November 5, 2025 • 45 mins
Jason reacts to the Golden State Warriors getting back on track with a win over the Phoenix Suns led by Steph Curry, Moses Moody, and Brandin Podziemski. Then he discusses the Chicago Bulls winning a wild game over Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers to get sole possession of first place in the Eastern Conference, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander continuing the Oklahoma City Thunder's undefeated start, and Steph's appearance on the ‘Mind the Game' podcast with LeBron James and Steve Nash.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume. All right, welcome to hoops tonight.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
You're at the volume heavy winsay everybody, hope all if
you guys are having a great week so far, gonna
jam pack show for you guys today. We're gonna do
three instant reactions to last night's slate. The Golden State
Warriors get back on track with a big win over
the Phoenix Suns. Got some interesting lineup data and some
thoughts on the way that Steve Kurr has been structuring
the rotation to this point in the season. After that,
(00:37):
an incredibly entertaining game between the Chicago Bowls and the
Philadelphia seventy six Ers. Is the Sixers jump all over
them in the first half, scoring seventy five points, but
get held to just thirty six in the second half
as the Chicago Bulls get a bunch of big stops,
holding the Sixers scoreless over the final four minutes, and
change end up winning on a Nicola Vucevich corner three
(00:59):
out of the right corner. We're gonna be breaking down
that game from the perspective of both teams. At the
tail end of the show. We've got the Clippers obviously
down Kawhi on the tail end of a back to
back but dropping a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
I want to zoom in in some detail on the
second half run from the Thunder in that game, just
the absolute avalanche that they closed that game with, and
(01:22):
zooming in on some of their depth of offensive talent
as Aj Mitchell really closed the deal spamming ball screens
and getting great shots every single time. And then finally
before we get out of here today, Steph Curry made
a surprise appearance on the Mind the Game podcast with
Lebron James and Steve Nash. I listened to it last night,
and a lot of really interesting stuff I want to
(01:44):
get into from that as well. You guys know the
Joe before we started. Subscribe to the Hoops to Night
YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos.
Follow me on Twitter at Underscore JCNLT so you guys
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Speaker 1 (01:56):
It's also a.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Super helpful if you leave a rating in a review
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to them on Fridays throughout the remainder of the season.
(02:19):
All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Warriors had
dropped two in a row to end last week, and
they were both pretty bad losses. The one in Milwaukee.
It's kind of like a textbook NBA track game, right,
Like you're on the road, Milwaukee's without Yannis. That naturally
leads to like a natural like shift and effort, where
like the main guys for Golden State aren't going to
(02:39):
be as keyed up as they normally would be. And
obviously for Milwaukee, the guys down the roster are all
getting a lot more opportunity and they're all fired up
and they want an opportunity to win. Ryan Rollins ended
up having a career night. Right, that sort of thing
will happen in the NBA. But the Pacers game that
was brutal. A winless Pacers team down a bunch of
guys in Indiana. The Warriors were up by eleven with
(03:04):
less than six minutes left, and they just fell victim
to that classic Pacers comeback where they just never stopped pressuring,
they never stop attacking, hit some big shots late, Steph
goes cold down the stretch and the Pacers end up
coming back to steal that game. So a rough little
stretch to end the week for the Warriors, but they
got back on track last night with a nice professional
win versus the Phoenix Suns. I kind of like the
(03:27):
natural give and take of the way that Steve Kerr
has structured the starting lineup versus the bench units we
saw last year Moses Moody and Brandon Pajemski get a
lot of minutes with the starters, especially as they would
go smaller with Draymond at center right. It was usually
Steph with Jimmy and Draymond with pods and Moses Moody
at the two and the three. And one of the
(03:49):
things that I kind of like it with this structure
where now they're going with two bigs, You've got Kaminga
in with the starters, and Quinton Post is starting. Presumably
that'll be al Horford at many points during the season.
Right with that lineup, what I like is, like, specifically
Quinton Post is more of like a play finisher, right,
Like he's going to pop out of ball screens, He's
(04:10):
going to keep the ball moving side to side if
he gets left open on pick and pops, like he
got three wide open pick and pop threes to start
this game. As Mark Williams was really aggressive on the
ball and pick and roll and sagging off and help,
and Quinton just kept making him pay with pick and
pop threes, right or spacing threes like that is a
play finishing aspect that he brings. But he's not going
(04:31):
to be like super aggressive with questionable shots, right. So
it allows like the main guys to kind of play
their game. And then when the bench guys come in
with Healed with a Moses Moody, with Brandon Pajemski, those
guys are a little bit more aggressive in their read
and react. They want to look for their shot, and
so those guys when they come in with the bench groups,
(04:51):
they have an opportunity to be really aggressive. And so
I'm kind of liking the natural give and take of
having the bigger lineup with Kaminga and Quintin poster Al
Horford with the starters, and then bringing in all of
your super aggressive guys off the bench to come in
and not have to worry about necessarily getting the ball
to Steph, but just being aggressive and playing their games.
And by the way, that lineup, the lineup with the starters,
(05:14):
so Steph, Jimmy Draymond with Jonathan Kamina and Quinton Post
is plus twenty eight points net in seventy five possessions
to start the year. Now, that same lineup with Horford
has been bad so far, but it's a super small sample,
only thirty two possessions, and I do believe it will
be much better in the long run. But then those
(05:35):
bench guys come in, right, they're a little more shoot first,
they can be aggressive.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
I like that dynamic.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Like Brandon Pajemski comes in and immediately starts generating buckets.
He gets like a little mid range jumper along the baseline.
He gets a rip through out of the right corner
where he gets a reverse layup. He hits a little
mid range turnaround in the middle. He runs the ball
screen with Trace Jackson Davis and hits him for a
lob dunk like Mose. This Moodie comes in and starts
being super aggressive. It's himself going on an offensive rebound
(06:01):
put back. In transition, he hits a three coming off
of a pin down from Tray Jackson Davis. He hits
another three off the dribble in transition, hits another three
off of a skip in transition from Pat Spencer. He
just comes in gunning right. I also really liked Tray
Jackson Davis with that group. He was just really active yesterday.
But that lineup, the Moses Moody, Brandon Pajemski, Buddy Healed trio,
(06:24):
just those three guys on the floor together in forty
nine possessions to start the season, a plus forty five
net rating. They have been very good to start the year,
and now Phoenix ended up cutting it to seven in
the early part of the fourth quarter. Devin Booker, who's
been fantastic to start the year, was really good in
that third quarter. They kind of worked their way back
(06:44):
into the game. But Steph really helps blow it open
with a little run there right in the early fourth quarter.
He runs off of a weak side screen off the
left wing where and we're gonna talk about this a
little bit more when we get to that mind the
game segment at the tail end of the show, but
just textbook Steph gravity come off of a Draymon pinned
down on the left side. Draymond slips out of it.
Both guys run with Steph. That forces Moody's man to
(07:06):
tag Draymond as he's slipping out of it. Draymond throws
a beautiful over the head pass to Moses Moody in
the corner. Boom nails a three. Then Steph gets also
a guitar on a switch toasts him off the dribble,
gets a driving layup. There was a hilarious play where
there's an impromptu double team thrown by Grayson Allen out
(07:27):
of the left corner, and so he double teams I
think it was Draymond if I remember correctly, and so
Buddy he or Moses Brandon Pajemski is wide open on
the left wing and he's just staying in there because
Grayson Allen double teamed right and Steph Curry's not even
ten feet away to Brandon's right or right at the
top of the key right.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
And it was.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Hilarious because you've got Jordan Goodwin who's hugged up to
Steph and he's just staring at Brandon Pajemski not maybe
eight nine feet away, like he could literally take one
and get a good contest. And he literally just stares
at Brandon Pajemski and lets him take a wide open
three on the left wing that he ends up hitting. Now,
(08:10):
on the one hand, it's like that's probably the right read,
like you should just stay hugged up on Steph and
dare Brandon Pejemski to hit the shot. But it's just
hilarious done the last to see a team essentially refuse
to make a defensive rotation out of fear of leaving
Steph Curry open. And then Moses Moody basically ice the game,
putting them up by nineteen by hitting another contested three
(08:32):
out of the left corner play where he might have
gotten fouled as you've got stripped down in the pocket.
Moses Moody hit five threes in the game, that fifth one,
putting them up by nineteen. A nice bounce back win
for Golden State after a rough end to last week.
They have a brutal early season schedule again. Back to
back Tonight in Sacramento, they have a bunch of back
(08:54):
to backs here to start the season. Sacramento has been
a little bit more feisty in their last couple of games.
They went in and beat Milwaukee, hanging one hundred and
thirty five on him, and they hung tough with Denver
the other night, So it's going to be a challenge.
Zach Lavine's scoring the ball at an extremely high level.
Demonis Bonus is finally waking up from his slumber to
start the season, so it's going to be a tougher
(09:14):
game to It's a tougher game than you would think
on the schedule tonight, on the tail end of a
back to back in Sacramento. Warriors fans, stay tuned for
the tail end of the show. I want to talk
a little bit about STEP's appearance on the Mind of
the Game podcast because I thought that was super interesting.
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(11:10):
or Virginia. Sixers Bulls just an absolutely wild game. Came
down to a very simple dynamic. To start the game,
Chicago got absolutely fried by Tyrese Maxi.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
And Joe Lmbi.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
They had twenty one and the rest of the Sixers
had twenty four. Playing off of the attention those guys
were getting, they gave up forty five points in the
first quarter, seventy five in the first half, and then
in the fourth quarter the Bulls just completely locked them up.
Maxi had eight points in the fourth quarter and Beid
had zero. The rest of the Sixers has had eight
(11:44):
as they held him to just sixteen points in the
fourth quarter, just thirty six points total in the second half.
So tail two halves defensively for the Chicago Bulls, and
the first quarter, Philly just kind of methodically beat all
of Chicago's coverages. In two man game with Max and Embiid,
and Embiid was also giving some problems to one on one.
So first possession of the game, and be just drives
(12:06):
at Vusovich. Vu gets his left hand kind of in
on Embiid's right arm, and you know, Embiid, he's one
of the best rifters in the league, so he just
immediately throws up like a running jump shot from like
eighteen feet away from the basket, gets to the foul line.
They go right to maximb two man game, first possession,
Vouch is a little too far back. Maxi hits a
pull up three. Second possession, Vouch steps up higher to
(12:29):
the level to take away the pull up three. Maxi
hits em Bead in the pocket, and Bead hits a
little jumper in the short role. Then Vouch tries to switch.
So again we're methodically working through the coverages. A lower
drop than a higher drop. Now a switch. On the switch, uh,
Tyres Maxi just takes vouch out to the perimeter and
hits a pull up three right in his face. Then
(12:51):
Embiid posts up Vusovic and draws a second defender, hits
Tyres Maxi for a kickout three. Then Embid beats Vucevic
on a pick and pop three at the top of
the key. Int to make matters worse, they were getting
crushed on the margins during that stretch. Philly was getting
a bunch of offensive rebounds that were leading to kickout threes.
They were turning Chicago over and getting run out layups
(13:12):
and dunks.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
They ended up.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Taking a twenty one point lead in the first quarter,
just jumped all over Chicago. They went back and forth
for a little while from there until the mid third quarter,
and right in that mid third quarter run Chicago just
massively ramped up their intensity. They forced seven turnovers just
in the third quarter. They had seventeen transition points just
in the third quarter. Remember, this has been the best
(13:35):
transition team in the league to start the season. They
are averaging thirty six points per game just in transition,
which leads to the NBA decent margin two. They're about
three points over the second best team another forty five
points just last night in transition. In total, over the
course of the full forty eight minutes, they also completely
(13:56):
flipped the script on the offensive glass. They became the
team that's to get those extra possessions. They had nine
offensive rebounds in just the second half, so just a
complete and total reversal of just the intensity and all
the stuff and the margins that they were struggling with
at the beginning of the game. They finally started to
have a little bit of success guarding the Embiid Maxi
two man game. They settled on a coverage that they liked,
(14:18):
which was basically just bring Vucevic all the way up
to the level to get the ball out of Tyrese
Maxi's hands, and then they were coming early in help
like an early tag and really packing the paint. They
prayed on one of the weaknesses from Tyrese Maxi and
Joel Embiid, which is they can be a bit shoot first,
which isn't the right read when the team's guarding the
action three on two. The read there is to get
(14:40):
the ball to the other side of the floor right
like on the first possession during that run that started
in the middle of the third quarter. They come up
to the level, Maxi splits the screen and Josh Gidty's
just sitting there waiting as that third defender in help
and instead of making the kickout, Maxi just tries to
shoot through Giddy at the rim and he smokes the layup.
The very next possession, Joel Embiid slips out of the
(15:04):
at the level coverage, Maxi hits him in the pocket.
Instead of making the read, he just runs over Trey
Jones and commits an offensive foul. Now, Maxi still had
a lot to say. He's just been unbelievable to start
the year. Kept getting downhill on ball screens and hitting
little floaters and hitting shots. But in the fourth quarter,
the Bulls really started to swarm him when he was
(15:25):
getting downhill in those ball screens, and Tyree started forcing
the issue a little bit, which has been unusual for him.
He had a season low five assists and last night's game,
and then he finally started to miss some shots as
they started to swarm him, especially towards the end of
the game. He started settling for some tougher step back
jump shots and he was missing them. Several bulls got
(15:45):
key one on one stops against Maxie late where they
were gapping forcing him into those pull ups and he
was missing them, and they were tough for shots that
he was missing down the stretcher. It was a little
bit of them getting gassed, which we'll talk about in
a minute, and a little bit of the shot difficulty
kind of increasing as the game went along. And Nikola Vusevich,
who had struggled mightily against Embid early in the game,
got five one on one stops against Joel Embiid just
(16:11):
in the second half of the fourth quarter, just in
that final minute, final stretch of minutes there at the
end of the game, five one on one stops against Embid.
He did something that is usually a death sentence with Embiid.
He was very aggressive with ball pressure. He was reaching
in and jabbing at the ball. As we know, that
usually ends in Joel Embiid going to the foul line
(16:33):
right like he catches you with your hand in the
cookie jar and he just does those little ripped throughs
and gathers where he can get fouls right. But Tavuoch's credit,
he was surgical with it. He was jabbing with reaches
but quickly getting his hands out before Embiid could do
anything about it, and it flustered him. It disrupted his rhythm.
He poked the ball away from him a couple of times,
one on like a step through where he's actually going
(16:54):
up to take a shot, and right when he brought
the ball up into the pocket, Boots just came down
and slapped it out of his hands. He poked it
away from him from behind on a possession where he
kind of reached around from the opposite side. He just
dominated that matchup late in the game, and Embiid was
missing his jumper as he was just kind of getting flustered.
And then on the other end of the floor, just
(17:15):
really high level play from Vussevich and from Josh Giddy
like Vooch did a bunch of damage around the room.
He killed the Sixers in the second half, rolling out
of ball screens and getting offensive rebounds as he would
get like inside position on the guard or maybe the
just rolling hard on a harder drive and just getting
an offensive rebound. He got a big lefty hook in
the fourth quarter over his right shoulder. Josh Giddy was
(17:38):
getting his kind of classic big guard drives for floaters
and layups and then to win the game, a very
interesting kind of floor setup for Chicago. Instead of going
to that two man game using Vouch as the screener,
they end up tucking Vouch in the right corner down
by one it's one eleven to one ten, and they
situate Vouch in the right corner, which basically forces Embiid
(17:59):
to make decision right like, if he's gonna help at
the basket as a rim protector, you're gonna concede a
kickout three to Vouch. And so the action they end
up running is they run a ghost screen, so it's
Josh Gitty on the left wing. They have Kevin Herder
come up, who's being guarded by VJ Edgecomb, and it
works to perfection. Kevin Herder slips out VJ Edgecomb doesn't
(18:20):
want to switch. He stays glued up to Kevin Herder,
which causes Kelly Ubray, who's guarding Josh Gitty, to open
his stance just a little too much to Josh Gitty's
left hand and Josh just hits that gap. Hits that
gap as the natural kind of ghost screen opening that
happens is that switch doesn't occur and Kelly opens up
(18:41):
his stance, drives left, and Bead steps over to help
and be got some good pressure on the pass, but
Giddy made a really nice, like jumping out of bounds
like lefty hook pass to Vucevich in the corner. He
nails the corner three. He's been torching teams in spot
up situations to start this year. He nails the corner
three that puts Chicago up by two. Quentin Grimes actually
(19:02):
got a decent look to win the game coming off
of a pin down at the top of the key,
but he ended up missing. Now the Bulls are six
and one and in sole possession of the top seed
in the Eastern Conference is they come back to win
that game. This is very much a margin team, to
be clear. Like they're fourteenth and half court offense. That's average.
They're eighth and half court defense, that's solid. They're not
(19:23):
six and one because they're dominating in half court execution.
They dominate in the margins, and they've been good in
clutch situations to end games. They dominate the transition game.
They have a ten point per game margin on average
every single night in transition points they get thirty six
Their opponents get twenty six. It's like starting ten to
(19:45):
ozero on the scoreboard, just in transition points. They're a
good rebounding team. They do a good job of generating
open three point looks. Like they're shooting over forty percent
from three to start the season, and that's going to
be hard to maintain.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
But you know me, I hate when.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
People just attribute that thing to variants, like variance plays
a role, but it's it's further down the list than
some of the other things that determine shot result. And
let's give them some credit for running quality offense. The
Bulls generate eighteen unguarded catch and shoot threes per game,
which is the sixth most in the entire NBA. They
move the ball well and they get good shots. And
(20:20):
this is where we need to talk about Josh Gitty
and Nikola Vusovich. The two of them are just a
really difficult duo to guard, and they're getting great shots
out of ball screens and out of post ups. Josh
Giddy continued his absurd start to the season with twenty
nine points, fifteen rebounds, and twelve assists last night. He's
up to twenty three, ten and nine on the season
for his averages on fifty percent from the field, forty
(20:42):
two percent from three, seventy five percent from the line.
That's fifty nine percent in true shooting. And then Vuch's
torching teams and ball screens and playmaking out of the
post and spacing the floor with the shooting. He's averaging
nineteen points, twelve rebounds, and four assists to start the year,
sixty nine percent true shot shooting, forty eight percent from
three on four point four three point attempts per game,
(21:04):
doing a ton of damage on spot ups and especially
in transition trailing the play. The spot up situations kind
of like what you saw in that final possession is
a great example. And then in the post, he's run
thirty post ups to start the year, and he's been
getting a one to seventeen offensive rating on his post
ups including passes. Very much looking like a guy who's
in a contract year that wants to get paid one
(21:25):
more time, he's ooping his ass off. He is thirty
five years old, so I'm sure that will play a
role in those contract negotiations come come into the equation.
But he's playing some great basketball to start this year,
and you know, the Bulls are just getting a lot
of their success out of playing at an insane pace
in transition some really high three high level three point
shooting and clutch play right that transition piece, it just
(21:50):
requires so much effort on defense and running the floor
that when they look flat, like in that first half
last night or in the second against the Knicks as
another example, it can come apart for them because they're
not an the elite half court team at least to
start this season, right, But when they are playing at
a high intensity, it's really hard to keep up with
(22:11):
them and how fast they run up and down the floor.
But the reality is, as we know, teams will start
to scout that they'll be prepared for that transition attack.
The three point shooting will come down a bit that
will put a heavier strain on their half court units
on both ends of the floor, and that's when we'll
get a better feel for just how good.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
This Bulls team.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
And by the way, over on hard Rock Bet, the
Bulls are currently plus three thousand to win the East.
That is the tenth best line in the conference. I
thought that was super interesting. I don't think they're going
to finish the years the one seed or anything like that,
but tenth best odds is an interesting value bet, and again,
all of our lines are provided by hard Rock Bet. Now,
(22:52):
on the Sixers front, I was honestly super impressed by
them in the first half. I thought Embiid and Maxi
just tried to do too much down the stretch and
they kind of gassed themselves out, like a basic kind
of balance. To explain this to you, guys, those guys
took twenty six shots in the second half and the
rest of the team took only nineteen in.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
The first half. There was better balance.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Those two guys took twenty one shots and the rest
of the team took twenty eight shots. And I thought,
especially down the stretch, they just kind of hero balled,
and you know, they were both cold on their jumpers
and no one else was in any kind of rhythm. Again,
Quentin Grimes gets that wide open look late, but that
was like the only shot attempt he got down the
stretch of that game. I also just thought they looked exhausted.
They weren't getting the lift they needed on those jump shots,
(23:36):
and that's something that can happen when there's not a
lot of variety and you're just playing a lot of
that one on one, it's seventy five points in the
first half and just thirty six points in the second half.
I think that was just like a weird kind of
like step back for them offensively in terms of their
ball movement and like they're driving kick attack compared to
what they were doing earlier in the season. All right,
(24:02):
So the thunder in their late game run against the Clippers,
the Clippers controlled the first two thirds of that game
or so, James Harden was excellent.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
They were shooting the ball really well as a team.
They got one.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Point six y nine points per catch and shoot jump
shot in the first half. But Oklahoma City closes the
game on a sixty one to thirty seven run to
go up by as much as twenty five before winning
the game by nineteen. It got sparked by a couple
of those classic like defense to transition sequences, So like
(24:34):
Alex Cruz, So they were running this like little cross
screen for Zubots to try to get him in the
post on the block, and you run the cross screen
essentially to either force a switch so Zubots gets a
smaller defender to post up, or if you're going to trail,
so if that guy like fights over the top of
the screen, Zubots now gets deep post position because instead
(24:55):
of having to back that guy down close to the basket,
he's already trailing him on his back side, so he
just runs over to the block and wherever he stops,
as long as he holds his ground, he's going to
get a good.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Deep post catch, right well.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Crusoe spent a good amount of time in the second
half on Chris Dunn where he was able to roam
and do a bunch of damage, and then the rest
of the time he's on James Harden. Did a really
good job on James Harden as well, but on the
possessions with Chris Donn, he was doing a lot of
stunting off of him and just kind of being a
disruptive roamer, and he sparked the run the first play
on that sixty one to thirty seven run, he ends
(25:28):
up peeling off of Chris Dunn as Zubots breaks open
on that little cross screen and he jumps back and
ends up deflecting the post entry pass that ends up
running out the other way for a Crusoe layup on
the other end of the floor. Then Chet gets in
on the action. He gets two great contests, one on
a hard end floater where he steps up late, and
then another one on a Zubot's offensive rebound attempt as
(25:49):
he left Zubots to make the contest. Zoo got the rebound,
but he recovered and got a great contest on Zoo
and forced another miss case on Wallace pays it off
with a big driving layup and trainransition the other way.
So stop turn or turnover, layup, stop layup, classic thunder
defensive transition sequences that got the lead down from five
(26:12):
to one. And by the way, I want to shout
out Chet here because like Zoo won a lot of
battles on the glass in that game. I think he
had four offensive rebounds, but Chet was battling with him,
and as a team they were doing a great job
of like gang rebounding in those situations and they won
some battles and Chet got some big defensive rebounds during
that third quarter run. Then Shay goes on a little run.
(26:33):
He attacks Harden in a guard guard screen. Harden defends
it like shit. Shae gets a wide open layup, he
gets Batoom in a guard guard screen hits him with
a quick dribble combination, hits a step back three over
the top. All of a sudden, Oklahoma City's up four.
The momentum is shifted. Clippers up five. Now the Thunder
are up four. He attacks Zu Bots in a ball screen,
makes a beautiful spin move over his left shoulder and
(26:54):
makes a kickout to Aaron Wiggins on the right wing.
He hits a three bang right Bogdan Bogdanovich with a
quick couple of scissor dribbles right to left, gets to
the basket for a layup. The run is starting to
gain a ton of momentum. Now right Isaiah Joe comes
in and hits a couple of threes, one off the dribble,
one off of a skip pass. Shay hits another pull
(27:16):
up three over Malcolm brogged into or over Bogdan Bogdanovitch
excuse me to end the third quarter. All of a sudden,
the Thunder are up by eight going into the fourth quarter,
and it could have been worse too. Brook Lopez hit
a couple of bombs against pretty good contests, one against
jay Lynn Williams, who came in and got a great
contest on a Brook Lopez three at the top of
(27:36):
the key just hit a tough shot and then another
one where he pumped fake to get the defender off
his feet knock down a shot. Otherwise, the thunder could
have been in big time control before we got to
the fourth quarter, but in that fourth quarter the thunder
just completely slammed the door shut. Crusoe and Hartenstein combined
for like a classic like Steph Curry action, like they
looked like Steph Curry and Draymond Green, where Crusoe's cutting
(27:57):
along the baseline. Hartenstein gets the ball and just throws
like a between the legs pass backwards to Crusoe running
out to the corner, and Cruso just running out to
his left side right left footwork just rises up and
knocks down the three like the spitting image of that
classic Golden State Warriors action. Thunder up by eleven, AJ
Mitchell gets a put back chet Holmgren hits a right
(28:20):
shoulder fade over the top of Brook. All of a sudden,
it's thunder by fifteen. And then at this point in
the middle of the earl ish kind of early third
of the fourth quarter, with a thunder up by fifteen,
AJ Mitchell came in and just utterly closed the game
with excellent pick and roll shot creation over and over
(28:41):
and over again, just putting the clippers in the blender,
scoring the ball and making great reads as he blows
the game open. Starts with a drop coverage look, he
attacks the big gets a left handed layup, so as
a result, the very next possession, brook Lopez wants to
step out higher, why so that he can stop aj
Mitch from getting ahead of Steam going towards the basket.
(29:02):
That opens the short roll past to Hartenstein. Hartenstein sees
Chet cutting along the baseline, perfect lob dunk that's created
by the lefty layup by AJ Mitchell that forced brook
Lopez to try to stop his momentum further away from
the basket. Now the thunder are up. By nineteen, he
had another one where he comes screaming down the lane
in a ball screen and he smokes a layup, but
(29:24):
he occupies brook Lopez as the rim protector. That leaves
Hartenstein a runway to just come in right behind him
and get an offensive rebound put back. We even got
a little Chet Isaiah Hartenstein two man game mixed in
here where Chet gets the ball screen from hart and
Sign and Chet returns the favor with a beautiful little
lobb to Hartenstein over the top. It's just an avalanche.
It's like bucket after bucket after bucket. Another aj Mitchell
(29:47):
ball screen where Lopez comes high on the at the
level coverage that forces James Harden to tag Isaiah Hartenstein
on the roll kick back to Chet on the pop
extra pass to Aaron Wiggins wide open on the left
wing because Harden went to tag the roller wide open three.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Once again.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Aj Mitchell's scoring twice in the early fourth quarter. He
gets ahead of Steam on the ball screen. If you
let him get over the top and you give him
a runway, he's so damn fast. He just explodes off
that right leg and he finishes with his left hand right.
They got two easy buckets like that. That forces the
big to come up to the level. As soon as
(30:26):
the big comes up to the level, you're defending the
action three on two. Now Now it's just about making
the reads and it's like easy, little tic tac toe
Hartenstein to Chet on the lob dunk, easy to little
tic tac toe, toss back to Chet on the pop,
extra pass to Wiggins on the left wing, wide open three.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
That goes in.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
It was just an absolute avalanche, and then aj closes it.
They're up twenty two. He gets a ball screen off
the left side, same exact thing at the level tag
beautiful cross court lefty skip pass that hits Isaiah Joe
right in the shooting pocket the right corner. He knocks
it down and now the Thunder are up by twenty five.
(31:04):
It was just an avalanche. They never stopped defending at
that crazy chaos causing level. And you can handle it
for a time, But how many games have we seen
like that with the Thunder where it's like teams are
hanging with them for like twenty four minutes, maybe for
thirty minutes, but then right around that, like mid to
late third quarter, it's just that onslot for the Thunder
just gets too much. The other team starts to let
(31:27):
go of the rope a little bit, and next thing
you know, they're up twenty five. It happens all the time.
It happened dozens of times last year. And they're just
playing beautiful offense right now, Shay's playing like an MVP.
I continue to be blown away by the level of
offense that they're getting from their deeper bench. Since JDub
has been out like AJ Mitchell was downright surgical and
pick and roll down the stretch. As we broke down
(31:48):
in detail, you have guys like Aaron Wiggins who are
hitting shots and Isaiah Joe since he's come back, has
been a godsend in terms of their spacing. Chet and
Isaiah Hartenstein have just such brilliant I low chemistry on
their lobs. They read each other in the middle of
the floor and on the baseline so well, and they're
obviously going to do so much damage to you and
transition off of their stops eight to no to start
(32:11):
the year looking like an absolute juggernaut. And you know,
I was frustrated when I heard that Kawhi was out
because the Thunder had played a light schedule last week
and I just wanted to see them challenged. I wanted
to get another look at them against a good team.
And here's the thing, this is just what the Thunder do.
Like they're Superstar and Shaye, he never misses a game.
(32:32):
He's one of the most reliable guys in the league.
And then as a team they win the war of attrition.
We talked about this in the Lakers segment yesterday. But
when I see teams that start to rack up wins
when main guys are out of the lineup, it's always
evidence for me of depth of talent in strong basketball culture.
And there's a clear depth of talent as we're seeing
(32:53):
guys like Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins and aj Mitchell
slide into bigger offensive roles and chet and Isaiah Hartenstein
in their read and react in the middle of the floor,
just giving them another level on offense that you didn't
see a couple of years ago. Right like that is
the depth of talent the strong basketball culture is the Hey,
we're down our second best player, but we're a kick
ass defensive team, and we're gonna play this way every
(33:17):
single night, every single possession. And you might be able
to keep up with it for a little while, but
the minute you let go of the rope, we're gonna
blow the game open. I mean, they're eight to zero
and they've been down their second best player all season.
They've just been looking like the best team in the
league by far. To start this campaign, right before we
get out of here today, I want to talk about
(33:37):
this Steph interview with Lebron. I had several little takeaways.
First of all, I want to shout out Lebron because,
like you would think in a situation like that, Lebron
is just he's very much the center of attention type
of personality. To Lebron's credit, I thought he did a
good job of backing the hell off and just letting
Steph run the interview like that. Everyone's there to see Steph.
(33:58):
This is your podcast. You're gonna have plenty of opportunity
to talk in other situations. Lebron just kind of backed off.
Steve Nash did a wonderful job just kind of queuing
up questions and Lebron like popped in here and then
to offer his perspective. But it was very focused on
Steph and his upbringing, his basketball development, his basketball philosophies,
(34:19):
and honestly, one of the biggest things that stood out
to me, Steph is just a remarkably smart dude. He's
a great speaker, He's great at explaining his basketball philosophy.
I found it to just be like, very easy to
listen to and very easy to understand how he feels
about the game. There were so many interesting things that
(34:40):
he dug into. I loved when he started talking about
his body and the work that he put in behind
the scenes to essentially build out all the elements of
strength training to facilitate his style of play. He kept
talking about this idea of building the chain, and like
I talk about shooting with the concept of energy transfer, right,
this idea of like there's a power you push down
(35:03):
on the floor with your feet right as you're jumping,
but there is a chain of energy that goes all
the way from your ankles to your knees, to your hips,
to your core, all the way up through your shoulders.
That that is the transfer of energy through to the
top of your shot. And any power that you lose
in that chain puts extra stress on the top of
(35:25):
your shot, and then it gets harder for muscle memory.
When the muscle memory can be very easy and light,
it's easy to replicate it, right, But when you lose
energy up the chain, that's what forces it to be
a higher stress shot at the top.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Of the shot.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
And it's one of those things where like I just
loved hearing him break down like all the specific details.
He specifically emphasized core, which I thought was really interesting.
He kind of was talking about like that kind of
popping of the hips that occurs on most basketball movements
and the idea that like that is an area where
a lot of players lose power. And I just thought
(36:01):
it was a really interesting breakdown of the weight room
because the weight room is like something that we've talked
about this on the show, Like, I think it's one
of the most underrated elements basketball development. Basketball is contact sport,
and you're dealing with physicality in every phase, whether you're
setting screens, fighting through screens, fighting to get open, driving
to the basket and winning that leverage battle and drives,
boxing out for rebounds.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
We can go on and on.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
There's a million different ways that strength plays a role,
but one of the biggest ones that we talked about
is your base on your shot. You're like Steph talked
a lot about this, not in this particular interview, but
in previous interviews. About the summer of twenty fifteen, after
having won the title and should have one finals MVP.
(36:44):
In that summer, he dramatically increased his leg strength and
he experienced like a six point per game leap in
his scoring average literally from like strength from increasing the
strength of his base. That is the when you're sprinting
full speed and you stop on a dime and rise up.
(37:04):
It is all leg strength and footwork that is what
allows you to get into your shots. Steph's superpower, right
is his jump shot. It's when Steph is open. Ever
since the Davidson days, that shit's going in. And so
the battle is how do you get the amount of
shots that you need? And actually thought he did an
interesting job talking about how like h with Bob Myers
(37:28):
coming up to him and being like, hey, like, I
think we should get you up to fifteen threes per game,
and like Steph's initial reaction was kind of like damn,
Like you know how hard it is to get fifteen
threes up in a game? And He's right. The point
is is like when you're a shooter and they're guarding
you like a shooter, You're not just open fifteen times
a game. It's not like, oh, I'm gonna get my
(37:48):
eighteen shots, I might as well make fifteen of them threes. No,
you gotta get open fifteen times for decent quality three
point shots. And that is all in that leg strength,
that chain that Steph is talking about the ability to
move and then to stop at any point in time
and rise up and shoot. There's other elements to it, right,
(38:09):
Like we're gonna talk about the offense in a minute,
the ball handling piece, the fluidity of connecting your dribble
to your shot. There's obviously a lot more that goes
into it. But I just thought all the stuff that
Steph was talking about with building the chain physically to
be an elite shooter was just a you think of
shooting as being like, oh, let's just go shoot a
thousand shots a day, and I'm not gonna sit here
(38:30):
and pretend like that's not the case. Like you've got
to put in the work behind the scenes. But there
is a huge, like body building element to it that
I think is under discussed, and I really enjoyed him
breaking that down. I loved the bit that he talked
about was Steve Kerr's offense, So he essentially talked about
that transition from you know, they win fifty games with
Mark Jackson summer of twenty fourteen, they end up bringing
(38:52):
in Steve Kerr. And one of the things that Steve
Kerr that Stephan said that Steve Kerr said to him
when he was kind of holding out the initial offense
was the idea of he was like, I just want
to make the defense make a ton of decisions on
every single possession. And of course, my ears, those of
you guys who have listened to the show over the years,
(39:13):
you know that's a concept that we talked about all
the time. My ears immediately perked up because I was like,
that's super fascinating, because talk about being ahead of your time.
This has been something that I've been keyed in a
lot over the last years. Twenty fourteen is eleven years ago.
Like Steve Kerr was so ahead of the curve with
his like basketball philosophy in the idea of generating good
shots through essentially making a defense make a ton of
(39:37):
decisions on every single possession. So, for instance, like if
you're running, let's just look at the two like most
dramatic opposite examples. Right, So we have the Steph Curry
Golden State Warriors ball and player movement offense, and then
we've got like the Luca don chicch spread pick and
roll offense. Now there's a lot more complications in the
Lakers version of it, but if you go back to like,
(39:59):
you know, twenty twenty two or twenty twenty four, where
it's like a lot of like just spread, pick and
roll type of stuff with Luca. It's there's not a
lot of decisions being made on the possession right, like
the balls getting brought out the floor. It's very brute force.
It's can you guard Luca in this one coverage or
in this one on one right, Like there's you know,
(40:22):
at the level, there's deeper drop, there's blitz, there's switch,
and in each of those four, you're essentially like removing
decision making and putting all of it on the job
of Luca. To beat that coverage like deeper drop, he's
got to go hit mid range jump shots right against that.
(40:42):
As the defender gets trapped on a side, he works
him into the lane, hits those little floaters right higher
drop or blitz. It's gonna be the short role. You're
hitting the guy in the pocket. Now we're playing four
on three out of that right the switch.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Now we're.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Get giving a big an opportunity to guard Luka Danci
John an island, or a small guard an opportunity to
guard Luka Dancijohn an island. The lack of ball in
player movement removes a lot of the decision making. The
guys who are off the ball have pretty basic roles
right that each of them have a help and recover
responsibility depending on which spot they are in that shell
drill right. Then you flip the script to the Golden
(41:21):
State Warriors offense and it starts with pace.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
You're playing the ball up the floor quickly early in
the shot clock, and then there's multiple interchanges. Steph made
this like really simple example. He was like, He's like,
let's say that there's a guy who gets a kickout
three on the right wing out of like one action.
So just imagine a guy rips from the left wing,
nail help from the right wing, swing pass guy takes
(41:46):
a three. Steph was like, that's not the same as
the exact same shot that comes out of a possession
where the balls already switched sides of the floor two
or three times. There's a rhythm that from people touching
the basketball. There are upsides to getting deeper into the
possession and making them guard multiple actions above and beyond
(42:09):
the rhythm part. Over the course of that, you present
all of these opportunities for someone to mess up. If
Steph runs off of five screens in a possession and
you defend the first three really well, you switch them properly,
or you stay attached physically and have help on any
sort of back cut, and then all of a sudden,
(42:30):
on the fourth one, two guys run with Steph. Someone
messed up. Now someone's wide open on the slip, and
someone's getting a wide open shot. A perfect example last
night is Steph running off of that wide pin down
from Draymond. Draymond slips into the open space, then he
throws the behind the head pass to Moses Moody in
the corner. That's a mistake that comes from the ball
(42:51):
and player movement that forces a defense to make so
many decisions on each possession. And when I heard that,
I was just like, of course, Steve or was on
top of this concept, like way back in the summer
of twenty fourteen, he was ahead of the curve, and
he took what was already a good team in that
Golden State Warriors team, and pushed him up to sixty
(43:12):
seven wins by essentially weaponizing the threat of Stephan Clay's
shooting through multiple actions on every single possession that forced
defenses to make a ton of decisions. And as soon
as somebody messes up, there's your opening. It's it takes
an enormous amount of trust, and like Steph talked about it,
how it was kind of sloppy at first, and it
took them a little while to kind of like figure
(43:33):
out what kind of shots they were going to get
in the offense and how to you know.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Basically how to execute it.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
But I was just really fascinating to hear Steve, like
Steph essentially point out that Steve Kerr was breeding this
idea of like using ball in player movement to force
defenses to make a ton of decisions on every single possession,
inevitably leading to the mistakes that lead to the openings.
(44:00):
Last thing I'll say overall, you know, I just was
thinking about it as I was watching the show. I
just think Steph is so damn cool, and he's so smart,
and he's so fun to listen to talk about the game,
and he's become you know, I think he's the fifth
best perimeter player of all time. He's become literally one
of the very best basketball players to ever touch the floor.
(44:22):
And it's just kind of funny because I hated his
ass ten years ago. I hated him because obviously I
was a younger fan and I was rooting for the
for the Lebron led Cleveland Cavaliers, right, and so rooting
against him made me hate him. But it's been so
funny because like over the course of the last you know,
six or seven years, especially as I've started to really
(44:45):
learn about the game, as I've studied the NBA and
tried to become more familiar with how NBA basketball works,
and then obviously just getting distance from from the rivalry.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Like Steph's just one of.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
My favorite basketball players of all time, and he he's
just completely won me over and I just really really
enjoyed listening to him just talk about basketball for forty
five minutes yesterday. It was an excellent pod. I'm looking
forward to part two. I'm hoping that they kind of
dive more into the Steph Lebron rivalry in that second episode.
I would imagine they will, and so I'm excited to
(45:18):
see that when they come.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Out with that.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
All right, guys, it's all I have for today, As always,
to sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting
the show. We'll be back tomorrow with more game reaction.
I'll see you guys then.
The volume. All right, welcome to hoops tonight.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
You're at the volume heavy winsay everybody, hope all if
you guys are having a great week so far, gonna
jam pack show for you guys today. We're gonna do
three instant reactions to last night's slate. The Golden State
Warriors get back on track with a big win over
the Phoenix Suns. Got some interesting lineup data and some
thoughts on the way that Steve Kurr has been structuring
the rotation to this point in the season. After that,
(00:37):
an incredibly entertaining game between the Chicago Bowls and the
Philadelphia seventy six Ers. Is the Sixers jump all over
them in the first half, scoring seventy five points, but
get held to just thirty six in the second half
as the Chicago Bulls get a bunch of big stops,
holding the Sixers scoreless over the final four minutes, and
change end up winning on a Nicola Vucevich corner three
(00:59):
out of the right corner. We're gonna be breaking down
that game from the perspective of both teams. At the
tail end of the show. We've got the Clippers obviously
down Kawhi on the tail end of a back to
back but dropping a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
I want to zoom in in some detail on the
second half run from the Thunder in that game, just
the absolute avalanche that they closed that game with, and
(01:22):
zooming in on some of their depth of offensive talent
as Aj Mitchell really closed the deal spamming ball screens
and getting great shots every single time. And then finally
before we get out of here today, Steph Curry made
a surprise appearance on the Mind the Game podcast with
Lebron James and Steve Nash. I listened to it last night,
and a lot of really interesting stuff I want to
(01:44):
get into from that as well. You guys know the
Joe before we started. Subscribe to the Hoops to Night
YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos.
Follow me on Twitter at Underscore JCNLT so you guys
don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed
wherever you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
It's also a.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Super helpful if you leave a rating in a review
on that front. Jackson's doing incredible work on our social
media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Make sure
you follow us there for content throughout the season and
the last but not least, If you want to get
mail bags into our Friday mail bags, go to YouTube,
go to the full episodes, go to our comments, write
mail bag with a colon. Write your question. We'll get
to them on Fridays throughout the remainder of the season.
(02:19):
All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Warriors had
dropped two in a row to end last week, and
they were both pretty bad losses. The one in Milwaukee.
It's kind of like a textbook NBA track game, right,
Like you're on the road, Milwaukee's without Yannis. That naturally
leads to like a natural like shift and effort, where
like the main guys for Golden State aren't going to
(02:39):
be as keyed up as they normally would be. And
obviously for Milwaukee, the guys down the roster are all
getting a lot more opportunity and they're all fired up
and they want an opportunity to win. Ryan Rollins ended
up having a career night. Right, that sort of thing
will happen in the NBA. But the Pacers game that
was brutal. A winless Pacers team down a bunch of
guys in Indiana. The Warriors were up by eleven with
(03:04):
less than six minutes left, and they just fell victim
to that classic Pacers comeback where they just never stopped pressuring,
they never stop attacking, hit some big shots late, Steph
goes cold down the stretch and the Pacers end up
coming back to steal that game. So a rough little
stretch to end the week for the Warriors, but they
got back on track last night with a nice professional
win versus the Phoenix Suns. I kind of like the
(03:27):
natural give and take of the way that Steve Kerr
has structured the starting lineup versus the bench units we
saw last year Moses Moody and Brandon Pajemski get a
lot of minutes with the starters, especially as they would
go smaller with Draymond at center right. It was usually
Steph with Jimmy and Draymond with pods and Moses Moody
at the two and the three. And one of the
(03:49):
things that I kind of like it with this structure
where now they're going with two bigs, You've got Kaminga
in with the starters, and Quinton Post is starting. Presumably
that'll be al Horford at many points during the season.
Right with that lineup, what I like is, like, specifically
Quinton Post is more of like a play finisher, right,
Like he's going to pop out of ball screens, He's
(04:10):
going to keep the ball moving side to side if
he gets left open on pick and pops, like he
got three wide open pick and pop threes to start
this game. As Mark Williams was really aggressive on the
ball and pick and roll and sagging off and help,
and Quinton just kept making him pay with pick and
pop threes, right or spacing threes like that is a
play finishing aspect that he brings. But he's not going
(04:31):
to be like super aggressive with questionable shots, right. So
it allows like the main guys to kind of play
their game. And then when the bench guys come in
with Healed with a Moses Moody, with Brandon Pajemski, those
guys are a little bit more aggressive in their read
and react. They want to look for their shot, and
so those guys when they come in with the bench groups,
(04:51):
they have an opportunity to be really aggressive. And so
I'm kind of liking the natural give and take of
having the bigger lineup with Kaminga and Quintin poster Al
Horford with the starters, and then bringing in all of
your super aggressive guys off the bench to come in
and not have to worry about necessarily getting the ball
to Steph, but just being aggressive and playing their games.
And by the way, that lineup, the lineup with the starters,
(05:14):
so Steph, Jimmy Draymond with Jonathan Kamina and Quinton Post
is plus twenty eight points net in seventy five possessions
to start the year. Now, that same lineup with Horford
has been bad so far, but it's a super small sample,
only thirty two possessions, and I do believe it will
be much better in the long run. But then those
(05:35):
bench guys come in, right, they're a little more shoot first,
they can be aggressive.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
I like that dynamic.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Like Brandon Pajemski comes in and immediately starts generating buckets.
He gets like a little mid range jumper along the baseline.
He gets a rip through out of the right corner
where he gets a reverse layup. He hits a little
mid range turnaround in the middle. He runs the ball
screen with Trace Jackson Davis and hits him for a
lob dunk like Mose. This Moodie comes in and starts
being super aggressive. It's himself going on an offensive rebound
(06:01):
put back. In transition, he hits a three coming off
of a pin down from Tray Jackson Davis. He hits
another three off the dribble in transition, hits another three
off of a skip in transition from Pat Spencer. He
just comes in gunning right. I also really liked Tray
Jackson Davis with that group. He was just really active yesterday.
But that lineup, the Moses Moody, Brandon Pajemski, Buddy Healed trio,
(06:24):
just those three guys on the floor together in forty
nine possessions to start the season, a plus forty five
net rating. They have been very good to start the year,
and now Phoenix ended up cutting it to seven in
the early part of the fourth quarter. Devin Booker, who's
been fantastic to start the year, was really good in
that third quarter. They kind of worked their way back
(06:44):
into the game. But Steph really helps blow it open
with a little run there right in the early fourth quarter.
He runs off of a weak side screen off the
left wing where and we're gonna talk about this a
little bit more when we get to that mind the
game segment at the tail end of the show, but
just textbook Steph gravity come off of a Draymon pinned
down on the left side. Draymond slips out of it.
Both guys run with Steph. That forces Moody's man to
(07:06):
tag Draymond as he's slipping out of it. Draymond throws
a beautiful over the head pass to Moses Moody in
the corner. Boom nails a three. Then Steph gets also
a guitar on a switch toasts him off the dribble,
gets a driving layup. There was a hilarious play where
there's an impromptu double team thrown by Grayson Allen out
(07:27):
of the left corner, and so he double teams I
think it was Draymond if I remember correctly, and so
Buddy he or Moses Brandon Pajemski is wide open on
the left wing and he's just staying in there because
Grayson Allen double teamed right and Steph Curry's not even
ten feet away to Brandon's right or right at the
top of the key right.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
And it was.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Hilarious because you've got Jordan Goodwin who's hugged up to
Steph and he's just staring at Brandon Pajemski not maybe
eight nine feet away, like he could literally take one
and get a good contest. And he literally just stares
at Brandon Pajemski and lets him take a wide open
three on the left wing that he ends up hitting. Now,
(08:10):
on the one hand, it's like that's probably the right read,
like you should just stay hugged up on Steph and
dare Brandon Pejemski to hit the shot. But it's just
hilarious done the last to see a team essentially refuse
to make a defensive rotation out of fear of leaving
Steph Curry open. And then Moses Moody basically ice the game,
putting them up by nineteen by hitting another contested three
(08:32):
out of the left corner play where he might have
gotten fouled as you've got stripped down in the pocket.
Moses Moody hit five threes in the game, that fifth one,
putting them up by nineteen. A nice bounce back win
for Golden State after a rough end to last week.
They have a brutal early season schedule again. Back to
back Tonight in Sacramento, they have a bunch of back
(08:54):
to backs here to start the season. Sacramento has been
a little bit more feisty in their last couple of games.
They went in and beat Milwaukee, hanging one hundred and
thirty five on him, and they hung tough with Denver
the other night, So it's going to be a challenge.
Zach Lavine's scoring the ball at an extremely high level.
Demonis Bonus is finally waking up from his slumber to
start the season, so it's going to be a tougher
(09:14):
game to It's a tougher game than you would think
on the schedule tonight, on the tail end of a
back to back in Sacramento. Warriors fans, stay tuned for
the tail end of the show. I want to talk
a little bit about STEP's appearance on the Mind of
the Game podcast because I thought that was super interesting.
Today's show is brought to you by our new presenting sponsor,
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(11:10):
or Virginia. Sixers Bulls just an absolutely wild game. Came
down to a very simple dynamic. To start the game,
Chicago got absolutely fried by Tyrese Maxi.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
And Joe Lmbi.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
They had twenty one and the rest of the Sixers
had twenty four. Playing off of the attention those guys
were getting, they gave up forty five points in the
first quarter, seventy five in the first half, and then
in the fourth quarter the Bulls just completely locked them up.
Maxi had eight points in the fourth quarter and Beid
had zero. The rest of the Sixers has had eight
(11:44):
as they held him to just sixteen points in the
fourth quarter, just thirty six points total in the second half.
So tail two halves defensively for the Chicago Bulls, and
the first quarter, Philly just kind of methodically beat all
of Chicago's coverages. In two man game with Max and Embiid,
and Embiid was also giving some problems to one on one.
So first possession of the game, and be just drives
(12:06):
at Vusovich. Vu gets his left hand kind of in
on Embiid's right arm, and you know, Embiid, he's one
of the best rifters in the league, so he just
immediately throws up like a running jump shot from like
eighteen feet away from the basket, gets to the foul line.
They go right to maximb two man game, first possession,
Vouch is a little too far back. Maxi hits a
pull up three. Second possession, Vouch steps up higher to
(12:29):
the level to take away the pull up three. Maxi
hits em Bead in the pocket, and Bead hits a
little jumper in the short role. Then Vouch tries to switch.
So again we're methodically working through the coverages. A lower
drop than a higher drop. Now a switch. On the switch, uh,
Tyres Maxi just takes vouch out to the perimeter and
hits a pull up three right in his face. Then
(12:51):
Embiid posts up Vusovic and draws a second defender, hits
Tyres Maxi for a kickout three. Then Embid beats Vucevic
on a pick and pop three at the top of
the key. Int to make matters worse, they were getting
crushed on the margins during that stretch. Philly was getting
a bunch of offensive rebounds that were leading to kickout threes.
They were turning Chicago over and getting run out layups
(13:12):
and dunks.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
They ended up.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Taking a twenty one point lead in the first quarter,
just jumped all over Chicago. They went back and forth
for a little while from there until the mid third quarter,
and right in that mid third quarter run Chicago just
massively ramped up their intensity. They forced seven turnovers just
in the third quarter. They had seventeen transition points just
in the third quarter. Remember, this has been the best
(13:35):
transition team in the league to start the season. They
are averaging thirty six points per game just in transition,
which leads to the NBA decent margin two. They're about
three points over the second best team another forty five
points just last night in transition. In total, over the
course of the full forty eight minutes, they also completely
(13:56):
flipped the script on the offensive glass. They became the
team that's to get those extra possessions. They had nine
offensive rebounds in just the second half, so just a
complete and total reversal of just the intensity and all
the stuff and the margins that they were struggling with
at the beginning of the game. They finally started to
have a little bit of success guarding the Embiid Maxi
two man game. They settled on a coverage that they liked,
(14:18):
which was basically just bring Vucevic all the way up
to the level to get the ball out of Tyrese
Maxi's hands, and then they were coming early in help
like an early tag and really packing the paint. They
prayed on one of the weaknesses from Tyrese Maxi and
Joel Embiid, which is they can be a bit shoot first,
which isn't the right read when the team's guarding the
action three on two. The read there is to get
(14:40):
the ball to the other side of the floor right
like on the first possession during that run that started
in the middle of the third quarter. They come up
to the level, Maxi splits the screen and Josh Gidty's
just sitting there waiting as that third defender in help
and instead of making the kickout, Maxi just tries to
shoot through Giddy at the rim and he smokes the layup.
The very next possession, Joel Embiid slips out of the
(15:04):
at the level coverage, Maxi hits him in the pocket.
Instead of making the read, he just runs over Trey
Jones and commits an offensive foul. Now, Maxi still had
a lot to say. He's just been unbelievable to start
the year. Kept getting downhill on ball screens and hitting
little floaters and hitting shots. But in the fourth quarter,
the Bulls really started to swarm him when he was
(15:25):
getting downhill in those ball screens, and Tyree started forcing
the issue a little bit, which has been unusual for him.
He had a season low five assists and last night's game,
and then he finally started to miss some shots as
they started to swarm him, especially towards the end of
the game. He started settling for some tougher step back
jump shots and he was missing them. Several bulls got
(15:45):
key one on one stops against Maxie late where they
were gapping forcing him into those pull ups and he
was missing them, and they were tough for shots that
he was missing down the stretcher. It was a little
bit of them getting gassed, which we'll talk about in
a minute, and a little bit of the shot difficulty
kind of increasing as the game went along. And Nikola Vusevich,
who had struggled mightily against Embid early in the game,
got five one on one stops against Joel Embiid just
(16:11):
in the second half of the fourth quarter, just in
that final minute, final stretch of minutes there at the
end of the game, five one on one stops against Embid.
He did something that is usually a death sentence with Embiid.
He was very aggressive with ball pressure. He was reaching
in and jabbing at the ball. As we know, that
usually ends in Joel Embiid going to the foul line
(16:33):
right like he catches you with your hand in the
cookie jar and he just does those little ripped throughs
and gathers where he can get fouls right. But Tavuoch's credit,
he was surgical with it. He was jabbing with reaches
but quickly getting his hands out before Embiid could do
anything about it, and it flustered him. It disrupted his rhythm.
He poked the ball away from him a couple of times,
one on like a step through where he's actually going
(16:54):
up to take a shot, and right when he brought
the ball up into the pocket, Boots just came down
and slapped it out of his hands. He poked it
away from him from behind on a possession where he
kind of reached around from the opposite side. He just
dominated that matchup late in the game, and Embiid was
missing his jumper as he was just kind of getting flustered.
And then on the other end of the floor, just
(17:15):
really high level play from Vussevich and from Josh Giddy
like Vooch did a bunch of damage around the room.
He killed the Sixers in the second half, rolling out
of ball screens and getting offensive rebounds as he would
get like inside position on the guard or maybe the
just rolling hard on a harder drive and just getting
an offensive rebound. He got a big lefty hook in
the fourth quarter over his right shoulder. Josh Giddy was
(17:38):
getting his kind of classic big guard drives for floaters
and layups and then to win the game, a very
interesting kind of floor setup for Chicago. Instead of going
to that two man game using Vouch as the screener,
they end up tucking Vouch in the right corner down
by one it's one eleven to one ten, and they
situate Vouch in the right corner, which basically forces Embiid
(17:59):
to make decision right like, if he's gonna help at
the basket as a rim protector, you're gonna concede a
kickout three to Vouch. And so the action they end
up running is they run a ghost screen, so it's
Josh Gitty on the left wing. They have Kevin Herder
come up, who's being guarded by VJ Edgecomb, and it
works to perfection. Kevin Herder slips out VJ Edgecomb doesn't
(18:20):
want to switch. He stays glued up to Kevin Herder,
which causes Kelly Ubray, who's guarding Josh Gitty, to open
his stance just a little too much to Josh Gitty's
left hand and Josh just hits that gap. Hits that
gap as the natural kind of ghost screen opening that
happens is that switch doesn't occur and Kelly opens up
(18:41):
his stance, drives left, and Bead steps over to help
and be got some good pressure on the pass, but
Giddy made a really nice, like jumping out of bounds
like lefty hook pass to Vucevich in the corner. He
nails the corner three. He's been torching teams in spot
up situations to start this year. He nails the corner
three that puts Chicago up by two. Quentin Grimes actually
(19:02):
got a decent look to win the game coming off
of a pin down at the top of the key,
but he ended up missing. Now the Bulls are six
and one and in sole possession of the top seed
in the Eastern Conference is they come back to win
that game. This is very much a margin team, to
be clear. Like they're fourteenth and half court offense. That's average.
They're eighth and half court defense, that's solid. They're not
(19:23):
six and one because they're dominating in half court execution.
They dominate in the margins, and they've been good in
clutch situations to end games. They dominate the transition game.
They have a ten point per game margin on average
every single night in transition points they get thirty six
Their opponents get twenty six. It's like starting ten to
(19:45):
ozero on the scoreboard, just in transition points. They're a
good rebounding team. They do a good job of generating
open three point looks. Like they're shooting over forty percent
from three to start the season, and that's going to
be hard to maintain.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
But you know me, I hate when.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
People just attribute that thing to variants, like variance plays
a role, but it's it's further down the list than
some of the other things that determine shot result. And
let's give them some credit for running quality offense. The
Bulls generate eighteen unguarded catch and shoot threes per game,
which is the sixth most in the entire NBA. They
move the ball well and they get good shots. And
(20:20):
this is where we need to talk about Josh Gitty
and Nikola Vusovich. The two of them are just a
really difficult duo to guard, and they're getting great shots
out of ball screens and out of post ups. Josh
Giddy continued his absurd start to the season with twenty
nine points, fifteen rebounds, and twelve assists last night. He's
up to twenty three, ten and nine on the season
for his averages on fifty percent from the field, forty
(20:42):
two percent from three, seventy five percent from the line.
That's fifty nine percent in true shooting. And then Vuch's
torching teams and ball screens and playmaking out of the
post and spacing the floor with the shooting. He's averaging
nineteen points, twelve rebounds, and four assists to start the year,
sixty nine percent true shot shooting, forty eight percent from
three on four point four three point attempts per game,
(21:04):
doing a ton of damage on spot ups and especially
in transition trailing the play. The spot up situations kind
of like what you saw in that final possession is
a great example. And then in the post, he's run
thirty post ups to start the year, and he's been
getting a one to seventeen offensive rating on his post
ups including passes. Very much looking like a guy who's
in a contract year that wants to get paid one
(21:25):
more time, he's ooping his ass off. He is thirty
five years old, so I'm sure that will play a
role in those contract negotiations come come into the equation.
But he's playing some great basketball to start this year,
and you know, the Bulls are just getting a lot
of their success out of playing at an insane pace
in transition some really high three high level three point
shooting and clutch play right that transition piece, it just
(21:50):
requires so much effort on defense and running the floor
that when they look flat, like in that first half
last night or in the second against the Knicks as
another example, it can come apart for them because they're
not an the elite half court team at least to
start this season, right, But when they are playing at
a high intensity, it's really hard to keep up with
(22:11):
them and how fast they run up and down the floor.
But the reality is, as we know, teams will start
to scout that they'll be prepared for that transition attack.
The three point shooting will come down a bit that
will put a heavier strain on their half court units
on both ends of the floor, and that's when we'll
get a better feel for just how good.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
This Bulls team.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
And by the way, over on hard Rock Bet, the
Bulls are currently plus three thousand to win the East.
That is the tenth best line in the conference. I
thought that was super interesting. I don't think they're going
to finish the years the one seed or anything like that,
but tenth best odds is an interesting value bet, and again,
all of our lines are provided by hard Rock Bet. Now,
(22:52):
on the Sixers front, I was honestly super impressed by
them in the first half. I thought Embiid and Maxi
just tried to do too much down the stretch and
they kind of gassed themselves out, like a basic kind
of balance. To explain this to you, guys, those guys
took twenty six shots in the second half and the
rest of the team took only nineteen in.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
The first half. There was better balance.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Those two guys took twenty one shots and the rest
of the team took twenty eight shots. And I thought,
especially down the stretch, they just kind of hero balled,
and you know, they were both cold on their jumpers
and no one else was in any kind of rhythm. Again,
Quentin Grimes gets that wide open look late, but that
was like the only shot attempt he got down the
stretch of that game. I also just thought they looked exhausted.
They weren't getting the lift they needed on those jump shots,
(23:36):
and that's something that can happen when there's not a
lot of variety and you're just playing a lot of
that one on one, it's seventy five points in the
first half and just thirty six points in the second half.
I think that was just like a weird kind of
like step back for them offensively in terms of their
ball movement and like they're driving kick attack compared to
what they were doing earlier in the season. All right,
(24:02):
So the thunder in their late game run against the Clippers,
the Clippers controlled the first two thirds of that game
or so, James Harden was excellent.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
They were shooting the ball really well as a team.
They got one.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Point six y nine points per catch and shoot jump
shot in the first half. But Oklahoma City closes the
game on a sixty one to thirty seven run to
go up by as much as twenty five before winning
the game by nineteen. It got sparked by a couple
of those classic like defense to transition sequences, So like
(24:34):
Alex Cruz, So they were running this like little cross
screen for Zubots to try to get him in the
post on the block, and you run the cross screen
essentially to either force a switch so Zubots gets a
smaller defender to post up, or if you're going to trail,
so if that guy like fights over the top of
the screen, Zubots now gets deep post position because instead
(24:55):
of having to back that guy down close to the basket,
he's already trailing him on his back side, so he
just runs over to the block and wherever he stops,
as long as he holds his ground, he's going to
get a good.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Deep post catch, right well.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Crusoe spent a good amount of time in the second
half on Chris Dunn where he was able to roam
and do a bunch of damage, and then the rest
of the time he's on James Harden. Did a really
good job on James Harden as well, but on the
possessions with Chris Donn, he was doing a lot of
stunting off of him and just kind of being a
disruptive roamer, and he sparked the run the first play
on that sixty one to thirty seven run, he ends
(25:28):
up peeling off of Chris Dunn as Zubots breaks open
on that little cross screen and he jumps back and
ends up deflecting the post entry pass that ends up
running out the other way for a Crusoe layup on
the other end of the floor. Then Chet gets in
on the action. He gets two great contests, one on
a hard end floater where he steps up late, and
then another one on a Zubot's offensive rebound attempt as
(25:49):
he left Zubots to make the contest. Zoo got the rebound,
but he recovered and got a great contest on Zoo
and forced another miss case on Wallace pays it off
with a big driving layup and trainransition the other way.
So stop turn or turnover, layup, stop layup, classic thunder
defensive transition sequences that got the lead down from five
(26:12):
to one. And by the way, I want to shout
out Chet here because like Zoo won a lot of
battles on the glass in that game. I think he
had four offensive rebounds, but Chet was battling with him,
and as a team they were doing a great job
of like gang rebounding in those situations and they won
some battles and Chet got some big defensive rebounds during
that third quarter run. Then Shay goes on a little run.
(26:33):
He attacks Harden in a guard guard screen. Harden defends
it like shit. Shae gets a wide open layup, he
gets Batoom in a guard guard screen hits him with
a quick dribble combination, hits a step back three over
the top. All of a sudden, Oklahoma City's up four.
The momentum is shifted. Clippers up five. Now the Thunder
are up four. He attacks Zu Bots in a ball screen,
makes a beautiful spin move over his left shoulder and
(26:54):
makes a kickout to Aaron Wiggins on the right wing.
He hits a three bang right Bogdan Bogdanovich with a
quick couple of scissor dribbles right to left, gets to
the basket for a layup. The run is starting to
gain a ton of momentum. Now right Isaiah Joe comes
in and hits a couple of threes, one off the dribble,
one off of a skip pass. Shay hits another pull
(27:16):
up three over Malcolm brogged into or over Bogdan Bogdanovitch
excuse me to end the third quarter. All of a sudden,
the Thunder are up by eight going into the fourth quarter,
and it could have been worse too. Brook Lopez hit
a couple of bombs against pretty good contests, one against
jay Lynn Williams, who came in and got a great
contest on a Brook Lopez three at the top of
(27:36):
the key just hit a tough shot and then another
one where he pumped fake to get the defender off
his feet knock down a shot. Otherwise, the thunder could
have been in big time control before we got to
the fourth quarter, but in that fourth quarter the thunder
just completely slammed the door shut. Crusoe and Hartenstein combined
for like a classic like Steph Curry action, like they
looked like Steph Curry and Draymond Green, where Crusoe's cutting
(27:57):
along the baseline. Hartenstein gets the ball and just throws
like a between the legs pass backwards to Crusoe running
out to the corner, and Cruso just running out to
his left side right left footwork just rises up and
knocks down the three like the spitting image of that
classic Golden State Warriors action. Thunder up by eleven, AJ
Mitchell gets a put back chet Holmgren hits a right
(28:20):
shoulder fade over the top of Brook. All of a sudden,
it's thunder by fifteen. And then at this point in
the middle of the earl ish kind of early third
of the fourth quarter, with a thunder up by fifteen,
AJ Mitchell came in and just utterly closed the game
with excellent pick and roll shot creation over and over
(28:41):
and over again, just putting the clippers in the blender,
scoring the ball and making great reads as he blows
the game open. Starts with a drop coverage look, he
attacks the big gets a left handed layup, so as
a result, the very next possession, brook Lopez wants to
step out higher, why so that he can stop aj
Mitch from getting ahead of Steam going towards the basket.
(29:02):
That opens the short roll past to Hartenstein. Hartenstein sees
Chet cutting along the baseline, perfect lob dunk that's created
by the lefty layup by AJ Mitchell that forced brook
Lopez to try to stop his momentum further away from
the basket. Now the thunder are up. By nineteen, he
had another one where he comes screaming down the lane
in a ball screen and he smokes a layup, but
(29:24):
he occupies brook Lopez as the rim protector. That leaves
Hartenstein a runway to just come in right behind him
and get an offensive rebound put back. We even got
a little Chet Isaiah Hartenstein two man game mixed in
here where Chet gets the ball screen from hart and
Sign and Chet returns the favor with a beautiful little
lobb to Hartenstein over the top. It's just an avalanche.
It's like bucket after bucket after bucket. Another aj Mitchell
(29:47):
ball screen where Lopez comes high on the at the
level coverage that forces James Harden to tag Isaiah Hartenstein
on the roll kick back to Chet on the pop
extra pass to Aaron Wiggins wide open on the left
wing because Harden went to tag the roller wide open three.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Once again.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Aj Mitchell's scoring twice in the early fourth quarter. He
gets ahead of Steam on the ball screen. If you
let him get over the top and you give him
a runway, he's so damn fast. He just explodes off
that right leg and he finishes with his left hand right.
They got two easy buckets like that. That forces the
big to come up to the level. As soon as
(30:26):
the big comes up to the level, you're defending the
action three on two. Now Now it's just about making
the reads and it's like easy, little tic tac toe
Hartenstein to Chet on the lob dunk, easy to little
tic tac toe, toss back to Chet on the pop,
extra pass to Wiggins on the left wing, wide open three.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
That goes in.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
It was just an absolute avalanche, and then aj closes it.
They're up twenty two. He gets a ball screen off
the left side, same exact thing at the level tag
beautiful cross court lefty skip pass that hits Isaiah Joe
right in the shooting pocket the right corner. He knocks
it down and now the Thunder are up by twenty five.
(31:04):
It was just an avalanche. They never stopped defending at
that crazy chaos causing level. And you can handle it
for a time, But how many games have we seen
like that with the Thunder where it's like teams are
hanging with them for like twenty four minutes, maybe for
thirty minutes, but then right around that, like mid to
late third quarter, it's just that onslot for the Thunder
just gets too much. The other team starts to let
(31:27):
go of the rope a little bit, and next thing
you know, they're up twenty five. It happens all the time.
It happened dozens of times last year. And they're just
playing beautiful offense right now, Shay's playing like an MVP.
I continue to be blown away by the level of
offense that they're getting from their deeper bench. Since JDub
has been out like AJ Mitchell was downright surgical and
pick and roll down the stretch. As we broke down
(31:48):
in detail, you have guys like Aaron Wiggins who are
hitting shots and Isaiah Joe since he's come back, has
been a godsend in terms of their spacing. Chet and
Isaiah Hartenstein have just such brilliant I low chemistry on
their lobs. They read each other in the middle of
the floor and on the baseline so well, and they're
obviously going to do so much damage to you and
transition off of their stops eight to no to start
(32:11):
the year looking like an absolute juggernaut. And you know,
I was frustrated when I heard that Kawhi was out
because the Thunder had played a light schedule last week
and I just wanted to see them challenged. I wanted
to get another look at them against a good team.
And here's the thing, this is just what the Thunder do.
Like they're Superstar and Shaye, he never misses a game.
(32:32):
He's one of the most reliable guys in the league.
And then as a team they win the war of attrition.
We talked about this in the Lakers segment yesterday. But
when I see teams that start to rack up wins
when main guys are out of the lineup, it's always
evidence for me of depth of talent in strong basketball culture.
And there's a clear depth of talent as we're seeing
(32:53):
guys like Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins and aj Mitchell
slide into bigger offensive roles and chet and Isaiah Hartenstein
in their read and react in the middle of the floor,
just giving them another level on offense that you didn't
see a couple of years ago. Right like that is
the depth of talent the strong basketball culture is the Hey,
we're down our second best player, but we're a kick
ass defensive team, and we're gonna play this way every
(33:17):
single night, every single possession. And you might be able
to keep up with it for a little while, but
the minute you let go of the rope, we're gonna
blow the game open. I mean, they're eight to zero
and they've been down their second best player all season.
They've just been looking like the best team in the
league by far. To start this campaign, right before we
get out of here today, I want to talk about
(33:37):
this Steph interview with Lebron. I had several little takeaways.
First of all, I want to shout out Lebron because,
like you would think in a situation like that, Lebron
is just he's very much the center of attention type
of personality. To Lebron's credit, I thought he did a
good job of backing the hell off and just letting
Steph run the interview like that. Everyone's there to see Steph.
(33:58):
This is your podcast. You're gonna have plenty of opportunity
to talk in other situations. Lebron just kind of backed off.
Steve Nash did a wonderful job just kind of queuing
up questions and Lebron like popped in here and then
to offer his perspective. But it was very focused on
Steph and his upbringing, his basketball development, his basketball philosophies,
(34:19):
and honestly, one of the biggest things that stood out
to me, Steph is just a remarkably smart dude. He's
a great speaker, He's great at explaining his basketball philosophy.
I found it to just be like, very easy to
listen to and very easy to understand how he feels
about the game. There were so many interesting things that
(34:40):
he dug into. I loved when he started talking about
his body and the work that he put in behind
the scenes to essentially build out all the elements of
strength training to facilitate his style of play. He kept
talking about this idea of building the chain, and like
I talk about shooting with the concept of energy transfer, right,
this idea of like there's a power you push down
(35:03):
on the floor with your feet right as you're jumping,
but there is a chain of energy that goes all
the way from your ankles to your knees, to your hips,
to your core, all the way up through your shoulders.
That that is the transfer of energy through to the
top of your shot. And any power that you lose
in that chain puts extra stress on the top of
(35:25):
your shot, and then it gets harder for muscle memory.
When the muscle memory can be very easy and light,
it's easy to replicate it, right, But when you lose
energy up the chain, that's what forces it to be
a higher stress shot at the top.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Of the shot.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
And it's one of those things where like I just
loved hearing him break down like all the specific details.
He specifically emphasized core, which I thought was really interesting.
He kind of was talking about like that kind of
popping of the hips that occurs on most basketball movements
and the idea that like that is an area where
a lot of players lose power. And I just thought
(36:01):
it was a really interesting breakdown of the weight room
because the weight room is like something that we've talked
about this on the show, Like, I think it's one
of the most underrated elements basketball development. Basketball is contact sport,
and you're dealing with physicality in every phase, whether you're
setting screens, fighting through screens, fighting to get open, driving
to the basket and winning that leverage battle and drives,
boxing out for rebounds.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
We can go on and on.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
There's a million different ways that strength plays a role,
but one of the biggest ones that we talked about
is your base on your shot. You're like Steph talked
a lot about this, not in this particular interview, but
in previous interviews. About the summer of twenty fifteen, after
having won the title and should have one finals MVP.
(36:44):
In that summer, he dramatically increased his leg strength and
he experienced like a six point per game leap in
his scoring average literally from like strength from increasing the
strength of his base. That is the when you're sprinting
full speed and you stop on a dime and rise up.
(37:04):
It is all leg strength and footwork that is what
allows you to get into your shots. Steph's superpower, right
is his jump shot. It's when Steph is open. Ever
since the Davidson days, that shit's going in. And so
the battle is how do you get the amount of
shots that you need? And actually thought he did an
interesting job talking about how like h with Bob Myers
(37:28):
coming up to him and being like, hey, like, I
think we should get you up to fifteen threes per game,
and like Steph's initial reaction was kind of like damn,
Like you know how hard it is to get fifteen
threes up in a game? And He's right. The point
is is like when you're a shooter and they're guarding
you like a shooter, You're not just open fifteen times
a game. It's not like, oh, I'm gonna get my
(37:48):
eighteen shots, I might as well make fifteen of them threes. No,
you gotta get open fifteen times for decent quality three
point shots. And that is all in that leg strength,
that chain that Steph is talking about the ability to
move and then to stop at any point in time
and rise up and shoot. There's other elements to it, right,
(38:09):
Like we're gonna talk about the offense in a minute,
the ball handling piece, the fluidity of connecting your dribble
to your shot. There's obviously a lot more that goes
into it. But I just thought all the stuff that
Steph was talking about with building the chain physically to
be an elite shooter was just a you think of
shooting as being like, oh, let's just go shoot a
thousand shots a day, and I'm not gonna sit here
(38:30):
and pretend like that's not the case. Like you've got
to put in the work behind the scenes. But there
is a huge, like body building element to it that
I think is under discussed, and I really enjoyed him
breaking that down. I loved the bit that he talked
about was Steve Kerr's offense, So he essentially talked about
that transition from you know, they win fifty games with
Mark Jackson summer of twenty fourteen, they end up bringing
(38:52):
in Steve Kerr. And one of the things that Steve
Kerr that Stephan said that Steve Kerr said to him
when he was kind of holding out the initial offense
was the idea of he was like, I just want
to make the defense make a ton of decisions on
every single possession. And of course, my ears, those of
you guys who have listened to the show over the years,
(39:13):
you know that's a concept that we talked about all
the time. My ears immediately perked up because I was like,
that's super fascinating, because talk about being ahead of your time.
This has been something that I've been keyed in a
lot over the last years. Twenty fourteen is eleven years ago.
Like Steve Kerr was so ahead of the curve with
his like basketball philosophy in the idea of generating good
shots through essentially making a defense make a ton of
(39:37):
decisions on every single possession. So, for instance, like if
you're running, let's just look at the two like most
dramatic opposite examples. Right, So we have the Steph Curry
Golden State Warriors ball and player movement offense, and then
we've got like the Luca don chicch spread pick and
roll offense. Now there's a lot more complications in the
Lakers version of it, but if you go back to like,
(39:59):
you know, twenty twenty two or twenty twenty four, where
it's like a lot of like just spread, pick and
roll type of stuff with Luca. It's there's not a
lot of decisions being made on the possession right, like
the balls getting brought out the floor. It's very brute force.
It's can you guard Luca in this one coverage or
in this one on one right, Like there's you know,
(40:22):
at the level, there's deeper drop, there's blitz, there's switch,
and in each of those four, you're essentially like removing
decision making and putting all of it on the job
of Luca. To beat that coverage like deeper drop, he's
got to go hit mid range jump shots right against that.
(40:42):
As the defender gets trapped on a side, he works
him into the lane, hits those little floaters right higher
drop or blitz. It's gonna be the short role. You're
hitting the guy in the pocket. Now we're playing four
on three out of that right the switch.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Now we're.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Get giving a big an opportunity to guard Luka Danci
John an island, or a small guard an opportunity to
guard Luka Dancijohn an island. The lack of ball in
player movement removes a lot of the decision making. The
guys who are off the ball have pretty basic roles
right that each of them have a help and recover
responsibility depending on which spot they are in that shell
drill right. Then you flip the script to the Golden
(41:21):
State Warriors offense and it starts with pace.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
You're playing the ball up the floor quickly early in
the shot clock, and then there's multiple interchanges. Steph made
this like really simple example. He was like, He's like,
let's say that there's a guy who gets a kickout
three on the right wing out of like one action.
So just imagine a guy rips from the left wing,
nail help from the right wing, swing pass guy takes
(41:46):
a three. Steph was like, that's not the same as
the exact same shot that comes out of a possession
where the balls already switched sides of the floor two
or three times. There's a rhythm that from people touching
the basketball. There are upsides to getting deeper into the
possession and making them guard multiple actions above and beyond
(42:09):
the rhythm part. Over the course of that, you present
all of these opportunities for someone to mess up. If
Steph runs off of five screens in a possession and
you defend the first three really well, you switch them properly,
or you stay attached physically and have help on any
sort of back cut, and then all of a sudden,
(42:30):
on the fourth one, two guys run with Steph. Someone
messed up. Now someone's wide open on the slip, and
someone's getting a wide open shot. A perfect example last
night is Steph running off of that wide pin down
from Draymond. Draymond slips into the open space, then he
throws the behind the head pass to Moses Moody in
the corner. That's a mistake that comes from the ball
(42:51):
and player movement that forces a defense to make so
many decisions on each possession. And when I heard that,
I was just like, of course, Steve or was on
top of this concept, like way back in the summer
of twenty fourteen, he was ahead of the curve, and
he took what was already a good team in that
Golden State Warriors team, and pushed him up to sixty
(43:12):
seven wins by essentially weaponizing the threat of Stephan Clay's
shooting through multiple actions on every single possession that forced
defenses to make a ton of decisions. And as soon
as somebody messes up, there's your opening. It's it takes
an enormous amount of trust, and like Steph talked about it,
how it was kind of sloppy at first, and it
took them a little while to kind of like figure
(43:33):
out what kind of shots they were going to get
in the offense and how to you know.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Basically how to execute it.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
But I was just really fascinating to hear Steve, like
Steph essentially point out that Steve Kerr was breeding this
idea of like using ball in player movement to force
defenses to make a ton of decisions on every single possession,
inevitably leading to the mistakes that lead to the openings.
(44:00):
Last thing I'll say overall, you know, I just was
thinking about it as I was watching the show. I
just think Steph is so damn cool, and he's so smart,
and he's so fun to listen to talk about the game,
and he's become you know, I think he's the fifth
best perimeter player of all time. He's become literally one
of the very best basketball players to ever touch the floor.
(44:22):
And it's just kind of funny because I hated his
ass ten years ago. I hated him because obviously I
was a younger fan and I was rooting for the
for the Lebron led Cleveland Cavaliers, right, and so rooting
against him made me hate him. But it's been so
funny because like over the course of the last you know,
six or seven years, especially as I've started to really
(44:45):
learn about the game, as I've studied the NBA and
tried to become more familiar with how NBA basketball works,
and then obviously just getting distance from from the rivalry.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Like Steph's just one of.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
My favorite basketball players of all time, and he he's
just completely won me over and I just really really
enjoyed listening to him just talk about basketball for forty
five minutes yesterday. It was an excellent pod. I'm looking
forward to part two. I'm hoping that they kind of
dive more into the Steph Lebron rivalry in that second episode.
I would imagine they will, and so I'm excited to
(45:18):
see that when they come.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Out with that.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
All right, guys, it's all I have for today, As always,
to sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting
the show. We'll be back tomorrow with more game reaction.
I'll see you guys then.
Host
Jason Timpf
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