December 11, 2025 • 25 mins
Jason reacts LIVE after night two of the NBA Cup, in-season tournament quarterfinals. He breaks down how De'Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle and the San Antonio Spurs were able to upset Luka Doncic, LeBron James, and the Los Angeles Lakers even without Victor Wembanyama. Then he discusses Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the OKC Thunder running Dillon Brooks and the Phoenix Suns off the court without Devin Booker. #volume
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume. All right, welcome to him today here at
the Volume Heavy Wednesday. Everybody hopeful, If you guys are
having an incredible week. We are reacting to Night two
of the nd season Tournament quarterfinals, as we got an
(00:24):
excellent showcase from two of the top teams in the
Western Conference. How about the San Antonio Spurs beating the
Denver Nuggets and the Los Angeles Lakers to clear their
way to Vegas in a showdown with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
I am buying all the Spurs dock right now. I
believe they are a legitimate championship contender in this league.
(00:45):
I'm excited to dive into that game. I want to
talk a little bit about this disturbing trend of the
Lakers just consistently getting punked by the more athletic teams
in the league. Will dive a little bit deeper into
that than the Oklahoma City Thunder when casually just beat
the Suns tonight by like forty something. So we'll dig
a little bit of that into that game as well.
At the Telli end of into that game as well,
(01:07):
at the tail end of the show, you guys are
the joke before we get started to subscribe to our
YouTube channel, scroll down and like this video. It helps
us a lot if you take a second just to
scroll down and hit that like button. And again, if
you want to get mailbag questions into our weekly mail bags,
make sure you drop them in the comments here underneath
this video. All right, let's talk some basketball. So, as
I said, tonight was an excellent showcase for two of
(01:29):
the top teams in the Western Conference, and both the
Spurs and the Thunder you saw everything about what makes
both of those teams awesome. And then another one of
the top teams in the Western Conference. You saw exactly
why no matter how many regular season games they win,
I will never view them as more than just a
puncher's chance upset threat, and I don't put them in
(01:50):
that top tier of contenders with teams like Oklahoma City,
Houston and Denver. And that game in particular, Let's start
with the Spurs. That was a wonderful showcase of everything
that's been driving their success this season, and it starts
with combining the level of offense that we've seen in
(02:10):
this now twelve game stretch without Victor wembin Yama with
the game breaking defensive talent that is Victor wembin Yama.
When they combine those two things, they become what I
think is an incredibly imposing playoff threat. Tonight was an
awesome showcase of that offense. And they've been playing like
this on offense for weeks now. Everything you saw tonight
(02:35):
that was not just a one night thing. That was
not just a oh, it's the Lakers and they get
punked by athletes. This is stuff they've been doing to everybody.
There's a little bit of weirdness tonight, like Steph Castle
and Keldon Johnson hit six threes in this game, but
it's basketball games. Weird things can happen. Marcus Smart hit
(02:55):
eight threes. Sometimes guys who are poor three point shooters
make a bunch of threes. Other than everything you saw
from san Antonio was like stuff they've been doing to everybody.
The athleticism in transition, they boat race the Lakers again
and again in the open court, just running right around
them for layups in easy threes, the consistent driving of
(03:16):
the basketball in the half court. San Antonio's drives per
game have skyrocketed since Victor women Yama went out because
it's their primary method of generating offense at this point.
It's also because Deeron Fox, who is a career star
ball handler, is now drawing more primary matchups. It's slotting
everybody else into more achievable roles. Steph Castle was feasting
(03:40):
tonight on whoever was standing in front of him, and
that driving thing has been a consistent trend they are averaging.
This is obviously the NBA dot Com stats haven't updated
from tonight's game, but in the eleven previous games since
Wemby went down, the Spurs were averaging fifty five drives
per game. That's sixth in the higher NBA. It's Deeron Fox,
(04:03):
It's Steel and Harper, it's Steph Castle, It's Keldon Johnson.
Jerry Sohan has done it at times. Keldon Johnson has
been bringing this like bullyball rim pressure element for most
of the season, the drawing of fouls. The Spurs have
been a top ten free throw right team in the
league this season. Why because their speed constantly has defenders
out of position. I saw a lot of Lakers fans
(04:25):
complaining about officiating tonight. There is this thing that consistently
happens in the NBA, and it seems bizarre on the surface,
but It makes sense when you really think about it,
and it's that when there is a team that is
being more physically aggressive, they tend to actually get called
for less fouls and they tend to draw more fouls
on their opponent. But that is literally because the more
(04:47):
physically aggressive team is almost always getting the opponent out
of position. On the offensive end, the defense is a
step behind their aggression, so they're out of position and
they're constantly hacking and fouling as they're getting beat. Most
of those were fouls. Guys, hate to break it to you,
(05:08):
because the Spurs were beating you to spots on offense,
and then on defense it's the exact same thing. They
were again, the more physically aggressive team that was beating
the Lakers to spots, So the Lakers weren't able to
draw fouls. A team that gets a lot of fouls
wasn't able to get to the foul. And there's a
handful of miss calls in there. I don't want to
pretend like the officiating was perfect, but there was miscalls
(05:29):
going both ways. I had no problem with the whistle tonight.
I thought the Spurs were the more physically aggressive team,
and I thought they deserved to get a better whistle
as a result, and they did. I thought most of
those fowls were fouls. The high level three point shooting.
They've been top ten in both volume and percentage since
Victor Wembenyama went down. And again, yes, Keldon Johnson and
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Steph Castle and Marcus Smart were the weird kind of
low percentage guys for both teams tonight that made threes.
But all those other dudes, they've been shooting the ball
super well during this stretch. Darren Fox has been shooting
the ball super well. Devin Vessel has been shooting the
ball super well. If you live Julian Champagnie and Harrison
Barnes open, they're going to make shots. Harrison Barnes was
(06:13):
torching Luca for helping off of him in this game.
With just easy, little catching chwo jump shots. He's refined
is released so much, that's so quick you can get
it off in such a small window of space. Again,
the Spurs have been the seventh ranked offense in the
league since Wenby went down, and you saw all of
that on display. Their guards Fox and Harper and Steph Castle,
(06:38):
they were able to get wherever they wanted on the
floor over and over and over again. The transition stuff,
Like the Lakers deserved some blame there too. I thought
they showed some pretty embarrassing effort on that front, as
they were bitching at the refs and not running back
and not talking and getting matched up. A lot of
sloppy stuff from the Lakers. We'll talk about them later,
but that's something the Spurs can do. They can outrun you.
(07:00):
They got lay ups and threes all night. I Steph
Castle another thirty piece coming back. Like the one thing
that continues to blow my mind with Steph is how
he can wind the ground battle on drives. We've talked
about this on the show before, but like when you
drive to the basket, generally speaking, it's not gonna just
be a layup line. There's usually a little bit of
physical contact. The dude's gonna slide with you. He's gonna
(07:22):
try to hit that shoulder on your shoulder and try
to kind of win that leverage battle to flatten out
your drive and force you to go lateral to the
basket rather than directly at the basket. And Steph Castle
just tends to blow through those shoulders. You saw so
many examples of that tonight, the two little transition buckets
on Luca Lucas there, but Steph is just like power
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dribble boom. Hit you with that left shoulder. You're going flying.
I'm going right up for a little layup kill. The
Lakers guards all night long with straight line drives. Darren
Fox it's a little bit more of like the shimmy shake.
He's got a lot of stuff with the handle. There's
a lot more like more like refer buying the skills
stuff with him because he's not the athlete that Steph
(08:04):
Castle is. But he's getting wherever he wants on the
floor again, getting to the foul line a ton as
the Lakers are constantly out of position. Everyone's hitting threes.
You saw it all tonight, and it's just exciting to
think about what this all could look like when they
get Victor wemen Yama back, because again, like Victor brings
the game breaking defensive weapon. I don't know, I've seen.
(08:28):
You know, there's some people that are like, oh, well,
the offense wasn't as good when Victor was playing. Deren
Fox wasn't playing. There's a whole element to their offense
now that they're gonna have with Dearon Fox. That is
going to weaponize the ball screen attack with Victor wemen
Yama in a way that it wasn't weaponized earlier. Dearon
Fox is such a gifted skip passer. He's so good
at reading the lowman and hitting the weak side corner. Like,
(08:49):
I think Victor is gonna come back and just add
to this offense and with his ability to break the
game on defense. Like you guys saw how much damage
the Lakers did when they did actually get into the
half court and pick and roll attack. They were able
to score pretty effectively against the Luke Cornett drop coverage.
That's gonna be a lot harder when that's Victor wen Minyama.
(09:10):
And one of the big things with Victor is there's
a force multiplier factor with the athletes around him, Like
I love how athletic their perimeter guys are and how
that specifically compliments Victor. They killed the Lakers on the
glass tonight too, and it's because all of their guards scrap.
Keldon Johnson annihilates teams on the glass. Their pathway to
(09:33):
winning the Western Conference is combining all of those things,
combining the game breaking defensive weapon that is Victor, all
the scrappy athleticism off the ball, defensively and on the
glass with all their perimeter players, Combining the way they've
shot the ball in this stretch with how Deer and
Fox has been as a pick and roll shot creator,
(09:54):
with Victor wen Minyama as an additional offensive weapon. Combining
all of that is how they generate a path to
win the Western Conference. I'm super, super excited to see
their show down with the Thunder on Saturday night again.
We're gonna be breaking that game down live here on
YouTube after the final buzzer on Saturday night. I'm buying
all this Spur stock man, like I. We have our
(10:17):
on Friday. I actually recorded it today so that that
video has already done, but it's gonna be airing on Friday.
I talked about how one of the biggest things I
was wrong about the season we did like our What's right,
What's wrong? From my preseason predictions, I did five things
I was right about, five things I was wrong about,
and one of the things I was wrong about was
I just could not have been more wrong about the
(10:38):
Spurs team. And I'm buying all the stock right now.
I just think they're awesome. I don't think this is
like a fun, spunky young team anymore. I view this
as a legitimate championship contending team in this league. I
think we need to see a little bit more to
put them up in that like Denver okc group. But
like I firmly think they're every bit. I mean, they
(11:00):
demonstrated their every bit is good, if not better than
the Lakers tonight. I think their every bit is good,
if not better than the Minnesota Timberwolves. They're probably closer
to Houston than we think. Like I think this is
just a I think this team is ready right now
to compete for a championship. The Lakers, on the other hand,
they've also been one of the best teams in the
NBA to start the season. But no matter how many
(11:21):
games they've won, I've even though they have Luka Doncic,
even though they have Austin reason Lebron James, I have
refused to include them in my top tier of contenders
alongside Oklahoma City, Denver, and Houston for one reason. They
have just consistently been physically dominated by more athletic teams,
seemingly at every opportunity. The good, more athletic teams, the bigger,
(11:45):
physical athletic teams on the perimeter, not just small and
fast like Philly for example. And no matter how many
regular season games they win, there will always be this
dark cloud that hangs over the team in the form
of that giant question mark. This week was another opportunity
for the Lakers to prove all the guys like me
(12:08):
wrong about them for holding that weakness over their head.
And yet they went out there again tonight and got
punked again, and all of the same things came to
the surface again. Luca will fill the box score, but
in these games he's made a ton of mistakes on
both ends of the floor that undercut his impact, so
(12:28):
he fails to control the game. This is becoming a
disturbing trend with Austin Reeves, where he's like it's his
ceiling is a ceiling, His averages are his averages, but
his floor. He has been so bad on both ends
of the floor against these types of teams, like he
was downright awful tonight. He got picked clean at half
(12:51):
court twice by Deerren Fox for pick sixes. Couldn't score
the ball effectively at all at any range, couldn't hit
spot up threes, couldn't hit off the dribble, three, he
wasn't hitting anything from the mid range, was missing everything
at the basket. And then on the other end, he
was getting picked on relentlessly by San Antonio's guards. He
couldn't keep the ball in front of him to save
his life. They were toying with it. It's too large
(13:12):
of a sample size now where this just keeps happening
with him. Lebron played really hard and he had some highlights.
That dunk on Luke Cornette was a fun one for sure,
but he also made several mistakes. And he's damn near
forty one years old. He didn't have the juice to
take over a game like this, and none of their
bench players other than Marcus Smart were able to have
any sort of real impact on the game. And the
(13:35):
reason why Marcus Smart had the positive plus minus was
because he had eight threes. Like Marcus was also getting
blown by on the perimeter. He made some plays, he
was active. I thought he did better than anybody else did,
but like he was also physically overmatched in this game.
And there's like a bit of a mental element too.
It feels like they're getting punked. They're complaining to refs.
(13:58):
They're losing discipline that sequence. At the end of the half,
Lebron dunks on Luke Cornett. They go down, they get
a stop. Luke Cornette makes an unbelievable defensive play, one
of the plays of the night. That block on Austin
Reeves at the rim felt like a complete momentum stopper. Whatever,
you go down to the other end, dearon Fox, HiT's
a tough contested floater. That's gonna happen. You gapped him, well,
(14:19):
your transition defense was good. I thought it was a
solid possession that pushes the lead back to ten. You
go down to the other end of the floor. Luca
Misses complains at the ress and literally him and Jackson
Hayes refuse to run back on defense, and the Spurs
just go down the floor and get it dunk. It
was like they decompose in these games again. Like they
didn't lose to San Antonio they got the shit kicked
(14:42):
out of them. They didn't lose to Phoenix, they got
the shit kicked out of them. They didn't lose to
Oklahoma City, they got the shit kicked out of them.
It's becoming too consistent of a trend. These same exact
things just keep happening in these types of games and
they get killed, and look, they're gonna have their chances
(15:02):
to rectify this. If I understand the scheduling for this tournament,
I think the Lakers are gonna get to play Phoenix. Now, well,
guess what, they were the team before the Spurs to
punk the Lakers on their home floor. So we'll see
if they do a better job in that game. But
even then, that's just like an entry level test. Phoenix
isn't as good as San Antonio, and San Antonio is
(15:25):
not as good as OKC. So I don't care how
many regular season games the Lakers win. They could be
we could fast forward six weeks and they could be
thirty and ten, and I would still view them as
a non threat until they demonstrate they can handle this
kind of opponent. That's the difference between Denver and Houston
(15:46):
and the Lakers. I know what Denver does works in
the postseason. I know it works against the athletic teams
in the NBA. I know they're gonna be able to
score against I know they're gonna be able to get
a certain amount of stops because they can stay mentally
focused and do their jobs, keep the ball in front,
(16:07):
and just come up with a game plan that allows
them to compete Houston. Like I know their size and
their defense. I know that translates. That's not something that
doesn't translate to the postseason. I don't know if any
of what the Lakers do translates to the postseason. It
just was incredibly disappointing. I don't think I'm punked tonight.
(16:31):
And like, look like you want to tell me that
San Antonio had some guys hit some threes that they
don't usually make threes, Like, sure, whatever, Marcus Smart hit
eight of them, guys, this was an outclassing. It was
just it was just so disappointing. And like again, it's
just like every time they run into this test, the
exact same thing happens. We'll see, we'll see what happens
(16:52):
against Phoenix. Not a good night for the Lakers. Moving
on to Suns Thunder. Not a whole lot to get
into here. The Thunder just beat the absolute shit out
of Phoenix from the opening tip. I think the Sun's
really felt the loss of Devin Booker in this one.
Colin Gillespie and Dylan Brooks were just utterly hopeless to
(17:12):
create advantage against this defense. Colin got ripped at half
court on the first play of the game by Cason
Wallace for a runout dunk. He had four turnovers in
the game. Dylan Brooks could like barely get the ball
over the front end of the rim, let alone make
a shot, but I'm not sure how much it would
have mattered because the Thunder are just playing truly special
hoops right now. This was their third consecutive twenty plus
(17:34):
point win. Their total margin to victory over the last
three games is one hundred points. The Sons tried to
park Mark Williams under the rim to deter drives early
in the game. Chat Holmgren went four for four from
three to make that impossible. His first shift was ridiculous,
just killed Mark Williams. Hit two threes where Mark was
sinking down into the paint, had another one where he
(17:55):
drove a close out and hit Cason Wallace in the
right corner for wide up in three. On defense, he
was like flustering Dylan Brooks and like defending him well
one on one, but also blocking him at the rim.
He had like a really nice play where he slipped
out of his screen at the top of the key
and like hit a little mid range jumper. Then he
came right in for a second shift and did the
exact same damn thing. Burned also Igdaro for helping off
(18:16):
of him by hitting another three. He blocked Dylan Brooks again,
he burned. He got a boy a on a switch
and just attacked him right to the front of the room.
We talked, we we're going to get into a deeper
dive into this on Friday. But he did an incredible
job over the course the last couple of weeks of
driving the basketball and his one on ones. It's been
one of the trends that's made him a really effective
one on one player this year. Chet's just been dominant,
(18:38):
and he was dominant in that first half. Shay had
a handful of sloppy turnovers, only the second time this
year that he's had four turnovers in a game, but
that was like the extent to which Phoenix's defense did
anything to bother Oklahoma City's offense, like Shay was surgical
in this game with his drives and kickouts. He finished
with twenty eight points and eight assists in just twenty
seven minutes. On just fifteen shots, team the Thunder over
(19:01):
twenty eight for forty from three. We talked about this
on Monday, but the Thunder have been top five in
unguarded catch and shoot three point percentage this season. Leaving
their role players open just doesn't work like it did
in years past. Lou Dort got a heater at the
end of the half and j Dub and Shay both
added into three. They blew the single. It was over
so fast. They forced twenty one turnovers and scored thirty
(19:25):
four points off of those turnovers. They're continuing to widen
the gap between them and the rest of the league
in that regard. They're averaging twenty five points per game
off of turnovers. No one else in the league is
getting over twenty two, and they're allowing just twelve points
off of turnovers. That's thirteen points of margin every single night. Again,
I have an episode that I recorded today that's coming
(19:45):
out on Friday, and one of the segments in there
is talking about the Thunder and I was wrong to
not pick them to win the title before the season,
And in my next contender rankings, I'm putting them in
their own tier at the top of the league. I'm
not going to go into too much more detail on
that to because I'm going into a lot of detail,
dig into a lot of the metrics on each specific
player and how they've gotten better in every facet of
(20:07):
the game the season. So I'll save that for Friday.
But to be frank, I think there's only a handful
of teams in the NBA that even have a shot
to compete with Oklahoma City like keep games close, let
alone win, and at the very best of those teams
are just upset threats. I don't think anyone has any
business picking against OKAC in any way. At this point.
I think it's more likely than not that they win
(20:28):
over seventy games. I think it's a very high possibility
that they break the NBA's all time wins record and
get something like seventy four to seventy five. This is
not a veteran team that's gonna deal with a lack
of effort. They're young, they're deep, they can handle their
stars being out. They have a better net rating with
shake outs Alexander off the floor than every other team
in the NBA does in total for the entire season.
(20:52):
When you talk about like the all time great teams.
There's layers you have to get through, right, Like, in
order to be all time great, you got to be
a multi time champion. I talked about this with the
Celtics after they won in twenty twenty four. You gotta
win multiple champions at championships, preferably two in a row,
like if you space them out like the Spurs, that
can get a little less respect than teams that win
(21:12):
two in a row that win three in a row.
There are dominance factors like how many regular season games
did you win? How many playoff games did you lose?
Like the twenty seventeen Warriors, they swept the Western Conference,
they won fifteen consecutive playoff games. The two thousand and
one Lakers did something similar. I think all of that
is in reach for this Thunder team. I think they
(21:34):
could be looking at over one hundred and forty regular
season wins over a two year span. They just got
to win seventy two to make that happen. I say,
just as if that's easy, But it just feels like
it feels like like if you ask me, like seventy
two wins, do the Thunder get there? It feels like
coin flip or better that they do. That's how good
this team is. If they dominate in this playoff run,
(21:56):
like they only lose one or two games, like no
one's gonna care about the fact that they lost more
games last year. I'm just done putting a ceiling on
this group. I think they're destined to be one of
the great teams in NBA history. Last thing, I'll talk
about this on this note because I think this is
kind of interesting with the Luca and Shade debate. I
think Shane's been better than Luca this year, and one
(22:19):
of the specific reasons why is kind of like what
we saw, which with Luca against San Antonio tonight, with
Luca against Phoenix, with Luca against the Thunder back in November.
Shae has this like surgical mistake free approach to basketball.
(22:39):
He I don't think Shae's a like an outstanding defender
by any measure, but he makes substantially fewer mistakes than
Luca does. He's not as much of an on ball
weakness as Luca is. He's not the defensive rebounder that
Luca is, but he still is a good, scrappy kind
of player that can make plays. He had a sequence
in the second half or it was either like late
(23:00):
first half, early second half. Can remember exactly what it was,
but he like back to back steals in the I
think it was early second half out on the out front,
like just pick the ball clean and then got to
steal in the passing lane on he got a driving
layup on driving dunk on one, had a lob to
chet Holmgrin on the other one. Like he can make
plays on defense, He's actually a pretty impactful overall defensive
(23:22):
player on that end of the floor. But the main
thing that has had me put Shay over Luca to
this point in the season is the lack of mistake making.
Like Luca undercuts so much of his success with sloppy turnovers,
with jogging back and transition, bitching at the refs, with
just little sequences of decisions where he'll like do two
(23:44):
or three you know, bad things over a four possession span,
and it undercuts some of his success. Shay has increased
his scoring volume per minute and increased his efficiency and
lowered his turnovers. This year, he's averaging less than two
turnovers game, and it's allowing whatever his overall impact is
(24:04):
to stop being undercut by the kinds of mistakes that
you see from a guy like Luca. I just think
Shay's been unbelievable. I think the only player in the
NBA that's still better than him is is NICOLEA. Jokic
at this point. And look, we dig a little bit
into that in the Friday episodes, so I'll save that
for then. But like just again, an incredible showcase for
two of the top teams in the Western Conference tonight
(24:25):
between San Antonio in Oklahoma City. I'm very, very excited
to watch them play on Saturday. I hope Wemby plays
in that game. That would be awesome, so we could
see a little bit of the the physical dynamic that
San Antonio can present defensively against Oklahoma City and in
the big picture, like NBA fans, if you don't like
the Thunder and you want someone to beat him. But
I think San Antonio is the only team I'm seeing
(24:45):
out there right now that seems to have much of
a shot other than maybe Houston in the long run.
But I mean they've got a little bit of a
you know, they've got a little bit of a shorter
window built around Kevin Durant's It's kind of a weird era.
You're seeing all these older teams flame out bad and
there's just this new group of young teams and they're
just full of a bunch of ass kicking, good young
(25:05):
players and kind of feels like the shift is happening right,
and it's gonna be fun covering these guys over the
course of the next several years as we move into
this next era of NBA basketball. All Right, guys, it's
all I have for tonight. As always, I sincerely appreciate
you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. No show.
Tomorrow morning, I have Lakers Collective with Trevor and Yovann.
(25:26):
If you want to hear me, come bitch and moan
about the Lakers for an hour with those guys. That'll
be going on at eleven am Pacific time tomorrow. And
then Friday morning again, I have that episode with the
five biggest predictions I was right about and five biggest
predictions I was wrong about. That's coming out on Friday,
and then Saturday night Live on YouTube after the final
(25:47):
buzzer of thunder Spurs, I will see you guys that
The volume. All right, welcome to him today here at
the Volume Heavy Wednesday. Everybody hopeful, If you guys are
having an incredible week. We are reacting to Night two
of the nd season Tournament quarterfinals, as we got an
(00:24):
excellent showcase from two of the top teams in the
Western Conference. How about the San Antonio Spurs beating the
Denver Nuggets and the Los Angeles Lakers to clear their
way to Vegas in a showdown with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
I am buying all the Spurs dock right now. I
believe they are a legitimate championship contender in this league.
(00:45):
I'm excited to dive into that game. I want to
talk a little bit about this disturbing trend of the
Lakers just consistently getting punked by the more athletic teams
in the league. Will dive a little bit deeper into
that than the Oklahoma City Thunder when casually just beat
the Suns tonight by like forty something. So we'll dig
a little bit of that into that game as well.
At the Telli end of into that game as well,
(01:07):
at the tail end of the show, you guys are
the joke before we get started to subscribe to our
YouTube channel, scroll down and like this video. It helps
us a lot if you take a second just to
scroll down and hit that like button. And again, if
you want to get mailbag questions into our weekly mail bags,
make sure you drop them in the comments here underneath
this video. All right, let's talk some basketball. So, as
I said, tonight was an excellent showcase for two of
(01:29):
the top teams in the Western Conference, and both the
Spurs and the Thunder you saw everything about what makes
both of those teams awesome. And then another one of
the top teams in the Western Conference. You saw exactly
why no matter how many regular season games they win,
I will never view them as more than just a
puncher's chance upset threat, and I don't put them in
(01:50):
that top tier of contenders with teams like Oklahoma City,
Houston and Denver. And that game in particular, Let's start
with the Spurs. That was a wonderful showcase of everything
that's been driving their success this season, and it starts
with combining the level of offense that we've seen in
(02:10):
this now twelve game stretch without Victor wembin Yama with
the game breaking defensive talent that is Victor wembin Yama.
When they combine those two things, they become what I
think is an incredibly imposing playoff threat. Tonight was an
awesome showcase of that offense. And they've been playing like
this on offense for weeks now. Everything you saw tonight
(02:35):
that was not just a one night thing. That was
not just a oh, it's the Lakers and they get
punked by athletes. This is stuff they've been doing to everybody.
There's a little bit of weirdness tonight, like Steph Castle
and Keldon Johnson hit six threes in this game, but
it's basketball games. Weird things can happen. Marcus Smart hit
(02:55):
eight threes. Sometimes guys who are poor three point shooters
make a bunch of threes. Other than everything you saw
from san Antonio was like stuff they've been doing to everybody.
The athleticism in transition, they boat race the Lakers again
and again in the open court, just running right around
them for layups in easy threes, the consistent driving of
(03:16):
the basketball in the half court. San Antonio's drives per
game have skyrocketed since Victor women Yama went out because
it's their primary method of generating offense at this point.
It's also because Deeron Fox, who is a career star
ball handler, is now drawing more primary matchups. It's slotting
everybody else into more achievable roles. Steph Castle was feasting
(03:40):
tonight on whoever was standing in front of him, and
that driving thing has been a consistent trend they are averaging.
This is obviously the NBA dot Com stats haven't updated
from tonight's game, but in the eleven previous games since
Wemby went down, the Spurs were averaging fifty five drives
per game. That's sixth in the higher NBA. It's Deeron Fox,
(04:03):
It's Steel and Harper, it's Steph Castle, It's Keldon Johnson.
Jerry Sohan has done it at times. Keldon Johnson has
been bringing this like bullyball rim pressure element for most
of the season, the drawing of fouls. The Spurs have
been a top ten free throw right team in the
league this season. Why because their speed constantly has defenders
out of position. I saw a lot of Lakers fans
(04:25):
complaining about officiating tonight. There is this thing that consistently
happens in the NBA, and it seems bizarre on the surface,
but It makes sense when you really think about it,
and it's that when there is a team that is
being more physically aggressive, they tend to actually get called
for less fouls and they tend to draw more fouls
on their opponent. But that is literally because the more
(04:47):
physically aggressive team is almost always getting the opponent out
of position. On the offensive end, the defense is a
step behind their aggression, so they're out of position and
they're constantly hacking and fouling as they're getting beat. Most
of those were fouls. Guys, hate to break it to you,
(05:08):
because the Spurs were beating you to spots on offense,
and then on defense it's the exact same thing. They
were again, the more physically aggressive team that was beating
the Lakers to spots, So the Lakers weren't able to
draw fouls. A team that gets a lot of fouls
wasn't able to get to the foul. And there's a
handful of miss calls in there. I don't want to
pretend like the officiating was perfect, but there was miscalls
(05:29):
going both ways. I had no problem with the whistle tonight.
I thought the Spurs were the more physically aggressive team,
and I thought they deserved to get a better whistle
as a result, and they did. I thought most of
those fowls were fouls. The high level three point shooting.
They've been top ten in both volume and percentage since
Victor Wembenyama went down. And again, yes, Keldon Johnson and
(05:52):
Steph Castle and Marcus Smart were the weird kind of
low percentage guys for both teams tonight that made threes.
But all those other dudes, they've been shooting the ball
super well during this stretch. Darren Fox has been shooting
the ball super well. Devin Vessel has been shooting the
ball super well. If you live Julian Champagnie and Harrison
Barnes open, they're going to make shots. Harrison Barnes was
(06:13):
torching Luca for helping off of him in this game.
With just easy, little catching chwo jump shots. He's refined
is released so much, that's so quick you can get
it off in such a small window of space. Again,
the Spurs have been the seventh ranked offense in the
league since Wenby went down, and you saw all of
that on display. Their guards Fox and Harper and Steph Castle,
(06:38):
they were able to get wherever they wanted on the
floor over and over and over again. The transition stuff,
Like the Lakers deserved some blame there too. I thought
they showed some pretty embarrassing effort on that front, as
they were bitching at the refs and not running back
and not talking and getting matched up. A lot of
sloppy stuff from the Lakers. We'll talk about them later,
but that's something the Spurs can do. They can outrun you.
(07:00):
They got lay ups and threes all night. I Steph
Castle another thirty piece coming back. Like the one thing
that continues to blow my mind with Steph is how
he can wind the ground battle on drives. We've talked
about this on the show before, but like when you
drive to the basket, generally speaking, it's not gonna just
be a layup line. There's usually a little bit of
physical contact. The dude's gonna slide with you. He's gonna
(07:22):
try to hit that shoulder on your shoulder and try
to kind of win that leverage battle to flatten out
your drive and force you to go lateral to the
basket rather than directly at the basket. And Steph Castle
just tends to blow through those shoulders. You saw so
many examples of that tonight, the two little transition buckets
on Luca Lucas there, but Steph is just like power
(07:42):
dribble boom. Hit you with that left shoulder. You're going flying.
I'm going right up for a little layup kill. The
Lakers guards all night long with straight line drives. Darren
Fox it's a little bit more of like the shimmy shake.
He's got a lot of stuff with the handle. There's
a lot more like more like refer buying the skills
stuff with him because he's not the athlete that Steph
(08:04):
Castle is. But he's getting wherever he wants on the
floor again, getting to the foul line a ton as
the Lakers are constantly out of position. Everyone's hitting threes.
You saw it all tonight, and it's just exciting to
think about what this all could look like when they
get Victor wemen Yama back, because again, like Victor brings
the game breaking defensive weapon. I don't know, I've seen.
(08:28):
You know, there's some people that are like, oh, well,
the offense wasn't as good when Victor was playing. Deren
Fox wasn't playing. There's a whole element to their offense
now that they're gonna have with Dearon Fox. That is
going to weaponize the ball screen attack with Victor wemen
Yama in a way that it wasn't weaponized earlier. Dearon
Fox is such a gifted skip passer. He's so good
at reading the lowman and hitting the weak side corner. Like,
(08:49):
I think Victor is gonna come back and just add
to this offense and with his ability to break the
game on defense. Like you guys saw how much damage
the Lakers did when they did actually get into the
half court and pick and roll attack. They were able
to score pretty effectively against the Luke Cornett drop coverage.
That's gonna be a lot harder when that's Victor wen Minyama.
(09:10):
And one of the big things with Victor is there's
a force multiplier factor with the athletes around him, Like
I love how athletic their perimeter guys are and how
that specifically compliments Victor. They killed the Lakers on the
glass tonight too, and it's because all of their guards scrap.
Keldon Johnson annihilates teams on the glass. Their pathway to
(09:33):
winning the Western Conference is combining all of those things,
combining the game breaking defensive weapon that is Victor, all
the scrappy athleticism off the ball, defensively and on the
glass with all their perimeter players, Combining the way they've
shot the ball in this stretch with how Deer and
Fox has been as a pick and roll shot creator,
(09:54):
with Victor wen Minyama as an additional offensive weapon. Combining
all of that is how they generate a path to
win the Western Conference. I'm super, super excited to see
their show down with the Thunder on Saturday night again.
We're gonna be breaking that game down live here on
YouTube after the final buzzer on Saturday night. I'm buying
all this Spur stock man, like I. We have our
(10:17):
on Friday. I actually recorded it today so that that
video has already done, but it's gonna be airing on Friday.
I talked about how one of the biggest things I
was wrong about the season we did like our What's right,
What's wrong? From my preseason predictions, I did five things
I was right about, five things I was wrong about,
and one of the things I was wrong about was
I just could not have been more wrong about the
(10:38):
Spurs team. And I'm buying all the stock right now.
I just think they're awesome. I don't think this is
like a fun, spunky young team anymore. I view this
as a legitimate championship contending team in this league. I
think we need to see a little bit more to
put them up in that like Denver okc group. But
like I firmly think they're every bit. I mean, they
(11:00):
demonstrated their every bit is good, if not better than
the Lakers tonight. I think their every bit is good,
if not better than the Minnesota Timberwolves. They're probably closer
to Houston than we think. Like I think this is
just a I think this team is ready right now
to compete for a championship. The Lakers, on the other hand,
they've also been one of the best teams in the
NBA to start the season. But no matter how many
(11:21):
games they've won, I've even though they have Luka Doncic,
even though they have Austin reason Lebron James, I have
refused to include them in my top tier of contenders
alongside Oklahoma City, Denver, and Houston for one reason. They
have just consistently been physically dominated by more athletic teams,
seemingly at every opportunity. The good, more athletic teams, the bigger,
(11:45):
physical athletic teams on the perimeter, not just small and
fast like Philly for example. And no matter how many
regular season games they win, there will always be this
dark cloud that hangs over the team in the form
of that giant question mark. This week was another opportunity
for the Lakers to prove all the guys like me
(12:08):
wrong about them for holding that weakness over their head.
And yet they went out there again tonight and got
punked again, and all of the same things came to
the surface again. Luca will fill the box score, but
in these games he's made a ton of mistakes on
both ends of the floor that undercut his impact, so
(12:28):
he fails to control the game. This is becoming a
disturbing trend with Austin Reeves, where he's like it's his
ceiling is a ceiling, His averages are his averages, but
his floor. He has been so bad on both ends
of the floor against these types of teams, like he
was downright awful tonight. He got picked clean at half
(12:51):
court twice by Deerren Fox for pick sixes. Couldn't score
the ball effectively at all at any range, couldn't hit
spot up threes, couldn't hit off the dribble, three, he
wasn't hitting anything from the mid range, was missing everything
at the basket. And then on the other end, he
was getting picked on relentlessly by San Antonio's guards. He
couldn't keep the ball in front of him to save
his life. They were toying with it. It's too large
(13:12):
of a sample size now where this just keeps happening
with him. Lebron played really hard and he had some highlights.
That dunk on Luke Cornette was a fun one for sure,
but he also made several mistakes. And he's damn near
forty one years old. He didn't have the juice to
take over a game like this, and none of their
bench players other than Marcus Smart were able to have
any sort of real impact on the game. And the
(13:35):
reason why Marcus Smart had the positive plus minus was
because he had eight threes. Like Marcus was also getting
blown by on the perimeter. He made some plays, he
was active. I thought he did better than anybody else did,
but like he was also physically overmatched in this game.
And there's like a bit of a mental element too.
It feels like they're getting punked. They're complaining to refs.
(13:58):
They're losing discipline that sequence. At the end of the half,
Lebron dunks on Luke Cornett. They go down, they get
a stop. Luke Cornette makes an unbelievable defensive play, one
of the plays of the night. That block on Austin
Reeves at the rim felt like a complete momentum stopper. Whatever,
you go down to the other end, dearon Fox, HiT's
a tough contested floater. That's gonna happen. You gapped him, well,
(14:19):
your transition defense was good. I thought it was a
solid possession that pushes the lead back to ten. You
go down to the other end of the floor. Luca
Misses complains at the ress and literally him and Jackson
Hayes refuse to run back on defense, and the Spurs
just go down the floor and get it dunk. It
was like they decompose in these games again. Like they
didn't lose to San Antonio they got the shit kicked
(14:42):
out of them. They didn't lose to Phoenix, they got
the shit kicked out of them. They didn't lose to
Oklahoma City, they got the shit kicked out of them.
It's becoming too consistent of a trend. These same exact
things just keep happening in these types of games and
they get killed, and look, they're gonna have their chances
(15:02):
to rectify this. If I understand the scheduling for this tournament,
I think the Lakers are gonna get to play Phoenix. Now, well,
guess what, they were the team before the Spurs to
punk the Lakers on their home floor. So we'll see
if they do a better job in that game. But
even then, that's just like an entry level test. Phoenix
isn't as good as San Antonio, and San Antonio is
(15:25):
not as good as OKC. So I don't care how
many regular season games the Lakers win. They could be
we could fast forward six weeks and they could be
thirty and ten, and I would still view them as
a non threat until they demonstrate they can handle this
kind of opponent. That's the difference between Denver and Houston
(15:46):
and the Lakers. I know what Denver does works in
the postseason. I know it works against the athletic teams
in the NBA. I know they're gonna be able to
score against I know they're gonna be able to get
a certain amount of stops because they can stay mentally
focused and do their jobs, keep the ball in front,
(16:07):
and just come up with a game plan that allows
them to compete Houston. Like I know their size and
their defense. I know that translates. That's not something that
doesn't translate to the postseason. I don't know if any
of what the Lakers do translates to the postseason. It
just was incredibly disappointing. I don't think I'm punked tonight.
(16:31):
And like, look like you want to tell me that
San Antonio had some guys hit some threes that they
don't usually make threes, Like, sure, whatever, Marcus Smart hit
eight of them, guys, this was an outclassing. It was
just it was just so disappointing. And like again, it's
just like every time they run into this test, the
exact same thing happens. We'll see, we'll see what happens
(16:52):
against Phoenix. Not a good night for the Lakers. Moving
on to Suns Thunder. Not a whole lot to get
into here. The Thunder just beat the absolute shit out
of Phoenix from the opening tip. I think the Sun's
really felt the loss of Devin Booker in this one.
Colin Gillespie and Dylan Brooks were just utterly hopeless to
(17:12):
create advantage against this defense. Colin got ripped at half
court on the first play of the game by Cason
Wallace for a runout dunk. He had four turnovers in
the game. Dylan Brooks could like barely get the ball
over the front end of the rim, let alone make
a shot, but I'm not sure how much it would
have mattered because the Thunder are just playing truly special
hoops right now. This was their third consecutive twenty plus
(17:34):
point win. Their total margin to victory over the last
three games is one hundred points. The Sons tried to
park Mark Williams under the rim to deter drives early
in the game. Chat Holmgren went four for four from
three to make that impossible. His first shift was ridiculous,
just killed Mark Williams. Hit two threes where Mark was
sinking down into the paint, had another one where he
(17:55):
drove a close out and hit Cason Wallace in the
right corner for wide up in three. On defense, he
was like flustering Dylan Brooks and like defending him well
one on one, but also blocking him at the rim.
He had like a really nice play where he slipped
out of his screen at the top of the key
and like hit a little mid range jumper. Then he
came right in for a second shift and did the
exact same damn thing. Burned also Igdaro for helping off
(18:16):
of him by hitting another three. He blocked Dylan Brooks again,
he burned. He got a boy a on a switch
and just attacked him right to the front of the room.
We talked, we we're going to get into a deeper
dive into this on Friday. But he did an incredible
job over the course the last couple of weeks of
driving the basketball and his one on ones. It's been
one of the trends that's made him a really effective
one on one player this year. Chet's just been dominant,
(18:38):
and he was dominant in that first half. Shay had
a handful of sloppy turnovers, only the second time this
year that he's had four turnovers in a game, but
that was like the extent to which Phoenix's defense did
anything to bother Oklahoma City's offense, like Shay was surgical
in this game with his drives and kickouts. He finished
with twenty eight points and eight assists in just twenty
seven minutes. On just fifteen shots, team the Thunder over
(19:01):
twenty eight for forty from three. We talked about this
on Monday, but the Thunder have been top five in
unguarded catch and shoot three point percentage this season. Leaving
their role players open just doesn't work like it did
in years past. Lou Dort got a heater at the
end of the half and j Dub and Shay both
added into three. They blew the single. It was over
so fast. They forced twenty one turnovers and scored thirty
(19:25):
four points off of those turnovers. They're continuing to widen
the gap between them and the rest of the league
in that regard. They're averaging twenty five points per game
off of turnovers. No one else in the league is
getting over twenty two, and they're allowing just twelve points
off of turnovers. That's thirteen points of margin every single night. Again,
I have an episode that I recorded today that's coming
(19:45):
out on Friday, and one of the segments in there
is talking about the Thunder and I was wrong to
not pick them to win the title before the season,
And in my next contender rankings, I'm putting them in
their own tier at the top of the league. I'm
not going to go into too much more detail on
that to because I'm going into a lot of detail,
dig into a lot of the metrics on each specific
player and how they've gotten better in every facet of
(20:07):
the game the season. So I'll save that for Friday.
But to be frank, I think there's only a handful
of teams in the NBA that even have a shot
to compete with Oklahoma City like keep games close, let
alone win, and at the very best of those teams
are just upset threats. I don't think anyone has any
business picking against OKAC in any way. At this point.
I think it's more likely than not that they win
(20:28):
over seventy games. I think it's a very high possibility
that they break the NBA's all time wins record and
get something like seventy four to seventy five. This is
not a veteran team that's gonna deal with a lack
of effort. They're young, they're deep, they can handle their
stars being out. They have a better net rating with
shake outs Alexander off the floor than every other team
in the NBA does in total for the entire season.
(20:52):
When you talk about like the all time great teams.
There's layers you have to get through, right, Like, in
order to be all time great, you got to be
a multi time champion. I talked about this with the
Celtics after they won in twenty twenty four. You gotta
win multiple champions at championships, preferably two in a row,
like if you space them out like the Spurs, that
can get a little less respect than teams that win
(21:12):
two in a row that win three in a row.
There are dominance factors like how many regular season games
did you win? How many playoff games did you lose?
Like the twenty seventeen Warriors, they swept the Western Conference,
they won fifteen consecutive playoff games. The two thousand and
one Lakers did something similar. I think all of that
is in reach for this Thunder team. I think they
(21:34):
could be looking at over one hundred and forty regular
season wins over a two year span. They just got
to win seventy two to make that happen. I say,
just as if that's easy, But it just feels like
it feels like like if you ask me, like seventy
two wins, do the Thunder get there? It feels like
coin flip or better that they do. That's how good
this team is. If they dominate in this playoff run,
(21:56):
like they only lose one or two games, like no
one's gonna care about the fact that they lost more
games last year. I'm just done putting a ceiling on
this group. I think they're destined to be one of
the great teams in NBA history. Last thing, I'll talk
about this on this note because I think this is
kind of interesting with the Luca and Shade debate. I
think Shane's been better than Luca this year, and one
(22:19):
of the specific reasons why is kind of like what
we saw, which with Luca against San Antonio tonight, with
Luca against Phoenix, with Luca against the Thunder back in November.
Shae has this like surgical mistake free approach to basketball.
(22:39):
He I don't think Shae's a like an outstanding defender
by any measure, but he makes substantially fewer mistakes than
Luca does. He's not as much of an on ball
weakness as Luca is. He's not the defensive rebounder that
Luca is, but he still is a good, scrappy kind
of player that can make plays. He had a sequence
in the second half or it was either like late
(23:00):
first half, early second half. Can remember exactly what it was,
but he like back to back steals in the I
think it was early second half out on the out front,
like just pick the ball clean and then got to
steal in the passing lane on he got a driving
layup on driving dunk on one, had a lob to
chet Holmgrin on the other one. Like he can make
plays on defense, He's actually a pretty impactful overall defensive
(23:22):
player on that end of the floor. But the main
thing that has had me put Shay over Luca to
this point in the season is the lack of mistake making.
Like Luca undercuts so much of his success with sloppy turnovers,
with jogging back and transition, bitching at the refs, with
just little sequences of decisions where he'll like do two
(23:44):
or three you know, bad things over a four possession span,
and it undercuts some of his success. Shay has increased
his scoring volume per minute and increased his efficiency and
lowered his turnovers. This year, he's averaging less than two
turnovers game, and it's allowing whatever his overall impact is
(24:04):
to stop being undercut by the kinds of mistakes that
you see from a guy like Luca. I just think
Shay's been unbelievable. I think the only player in the
NBA that's still better than him is is NICOLEA. Jokic
at this point. And look, we dig a little bit
into that in the Friday episodes, so I'll save that
for then. But like just again, an incredible showcase for
two of the top teams in the Western Conference tonight
(24:25):
between San Antonio in Oklahoma City. I'm very, very excited
to watch them play on Saturday. I hope Wemby plays
in that game. That would be awesome, so we could
see a little bit of the the physical dynamic that
San Antonio can present defensively against Oklahoma City and in
the big picture, like NBA fans, if you don't like
the Thunder and you want someone to beat him. But
I think San Antonio is the only team I'm seeing
(24:45):
out there right now that seems to have much of
a shot other than maybe Houston in the long run.
But I mean they've got a little bit of a
you know, they've got a little bit of a shorter
window built around Kevin Durant's It's kind of a weird era.
You're seeing all these older teams flame out bad and
there's just this new group of young teams and they're
just full of a bunch of ass kicking, good young
(25:05):
players and kind of feels like the shift is happening right,
and it's gonna be fun covering these guys over the
course of the next several years as we move into
this next era of NBA basketball. All Right, guys, it's
all I have for tonight. As always, I sincerely appreciate
you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. No show.
Tomorrow morning, I have Lakers Collective with Trevor and Yovann.
(25:26):
If you want to hear me, come bitch and moan
about the Lakers for an hour with those guys. That'll
be going on at eleven am Pacific time tomorrow. And
then Friday morning again, I have that episode with the
five biggest predictions I was right about and five biggest
predictions I was wrong about. That's coming out on Friday,
and then Saturday night Live on YouTube after the final
(25:47):
buzzer of thunder Spurs, I will see you guys that
Host
Jason Timpf
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