ideally, by putting
Mark Williams in that starting lineup, you have to run
drop coverage with him, and that means that you have
to ball screens, not switch, which means you've got to
have somebody that's willing to defend on the perimeter and
chase over the top of screens. A perfect example is
(38:33):
like in tonight's game where Ruy Hatchamura and Dorian Finnis
Smith are both starting, and again we all know Lucas
going in for one of those guys who started on
Steph Dorian Phinney Smith, Right, Dorian is not ideally suited
to be that type of player. I like Dorian better
is a switching guy who's kind of all over the floor,
not navigating screens as much. But he also can do that,
(38:54):
and he certainly can do it a lot better than Ruy,
So that to me is an easy solution there. You
start Mura, or excuse me, you start Dorian Finney Smith.
Then also, Ruy's scoring is going to be of more value.
On the bench, you can imagine a universe where you know,
Braun and Dorian Finney Smith come out and gave Vincent
and Ruy Hachimura come in, and Ruy has more opportunity
(39:16):
to be aggressive with that bench group. Right. Is it
possible for Mark Williams and Jared Vanderbilt to start at
the same time and their offense not fall apart? I
don't think so. It's more just you can make it work.
To be clear, there's a certain amount of like rapid
cutting and movement on the interior where guys can remain
a threat even when there's multiple players that can't shoot
from the perimeter. But it certainly is a lot more difficult,
(39:38):
and I just think Jared Vanderbilt is going to be
more anchoring the small ball groups when Mark Williams is
off the floor. Do you think the Lakers This is
from JM and thank you for the donation as well, Jams.
Do you think the Lakers can win the championship this year?
Now that they have two all time great matchup hunters
and Luka Dancic and Lebron James. This is the thing
that makes me so excited about this team. What you
saw in that second half is a smaller version of
(40:01):
what happens in almost every single NBA playoff game. A
certain point, we're playing against a really good team that's
playing desperate basketball, and when hit gets top, they're gonna
ratchet things up. They're gonna get more physical, they're gonna
pressure the ball, they're gonna be more aggressive in terms
of their coverages, and everything's gonna get really difficult, and
it's gonna become an absolute slow down, fistfight. And in
(40:24):
that situation, you can't have two better rock fight basketball
players on the offensive end of the floor than Lebron
James and Luka Doncic. Especially Lebron James that legitimately, again
is very small sample size, but in the last week
has been playing at the level that you see the
top five players in the league play at. And I mean,
if Lebron can maintain that, we need to have an
(40:45):
entirely different discussion about the potential that this that this
team has after acquiring DeAndre acquiring DeAndre Hunter, have the
Cavs leapfrog the Celtics for the best five man lineup
who should be considered the favorite in that conference? Love
the videos. I have not had the Cavs leap Frog
Boston after that trade. I do think it's a smart
move from them in that it avoided getting rid of
(41:08):
any of their most valuable assets. The players they traded
out are a little bit redundant. For instance, Karris Lavert
is redundant with ty Jerome now that Ty Jerome has
kind of come to the surface as one of the
best backup guards in the league. Carris has got some
defensive talent and does a lot of things well, but
he's a little bit more redundant then George Kniang. DeAndre
(41:29):
Hunter is just a much better player than him, so
it's a talent add DeAndre Hunter. One of the big
things I talked about in our trade deadline reaction today
is like he's just got scoring chops and a lot
of times in the playoffs when things really bogged down,
it's about the guy that can take that skip pass
from Donovan Mitchell. But he's got an A plus athlete
closing out at him and he needs to score there,
like create a bucket for himself. And DeAndre Hunter has
(41:52):
been one of the better pull up jump shooters in
the league this year. He's got the ability to put
the ball on the foard and make plays for himself.
I like that he gives you more physicality and size
on the perimeter, which is obviously important for a Boston
team that constantly is looking to attack mispatches. All of
that is great, but I still think that Boston, as
you guys saw when they went into Cleveland the other night,
and as we've seen throughout this entire season, they just
(42:13):
have this level they can get to when they really
tighten the screws on defense and the Jays just get
super physically aggressive on offense, where it's just tough to
deal with their talent. And again, I think we have
to be honest about the fact that Boston is just
completely past this regular season process at this point. They
are a April May June type of team, and so
(42:36):
I think that there's some real difference and just what
we can expect from those teams in the regular season. Now.
As far as do they have a chance, of course,
they do them a five game lead in the standings,
so as long as they play mostly as good as
they've been playing to start the year, they're going to
be the number one overall seed, which means when we
get to late May game one of the Eastern Conference Finals,
(42:59):
is going to be in Cleveland. You ride a raucous
crowd to a two zero series lead, you got a
really good chance to win that series. So like, of
course they can win. I don't think Boston is like
the head and shoulders favorite to win the conference. I
just think they're the favorite, and I think that their
talent is a little underrated at this point because they're
dealing with some regular season malaise. Who was carried more
(43:22):
Rob Polinka by Nico or Ringo Star by Paul John
and George. I did this segment for Microsoft Today where
we talked about like overcoming adversity, and I did the
whole thing on Rob and Paul, our producer, texted me
right after and he's like, you should have just made
Nico Harrison the start that segment. Oh man, All right,
(43:45):
let's see, last time the Celtics won the title, the
Lakers won the next season. That's super interesting. What do
you think is the biggest question mark for the Lakers
going forward whether or not they can put together a
reasonable defense with Mark Williams at center, Which is gonna
come down to whether or not they can find a
a defensive scheme that kind of works with that group,
and they're gonna have to find lineup construction that pairs
(44:06):
somebody that can chase over the top of screens with
Mark so they can keep him in a deep drop.
And then coaching is going to play a big role.
They've got to somehow pretty quickly. They have to pretty
quickly develop Mark into a useful defensive player, and that's
gonna be tough. What's going on with the Trailblazers. They
are on fire, young players finally taking the next step,
playing really good defense. Tomani Kamara has been one of
(44:28):
the most impressive young defensive athletes that we've seen in
the league this year. They're getting good shot creation from
Anferny Simon's and Scoot Henderson's playing the best basketball of
his young career. Their fun team, and I was kind
of expecting them to be more sellers at the deadline,
and I think they just played too well for that
to be the case. All right, well we got one
here from EGO donated five dollars, Thank you so much.
Do you think Lucas saves Lebron's legs come May? This
(44:50):
is huge for a real run. Lebron can coast a
bit without the offense tanking legs in May June very important. Yeah,
there was a play. There was a play where Lebron
was posting Brandon Pizzimski along the left lane line and
he shot a bank shop that went off the corner
of the backboard. It was a pretty ugly miss, and
it was just so abundantly clear that he was exhausted.
And Austin can leverage the athletic gifts and these bursts.
(45:14):
That's why I think the manager Nobili comp is such
a great comp for Austin Reeves. But like both of
them have a kind of a tendency to run into
a wall at a certain point because of Lebron's agent,
because of Austin's athletic limitations, and Luca just has the
ability to overcome that. And I think it's a really
underrated aspect of this that Lebron's going to be able
(45:34):
to devote energy to the defensive end of the floors
as a product of the U as a product of
the load that Luca can take on the offensive end
of the floor From maxim Sold, the Nuggets run more
of their offense through Michael Porter Junior. No, I don't
think so. Go ahead a great game tonight. I was
really impressed by the off screen work that he did.
(45:56):
But the problem with MPJ is he's another one of
those guys that can kind of run into a wall
in terms of athleticism, where like you saw this against
Minnesota and all the Minnesota matchups. We even saw this
a little bit in the Miami series in the finals.
But like when teams can kind of physically pressure him
and make him rush and feel a little bit uncomfortable,
(46:18):
his game falls apart. And there are just more reliable
offensive players in terms of Jamal Murray in particular in
a playoff setting, even Russell Westbrook, who has an athlete
when he's in a small role, can leverage himself as
things get more intense. I think that it's there's obviously
MPJ is always gonna have his role, and on nights
(46:39):
like tonight, when he's really got it, you want to
keep going to him, keep going to him. But I
don't see it as a I don't really see it
as a as a you know, foundational offensive concept, if
that makes sense. A couple more, if Ben's his If
Ben Simmons gets bought out, what's the team that is
perfect for him? I mean, I suppose it would have
to be a tea. Then he's a little like a
(46:59):
four with some size. I'd be an interesting one for
Golden State maybe, Like Ben Simmons is kind of like
a Draymond Green esque drible handoff, roll into space kind
of guy.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Still, I've seen some moments this year where like he'll
slide his feet on the perimeter. I'll be like, oh
my God, Like remember how good Ben Simmons used to
be on defense. I remember watching Ben Simmons once guard
Damian Lillard when he was in his athletic prime and
like easily blocked Dame on a step back jump shot
going to his right. You know, Dame's go to like
hard a pound dribble into the step back going right,
(47:29):
Like Ben had this athletic burst that's just not there anymore.
You still see it from time to time where you'll
make a play, you'll get dunk, he'll you know, slide
his feet on the perimeter and make a play. But
still is super gun shy around the basket as a finisher.
I don't really see him as a guy that I
ever want playing meaningful minutes in a serious basketball game.
What's your take on the first game with Aaron Fox
(47:49):
on the Spurs. I haven't watched that one yet, Off
to check it out later. Why does Austin Reeves look
so bad at times? I think Austin has had some
bad games this year when he really gets attacked on
the defensive end of the floor. And he also, kind of,
like Michael Porter Junior, can get a little bit messed
up by specific types of matchups, physical types of perimeter
players that can pressure him. But I've also seen him
overcome that type of matchup, and like, here's the thing, Like,
this is why Austin Reeves like to me, that twenty
(48:11):
point per game, fifty forty ninety guy, That to me
is the Austin Reeves experience. So the way it manifests
itself is a lot of twenty seven point nights and
a lot of thirteen point nights, right like, and a
lot of that's going to have to do matchup to
match up. But I think Austin Reeves played a lot
better tonight than the shooting percentages would tell you. Consistently,
got to the foul line, had that big bank shot
in crunch time. I thought that was a big shot.
(48:33):
I Austin's one of my favorite players that I've ever
rooted for. All Right, guys, that's all I have for tonight.
As always, a sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me
and supporting the show. As of right now, the plan
is to go after a game on Saturday. I'm not
one hundred percent sure yet because I think it depends
on whether or not Luca plays. So we'll figure that out
and I'll let you guys know. But keep an eye
(48:53):
on my Twitter feed at our sport jsonlt for show announcements,
and I'll let you guys know when the next show is.
If we don't go on Saturday, then obviously we'll be
back on Monday for our power rankings and our usual
routine from there. Again, sincerely appreciate you guys for rocking
with me and supporting the show. I'll see you guys next.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Time the volume.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
What's up guys. As always, I appreciate you for listening
to and supporting Hoops 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
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The volume.
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dot co slash audio. All right, welcome to tonight. You're
at the volume. Happy Thursday, everybody hopeful. If you guys
(01:47):
are having a great week, got a jam packed show
for you tonight. We're hitting four games from the Thursday
nights late. Lebron just puts on an absolute masterclass against
the Golden State Warriors with forty two, seventeen and eight.
We're going to be breaking down that game from the
perspective of both teams. Anthony Edwards who's had a couple
of really explosive scoring games as of late, just goes
(02:08):
absolutely crazy on the Houston Rockets in the last eight
minutes of the fourth quarter. Another brilliant game from him.
I want to talk about some of the specific ways
his athleticism is so difficult to contend with. After that,
the Dallas Favericks beat the Boston Celtics in Boston tonight
as the Celtics continue their uneven play throughout the season,
and a really nice impressive version of small ball from Dallas.
(02:30):
They're going to be talking a lot about small ball
and what makes it work in tonight's show. And then lastly,
at the tail end, Nicole Jokic another triple double and
a win against the Orlando Magic. We're going to talk
about the concept of inverted pick and roll and what
makes that so difficult to guard as he was just
eviscerating the Orlando Magic big men in traffic by running
them through screens all night long. It's gonna be a
(02:51):
fun one. You guys are the job. Before we started
to subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels, you don't
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a review. On that front, we also have brand new
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releasing content throughout the year. Make sure you guys follow
us there. And the last about at least keep dropping
mail back questions. At the tail end of tonight's show,
(03:12):
We're gonna actually record our mailbag, So drop questions in
the chat and our producer Paul is gonna actually send
them to me and we'll hit about ten to fifteen
minutes for a worth of questions right at the tail
end of the show. All right, let's talk some basketball.
So I've been experiencing a bit of deja vus with
Lebron James as of late. I've been talking a lot
(03:34):
about this concept of belief and how much it matters
when you're trying to win a championship, because playing championship
basketball is hard. Have you seen Lebron take some hits
in the last few games. Have you seen him end
up on the ground, have you seen him skying for rebounds.
Have you seen him making low man rotations that he
wasn't making in the past. You're seeing Lebron like really
(03:55):
exert himself because it is hard, and you absolutely we
must believe that you can actually win the trophy in
order to get a level of desperate commitment to what
it takes to play winning basketball. I don't want to
sit here and pretend like Lebron has had no belief
all season, but we have to be honest. We've all
(04:16):
seen Lebron give poor defensive efforts where he literally looks
like he knows his team isn't very good. We've seen
him look dejected at times in the postgame locker room.
He's also had stretches where he's looked locked in and
played very well, but they've been fewer and further between
over the last couple of years as a in large
part because it hasn't. I mean, we all know this
(04:38):
Laker team. It's like, yeah, they got a chance. Maybe
if Lebron and Ad play amazing and some role players
out kick their coverage, so to speak, maybe they can
get it done. But there was never any like true
belief that there was this like clear championship ceiling there
for that team. This isn't just a locked in and
engaged Lebron we're seeing right now. This this is a
(05:00):
Lebron that actually truly believes he has a great chance
to win the title. And I'm actually excited, especially for
Lakers fans, because it's been a long time since we've
seen this. Last time we saw this guy was probably
twenty twenty one, right the year that they lost in
the first round of Phoenix. Lebron is one of the
greatest competitors of all time. Don't let the benevolent attitude
fool you. This guy is a maniacal competitor and when
(05:23):
he sees an opportunity, he locks in on it and
he's literally going to make sure that everything that he
can do in his power, everything in his control, he's
going to take care. Forty two seventeen and eight Tonight
one of the best rebounding games of the season from
Lebron as he's had to anchor these small ball groups
without centers. Just another level of shot creation we've seen
(05:44):
from him in the last couple of like the last
three four games, We're seeing incredible defensive rotations, communication, an
attention to detail, and his playmaking remember those stretches this
year where it kind of felt like Lebron was coasting
through games mental and just kind of throwing the ball
all over the court, and like he just didn't really
(06:04):
seem invested mentally in the game. Like he's looked so
laser focused every single time I've seen him in the
last week or so, and it just looks like a different,
more maniacally obsessively invested in this group version of Lebron James,
and that to me, he's exciting on a bunch of
(06:25):
different levels beyond just this is the guy that I
became such a big fan of growing up, and the
guy that dominated the league for a decade and a
really fun thing to watch when you're rooting for the
team that he's playing on. And so like, I'm just
excited to be a part of another opportunity to watch
Lebron James when he actually feels like he has a
(06:48):
real chance to win the title. I'm super excited to
see how it could potentially affect Luca. Luca's got a
lot of motivation right now, as he just had a
franchise pretty embarrassing fashion bail on him right at the
beginning of his prime and so he's gonna have a
certain amount of motivation from that. But I can't imagine
a better ecosystem to take Luka Dancij out of and
plug him into then the greatest basketball player of all time,
(07:12):
as mentally engaged, as physically engaged as he's been in
almost a half decade. And I think it's going to
bring a level out of both of these guys, Luca
to Lebron in the form of the belief that he
has reinstored for him, and Lebron to Luca in terms
of the example that he can set. And I think
it's gonna lead to some really special basketball from this group.
(07:34):
I want to zoom in on some x's and o's
from tonight. I want to talk about the concept of
small ball. You know, we're gonna be talking a lot
about Mark Williams over the course the next couple of weeks.
And for those of you guys who missed it, we
did a scouting report on Mark Williams earlier today, So
just go to our YouTube channel scroll a little bit
further back you can find the full breakdown of everything
Mark Williams. I'm not going to get into him tonight,
(07:54):
but one of the reasons why, like I didn't understand
a lot of pessimism coming out of that deal because
there's a lot of pessimismsunding. You know, Mark Williams is
not a good defender, and that's true. Mark Williams is
twenty three and he has absurd physical tools, but the
the guy, he just has a lot of work still.
He's pretty raw, needs a lot of work in terms
of rounding out what he needs to be a good
defensive player. And there will be games this year where
(08:16):
Mark Williams looks really bad on defense and the Lakers
defense looks really bad. But one of the reasons why
I wasn't super concerned about that was there was a
huge upside by making this kind of deal, by going
for a center that is on a cost controlled rookie
contract as opposed to a you know, an extension that's
(08:37):
a fifteen twenty twenty five million dollars deal, like a
guy like a Nicholas Claxton, a guy like Robert Williams,
a guy like Nikola Vucevich, a guy like Yaka pertl Right,
some of these other options that the Lakers were looking at.
By virtue of going for a cost controlled player and
the two options there obviously that we saw were Walker
Kessler and Mark Williams. By going after a guy like that,
(08:58):
you can just package a couple of them contracts. That's
what they did. They packaged Dalton connect And who, by
the way, was like periodically in the rotation for the
Lakers this year, but had his minutes messed with a lot.
And I was pretty consistent that I didn't think he
was a playoff rotation player yet, even though I believe
in him long term as an offensive prospect. But you
ship him out, you ship Cam Reddish out. You didn't
lose any of these same guys that have been playing
(09:21):
amazing basketball as of late. The only perimeter guy that's
like kind of a regular rotation player you lost is
Max Christy. He's a huge loss. Dallas fans are gonna
love him. But there's subtly underneath the surface here, even
dating back to the Knicks game when Anthony Davis didn't
even play, there is a group of seven guys here,
eight guys really if you count Jackson Hayes, who's been
(09:41):
playing some pretty damn special basketball. And it's because they
have more size on the perimeter, more defensive talent, more
rebounding talent more than we've seen on this roster before,
because Dorian Finney Smith came in in the deal, and
because Jared Vanderbilt's healthy now. So now you're seeing these
lineups that have Lebron James, Dorian Finney Smith, Ruey Hotchamura,
(10:03):
Jared Vanderbilt on the floor. And even the guards, guys
like Gave Vincent, guys like Austin Reeves, they compete, they
do their job. Austin was guarding tonight, gave Vincent was
guarding tonight. In order for small ball to work, there
has to be a commitment athletically to the details. You
need several things in order for small ball to work.
You need a shot creation because you're gonna create a
(10:25):
lot of space, and you're gonna have these good perimeter
players operating in space against a mismatch right, and you
need guys that can either consistently beat that coverage one
on one or consistently get the defense in rotation, either
by drawing a double team or by beating that guy
at the dribble and drawing in help from there. You
gotta have guys that can finish the play. Extended vantages, drive, closeouts,
(10:47):
play that driving kick sequence through to fruition for those
wide open catch and shoot threes and the stuff at
the rim. So that's what you need to make it
work on offense, and then on defense you have to
be able to switch, contain the ball, that crowding mismatches,
getting into passing lanes, making the floor feel smaller for
the player that's trying to attack your weakest defender, and
(11:08):
then out that you have to rebound you're smaller. Everyone's
got to crash, everyone's got to be flying in and
tapping at the ball, and there's just been excellent production
in every single one of those categories. Lebron and Austin
are just in one hell of a rhythm right now.
And like Austin had a nightmare shooting game, both of
(11:29):
them cooled off pretty bad in that second half, but
they still did enough. Both guys did a good job
getting to the foul line in the second half as
ways to kind of just squeeze extra points out. But
both of them were generating advantages, generating buckets for themselves
all like they've been playing just fantastic basketball over the
course of the last couple of weeks. And then off
(11:49):
of that, Gabe Vincent's hitting shots. Riachimura is making plays.
Jared Vanderbilt through his offensive rebounding and just his activity
is maintaining himself as a threat on the Dorian Finney
Smith knocking down shots. Everyone is doing their job within
that advantage, extending and play finishing, and then on defense,
just by virtue of having more good defenders on the floor,
(12:12):
by virtue of having more good defenders in the rotation,
there's just better talent in this switching scheme. Containing the
ball being in the right place, is making the efforts
you need to close out defensive possessions. And that's the
last part. Rebounding, they're gonna go small. You've got to
fly around for rebounds. Your perimeter players have to have
dominating rebounding efforts. Lebron James and Jared Vanderbilt too, forwards
(12:37):
had thirty one rebounds in this game, thirty one of them.
You want to know how small ball works when you
got guys that are small that play huge, and Jared
Vanderbilt and Lebron are two of those guys. Austin Reeves,
even your small guys have to battle. Austin Reeves only
had four rebounds, but he had two of the biggest
rebounding sequences of the night. What I thought was the
play of the game. This crazy play where it's a
(12:59):
high point right around the left lay line. Draymond's got
positioned on the rebound. Austin comes flying in and just
barely gets a piece of it, keeps it alive just
long enough for Jared Vanderbilt to get it. Jared Vanderbilt
can grabing go all night. He was getting rebounds and
instead of having to give the ball to someone to
run against ball pressure, he just would bring the ball
(13:20):
up to floor. Jared Vanderbilt huge defensive rebound, throws a
beautiful bounce pass in transition to Dorian Phinney Smith for
a dunk. A remarkable play that captures the difference in
the personality of this team compared to the pass because
of Dorian Phinney Smith coming in in the trade. Jared
Vanderbilt getting healthy. You just have more talent in those positions,
(13:41):
and your small guys are scrapping too. He also had
Austin got another huge contested rebound out of the left
kind of corner area, just running to a loose ball.
Loose ball that was going that way. No one was there.
Austin beat everybody there. Those are things. Those things are
non negotiable. When the Lakers switching defense look terrible, even
with Anthony David in the early parts of the season,
it mostly came down to that. It mostly came down
(14:04):
to guys not being willing to do that work. And
so that that is why I'm like kind of high
on the Mark Williams move because to me, this inevitably
is a small ball team. Maxi Kleiba is like a
really solid small ball center, a guy that like will
also be able to help anchor these minutes. He's not
going to be healthy until most likely early April, but
(14:26):
that's another option that continues to anchor that idea. We're
gonna talk about it in a minute, but they're a
buyout destination. There is potential for even more two way
talent to join this roster. And when I look at
the Mark Williams move, I look at it as like, Yeah,
there's gonna be lineups out there that are Luca at
the point with probably Austin and Mark Williams is going
(14:47):
to be out there and they're gonna run a lot
of pick and roll and they're gonna score a million points.
And they'll also give up a million points on the
other end. But like, those lineups will still be good
because they're going to be extremely difficult to guard. And
then they're also going to small ball looks. They're going
to be able to throw out lineups with Luca and
Lebron in Austin, but with Dorian Finney Smith and Vando
(15:08):
next to them, and they'll run spread ball screens with
Jared Vanderbilt or with Lebron and have Vanderbilt operate as
a cutter along the baseline, and those lineups will be
able to get enough stops because when Lebron is playing hard,
he's a very good defender. Dorian Phinney Smith very good defender.
Jared Vanderbilt is an amazing defender. Like, they're going to
(15:28):
have looks that they can go to. Now, are there
are there weaknesses here? Of course, they're a little thin
on the front line for massive centers. They're going to
struggle with Jokic type a type of bigs right, and
that arguably is the kind of player they should be
looking out in the looking for in the buyout market.
Is just the best, big, bruising type of center that
they can find. But like I look at this Lakers
(15:51):
team that has many different shapes that they can take.
They're playing such great basketball right now, and they managed
to pull this off without giving a way any of
those players that are playing such great basketball right now.
And then you're gonna bring in this Luca Mark Williams
dynamic that just gives you an entirely different punch that
you can throw. Not to mention, like, let's talk about
(16:12):
that second half. Lebron and Austin started to fatigue. The
Warriors went small. Guess what. The Warriors are the original
small ball team. They're very good at it too, and
they up to their defensive pressure, they up to their
rebounding effort, and they wore the Lakers down a little
bit in that second half. Obviously, there was a little
bit of the Lakers pulling back, and there's some of
(16:32):
that natural push and pull that happens in NBA regular
season games, but the actual tangible thing that was affecting
the Lakers was Lebron and Austin started to fatigue a
little bit. This is where Luka Doncic is like the
trump card for that. Luka Doncic is going to just
make everything so much easier in that situation where a
(16:54):
defense really tightens the screws and Lebron and Austin start
to show some of their lumps. Playing great, but Lebron's
forty and Austin obviously has some athletic limitations. Luca is
the second or third best basketball player on planet Earth,
and specifically because his superpower is you can't pressure him
(17:16):
and force him to speed up. You can't keep him
from getting to his spots. You can't keep him from
either getting a shot that he likes for himself or
a shot that he likes for someone else. And that
is going to add a layer of resilience to that
group as they go through stretches like what they did
in that second half. The Lakers are playing great basketball, man,
and they're the premier buyout destination in the league. I
(17:39):
literally can't even believe the reversal of fortune here over
the course of where I felt about this team over
the course of the last few months and where they're
at now. Obviously, I'm not going to make any sort
of declaration about where they land in my contender tier,
not until I see a lot of basketball with Luka
doncicin Mark Williams on the floor, certain point, I just
(18:00):
want to be like, let's not overthink it, guys, they're
gonna be really fucking good. Like they're they have this
incredible identity, and these two guys aren't even there yet.
And it's the walking thirty point triple double guy and
the dude who can go for twenty five and fifteen
on any given night, and and that's that's just a
(18:20):
massive influx of talent on the Warriors front. Obviously, we
didn't see Jimmy Butler in this game, and I thought
they've generally played pretty well. In the stretches of the
game where they had Steph Curry on the floor, they
were minus three and steps minutes. They got beat up
pretty bad by the starters in the opening stretch of
the game, but every other stretch of the game they
competed with the Lakers starters and played well. But then
(18:42):
you just kept going to these bench groups and it's
like Pat Spencer and Brandon Pajemski and it's like Pat
Spencer's a really cool story. I mean, I don't know
why the hell he went off the like off a
handle on that and one against Lebron like that was
that was a pretty funny sequence. But like, that's it.
Pat Spencer's a cool story. Probably shouldn't be the secondary
(19:04):
shot creator on your bench unit if you have serious
championship aspirations. Brandon Pazemski really like him as a prospect.
Had a rough shooting night tonight, especially at the foul line,
But he's a guy that does a lot of little
things well. Probably shouldn't be your primary shot creator on
a bench unit. And so like, this is the beauty
of having Jimmy Butler coming into this equation. In addition
(19:26):
to anchoring those starting units with more talent on both
ends of the floor, he just gives you a much
better chance to survive those minutes you watched them. You
saw they couldn't get good shots. That was the problem.
They scrapped and they made plays here and there, but
time and time again, that Laker defense was able to
contain those guys. And so that's exactly why I'm so
excited to see what Jimmy Butler looks like in this context.
(19:49):
Like Steph, what he take thirty took damn your forty
shots tonight, Like he's having to do everything right now,
And that's exactly why you had to do what you did.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yesterday.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
All right, let's move on to Anthony Edwards just absolutely
dominating the Houston Rockets. The Rockets are banged up when
they're playing their worst basketball this season right now, but
they had a lead at one point lead about eight
minutes left in the fourth quarter up until Anthony Edwards
came in and just completely eviscerated them. He has scored
sixteen points over the final eight minutes of the game.
The degree of difficulty on the work that he did
(20:34):
was off the charge. Remember, Houston is probably one of
the few teams in the league, probably the team that's
best equipped actually to handle Anthony Edwards's power In athleticism, again,
Anthony Ewards brings this unique combination of incredible athletic mobility,
but he's just built like a refrigerator, and so he's
just incredibly difficult to handle his like straight line power. Right.
(20:55):
But here's the thing, even though the Rockets have a
lot of athletes that have power like ant is just
a complete other level of athlete. In three plays that
I wanted to quickly kind of like highlight to demonstrate this,
he had an and one on Dylan Brooks coming down
the left lane line on like a eurostep where Dylan
Brooks went with the verticality, but he wanted to foul Ant,
(21:15):
so he came down on top of him as easy
call for the ref basically pushed Ant down backwards and
at like a forty five degree ankle from the angle
from the ground while falling down, somehow gets the strength
to literally get a line drive jump shot off that
bank's end. Just an incredible demonstration of strength that he has.
(21:36):
Then he has his play on the left corner area
after an offensive rebound where he's got Cam Whitmore on
his high side and Jalen Green in front of him. Again,
these are two A plus athletes that are bracketing Anthony
Edwards and basically a double team, but Ant is an
A plus plus plus athlete and he just ripped right
through them and got an easy and one layout. And
(21:57):
then lastly that step back three over Dylan Brooks. Ellen's
doing a great job playing the jump shot and getting it.
Still gets a great contest, but Ant just goes to
a shuffle stepide It's basically the step back with that
extra shuffle step at the end and takes like a
twenty seven footer with his momentum going away from the basket.
But his legs are so damn strong that he just
(22:18):
goes straight up and down and gets such great lift
that it's just this easy, breezy flip of the wrist
at the end. And he's become such a damn good
shooter that like, that's a good shot for him. This
is why I'm so high on Anthony Edwards in the
big picture. He has the physical tools to overcome literally
any surrounding circumstance. There isn't an athlete in the NBA
(22:41):
that can stop Anthony Edwards from at least getting a
decent look at a pull up jump shot. And again,
he's gotten so good at making them that even a
tough pull up jump shot is still a good look
for Anthony Edwards. When he combines that with improved playmaking,
improved defense, and honestly just a little bit Betters construction
to take advantage of his downhill ability, the sky is
(23:03):
the limit for this kid. I also wanted to shout
out Jalen Clark. He's been getting minutes over the last
couple of weeks with some injuries. He had seventeen points
tonight doing his job on offense beeding low man help
he had a steady dose of jack Landale, who was
playing backup center for the banged up Rockets scene tonight.
He had a steady dose of jack Landel on him,
and jack Landil was just helping everywhere, and so he
just kept ending up in the corner. He had three
(23:24):
three's out of the corner. He had a really nice
bucket on a back cut where jack Landiel was getting
ready to double team nase Red on a post up
and Jalen literally identified it and like looked like a
sprinter along the baseline eighteen foot from the basket, just
like waiting for the gun to fire, And as soon
as jack Landiel went to hard double, you just shot
down the baseline. And a lot of times you want
(23:45):
to do that as a as a smaller player simply
because you want to have a running start. Remember when
you play NBA two K, they had that vertical jump metric.
Like big guys can work out of the dunker spot
without much of a running start because they could just
get up off the grip so quick off two feet
and they have such a high standing reach. These athletes
that are on the perimeter, they need a running start
(24:06):
to be able to finish over bigger players around the basket.
I just thought he did a really nice job beating
that low man help. The Wolves have won seven out
of nine, and by the way, in that span, Anthony
Everwards is averaging thirty two points, six rebound, six assists
on sixty two percent true shooting six assists per game.
Made two beautiful feeds out of double teams late in
(24:28):
the game for a wide open three from Nasried at
the top key that he missed, and then another double
team that led to a wide open three for Mike
Conley that ended up making and that basically put the
gameway really special basketball from Anthony Edwards. Let's move on
to the Dallas Mavericks, who get a big win on
the road against the Boston Celtics. They pulled away with
a small ball group to end the first quarter, Kyrie Irving, Spencer, Dinwiddie, Olivia,
(24:52):
Maxon's prosper Max Christie fresh in from the Lakers, and
Naji Marshall, and as I talked about earlier, that can
work as long as your shot creators do a good
job of consistently scoring one on one or starting driving
kick sequences with advantage creation, and as long as you
have guys finishing plays by finishing those driving kick sequences.
(25:13):
And as long as on defense you can contain the
ball and you can rebound, you can win playing small ball,
and they just played better small ball than the Celtics
did in that end of the first quarter group, Jalen
Brown had a couple of bad turnovers trying to dribble
through traffic. He had to post up against Max Christie
right around like the semi circle. Max Christy's skinny, He's
(25:33):
a guy you can go through. Jalen settled for a
tough fade away and missed it. But on the other end,
Spencer Dinwiddie is attacking the rim. He gets two driving layups,
shoots a pull up three, but it comes after those
driving laps when he's in rhythm and he has more separation.
Spencer was great in this entire game, but it was
really good in that stretch starting driving kick sequences too.
(25:55):
Big time like dribble, penetration and spray out. Sometimes just
simple stuff like I've got a nice on the right wing,
we got a player on the left wing. We're in
four out one in spacing, which is pretty typical for
driving kick stuff. And the guy who's getting the left
wing is kind of sitting around the nail. Spencer just
takes two hard dribbles towards the middle, gets that guy
to commit, throws a swing pass its Naji Marshall pump
bake drive left. Naji Marshall ends up hitting a bucket.
(26:18):
Sometimes it can be something simple like that. When a
team is loading up on you, your job is just to
create the advantage so that the players off of you
can finish those plays. Right. Chris tops porzingis on the
other end, posting up. Naji Marshall settles for really tough
right shoulder fade away that he misses. Tatum comes in.
He's being really aggressive towards the rim in that late
(26:38):
first quarter stretch, but even he was sloppy. He missed
a couple of layups, he had a turnover. The mass
were just playing better small ball, and they just built
a nice little lead. They drove and kicked better, they
switched and contained the ball better, they rebounded better. They
just did a better job then the Celtics did, even
though the talent would lead you to believe that the
Celtics should. And this has been a recurring theme for
(27:01):
the Celtics and we're gonna talk about that in a minute.
But Dallas has played better than then tonight. Klay Thompson
was fantastic in this game. The Celtics were really hesitant
to switch with him all night. And this is a
acceptable strategy with shooters, like you can do the switching
thing for off ball action. But in theory it's great,
but there's just it leads to a lot of mistakes,
(27:22):
right Like if you switch and the guy passively switches,
meaning the guy that's switching on to the shooter just
as a step late, he can find some separation and
take a jump shot there. Sometimes people completely botch switches.
You can get separated and lose that connection body to
body and it can cause problems. But the problem is
if you stay attached and you lock and trail, that
puts you in the situation where you're vulnerable to drop
(27:44):
coverage shots. So if they're not switching and they have
their big sitting back and he's coming off of that action,
if the guy's in trail position, there's movement jump shots
that are open in the gap between the guy that's
chasing him and the guy that's sitting back there in
that drop coverage and it was weird because even there
are even a lot of sequences in off ball action
that didn't involve bigs where the Celtics were hesitant to
(28:08):
switch and they would just have like Derek White, stay
attached to him. But Clay was getting a lot of
opportunities against those Boston drop coverage looks, and he's still
one of the greatest movement shooters of all time, and
he just got hot, and he just eviscerated their drop
coverages all night with little movement jump shots in that
gap between the screen defender and the trailing defender. And
(28:30):
by the time Boston adjusted, they tried switching with the big,
they tried rotating off ball with a different perimeter player,
it just didn't matter because Clay was in too good
of a groove at that point. Twenty five in this game,
the MAVs led by as much as twenty seven in
this game, is a really nice win for them on
the road. And the Celtics are just so obviously so bored.
(28:52):
I was talking about this with a Lakers fan buddy
of mine earlier today, but like to me, the Celtics
are so obviously the least motivated team in the NBA.
This year, and they have such a difference between when
they play with force on both ends, when they're defending
like crazy, weaponizing their athleticism, and then on the other
(29:14):
end of the floor just attacking, attacking, attacking and getting
great shots and just picking teams apart, versus their like
games where they play with less force and it's like
they're just not defending the way that they're capable of
and they're settling for a lot of bad jump shots.
And it's been like a lot of both mixed in.
It's not even like, oh, here's ten good games, here's
(29:35):
ten shitty games. It's like they go into Cleveland and
put together one of their most complete efforts of the season,
and then they come home and lay an egg against
a Dallas Mavericks team that doesn't have Luca or Anthony
Davis and a Mavericks team that's spiraled without Luka Doncic
this season. And so, like again, I'm gonna say the
same thing I've been saying about it with the Celtics
(29:55):
all year long. I know that championship upside is in there.
I still believe in them. They's still my top tier
championship contender. I still have them above the Oklahoma City Thunder.
But the problem is is they're playing with fire by
playing a lot of bad basketball mixed in with good basketball.
When you play bad basketball, your habits aren't as sharp
as they are when you're consistently playing great basketball. If
(30:17):
your habits aren't as sharp, then when you run into
adversity in a big playoff game, you don't have the
same level of that habitual championship basketball that you can
lean back on to help survive those moments. It feels
a little bit like the Celtics are leaning on their
talent this year instead of their relentless execution, which is
how they won the title in addition to the talent
(30:37):
that they had. And so again, it's not over for them.
It's not like they're on a different tier than Oklahoma
City or Cleveland. I still view them as the clear
championship favorite, but we have to be honest about the
fact that they're playing with some fire this year. Lastly,
Tonight briefly on Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets. An absolute
masterclass from Nikole jokicch puts up twenty eight points, ten
(30:58):
rebounds in twelve assists thirty one minutes, did a ton
of damage as a pick and roll ball handler. In
tonight's game, he kept running goga bitadz through these inverted
ball screens all over the floor, a lot on the
right wing, a little bit at the top of the key.
And one of the things I talk about a lot
when it comes to inverted ball screens. And again for
those of you gus who don't understand what that is
is typically a ball screen is a perimeterive player handling
(31:19):
and a big player setting the screen, and an inverted
ball screen the big players handling, and you've got a
perimeterive player setting the screen. And what it does is
it reversus defensive roles. They're like, how many pick and
rolls have you watched in the NBA this year? And
most of them look roughly the same, right, like the
guards chasing over the top, the big is somewhere waiting
(31:39):
on the other end, either up at the level of
shitting further back in a drop coverage, and all of
them look the same. And they have a certain kind
of like pattern that these guards have done their entire lives,
and a certain pattern that these bigs have done their
entire lives. You know, how many ball screens NBA centers
(32:00):
have defended since they were playing high school basketball. Do
you know how many ball screens guards have defended since
they were playing high school basketball? Now, flip it and
the big guy is handling a ball handler through balls
through screens, and the small guy who's now in a
position to help is having to help on a massive
(32:22):
ball handler when he's never done that before, not in
any sort of substantial context. Right, and again, it was
so funny to watch Goga Patadze struggle with this comes
off of an inverted ball screen from Michael Porter Junior
in the first half along the right wing, and Gogo
Patazz goes under but he by the time he actually
(32:43):
meets Nikole Jokic, it's only like five feet from the rim.
Nikole Jokic has like what thirty forty pounds on him
and just has a head of steam and just easily
bumps into him, and Goga goes flying back and he
just gets an easy lap of Jokics running with ahead
of steam against a player five feet from the basket.
There's nobody in the league that could stop him there.
But like, how do you get Jokic into that situation
(33:04):
where he's running with the ball into a static player
or a backpedaling player five feet from the basket by
forcing that player to run through a screen that he
has no idea what to do. The had one in
the second half. Its top skey in the third quarter
where Goga goes to run over the top of the
screen and Jokic rejects the screen, and Goga literally had
(33:26):
his back turned to Jokic while Jokic was driving past
him the other way because he has no idea what
he's doing. He has never defended ball screens. He doesn't
know how to get that top foot over while keeping
his chest square to the defender. He doesn't know that.
You can't just commit to going over to the top
of the screen against any good ball handler, because so
(33:46):
many of those end up being rejected by the ball
handler as soon as they know you commit to the screen,
it's just cross right back over and you're going right
to the basket. But that's the beauty of the inverted
ball screen is it just puts defenders into compromising positions,
and in order for it to work, you need to
have a big that can both dribble, shoot and pass.
And you're not going to find a big an NBA
history that did that stuff better than Nicole Jokis. Brilliant
(34:09):
game from him. Michael Porter Junior also put up thirty
Really some of his best work. Just that every part
of his game going was doing a ton of work
off the dribble in the screening actions, just keeping his
dribble alive so that he could get to spots and
take advantage of people over pursuing him on screens. Made
great reads in his off screen possessions all night, Like
got free for a bunch of backdoor buckets, just like
(34:29):
it got a nasty dunk off one too, Just like
getting the defender to overplay the screen and then pushing
then just pushing him out of the way and going
back towards the basket, finding openings for threes in transition.
Just a really nice game for Michael Porter Junior. Nice
went for the Nuggets over a reeling Orlando Magic team.
(34:59):
All right, let's get into our male bad questions again.
We're gonna go for about ten to fifteen minutes and
then we'll be done here. From Doyle, I disagree with
you about the Jimmy trades. Steph isn't the one that
will benefit KAMINGA is going to be the true benefactor.
Love everything you do, Thank you. So I agree in principle,
just simply because that's what slotting is, right, Like, Steph
(35:22):
to me is not the same player he was in
twenty twenty one. And I want to be clear, like,
do I think Steph's efficiency will improve after Jimmy starts playing. Yes,
it will because he won't have to take as many
bad shots. But Steph does have a little bit of
an issue getting separation at this point in his career,
and that's a real thing. And a lot of Steph's
value at this point comes from just the way he's guarded,
(35:43):
which is something I spent a lot of time talking
about in the Jimmy Butler video on Wednesday Night, Like Steph,
Steph is going to be guarded in such a way
that he has such a high offensive floor even if
he does go you know, six for nineteen from three
or six for two, twenty for three, whatever it was
that he went tonight.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Right, But.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
The real problem for the Warriors was lower level offensive
players slotted into higher roles. Asking Dennis Andrew Wiggins Jonathan
Kaminga to be like reliable every night twenty point per
game guys. Jonathan Kaminga has been just as likely to
score twelve or fewer points this year as he is
to score twenty plus. Like that, that's not a good
(36:25):
spot for him at this phase in his career as
a young player. He doesn't need to be in a
doesn't need to be in a situation where he's being
depended on offensively. Jimmy Butler comes in. He is that
dependable high floor offensive player. All of a sudden, you
can kind of pick and choose who plays well. Every
great basketball team is the same story. It's you got
(36:46):
your reliable offensive guys, and then there's like five other
dudes where it's like who's got it tonight? And yeah,
on the nights where all five of them suck, it
can go dark for any team in the NBA. But
like sometimes these two guys get going, and then these
two guys get going, and then these three guys get going,
and it's like this guy is seventeen when he normally
averages eight, and this guy had twenty three tonight when
(37:07):
he normally averages fifteen. That sort of variety is like
totally normal. That is what you expect from those players.
They just can't be dependent on or you're gonna be
constantly you're gonna be constantly frustrated with what you get
out of it from TK. Assuming Luca, Austin Reeves, Lebron,
and Mark Williams are the four starters, who should be
(37:30):
the last starter? And why so? I thought a lot
about this. I expect JJ Reddick to go with Ruby Hachimura.
I would personally go with Dorian Finney Smith for a
very simple reason. I would want to deploy him against
the opponent's best perimeter player, and then I would effectively
have Austin Reeves defending as a defending the second best
(37:50):
perimeter player. Luca is defending your third best perimeter player.
Lebron's your low man. Mark Williams is in ball screens, right,
So like that to me makes the most sense. If
you bring Ruby Hotchi Mura in, you're probably going to
more of a switching look, and that's just not gonna
be good because that's going to put Mark Williams on
the perimeter a lot. Charlotte almost exclusively used Mark Williams
in a deep drop because he sucks at defending on
(38:11):
the perimeter. He's not good at defending around the basket either,
but at least around the basket. He's going to block
some shots. His size can be a problem, and he's
a very good defensive rebounder. Right, So ideally, by putting
Mark Williams in that starting lineup, you have to run
drop coverage with him, and that means that you have
to ball screens, not switch, which means you've got to
have somebody that's willing to defend on the perimeter and
chase over the top of screens. A perfect example is
(38:33):
like in tonight's game where Ruy Hatchamura and Dorian Finnis
Smith are both starting, and again we all know Lucas
going in for one of those guys who started on
Steph Dorian Phinney Smith, Right, Dorian is not ideally suited
to be that type of player. I like Dorian better
is a switching guy who's kind of all over the floor,
not navigating screens as much. But he also can do that,
(38:54):
and he certainly can do it a lot better than Ruy,
So that to me is an easy solution there. You
start Mura, or excuse me, you start Dorian Finney Smith.
Then also, Ruy's scoring is going to be of more value.
On the bench, you can imagine a universe where you know,
Braun and Dorian Finney Smith come out and gave Vincent
and Ruy Hachimura come in, and Ruy has more opportunity
(39:16):
to be aggressive with that bench group. Right. Is it
possible for Mark Williams and Jared Vanderbilt to start at
the same time and their offense not fall apart? I
don't think so. It's more just you can make it work.
To be clear, there's a certain amount of like rapid
cutting and movement on the interior where guys can remain
a threat even when there's multiple players that can't shoot
from the perimeter. But it certainly is a lot more difficult,
(39:38):
and I just think Jared Vanderbilt is going to be
more anchoring the small ball groups when Mark Williams is
off the floor. Do you think the Lakers This is
from JM and thank you for the donation as well, Jams.
Do you think the Lakers can win the championship this year?
Now that they have two all time great matchup hunters
and Luka Dancic and Lebron James. This is the thing
that makes me so excited about this team. What you
saw in that second half is a smaller version of
(40:01):
what happens in almost every single NBA playoff game. A
certain point, we're playing against a really good team that's
playing desperate basketball, and when hit gets top, they're gonna
ratchet things up. They're gonna get more physical, they're gonna
pressure the ball, they're gonna be more aggressive in terms
of their coverages, and everything's gonna get really difficult, and
it's gonna become an absolute slow down, fistfight. And in
(40:24):
that situation, you can't have two better rock fight basketball
players on the offensive end of the floor than Lebron
James and Luka Doncic. Especially Lebron James that legitimately, again
is very small sample size, but in the last week
has been playing at the level that you see the
top five players in the league play at. And I mean,
if Lebron can maintain that, we need to have an
(40:45):
entirely different discussion about the potential that this that this
team has after acquiring DeAndre acquiring DeAndre Hunter, have the
Cavs leapfrog the Celtics for the best five man lineup
who should be considered the favorite in that conference? Love
the videos. I have not had the Cavs leap Frog
Boston after that trade. I do think it's a smart
move from them in that it avoided getting rid of
(41:08):
any of their most valuable assets. The players they traded
out are a little bit redundant. For instance, Karris Lavert
is redundant with ty Jerome now that Ty Jerome has
kind of come to the surface as one of the
best backup guards in the league. Carris has got some
defensive talent and does a lot of things well, but
he's a little bit more redundant then George Kniang. DeAndre
(41:29):
Hunter is just a much better player than him, so
it's a talent add DeAndre Hunter. One of the big
things I talked about in our trade deadline reaction today
is like he's just got scoring chops and a lot
of times in the playoffs when things really bogged down,
it's about the guy that can take that skip pass
from Donovan Mitchell. But he's got an A plus athlete
closing out at him and he needs to score there,
like create a bucket for himself. And DeAndre Hunter has
(41:52):
been one of the better pull up jump shooters in
the league this year. He's got the ability to put
the ball on the foard and make plays for himself.
I like that he gives you more physicality and size
on the perimeter, which is obviously important for a Boston
team that constantly is looking to attack mispatches. All of
that is great, but I still think that Boston, as
you guys saw when they went into Cleveland the other night,
and as we've seen throughout this entire season, they just
(42:13):
have this level they can get to when they really
tighten the screws on defense and the Jays just get
super physically aggressive on offense, where it's just tough to
deal with their talent. And again, I think we have
to be honest about the fact that Boston is just
completely past this regular season process at this point. They
are a April May June type of team, and so
(42:36):
I think that there's some real difference and just what
we can expect from those teams in the regular season. Now.
As far as do they have a chance, of course,
they do them a five game lead in the standings,
so as long as they play mostly as good as
they've been playing to start the year, they're going to
be the number one overall seed, which means when we
get to late May game one of the Eastern Conference Finals,
(42:59):
is going to be in Cleveland. You ride a raucous
crowd to a two zero series lead, you got a
really good chance to win that series. So like, of
course they can win. I don't think Boston is like
the head and shoulders favorite to win the conference. I
just think they're the favorite, and I think that their
talent is a little underrated at this point because they're
dealing with some regular season malaise. Who was carried more
(43:22):
Rob Polinka by Nico or Ringo Star by Paul John
and George. I did this segment for Microsoft Today where
we talked about like overcoming adversity, and I did the
whole thing on Rob and Paul, our producer, texted me
right after and he's like, you should have just made
Nico Harrison the start that segment. Oh man, All right,
(43:45):
let's see, last time the Celtics won the title, the
Lakers won the next season. That's super interesting. What do
you think is the biggest question mark for the Lakers
going forward whether or not they can put together a
reasonable defense with Mark Williams at center, Which is gonna
come down to whether or not they can find a
a defensive scheme that kind of works with that group,
and they're gonna have to find lineup construction that pairs
(44:06):
somebody that can chase over the top of screens with
Mark so they can keep him in a deep drop.
And then coaching is going to play a big role.
They've got to somehow pretty quickly. They have to pretty
quickly develop Mark into a useful defensive player, and that's
gonna be tough. What's going on with the Trailblazers. They
are on fire, young players finally taking the next step,
playing really good defense. Tomani Kamara has been one of
(44:28):
the most impressive young defensive athletes that we've seen in
the league this year. They're getting good shot creation from
Anferny Simon's and Scoot Henderson's playing the best basketball of
his young career. Their fun team, and I was kind
of expecting them to be more sellers at the deadline,
and I think they just played too well for that
to be the case. All right, well we got one
here from EGO donated five dollars, Thank you so much.
Do you think Lucas saves Lebron's legs come May? This
(44:50):
is huge for a real run. Lebron can coast a
bit without the offense tanking legs in May June very important. Yeah,
there was a play. There was a play where Lebron
was posting Brandon Pizzimski along the left lane line and
he shot a bank shop that went off the corner
of the backboard. It was a pretty ugly miss, and
it was just so abundantly clear that he was exhausted.
And Austin can leverage the athletic gifts and these bursts.
(45:14):
That's why I think the manager Nobili comp is such
a great comp for Austin Reeves. But like both of
them have a kind of a tendency to run into
a wall at a certain point because of Lebron's agent,
because of Austin's athletic limitations, and Luca just has the
ability to overcome that. And I think it's a really
underrated aspect of this that Lebron's going to be able
(45:34):
to devote energy to the defensive end of the floors
as a product of the U as a product of
the load that Luca can take on the offensive end
of the floor From maxim Sold, the Nuggets run more
of their offense through Michael Porter Junior. No, I don't
think so. Go ahead a great game tonight. I was
really impressed by the off screen work that he did.
(45:56):
But the problem with MPJ is he's another one of
those guys that can kind of run into a wall
in terms of athleticism, where like you saw this against
Minnesota and all the Minnesota matchups. We even saw this
a little bit in the Miami series in the finals.
But like when teams can kind of physically pressure him
and make him rush and feel a little bit uncomfortable,
(46:18):
his game falls apart. And there are just more reliable
offensive players in terms of Jamal Murray in particular in
a playoff setting, even Russell Westbrook, who has an athlete
when he's in a small role, can leverage himself as
things get more intense. I think that it's there's obviously
MPJ is always gonna have his role, and on nights
(46:39):
like tonight, when he's really got it, you want to
keep going to him, keep going to him. But I
don't see it as a I don't really see it
as a as a you know, foundational offensive concept, if
that makes sense. A couple more, if Ben's his If
Ben Simmons gets bought out, what's the team that is
perfect for him? I mean, I suppose it would have
to be a tea. Then he's a little like a
(46:59):
four with some size. I'd be an interesting one for
Golden State maybe, Like Ben Simmons is kind of like
a Draymond Green esque drible handoff, roll into space kind
of guy.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Still, I've seen some moments this year where like he'll
slide his feet on the perimeter. I'll be like, oh
my God, Like remember how good Ben Simmons used to
be on defense. I remember watching Ben Simmons once guard
Damian Lillard when he was in his athletic prime and
like easily blocked Dame on a step back jump shot
going to his right. You know, Dame's go to like
hard a pound dribble into the step back going right,
(47:29):
Like Ben had this athletic burst that's just not there anymore.
You still see it from time to time where you'll
make a play, you'll get dunk, he'll you know, slide
his feet on the perimeter and make a play. But
still is super gun shy around the basket as a finisher.
I don't really see him as a guy that I
ever want playing meaningful minutes in a serious basketball game.
What's your take on the first game with Aaron Fox
(47:49):
on the Spurs. I haven't watched that one yet, Off
to check it out later. Why does Austin Reeves look
so bad at times? I think Austin has had some
bad games this year when he really gets attacked on
the defensive end of the floor. And he also, kind of,
like Michael Porter Junior, can get a little bit messed
up by specific types of matchups, physical types of perimeter
players that can pressure him. But I've also seen him
overcome that type of matchup, and like, here's the thing, Like,
this is why Austin Reeves like to me, that twenty
(48:11):
point per game, fifty forty ninety guy, That to me
is the Austin Reeves experience. So the way it manifests
itself is a lot of twenty seven point nights and
a lot of thirteen point nights, right like, and a
lot of that's going to have to do matchup to
match up. But I think Austin Reeves played a lot
better tonight than the shooting percentages would tell you. Consistently,
got to the foul line, had that big bank shot
in crunch time. I thought that was a big shot.
(48:33):
I Austin's one of my favorite players that I've ever
rooted for. All Right, guys, that's all I have for tonight.
As always, a sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me
and supporting the show. As of right now, the plan
is to go after a game on Saturday. I'm not
one hundred percent sure yet because I think it depends
on whether or not Luca plays. So we'll figure that out
and I'll let you guys know. But keep an eye
(48:53):
on my Twitter feed at our sport jsonlt for show announcements,
and I'll let you guys know when the next show is.
If we don't go on Saturday, then obviously we'll be
back on Monday for our power rankings and our usual
routine from there. Again, sincerely appreciate you guys for rocking
with me and supporting the show. I'll see you guys next.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Time the volume.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
What's up guys. As always, I appreciate you for listening
to and supporting Hoops 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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