Thunder-Lakers Reaction: OKC has 70 win potential + Jokic & Nuggets dominate, Steph leads Warriors W
November 13, 2025 • 45 mins
Jason reacts to the Oklahoma City Thunder dominating the Los Angeles Lakers behind an impressive day from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and a defense that stopped Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves. He discusses the Lakers’ struggles in the context of OKC and why getting LeBron James back might not be enough. Then he breaks down Nikola Jokic getting 55 points in a Denver Nuggets victory over the Los Angeles Clippers and Steph Curry leading the Golden State Warriors to a bounce-back win over Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
All right, welcome to hoops tonight.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
You're at the volume heavy Thursday, everybody, hope all if
you guys are having a great week so far. Got
a jam packed show for you guys. Today, we're gonna
be hanging out West. I have three games I want
to hit on as the Oklahoma City Thunder finish an
incredibly impressive two day set, just absolutely beating the shit out.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Of the Warriors and the Lakers.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I want to dig into some numbers there that are
super exciting for thunders fans at Thunder fans, I want
to talk a little bit about the specific reason why
I thought the Lakers struggled so much last night. Later
on the show, Nikole Jokic a double nickel fifty five
against the Los Angeles Clippers, just absolutely Friday beats a
Zubots as well as Brook Lopez was sitting a ton
(00:55):
of threes. I want to get into a bunch of
stuff from that game on the perspective of both teams.
And at the tail end of the show, the Golden
State Warriors got a very nice bounce back win on
the road in San Antonio. Draymond Green did number one
on one as a defender against Victor Webbin Yama. Steph
Curry breaks out at with a thirty one point second
half as the Warriors get a big win there. I
(01:16):
want to dive into some stuff from both of those
teams in that game as well. There was also a
lot of Eastern Conference hoops last night. I didn't get
a chance to get to those games this morning because
I ran out of time, but I would like to
get to them in tomorrow's show. We have a very
light slate tonight, so if you have any questions regarding
last night's Eastern Conference games, drop them in the YouTube
comments in this show and we will get to them
(01:38):
in tomorrow morning's mail bag. You guys know the joke
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(01:59):
you guys, follow us there more content throughout the season.
In the last but not least, if you want to
get mailback questions in again, tomorrow is our mail bag.
This is your last episode to get questions in before
tomorrow's mailbag again, just go into the YouTube comments right
mail bag with Colin, write your question on the full
episode on YouTube, and we'll get to those in our
Friday mail bags throughout the remainder of the season. All right,
(02:20):
let's talk some basketball. So, in a stunning repeat of
what happened the previous night against Golden State, the Thunder
defense just completely dismantled a Western Conference contender, this time
on national television, and this time against a Lakers half
court offense led by Austin Reeves and Luka Doncic that
had been one of the very best in the league
(02:40):
to start this season. The Lakers that going into the night,
I think there were second or third right right in
that range in overall half court offensive rating. Even after
last night there's still I believe sixth and half court
offensive rating. That was one of the best half court
offenses in the league, and the Thunder just belt to
ass just completely shut them down. The Lakers posted a
(03:03):
stunning zero point seven to eight points per half court
offensive possession, just ridiculous defensive performance from the Thunder. I
was worried about how well Cason Wallace would hold up
on Luca because he's giving up so much size. This
is something we talked about in yesterday's show, and we
talked about at the beginning of the stream on playback.
After losing him a few times on the opening possessions,
(03:25):
I thought he was just fine in that matchup. The
rest of the game. I thought all of Oklahoma City's
defenders did a fantastic job pressuring Luca on his way
up the floor. But then as Luca would get downhill
and as he get into that scoring zone in that
like you know, eighteen to twelve feet kind of range,
short range around the elbows or so, as soon as
you get into that area, they disconnect and they'd get
(03:47):
their hands off. So then when Luca would go with
those kind of janki gatherers to try to get up
into his mid range jump shot, they were keeping him
off the foul line for the most part. They forced
him into a lot of kind of just awkward shot
attempts where it seemed like Luca was more fixated with
trying to draw a foul than just playing basketball, and
it worked. They held him to just seven for twenty
(04:09):
from the field. Early in the game, I thought, okay,
Soe did a wonderful job of pressuring Luca in their blitzes,
got a bunch of deflections and forced him into four
turnovers in his first shift. They did an awesome job
on Luca, no problems there, and then they basically just
completely neutralized Austin. I thought they won that battle from
the opening tip. You could tell in Austin's first shift.
(04:30):
We were watching it on playback with Anthony Irwin, and
just right away you could tell there was a lack
of aggression. He gets like a little ball screen and
Hart and Stegin's pretty far back in a drop And
this is a guy in Austin who's been torching teams
all year by attacking, attacking, attacking, getting into bodies, drawing fouls,
getting all the way to the rim for finishes, and
(04:51):
Austin like settled for like a pretty tough drifting drop
coverage three on one of his first attacks when there
was a nice big runway in front of him with
plenty of opportunity to get ahead of Steam towards the basket,
and he just didn't want to. I thought that the
psychological side of it for Austin, he just didn't have
the right approach coming into the game. And then over
the course of the game, when Austin looked to attack,
(05:13):
he just couldn't get anything going. He was just four
for twelve with five turnovers in this game. And you know,
I saw a lot of negativity surrounding Austin after the game,
and like to be very clear, like, I don't think
it necessarily has anything to do with whether or not
Austin is good enough to justify a max contractor whether
or not he's good enough to be Luca's number two.
(05:34):
To me, like, set that this aside for a second.
It's more just if you're gonna have any shot to
beat Oklahoma City, you need Austin to be better. So
if Austin can't be better than that against Oklahoma City,
you're dead on arrival. I think he can be better
than that, but he certainly wasn't. Last night, the Thunder
defense took two guys who had essentially been frying everyone
else in the league and just completely shut them down.
(05:57):
Combined eleven for thirty two from the field for Austin
and Luca generally kept them off the foul line relative
to the amount of drifting they were trying. Nine turnovers,
and a Laker offense that has been one of the
best half court offenses in the league could not score
in the half court. I think we all might still
be underrating this Thunder defense, if that's even possible. I
(06:18):
came up with a couple of basic stats this morning
to demonstrate this to you guys. So, according to Cleaning
the Glass, the Thunder have played three hundred and twenty
nine non garbage time possessions with Shake Gildess Alexander off
the floor. Three hundred and twenty nine possessions. That's like
more than three games worth of possessions three forty eight
(06:38):
minute games. With all that time with Shay off the floor,
they are outscoring teams by twenty one points per one
hundred possessions plus twenty one net non garbage time no Shay,
they are whooping teams' asses without their best player on
the floor. And it's because in those possessions they are
(07:02):
logging a ninety one defensive rating that is off the
charts good. They blew that game open last night, Like
when Shae left the game, they were up double figures.
I think they were up like twelve. They blew that
game open in the early second quarter last night. Was
Shay off the floor just with defense, just blowing up
(07:22):
Laker offensive possessions. Alex Cruso's ripping Austin Reeves at half court,
They're running down, hitting threes, getting easy baskets on cuts.
AJ Mitchell was torching the Lakers, just coming off a
simple two man game and hitting Hartenstein in the pocket.
The Thunder annihilated the Lakers in like a five minute
stretch to start the second quarter and blue the game
(07:43):
open because they are so damn good on defense. And
the crazy thing is is it doesn't seem to have
any sort of connection to who's on the floor.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
You take Chet off the floor, for.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Instance, and Chet, by the way, I mean, I'm not
trying to undersell Chet. You watch Chet. He is the
anchor for this defense. He's unfreaking believable on defense. He
was amazing in each of the last two games. But
even if you take Chet off the floor, So no Chet,
no Shay, no j Dub, So none of their three
(08:16):
best players they have a plus twenty four net rating
in one hundred and fifty eight non garbage time possessions.
Because of how elite they are on defense, you take
dort off, they're great on defense.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Even if you take Alex.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Crusoe off the floor and Alex Cruso, the on numbers
with Alex Cruso on the floor with their defense are
like completely outrageous. You take Crusoe off the floor, they
have a one zh six point five defensive rating, which
isn't transcendently great like it is when Alex is on
the floor, but that's still a ninety third percentile defense.
(08:52):
This preaches organizational excellence from the top down with Sam
Presty targeting high motor, high IQ athletic defensive players that
can also play in Mark Dagnel's system all the way
down to Mark Dagnall and just the standards that he's implementing,
the expectations, the attention to detail, the level of focus,
(09:13):
energy and intensity that he breeds into that team from
the top guy all the way down to the fifteenth man,
to the example that Shake Gill Alexander sets. He's getting deep.
Posted by Ruy Hachimura in a transition play and he's
fighting his ass off to scrap over the top and
poking the ball away on the post entry, getting deflections,
(09:34):
defending on the ball. Everyone from the top down is
completely bought into this Thunder basketball identity, and so regardless
of who's on the floor, they look the same. They
look the same. It is a consistency down the entire organization.
(09:55):
They're chewing teams up and spinning them out with his defense.
And then you bring in the fact that they have
a perennial MVP candidate and shake Gilgess Alexander that's gonna
drop an efficient thirty every single night. Or the fact
that chet holmgrin this year is averaging nineteen points per
game on seventy two percent true shooting, drilling pick and
pop threes, drilling spacing threes along the left wing, putting
(10:17):
the ball on the floor, and scoring in the short
range with little right shoulder fade aways or left shoulder
fade aways. The dunker spot work that he does. He
catches everything and dunks everything when he is left open
underneath the basket, even if he's outside the lane line.
It's j Dubbs coming back to this. AJ Mitchell is
(10:38):
blossoming into the next great Thunder role player. As a team,
they're growing as processors and just their read and react sequences.
I was talking with an OKC fan on playback last
night shout out Will, and we were talking about this,
but like, they're fun to watch now. There were times
in the past where it was like, Okay, we grind
things down in defense and then it's a lot of
(10:59):
Shae on one and the ball doesn't move really well.
There's a lot of breaking threes. They move the ball
really well. Now they have great player movement, the cutting,
the movement, the variety, and the way that they look
to attack. I've really enjoyed watching them this year. And
(11:19):
if you look at their schedule, they're about to win
their next six games for sure, and then after that,
you know, obviously every game on the schedule, you can
argue they're gonna be favored. This team is about to
be eighteen and one. That would mean they'd only need
to go fifty two to eleven to get to seventy wins.
That's less than a sixty eight win pace, and they
(11:39):
won sixty eight games last year, so all they have
to do is essentially maintain the pace they had last year.
And they're gonna win seventy one games right now. At
this point, I think it's roughly a coin flip that
they're gonna get to seventy and they have a good
chance to make a run at the all time record,
(12:00):
the seventy three wins record, because if you have that
flexibility to be that good regardless of who's on the floor,
if you're consistently chewing up and spitting out teams with
your defense, even with two of your top three perimeter
defenders out of the lineup, to your top four perimeter
defenders in JW and Loudort out of the lineup, if
(12:22):
you're still getting stops with chet Holmgren off the floor,
if you're still able to run up the score and
blow teams out when your MVP level ball handler is
on the bench. The last time we saw anything like
this was the KD Steph Warriors, and that had two
of the top three players in the world, two of
(12:42):
the top twelve players.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Of all time.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Had one of the very best defensive players of this era,
if not the best, in Draymond Green. Klay Thompson, who
was the second best shooter in the world in an
elite perimeter defender, a guy who's capable of going for
thirty seven points in a quarter, and Andre Guadala arguably
the best wing defender of his era, certainly in the
top two or three, and a beautiful connective fit with
(13:05):
that Warriors offense. It was like this greatest roster ever
assembled and okaysee is chewing up and spitting out teams
at that level right now with guys out of the lineup.
I I just couldn't be more impressed with the thunder
and the way they've looked to start this season. On
the Lakers front, there's going to be a tendency over
(13:27):
the next couple of days to focus on the roster
and its limitations, and I don't want to pretend those
limitations don't exist. The Lakers did look on athletic last night.
DeAndre Ayton really seemed to struggle with just the level
of intensity and physicality underneath the basket. You know, if
Rui wasn't getting a wide open three, he seemed to
be struggling to score, put the ball on the floor
in the midrange a little bit, and was struggling to.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Get off there.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Like there's there's certain things where they looked a little
athletically over matched last night. But I always start with
the stars. Everything for me trickles down from that idea
of exactly what I said about Stephen Curry in the
Tuesday night game. If you guys remember Steph couldn't break
(14:08):
down Oklahoma City's defense last night, Luka Doncic couldn't break
down Oklahoma City's defense, and neither could Austin. Luca was
drawing two to the ball, but he wasn't beating the
blitz with the right pass. He had a couple of
buckets that he got out of it, but there were
a lot of turnovers, and there were several sequences where
he made like the wrong read, like, oh, the guy's
(14:31):
wide open in the corner and he's actually guarded on
the wing, but I'm gonna throw it to the wing,
where now it's got to be a second pass to
the corner, and so now Shay can make the rotation
to Jake Laavia, he's no longer open. The blitz worked,
or a deflection or a pass that didn't quite get
into the right spot. And it's not one hundred percent
Luca's faulted. There were some plays where guys were there
were several sequences where I thought, instead of short rolling,
(14:52):
guys were rolling too hard to the rim. And now
all of a sudden, you're just making for some really
difficult passing angles. I don't want to pretend like if
it's all Luca's fault, but the bottom line is when
Luca was in single coverage or drop coverage situations, he
was unable to score when he got two to the ball.
He was unable to compromise the defense with the right
read going to Austin, same exact concept, Unable to score
(15:13):
when he had scoring opportunities, unable to consistently generate quality
advantage opportunities when he would pass the.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Ball from there.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
I don't expect anybody in the league to just thrive
in any sort of matchup against an elite basketball team
if you can't set them up with advantages. In other words,
I don't care if that was Herb Jones at the three,
Aaron Gordon at the four, and Jared Allen at the five,
just three excellent above average starters as role players. Two
(15:42):
a guys at those positions next to Austin and Luca,
they're still getting their ass kicked last night. If Austin
and Luca can't compromise Oklahoma City's defense. I think it's
important to separate those issues. Yes, do the Lakers have
an athleticism shortcoming?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Absolutely?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Is Is Lebron gonna be able to help? Yeah, to
some extent. Is it gonna be enough? Probably not. They're
probably still gonna need some sort of assistance in athleticism
in two way play at some point down closer to
the trade deadline, through the flipping of contracts like Max
Kliba and Gabe Vincent and things along those lines, like, Yeah,
that's a conversation we can have, but they're dead on arrival.
(16:24):
If Austin and Luca can't generate quality shots, if Lebron
can't help them generate quality shots against the Thunder. We
talked about this all the time. It's about advantage creation.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
If you.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Establish easy opportunities for your role players because of how
good your stars are, they're probably gonna thrive. If you
don't generate quality opportunities for them, because you're not setting
them up with great advantages, they're probably gonna look limited.
And that's what it came down to for me last night.
(16:59):
Austin and Luke weren't breaking the Thunder defense at the
point of attack, which was shortening all those windows, all
those driving lanes, all those closeouts, every little opportunity was
just tight and congested, and so of course they really
struggled against an elite defense when they weren't being gift
wrapped advantages, which is the job of Austin and Luca.
(17:19):
So I just think it's I think you're gonna see
a lot of stuff talk about the Lakers roster over
the course of the last over the course of the
next couple of days before they play again. I think
that's kind of missing the point of what happened last night.
If Austin and Luca go in there and they drop
sixty on sixty five percent true shooting, and they don't
(17:40):
turn the basketball over and okaysee starts reacting to them,
and they make the kickout passes and the reads that
get guys quality opportunities. I think Ruey has a better game.
I think Eaton has a better game. I think Jake
Gravey has a better game. I think all of them
have better games. I think those things are connected, and
I just think I think last night was mostly about
Okay just destroying the Laker offensive initiators. One last note
(18:06):
on the Lakers before we move on Luka Doncicch in
his last five games has taken eighty eight jump shots
and he's gotten just sixty four points to zero point
seventy three points per shot. It's been something that kind
of started to show in that Miami Heat game, and
it's been pretty consistent down the line over the course
of the last week and a half. If lucas not
making jump shots, it kind of takes him down from
(18:27):
that like I'm in the conversation with the very best
player in the world like Jokic to I'm just another
guy in that top tier, and that to me is
kind of like a differentiator between the levels that Luca
can reach. And he just hasn't been shooting the jump
shots super well as of late. Obviously, small sample size
was a small sample size when he's shooting amazing to
(18:48):
start the year. It's a small sample size when he's
shooting terribly right now. Ultimately, what level this team can
get to is gonna have a lot to do with
what does Luca's large sample jump shooting look like. Is
going to be able to consistently knock down those short
jump shots, especially when they get into big playoff moments,
just something to keep an eye on as we get
further into the season. Today's show is brought to you
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or Virginia. Nuggets Clippers did not look great early for
the Nuggets. Last night came John and left the game
with some kind of like arm shoulder injury in his
shooting arm, so let's hope that's not too serious. Christian
Brown sprained his ankle. Jamal Murray was having a rough
shooting night. The Denver defense was rough to start the game,
(21:13):
but Nikole Jokic kept them in the game by just
absolutely frying the Clippers center rotation. He got a lot
of one on one opportunities against Zubots and Zubots again,
is like in theory, one of the better Jokic defenders
in the league is a guy that can kind of
match his size and mobility and IQ and he just
cooked him, just absolutely cooked him last night. Then brook
(21:35):
Brook Lopez came in, he cooked him too. He torched
both of them and picking pops and spacing situations. He
had five out of six threes last night. He's up
to thirty nine percent on the season. That was a
big part of what kept him in the game early,
you know, hitting a big three in the second half,
two that capped off a run that put him up
by fourteen. But he had thirty three points in the
first half alone to keep the Nuggets afloat while things
(21:56):
were coming apart. A little bit, and then in the
second half, David Adelman starts Tim Hardaway Junior and Spencer
Jones in the Cam Johnson and Christian Brown spots, and
as a group, they locked in on defense and they
started to get a bunch of stops. They started to
get out in transition. Jokic got a couple easy transition buckets.
Tim Hardaway hit a couple of threes with that unit.
You know, watching him with the starting group was super
(22:18):
interesting to me because I think there's this like kind
of there's this concept that can feed on itself with
catch and shoot shooting when you're being aggressive. So like
Jokic is hunting Tim Hardaway Junior with kickout passes because
he knows Tim wants to shoot, he knows Tim will shoot,
and Tim's knocking down shots, and I think it's like,
(22:40):
you know, we'll see what this Cam Johnson injury ends
up being and how long he ends up being out.
I'm hoping it's not something serious going on with his shoulder.
But again, when you look at Michael Porter Junior and
what his fit was like with his team, he was
so aggressive off the catch that it was kind of
self feeding in the sense that as he would make shots,
guys would hunt him more, that would lead to more opportunities,
(23:03):
which was why Michael Porter Junior was the kind of
guy that on any given night could go for twenty
five thirty points and just kind of was a ceiling
razor for that Denver offense. There's been a bad combination
with Cam of like not super aggressive off the catch,
but also not making shots. And I just thought it
was interesting seeing Tim with the starters in that second half,
like that first shift in the second half, because it's
(23:24):
a reminder that, like this stuff will feed on itself,
Like I watched Jokic hunting Tim because he knows he
wants to shoot and he knows he's gonna knock the
shot down, and that both of those areas are kind
of tilting in the wrong direction for Cam, and I
just want to see when Cam comes back. That's what
Michael Porter Junior was doing, That's what Tim Hardaway Junior
is doing. Be super aggressive off the catch. That will
(23:47):
then allow the team to start hunting you more, which
will then help you get an even better rhythm. Or
then we can start seeing Cam go for twenty twenty
five points in a night and be that ceiling raising
player that we know he's capable of being. So yokichends
up hitting a three at the top of the key.
It makes up what ninety to fifty six or ninety
to seventy six if I remember correctly, that kind of
(24:08):
blew it open and that a Denver never really looked
back from there. Jokic finished the game with fifty five points,
twelve rebounds, and six assists. And again, that's one of
the best Yokic defenders in the league. Last night that
Jokic just looked completely comfortable against made him look hopeless.
Jokicch in the post. I want to zoom in on
(24:28):
this concept for a minute. When Jokic shoots out of
the post this season, he is thirty four for forty
four from the field. That's seventy seven percent. We often
talk about his short range touch, right, Like, the big
difference between Jokic and a lot of the other elite
scorers in NBA history is he's not a guy that's
(24:50):
going to get to a mid ranger that he makes
half the time, or a three that he's going to
make forty percent of the time. He's going to get
to something closer to the basket and he's going to
hit it two thirds of the time. That's been the
calling card for Jokic, mid sixties on floaters and hooks
at his absolute peak high sixties, right around seventy percent. Right, well,
(25:11):
how about the mid seventies. Yokic has started this season
twenty eight for thirty eight on floaters and hooks at
seventy four percent from the field on those shots. He's
sixty four percent on mid range jumpers. That's crazy, eighty
one percent on layups. That's crazy. He's somehow even more
(25:35):
deadly as a short range shot maker than he used
to be. And it's turning the Jokics post up into
far and away the most dependable play in the entire
game of basketball right now when you factor in all
Jokics post ups. So this is shot attempts, turnovers, passing
sequences out of his post ups. Anytime you throw the
(25:56):
ball to yokicch in the post. According to Synergy, the
Nuggets have a sixty two percent chance of putting points
on the board in that possession. Just shy of two
thirds of the time that you dump the ball down
to Jokic in the post, you're scoring on that possession
and in terms of large sample efficiency, how about a
(26:17):
one thirty one offensive rating on possessions where you post
Nikola jokicap pretty insane last six games for Yokic's averaging
thirty six points, twelve rebounds, and eleven assists, seventy four
percent from the field, fifty six percent from three, eighty
(26:37):
six percent from the line. This is the best offensive
basketball player ever, playing the best basketball of his career,
and in a field where Yannis has been unbelievable, and
Luca obviously before last night has been unbelievable, and che
yojess Alexander has been unbelievable, and Victor Wimbnyama has been unbelievable.
(26:59):
Jokic still just looks like he's better than all those guys.
He's just playing unbelievable basketball right now. Thirty six twelve
and eleven over his last six games on seventy four
fifty six splits. It's unbelievable stuff. On the Clippers situation,
I don't want to spend too long here because they're
kind of drifting out of relevance at this point in
(27:19):
the NBAL, though that we'll see if they end up
making some trades that end up affecting other teams. You know,
I understood the thought process behind going after you know,
when you make the trade, the Norman Powell trade, right,
and it brings back John Collins. There was an important
order of operations that they were going with.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
There.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
There's an athletic dynamic when you have a really big
athletic forward who plays hard, which is what John Collins is.
He's like a high motor athlete at the ford position,
and you layer that alongside real size and rebounding physicality
at the center position with Zuobots, Right. We see this
elsewhere in the league. A perfect example of it is
literally like what Nikola Jokic and Aaron Gordon represent together.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
We've seen you know, crazy versions of it defensively with
like Giannison Brooke back in the heyday of the Milwaukee Bucks.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
But when you have that like big athletic forward next
to the big bruising center, and that athletic forward's job
is just to be this like kind of wrecking ball
on the margins, there's like a there's an athletic dynamic,
a physicality dynamic that they were trying to bring to
the table by making the John Collins trade and that
has worked for the record, like John Collins has looked
(28:33):
like he helps this basketball team in some real ways.
The problem is is you end up sending Norman Powell
out in the process. Right, And I understood the thought
process of like, okay, well, what if you bring in
Bradley Beal. Can Bradley Beal when he's healthy be a
rough approximation of what Norman Powell was in theory? Yes,
it was a high risk play. Right if if Bradley
(28:57):
Beal ends up coming in and looking good and John
Collins comes in and fills that very specific need, Okay,
we're cooking with Greece, right, cooking with gas whatever, the
expression is, Right, You're in good shape there. But you
get the terrible combination of Bradley being both bad when
(29:18):
he's on the court and now injured. And he was
injured on and off throughout the stretch before he ended
up injuring his hip, right, so you get basically nothing
out of Bradley Beal. It gets exacerbated by the fact
that James Harden comes into camp in a little less
good of shape than he was last year. Gets exacerbated
by the fact that Kawhi Leonard ends up getting hurt.
(29:39):
It gets exacerbated by the fact that Chris Paul ends
up coming in and not playing super well to start
the season, and now things are going south, and like
again there's a lot of like discussion surrounding Okay, should
the Clippers have kept Norman Powell. Well, if you keep
Norman Powell, you gotta pay him. If you got to
pay him, now, you're tying up your cap longer term.
(29:59):
If you type your cap longer term, you're kind of
more committed to this core. I think the Clippers more
or less we're looking at this season as somewhat of
a last hurrah. Anyway, there's no reason to like really
invest long term into this particular group. They wanted to
retain flexibility. So if you sign Bradley Beale to a
discounted contract, it just theoretically is a more flexible type
(30:22):
of move than signing Norman Powell. So like, on the
one hand, it's easy to just be like, well, they
let Norman Powell walk. That was a bad idea. Now
they're not as good. Well, it's like, were they going
to win the title? Probably not. They were just a
second tier contender. Anyway, everyone seemed to be aware of that,
so making the move to tie up your cap long
(30:43):
term to give yourself a better shot when you're still
not a top tier contender, Like, I'm not going to
judge the Clippers for making that move. That said, you know,
we talk a lot about how when you're looking at
your spectrum of potential outcomes as a team, there's like
things that need to happen on the good side for
you to reach your goals, and then there's things that
could go the other way to lead you being bad. So,
(31:05):
for instance, like with the Thunder, if you look at
all the injuries that they've had in order for them
to be successful, you needed Shay to be better than
he was last year. He has been. You needed Chet
to take an offensive leap he has. You needed one
of your deeper bench ball handlers to kind of pop
on offense. You have Aj Mitchell has popped right. You
(31:27):
needed to maintain the defensive identity from last year, even
though you're in a defending champion campaign where usually effort
can wayne a little bit. They've been amazing on defense
to start the season. So all of these little swing
factors have gone in the positive direction, and you're getting
a thunder team that's going to be eighteen and one
in a week and a half.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Similarly, with the Clippers, what would you have needed for
things to go right for them? You would have needed
Bradley be able to stay healthy and to be, you know,
seventy percent of what Norman Powell was. You needed Kawhi
Leonard to stay healthy and play at it at least
a second tier superstar level. You needed James Harden to
come into camp just like he did last year and
set the tone from the start of the season as
(32:08):
an advantage creator. You needed Chris Paul to come in
and be what he was last year, one of the
best pick and role players in the NBA. You needed
all of these things to go your direction, and instead
they all went the opposite direction. You know, you see
a team one of the Clippers now like three and eight.
They're having a brutal start to the season. Whenever you
see stuff like that, you can't blame one thing. It's
(32:29):
all of the things. James not quite as good, Kawi
Hurd again, Norman Palell's gone having a career year down
in Miami. Bradley Beal's injured again, and when he was healthy,
he wasn't playing well. Like all those things go the
opposite direction. Now you're looking at a three and eight
Clippers team, So, like, I think it's way too early
in the season to just bail on things. You want
(32:50):
to see how it goes. Maybe Kawhi Leonard comes back
and things get better. Maybe they're able to make a
trade at some point for a higher level offensive player
to kind of help anchor things. There's a very into
this story where they can write the ship. But if
we get another month into this and they're ten and twenty,
that's where you need to start having more complicated conversations
about capitalizing on the assets that you have in order
(33:12):
to set up your next phase of Clippers basketball. And
they don't know their pick. I was reading the thing
this morning. Okay, see has their swap for the next
two years? Is that could get pretty That could get
pretty brutal for the entire NBA if the Clippers end
up going south. And okay, so he ends up capitalizing
(33:32):
on it all right, Warrior spurs One small bright spot
from a rough night for me last night as a
basketball fan, as I watched my Lakers get completely and
utterly dismantled, I did go on a rant yesterday about
how I thought the Warriors were better than they've looked
(33:53):
to this point, and I predicted that they would go
into San Antonio and win. I think they're gonna beat
San Antonio tonight. And even though they were on the
tail end back to back, and that ended up being
one of the few things I was right.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
About last night.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
I just thought they had a light workload against Oklahoma
City because of the blowout, Right, you didn't have big
minute totals for anybody. I thought it was a really
tough game for Steph to come back, like going from
you know, being out with that upper respiratory illness which
can affect her conditioning so much. Stepping into that Oklahoma
City blenders just a really tough game. But he built
(34:26):
it a little built a little bit of rhythm, got
his wind. He looked like he was an awesome rhythm
last night. As far as back to backs go on
the road, it was a short flight, right, like you're
just going from Oklahoma City to San Antonio. And then
I thought the Golden State defense was a good matchup.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
For the Spurs. I thought they were built well for it.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
They've got the types of physical defenders to guard Wenby,
and they've got the coach and Steve Kerr that's going
to be able to see any sort of opportunities to
double team and cause the same problems that Wenby's had
in the past. Now it looked different than I expected,
because I thought the Warriors would double Wenby more, and
they did on occasion when he would get a smaller
defender on a switch. They were doubling basically every time
he put the ball on the floor and Draymond wasn't
(35:05):
on him, they were sending a double team, but they
essentially let Draymond stick in one on one, and Draymond
did a number on him in this game. And it's
like it's all relative because like Wemby's insanely talented, and
he had thirty one fifteen to ten in this game.
Kind a little bit of a rhythm late in the
game on Draymond when the game was already out of reach,
and hit a couple jump shots over the top of him.
(35:27):
But for the most part, he was capitalizing on the
opportunities when he got Draymond off of him. Whether Draymond
was on the bench and Jimmy was the primary defender
or chaos situations like off ball situations when Draymond was
in help or you know, transition, that sort of thing.
He found his way to score. But in his one
on ones, I think he missed his first seven shots
(35:50):
with Draymond guarding him one on one. In the second half,
in particular, you could see him, even in single coverage
against Draymond look not comfortable putting the ball on the
floor and kind of just passing the ball out of
those one on one. So, just a wonderful job from
Draymond Green, who's arguably the best defensive player of this
era and still to this day is one of the
(36:10):
most impactful defensive players in the league. I thought he
did a wonderful job on Victor wembin Yama last night.
And then Steph Curry just exploded in the second half,
thirty one points on thirteen shots. Just in the second half.
Got a couple of clean looks against Wemby in deeper
drop coverages where ball screens. They ran like a little
double screen at the top where Wemby was sagging way back,
like almost around the elbow. Easy breezy, little pull up
(36:32):
three for Steph Curry. He found a one on one
matchup that he really liked. He liked Julian champagnee one
on one, and he was giving him a bunch of
work every time he got him where there was a transition,
cross match or through a screening action, he just was like,
get out of my way. I'm just gonna attack Julian
Champagne one on one, a little bit of a bigger,
slower wing compared to some of the other guards. It's
all he had to do was really get into his
(36:52):
body and then step back and then he was able
to get a good amount of separation. He was beating
Wemby in switches just by driving past him, generated shots.
Passing out of that. He drew a foul on him
by driving past him and then doing the textbook kind
of like jump backwards type of play to draw the
foul on Wemby. He got loose in the chaos of transition.
In offensive rebounds, Gary Payton was awesome in this game
(37:14):
on the offensive end as like a cutter and as
a screener. Little release valvel underneath the basket also did
a bunch of damage on the offensive glass. He had
a sequence late in the game where he got back
to back offensive rebounds that both led to Steph Curry threes.
Missed the first one, but made the second one in
that left corner. Steph just did a ton of damage
in the chaos of the game in the second half
as well. It just looked like he was in a
(37:35):
much better rhythm than he was in against ok Se
and he finished with forty six points, five rebounds, five assists,
just one turnover, got to the foul line sixteen times.
Really nice game from Steph Curry. I thought Jimmy Butler
was excellent in this game. Kind of started with the
rescue possession. He hit like a contested catch and shoot
three along the right wing when the shot clock was
(37:55):
running down. But he hit so many big threes in
the second half the Spurs were basically daring him to
shoot sagging way off. He had a big one in
crunch time along the left wing as well, the usual
kind of little bits of shot creation when Staph was
off the floor once again drawing fouls by getting into
the teeth of the defense and taking weird driving angles
and getting defenders out of position. Moses Moody deserves a
(38:17):
ton of credit for the damage he did in the
first half of this game that helped keep them attached
when the Warriors got off to a little bit of
a rough start again. We mentioned Gary Payton in the
job he did on offense in the second half. Just
a really nice bounce back win for the Warriors. I
did want to talk briefly about this Jonathan Kamingas stuff,
So after the thunder game, I thought this was kind
(38:41):
of lame. But there was a lot of passive aggressive
comments being made by the Warriors veterans that seemed to
be targeted towards the younger players. Specifically. No one was
named by name, but it was pretty clear they were
hinting at guys like Jonathan Kaminga and Brandon Pajemski in particular.
I thought it was kind of lame because it was like,
you got your ass kicked against Oklahoma City because all
(39:03):
of you played poorly, like and Steph in particular had
a bad game against Okay see and no shame in that. Okay, Okay,
So he just did the same thing to Luca and Austin.
Oklahoma City is a transcendently great defense. They did the
same thing to Kevin Durant earlier in the season. They
are a huge pain in the ass. It's not about
Oklahoma City. I just thought, let me just let me
rephrase it like this. Okay, So you don't want to
(39:27):
play Kaminga with the starters. You don't think he's a
good fit. You think your lineup construction makes more sense
to bring him off the bench in a smaller role.
You want to go with the guy like Will Richard
in the starting lineup or Moses Moody in the starting lineup.
You want guys that are more natural fits and Golden
State system. That's fine. Just say that, Just say, hey,
(39:49):
you know, we tried the cominga with the starters thing
to start the season. You know, he had his moments,
had some reads that he made that he wasn't making
in years past, a little bit more refined in some
of his attacks. But ultimately, now that we're a few
weeks into this thing, now that we're almost a month
into this thing, we think he's better coming off of
the bench.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
We're going to transition into that role. Just say that.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Like, do I think Kaminga has been very good in
the last week and a half or so.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
No.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Do I think he's starting to regress a little bit
in some key areas, Yes, But like passive, aggressively, essentially
blaming him for the situation that the team is in
is ridiculous. You toast it off a game against the
Pacers because your stars were fucking off like Steph was
brutal at the end of that game. You lost a
couple more games.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Because Steph got sick.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
That happens the situation you blew a game against Milwaukee
where Jannis didn't play like you like, take some personal responsibility,
like again, I'm you know me, I've never been a
huge fan of the kaminga fit. I think again, he
showed some positive strides to start the season. I have
been an advocate generally for trading him over the course
(40:57):
of the last couple of years. So I'm not disagreeing
with you in principle about the idea of the way
the team should be run in terms of the rotation.
But like I did, think it was kind of lame
for them to take those like pretty passive aggressive stances
in the press conferences after Oklahoma City and again you
want to give them some competitive leeway. Again, it's a
thunder ass kicking, right. No one's happy after an ass kicking,
(41:20):
And when you're grouchy, you might say some things you
might not otherwise say. But I just thought it was like, hey, like,
you guys got your ass kicked. It wasn't Jonathan k
minga's fault. Like, yeah, he had a few turnovers in
that game, he made a few bad decisions. Johnathan kming
is not the reason you get your ass kicked by
the thunder. I thought it was just kind of a
little bit ridiculous to target those guys the way that
they did. And I know they denied it, and I
(41:40):
know Draymond was going after Kevin o'connory yesterday and you know,
basically saying that he wasn't talking about those guys. But
that's just if you've learned anything as an adult, I
deny deny as literally just the approach that everyone takes
with any sort of accusation of any kind. I still
remain bullish on the Warriors. Really nice bounce back, Wayne.
We're going to be covering them on playback on Friday
(42:02):
night for round two of that of that Spurs Warriors matchup.
I just again, I'm I'm just I just don't think
there's any need for the post game stuff that we
saw on Tuesday night on the Spurs front. I loved
how Wemby found opportunities to score when he got free
of Draymond. There's this idea that some young basketball players
(42:24):
have where it's like, I've got a demonstrate that I
can beat this guy, and it's like, no one's giving
you bonus points for scoring against the other team's best defender.
That's just playing stupid basketball. When you get guarded by
one of the best defensive players of all time, your
goal should be get him off of me, Like find
(42:48):
a way to not have to score against Draymond, and
he did throughout the game, little guard screens that would
get him switched onto a guard where you get a
quick opportunity to attack, or a quick opportunity to draw
devil team and pass out it getting Draymond's screen. And
you could see a lot of that in the second half,
like using screens on Draymond so that as the ball handler,
Wenby could get into some over the top shots off
(43:10):
of the dribble. Transition chaos, offensive rebound chaos, all those opportunities.
Find your dozen times a game where you can get
that dude off of you, be aggressive, and that's how
you end up with thirty one, fifteen and ten despite
struggling with the individual matchup of Draymond Green. So I
was really impressed by Wemby there He and dearon Fox
(43:31):
have to take better care of the ball though. One
of the things that we're seeing early on with the
Fox Wemby pairing is in ball screens teams are defending
them three on two consistently. Warriors did it a bunch
last night, and so those corner skips are open and
deeron Fox is sneaky good at that. The spurs generated
to like completely butt naked corner threes off of Wenby
Fox two man game where you know, Fox kind of
(43:54):
got downhill, low Man comes over, finds that little passing
angle and makes that swing out to the cour They're
gonna get a lot of really good shots out of
the Dear and Fox ballscreen situation, both with Wemby off
the ball and with Wenby as the screener. That that's
going to work. But the turnovers killed them. There were
a couple of bizarre turnovers from darreon Fox in this game.
(44:16):
He had a lob in this game that was like
maybe like seven or eight feet too high. Some swing
passes and cross court passes from all from those two
and from Steph Castle. Steph Castle had a bad one
in the second half that he turned over to Steph.
There's a certain amount of ball security stuff with san
Antonio right now. It's starting to come to the forefront
that they got to work through in order to get
(44:37):
to where they want to go. All right, guys, It's
all I have for today is always sincerely appreciate you
guys for supporting us and supporting the show again. We
will be back tomorrow morning for our mailbag, and I
want to touch on some of those Eastern Conference games
from last night, So drop your questions regarding those games
and anything else. Anything is fair game in the YouTube comments, whatever,
mail bag tomorrow and then again tomorrow night on playback
(44:58):
for Warrior Spurs.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
I'll see you guys. Tat
The volume.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
All right, welcome to hoops tonight.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
You're at the volume heavy Thursday, everybody, hope all if
you guys are having a great week so far. Got
a jam packed show for you guys. Today, we're gonna
be hanging out West. I have three games I want
to hit on as the Oklahoma City Thunder finish an
incredibly impressive two day set, just absolutely beating the shit out.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Of the Warriors and the Lakers.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I want to dig into some numbers there that are
super exciting for thunders fans at Thunder fans, I want
to talk a little bit about the specific reason why
I thought the Lakers struggled so much last night. Later
on the show, Nikole Jokic a double nickel fifty five
against the Los Angeles Clippers, just absolutely Friday beats a
Zubots as well as Brook Lopez was sitting a ton
(00:55):
of threes. I want to get into a bunch of
stuff from that game on the perspective of both teams.
And at the tail end of the show, the Golden
State Warriors got a very nice bounce back win on
the road in San Antonio. Draymond Green did number one
on one as a defender against Victor Webbin Yama. Steph
Curry breaks out at with a thirty one point second
half as the Warriors get a big win there. I
(01:16):
want to dive into some stuff from both of those
teams in that game as well. There was also a
lot of Eastern Conference hoops last night. I didn't get
a chance to get to those games this morning because
I ran out of time, but I would like to
get to them in tomorrow's show. We have a very
light slate tonight, so if you have any questions regarding
last night's Eastern Conference games, drop them in the YouTube
comments in this show and we will get to them
(01:38):
in tomorrow morning's mail bag. You guys know the joke
before we get started. Subscribe to Hoops and I YouTube
channel so 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 a podcast few
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on that front. Jackson's doing incredible work on our social
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(01:59):
you guys, follow us there more content throughout the season.
In the last but not least, if you want to
get mailback questions in again, tomorrow is our mail bag.
This is your last episode to get questions in before
tomorrow's mailbag again, just go into the YouTube comments right
mail bag with Colin, write your question on the full
episode on YouTube, and we'll get to those in our
Friday mail bags throughout the remainder of the season. All right,
(02:20):
let's talk some basketball. So, in a stunning repeat of
what happened the previous night against Golden State, the Thunder
defense just completely dismantled a Western Conference contender, this time
on national television, and this time against a Lakers half
court offense led by Austin Reeves and Luka Doncic that
had been one of the very best in the league
(02:40):
to start this season. The Lakers that going into the night,
I think there were second or third right right in
that range in overall half court offensive rating. Even after
last night there's still I believe sixth and half court
offensive rating. That was one of the best half court
offenses in the league, and the Thunder just belt to
ass just completely shut them down. The Lakers posted a
(03:03):
stunning zero point seven to eight points per half court
offensive possession, just ridiculous defensive performance from the Thunder. I
was worried about how well Cason Wallace would hold up
on Luca because he's giving up so much size. This
is something we talked about in yesterday's show, and we
talked about at the beginning of the stream on playback.
After losing him a few times on the opening possessions,
(03:25):
I thought he was just fine in that matchup. The
rest of the game. I thought all of Oklahoma City's
defenders did a fantastic job pressuring Luca on his way
up the floor. But then as Luca would get downhill
and as he get into that scoring zone in that
like you know, eighteen to twelve feet kind of range,
short range around the elbows or so, as soon as
you get into that area, they disconnect and they'd get
(03:47):
their hands off. So then when Luca would go with
those kind of janki gatherers to try to get up
into his mid range jump shot, they were keeping him
off the foul line for the most part. They forced
him into a lot of kind of just awkward shot
attempts where it seemed like Luca was more fixated with
trying to draw a foul than just playing basketball, and
it worked. They held him to just seven for twenty
(04:09):
from the field. Early in the game, I thought, okay,
Soe did a wonderful job of pressuring Luca in their blitzes,
got a bunch of deflections and forced him into four
turnovers in his first shift. They did an awesome job
on Luca, no problems there, and then they basically just
completely neutralized Austin. I thought they won that battle from
the opening tip. You could tell in Austin's first shift.
(04:30):
We were watching it on playback with Anthony Irwin, and
just right away you could tell there was a lack
of aggression. He gets like a little ball screen and
Hart and Stegin's pretty far back in a drop And
this is a guy in Austin who's been torching teams
all year by attacking, attacking, attacking, getting into bodies, drawing fouls,
getting all the way to the rim for finishes, and
(04:51):
Austin like settled for like a pretty tough drifting drop
coverage three on one of his first attacks when there
was a nice big runway in front of him with
plenty of opportunity to get ahead of Steam towards the basket,
and he just didn't want to. I thought that the
psychological side of it for Austin, he just didn't have
the right approach coming into the game. And then over
the course of the game, when Austin looked to attack,
(05:13):
he just couldn't get anything going. He was just four
for twelve with five turnovers in this game. And you know,
I saw a lot of negativity surrounding Austin after the game,
and like to be very clear, like, I don't think
it necessarily has anything to do with whether or not
Austin is good enough to justify a max contractor whether
or not he's good enough to be Luca's number two.
(05:34):
To me, like, set that this aside for a second.
It's more just if you're gonna have any shot to
beat Oklahoma City, you need Austin to be better. So
if Austin can't be better than that against Oklahoma City,
you're dead on arrival. I think he can be better
than that, but he certainly wasn't. Last night, the Thunder
defense took two guys who had essentially been frying everyone
else in the league and just completely shut them down.
(05:57):
Combined eleven for thirty two from the field for Austin
and Luca generally kept them off the foul line relative
to the amount of drifting they were trying. Nine turnovers,
and a Laker offense that has been one of the
best half court offenses in the league could not score
in the half court. I think we all might still
be underrating this Thunder defense, if that's even possible. I
(06:18):
came up with a couple of basic stats this morning
to demonstrate this to you guys. So, according to Cleaning
the Glass, the Thunder have played three hundred and twenty
nine non garbage time possessions with Shake Gildess Alexander off
the floor. Three hundred and twenty nine possessions. That's like
more than three games worth of possessions three forty eight
(06:38):
minute games. With all that time with Shay off the floor,
they are outscoring teams by twenty one points per one
hundred possessions plus twenty one net non garbage time no Shay,
they are whooping teams' asses without their best player on
the floor. And it's because in those possessions they are
(07:02):
logging a ninety one defensive rating that is off the
charts good. They blew that game open last night, Like
when Shae left the game, they were up double figures.
I think they were up like twelve. They blew that
game open in the early second quarter last night. Was
Shay off the floor just with defense, just blowing up
(07:22):
Laker offensive possessions. Alex Cruso's ripping Austin Reeves at half court,
They're running down, hitting threes, getting easy baskets on cuts.
AJ Mitchell was torching the Lakers, just coming off a
simple two man game and hitting Hartenstein in the pocket.
The Thunder annihilated the Lakers in like a five minute
stretch to start the second quarter and blue the game
(07:43):
open because they are so damn good on defense. And
the crazy thing is is it doesn't seem to have
any sort of connection to who's on the floor.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
You take Chet off the floor, for.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Instance, and Chet, by the way, I mean, I'm not
trying to undersell Chet. You watch Chet. He is the
anchor for this defense. He's unfreaking believable on defense. He
was amazing in each of the last two games. But
even if you take Chet off the floor, So no Chet,
no Shay, no j Dub, So none of their three
(08:16):
best players they have a plus twenty four net rating
in one hundred and fifty eight non garbage time possessions.
Because of how elite they are on defense, you take
dort off, they're great on defense.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Even if you take Alex.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Crusoe off the floor and Alex Cruso, the on numbers
with Alex Cruso on the floor with their defense are
like completely outrageous. You take Crusoe off the floor, they
have a one zh six point five defensive rating, which
isn't transcendently great like it is when Alex is on
the floor, but that's still a ninety third percentile defense.
(08:52):
This preaches organizational excellence from the top down with Sam
Presty targeting high motor, high IQ athletic defensive players that
can also play in Mark Dagnel's system all the way
down to Mark Dagnall and just the standards that he's implementing,
the expectations, the attention to detail, the level of focus,
(09:13):
energy and intensity that he breeds into that team from
the top guy all the way down to the fifteenth man,
to the example that Shake Gill Alexander sets. He's getting deep.
Posted by Ruy Hachimura in a transition play and he's
fighting his ass off to scrap over the top and
poking the ball away on the post entry, getting deflections,
(09:34):
defending on the ball. Everyone from the top down is
completely bought into this Thunder basketball identity, and so regardless
of who's on the floor, they look the same. They
look the same. It is a consistency down the entire organization.
(09:55):
They're chewing teams up and spinning them out with his defense.
And then you bring in the fact that they have
a perennial MVP candidate and shake Gilgess Alexander that's gonna
drop an efficient thirty every single night. Or the fact
that chet holmgrin this year is averaging nineteen points per
game on seventy two percent true shooting, drilling pick and
pop threes, drilling spacing threes along the left wing, putting
(10:17):
the ball on the floor, and scoring in the short
range with little right shoulder fade aways or left shoulder
fade aways. The dunker spot work that he does. He
catches everything and dunks everything when he is left open
underneath the basket, even if he's outside the lane line.
It's j Dubbs coming back to this. AJ Mitchell is
(10:38):
blossoming into the next great Thunder role player. As a team,
they're growing as processors and just their read and react sequences.
I was talking with an OKC fan on playback last
night shout out Will, and we were talking about this,
but like, they're fun to watch now. There were times
in the past where it was like, Okay, we grind
things down in defense and then it's a lot of
(10:59):
Shae on one and the ball doesn't move really well.
There's a lot of breaking threes. They move the ball
really well. Now they have great player movement, the cutting,
the movement, the variety, and the way that they look
to attack. I've really enjoyed watching them this year. And
(11:19):
if you look at their schedule, they're about to win
their next six games for sure, and then after that,
you know, obviously every game on the schedule, you can
argue they're gonna be favored. This team is about to
be eighteen and one. That would mean they'd only need
to go fifty two to eleven to get to seventy wins.
That's less than a sixty eight win pace, and they
(11:39):
won sixty eight games last year, so all they have
to do is essentially maintain the pace they had last year.
And they're gonna win seventy one games right now. At
this point, I think it's roughly a coin flip that
they're gonna get to seventy and they have a good
chance to make a run at the all time record,
(12:00):
the seventy three wins record, because if you have that
flexibility to be that good regardless of who's on the floor,
if you're consistently chewing up and spitting out teams with
your defense, even with two of your top three perimeter
defenders out of the lineup, to your top four perimeter
defenders in JW and Loudort out of the lineup, if
(12:22):
you're still getting stops with chet Holmgren off the floor,
if you're still able to run up the score and
blow teams out when your MVP level ball handler is
on the bench. The last time we saw anything like
this was the KD Steph Warriors, and that had two
of the top three players in the world, two of
(12:42):
the top twelve players.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Of all time.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Had one of the very best defensive players of this era,
if not the best, in Draymond Green. Klay Thompson, who
was the second best shooter in the world in an
elite perimeter defender, a guy who's capable of going for
thirty seven points in a quarter, and Andre Guadala arguably
the best wing defender of his era, certainly in the
top two or three, and a beautiful connective fit with
(13:05):
that Warriors offense. It was like this greatest roster ever
assembled and okaysee is chewing up and spitting out teams
at that level right now with guys out of the lineup.
I I just couldn't be more impressed with the thunder
and the way they've looked to start this season. On
the Lakers front, there's going to be a tendency over
(13:27):
the next couple of days to focus on the roster
and its limitations, and I don't want to pretend those
limitations don't exist. The Lakers did look on athletic last night.
DeAndre Ayton really seemed to struggle with just the level
of intensity and physicality underneath the basket. You know, if
Rui wasn't getting a wide open three, he seemed to
be struggling to score, put the ball on the floor
in the midrange a little bit, and was struggling to.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Get off there.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Like there's there's certain things where they looked a little
athletically over matched last night. But I always start with
the stars. Everything for me trickles down from that idea
of exactly what I said about Stephen Curry in the
Tuesday night game. If you guys remember Steph couldn't break
(14:08):
down Oklahoma City's defense last night, Luka Doncic couldn't break
down Oklahoma City's defense, and neither could Austin. Luca was
drawing two to the ball, but he wasn't beating the
blitz with the right pass. He had a couple of
buckets that he got out of it, but there were
a lot of turnovers, and there were several sequences where
he made like the wrong read, like, oh, the guy's
(14:31):
wide open in the corner and he's actually guarded on
the wing, but I'm gonna throw it to the wing,
where now it's got to be a second pass to
the corner, and so now Shay can make the rotation
to Jake Laavia, he's no longer open. The blitz worked,
or a deflection or a pass that didn't quite get
into the right spot. And it's not one hundred percent
Luca's faulted. There were some plays where guys were there
were several sequences where I thought, instead of short rolling,
(14:52):
guys were rolling too hard to the rim. And now
all of a sudden, you're just making for some really
difficult passing angles. I don't want to pretend like if
it's all Luca's fault, but the bottom line is when
Luca was in single coverage or drop coverage situations, he
was unable to score when he got two to the ball.
He was unable to compromise the defense with the right
read going to Austin, same exact concept, Unable to score
(15:13):
when he had scoring opportunities, unable to consistently generate quality
advantage opportunities when he would pass the.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Ball from there.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
I don't expect anybody in the league to just thrive
in any sort of matchup against an elite basketball team
if you can't set them up with advantages. In other words,
I don't care if that was Herb Jones at the three,
Aaron Gordon at the four, and Jared Allen at the five,
just three excellent above average starters as role players. Two
(15:42):
a guys at those positions next to Austin and Luca,
they're still getting their ass kicked last night. If Austin
and Luca can't compromise Oklahoma City's defense. I think it's
important to separate those issues. Yes, do the Lakers have
an athleticism shortcoming?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Absolutely?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Is Is Lebron gonna be able to help? Yeah, to
some extent. Is it gonna be enough? Probably not. They're
probably still gonna need some sort of assistance in athleticism
in two way play at some point down closer to
the trade deadline, through the flipping of contracts like Max
Kliba and Gabe Vincent and things along those lines, like, Yeah,
that's a conversation we can have, but they're dead on arrival.
(16:24):
If Austin and Luca can't generate quality shots, if Lebron
can't help them generate quality shots against the Thunder. We
talked about this all the time. It's about advantage creation.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
If you.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Establish easy opportunities for your role players because of how
good your stars are, they're probably gonna thrive. If you
don't generate quality opportunities for them, because you're not setting
them up with great advantages, they're probably gonna look limited.
And that's what it came down to for me last night.
(16:59):
Austin and Luke weren't breaking the Thunder defense at the
point of attack, which was shortening all those windows, all
those driving lanes, all those closeouts, every little opportunity was
just tight and congested, and so of course they really
struggled against an elite defense when they weren't being gift
wrapped advantages, which is the job of Austin and Luca.
(17:19):
So I just think it's I think you're gonna see
a lot of stuff talk about the Lakers roster over
the course of the last over the course of the
next couple of days before they play again. I think
that's kind of missing the point of what happened last night.
If Austin and Luca go in there and they drop
sixty on sixty five percent true shooting, and they don't
(17:40):
turn the basketball over and okaysee starts reacting to them,
and they make the kickout passes and the reads that
get guys quality opportunities. I think Ruey has a better game.
I think Eaton has a better game. I think Jake
Gravey has a better game. I think all of them
have better games. I think those things are connected, and
I just think I think last night was mostly about
Okay just destroying the Laker offensive initiators. One last note
(18:06):
on the Lakers before we move on Luka Doncicch in
his last five games has taken eighty eight jump shots
and he's gotten just sixty four points to zero point
seventy three points per shot. It's been something that kind
of started to show in that Miami Heat game, and
it's been pretty consistent down the line over the course
of the last week and a half. If lucas not
making jump shots, it kind of takes him down from
(18:27):
that like I'm in the conversation with the very best
player in the world like Jokic to I'm just another
guy in that top tier, and that to me is
kind of like a differentiator between the levels that Luca
can reach. And he just hasn't been shooting the jump
shots super well as of late. Obviously, small sample size
was a small sample size when he's shooting amazing to
(18:48):
start the year. It's a small sample size when he's
shooting terribly right now. Ultimately, what level this team can
get to is gonna have a lot to do with
what does Luca's large sample jump shooting look like. Is
going to be able to consistently knock down those short
jump shots, especially when they get into big playoff moments,
just something to keep an eye on as we get
further into the season. Today's show is brought to you
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or Virginia. Nuggets Clippers did not look great early for
the Nuggets. Last night came John and left the game
with some kind of like arm shoulder injury in his
shooting arm, so let's hope that's not too serious. Christian
Brown sprained his ankle. Jamal Murray was having a rough
shooting night. The Denver defense was rough to start the game,
(21:13):
but Nikole Jokic kept them in the game by just
absolutely frying the Clippers center rotation. He got a lot
of one on one opportunities against Zubots and Zubots again,
is like in theory, one of the better Jokic defenders
in the league is a guy that can kind of
match his size and mobility and IQ and he just
cooked him, just absolutely cooked him last night. Then brook
(21:35):
Brook Lopez came in, he cooked him too. He torched
both of them and picking pops and spacing situations. He
had five out of six threes last night. He's up
to thirty nine percent on the season. That was a
big part of what kept him in the game early,
you know, hitting a big three in the second half,
two that capped off a run that put him up
by fourteen. But he had thirty three points in the
first half alone to keep the Nuggets afloat while things
(21:56):
were coming apart. A little bit, and then in the
second half, David Adelman starts Tim Hardaway Junior and Spencer
Jones in the Cam Johnson and Christian Brown spots, and
as a group, they locked in on defense and they
started to get a bunch of stops. They started to
get out in transition. Jokic got a couple easy transition buckets.
Tim Hardaway hit a couple of threes with that unit.
You know, watching him with the starting group was super
(22:18):
interesting to me because I think there's this like kind
of there's this concept that can feed on itself with
catch and shoot shooting when you're being aggressive. So like
Jokic is hunting Tim Hardaway Junior with kickout passes because
he knows Tim wants to shoot, he knows Tim will shoot,
and Tim's knocking down shots, and I think it's like,
(22:40):
you know, we'll see what this Cam Johnson injury ends
up being and how long he ends up being out.
I'm hoping it's not something serious going on with his shoulder.
But again, when you look at Michael Porter Junior and
what his fit was like with his team, he was
so aggressive off the catch that it was kind of
self feeding in the sense that as he would make shots,
guys would hunt him more, that would lead to more opportunities,
(23:03):
which was why Michael Porter Junior was the kind of
guy that on any given night could go for twenty
five thirty points and just kind of was a ceiling
razor for that Denver offense. There's been a bad combination
with Cam of like not super aggressive off the catch,
but also not making shots. And I just thought it
was interesting seeing Tim with the starters in that second half,
like that first shift in the second half, because it's
(23:24):
a reminder that, like this stuff will feed on itself,
Like I watched Jokic hunting Tim because he knows he
wants to shoot and he knows he's gonna knock the
shot down, and that both of those areas are kind
of tilting in the wrong direction for Cam, and I
just want to see when Cam comes back. That's what
Michael Porter Junior was doing, That's what Tim Hardaway Junior
is doing. Be super aggressive off the catch. That will
(23:47):
then allow the team to start hunting you more, which
will then help you get an even better rhythm. Or
then we can start seeing Cam go for twenty twenty
five points in a night and be that ceiling raising
player that we know he's capable of being. So yokichends
up hitting a three at the top of the key.
It makes up what ninety to fifty six or ninety
to seventy six if I remember correctly, that kind of
(24:08):
blew it open and that a Denver never really looked
back from there. Jokic finished the game with fifty five points,
twelve rebounds, and six assists. And again, that's one of
the best Yokic defenders in the league. Last night that
Jokic just looked completely comfortable against made him look hopeless.
Jokicch in the post. I want to zoom in on
(24:28):
this concept for a minute. When Jokic shoots out of
the post this season, he is thirty four for forty
four from the field. That's seventy seven percent. We often
talk about his short range touch, right, Like, the big
difference between Jokic and a lot of the other elite
scorers in NBA history is he's not a guy that's
(24:50):
going to get to a mid ranger that he makes
half the time, or a three that he's going to
make forty percent of the time. He's going to get
to something closer to the basket and he's going to
hit it two thirds of the time. That's been the
calling card for Jokic, mid sixties on floaters and hooks
at his absolute peak high sixties, right around seventy percent. Right, well,
(25:11):
how about the mid seventies. Yokic has started this season
twenty eight for thirty eight on floaters and hooks at
seventy four percent from the field on those shots. He's
sixty four percent on mid range jumpers. That's crazy, eighty
one percent on layups. That's crazy. He's somehow even more
(25:35):
deadly as a short range shot maker than he used
to be. And it's turning the Jokics post up into
far and away the most dependable play in the entire
game of basketball right now when you factor in all
Jokics post ups. So this is shot attempts, turnovers, passing
sequences out of his post ups. Anytime you throw the
(25:56):
ball to yokicch in the post. According to Synergy, the
Nuggets have a sixty two percent chance of putting points
on the board in that possession. Just shy of two
thirds of the time that you dump the ball down
to Jokic in the post, you're scoring on that possession
and in terms of large sample efficiency, how about a
(26:17):
one thirty one offensive rating on possessions where you post
Nikola jokicap pretty insane last six games for Yokic's averaging
thirty six points, twelve rebounds, and eleven assists, seventy four
percent from the field, fifty six percent from three, eighty
(26:37):
six percent from the line. This is the best offensive
basketball player ever, playing the best basketball of his career,
and in a field where Yannis has been unbelievable, and
Luca obviously before last night has been unbelievable, and che
yojess Alexander has been unbelievable, and Victor Wimbnyama has been unbelievable.
(26:59):
Jokic still just looks like he's better than all those guys.
He's just playing unbelievable basketball right now. Thirty six twelve
and eleven over his last six games on seventy four
fifty six splits. It's unbelievable stuff. On the Clippers situation,
I don't want to spend too long here because they're
kind of drifting out of relevance at this point in
(27:19):
the NBAL, though that we'll see if they end up
making some trades that end up affecting other teams. You know,
I understood the thought process behind going after you know,
when you make the trade, the Norman Powell trade, right,
and it brings back John Collins. There was an important
order of operations that they were going with.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
There.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
There's an athletic dynamic when you have a really big
athletic forward who plays hard, which is what John Collins is.
He's like a high motor athlete at the ford position,
and you layer that alongside real size and rebounding physicality
at the center position with Zuobots, Right. We see this
elsewhere in the league. A perfect example of it is
literally like what Nikola Jokic and Aaron Gordon represent together.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
We've seen you know, crazy versions of it defensively with
like Giannison Brooke back in the heyday of the Milwaukee Bucks.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
But when you have that like big athletic forward next
to the big bruising center, and that athletic forward's job
is just to be this like kind of wrecking ball
on the margins, there's like a there's an athletic dynamic,
a physicality dynamic that they were trying to bring to
the table by making the John Collins trade and that
has worked for the record, like John Collins has looked
(28:33):
like he helps this basketball team in some real ways.
The problem is is you end up sending Norman Powell
out in the process. Right, And I understood the thought
process of like, okay, well, what if you bring in
Bradley Beal. Can Bradley Beal when he's healthy be a
rough approximation of what Norman Powell was in theory? Yes,
it was a high risk play. Right if if Bradley
(28:57):
Beal ends up coming in and looking good and John
Collins comes in and fills that very specific need, Okay,
we're cooking with Greece, right, cooking with gas whatever, the
expression is, Right, You're in good shape there. But you
get the terrible combination of Bradley being both bad when
(29:18):
he's on the court and now injured. And he was
injured on and off throughout the stretch before he ended
up injuring his hip, right, so you get basically nothing
out of Bradley Beal. It gets exacerbated by the fact
that James Harden comes into camp in a little less
good of shape than he was last year. Gets exacerbated
by the fact that Kawhi Leonard ends up getting hurt.
(29:39):
It gets exacerbated by the fact that Chris Paul ends
up coming in and not playing super well to start
the season, and now things are going south, and like
again there's a lot of like discussion surrounding Okay, should
the Clippers have kept Norman Powell. Well, if you keep
Norman Powell, you gotta pay him. If you got to
pay him, now, you're tying up your cap longer term.
(29:59):
If you type your cap longer term, you're kind of
more committed to this core. I think the Clippers more
or less we're looking at this season as somewhat of
a last hurrah. Anyway, there's no reason to like really
invest long term into this particular group. They wanted to
retain flexibility. So if you sign Bradley Beale to a
discounted contract, it just theoretically is a more flexible type
(30:22):
of move than signing Norman Powell. So like, on the
one hand, it's easy to just be like, well, they
let Norman Powell walk. That was a bad idea. Now
they're not as good. Well, it's like, were they going
to win the title? Probably not. They were just a
second tier contender. Anyway, everyone seemed to be aware of that,
so making the move to tie up your cap long
(30:43):
term to give yourself a better shot when you're still
not a top tier contender, Like, I'm not going to
judge the Clippers for making that move. That said, you know,
we talk a lot about how when you're looking at
your spectrum of potential outcomes as a team, there's like
things that need to happen on the good side for
you to reach your goals, and then there's things that
could go the other way to lead you being bad. So,
(31:05):
for instance, like with the Thunder, if you look at
all the injuries that they've had in order for them
to be successful, you needed Shay to be better than
he was last year. He has been. You needed Chet
to take an offensive leap he has. You needed one
of your deeper bench ball handlers to kind of pop
on offense. You have Aj Mitchell has popped right. You
(31:27):
needed to maintain the defensive identity from last year, even
though you're in a defending champion campaign where usually effort
can wayne a little bit. They've been amazing on defense
to start the season. So all of these little swing
factors have gone in the positive direction, and you're getting
a thunder team that's going to be eighteen and one
in a week and a half.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Similarly, with the Clippers, what would you have needed for
things to go right for them? You would have needed
Bradley be able to stay healthy and to be, you know,
seventy percent of what Norman Powell was. You needed Kawhi
Leonard to stay healthy and play at it at least
a second tier superstar level. You needed James Harden to
come into camp just like he did last year and
set the tone from the start of the season as
(32:08):
an advantage creator. You needed Chris Paul to come in
and be what he was last year, one of the
best pick and role players in the NBA. You needed
all of these things to go your direction, and instead
they all went the opposite direction. You know, you see
a team one of the Clippers now like three and eight.
They're having a brutal start to the season. Whenever you
see stuff like that, you can't blame one thing. It's
(32:29):
all of the things. James not quite as good, Kawi
Hurd again, Norman Palell's gone having a career year down
in Miami. Bradley Beal's injured again, and when he was healthy,
he wasn't playing well. Like all those things go the
opposite direction. Now you're looking at a three and eight
Clippers team, So, like, I think it's way too early
in the season to just bail on things. You want
(32:50):
to see how it goes. Maybe Kawhi Leonard comes back
and things get better. Maybe they're able to make a
trade at some point for a higher level offensive player
to kind of help anchor things. There's a very into
this story where they can write the ship. But if
we get another month into this and they're ten and twenty,
that's where you need to start having more complicated conversations
about capitalizing on the assets that you have in order
(33:12):
to set up your next phase of Clippers basketball. And
they don't know their pick. I was reading the thing
this morning. Okay, see has their swap for the next
two years? Is that could get pretty That could get
pretty brutal for the entire NBA if the Clippers end
up going south. And okay, so he ends up capitalizing
(33:32):
on it all right, Warrior spurs One small bright spot
from a rough night for me last night as a
basketball fan, as I watched my Lakers get completely and
utterly dismantled, I did go on a rant yesterday about
how I thought the Warriors were better than they've looked
(33:53):
to this point, and I predicted that they would go
into San Antonio and win. I think they're gonna beat
San Antonio tonight. And even though they were on the
tail end back to back, and that ended up being
one of the few things I was right.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
About last night.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
I just thought they had a light workload against Oklahoma
City because of the blowout, Right, you didn't have big
minute totals for anybody. I thought it was a really
tough game for Steph to come back, like going from
you know, being out with that upper respiratory illness which
can affect her conditioning so much. Stepping into that Oklahoma
City blenders just a really tough game. But he built
(34:26):
it a little built a little bit of rhythm, got
his wind. He looked like he was an awesome rhythm
last night. As far as back to backs go on
the road, it was a short flight, right, like you're
just going from Oklahoma City to San Antonio. And then
I thought the Golden State defense was a good matchup.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
For the Spurs. I thought they were built well for it.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
They've got the types of physical defenders to guard Wenby,
and they've got the coach and Steve Kerr that's going
to be able to see any sort of opportunities to
double team and cause the same problems that Wenby's had
in the past. Now it looked different than I expected,
because I thought the Warriors would double Wenby more, and
they did on occasion when he would get a smaller
defender on a switch. They were doubling basically every time
he put the ball on the floor and Draymond wasn't
(35:05):
on him, they were sending a double team, but they
essentially let Draymond stick in one on one, and Draymond
did a number on him in this game. And it's
like it's all relative because like Wemby's insanely talented, and
he had thirty one fifteen to ten in this game.
Kind a little bit of a rhythm late in the
game on Draymond when the game was already out of reach,
and hit a couple jump shots over the top of him.
(35:27):
But for the most part, he was capitalizing on the
opportunities when he got Draymond off of him. Whether Draymond
was on the bench and Jimmy was the primary defender
or chaos situations like off ball situations when Draymond was
in help or you know, transition, that sort of thing.
He found his way to score. But in his one
on ones, I think he missed his first seven shots
(35:50):
with Draymond guarding him one on one. In the second half,
in particular, you could see him, even in single coverage
against Draymond look not comfortable putting the ball on the
floor and kind of just passing the ball out of
those one on one. So, just a wonderful job from
Draymond Green, who's arguably the best defensive player of this
era and still to this day is one of the
(36:10):
most impactful defensive players in the league. I thought he
did a wonderful job on Victor wembin Yama last night.
And then Steph Curry just exploded in the second half,
thirty one points on thirteen shots. Just in the second half.
Got a couple of clean looks against Wemby in deeper
drop coverages where ball screens. They ran like a little
double screen at the top where Wemby was sagging way back,
like almost around the elbow. Easy breezy, little pull up
(36:32):
three for Steph Curry. He found a one on one
matchup that he really liked. He liked Julian champagnee one
on one, and he was giving him a bunch of
work every time he got him where there was a transition,
cross match or through a screening action, he just was like,
get out of my way. I'm just gonna attack Julian
Champagne one on one, a little bit of a bigger,
slower wing compared to some of the other guards. It's
all he had to do was really get into his
(36:52):
body and then step back and then he was able
to get a good amount of separation. He was beating
Wemby in switches just by driving past him, generated shots.
Passing out of that. He drew a foul on him
by driving past him and then doing the textbook kind
of like jump backwards type of play to draw the
foul on Wemby. He got loose in the chaos of transition.
In offensive rebounds, Gary Payton was awesome in this game
(37:14):
on the offensive end as like a cutter and as
a screener. Little release valvel underneath the basket also did
a bunch of damage on the offensive glass. He had
a sequence late in the game where he got back
to back offensive rebounds that both led to Steph Curry threes.
Missed the first one, but made the second one in
that left corner. Steph just did a ton of damage
in the chaos of the game in the second half
as well. It just looked like he was in a
(37:35):
much better rhythm than he was in against ok Se
and he finished with forty six points, five rebounds, five assists,
just one turnover, got to the foul line sixteen times.
Really nice game from Steph Curry. I thought Jimmy Butler
was excellent in this game. Kind of started with the
rescue possession. He hit like a contested catch and shoot
three along the right wing when the shot clock was
(37:55):
running down. But he hit so many big threes in
the second half the Spurs were basically daring him to
shoot sagging way off. He had a big one in
crunch time along the left wing as well, the usual
kind of little bits of shot creation when Staph was
off the floor once again drawing fouls by getting into
the teeth of the defense and taking weird driving angles
and getting defenders out of position. Moses Moody deserves a
(38:17):
ton of credit for the damage he did in the
first half of this game that helped keep them attached
when the Warriors got off to a little bit of
a rough start again. We mentioned Gary Payton in the
job he did on offense in the second half. Just
a really nice bounce back win for the Warriors. I
did want to talk briefly about this Jonathan Kamingas stuff,
So after the thunder game, I thought this was kind
(38:41):
of lame. But there was a lot of passive aggressive
comments being made by the Warriors veterans that seemed to
be targeted towards the younger players. Specifically. No one was
named by name, but it was pretty clear they were
hinting at guys like Jonathan Kaminga and Brandon Pajemski in particular.
I thought it was kind of lame because it was like,
you got your ass kicked against Oklahoma City because all
(39:03):
of you played poorly, like and Steph in particular had
a bad game against Okay see and no shame in that. Okay, Okay,
So he just did the same thing to Luca and Austin.
Oklahoma City is a transcendently great defense. They did the
same thing to Kevin Durant earlier in the season. They
are a huge pain in the ass. It's not about
Oklahoma City. I just thought, let me just let me
rephrase it like this. Okay, So you don't want to
(39:27):
play Kaminga with the starters. You don't think he's a
good fit. You think your lineup construction makes more sense
to bring him off the bench in a smaller role.
You want to go with the guy like Will Richard
in the starting lineup or Moses Moody in the starting lineup.
You want guys that are more natural fits and Golden
State system. That's fine. Just say that, Just say, hey,
(39:49):
you know, we tried the cominga with the starters thing
to start the season. You know, he had his moments,
had some reads that he made that he wasn't making
in years past, a little bit more refined in some
of his attacks. But ultimately, now that we're a few
weeks into this thing, now that we're almost a month
into this thing, we think he's better coming off of
the bench.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
We're going to transition into that role. Just say that.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Like, do I think Kaminga has been very good in
the last week and a half or so.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
No.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Do I think he's starting to regress a little bit
in some key areas, Yes, But like passive, aggressively, essentially
blaming him for the situation that the team is in
is ridiculous. You toast it off a game against the
Pacers because your stars were fucking off like Steph was
brutal at the end of that game. You lost a
couple more games.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Because Steph got sick.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
That happens the situation you blew a game against Milwaukee
where Jannis didn't play like you like, take some personal responsibility,
like again, I'm you know me, I've never been a
huge fan of the kaminga fit. I think again, he
showed some positive strides to start the season. I have
been an advocate generally for trading him over the course
(40:57):
of the last couple of years. So I'm not disagreeing
with you in principle about the idea of the way
the team should be run in terms of the rotation.
But like I did, think it was kind of lame
for them to take those like pretty passive aggressive stances
in the press conferences after Oklahoma City and again you
want to give them some competitive leeway. Again, it's a
thunder ass kicking, right. No one's happy after an ass kicking,
(41:20):
And when you're grouchy, you might say some things you
might not otherwise say. But I just thought it was like, hey, like,
you guys got your ass kicked. It wasn't Jonathan k
minga's fault. Like, yeah, he had a few turnovers in
that game, he made a few bad decisions. Johnathan kming
is not the reason you get your ass kicked by
the thunder. I thought it was just kind of a
little bit ridiculous to target those guys the way that
they did. And I know they denied it, and I
(41:40):
know Draymond was going after Kevin o'connory yesterday and you know,
basically saying that he wasn't talking about those guys. But
that's just if you've learned anything as an adult, I
deny deny as literally just the approach that everyone takes
with any sort of accusation of any kind. I still
remain bullish on the Warriors. Really nice bounce back, Wayne.
We're going to be covering them on playback on Friday
(42:02):
night for round two of that of that Spurs Warriors matchup.
I just again, I'm I'm just I just don't think
there's any need for the post game stuff that we
saw on Tuesday night on the Spurs front. I loved
how Wemby found opportunities to score when he got free
of Draymond. There's this idea that some young basketball players
(42:24):
have where it's like, I've got a demonstrate that I
can beat this guy, and it's like, no one's giving
you bonus points for scoring against the other team's best defender.
That's just playing stupid basketball. When you get guarded by
one of the best defensive players of all time, your
goal should be get him off of me, Like find
(42:48):
a way to not have to score against Draymond, and
he did throughout the game, little guard screens that would
get him switched onto a guard where you get a
quick opportunity to attack, or a quick opportunity to draw
devil team and pass out it getting Draymond's screen. And
you could see a lot of that in the second half,
like using screens on Draymond so that as the ball handler,
Wenby could get into some over the top shots off
(43:10):
of the dribble. Transition chaos, offensive rebound chaos, all those opportunities.
Find your dozen times a game where you can get
that dude off of you, be aggressive, and that's how
you end up with thirty one, fifteen and ten despite
struggling with the individual matchup of Draymond Green. So I
was really impressed by Wemby there He and dearon Fox
(43:31):
have to take better care of the ball though. One
of the things that we're seeing early on with the
Fox Wemby pairing is in ball screens teams are defending
them three on two consistently. Warriors did it a bunch
last night, and so those corner skips are open and
deeron Fox is sneaky good at that. The spurs generated
to like completely butt naked corner threes off of Wenby
Fox two man game where you know, Fox kind of
(43:54):
got downhill, low Man comes over, finds that little passing
angle and makes that swing out to the cour They're
gonna get a lot of really good shots out of
the Dear and Fox ballscreen situation, both with Wemby off
the ball and with Wenby as the screener. That that's
going to work. But the turnovers killed them. There were
a couple of bizarre turnovers from darreon Fox in this game.
(44:16):
He had a lob in this game that was like
maybe like seven or eight feet too high. Some swing
passes and cross court passes from all from those two
and from Steph Castle. Steph Castle had a bad one
in the second half that he turned over to Steph.
There's a certain amount of ball security stuff with san
Antonio right now. It's starting to come to the forefront
that they got to work through in order to get
(44:37):
to where they want to go. All right, guys, It's
all I have for today is always sincerely appreciate you
guys for supporting us and supporting the show again. We
will be back tomorrow morning for our mailbag, and I
want to touch on some of those Eastern Conference games
from last night, So drop your questions regarding those games
and anything else. Anything is fair game in the YouTube comments, whatever,
mail bag tomorrow and then again tomorrow night on playback
(44:58):
for Warrior Spurs.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
I'll see you guys. Tat
Host
Jason Timpf
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