Jason Timpf answers listener questions during an NBA Mailbag segment. Jason discusses his favorite storylines from the likely Mavericks-Celtics NBA Finals matchup, why Dallas can present problems for Jayson Tatum and Boston, and whether Luka Doncic has a chance to compete for NBA GOAT status. #volume #herd
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Night here at the volume. Happy Tuesday, everybody. Hope all
you guys are having a great week. Just gonna do
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All right, let's talk some basketball. So the first question,
what is your most interesting storyline from a likely MAVs Celtics. Obviously,
(03:01):
the Celtics have officially secured their spot in the NBA Finals.
The MAVs need one more win to do so. But
as we've broken down at nauseum in the show, We're
going to get into a little bit deeper today. I
don't see a pathway for Minnesota to flip the script
against Dallas. I think it's a terrible matchup for them,
in addition to the fact that Luca is clearly a
better player at this phase of his career than Anthony Edwards,
(03:23):
and so I don't really see a path there. So
I think the overwhelmingly likely scenario is that we're going
to get the MAVs versus the Celtics in the NBA Finals,
and so from there, I'm gonna kind of go a
little bit deeper into a concept I talked a little
bit about last night with Colin Coward. What I think
is most interesting about this series is the complete difference
(03:43):
in the two builds of these rosters. Right, Boston feels
like more of a talent accumulation type of roster. Right,
everyone plays positions that compliment each other really well. Right,
Like Derek White's more of like a skill guard, right all, so,
an excellent defensive player and a great athlete, but he's
a guy that can you know, really run a lot
(04:04):
of action. Excellent pull up three point shooter when they
go to late game situations, it usually ends up being
Tatum White two man game, right. But then Drew Hollidy
kind of plays that athlete guard guards the other team's
best guard kind of thing, right, And then you've got
you know, your smaller forward, and then you've got your
bigger forward and Jason Tatum, and then you've got that
center position with a rim protector and Chris tops porzingis right.
(04:27):
But at the same time, none of those guys are
like role players, right. Every single one of them has
at various points in their careers been playing in very
large roles, even like Derek White, who's been a role
player and a lot of teams, Like I would argue,
at this point, he's become one of the primary decision
makers for the Boston Celtics, right, And so that team
(04:47):
is you know, as we mentioned in many of the
recent episodes, all five of those guys that I just
mentioned on the open market, if they were free agents
right now, would command over thirty million dollars a year.
So it's like a very talented, you know, conglomeration of players.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Then we get into Dallas and it's like you've got
a player in Luca that I believe is better than
Jason Tatum. I believe he's at least the second best
player in the league, if not the best player in
the league. Right, So, it's more of like a top
heavy build where you have Luca and Kyrie and they
take on basically the vast majority, They take on the
entirety of the offensive decision making part of the offense.
(05:24):
That puts everybody else in a play finishing role.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
So, Derrek Jones Junior, it's ketch and shoot threes, driving closeouts.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
PJ.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Washington, it's ketch and shoot threes, driving close outs, a
little bit of work in the dunker spot, maybe the
occasional duck in post up. Right, Derek Lively vertical spacing,
Daniel Gafford vertical spacing. Every single guy on the team
is playing in a play finishing role on the offensive
end of the floor. Then you go over to the
defense end of the floor, and every single one of
those same guys has super focused and important defensive responsibilities.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Right. PJ.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Washington and Derek Jones Junior are guarding your best guard
and forward.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
On the other team.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Lively and Daniel Gafford are running deep drop coverage and
protecting the ram and Kyrie and Lucar primarily off ball,
although Kyrie's done a good amount of work on ball
in this playoff run. Right, So it's like it's a
lot of like guys having less talent being focused into
very specific roles behind these two super talented offensive players
versus Boston, where it's like kind of everyone has to
(06:22):
do everything because everyone is a star, right, And so
like I do find that to be super super fascinating
going into that series, that to me is the most
interesting storyline. Another kind of way to look at it
is like Luca being potentially the best player in the
series versus Boston clearly being the more talented team in
the series, and so it's going to be an interesting
(06:43):
kind of of you know, case study and whether or
not the best player on in the series can elevate
his team over more talent. Now again, but for the record,
we've seen many times over the years that not be enough. Right, Like,
I think Lebron James was clearly the best player in
the world from twenty twelve to twenty twenty. I thought
(07:03):
that that was clear, and yet there were several examples
over that stretch where he did not win the NBA Championship,
he won four of them. What is a nine year span,
so we lost five of them, right, So like twenty fourteen,
that Spurs team just had it cooking in so many
different ways offensively and at Dwayne Wade's knee was kind
of bothering and the team was kind of just getting
(07:25):
a little bit fatigued, a little bit old, right, you know.
Twenty fifteen, Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving get hurt. Right
twenty seventeen. In twenty eighteen, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry,
the second and third best players in the world, team
up with each other and that ends up being enough
to unseat him. Right, twenty nineteen, he has the groin injury. So,
like you guys can see the point, Like there are
many times in NBA history where the best player in
(07:47):
the series does not win. I think just look back
at the Denver series, knowing what we know about Anthony
Edwards now and seeing that he doesn't have the matchup
resiliency that someone like a Luka Doncic has. Now that
we've seen that, we can state unequivocally that the best
player in the series in the Denver Minnesota Series was
Jokic and yet Denver lost, and so we're gonna see
(08:09):
if Luca can reverse that trend going into the NBA Finals.
Next question, does Dallas have what it takes to upset
Boston in the finals. Absolutely, They're an elite defensive team, right.
I think a big part of it is going to
be Luca attacking and pick and roll. I started to
just barely look at some film. We're gonna do a
lot of series preview content around this series because we're
(08:32):
just gonna have a lot of time. Like, guys, if
if Dallas wins tonight, which I think they probably will,
but Minnesota's got a shot if Dallas wins tonight, we're
looking at eight consecutive days, full days off before the
NBA Finals. Like I was thinking, we'll probably go there's
two Dallas Boston games. We may just do full breakdowns
of both of those games. We might spend an entire
(08:53):
show talking about the offense. We might bring on Chris Mannix,
we might bring on those of you guys who were Dallas.
If you guys have a specific like team, someone who
covers the Mavericks really closely that you guys think is
great at it, drop it in the comments I'll see
if I can't reach out and get them on the show.
We're gonna have a lot of fun previewing this series,
and we're gonna get into all those details. But one
(09:15):
of the things that I noticed in my initial kind
of look at some film yesterday is Luca is too
big for everybody on Boston pretty much except for Jason Tatum.
And so I think a big thing is Boston's not
gonna want to put Jason Tatum on Luca, especially not
early in the series. I think Drew Holliday is gonna
get that assignment a lot, right. I think Jalen Brown
and Drew Holliday are gonna be the guys that see
(09:35):
the majority of the time on him. And like, you know,
first possession of the game in Boston, like Luca gets
Drew Holliday on his hip and just methodically works him
down into the lane, waits for chrisops Porzingis to recover
to the role man, and then he just shoots an
easy little floater over Drew Holliday and he turns around
and makes the too small symbol, right, So, like I
think that that's gonna be kind of like where this
series hinges is can Luca really strangle the pace of
(09:59):
the game and pick the Celtics defense apart in the
half court because if you can and keep the game
kind of slowed down in intense and high pressure, maybe
on the other end of the floor, can your elite
defense play Boston into some of their worst tendencies. Now,
one of the things that's going to be interesting is
Boston is very much a spread you out type of
driving kick offense, which is very, very different than what
(10:21):
Minnesota does, right, and like, you're not gonna have the
luxury that you have in this series of having Daniel
Gafford and Derek Lively just spark in the paint because
Rudy Gobert is terrible at making anything other than a dunk.
I'm gonna actually pull up this stat real quick. I
tweeted it out yesterday, but I pulled this up on
Synergy yesterday and I was like literally blown away. So,
(10:42):
Rudy Gobert is this that is like legitimately insane. Let's see,
Rudy Gobert is shooting sixteen for thirty five on layups
in this playoff run and three for eleven on floaters
in hook So like that's one of the things that
allows Derek Lively and Daniel Gafford to just kind of
(11:04):
roam off of Gobert and help in the lane is like,
unless it's a clean dunk, Gobart's probably not gonna make it.
And so that buys you that luxury. That's not what
it's gonna be like with Al Horford and chrisops porzingis
they're gonna be operating primarily from the three point line
and it's gonna be a lot more about covering in space. Now,
this is where we've found out that Maxi Kleba is
(11:24):
coming back tonight. That's a big deal for Dallas, right,
Like having Kleba back gives you the ability to put
lineups out there with Kleba, PJ. Washington, and Derek Jones
Junior all on the floor at the same time, and
then you can you can put those guys on Tatum
and Brown and Derek White and ask Kyrie to do
a somewhat easier job of guarding someone like a Drew
(11:45):
Holliday and ask Luca to maybe be the guy who's
hedging and recovering on an on an Al Horford or
something along those lines. Like they're they're gonna have options,
more options by virtue of having Maxi Kleba back, but
it's gonna be much more of a of a defend
in space type of series, whereas this series is much
more of a load up and pack the paint type
(12:06):
of series.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
So it's going to be very, very different.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
But Dallas certainly has what it takes and it's all
going to come down to Luca just completely dominating the series,
and it's going to come down to physical perimeter containment
from Dallas's perimeter defenders. And if they can do that
in kind of play Boston into their worst tendencies, I
think they've got a good chance. Who is the best
(12:28):
lob thrower in NBA history and why is it? Luka
Doncic I was thinking about this earlier. I think it's
probably Luca as well. There are a lot of really
good lob throwers that have seen over the years, like
guys like Trey Young, guys like Chris Paul. Lebron was
always good at he just never played with a vertical
spacing threat until Anthony Davis, and he's been pretty good
at connecting him with lobbs. But the problem with Lebron
and Ad is they play very similar positions, so teams
(12:50):
will typically switch those ball screens, and so lebron ad
picking rolls out something you see a ton of unless
you're playing against a drop coverage big, right, But I
think it's clear Luca. One of the big things that
I think makes him the best at it is he's tall,
and like you got to think, so, what makes a
lob open. A lob is open when the rim protector
leaves the lob threat. Right, If the rim protector is
(13:11):
leaving the lob threat, that means that a seven footer
or some sort of large center type player is leaving
that guy to pressure Luca, and so he's got to
be able to get that pass over the tall player.
I put in the film session yesterday. Do you guys
remember that transition post up of Mike Conley where Luca
spun baseline and threw the lob up to I think
it was Gafford, it might have been Lively, it doesn't matter.
(13:32):
But on that play, Gobert left him and double team
Luca and came up arms up, and Luca just happened
to get the pass up over the top of him,
which is just a kind of like a benefit of
him being as tall as he is. I've been saying
this for a while, but I think Luca is the
only current NBA player that can contend for goats status thoughts.
(13:53):
So I was looking at I thought about this for
a little while this morning because I kind of think
of like three tiers of young players, Like the guys
in that like age twenty seven to thirty range that
are like kind of in the heart of their prime
right now. There's like the guys that are in that
like twenty five to twenty six, twenty four to twenty
(14:13):
five to twenty six range. Those to me are the
guys that are just entering into their prime. And then
there's the guys that are in their early twenties that
are like very clearly just like raw talent, that are
still kind of getting into that phase. In the older tier,
Jannis and Jokic, they both have a title, right but
they both turn thirty next year. It's a one championship.
Entering into your thirties, they just would have to go
(14:35):
on an absolutely crazy run over the next five years
to enter into those conversations.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
So that feels pretty unlikely.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Joel Embiid he doesn't have one yet, and he's gonna
be thirty. I think he might actually already be thirty.
But like Embiid is probably off of that, off of
that you know, pathway right in Luca's tier, which is
the kind of guys in that you know, twenty four
to twenty five to twenty six age bracket. I put Luca, Shakekilojos, Alexander,
Jason Tatum, and Devin Booker. Devin Booker just I don't
(15:04):
I just don't think he has that upside. Jason Tatum,
I think is a really good and maybe even a
bit underrated basketball player, but I don't think that he's
in the tier of players that can really like dominate
the league for a half of a decade. Like like,
I think he's the perfect fit for this super talented
Boston roster, but I think if you swapped him with like,
(15:26):
with a guy like Luca and put him in a
role where he really had to run an offense by
himself or with only one secondary shot creator for an
eighty two game season, I just don't think he's the
kind of guy that can really do that at.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
A super high level. Shaek yios.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Alexander is damn good, but I don't think he's as
good as Luca, So I think Luca is really the
only guy in his tier that can do it. But
in the next generation, I think there's two guys that
can do it. I think Victor webbin Yama has that potential,
and I think Anthony Edwards has that potential. But it's
just completely raw potential with those two. So it's like
there's a there's a huge, wide rue range of outcomes
(16:00):
for them, and as you get older, those ranges of
outcomes kind of zero in between where your current development
is and what your potential upside is, right, And so yeah,
I think that I think that Lucas certainly has that potential,
but I also think that there are some guys in
the younger generation that have that potential. What is it
that separates go Baar in the eyes of voters from
(16:22):
players like Ad Bam and Victor wemen Yama. I find
it odd that media voters complained about him winning just
to vote for him year after year. So voters, I've
one of the big things that I learned after I
got into this business. A good percentage of voters rely
heavily on metrics, which is crazy to me, but it
is what it is, and I've had one of those
(16:43):
guys explain to me the reasoning and their whole thing
is like the eye test is flawed, but numbers are unbiased,
and that's a good way to look at it. I
think that that's absurd personally, but that is the way
that so many voters think.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And there's just a lot of really good.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Metrics that support Rudy Gobert being the best regular season defender,
and even though defensive metrics in particular are very flawed,
a lot of people kind of key in on that
sort of thing. I think the second piece of it
is people are just enamored with the fact that Gobert
is like super engaged defensively all the time, which is
completely ridiculous when you factor in the responsibilities that Anthony
(17:23):
Davis has, that bam Adebayo has, that Victor Webmbinyama has
a D and bam we're both like folkrum ball screeners
in a five out offense all year, like they were
guys that had to like consistently make decisions and set
screens and roll hard to the rim, not in a
way like Rudy Gobert where it's like maybe you'll catch
and finish every once in a while, they were expected
(17:44):
to score. They were expected to score consistently on the
offensive end of the floor. And Victor webbin Yama obviously
as well, is a guy that is a primary initiator
for his team, and so like I can speak to
this from personal experience. Like when I was in college.
When I was in junior college, I was like one
of the best scorers on my team. I was the
guy that had the ball in my hands a ton.
(18:04):
Then I went to Naia, and when I was there,
I played alongside two All American guards. My role fundamentally
changed from guy who had the ball in his hands
to I stayed on the floor and like kept my
spot in the lineup by basically devoting all of my
energy towards guarding the other team's best player and trying
to knock corner threes down right. So like in that
(18:28):
every game I went in like all I cared about
was defense, defense, defense, because that was how I kept
my job while I was playing alongside really good offensive players.
And so that's what Rudy Gobert does. Rudy Gobert goes
into tonight's game, He's not thinking about anything on the
offensive end. The only thing Rudy Gobert is thinking about
tonight going into the game is how do I anchor
(18:48):
this defense? Whereas Anthony Davis when he's going into Game
five in Denver, he's thinking, man, I got to give
him an efficient thirty tonight two, you know what I mean.
And so like there's just a lot of pressure sure
on those guys to do more. And I genuinely think
all three of those guys and arguably Draymond as well,
are better defensive players in a vacuum than Rudy Gobert.
(19:10):
But because Rudy Gobert devotes all of his energy in
that direction, he puts up these crazy metrics and all
the voters just kind of glom onto that sort of
thing and they run with it every single year. And
so Rudy Gobert has four Defensive Player of the Year trophies,
and I think he's probably somewhere around the fifth to
seventh best defensive player in the world. And it is
what it is. If the Timberwolves mostly Towns and Ant
(19:33):
were playing like they were the first two rounds, would
they be up three to zero or at least two
to one. I mean, yeah, But think about why they're
playing poorly. They're not playing poorly, like so many people
want to point to this as like some sort of
mental shortcoming, like, oh, you know, Carl Towns and Anthony
Edwards just ran into this aura of Luka Doncic and
then they just crumbled the pieces. No, Like they're playing
(19:55):
a very different defense than they did in the first
two rounds. They are completely incapable of getting into the paint.
All of Minnesota's paint finishes have come off the ball,
either through cleanups around the rim, put backs, or attacking
closeouts on the weekside. Carltown's in Anthony Edwards are not
consistently getting into the lane because of elite perimeter athleticism
(20:18):
and elite vertical athleticism under the rim for Dallas, and
so again, like they're not playing well, but there's a
basketball reason for that, Like we got to get out
of this hole, like, oh, they crumbled under the pressure. No, no, no,
Like there's generally speaking, if the basketball conditions are favorable,
a player is gonna play well, and if basketball conditions
are not favorable, they're not going to play well. And again,
(20:39):
it's exposed a couple of weaknesses as we've gone over
in this series. I've consistently said Carl Anthony Towns is
a guy that if you can flatten out his drives
and shut off the lane from him, he's an inconsistent
over the top shooter, and so you will turn him
into a make or miss guy, and he's been missing
in this series. That's something that can happen with Karl
Anthony Towns. Anthony Edwards his flies, he's all one speed
(20:59):
right now, and so he's got to learn against these
super packed in defenses how to be more methodical to
manipulate help defenders, which is going to take him a
few more years of experience. There's two of these. I'm
so relieved that Jason is leaning Boston. Would have crushed
my soul for him to give us his curse. The
second one, Please don't pick the MAVs to win, Jason,
(21:19):
don't do it. First of all, I literally picked the
MAVs to win against the Clippers. I picked the MAVs
to win against the thunder when they were an underdog.
So was I cursing the MAVs. Then, in my pre
playoffs contender rankings, I had Denver one, Boston to Dallas three.
So like I obviously was a huge believer in Dallas
(21:41):
all along, I picked against them in this specific series
in a razor thin margin. And then I also laid
out in the series preview all the different reasons that
Dallas could win, including Jada McDaniels might be too skinny
for Luca, including Dallas has real rim protection that might
cause problems for Anthony Edwards and Karl Anthony Towns. In
(22:02):
the lane, I also mentioned like I thought Luca's knee
might be in rough shape and it might cause some problems.
It clearly has not been an issue. So like, first
of all, I haven't cursed your team. Second of all,
I've been consistently on the Dallas bandwagon for the most
part over the course of the latter portion of the year,
So I really don't know where all that sentiment comes from.
Why don't teams target Luca? Why didn't they put him
(22:23):
in pick and roll? So, first of all, there's a
reason why the Wolves can't because Luca has been targeted
on occasion in this series, and he's ended up on
an island against you know, Luca, or against Anthony Edwards
or against Carl Anthony Towns. The reason why the Wolves
are struggling with it is think about it like this.
If it has Derek Jones Junior on him and he
(22:44):
brings Luca into the screen, gets a switch at that point,
where's Gobert if it's an ISO. If it's an ISO,
go Beart's sitting underneath the basket in the dunker spot, right,
and who's guarding him Derek Leivelier Daniel Gaffer Right. So
Luca's defensive job becomes very simple. Just press up on
(23:06):
Ant and make him drive, and if he drives, he's
just gonna drive into all of this damn traffic underneath
the rim. Dallas has also been helping heavily off of
Jade McDaniels all serious. So it's not that they're not
trying to target Luca, it's just it doesn't solve the
fundamental problem, which is Ant can get by his man.
That's not the issue. Even Derek Jeonge Jr. And can
get by him. It's the totality of the team defense
(23:27):
on the way they're packing the paint, and with Gobaert
and McDaniels being left open, how they're incapable of consistently
making them pay for doing that. But Boston is very,
very big on matchup attacking. Up until the point where
Tyres Aliburton left the series, the vast majority of action
they were running was targeting Tyros Aliburton either on the
(23:48):
ball through pick and roll or off the ball through
inverted pick and roll where he was hedging and recovering.
Boston was going at him every single time down the floor. Also,
Boston can get centers out of the paint because they
have shooting bigs, so they can like legitimately play five
out all the time, right, And so from that perspective,
I do think Luca will get targeted a lot more
(24:09):
consistently in the Boston series, and it will come down to,
you know, is is Dallas willing to hedge and recover
or are they just gonna have to double team m
out of those situations or is Luca just gonna slide
his feet and do it. Well, we're gonna find out
in that next round. Every Luca play description as you saying,
watch how Luca bumps Jayden to create separation, or watch
(24:29):
how Luca hits him so hard he goes flying, or
Luca gives him a little off arm creating separation, or
watch Luca bump Jaden with the drop step here, with
each being followed by Lucas step back. This action is
never called an offensive foul. How can anyone guard this
type of play effectively? Basketball is a contact sport. I
hate to break it to you. That's just what it is.
It's not like every single basketball Not only is basketball
(24:51):
contact sport, it becomes more and more of a contact
sport the later you get into the playoffs. And that's
just not even that's not even just a NBA thing.
That's at every life, whether it's high school, when you
get into the playoffs, it gets more physical. Whether it's
an NCAA tournament game, it gets like that, whether it's
a money tournament where there's money on the line and
guys are playing like it, just anytime the intensity in
(25:12):
stakes rise, it becomes a contact sport. And so that's
why if you look back through NBA history, it's usually
the big strong guys who end up playing the best.
It ends up being the Lucas, it ends up being
the jokic As, it ends up being the Lebron james As,
it ends up being the Giannises in this league, right,
the big strong guys who have the most success. Why
are you so convinced that Ant will just learn to
(25:34):
be a smart player and game controller. He will improve,
of course, but he has an enormous gap to close
with guys like Luka or Jokis. I'm sure he will
be a brilliant player for years to come, but I
do not really see the signs of him being a
great decision maker consistently. I have the impression that Wemby
is more likely to have that type of impact, and
he is in his and he is in his way
also a freak of nature like Ant. So if anyone
is going to be an outstanding force in the league
(25:54):
other than Luca or Jokic, it's going to be Wemby,
not Ant.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Wenby's a very different type of player Ant, but he
also has that type of potential. I absolutely think that
Wemby could be.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Better than it.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
He should be better than it, right, Like, he's got
the best set of physical tools ever in the history
of NBA prospects.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
So, like, Wemby's kind of like a different thing as
far as ANTC goes. He's twenty two years old, guys,
He's twenty two years old. Michael Jordan and Lebron James
didn't win their first titles until they were twenty seven.
That's five years, five more playoff runs. Like, think about
how long ago five years was. Five years ago Kwhi
Leonard was playing for the Toronto Raptors. Five years ago,
(26:31):
Kevin Durant was still wearing a Golden State Warriors jersey. Okay, Like,
that's how far we have to get for Aunt to
be able to win a title on the same schedule
as the lebron James Michael Jordan's tier of guys at
the top of the league in NBA history, right, So, Like,
I wouldn't overthink that. And most importantly, I've seen encouraging
signs having that disastrous first half in Game seven and
(26:55):
then figuring out how to be deeply impactful in the
second half. That was a huge, huge sign of adaptability
from Ant, even in this series. I know every Mavericks
fan is just convinced it was because of Lively. I
thoroughly disagree. In terms of his overall approach. He was
much smarter in the second half of Game three. No,
it's not gonna be enough to turn the series around,
but he is adaptable, he is learning, and he is
(27:17):
rapidly improving. Give this dude five more offseasons, five more
eighty two game grinds, five more playoff runs. He's gonna
be so damn good. Guys, He's gonna be so damn good.
It looked like he might be ahead of schedule. Turns
out still needs some more time. But that doesn't mean
we need to pretend the dude is incapable of reaching
where he wants to get to need the Boston Verse
(27:39):
MAVs breakdown. Like I said, obviously, we're gonna wait until
after the MAVs series ends, but we will do many,
many layers of series preview content for this matchup, a
ton of film, probably gonna have some guests on as well.
We're gonna have lots to get into over the course
of the coming week. How has Ant's potential changed zero
(28:00):
after the series? You just said in this video that
he will need considerably more time to reach the peak,
So that's considerably less rings for him. He potentially could
have started winning championships starting this season, but now it'll
take him a couple more years to get his first.
The potential does change, No, it doesn't. Lebron James and
Michael Jordan didn't win their first until twenty seven and
they've combined to win ten. He was on pace to
(28:22):
be way ahead of schedule. It looks like he's a
little bit He's got a ways to go. But guys,
he's twenty two. He barely can order a beer. Okay, Jason,
I love the channel and have improved my understanding of
basketball measurably thanks to your logical and insightful breakdowns of
the game. I used the logic you taught me to
predict that the MAVs have many advantages in this matchup
(28:45):
and that should put them as considerable favorite, despite what
the overall narratives were surrounding the series. Looking back on
your coverage, I believe you have the basketball like Q
and experience to have gone against the majority of your
peers and predicted the shape of this matchup before game one,
but you allowed yourself to be moved by more narrative
based statements such as Edwards is playing like a top
five player in the league, or that either Denver or
(29:06):
Mini could easily beat Dallas or Oklahoma City. Do you
think this is a fair assessment and that if you
followed your own processes more strictly, you could have predicted
this series more accurately. So, first of all, I really
do try to look at the basketball before going into
the series. If you guys, go go back and listen
to the series preview and you'll hear a lot of
(29:27):
the same shit that's happened in the series. I specifically
brought up McDaniels might not be able to guard Luca.
I specifically brought up that the rim protection might be
an issue for Anthony Edwards and Carl Anthony Towns. I
specifically brought up that Derek Jones Junior was a freaky
athlete that might be able to have some more success
keeping Anthony Edwards in front off of the dribble. I
looked at all those advantages. I think where I specifically
(29:49):
made a mistake was I knew Dallas's rim protection would
be different than Denver. I just thought ant would have
more success against it. So, like, honestly, like it's this
series should be a little closer than it is. It
shouldn't be a sweep. Dallas isn't four to zero better
than Minnesota. But Anthony Everards is having a really really
(30:10):
rough series, which can happen sometimes for young basketball players
when they run into a tough matchup, and so again,
like the way I look at it, like I was wrong,
but I had it close. Go look at in the preview,
I've specifically said, like, this can go either way. Dallas
certainly can win. I'm picking Minnesota. I thought Minnesota's defense
would have a little bit more impact on Luca, and
(30:31):
I thought Anthony Edwards would have a little bit more
success attacking in the half court against this team. It
went a different way. I was wrong. It happens. I
don't know what else to say. But at the end
of the day, guys, like like I guys, Minnesota beat Denver.
Minnesota beat Denver. Denver and Anthony Edwards went toe to
toe with the best player in the world and like
(30:52):
played more or less at his level over the course
of a seven game series. Like Dallas flipped the script.
Good on them, tip the cap. But like, let's not
sit here and pretend like Minnesota was a bunch of
bums and we all foolishly picked bums over because of
narratives over the Dallas Mavericks. That's not the way that
I see it. First you were on Denver, then Minnesota,
(31:15):
now Dallas. Do you have pick integrity? A couple things
I hate this part of the job, but it's something
that we have to do.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
There is no such thing as like a basketball analyst
out there. If there is one, show me who year
in year out, just picks every single series correctly. It's
not a thing. I remember when we were talking with
When I was talking with Ethan Strauss on his podcast,
he said something that I thought was fascinating. He goes,
humans on a deep level are are are addicted to variants,
(31:53):
And what he meant by that was like, we want
to go into a situation and not know what's going
to happen, right, And he was referring to it with
JJ Redick wanting to get back into coaching, and essentially,
the way I interpreted that and what I thought was
super fascinating is like, that's what makes sports fun to watch, guys,
is we don't know what's gonna happen. If we knew
(32:16):
every single game clearly who was going to win, no
one would watch. Where's the fun in that? Like, at
the end of the day, Like, that's what we love
about sports is you tune in for Game seven Denver
Minnesota and it's like, man, what's gonna happen tonight? Is
Denver going to flex their championship muscles and get this
(32:39):
thing done? Or is Minnesota, on the strength of this
twenty two year old kid in a great defense, gonna
beat these guys. And you're like, grab your popcorn, man,
get pop an ice cold beer. Let's watch what happens.
Like that's what we love about sports. And then guess
what we turn it on and it's like, holy shit,
Denver's up twenty. Oh my gosh, they haven't scored in
(33:02):
like five minutes. Now Minnesota's back in the game. Uh
oh Nasried's making shots. It's oh my gosh, Minnesota's gonna win.
That's why we love sports. That's why we love it.
I said this on a mail bag like a week ago.
There's nothing that has surprised me more since getting into
this industry than how obsessed people are with like my
(33:26):
ability to successfully predict playoff series, which is like completely absurd.
It's completely absurd. Secondly, I was on Denver because they
have the best player in the world and they have
a damn good basketball team. They barely lost in a
series where they led by twenty in.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
The fourth quarter.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Dallas was third on my list of championship contenders this year.
I picked them over Minnesota to start the playoff runt right. Obviously,
I became very optimistic on Minnesota after they beat Denver. Also,
I picked Dallas to win in the first round. I
picked Dallas to win in this second round. There's no
such thing as picking. Honestly, whoever wrote that question, I
(34:04):
want another mail bag answer. What do you mean by
pick integrity? What does that damn mean? I just don't understand, Like,
help me understand what you're expecting in terms of picks.
It's it's so confounding to me in retrospect. Do you
think that the fact that Minnesota took all seven games
to beat Denver was an indication that they were not ready?
(34:25):
They went up two oh and honestly, I think it
should have ended in five or six. Mex The matchup
was literally perfect form Minnesota. I'm curious to see what
you think about this. I don't think it needs to
be overthought. I thought, honestly, just Denver is a championship
caliber team that flexed their muscles and was able to
kind of regain control of the situation.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
But at the very last.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Minute, Minnesota kind of dug their heels in and they
were able to kind of drag it back, but again, guys,
like they were up twenty in the second half of
Game seven. Some of this is just the weirdness of sports, right.
Would you consider doing offseason film breakdowns with some of
the all time great players, Specifically, they're moves that change
the game allaw the iverson cut Love the Channel. You've
helped me on my journey to love the game of
(35:05):
basketball again with your great analysis.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Thank you. First of all, I bitch and moan a
lot about.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
The people in my comments that are complaining constantly, but
the overwhelming majority of you guys are positive, and I
want to make sure that I let you guys know
that I'm aware of that, and I'm super thankful for it,
and I appreciate all of you guys' support in the
kind words along the way. As far as the off season,
this is our first off season having film, and I'm
(35:31):
really excited to see what we do. When we do
player rankings, gonna include film, When we do all time rankings,
gonna include film. When we do series season previews, we're
gonna include film. So like draft stuff, we're gonna be
able to do film this year. So like I'm excited
to see what we do. We'll probably after the finals
do some sort of like strategy meeting internally to kind
of come up with some ideas. But we're gonna do
a lot of stuff with film this summer. Jason mailback
(35:54):
question for you, what do you think is the hardest
part regarding prepping for these reaction videos you make or
even going into a series were's so evenly matched between
both sides. Huge fan of the show, so reaction videos easily.
The hardest part is the close game. So you can
imagine I'm writing notes watching the game. I'm writing down
all the interesting tactical stuff that I'm seeing, right, but
let's say it's one hundred to one hundred and four
(36:15):
minutes left. Everything about the narrative of the show and
the flow of the show hinges on who wins the game.
And often I feel like a certain team's gonna win,
or I write a bunch of notes about one specific side,
and then you have a massive comeback, like a twenty
point comeback in the second half of game seven, and
suddenly the entire show flips over. And so instant reaction
shows are kind of interesting and unique challenge in the
(36:36):
sense that like it's just you never know what you're
gonna have to say because things can change so quickly
over a few minutes at the end. As far as
like series previews, like the hardest part is like I
go through the film and I see, oh, this team
has this advantage, this team has that advantage, this team
has this advantage, this team has that advantage, and it's
really difficult to predict something that's wildly unpredictable. The vast
(36:57):
majority of the series, in this playoff run, we're but
between relatively evenly matched teams that could have gone either way.
Even just look at thunder MAVs. If PJ Washington, Let's
say that Shay gets a clean block on PJ. Washington
on that corner three and they win, and they go
home and they win game seven, the entire NB Finals
could be different like that we would at Thunder Minnesota
(37:18):
in the second round, in the third round. So like, again,
all of this stuff hangs by a thread, and so
many things could have gone differently, and so like that's
the hard part. And like, honestly, when it comes to
doing series previews, like like half the battle is like
no matter what I pick.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
I'm gonna end up getting slandered for it at the
end of the day.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Anyway, do you think Lucas hit his ceiling as an
overall player or does he have areas to improve? I
think obviously with Luca it's it's mostly gonna be about
physical fitness. I think he's obviously a good athlete. I'm
not trying to sit here and pretend like he doesn't
take care of his body at all. But there certainly
is another level he can get to on that front,
and I wonder if you will ever get to that
(37:55):
in his career, because if he does, that could have
locked an entirely different level in terms of him both
defense and in terms of his conditioning level over the
course of games, which is already really good. How do
you see the matchup between the Nuggets and the Maps.
Barkley had a short comment that Denver would have beaten
Dallas if they had managed to go through Minnesota. I
probably would have picked Denver to beat Dallas had they
met in the conference finals. It's really as simple Denver.
(38:16):
In the same way that Denver has the personnel to
guard Anthony Edwards, they really don't have the personnel to
deal with Jokic. They would have to double and swarm
him the entire series, which would have led to a
ton of open looks. The other part of it, too
is Dallas. Denver is more capable of handling Dallas's loaded
up defense with their ability to move the ball side
to side. They play more five out and I think
(38:39):
they would have just generated a lot more quality looks. Also,
Da Denver has a player that's big and strong enough
to kind of sort of hang with Luca and Aaron Gordon,
which is something that Minnesota does not, and that's just
fundamentally different, Like Luca wouldn't be able to put Aaron
Gordon in jail on those ball screens and manipulate Aaron
Gordon the.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Way he does.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Jaden McDaniels that said, Dallas certainly could have beat Denis.
I would have probably picked Denver on like a sixty
to forty basis, which means I would have given Dallas
like a forty percent chance to win the series, which
means I certainly think it could have gone that route.
I just would feel like it would be more likely
that Denver would have won. This was an interesting comment,
not really a question, but a comment that I got
(39:18):
Luca versus Jokich is interesting. Obviously, Jokich has certain advantages
with his size, but I believe Luca also has a
few advantages by virtue of him being a perimeter player
and a great ball handler. For example, the best closers
usually tend to be guards, and Luca is probably the
best closer in the league today. On the Nuggets, too,
Murray is typically the one closing games more often than not.
Also because he is a perimeter player, I believe he
is able to control the pace of the game more
so than Jokic. Having said all that, if there was
(39:40):
one shot to be taken, I'd run Jokic post up
over any other play in the league. There's just a
feeling of inevitability with Yokich that isn't there with anyone else.
When it's all said and done, I do expect Luca
to end up higher in all time ranking, simply because
he's younger by four to five years. Also, to be
fair to him, he's been a superstar basically from day
one of his NBA career. That part at the end
I agree with like Luca probably has a better chance
of ending up higher all time just simply because he
(40:02):
got started younger. Right, I disagree in the sense that
I do think Jokic can strangle the posts of the
pace of the game. I do think Jokic can operate
as a closer. He chooses to go through Jamal Murray
often just because of matchups, and it's also just Jokic
is one of those guys too that like he doesn't
give a fuck who makes or takes the shot. He
just wants to win. But Yokic is certainly capable of
(40:22):
operating as a closer. I actually think Jokic and Luca
are very similar. They are two offensive engines who consistently
generate quality shots through the team, either by scoring on
an island, and they're pretty much unguardable. There's only a
handful of guys in the league that can guard both guys,
and then the consistent making of good reads when they
draw double teams.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
I think if there's one thing that Luka has kind
of gained ground on Jokich on as of late is
the jump shot. Just Yokis didn't shoot the ball well
this year and Luca's shooting it much better, and that
ended up being a problem, especially in the Minnesota series,
when Yokic couldn't hit pick and pop threes. But I
think that they're both remarkably similar. The only real difference
is they play different positions. Yokich operates more in the
(41:01):
flow of the game as a five out guy versus
Luca being like a four out you know, heliocentric type
of guy. As someone in what I would consider to
be the new age of sports media, what is it
going to take to get away from the clickbait headlines
that currently dominate old slash traditional media. I understand that
the Celtics have had a far easier road than the Wolves,
but but the Anton Tatum narratives are so bizarre to me.
(41:24):
So again, guys, this is I. I don't like watching
shows that have overly you know, critical clickbaity type of
subject matter, right, but I don't have to watch them
like this is the beautiful thing about the new age
of sports media. Whatever it is you're into listening to,
you can find and so like my thing is like there,
(41:46):
those things will continue to exist as long as people
watch them, and people still.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Do like I like I.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
I still to this day see you know, ESPN clips
with relatively clickbaity topics that perform extremely well and so
like people still like that kind of content. It's like,
if you're not into that, go listen to something different,
you know what I mean. One other thing that I
wanted to hit here. I get criticized a lot for
like my thumbnails and my titles. I don't write the
thumbnails or the titles, guys, Just to make that clear.
(42:15):
I record the show and I submit it and then
my team does the rest. And so like again, like
it's there's a certain business element that we have to
be realistic of. Like if it get if a click
baity headline gets you guys to click, but then you
like my show for being what my show is, then
I'm gonna take that as a win. Even if there
(42:35):
was a little grifty thing we had to do off
the top to get you to come through the door, right.
But like, once we get the door swing, it's really
about whether or not you like the show, right. But again, like,
if you guys don't like the stuff that's out there,
all you have to do is not watch it, you know,
Like I don't think it's really that complicated. Damn after
hearing all those stats, how does Minnesota even keep it close?
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Turnovers?
Speaker 1 (42:56):
I know, Games one and two dollars shot pour from three,
but still in game, should Dallas not push it, protect
the ball and just run half court sets every possession
since they're so much better at it. The main thing
that's kept it close to second chance points. The Timberwolves
have been much better at converting offensive rebounds into points.
They're up thirty nine to twenty five and second chance
points in the series. That has closed the gap on
some of the half court execution stuff. I'm having an
(43:19):
argument with my friends and I said Tatum has to
be the one to guard Luca in the finals.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Do you agree? Yes?
Speaker 1 (43:24):
I think that's where the series is eventually going. So
if Luca's picking on matchups and just barbecuing all of
your smaller perimeter defenders, the only thing you can do
is put Tatum on him. Now, how does that work
in different coverages? So what that would mean is in
ball screens, you have Tatum on Luca and you chase
over the top and that way, when Luca tries to
(43:45):
put Tatum in jail, Tatum's big and strong and long
enough to actually bother Luca there in a way that
a guy like Jada McDaniels can't. Right from there, Luca
will probably start trying to run guard guard screens to
try to get to try to get Tatum switched off
of him. From there you run hedge and recover and
you rotate. But I think that would be the goal
because that's the best way to get the ball out
of Luca's hands and actually make other people try to score.
(44:08):
Is like if you have it so that you can't
attack and straight Iso. Because one of the things that
Dallas would do is if they're blitzing ball screens against Minnesota,
Luca will just attack Jayda McDaniel's one on one because
he feels comfortable. He won't be able to do that
as easily with Tatum, So I think Tatum on Luca
is probably their best strategy in the long run. Also,
Boston has enough offensive talent that if you went to
(44:29):
Tatum and said, hey, I need you to devote eighty
percent of your energy to guarding Luka Doncic, Boston would
be fine because they have enough offensive talent on the
other end to make up for it.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
All Right, we have four more.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
It looks like, hey, Jason, in your opinion, what has
made the Luca Kyrie backcourt work so well compared to
other teams that have tried using two star guards, like
Atlanta and Cleveland, It's really this simple. Atlanta and was
Trey Young and Dejonte Murray. Cleveland was Donovan Mitchell and
Darius Garland. Dallas has Luka Doncic, who might be the
best player in the world. And Kyrie Irving, who's better
(45:02):
as a number two than Garland or de john Taim Murray.
I don't think we need to overthink it. They just
they're the stars are actually just really really good, and
they've got really good role players doing all the dirty
work for them. Didn't you say that ant Man is
clearly better than Tatum. So I had a mail back
question that said where someone said who would you take
(45:22):
right now, Tatum or and I said I would take
I would take Aunt right now, no questions.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
And here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
When I that was just a quick response to a
mail back question, the way I really feel about it
is that I do think that ant Man is going
to be better than Tatum sooner than later. I if
I was a GM, I'd rather have ant Man on
my team than Jason Tatum. But right now, right now
for a playoff series, I think Tatum is better, And
I said that in our player rankings when we did
(45:48):
the top five, like a week and a half, two
weeks ago, I had Jokic one Luka two.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Did I did we remove Yokic?
Speaker 1 (45:57):
No? No, yeah, yeah it was Jokic one, Luka two. I
had Tatum three, Anthony Edwards four. So like that's how
I feel. But I do think that I would be
stunned if eighteen months from now if it wasn't at
Tatum's level, and if thirty six months from now he
wasn't just clearly better.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
Two more.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
I used to enjoy your pod with Raj and then
one day it seemed like it was discontinued. Can you
elaborate on what happened there exactly? I know you explained
some of the overall journey recently, but I really liked
State of the Lakers. So it's really as simple. State
of Lakers was only half the podcast. It started as
Jason The Jason tim Podcast, then it became State of
the Lakers. But half of the show was me doing
instant reaction shows with Roger at night. The other half
(46:37):
of the show is me by myself covering the rest
of the league. Roger and I had very different goals.
My goal was to cover the NBA at large. Roger's
goal is to be a credentialed reporter that covers the
Los Angeles Lakers. When the volume reached out to me,
they wanted me to cover the league as a as
a solo guy like I was already doing for the
(46:58):
other half of the state of the Lakers. So that's
really all it was. They were essentially just trying to
build a new show around what the Jason timf podcast
was before I started working with Raj. But Roger and
I had different goals. Roger doesn't want to cover the
entire league and wants to cover the Lakers, and that's what
he's doing right now. But I loved working with Raj,
and I think he's one of the best people that
(47:19):
covers the Lakers. Does great work. I think he's working.
I think he's doing a show right now with an
A Kilawala, and they do a great They do a
great job. Seems like Luca jumped Giannis for you and
the best player in the world rankings. How and why?
Very simple? I just I think the most important skill
that a basketball player can have is the ability to
consistently generate quality shots, first team in the half court,
and I think Luca's awesome at it, potentially the best
(47:42):
player in the world at it. And for Giannis, I
think that's actually been one of the major issues that
has plagued him over the years. Like, yes, he got hurt,
but when push came to shove against Miami last year,
he couldn't get a shot at like, he couldn't make
a quality shot over the top of bam, Like he
can't even get like a left shoulder hook right. Going
back to the twenty twenty two season, like his I
(48:05):
actually thought he was really good in that series against Boston,
but still there's some limitations in terms of his ability
to get shots off over the top when he can't
just penetrate into the paint. And then obviously before that,
before the twenty twenty one season when they won the title,
that was consistently what was his issue in twenty nineteen.
In twenty twenty twenty twenty one in particular, two like
(48:26):
a genuine championship. Don't take anything away from it, but
it was a weird season and he played some limited
competition along the way, and I do think that that
was one of the things that allowed Giannis to overcome
that specific weakness of his second part of the question,
the Wolves exposed how bad Yokich is a is a
rim protector. How has that shaped your view on him
relative to Giannis and other great bigs in NBA history.
(48:47):
So the thing with with Jokich is he demonstrated last
year that he could defend the rim well enough against
like really good competition too, against Lebron and Ad against
Bam and Jimmy, against Kadie and Devin Booker. Like, he
demonstrated that he could do that at last year. I
think in a lot of ways, Minnesota just drove him
into the ground with their overwhelming physicality, and I think
he got tired and I think he fell apart there.
(49:08):
So obviously there are some things that he has to
improve on in that regard. But I still think, to
put it simply, if I had to build a team
that could win a championship, I feel it could be
easier to build one around Yokic than Yannis simply because
it's gonna be easy for me to get defensive personnel
that can thrive offensively off of what Jokic does than
vice versa. All right, guys, that's all I have for
today is always. I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting
(49:29):
the show. We're gonna be back tonight live on YouTube
after the final buzzer Game four between the Wolves and
the mass I will see you guys then. H
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(02:16):
Night here at the volume. Happy Tuesday, everybody. Hope all
you guys are having a great week. Just gonna do
a quick mail bag today before we get to Game
four the Western Conference Finals tonight. We'll be going live
on YouTube tonight after the final buzzer. Make sure you
guys are there, got like twenty twenty five questions we're
going to get to today. You guys know the drill
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(02:38):
show announcements. Don't forget about a podcast feed wherever you
get your podcast on our Hoops Tonight, and then keep
dropping mail bag questions and those YouTube comments so we
can keep hitting them throughout the rest of the postseason.
All right, let's talk some basketball. So the first question,
what is your most interesting storyline from a likely MAVs Celtics. Obviously,
(03:01):
the Celtics have officially secured their spot in the NBA Finals.
The MAVs need one more win to do so. But
as we've broken down at nauseum in the show, We're
going to get into a little bit deeper today. I
don't see a pathway for Minnesota to flip the script
against Dallas. I think it's a terrible matchup for them,
in addition to the fact that Luca is clearly a
better player at this phase of his career than Anthony Edwards,
(03:23):
and so I don't really see a path there. So
I think the overwhelmingly likely scenario is that we're going
to get the MAVs versus the Celtics in the NBA Finals,
and so from there, I'm gonna kind of go a
little bit deeper into a concept I talked a little
bit about last night with Colin Coward. What I think
is most interesting about this series is the complete difference
(03:43):
in the two builds of these rosters. Right, Boston feels
like more of a talent accumulation type of roster. Right,
everyone plays positions that compliment each other really well. Right,
Like Derek White's more of like a skill guard, right all, so,
an excellent defensive player and a great athlete, but he's
a guy that can you know, really run a lot
(04:04):
of action. Excellent pull up three point shooter when they
go to late game situations, it usually ends up being
Tatum White two man game, right. But then Drew Hollidy
kind of plays that athlete guard guards the other team's
best guard kind of thing, right, And then you've got
you know, your smaller forward, and then you've got your
bigger forward and Jason Tatum, and then you've got that
center position with a rim protector and Chris tops porzingis right.
(04:27):
But at the same time, none of those guys are
like role players, right. Every single one of them has
at various points in their careers been playing in very
large roles, even like Derek White, who's been a role
player and a lot of teams, Like I would argue,
at this point, he's become one of the primary decision
makers for the Boston Celtics, right, And so that team
(04:47):
is you know, as we mentioned in many of the
recent episodes, all five of those guys that I just
mentioned on the open market, if they were free agents
right now, would command over thirty million dollars a year.
So it's like a very talented, you know, conglomeration of players.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Then we get into Dallas and it's like you've got
a player in Luca that I believe is better than
Jason Tatum. I believe he's at least the second best
player in the league, if not the best player in
the league. Right, So, it's more of like a top
heavy build where you have Luca and Kyrie and they
take on basically the vast majority, They take on the
entirety of the offensive decision making part of the offense.
(05:24):
That puts everybody else in a play finishing role.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
So, Derrek Jones Junior, it's ketch and shoot threes, driving closeouts.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
PJ.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Washington, it's ketch and shoot threes, driving close outs, a
little bit of work in the dunker spot, maybe the
occasional duck in post up. Right, Derek Lively vertical spacing,
Daniel Gafford vertical spacing. Every single guy on the team
is playing in a play finishing role on the offensive
end of the floor. Then you go over to the
defense end of the floor, and every single one of
those same guys has super focused and important defensive responsibilities.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Right. PJ.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Washington and Derek Jones Junior are guarding your best guard
and forward.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
On the other team.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Lively and Daniel Gafford are running deep drop coverage and
protecting the ram and Kyrie and Lucar primarily off ball,
although Kyrie's done a good amount of work on ball
in this playoff run. Right, So it's like it's a
lot of like guys having less talent being focused into
very specific roles behind these two super talented offensive players
versus Boston, where it's like kind of everyone has to
(06:22):
do everything because everyone is a star, right, And so
like I do find that to be super super fascinating
going into that series, that to me is the most
interesting storyline. Another kind of way to look at it
is like Luca being potentially the best player in the
series versus Boston clearly being the more talented team in
the series, and so it's going to be an interesting
(06:43):
kind of of you know, case study and whether or
not the best player on in the series can elevate
his team over more talent. Now again, but for the record,
we've seen many times over the years that not be enough. Right, Like,
I think Lebron James was clearly the best player in
the world from twenty twelve to twenty twenty. I thought
(07:03):
that that was clear, and yet there were several examples
over that stretch where he did not win the NBA Championship,
he won four of them. What is a nine year span,
so we lost five of them, right, So like twenty fourteen,
that Spurs team just had it cooking in so many
different ways offensively and at Dwayne Wade's knee was kind
of bothering and the team was kind of just getting
(07:25):
a little bit fatigued, a little bit old, right, you know.
Twenty fifteen, Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving get hurt. Right
twenty seventeen. In twenty eighteen, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry,
the second and third best players in the world, team
up with each other and that ends up being enough
to unseat him. Right, twenty nineteen, he has the groin injury. So,
like you guys can see the point, Like there are
many times in NBA history where the best player in
(07:47):
the series does not win. I think just look back
at the Denver series, knowing what we know about Anthony
Edwards now and seeing that he doesn't have the matchup
resiliency that someone like a Luka Doncic has. Now that
we've seen that, we can state unequivocally that the best
player in the series in the Denver Minnesota Series was
Jokic and yet Denver lost, and so we're gonna see
(08:09):
if Luca can reverse that trend going into the NBA Finals.
Next question, does Dallas have what it takes to upset
Boston in the finals. Absolutely, They're an elite defensive team, right.
I think a big part of it is going to
be Luca attacking and pick and roll. I started to
just barely look at some film. We're gonna do a
lot of series preview content around this series because we're
(08:32):
just gonna have a lot of time. Like, guys, if
if Dallas wins tonight, which I think they probably will,
but Minnesota's got a shot if Dallas wins tonight, we're
looking at eight consecutive days, full days off before the
NBA Finals. Like I was thinking, we'll probably go there's
two Dallas Boston games. We may just do full breakdowns
of both of those games. We might spend an entire
(08:53):
show talking about the offense. We might bring on Chris Mannix,
we might bring on those of you guys who were Dallas.
If you guys have a specific like team, someone who
covers the Mavericks really closely that you guys think is
great at it, drop it in the comments I'll see
if I can't reach out and get them on the show.
We're gonna have a lot of fun previewing this series,
and we're gonna get into all those details. But one
(09:15):
of the things that I noticed in my initial kind
of look at some film yesterday is Luca is too
big for everybody on Boston pretty much except for Jason Tatum.
And so I think a big thing is Boston's not
gonna want to put Jason Tatum on Luca, especially not
early in the series. I think Drew Holliday is gonna
get that assignment a lot, right. I think Jalen Brown
and Drew Holliday are gonna be the guys that see
(09:35):
the majority of the time on him. And like, you know,
first possession of the game in Boston, like Luca gets
Drew Holliday on his hip and just methodically works him
down into the lane, waits for chrisops Porzingis to recover
to the role man, and then he just shoots an
easy little floater over Drew Holliday and he turns around
and makes the too small symbol, right, So, like I
think that that's gonna be kind of like where this
series hinges is can Luca really strangle the pace of
(09:59):
the game and pick the Celtics defense apart in the
half court because if you can and keep the game
kind of slowed down in intense and high pressure, maybe
on the other end of the floor, can your elite
defense play Boston into some of their worst tendencies. Now,
one of the things that's going to be interesting is
Boston is very much a spread you out type of
driving kick offense, which is very, very different than what
(10:21):
Minnesota does, right, and like, you're not gonna have the
luxury that you have in this series of having Daniel
Gafford and Derek Lively just spark in the paint because
Rudy Gobert is terrible at making anything other than a dunk.
I'm gonna actually pull up this stat real quick. I
tweeted it out yesterday, but I pulled this up on
Synergy yesterday and I was like literally blown away. So,
(10:42):
Rudy Gobert is this that is like legitimately insane. Let's see,
Rudy Gobert is shooting sixteen for thirty five on layups
in this playoff run and three for eleven on floaters
in hook So like that's one of the things that
allows Derek Lively and Daniel Gafford to just kind of
(11:04):
roam off of Gobert and help in the lane is like,
unless it's a clean dunk, Gobart's probably not gonna make it.
And so that buys you that luxury. That's not what
it's gonna be like with Al Horford and chrisops porzingis
they're gonna be operating primarily from the three point line
and it's gonna be a lot more about covering in space. Now,
this is where we've found out that Maxi Kleba is
(11:24):
coming back tonight. That's a big deal for Dallas, right,
Like having Kleba back gives you the ability to put
lineups out there with Kleba, PJ. Washington, and Derek Jones
Junior all on the floor at the same time, and
then you can you can put those guys on Tatum
and Brown and Derek White and ask Kyrie to do
a somewhat easier job of guarding someone like a Drew
(11:45):
Holliday and ask Luca to maybe be the guy who's
hedging and recovering on an on an Al Horford or
something along those lines. Like they're they're gonna have options,
more options by virtue of having Maxi Kleba back, but
it's gonna be much more of a of a defend
in space type of series, whereas this series is much
more of a load up and pack the paint type
(12:06):
of series.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
So it's going to be very, very different.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
But Dallas certainly has what it takes and it's all
going to come down to Luca just completely dominating the series,
and it's going to come down to physical perimeter containment
from Dallas's perimeter defenders. And if they can do that
in kind of play Boston into their worst tendencies, I
think they've got a good chance. Who is the best
(12:28):
lob thrower in NBA history and why is it? Luka
Doncic I was thinking about this earlier. I think it's
probably Luca as well. There are a lot of really
good lob throwers that have seen over the years, like
guys like Trey Young, guys like Chris Paul. Lebron was
always good at he just never played with a vertical
spacing threat until Anthony Davis, and he's been pretty good
at connecting him with lobbs. But the problem with Lebron
and Ad is they play very similar positions, so teams
(12:50):
will typically switch those ball screens, and so lebron ad
picking rolls out something you see a ton of unless
you're playing against a drop coverage big, right, But I
think it's clear Luca. One of the big things that
I think makes him the best at it is he's tall,
and like you got to think, so, what makes a
lob open. A lob is open when the rim protector
leaves the lob threat. Right, If the rim protector is
(13:11):
leaving the lob threat, that means that a seven footer
or some sort of large center type player is leaving
that guy to pressure Luca, and so he's got to
be able to get that pass over the tall player.
I put in the film session yesterday. Do you guys
remember that transition post up of Mike Conley where Luca
spun baseline and threw the lob up to I think
it was Gafford, it might have been Lively, it doesn't matter.
(13:32):
But on that play, Gobert left him and double team
Luca and came up arms up, and Luca just happened
to get the pass up over the top of him,
which is just a kind of like a benefit of
him being as tall as he is. I've been saying
this for a while, but I think Luca is the
only current NBA player that can contend for goats status thoughts.
(13:53):
So I was looking at I thought about this for
a little while this morning because I kind of think
of like three tiers of young players, Like the guys
in that like age twenty seven to thirty range that
are like kind of in the heart of their prime
right now. There's like the guys that are in that
like twenty five to twenty six, twenty four to twenty
(14:13):
five to twenty six range. Those to me are the
guys that are just entering into their prime. And then
there's the guys that are in their early twenties that
are like very clearly just like raw talent, that are
still kind of getting into that phase. In the older tier,
Jannis and Jokic, they both have a title, right but
they both turn thirty next year. It's a one championship.
Entering into your thirties, they just would have to go
(14:35):
on an absolutely crazy run over the next five years
to enter into those conversations.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
So that feels pretty unlikely.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Joel Embiid he doesn't have one yet, and he's gonna
be thirty. I think he might actually already be thirty.
But like Embiid is probably off of that, off of
that you know, pathway right in Luca's tier, which is
the kind of guys in that you know, twenty four
to twenty five to twenty six age bracket. I put Luca, Shakekilojos, Alexander,
Jason Tatum, and Devin Booker. Devin Booker just I don't
(15:04):
I just don't think he has that upside. Jason Tatum,
I think is a really good and maybe even a
bit underrated basketball player, but I don't think that he's
in the tier of players that can really like dominate
the league for a half of a decade. Like like,
I think he's the perfect fit for this super talented
Boston roster, but I think if you swapped him with like,
(15:26):
with a guy like Luca and put him in a
role where he really had to run an offense by
himself or with only one secondary shot creator for an
eighty two game season, I just don't think he's the
kind of guy that can really do that at.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
A super high level. Shaek yios.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Alexander is damn good, but I don't think he's as
good as Luca, So I think Luca is really the
only guy in his tier that can do it. But
in the next generation, I think there's two guys that
can do it. I think Victor webbin Yama has that potential,
and I think Anthony Edwards has that potential. But it's
just completely raw potential with those two. So it's like
there's a there's a huge, wide rue range of outcomes
(16:00):
for them, and as you get older, those ranges of
outcomes kind of zero in between where your current development
is and what your potential upside is, right, And so yeah,
I think that I think that Lucas certainly has that potential,
but I also think that there are some guys in
the younger generation that have that potential. What is it
that separates go Baar in the eyes of voters from
(16:22):
players like Ad Bam and Victor wemen Yama. I find
it odd that media voters complained about him winning just
to vote for him year after year. So voters, I've
one of the big things that I learned after I
got into this business. A good percentage of voters rely
heavily on metrics, which is crazy to me, but it
is what it is, and I've had one of those
(16:43):
guys explain to me the reasoning and their whole thing
is like the eye test is flawed, but numbers are unbiased,
and that's a good way to look at it. I
think that that's absurd personally, but that is the way
that so many voters think.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And there's just a lot of really good.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Metrics that support Rudy Gobert being the best regular season defender,
and even though defensive metrics in particular are very flawed,
a lot of people kind of key in on that
sort of thing. I think the second piece of it
is people are just enamored with the fact that Gobert
is like super engaged defensively all the time, which is
completely ridiculous when you factor in the responsibilities that Anthony
(17:23):
Davis has, that bam Adebayo has, that Victor Webmbinyama has
a D and bam we're both like folkrum ball screeners
in a five out offense all year, like they were
guys that had to like consistently make decisions and set
screens and roll hard to the rim, not in a
way like Rudy Gobert where it's like maybe you'll catch
and finish every once in a while, they were expected
(17:44):
to score. They were expected to score consistently on the
offensive end of the floor. And Victor webbin Yama obviously
as well, is a guy that is a primary initiator
for his team, and so like I can speak to
this from personal experience. Like when I was in college.
When I was in junior college, I was like one
of the best scorers on my team. I was the
guy that had the ball in my hands a ton.
(18:04):
Then I went to Naia, and when I was there,
I played alongside two All American guards. My role fundamentally
changed from guy who had the ball in his hands
to I stayed on the floor and like kept my
spot in the lineup by basically devoting all of my
energy towards guarding the other team's best player and trying
to knock corner threes down right. So like in that
(18:28):
every game I went in like all I cared about
was defense, defense, defense, because that was how I kept
my job while I was playing alongside really good offensive players.
And so that's what Rudy Gobert does. Rudy Gobert goes
into tonight's game, He's not thinking about anything on the
offensive end. The only thing Rudy Gobert is thinking about
tonight going into the game is how do I anchor
(18:48):
this defense? Whereas Anthony Davis when he's going into Game
five in Denver, he's thinking, man, I got to give
him an efficient thirty tonight two, you know what I mean.
And so like there's just a lot of pressure sure
on those guys to do more. And I genuinely think
all three of those guys and arguably Draymond as well,
are better defensive players in a vacuum than Rudy Gobert.
(19:10):
But because Rudy Gobert devotes all of his energy in
that direction, he puts up these crazy metrics and all
the voters just kind of glom onto that sort of
thing and they run with it every single year. And
so Rudy Gobert has four Defensive Player of the Year trophies,
and I think he's probably somewhere around the fifth to
seventh best defensive player in the world. And it is
what it is. If the Timberwolves mostly Towns and Ant
(19:33):
were playing like they were the first two rounds, would
they be up three to zero or at least two
to one. I mean, yeah, But think about why they're
playing poorly. They're not playing poorly, like so many people
want to point to this as like some sort of
mental shortcoming, like, oh, you know, Carl Towns and Anthony
Edwards just ran into this aura of Luka Doncic and
then they just crumbled the pieces. No, Like they're playing
(19:55):
a very different defense than they did in the first
two rounds. They are completely incapable of getting into the paint.
All of Minnesota's paint finishes have come off the ball,
either through cleanups around the rim, put backs, or attacking
closeouts on the weekside. Carltown's in Anthony Edwards are not
consistently getting into the lane because of elite perimeter athleticism
(20:18):
and elite vertical athleticism under the rim for Dallas, and
so again, like they're not playing well, but there's a
basketball reason for that, Like we got to get out
of this hole, like, oh, they crumbled under the pressure. No, no, no,
Like there's generally speaking, if the basketball conditions are favorable,
a player is gonna play well, and if basketball conditions
are not favorable, they're not going to play well. And again,
(20:39):
it's exposed a couple of weaknesses as we've gone over
in this series. I've consistently said Carl Anthony Towns is
a guy that if you can flatten out his drives
and shut off the lane from him, he's an inconsistent
over the top shooter, and so you will turn him
into a make or miss guy, and he's been missing
in this series. That's something that can happen with Karl
Anthony Towns. Anthony Edwards his flies, he's all one speed
(20:59):
right now, and so he's got to learn against these
super packed in defenses how to be more methodical to
manipulate help defenders, which is going to take him a
few more years of experience. There's two of these. I'm
so relieved that Jason is leaning Boston. Would have crushed
my soul for him to give us his curse. The
second one, Please don't pick the MAVs to win, Jason,
(21:19):
don't do it. First of all, I literally picked the
MAVs to win against the Clippers. I picked the MAVs
to win against the thunder when they were an underdog.
So was I cursing the MAVs. Then, in my pre
playoffs contender rankings, I had Denver one, Boston to Dallas three.
So like I obviously was a huge believer in Dallas
(21:41):
all along, I picked against them in this specific series
in a razor thin margin. And then I also laid
out in the series preview all the different reasons that
Dallas could win, including Jada McDaniels might be too skinny
for Luca, including Dallas has real rim protection that might
cause problems for Anthony Edwards and Karl Anthony Towns. In
(22:02):
the lane, I also mentioned like I thought Luca's knee
might be in rough shape and it might cause some problems.
It clearly has not been an issue. So like, first
of all, I haven't cursed your team. Second of all,
I've been consistently on the Dallas bandwagon for the most
part over the course of the latter portion of the year,
So I really don't know where all that sentiment comes from.
Why don't teams target Luca? Why didn't they put him
(22:23):
in pick and roll? So, first of all, there's a
reason why the Wolves can't because Luca has been targeted
on occasion in this series, and he's ended up on
an island against you know, Luca, or against Anthony Edwards
or against Carl Anthony Towns. The reason why the Wolves
are struggling with it is think about it like this.
If it has Derek Jones Junior on him and he
(22:44):
brings Luca into the screen, gets a switch at that point,
where's Gobert if it's an ISO. If it's an ISO,
go Beart's sitting underneath the basket in the dunker spot, right,
and who's guarding him Derek Leivelier Daniel Gaffer Right. So
Luca's defensive job becomes very simple. Just press up on
(23:06):
Ant and make him drive, and if he drives, he's
just gonna drive into all of this damn traffic underneath
the rim. Dallas has also been helping heavily off of
Jade McDaniels all serious. So it's not that they're not
trying to target Luca, it's just it doesn't solve the
fundamental problem, which is Ant can get by his man.
That's not the issue. Even Derek Jeonge Jr. And can
get by him. It's the totality of the team defense
(23:27):
on the way they're packing the paint, and with Gobaert
and McDaniels being left open, how they're incapable of consistently
making them pay for doing that. But Boston is very,
very big on matchup attacking. Up until the point where
Tyres Aliburton left the series, the vast majority of action
they were running was targeting Tyros Aliburton either on the
(23:48):
ball through pick and roll or off the ball through
inverted pick and roll where he was hedging and recovering.
Boston was going at him every single time down the floor. Also,
Boston can get centers out of the paint because they
have shooting bigs, so they can like legitimately play five
out all the time, right, And so from that perspective,
I do think Luca will get targeted a lot more
(24:09):
consistently in the Boston series, and it will come down to,
you know, is is Dallas willing to hedge and recover
or are they just gonna have to double team m
out of those situations or is Luca just gonna slide
his feet and do it. Well, we're gonna find out
in that next round. Every Luca play description as you saying,
watch how Luca bumps Jayden to create separation, or watch
(24:29):
how Luca hits him so hard he goes flying, or
Luca gives him a little off arm creating separation, or
watch Luca bump Jaden with the drop step here, with
each being followed by Lucas step back. This action is
never called an offensive foul. How can anyone guard this
type of play effectively? Basketball is a contact sport. I
hate to break it to you. That's just what it is.
It's not like every single basketball Not only is basketball
(24:51):
contact sport, it becomes more and more of a contact
sport the later you get into the playoffs. And that's
just not even that's not even just a NBA thing.
That's at every life, whether it's high school, when you
get into the playoffs, it gets more physical. Whether it's
an NCAA tournament game, it gets like that, whether it's
a money tournament where there's money on the line and
guys are playing like it, just anytime the intensity in
(25:12):
stakes rise, it becomes a contact sport. And so that's
why if you look back through NBA history, it's usually
the big strong guys who end up playing the best.
It ends up being the Lucas, it ends up being
the jokic As, it ends up being the Lebron james As,
it ends up being the Giannises in this league, right,
the big strong guys who have the most success. Why
are you so convinced that Ant will just learn to
(25:34):
be a smart player and game controller. He will improve,
of course, but he has an enormous gap to close
with guys like Luka or Jokis. I'm sure he will
be a brilliant player for years to come, but I
do not really see the signs of him being a
great decision maker consistently. I have the impression that Wemby
is more likely to have that type of impact, and
he is in his and he is in his way
also a freak of nature like Ant. So if anyone
is going to be an outstanding force in the league
(25:54):
other than Luca or Jokic, it's going to be Wemby,
not Ant.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Wenby's a very different type of player Ant, but he
also has that type of potential. I absolutely think that
Wemby could be.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Better than it.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
He should be better than it, right, Like, he's got
the best set of physical tools ever in the history
of NBA prospects.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
So, like, Wemby's kind of like a different thing as
far as ANTC goes. He's twenty two years old, guys,
He's twenty two years old. Michael Jordan and Lebron James
didn't win their first titles until they were twenty seven.
That's five years, five more playoff runs. Like, think about
how long ago five years was. Five years ago Kwhi
Leonard was playing for the Toronto Raptors. Five years ago,
(26:31):
Kevin Durant was still wearing a Golden State Warriors jersey. Okay, Like,
that's how far we have to get for Aunt to
be able to win a title on the same schedule
as the lebron James Michael Jordan's tier of guys at
the top of the league in NBA history, right, So, Like,
I wouldn't overthink that. And most importantly, I've seen encouraging
signs having that disastrous first half in Game seven and
(26:55):
then figuring out how to be deeply impactful in the
second half. That was a huge, huge sign of adaptability
from Ant, even in this series. I know every Mavericks
fan is just convinced it was because of Lively. I
thoroughly disagree. In terms of his overall approach. He was
much smarter in the second half of Game three. No,
it's not gonna be enough to turn the series around,
but he is adaptable, he is learning, and he is
(27:17):
rapidly improving. Give this dude five more offseasons, five more
eighty two game grinds, five more playoff runs. He's gonna
be so damn good. Guys, He's gonna be so damn good.
It looked like he might be ahead of schedule. Turns
out still needs some more time. But that doesn't mean
we need to pretend the dude is incapable of reaching
where he wants to get to need the Boston Verse
(27:39):
MAVs breakdown. Like I said, obviously, we're gonna wait until
after the MAVs series ends, but we will do many,
many layers of series preview content for this matchup, a
ton of film, probably gonna have some guests on as well.
We're gonna have lots to get into over the course
of the coming week. How has Ant's potential changed zero
(28:00):
after the series? You just said in this video that
he will need considerably more time to reach the peak,
So that's considerably less rings for him. He potentially could
have started winning championships starting this season, but now it'll
take him a couple more years to get his first.
The potential does change, No, it doesn't. Lebron James and
Michael Jordan didn't win their first until twenty seven and
they've combined to win ten. He was on pace to
(28:22):
be way ahead of schedule. It looks like he's a
little bit He's got a ways to go. But guys,
he's twenty two. He barely can order a beer. Okay, Jason,
I love the channel and have improved my understanding of
basketball measurably thanks to your logical and insightful breakdowns of
the game. I used the logic you taught me to
predict that the MAVs have many advantages in this matchup
(28:45):
and that should put them as considerable favorite, despite what
the overall narratives were surrounding the series. Looking back on
your coverage, I believe you have the basketball like Q
and experience to have gone against the majority of your
peers and predicted the shape of this matchup before game one,
but you allowed yourself to be moved by more narrative
based statements such as Edwards is playing like a top
five player in the league, or that either Denver or
(29:06):
Mini could easily beat Dallas or Oklahoma City. Do you
think this is a fair assessment and that if you
followed your own processes more strictly, you could have predicted
this series more accurately. So, first of all, I really
do try to look at the basketball before going into
the series. If you guys, go go back and listen
to the series preview and you'll hear a lot of
(29:27):
the same shit that's happened in the series. I specifically
brought up McDaniels might not be able to guard Luca.
I specifically brought up that the rim protection might be
an issue for Anthony Edwards and Carl Anthony Towns. I
specifically brought up that Derek Jones Junior was a freaky
athlete that might be able to have some more success
keeping Anthony Edwards in front off of the dribble. I
looked at all those advantages. I think where I specifically
(29:49):
made a mistake was I knew Dallas's rim protection would
be different than Denver. I just thought ant would have
more success against it. So, like, honestly, like it's this
series should be a little closer than it is. It
shouldn't be a sweep. Dallas isn't four to zero better
than Minnesota. But Anthony Everards is having a really really
(30:10):
rough series, which can happen sometimes for young basketball players
when they run into a tough matchup, and so again,
like the way I look at it, like I was wrong,
but I had it close. Go look at in the preview,
I've specifically said, like, this can go either way. Dallas
certainly can win. I'm picking Minnesota. I thought Minnesota's defense
would have a little bit more impact on Luca, and
(30:31):
I thought Anthony Edwards would have a little bit more
success attacking in the half court against this team. It
went a different way. I was wrong. It happens. I
don't know what else to say. But at the end
of the day, guys, like like I guys, Minnesota beat Denver.
Minnesota beat Denver. Denver and Anthony Edwards went toe to
toe with the best player in the world and like
(30:52):
played more or less at his level over the course
of a seven game series. Like Dallas flipped the script.
Good on them, tip the cap. But like, let's not
sit here and pretend like Minnesota was a bunch of
bums and we all foolishly picked bums over because of
narratives over the Dallas Mavericks. That's not the way that
I see it. First you were on Denver, then Minnesota,
(31:15):
now Dallas. Do you have pick integrity? A couple things
I hate this part of the job, but it's something
that we have to do.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
There is no such thing as like a basketball analyst
out there. If there is one, show me who year
in year out, just picks every single series correctly. It's
not a thing. I remember when we were talking with
When I was talking with Ethan Strauss on his podcast,
he said something that I thought was fascinating. He goes,
humans on a deep level are are are addicted to variants,
(31:53):
And what he meant by that was like, we want
to go into a situation and not know what's going
to happen, right, And he was referring to it with
JJ Redick wanting to get back into coaching, and essentially,
the way I interpreted that and what I thought was
super fascinating is like, that's what makes sports fun to watch, guys,
is we don't know what's gonna happen. If we knew
(32:16):
every single game clearly who was going to win, no
one would watch. Where's the fun in that? Like, at
the end of the day, Like, that's what we love
about sports is you tune in for Game seven Denver
Minnesota and it's like, man, what's gonna happen tonight? Is
Denver going to flex their championship muscles and get this
(32:39):
thing done? Or is Minnesota, on the strength of this
twenty two year old kid in a great defense, gonna
beat these guys. And you're like, grab your popcorn, man,
get pop an ice cold beer. Let's watch what happens.
Like that's what we love about sports. And then guess
what we turn it on and it's like, holy shit,
Denver's up twenty. Oh my gosh, they haven't scored in
(33:02):
like five minutes. Now Minnesota's back in the game. Uh
oh Nasried's making shots. It's oh my gosh, Minnesota's gonna win.
That's why we love sports. That's why we love it.
I said this on a mail bag like a week ago.
There's nothing that has surprised me more since getting into
this industry than how obsessed people are with like my
(33:26):
ability to successfully predict playoff series, which is like completely absurd.
It's completely absurd. Secondly, I was on Denver because they
have the best player in the world and they have
a damn good basketball team. They barely lost in a
series where they led by twenty in.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
The fourth quarter.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Dallas was third on my list of championship contenders this year.
I picked them over Minnesota to start the playoff runt right. Obviously,
I became very optimistic on Minnesota after they beat Denver. Also,
I picked Dallas to win in the first round. I
picked Dallas to win in this second round. There's no
such thing as picking. Honestly, whoever wrote that question, I
(34:04):
want another mail bag answer. What do you mean by
pick integrity? What does that damn mean? I just don't understand, Like,
help me understand what you're expecting in terms of picks.
It's it's so confounding to me in retrospect. Do you
think that the fact that Minnesota took all seven games
to beat Denver was an indication that they were not ready?
(34:25):
They went up two oh and honestly, I think it
should have ended in five or six. Mex The matchup
was literally perfect form Minnesota. I'm curious to see what
you think about this. I don't think it needs to
be overthought. I thought, honestly, just Denver is a championship
caliber team that flexed their muscles and was able to
kind of regain control of the situation.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
But at the very last.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Minute, Minnesota kind of dug their heels in and they
were able to kind of drag it back, but again, guys,
like they were up twenty in the second half of
Game seven. Some of this is just the weirdness of sports, right.
Would you consider doing offseason film breakdowns with some of
the all time great players, Specifically, they're moves that change
the game allaw the iverson cut Love the Channel. You've
helped me on my journey to love the game of
(35:05):
basketball again with your great analysis.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Thank you. First of all, I bitch and moan a
lot about.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
The people in my comments that are complaining constantly, but
the overwhelming majority of you guys are positive, and I
want to make sure that I let you guys know
that I'm aware of that, and I'm super thankful for it,
and I appreciate all of you guys' support in the
kind words along the way. As far as the off season,
this is our first off season having film, and I'm
(35:31):
really excited to see what we do. When we do
player rankings, gonna include film, When we do all time rankings,
gonna include film. When we do series season previews, we're
gonna include film. So like draft stuff, we're gonna be
able to do film this year. So like I'm excited
to see what we do. We'll probably after the finals
do some sort of like strategy meeting internally to kind
of come up with some ideas. But we're gonna do
a lot of stuff with film this summer. Jason mailback
(35:54):
question for you, what do you think is the hardest
part regarding prepping for these reaction videos you make or
even going into a series were's so evenly matched between
both sides. Huge fan of the show, so reaction videos easily.
The hardest part is the close game. So you can
imagine I'm writing notes watching the game. I'm writing down
all the interesting tactical stuff that I'm seeing, right, but
let's say it's one hundred to one hundred and four
(36:15):
minutes left. Everything about the narrative of the show and
the flow of the show hinges on who wins the game.
And often I feel like a certain team's gonna win,
or I write a bunch of notes about one specific side,
and then you have a massive comeback, like a twenty
point comeback in the second half of game seven, and
suddenly the entire show flips over. And so instant reaction
shows are kind of interesting and unique challenge in the
(36:36):
sense that like it's just you never know what you're
gonna have to say because things can change so quickly
over a few minutes at the end. As far as
like series previews, like the hardest part is like I
go through the film and I see, oh, this team
has this advantage, this team has that advantage, this team
has this advantage, this team has that advantage, and it's
really difficult to predict something that's wildly unpredictable. The vast
(36:57):
majority of the series, in this playoff run, we're but
between relatively evenly matched teams that could have gone either way.
Even just look at thunder MAVs. If PJ Washington, Let's
say that Shay gets a clean block on PJ. Washington
on that corner three and they win, and they go
home and they win game seven, the entire NB Finals
could be different like that we would at Thunder Minnesota
(37:18):
in the second round, in the third round. So like, again,
all of this stuff hangs by a thread, and so
many things could have gone differently, and so like that's
the hard part. And like, honestly, when it comes to
doing series previews, like like half the battle is like
no matter what I pick.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
I'm gonna end up getting slandered for it at the
end of the day.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Anyway, do you think Lucas hit his ceiling as an
overall player or does he have areas to improve? I
think obviously with Luca it's it's mostly gonna be about
physical fitness. I think he's obviously a good athlete. I'm
not trying to sit here and pretend like he doesn't
take care of his body at all. But there certainly
is another level he can get to on that front,
and I wonder if you will ever get to that
(37:55):
in his career, because if he does, that could have
locked an entirely different level in terms of him both
defense and in terms of his conditioning level over the
course of games, which is already really good. How do
you see the matchup between the Nuggets and the Maps.
Barkley had a short comment that Denver would have beaten
Dallas if they had managed to go through Minnesota. I
probably would have picked Denver to beat Dallas had they
met in the conference finals. It's really as simple Denver.
(38:16):
In the same way that Denver has the personnel to
guard Anthony Edwards, they really don't have the personnel to
deal with Jokic. They would have to double and swarm
him the entire series, which would have led to a
ton of open looks. The other part of it, too
is Dallas. Denver is more capable of handling Dallas's loaded
up defense with their ability to move the ball side
to side. They play more five out and I think
(38:39):
they would have just generated a lot more quality looks. Also,
Da Denver has a player that's big and strong enough
to kind of sort of hang with Luca and Aaron Gordon,
which is something that Minnesota does not, and that's just
fundamentally different, Like Luca wouldn't be able to put Aaron
Gordon in jail on those ball screens and manipulate Aaron
Gordon the.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Way he does.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Jaden McDaniels that said, Dallas certainly could have beat Denis.
I would have probably picked Denver on like a sixty
to forty basis, which means I would have given Dallas
like a forty percent chance to win the series, which
means I certainly think it could have gone that route.
I just would feel like it would be more likely
that Denver would have won. This was an interesting comment,
not really a question, but a comment that I got
(39:18):
Luca versus Jokich is interesting. Obviously, Jokich has certain advantages
with his size, but I believe Luca also has a
few advantages by virtue of him being a perimeter player
and a great ball handler. For example, the best closers
usually tend to be guards, and Luca is probably the
best closer in the league today. On the Nuggets, too,
Murray is typically the one closing games more often than not.
Also because he is a perimeter player, I believe he
is able to control the pace of the game more
so than Jokic. Having said all that, if there was
(39:40):
one shot to be taken, I'd run Jokic post up
over any other play in the league. There's just a
feeling of inevitability with Yokich that isn't there with anyone else.
When it's all said and done, I do expect Luca
to end up higher in all time ranking, simply because
he's younger by four to five years. Also, to be
fair to him, he's been a superstar basically from day
one of his NBA career. That part at the end
I agree with like Luca probably has a better chance
of ending up higher all time just simply because he
(40:02):
got started younger. Right, I disagree in the sense that
I do think Jokic can strangle the posts of the
pace of the game. I do think Jokic can operate
as a closer. He chooses to go through Jamal Murray
often just because of matchups, and it's also just Jokic
is one of those guys too that like he doesn't
give a fuck who makes or takes the shot. He
just wants to win. But Yokic is certainly capable of
(40:22):
operating as a closer. I actually think Jokic and Luca
are very similar. They are two offensive engines who consistently
generate quality shots through the team, either by scoring on
an island, and they're pretty much unguardable. There's only a
handful of guys in the league that can guard both guys,
and then the consistent making of good reads when they
draw double teams.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
I think if there's one thing that Luka has kind
of gained ground on Jokich on as of late is
the jump shot. Just Yokis didn't shoot the ball well
this year and Luca's shooting it much better, and that
ended up being a problem, especially in the Minnesota series,
when Yokic couldn't hit pick and pop threes. But I
think that they're both remarkably similar. The only real difference
is they play different positions. Yokich operates more in the
(41:01):
flow of the game as a five out guy versus
Luca being like a four out you know, heliocentric type
of guy. As someone in what I would consider to
be the new age of sports media, what is it
going to take to get away from the clickbait headlines
that currently dominate old slash traditional media. I understand that
the Celtics have had a far easier road than the Wolves,
but but the Anton Tatum narratives are so bizarre to me.
(41:24):
So again, guys, this is I. I don't like watching
shows that have overly you know, critical clickbaity type of
subject matter, right, but I don't have to watch them
like this is the beautiful thing about the new age
of sports media. Whatever it is you're into listening to,
you can find and so like my thing is like there,
(41:46):
those things will continue to exist as long as people
watch them, and people still.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Do like I like I.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
I still to this day see you know, ESPN clips
with relatively clickbaity topics that perform extremely well and so
like people still like that kind of content. It's like,
if you're not into that, go listen to something different,
you know what I mean. One other thing that I
wanted to hit here. I get criticized a lot for
like my thumbnails and my titles. I don't write the
thumbnails or the titles, guys, Just to make that clear.
(42:15):
I record the show and I submit it and then
my team does the rest. And so like again, like
it's there's a certain business element that we have to
be realistic of. Like if it get if a click
baity headline gets you guys to click, but then you
like my show for being what my show is, then
I'm gonna take that as a win. Even if there
(42:35):
was a little grifty thing we had to do off
the top to get you to come through the door, right.
But like, once we get the door swing, it's really
about whether or not you like the show, right. But again, like,
if you guys don't like the stuff that's out there,
all you have to do is not watch it, you know,
Like I don't think it's really that complicated. Damn after
hearing all those stats, how does Minnesota even keep it close?
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Turnovers?
Speaker 1 (42:56):
I know, Games one and two dollars shot pour from three,
but still in game, should Dallas not push it, protect
the ball and just run half court sets every possession
since they're so much better at it. The main thing
that's kept it close to second chance points. The Timberwolves
have been much better at converting offensive rebounds into points.
They're up thirty nine to twenty five and second chance
points in the series. That has closed the gap on
some of the half court execution stuff. I'm having an
(43:19):
argument with my friends and I said Tatum has to
be the one to guard Luca in the finals.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Do you agree? Yes?
Speaker 1 (43:24):
I think that's where the series is eventually going. So
if Luca's picking on matchups and just barbecuing all of
your smaller perimeter defenders, the only thing you can do
is put Tatum on him. Now, how does that work
in different coverages? So what that would mean is in
ball screens, you have Tatum on Luca and you chase
over the top and that way, when Luca tries to
(43:45):
put Tatum in jail, Tatum's big and strong and long
enough to actually bother Luca there in a way that
a guy like Jada McDaniels can't. Right from there, Luca
will probably start trying to run guard guard screens to
try to get to try to get Tatum switched off
of him. From there you run hedge and recover and
you rotate. But I think that would be the goal
because that's the best way to get the ball out
of Luca's hands and actually make other people try to score.
(44:08):
Is like if you have it so that you can't
attack and straight Iso. Because one of the things that
Dallas would do is if they're blitzing ball screens against Minnesota,
Luca will just attack Jayda McDaniel's one on one because
he feels comfortable. He won't be able to do that
as easily with Tatum, So I think Tatum on Luca
is probably their best strategy in the long run. Also,
Boston has enough offensive talent that if you went to
(44:29):
Tatum and said, hey, I need you to devote eighty
percent of your energy to guarding Luka Doncic, Boston would
be fine because they have enough offensive talent on the
other end to make up for it.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
All Right, we have four more.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
It looks like, hey, Jason, in your opinion, what has
made the Luca Kyrie backcourt work so well compared to
other teams that have tried using two star guards, like
Atlanta and Cleveland, It's really this simple. Atlanta and was
Trey Young and Dejonte Murray. Cleveland was Donovan Mitchell and
Darius Garland. Dallas has Luka Doncic, who might be the
best player in the world. And Kyrie Irving, who's better
(45:02):
as a number two than Garland or de john Taim Murray.
I don't think we need to overthink it. They just
they're the stars are actually just really really good, and
they've got really good role players doing all the dirty
work for them. Didn't you say that ant Man is
clearly better than Tatum. So I had a mail back
question that said where someone said who would you take
(45:22):
right now, Tatum or and I said I would take
I would take Aunt right now, no questions.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
And here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
When I that was just a quick response to a
mail back question, the way I really feel about it
is that I do think that ant Man is going
to be better than Tatum sooner than later. I if
I was a GM, I'd rather have ant Man on
my team than Jason Tatum. But right now, right now
for a playoff series, I think Tatum is better, And
I said that in our player rankings when we did
(45:48):
the top five, like a week and a half, two
weeks ago, I had Jokic one Luka two.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Did I did we remove Yokic?
Speaker 1 (45:57):
No? No, yeah, yeah it was Jokic one, Luka two. I
had Tatum three, Anthony Edwards four. So like that's how
I feel. But I do think that I would be
stunned if eighteen months from now if it wasn't at
Tatum's level, and if thirty six months from now he
wasn't just clearly better.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
Two more.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
I used to enjoy your pod with Raj and then
one day it seemed like it was discontinued. Can you
elaborate on what happened there exactly? I know you explained
some of the overall journey recently, but I really liked
State of the Lakers. So it's really as simple. State
of Lakers was only half the podcast. It started as
Jason The Jason tim Podcast, then it became State of
the Lakers. But half of the show was me doing
instant reaction shows with Roger at night. The other half
(46:37):
of the show is me by myself covering the rest
of the league. Roger and I had very different goals.
My goal was to cover the NBA at large. Roger's
goal is to be a credentialed reporter that covers the
Los Angeles Lakers. When the volume reached out to me,
they wanted me to cover the league as a as
a solo guy like I was already doing for the
(46:58):
other half of the state of the Lakers. So that's
really all it was. They were essentially just trying to
build a new show around what the Jason timf podcast
was before I started working with Raj. But Roger and
I had different goals. Roger doesn't want to cover the
entire league and wants to cover the Lakers, and that's what
he's doing right now. But I loved working with Raj,
and I think he's one of the best people that
(47:19):
covers the Lakers. Does great work. I think he's working.
I think he's doing a show right now with an
A Kilawala, and they do a great They do a
great job. Seems like Luca jumped Giannis for you and
the best player in the world rankings. How and why?
Very simple? I just I think the most important skill
that a basketball player can have is the ability to
consistently generate quality shots, first team in the half court,
and I think Luca's awesome at it, potentially the best
(47:42):
player in the world at it. And for Giannis, I
think that's actually been one of the major issues that
has plagued him over the years. Like, yes, he got hurt,
but when push came to shove against Miami last year,
he couldn't get a shot at like, he couldn't make
a quality shot over the top of bam, Like he
can't even get like a left shoulder hook right. Going
back to the twenty twenty two season, like his I
(48:05):
actually thought he was really good in that series against Boston,
but still there's some limitations in terms of his ability
to get shots off over the top when he can't
just penetrate into the paint. And then obviously before that,
before the twenty twenty one season when they won the title,
that was consistently what was his issue in twenty nineteen.
In twenty twenty twenty twenty one in particular, two like
(48:26):
a genuine championship. Don't take anything away from it, but
it was a weird season and he played some limited
competition along the way, and I do think that that
was one of the things that allowed Giannis to overcome
that specific weakness of his second part of the question,
the Wolves exposed how bad Yokich is a is a
rim protector. How has that shaped your view on him
relative to Giannis and other great bigs in NBA history.
(48:47):
So the thing with with Jokich is he demonstrated last
year that he could defend the rim well enough against
like really good competition too, against Lebron and Ad against
Bam and Jimmy, against Kadie and Devin Booker. Like, he
demonstrated that he could do that at last year. I
think in a lot of ways, Minnesota just drove him
into the ground with their overwhelming physicality, and I think
he got tired and I think he fell apart there.
(49:08):
So obviously there are some things that he has to
improve on in that regard. But I still think, to
put it simply, if I had to build a team
that could win a championship, I feel it could be
easier to build one around Yokic than Yannis simply because
it's gonna be easy for me to get defensive personnel
that can thrive offensively off of what Jokic does than
vice versa. All right, guys, that's all I have for
today is always. I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting
(49:29):
the show. We're gonna be back tonight live on YouTube
after the final buzzer Game four between the Wolves and
the mass I will see you guys then. H
Hosts And Creators
Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!