July 17, 2025 • 32 mins
Jason reacts to the Bleacher Report top 100 NBA players all-time list including the classic Michael Jordan vs. LeBron James debate, why Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant got snubbed being outside the top 10, and why Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors is being underrated. Then he discusses Bradley Beal officially being bought out from the Phoenix Suns and joining the Los Angeles Clippers.
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For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKG dot
co slash audio. All right, welcome to Hoops tonight. You're
at the volume heavy Thursday everybody. Hope all of you
(01:48):
guys are having a great end to your week of
coming to you for the first time and what will
be my new studio in Denver. I'm very, very excited
to be here. I woke up this morning and it
was sixty two degrees outside. It was kind of a
shock coming from Arizona. But obviously it's going to be
a little bit of a work in progress behind me.
But it's the summertime so we can live with it
for right now. I'm very very excited to be here,
and I'm very very excited for today's show. We got
(02:09):
some really interesting stuff to get into it. We're going
to start with Bleacher Report's Top one hundred list, a
couple things that I disagreed with in the top twenty.
I want to kind of revisit MJ versus Lebron a
little bit. I want to talk about Kobe and how
like preposterousts preposterously underrated he has become. And then Steph
Curry as well, who I think for a guy who's
given Lebron a run for his money, I feel like
(02:31):
he's pretty low on that list as well. So we're
gonna be hitting that for a little bit. And now
at the tail end of the show, we got a
little bit of expected NBA news yesterday is the Bradley.
The Bradley Beal buy out finally went through and he
is signing with the Los Angeles Clippers. So I want
to briefly revisit some of the stuff we talked about
with Bradley and what went wrong in Phoenix and why
I think it'll work well in Los Angeles. But I
also want to look a little bit deeper at the
(02:53):
Clippers in general. We've been doing deep dives kind of
periodically throughout the year on some of these Western Conference teams.
So today we'll be talking a little bit about the Clippers.
You guys know the jope before we get started. Subscribe
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(03:15):
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in our weekly mail bags throughout the remainder of the
off season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So let's
dig into this Bleacher Report top one hundred and I
want to focus on the top twenty and I'm gonna
read out the names for you and then we'll go
(03:36):
from there. So they had Michael Jordan at one, Lebron
James at two, Kareem at three, Magic Johnson at four,
Bill Russell at five, Shaquille O'Neil at six, Tim Duncan
at seven, Larry Bird at eight, Weilt Chamberlain at nine,
Steph Curry at ten, Kobe Bryant way Down at eleven,
Achim olange One at twelve, Kevin Durant at thirteen, Oscar
Robertson at fourteen, Jerry West at fifteen, Kevin Garnett at sixteen,
(03:58):
Nicole jokicch at seventeen, Jerk Navisky at eighteen, David Robinson
at nineteen, and Doctor j at twenty. So before we
go any further, these lists are borderline impossible for several reasons,
so I'm very forgiving. I'm not gonna get too upset
about this. There's several reasons. First of all, the position groups.
How do you rank a guy like Kareem abdul Jabbar
(04:18):
against Steph Curry. They might as well have been playing
different sports with how wildly different their jobs were on
both ends of the floor. I've done lists before where
I've removed centers entirely, but even that, I would argue
is flawed. Because of guys like Kareem Abdul Jabbar and
what he did offensively Nikola Jokic, and how like you,
if you were ranking point guards, you could argue Nikola
(04:40):
Jokich should be pretty high on a list of small
point guards. Right. So, like the it's just a really
difficult thing to consider in a list like this. Secondly,
how do you separate individual greatness from the success of
a team? Right? Nikola Jokic has never played with an
All Star, he's never played with an All NBA player,
and he's never played with an All defense player. So
(05:01):
how do you rank his team accomplishments on equal footing
with a guy like Magic Johnson or Larry Bird or
Kareem abdulje Bar, guys who played on historically great rosters, right.
And then lastly, there are the differences in the eras
the game is so different. There are more teams, there's
way more talent. This is crazy. When Bill Russell won
his first championship, there were eight teams in the NBA,
(05:24):
eight of them. I mean, I mean, come on, how
does that even remotely compare to what we have today?
Michael Jordan in his era, seven teams were added in
a mass set of expansion, the talent was diluted. That
was a big part of how those Bulls teams racked
up massive win totals year after year. That doesn't mean
that the Bulls were overrated or that MJ was overrated.
(05:46):
It just means all of this shit is super subjective,
so I totally understand if anyone disagrees. But on that note,
let's get into some of these rankings in blitcher reports list.
So I have Lebron and MJ flipped, but that's really
about what you value. If you're asking who had the
most dominant career, it's obviously MJ. Right. For a decade,
(06:09):
nobody could fuck with him. He was far and away
the best player in the NBA. He won six championships
in eight years. That's the definition of unassailable dominance, right.
My case for Lebron exists more in a vacuum. He
was the best player in the NBA for about nine
years in my opinion, from twenty twelve to twenty twenty.
(06:31):
But the league was much more talented in his era.
Just look at the list. Steph Curry and Kevin Durant
are both very high in this particular list, and they
played alongside Lebron James, right, so there wasn't as large
of a gap in terms of like pure dominance. But
I'd argue you will never see that again. Like look
(06:51):
at Jokic. Nikole Jokich is discernibly better than his peers
right now, but that gap isn't even close to how
much better Michael Jordan was than Charles bark Lee or
Clyde Drexler or a keem Olajuan. Really good players, but
not the same types of players that Nikole Jokic is
competing against that Lebron James competed against. I think some
of that is just the influx of NBA talent. It's
(07:14):
like a plateauing effect, right. It's a big part of
why I think Kobe's underrated, which we'll get to in
a few minutes. The Lebron case is simple. Out of
any player in NBA history, if you were starting a
franchise from scratch, and you had that player for the
entirety of his career, which player would give you the
best chance to win the most championships over the course
(07:37):
of that player's career? And the answer is Lebron James.
First of all, he's one of the top five offensive
engines in the history of the game. I've talked a
lot about this concept over the course of the last
couple of years, even at lower levels with guys like
James Harden or Tyrese Halliburton. Right. I even talked about
at a very low level and discount in the form
of D'Angelo Russell, a guy who can run action and
(08:00):
make the reads that sets up role players with a
player sprinting at them or with an opening rather than
against the set defender. Lebron is a player that created
advantages so consistently that he basically guaranteed you an elite offense,
irrespective of surrounding talent. Look at some of the worst
rosters that Lebron played with in his prime. The twenty
(08:23):
eighteen Calves top five offense, the nine and twenty ten
Calves very defensive loaded rosters, both top five offenses. That
was with like Kevin Love and Moe Williams as his
second best offensive players for ten consecutive seasons from two
thousand and nine to twenty eighteen. The worst Lebron led
offense was the twenty twelve heat that ranked sixth. Every
(08:47):
single other offense he led in that stretch was top five,
and it translated to the playoffs extremely well because he
had the size and the strength to hold up under
the physicality, and he was versatile. He could attack from
so many different spots on the floor and impact winning
on offense in so many different ways. He is one
of the greats in terms of generating offense in the
NBA and then in the other end of the four.
(09:09):
Lebron was one of the most versatile defenders in the
history of the sport, whether he was protecting the rim
on the back line like he did in the Spurs
series meet and Thiago Splitter at the rim, or in
the Warriors series where he blocked nine shots over the
final three games of that twenty sixteen finals. He guarded
Derek Rose down the stretch of the twenty eleven finals
(09:29):
as a twenty eleven Eastern Conference Finals as a perimeter
threat Jamal Murray in the twenty twenty Western Conference Finals.
He could be deployed as a perimeter defender you needed
him to rebound. He had seventeen playoff games to this
point with at least fifteen rebounds. He has six playoff
games with at least eighteen rebounds. He's function functionally a
(09:52):
big as a rebounder when you need him to be,
or if you just need him to make a superhuman
transition play like he did to save the twenty sixteen Finals.
He's always able to fill whatever defensive role the team
needs and to tie it all together. Outside of his
decade where he was the best player in the world,
there's an entire additional decade and change of him being
(10:14):
a top ten player. He was just in his twenty
second season, sixth the MVP voting in second team All NBA.
He's a safe bet to make an All NBA team
next year in his twenty third year. That as a
franchise that gives you an additional decade more of chances
(10:35):
where if you have built the right roster around him,
you could win a championship in those years. So, to
put it simply, there is no player in the history
of the NBA that would give you a better opportunity
to win more championships than Lebron James. So yeah, I'd
flip them and I'd have Lebron at number one. Kobe
having him at number eleven is straight up insulting. This
(10:57):
opinion is fueled by the inability of people to look
beyond the box score. Kobe was inefficient by modern standards.
He posted just four seasons in his career with an
effective field goal percentage over fifty percent. He never went
over fifty one percent. People see that and they just
(11:18):
think he was a shot chucker that didn't have any
idea how to play within a team concept. The problem
with this point of view is it discounts the fact
that every perimeter jump shooter in the league was inefficient.
In that era, everyone was There was no space. Every
team was playing with two bigs who couldn't shoot. Many
of the teams were playing with three or four guys
on the floor at all times that were either inconsistent
(11:40):
to bad shooters. The paint was a shit show. Teams
didn't understand the modern spacing principles that we have today.
The dead giveaway there is guess what the most efficient
scoring season of Kobe's career was the year right before
he tore his achilles in twenty thirteen. Why because it
was closer to the modern era, when people had a
better understanding of how to score efficiently in the NBA.
(12:02):
Was Kobe the best version of himself in twenty thirteen?
Of course, not, but it was just the combination of
him still having most of his juice before the Achilles
tear and the league was starting to figure out how
to play. He was playing a lot more spread pick
and roll in that year. The other perimeter stars, though,
just take a look at him. They're all inefficient relative
to today's standards. Alan Iverson never had a single season
(12:26):
over forty nine percent effective field goal percentage. Tracy McGrady
had just one season it was fifty point five percent.
Vince Carter's numbers, they're a little more tricky because he
had a stretch there at the end where he was
a role player. But he had just two seasons in
his career where he averaged at least twenty points per
game and was over fifty percent in effective field goal percentage,
and he never went over fifty one percent. Grant Hill
(12:48):
just two seasons averaging over twenty percent or twenty points
per game and over fifty percent in effective field goal percentage.
So for how inefficient everybody thinks Kobe was, he was
actually more efficient than his peers who were doing the
same job. I do think that Michael Jordan was better
than Kobe. He was a better athlete he's better at
getting separation. He was more versatile on that end of
(13:10):
the four right, but mj also would have been an
inefficient shot chucker if we dropped him in the middle
of the two thousands. I think his reputation. Kobe's reputation
is completely marred by that misunderstanding, so I have him
as the third best player of all time, right behind
Lebron James and Michael Jordan. Last thing for our list
(13:33):
that I want to hit today is Steph Curry. I
have Steph at five on my list, behind Lebron, Michael Jordan, Kobe,
and Magic. Now again, I have a really hard time
figuring out where to put centers on this list, so
I totally understand why people would disagree with that, But
let me make the case. I think Steph Curry is
the second best offensive engine in the history of the
(13:55):
sport behind Nikola Jokic, and as we've talked about, I
think that's the most valuable trade that a basketball player
can have. His transcendent shooting combined with his ability to
do it both on the ball and off the ball,
a thing that like all the insane driple combinations people
have been able to generate. A reasonable facsimile of that.
I feel like Damian Lillard did a reasonable job of
(14:17):
kind of like replicating what Steph did on the ball,
especially in the late twenty tens in the early twenty
twenties when he was just off the charts good as
a pull up shooter, right. But it was the off
ball piece of it that made Steph another tier above
all of those pull up shooting guards in the league.
No one's been able to replicate it, and it manifests
in a bunch of different ways. First of all, is
(14:39):
the inverted spacing Steph coming off of on and off
ball screens from Draymond consistently forced Biggs to show up
at the level. If you want to see what it
looked like before teams figured this out, just go watch
the twenty thirteen series with the Spurs and watch Steph
just absolutely torch San Antonio with just high ball screens.
(15:01):
Teams had to step up with their bigs or Steph
would hit the shot. It was that simple. That removed
rim protection from the equation because the rim protector was
going so far out to the perimeter. So the Warriors
started picking teams apart with these four on three advantages.
Things that were so confusing for people to understand that
even though Steph won the twenty fifteen Finals by getting
(15:21):
blitzed every single time down the floor, everyone gave the
Finals MVP to Andre Gudala because it broke their brains.
They couldn't understand the advantage creation that he was doing.
The second piece of it was just the mistake making
that we saw from defenses, the sheer panic that Steph
induced and defenders led to constant botching of coverages two
(15:43):
guys running with Steph when he comes off of an
off ball screen, or like guys pointing at the next
guy in the chain for them to switch out, and
then that miscommunication leading to mistakes. The third piece of
it was math. Steph's efficiency dwarfs almost every NBA scoring
season because of his high volume three point shooting. It's
(16:04):
not really that complicated. Three is worth more than two,
and so he routinely and consistently posted true shooting percentages
in the mid sixties. It fundamentally changed the entire landscape
of the NBA. All of his peers at the guard
position started heavily emphasizing three point shooting, especially off the dribble,
although somehow none of them, like we mentioned, were able
(16:25):
to replicate the off ball elements of it. Damian Lillard's
the guy that I look at there. For the most part,
all of the pick and roll coverages in the NBA changed.
Bigs coming up higher, guards, chasing over the top of screens,
the lowman position, the idea of a backside forward having
to replace rim protection because a big is going up
to the level. A big part of that changed during
(16:47):
the Steph Curry era. I would say that the largest
change in NBA basketball in my lifetime came as a
direct result of what Steph accomplished. And to tie it
all get together, did all of the things that the
all time great players did in terms of a as
a competitor, becoming the most supremely conditioned player in the
(17:09):
league so that he could outlast his opponents simply by running,
going from a negative defender to a legitimate positive defender,
by putting on a bunch of muscle, becoming very good
in terms of anticipating what defenses are doing and being
in the right position. He became a good defender. The
greatest compliment you can pay Steph is just ask people
(17:30):
to take another look at that list. Every single other
name in that top twenty is at least six foot six.
He's the only player in NBA history to have remotely
close to the impact of the top players in NBA
history at that size. Again, I mentioned this off the
top of the show. Steph gave Lebron a run for
(17:51):
his money, and I think Lebron is the greatest player
to ever touch the basketball. So I think ten is
way too low. All right, let's take into this Bradly
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(18:53):
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Bradley Beals bought out by the Phoenix Suns and he
signs with the Los Angeles Clippers for two years and
(20:01):
eleven million dollars. I've been critical over the last few
few years of Bradley Beal, but most of it had
to do with the surrounding circumstances. I think there's a
misconception about what went wrong in Phoenix. It's not that
Bradley Beal wasn't good enough, said he wasn't good enough
at what the Suns needed, not just from him, but
(20:21):
from the entire roster. Bradley Beal was a very good
offensive player in a Sun's jersey. He was a seventy
fifth percentile spot up player. He shot the ball extremely well.
He was solid on the ball. He ran about five
hundred and two actions, picking rolls, ISOs and post ups
including passes, and he generated five hundred and one points,
which is a point per possession on high volume. That's good.
(20:44):
He was sloppy in the dirty work, and that just
was accentuated by the weaknesses and the roster. He wasn't
very good on the ball defensively, and he was flat
out bad off the ball defensively, and on that particular
team when they needed guys that could protect the ram
reb bound guard both on and off the ball, it
just kind of showed to a greater extent. This is
(21:07):
the redundancy thing, right. Scoring guards are ceiling raizers, but
they are not foundations. And when you basically have three
of those dudes, their skill sets start to overlap and
all of that strong foundation that you need to be
a good basketball team is just non existent. The Clippers
have a really strong basketball foundation. They have one of
(21:30):
the best centers in the league, a guy that establishes
a high defensive floor and a rebounding for in Ifasa
Zubats right, and they've now anchored that with one a
guy in brook Lopez, who I think will be one
of the best backup centers in basketball this year. They
add another power forward option in John collins Brook and
John give them some additional matchup resilience for teams like Denver,
(21:53):
which we'll talk about in a little bit, and Oklahoma City,
i'd argue as well. We'll talk more about that in
a minute. I want to dig into that, just like
John's off of rebounding, the kind of like too big
look and how you're specifically supposed to guard a guy
like Nikola Jokic. We'll dig into that later on. They
have a deep core of perimeter defenders. This is the
beauty of the Paul George pivot, right. It looks genius
(22:14):
in retrospect, as Paul George just had to have his
knee surgically repaired again from a shooting workout, which is
like crazy. It looks, you know, again, like they just
what the timing of getting out of the Paul George
business and the way they pivoted like it was a
proof of concept for me. If you guys remember last summer,
I applauded the move because of my belief like my
(22:36):
basketball beliefs, my beliefs in perimeter defense and overall team speed.
If you guys remember I said before the season then
I thought the Clippers would be above the plane and
that they'd be a very good regular season team, and
they were. It was proof of concept the concept being
star power can come with redundancy, and that a good
role player who feels a team need can actually be
(22:56):
more valuable than a star who doesn't feel a team need.
The Clippers can guard the opposing team's best player for
forty eight minutes with an elite perimeter defender in Chris
Don and Derek Jones. Junior quality perimeter defense with quality
rim protection and quality defensive rebounding just represents a very
(23:19):
strong foundation to build a basketball team on. In the
modern NBA, the Clippers actually had a bit of a
deficit in ball handling. James Harden is an excellent advantage creator.
I think he's one of the more valuable kind of
like offensive floor guys in the league. But Kawhi Leonard
missed more than half the season last year. He missed
like forty five games, and the ball handling falls off
(23:42):
a cliff after that. So Bradley's offensive upside will be
substantially more valuable to the Clippers than it was to
the Suns, and his weaknesses will be less apparent because
they have such a strong foundation he can fill that
third ball handler role like he did in Phoenix, which
again I thought he was fine in that role. That
wasn't the issue. But the team's stronger foundation will make
(24:06):
that offensive value more apparent, and when Kawhi is out
of the lineup, he can easily scale up that secondary
shot creator role. He absolutely can be the number two
behind James Harden in a regular season context to fill
that role and allow Kawhi Leonard to ease his way
through the season. I'm not the biggest Bradley bial fan.
(24:29):
We just need to adjust our expectations. He's not a
fifty million dollars star anymore that the Suns needed to
be an impact athlete on the floor. On the margins,
He's a Norman Powell replacement, and I certainly think he
can be a better player than Norman Powell, even though
I think Norman did an admirable job. And at two years,
(24:53):
eleven million, that's just a solid upgrade. So I thought
it was a nice little pivot from the from the
Clipper this summer again investing in front court depth and
upgrading Norman Powell. We don't need to overthink this. They're
a better basketball team, so let's look at the Clippers
at large now for a minute, le zoom out. I'm
(25:13):
specifically fascinated with how they match up with the top
teams in the Western Conference. I still view them as
a second tier team. I don't think they've done and
their star power is just to finicky to be up
in that list with Denver, Oklahoma City in Houston. But
they have a good case to be the top team
in that second tier. If you look at that second tier,
it's the Clippers, it's the Timberwolves, it's the Warriors, it's
(25:36):
the Lakers. Right, Like Minnesota lost to k Alexander Walker.
We have a mail bag that we're going to record
later today, Like I'll talk a little bit more about Minnesota.
Like that doesn't necessarily mean they got worse, but they
certainly didn't get dramatically better. Right, Golden State has basically
done nothing. We'll see what they end up pulling off.
If they even get Horford, what's going on with this
Jonathan Cominge stuff, We'll see. The Lakers got a high
(25:57):
risk upgrade in DeAndre Ayton, and that could make them
better if Eightton is focused and healthy. But they also
lost Dorian Phinney Smith for nothing after trading picks for it.
Like guys, the Lakers were seventeen points per one hundred
possessions better with Dorian Finney Smith on the floor than
when he was off. He was one of their most
valuable role players. And they were like, nah, they'll save
(26:19):
cap space for Giannis, right, and now they look like
the least athletic playoff team in the entire NBA. The
Clippers got way deeper in the front court without sacrificing
any substantial asset and while actually upgrading their tertiary ball handler.
And that depth upgrade. The front court depth is specifically
(26:42):
valuable in a Western conference that has Oklahoma City and
Denver in it, who I think arguably are the two
best teams in the league. Now with Denver, it's about
matching size. They can make Zubats's job easier by spelling
him with a player in brook Lopez that has the
size and strength to make Nikola Jokic work hard for
his buckets. And again, it's not when you're getting to
(27:03):
these guys like Jokic, it's not about stopping him. It's
about making things as difficult as possible. Like Oklahoma City
did a number on Jokic, and he still pulverized them
down the stretch of that series because he's just He's
Nicola Jokic. There's only so much you can do right.
Zubots's work against Yokich was a big part of how
they pushed them to seven last year. Adding John Collins
(27:24):
to that, adding brook Lopez to that will help them
do an even better job of that. John Collins gives
them a legitimate too big look. He shot the ball
really well last year. And again, like this is the
key when I say too big look, like, well, Jason
brook Lobez can shoot, why can't you just play him
in Zubats. Your foot speed just tanks way too low
and it becomes impossibly like you'd never be able to
(27:45):
play Brooken Zoo together because teams will just run you
off the floor and transition. But John Collins is like
a big who's athletic enough to run the floor, can
shoot the ball well enough, which we're gonna talk about
in a minute, but is big and strong enough to
provide some more physical resistance at that power forward spot.
He shots the ball really well last year. He was
forty two percent overall on catch and shoot looks. That's
one point two points per shot when you waited for threes,
(28:08):
forty three percent when he was unguarded, one point twenty
five points per shot. He's knocking down open jump shots.
He actually was pretty good off the dribble last year.
John Collins on forty three off the dribble jump shots
last year made twenty. It's almost fifty percent. And that's
not a one year sample. Guys. He shot thirty eight
percent on catch and shoot jump shots last year, forty
two percent when he was unguarded. He's been like over
(28:30):
the course of the last couple of years, he's become
a quality jump shooter in this league. It's a very
very uh like, kind of like subtle trajectory for a
player that's been hiding in Utah for the last couple
of years. Right, that should have made him because of
his foot speed in combination with his jump shooting, he
should be able to play alongside either Zubots or Lopez. Again,
why does the two big look matter with Jokic? Do
(28:54):
you guys remember in the Oklahoma City series how they
gave NICOLEA. Jokic, The issues that they gave him, It's
stemmed from the ability to play his right hand with
a big, strong player like Hartenstein while also having rim
protection behind it. Now, because Chet had foot speed and
the ability to hit threes, they could run a two
big look, but that's actually literally two centers. That's a
(29:15):
unique thing, so they won't be able to put together
a look as impressive physically as what Oklahoma City did.
But if John Collins can take that shoulder to the
chest and play Yokich's right hand and funnel him into
a Brook or funnel him into a Zubots, that's a
look that can potentially work. So like it gives a
scheme versatility element to the way that the Clippers can
(29:38):
guard Denver that didn't exist there last year. With Oklahoma City.
It's about punishing their lack of perimeter size and not
allowing them to go small. They have that too big look, right,
but they also like to play Chet at center, and
if they go Chet at center, you have to punish
them on the front line with that interior size and
offensive rebounding right, John Collins is an excellent offensive rebounder
(30:01):
and he will be able to punish Oklahoma City when
they go small. He's a career three offensive rebounds per
thirty six minutes, which is excellent. And he had a
season in Atlanta obviously earlier in his career where he
averaged four point three offensive rebounds per thirty six. He's
a beast of an offensive rebounder, so that will give
them the ability when Okay, so he goes small to
punish that lack of interior size, and then Kawhi Leonard.
(30:23):
He is the type of big, strong, powerful perimeter score
that can cause problems for an Oklahoma City team that
doesn't have a lot of size on the perimeter. Now, again,
that doesn't mean I think they're gonna beat Oklahoma City
or beat Denver. They're not in that top tier in
the West, but I do think they're the best of
that second tier list of teams, at least as currently constructed.
(30:44):
We'll see if more moves get made and they have
some specific advantages over Denver and Oklahoma City that give
them a real chance to upset in those matchups. Again,
like if you're gonna upset somebody, you gotta have an advantage.
You're not gonna upset somebody just by shooting the ball
super well. You're not gonna upset somebody by benefiting from
(31:05):
variants or a whistle or something along those lines. You
upset somebody, even if they're a better team, because there's
one specific advantage or maybe a couple of specific advantages
that you smartly exploit over and over again in the series,
and it adds pressure and changes the mental dynamic of
the series, and suddenly these guys are underachieving and you
can pull off something like that. But you gotta have
(31:26):
an advantage in the pivots that they've made this summer.
Give them some of those advantages that they would need
in those particular matchups. All right, guys, That's all I
have for today is always a sincerely appreciate you guys
for supporting me and supporting the show. We will be
back tomorrow with the mailbag. I'm really excited. Lots of
interesting stuff to get into. I will see you guys
then
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For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKG dot
co slash audio. All right, welcome to Hoops tonight. You're
at the volume heavy Thursday everybody. Hope all of you
(01:48):
guys are having a great end to your week of
coming to you for the first time and what will
be my new studio in Denver. I'm very, very excited
to be here. I woke up this morning and it
was sixty two degrees outside. It was kind of a
shock coming from Arizona. But obviously it's going to be
a little bit of a work in progress behind me.
But it's the summertime so we can live with it
for right now. I'm very very excited to be here,
and I'm very very excited for today's show. We got
(02:09):
some really interesting stuff to get into it. We're going
to start with Bleacher Report's Top one hundred list, a
couple things that I disagreed with in the top twenty.
I want to kind of revisit MJ versus Lebron a
little bit. I want to talk about Kobe and how
like preposterousts preposterously underrated he has become. And then Steph
Curry as well, who I think for a guy who's
given Lebron a run for his money, I feel like
(02:31):
he's pretty low on that list as well. So we're
gonna be hitting that for a little bit. And now
at the tail end of the show, we got a
little bit of expected NBA news yesterday is the Bradley.
The Bradley Beal buy out finally went through and he
is signing with the Los Angeles Clippers. So I want
to briefly revisit some of the stuff we talked about
with Bradley and what went wrong in Phoenix and why
I think it'll work well in Los Angeles. But I
also want to look a little bit deeper at the
(02:53):
Clippers in general. We've been doing deep dives kind of
periodically throughout the year on some of these Western Conference teams.
So today we'll be talking a little bit about the Clippers.
You guys know the jope before we get started. Subscribe
to the Hoops and I YouTube channels. You don't miss
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(03:15):
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the last but not least, keep dropping mail bag questions
in the YouTube comments so that we can hit him
in our weekly mail bags throughout the remainder of the
off season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So let's
dig into this Bleacher Report top one hundred and I
want to focus on the top twenty and I'm gonna
read out the names for you and then we'll go
(03:36):
from there. So they had Michael Jordan at one, Lebron
James at two, Kareem at three, Magic Johnson at four,
Bill Russell at five, Shaquille O'Neil at six, Tim Duncan
at seven, Larry Bird at eight, Weilt Chamberlain at nine,
Steph Curry at ten, Kobe Bryant way Down at eleven,
Achim olange One at twelve, Kevin Durant at thirteen, Oscar
Robertson at fourteen, Jerry West at fifteen, Kevin Garnett at sixteen,
(03:58):
Nicole jokicch at seventeen, Jerk Navisky at eighteen, David Robinson
at nineteen, and Doctor j at twenty. So before we
go any further, these lists are borderline impossible for several reasons,
so I'm very forgiving. I'm not gonna get too upset
about this. There's several reasons. First of all, the position groups.
How do you rank a guy like Kareem abdul Jabbar
(04:18):
against Steph Curry. They might as well have been playing
different sports with how wildly different their jobs were on
both ends of the floor. I've done lists before where
I've removed centers entirely, but even that, I would argue
is flawed. Because of guys like Kareem Abdul Jabbar and
what he did offensively Nikola Jokic, and how like you,
if you were ranking point guards, you could argue Nikola
(04:40):
Jokich should be pretty high on a list of small
point guards. Right. So, like the it's just a really
difficult thing to consider in a list like this. Secondly,
how do you separate individual greatness from the success of
a team? Right? Nikola Jokic has never played with an
All Star, he's never played with an All NBA player,
and he's never played with an All defense player. So
(05:01):
how do you rank his team accomplishments on equal footing
with a guy like Magic Johnson or Larry Bird or
Kareem abdulje Bar, guys who played on historically great rosters, right.
And then lastly, there are the differences in the eras
the game is so different. There are more teams, there's
way more talent. This is crazy. When Bill Russell won
his first championship, there were eight teams in the NBA,
(05:24):
eight of them. I mean, I mean, come on, how
does that even remotely compare to what we have today?
Michael Jordan in his era, seven teams were added in
a mass set of expansion, the talent was diluted. That
was a big part of how those Bulls teams racked
up massive win totals year after year. That doesn't mean
that the Bulls were overrated or that MJ was overrated.
(05:46):
It just means all of this shit is super subjective,
so I totally understand if anyone disagrees. But on that note,
let's get into some of these rankings in blitcher reports list.
So I have Lebron and MJ flipped, but that's really
about what you value. If you're asking who had the
most dominant career, it's obviously MJ. Right. For a decade,
(06:09):
nobody could fuck with him. He was far and away
the best player in the NBA. He won six championships
in eight years. That's the definition of unassailable dominance, right.
My case for Lebron exists more in a vacuum. He
was the best player in the NBA for about nine
years in my opinion, from twenty twelve to twenty twenty.
(06:31):
But the league was much more talented in his era.
Just look at the list. Steph Curry and Kevin Durant
are both very high in this particular list, and they
played alongside Lebron James, right, so there wasn't as large
of a gap in terms of like pure dominance. But
I'd argue you will never see that again. Like look
(06:51):
at Jokic. Nikole Jokich is discernibly better than his peers
right now, but that gap isn't even close to how
much better Michael Jordan was than Charles bark Lee or
Clyde Drexler or a keem Olajuan. Really good players, but
not the same types of players that Nikole Jokic is
competing against that Lebron James competed against. I think some
of that is just the influx of NBA talent. It's
(07:14):
like a plateauing effect, right. It's a big part of
why I think Kobe's underrated, which we'll get to in
a few minutes. The Lebron case is simple. Out of
any player in NBA history, if you were starting a
franchise from scratch, and you had that player for the
entirety of his career, which player would give you the
best chance to win the most championships over the course
(07:37):
of that player's career? And the answer is Lebron James.
First of all, he's one of the top five offensive
engines in the history of the game. I've talked a
lot about this concept over the course of the last
couple of years, even at lower levels with guys like
James Harden or Tyrese Halliburton. Right. I even talked about
at a very low level and discount in the form
of D'Angelo Russell, a guy who can run action and
(08:00):
make the reads that sets up role players with a
player sprinting at them or with an opening rather than
against the set defender. Lebron is a player that created
advantages so consistently that he basically guaranteed you an elite offense,
irrespective of surrounding talent. Look at some of the worst
rosters that Lebron played with in his prime. The twenty
(08:23):
eighteen Calves top five offense, the nine and twenty ten
Calves very defensive loaded rosters, both top five offenses. That
was with like Kevin Love and Moe Williams as his
second best offensive players for ten consecutive seasons from two
thousand and nine to twenty eighteen. The worst Lebron led
offense was the twenty twelve heat that ranked sixth. Every
(08:47):
single other offense he led in that stretch was top five,
and it translated to the playoffs extremely well because he
had the size and the strength to hold up under
the physicality, and he was versatile. He could attack from
so many different spots on the floor and impact winning
on offense in so many different ways. He is one
of the greats in terms of generating offense in the
NBA and then in the other end of the four.
(09:09):
Lebron was one of the most versatile defenders in the
history of the sport, whether he was protecting the rim
on the back line like he did in the Spurs
series meet and Thiago Splitter at the rim, or in
the Warriors series where he blocked nine shots over the
final three games of that twenty sixteen finals. He guarded
Derek Rose down the stretch of the twenty eleven finals
(09:29):
as a twenty eleven Eastern Conference Finals as a perimeter
threat Jamal Murray in the twenty twenty Western Conference Finals.
He could be deployed as a perimeter defender you needed
him to rebound. He had seventeen playoff games to this
point with at least fifteen rebounds. He has six playoff
games with at least eighteen rebounds. He's function functionally a
(09:52):
big as a rebounder when you need him to be,
or if you just need him to make a superhuman
transition play like he did to save the twenty sixteen Finals.
He's always able to fill whatever defensive role the team
needs and to tie it all together. Outside of his
decade where he was the best player in the world,
there's an entire additional decade and change of him being
(10:14):
a top ten player. He was just in his twenty
second season, sixth the MVP voting in second team All NBA.
He's a safe bet to make an All NBA team
next year in his twenty third year. That as a
franchise that gives you an additional decade more of chances
(10:35):
where if you have built the right roster around him,
you could win a championship in those years. So, to
put it simply, there is no player in the history
of the NBA that would give you a better opportunity
to win more championships than Lebron James. So yeah, I'd
flip them and I'd have Lebron at number one. Kobe
having him at number eleven is straight up insulting. This
(10:57):
opinion is fueled by the inability of people to look
beyond the box score. Kobe was inefficient by modern standards.
He posted just four seasons in his career with an
effective field goal percentage over fifty percent. He never went
over fifty one percent. People see that and they just
(11:18):
think he was a shot chucker that didn't have any
idea how to play within a team concept. The problem
with this point of view is it discounts the fact
that every perimeter jump shooter in the league was inefficient.
In that era, everyone was There was no space. Every
team was playing with two bigs who couldn't shoot. Many
of the teams were playing with three or four guys
on the floor at all times that were either inconsistent
(11:40):
to bad shooters. The paint was a shit show. Teams
didn't understand the modern spacing principles that we have today.
The dead giveaway there is guess what the most efficient
scoring season of Kobe's career was the year right before
he tore his achilles in twenty thirteen. Why because it
was closer to the modern era, when people had a
better understanding of how to score efficiently in the NBA.
(12:02):
Was Kobe the best version of himself in twenty thirteen?
Of course, not, but it was just the combination of
him still having most of his juice before the Achilles
tear and the league was starting to figure out how
to play. He was playing a lot more spread pick
and roll in that year. The other perimeter stars, though,
just take a look at him. They're all inefficient relative
to today's standards. Alan Iverson never had a single season
(12:26):
over forty nine percent effective field goal percentage. Tracy McGrady
had just one season it was fifty point five percent.
Vince Carter's numbers, they're a little more tricky because he
had a stretch there at the end where he was
a role player. But he had just two seasons in
his career where he averaged at least twenty points per
game and was over fifty percent in effective field goal percentage,
and he never went over fifty one percent. Grant Hill
(12:48):
just two seasons averaging over twenty percent or twenty points
per game and over fifty percent in effective field goal percentage.
So for how inefficient everybody thinks Kobe was, he was
actually more efficient than his peers who were doing the
same job. I do think that Michael Jordan was better
than Kobe. He was a better athlete he's better at
getting separation. He was more versatile on that end of
(13:10):
the four right, but mj also would have been an
inefficient shot chucker if we dropped him in the middle
of the two thousands. I think his reputation. Kobe's reputation
is completely marred by that misunderstanding, so I have him
as the third best player of all time, right behind
Lebron James and Michael Jordan. Last thing for our list
(13:33):
that I want to hit today is Steph Curry. I
have Steph at five on my list, behind Lebron, Michael Jordan, Kobe,
and Magic. Now again, I have a really hard time
figuring out where to put centers on this list, so
I totally understand why people would disagree with that, But
let me make the case. I think Steph Curry is
the second best offensive engine in the history of the
(13:55):
sport behind Nikola Jokic, and as we've talked about, I
think that's the most valuable trade that a basketball player
can have. His transcendent shooting combined with his ability to
do it both on the ball and off the ball,
a thing that like all the insane driple combinations people
have been able to generate. A reasonable facsimile of that.
I feel like Damian Lillard did a reasonable job of
(14:17):
kind of like replicating what Steph did on the ball,
especially in the late twenty tens in the early twenty
twenties when he was just off the charts good as
a pull up shooter, right. But it was the off
ball piece of it that made Steph another tier above
all of those pull up shooting guards in the league.
No one's been able to replicate it, and it manifests
in a bunch of different ways. First of all, is
(14:39):
the inverted spacing Steph coming off of on and off
ball screens from Draymond consistently forced Biggs to show up
at the level. If you want to see what it
looked like before teams figured this out, just go watch
the twenty thirteen series with the Spurs and watch Steph
just absolutely torch San Antonio with just high ball screens.
(15:01):
Teams had to step up with their bigs or Steph
would hit the shot. It was that simple. That removed
rim protection from the equation because the rim protector was
going so far out to the perimeter. So the Warriors
started picking teams apart with these four on three advantages.
Things that were so confusing for people to understand that
even though Steph won the twenty fifteen Finals by getting
(15:21):
blitzed every single time down the floor, everyone gave the
Finals MVP to Andre Gudala because it broke their brains.
They couldn't understand the advantage creation that he was doing.
The second piece of it was just the mistake making
that we saw from defenses, the sheer panic that Steph
induced and defenders led to constant botching of coverages two
(15:43):
guys running with Steph when he comes off of an
off ball screen, or like guys pointing at the next
guy in the chain for them to switch out, and
then that miscommunication leading to mistakes. The third piece of
it was math. Steph's efficiency dwarfs almost every NBA scoring
season because of his high volume three point shooting. It's
(16:04):
not really that complicated. Three is worth more than two,
and so he routinely and consistently posted true shooting percentages
in the mid sixties. It fundamentally changed the entire landscape
of the NBA. All of his peers at the guard
position started heavily emphasizing three point shooting, especially off the dribble,
although somehow none of them, like we mentioned, were able
(16:25):
to replicate the off ball elements of it. Damian Lillard's
the guy that I look at there. For the most part,
all of the pick and roll coverages in the NBA changed.
Bigs coming up higher, guards, chasing over the top of screens,
the lowman position, the idea of a backside forward having
to replace rim protection because a big is going up
to the level. A big part of that changed during
(16:47):
the Steph Curry era. I would say that the largest
change in NBA basketball in my lifetime came as a
direct result of what Steph accomplished. And to tie it
all get together, did all of the things that the
all time great players did in terms of a as
a competitor, becoming the most supremely conditioned player in the
(17:09):
league so that he could outlast his opponents simply by running,
going from a negative defender to a legitimate positive defender,
by putting on a bunch of muscle, becoming very good
in terms of anticipating what defenses are doing and being
in the right position. He became a good defender. The
greatest compliment you can pay Steph is just ask people
(17:30):
to take another look at that list. Every single other
name in that top twenty is at least six foot six.
He's the only player in NBA history to have remotely
close to the impact of the top players in NBA
history at that size. Again, I mentioned this off the
top of the show. Steph gave Lebron a run for
(17:51):
his money, and I think Lebron is the greatest player
to ever touch the basketball. So I think ten is
way too low. All right, let's take into this Bradly
be on News. So I've been using my Bridge wallet
now for about two months, and I absolutely love it.
I'd been using a leather wallet for a while before that.
It was a small one, it didn't hold very many cards,
(18:11):
and then when I did try to put extra stuff
in there, especially cash, it would like stretch the leather.
And then when I would take some cash out or
get rid of a hotel key that I was holding,
all of a sudden, it would like just be too
stretched and cards would start slipping out of it and stuff.
I have really really enjoyed using this ridge whilet over
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(18:32):
a nice thick metal housing to it. It's got like
a heft to it. It feels really high quality. It goes
in and out of your pocket super easily because of
the elastic bands that hold it together. It very seamlessly
transitions between holding a lot of stuff versus holding not
very much stuff. I've had trips where i go on
vacation and I'm carrying more cards in there, but then
i don't need them when I'm at home, and I'll
(18:53):
take stuff out of it and it works perfectly well.
It's got RFID blocking in there, so you're protected from
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Bradley Beals bought out by the Phoenix Suns and he
signs with the Los Angeles Clippers for two years and
(20:01):
eleven million dollars. I've been critical over the last few
few years of Bradley Beal, but most of it had
to do with the surrounding circumstances. I think there's a
misconception about what went wrong in Phoenix. It's not that
Bradley Beal wasn't good enough, said he wasn't good enough
at what the Suns needed, not just from him, but
(20:21):
from the entire roster. Bradley Beal was a very good
offensive player in a Sun's jersey. He was a seventy
fifth percentile spot up player. He shot the ball extremely well.
He was solid on the ball. He ran about five
hundred and two actions, picking rolls, ISOs and post ups
including passes, and he generated five hundred and one points,
which is a point per possession on high volume. That's good.
(20:44):
He was sloppy in the dirty work, and that just
was accentuated by the weaknesses and the roster. He wasn't
very good on the ball defensively, and he was flat
out bad off the ball defensively, and on that particular
team when they needed guys that could protect the ram
reb bound guard both on and off the ball, it
just kind of showed to a greater extent. This is
(21:07):
the redundancy thing, right. Scoring guards are ceiling raizers, but
they are not foundations. And when you basically have three
of those dudes, their skill sets start to overlap and
all of that strong foundation that you need to be
a good basketball team is just non existent. The Clippers
have a really strong basketball foundation. They have one of
(21:30):
the best centers in the league, a guy that establishes
a high defensive floor and a rebounding for in Ifasa
Zubats right, and they've now anchored that with one a
guy in brook Lopez, who I think will be one
of the best backup centers in basketball this year. They
add another power forward option in John collins Brook and
John give them some additional matchup resilience for teams like Denver,
(21:53):
which we'll talk about in a little bit, and Oklahoma City,
i'd argue as well. We'll talk more about that in
a minute. I want to dig into that, just like
John's off of rebounding, the kind of like too big
look and how you're specifically supposed to guard a guy
like Nikola Jokic. We'll dig into that later on. They
have a deep core of perimeter defenders. This is the
beauty of the Paul George pivot, right. It looks genius
(22:14):
in retrospect, as Paul George just had to have his
knee surgically repaired again from a shooting workout, which is
like crazy. It looks, you know, again, like they just
what the timing of getting out of the Paul George
business and the way they pivoted like it was a
proof of concept for me. If you guys remember last summer,
I applauded the move because of my belief like my
(22:36):
basketball beliefs, my beliefs in perimeter defense and overall team speed.
If you guys remember I said before the season then
I thought the Clippers would be above the plane and
that they'd be a very good regular season team, and
they were. It was proof of concept the concept being
star power can come with redundancy, and that a good
role player who feels a team need can actually be
(22:56):
more valuable than a star who doesn't feel a team need.
The Clippers can guard the opposing team's best player for
forty eight minutes with an elite perimeter defender in Chris
Don and Derek Jones. Junior quality perimeter defense with quality
rim protection and quality defensive rebounding just represents a very
(23:19):
strong foundation to build a basketball team on. In the
modern NBA, the Clippers actually had a bit of a
deficit in ball handling. James Harden is an excellent advantage creator.
I think he's one of the more valuable kind of
like offensive floor guys in the league. But Kawhi Leonard
missed more than half the season last year. He missed
like forty five games, and the ball handling falls off
(23:42):
a cliff after that. So Bradley's offensive upside will be
substantially more valuable to the Clippers than it was to
the Suns, and his weaknesses will be less apparent because
they have such a strong foundation he can fill that
third ball handler role like he did in Phoenix, which
again I thought he was fine in that role. That
wasn't the issue. But the team's stronger foundation will make
(24:06):
that offensive value more apparent, and when Kawhi is out
of the lineup, he can easily scale up that secondary
shot creator role. He absolutely can be the number two
behind James Harden in a regular season context to fill
that role and allow Kawhi Leonard to ease his way
through the season. I'm not the biggest Bradley bial fan.
(24:29):
We just need to adjust our expectations. He's not a
fifty million dollars star anymore that the Suns needed to
be an impact athlete on the floor. On the margins,
He's a Norman Powell replacement, and I certainly think he
can be a better player than Norman Powell, even though
I think Norman did an admirable job. And at two years,
(24:53):
eleven million, that's just a solid upgrade. So I thought
it was a nice little pivot from the from the
Clipper this summer again investing in front court depth and
upgrading Norman Powell. We don't need to overthink this. They're
a better basketball team, so let's look at the Clippers
at large now for a minute, le zoom out. I'm
(25:13):
specifically fascinated with how they match up with the top
teams in the Western Conference. I still view them as
a second tier team. I don't think they've done and
their star power is just to finicky to be up
in that list with Denver, Oklahoma City in Houston. But
they have a good case to be the top team
in that second tier. If you look at that second tier,
it's the Clippers, it's the Timberwolves, it's the Warriors, it's
(25:36):
the Lakers. Right, Like Minnesota lost to k Alexander Walker.
We have a mail bag that we're going to record
later today, Like I'll talk a little bit more about Minnesota.
Like that doesn't necessarily mean they got worse, but they
certainly didn't get dramatically better. Right, Golden State has basically
done nothing. We'll see what they end up pulling off.
If they even get Horford, what's going on with this
Jonathan Cominge stuff, We'll see. The Lakers got a high
(25:57):
risk upgrade in DeAndre Ayton, and that could make them
better if Eightton is focused and healthy. But they also
lost Dorian Phinney Smith for nothing after trading picks for it.
Like guys, the Lakers were seventeen points per one hundred
possessions better with Dorian Finney Smith on the floor than
when he was off. He was one of their most
valuable role players. And they were like, nah, they'll save
(26:19):
cap space for Giannis, right, and now they look like
the least athletic playoff team in the entire NBA. The
Clippers got way deeper in the front court without sacrificing
any substantial asset and while actually upgrading their tertiary ball handler.
And that depth upgrade. The front court depth is specifically
(26:42):
valuable in a Western conference that has Oklahoma City and
Denver in it, who I think arguably are the two
best teams in the league. Now with Denver, it's about
matching size. They can make Zubats's job easier by spelling
him with a player in brook Lopez that has the
size and strength to make Nikola Jokic work hard for
his buckets. And again, it's not when you're getting to
(27:03):
these guys like Jokic, it's not about stopping him. It's
about making things as difficult as possible. Like Oklahoma City
did a number on Jokic, and he still pulverized them
down the stretch of that series because he's just He's
Nicola Jokic. There's only so much you can do right.
Zubots's work against Yokich was a big part of how
they pushed them to seven last year. Adding John Collins
(27:24):
to that, adding brook Lopez to that will help them
do an even better job of that. John Collins gives
them a legitimate too big look. He shot the ball
really well last year. And again, like this is the
key when I say too big look, like, well, Jason
brook Lobez can shoot, why can't you just play him
in Zubats. Your foot speed just tanks way too low
and it becomes impossibly like you'd never be able to
(27:45):
play Brooken Zoo together because teams will just run you
off the floor and transition. But John Collins is like
a big who's athletic enough to run the floor, can
shoot the ball well enough, which we're gonna talk about
in a minute, but is big and strong enough to
provide some more physical resistance at that power forward spot.
He shots the ball really well last year. He was
forty two percent overall on catch and shoot looks. That's
one point two points per shot when you waited for threes,
(28:08):
forty three percent when he was unguarded, one point twenty
five points per shot. He's knocking down open jump shots.
He actually was pretty good off the dribble last year.
John Collins on forty three off the dribble jump shots
last year made twenty. It's almost fifty percent. And that's
not a one year sample. Guys. He shot thirty eight
percent on catch and shoot jump shots last year, forty
two percent when he was unguarded. He's been like over
(28:30):
the course of the last couple of years, he's become
a quality jump shooter in this league. It's a very
very uh like, kind of like subtle trajectory for a
player that's been hiding in Utah for the last couple
of years. Right, that should have made him because of
his foot speed in combination with his jump shooting, he
should be able to play alongside either Zubots or Lopez. Again,
why does the two big look matter with Jokic? Do
(28:54):
you guys remember in the Oklahoma City series how they
gave NICOLEA. Jokic, The issues that they gave him, It's
stemmed from the ability to play his right hand with
a big, strong player like Hartenstein while also having rim
protection behind it. Now, because Chet had foot speed and
the ability to hit threes, they could run a two
big look, but that's actually literally two centers. That's a
(29:15):
unique thing, so they won't be able to put together
a look as impressive physically as what Oklahoma City did.
But if John Collins can take that shoulder to the
chest and play Yokich's right hand and funnel him into
a Brook or funnel him into a Zubots, that's a
look that can potentially work. So like it gives a
scheme versatility element to the way that the Clippers can
(29:38):
guard Denver that didn't exist there last year. With Oklahoma City.
It's about punishing their lack of perimeter size and not
allowing them to go small. They have that too big look, right,
but they also like to play Chet at center, and
if they go Chet at center, you have to punish
them on the front line with that interior size and
offensive rebounding right, John Collins is an excellent offensive rebounder
(30:01):
and he will be able to punish Oklahoma City when
they go small. He's a career three offensive rebounds per
thirty six minutes, which is excellent. And he had a
season in Atlanta obviously earlier in his career where he
averaged four point three offensive rebounds per thirty six. He's
a beast of an offensive rebounder, so that will give
them the ability when Okay, so he goes small to
punish that lack of interior size, and then Kawhi Leonard.
(30:23):
He is the type of big, strong, powerful perimeter score
that can cause problems for an Oklahoma City team that
doesn't have a lot of size on the perimeter. Now, again,
that doesn't mean I think they're gonna beat Oklahoma City
or beat Denver. They're not in that top tier in
the West, but I do think they're the best of
that second tier list of teams, at least as currently constructed.
(30:44):
We'll see if more moves get made and they have
some specific advantages over Denver and Oklahoma City that give
them a real chance to upset in those matchups. Again,
like if you're gonna upset somebody, you gotta have an advantage.
You're not gonna upset somebody just by shooting the ball
super well. You're not gonna upset somebody by benefiting from
(31:05):
variants or a whistle or something along those lines. You
upset somebody, even if they're a better team, because there's
one specific advantage or maybe a couple of specific advantages
that you smartly exploit over and over again in the series,
and it adds pressure and changes the mental dynamic of
the series, and suddenly these guys are underachieving and you
can pull off something like that. But you gotta have
(31:26):
an advantage in the pivots that they've made this summer.
Give them some of those advantages that they would need
in those particular matchups. All right, guys, That's all I
have for today is always a sincerely appreciate you guys
for supporting me and supporting the show. We will be
back tomorrow with the mailbag. I'm really excited. Lots of
interesting stuff to get into. I will see you guys
then
Host
Jason Timpf
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