Jason reacts to the strange story of the Los Angeles Clippers parting ways with franchise icon Chris Paul, the confusing reporting of the story, how head coach Ty Lue is involved, and what to make of all this. Then he breaks down Jaylen Brown leading the Boston Celtics to a big win over Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks, plus Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's surgical clutch play to lead the OKC Thunder over the Golden State Warriors without Steph Curry.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume. All right, Well, go to hoops tonight. You're
at the volume heavy Wednesday, everybody, hope if you guys
are having an incredible week, got a jam packed show
(00:21):
for you guys today. We got some wild news this
morning when we woke up, very weird morning for me.
I woke up to my first like real snow day
in Denver. I woke up to over six inches of
snow around my house. My dogs were going crazy. I
don't know if I'm gonna be able to leave the
house today. We'll see how that goes. But I've heard
good things about the way that Denver cares for their roads.
But also woke up to the news that Chris Paul
(00:44):
is gonna be shipped away from the Los Angeles Clippers
at some point in the next few weeks. We got
an announcement saying that this is from Lawrence Frank. We
are parting ways with Chris and he will no longer
be with the team. We will work with him on
the next step of his career. And then he goes
on into some more details that we'll get into in
(01:05):
a minute of a Chris no longer with the Clippers.
I want to talk about how weird. This is why
cooler heads probably should have prevailed here, considering no one
actually is having fun and having a good time when
you're getting your butt kicked every night. And then I
want to talk a little bit about some specific lineup
numbers that point me more towards the Stars when it
(01:25):
comes to the struggles that the Clippers are having. And
then after that we're gonna hit a couple of National
TV games from last night. So the New York Knicks
jumped the Boston Celtics early, but the Celtics pretty much
dominate them throughout the remainder of that game. Some really
fascinating shot creation from Jalen Brown, some exciting trends for
the Celtics in terms of the simple fact that, believe
(01:48):
it or not, even though the Celtics are thirtieth in
defensive rebounding percentage, they are winning the rebound margin in
a way that I want to dig into, thanks to
the effort of their athletic wings, guys like Jordan Walsh
and Hugo Gonzalez and Josh may Not so some Celtics talk. Also,
if you're a Nicks, if you're a skeptic in the
(02:09):
Knicks at any way, shape or form. Last night was
like just a giant advertisement for every single one of
the Knicks issues. We'll dig a little bit into that. Then,
at the tail end of the show, what was supposed
to be just a blowout as Oklahoma City goes into
Golden State with Steph Curry out of the lineup, turned
into another intense clutch basketball game where the Thunder just
(02:31):
played perfect basketball down the stretch. I want to dig
into some of the specifics there, just how good shake
out as Alexander has been in the clutch this season,
their role players, their ball movement, their willingness and to
make the right play and knock down shots, and some
exciting trends with the Oklahoma City Thunder. You guys are
the job. Before we get started. To subscribe to Hoops
Tonight YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos.
(02:51):
Follow me on Twitter, Underscore, json lts, you guys don't
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Jackson is doing incredible work on our social media feeds
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follow us there for more content throughout the season. And
the last but not least, if you want to get
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(03:14):
and write mail bag with a colent. Write your comment
or your question and we'll get to them in our
Friday mail bags. Obviously we'll have a mailbag coming this
coming Friday. One last quick thing. Two last quick things. Actually,
make sure you like this video helps us a lot,
so if you just take a second to scroll down
and hit that like button, we'd really appreciate it. And
then lastly, we have our first playback stream of the week.
We're hitting two Eastern Conference Laker games this week, Lakers
(03:38):
Raptors tomorrow night and Laker Celtics on Friday night. I've
reached out to some people who cover the Raptors and Celtics.
I'm going to try to get some guests on so
that we can get some more joint coverage of the
two teams throughout the show from people that are intimately
involved with covering the Raptors and the Celtics. But at
the very least, we will be live on playback Thursday
(03:59):
night for Lakers RAP as well as Friday night for
Laker Celtics. Should be a couple of fun ones there.
All right, let's talk some basketball. So this is the
latest in a long line of hilarious treatment of stars
by the Clippers' front office. We all remember the Blake
Griffin fiasco and everything associated with that, the crazy meeting,
(04:19):
the t shirts that were printed, all of the hooplaine
basically fake investment, fake emotional investment, and Blake Griffin in
his future with the Clippers before they promptly shipp him
out of town, juxtaposed with the bizarre Kawhi Leonard aspiration
fiasco and the fact that he's been getting paid underneath
the table millions and millions and millions of dollars allegedly
(04:40):
as part of a cap circumvention scheme that just continues
to get more and more crazy the more details that
come out. And then four days ago, the Clippers team
account tweets a press conference clip of Chris Paul talking
about how much he loves it in Los Angeles, and
there's a quote of an actual statement in the tweet
(05:01):
from the Clippers that says CP three will end his
Hall of Fame career at home. Well not anymore. And
you know, we know there's going to be more to
this story as Chris Paul has been shipped home, and
like Laurence Frank for the Record has come out and
said that he's not blaming Chris Paul. We have read
the beginning of this quote at the start of the show,
but he says, we are parting ways with Chris and
(05:23):
he will no longer be with the team. We will
work with him on the next step of his career,
so they're going to find a new home for him.
But he also said Chris is a legendary Clipper who
at a historic career. And I want to make one
thing very clear. No one is blaming Chris for our underperformance,
accept responsibility for the record we have right now. There
are a lot of reasons why we've struggled. We're grateful
for the impact Chris has made on this franchise. We
(05:43):
ended up just before we started recording getting some more details.
Shan Sharania tweeted Chris Paul and his leadership style clashed
with the Clippers. Sources tel ESPN. Paul had been a
vote had been vocal in holding management, coaches and players accountable,
which the team felt became disruptive. Specifically, hy Lou was
not on speaking terms with Paul for several weeks. Chris
Haynes then ends up tweeting sources. Weeks ago, Chris Paul
(06:07):
requested to have a meeting with Tyrone Lou to discuss
allegations of being a negative presence on the team. Lou
refused to meet with him. Lawrence Frank traveled to Atlanta
to deliver the news of parting ways. Paul desired a
final season to be with the Clippers. Now, there's gonna
be a lot more that comes out about this. That
tweet from Chris Haynes is very clearly Chris Paul's perspective
on the situation. I'm sure there's more to it. One
(06:31):
of the biggest things that I think about there is
like they're getting smashed every night. They've lost fourteen of
their last sixteen games. Like, who's gonna have a good
attitude right now, who's gonna be all hunky dory smiley
and infusing positive energy into the situation. They suck. They're
playing trash basketball, right It's gonna be really hard to
(06:52):
keep a good attitude in a situation like that. We've
even seen James Harden and Kawhi Leonard themselves go into
postgame pressers and essentially be like the team's not good
enough and start talking about the role players. It's just
weird and so like, it's one of those things where
I kind of just feel like cooler heads should have prevailed.
And we don't know if what Chris Paul is essentially
(07:13):
channeling through Chris Haynes is true that he requested to
have a meeting with Tyron Lou but ultimately, like this
should have been one of those situations where people get
together and they go, look, I know you're pissed. I'm
pissed too, He's pissed. We're all pissed. We were a
legitimate championship contender last year and now we're a bad
(07:33):
basketball team. We're getting our butts kicked every single night,
even with our stars healthy. Like, this is just bad.
Let's find a way to kind of work this out
and try to move forward towards our goals, especially when
you you know, the last thing the Clippers need right
now is fewer good basketball players. So like, on a
certain level, I just wish cooler heads would have prevailed,
(07:54):
but it's just weird, and I'm sure we're gonna get
more details. I'm sure we're gonna get some sort of
detailed reporting that comes out from both the story over
the course of the next couple of days. We'll obviously
have more thoughts about that as it information comes out.
But what has happened to the Clippers to me is
pretty simple. It's an across the board declined from their
stars in combination with a lack of some key pieces
(08:18):
that contributed to the team last year. But I'm always
going to point towards the stars when the stars themselves
aren't able to leverage their gifts the way that they
typically do. There's a very simple stat to demonstrate this,
and I know Kawhi and James Harden are putting up
counting stats, but the actual shock creation data and especially
their effort on the defensive end, has not been the same.
(08:39):
And there has been a massive drop off in the
defensive performance of this Clippers team, which is undercutting any
sort of statistical success that James Harden and Kwhi Leonard
might be having so in twenty twenty five. So last season,
when Kawhi, Leonard, James Harden and if it's Zubots were
on the floor together, they outscored teams by fourteen points
(08:59):
per one hundred possessions, a plus fourteen net rating, super impressive.
They had a one oh eight defensive rating. That's elite.
They were elite on the offensive end, they were over
one twenties, like right around one twenty one in offensive rating.
That same trio. This year, that same group Kawhi, Leonard,
James Harden and Beats the Zoubots all on the floor
together are getting outscored by ten points per one hundred possessions.
(09:26):
They have a one twenty seven defensive rating and their
offenses average. So yeah, Jason, Kawhi, Leonard, and James Harden
are putting up monster numbers. Their lineups are not scoring
nearly as well as they did last season. And of
course there's context here. The loss of Norman Powell obviously hurts.
I don't even blame the Clippers for that. They were
(09:48):
in a weird situation with their timeline, or it didn't
really make sense to tie up a bunch of salary
in Norman Powell. The move to kind of pivot to
Bradley Peel as Bradley Peel Bradley Beal as a stop
gap solution. It was defensible in this in the moment. Obviously,
having no Norman Powell and no Bradley Beal obviously hurts them.
(10:08):
Norman was such an important offensive weapon for them. I
think the loss of Derek Jones Junior has been bad
for their defense. Although here's the thing. Even when Derek
Jones was on the floor to start the year, it's
not like they were guarding in those minutes. And that's
why I keep coming back to the stars like Chris
Dunn and John Collins and Nick Batoom. Is it the
same high level role player core that they had last year.
(10:32):
It's obviously not due to the injuries and the loss
of Norman Powell, but you should still be able to
win your minutes with James Harden Kawhi Leonard, Chris Dunn,
John Collins and a Vitza Zubats on the floor. And
that lineup is getting ran minus seven net this season.
That five man grouping. When you're getting shit canned with
(10:54):
your best three players on the floor with league average
role players around them, I'm not gonna blame the role players.
It starts with the Stars. They're not playing any defense,
the team as a unit isn't scoring as well as
they used to, and now they're pouting after games and
blaming the role players. To me, it's been all of it.
(11:15):
It's been the drop off from the core foundational stars.
It's been the injury to Bradley Beal in the context
of losing Norman Powell. It's all of it combined. But
in those situations, I always think it's pretty lame to
go to the dudes who make very little money and
the dudes that have small roles and be like, it's
(11:37):
your fault, we're bad. When the dudes that are making
all the money that are on the floor and they're
not doing the same level of work that they did
last year, I'm gonna always look at the stars in
a situation like that. I could not have been more
wrong about the Clippers this season. We're gonna do a
prediction check in soon. This is something that I think
is fun because there have been like several predictions this
(11:58):
year that I've been like dead on about, and there's
been several that I've been dead wrong about, and so
I think it'd be fun to kind of go back
and look at all of the different predictions I made
this offseason and how things are going on those fronts.
We're going to do that at some point down the
line in the next week or two. But this one
in particular, I said, I thought that the Clippers, beyond
the Houston OKC Denver tier, had the best chance to
(12:19):
like rack up regular season wins and get that fourth
seed or be a team that has home court in
the first round, because I believed in their depth, because
I believed in the compatibility excuse me, of all the
different types of players that they have on that roster. Literally,
one of my worst takes ever could not have been
more wrong. They're just bad, man, And again, it wasn't
(12:43):
a Chris Paul issue, And like, I just feel like
cooler heads should have prevailed here, because now you're adding
insult to injury. Literally, the injury being this basketball team
being bad, and the insult being you taking arguably the
best Clipper ever and trashing him and kicking him off
the team. And it's just really unfortunate. All right, Let's
(13:06):
get into a couple of basketball games from last night.
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gambler or start with Nick Celtics. Really a dominant performance
(15:19):
from the Celtics after a hot Knicks start. If it
wasn't for Mikale Bridges just being like an absolute laser
off the catch, even over contests from three, Celtics probably
win this game by fifteen twenty points. And shout out
to Michale Bridges. He's shooting like nine percent better from
three this year than he did last year. It's every
time he rises up. I just feel like it's going
in this season and that has been a big boost
to the Knicks offense. But the Celtics, after getting off
(15:41):
to a rough start, really played some great basketball down
the stretch of this game to get a big win
versus the Knicks. I thought Joe Miszula showed good patience
with his game plan. I get a couple of things
early on, like he had Nimi Kita guarding Josh Hart
and just sagging off in the paint and heart was
burning him in the first quarter in threes and quick
little drives and little mid range jump shots, and it
(16:04):
was not working for Boston. Early in the game, they
were sending aggressive help on Karl Anthony Towns's drives in
post up. As soon as he put the ball on
the floor, they'd be swarming around him trying to turn
him over and force him into into bad misses. And
that wasn't working for the first like quarter and a half,
and the Nicks ended up leading by as much as fourteen.
(16:26):
Early in the game, Kat was scoring sometimes over double
and triple teams, Josh Hart hitting shots, Jalen Brunson got
off to a good start, like a lot of things
went the next way early, and also Jaln Brown, who
had a fantastic game which we're gonna get into, but
he got off to a rough start, and so the
Nicks ended up getting off to that fourteen point lead.
But the Celtics just kept playing hard and they kept
(16:46):
to their game plan. Like Kat the rest of the game.
He had a nice box score game because he did
a bunch of damage off the ball, like some offensive rebounds,
a couple of like driving kick sequences where he just
ended up wide open underneath the basket, and the Celtics
ended up going centerless for the majority of this game,
which I which ended up also benefiting CAT in some
of those like dunker spot offensive rebound sequences, But as
(17:07):
far as his one on ones went, or I should
say his individual attacks those ISOs in his post ups.
Over the course of the game, he just kept trying
to shoot through double teams, and he was turning the
ball over and having some bad misses, and overall, I
thought that their coverage in set half court situation started
to work pretty well against Cat, And then Josh Hart
missed his last three threes and over the final three
(17:29):
quarters of the game was a minus thirteen. So the
game plan there ended up working as time went on,
albeit in some stretches without a center on the floor.
But Jalen Brown eventually found his footing and he ended
up having just a really really nice shot creation game
just completely picked apart the Knicks defense, mostly with methodical
matchup attacking, relentless attacking Jalen Brunson in action early in
(17:51):
the game. The Knicks were willing to essentially concede that
switch and let Jalen work against Jalen and Jalen Brown
just bullied him. And he's been so incredibly comfortable in
the mid range this year, just kind of making some
sort of aggressive move to get down to that like
ten to twelve foot range, and then just little quick
step backs or little short right shoulder fades and little
(18:11):
step through short jump shots and floaters and things like that,
and he's torching teams on that. He's shooting fifty five
percent this season, forty seven for eighty five on jump
shots inside of seventeen feet and Jalen Brown scored directly
on Jalen Brunson one on one five times in this game,
including a nasty blowby dunk in transition where he got
(18:34):
him with a little crossover and went up and dunked
in traffic. He picked on Tyler Kollok on a little
transition drive, beat him to the basket, just bullied him
with his left shoulder, got all the way to the basket.
He picked on Mitchell Robinson in a switch, mixed him
up with a series of off the dribble moves and
hit a little mid range pull up. He was picking
on Cat and ball screens, beating him in deep drop coverage.
He had him in a ISO one on one off
(18:56):
the right wing, and Cat was just sagging off and
he just did a little methodical, little slow jack step,
rose up and hit a three. Just consistently beating the
weaker Knicks defenders in space over and over again. He
made it abundantly clear through those first three quarters that
he was going to be deliberate about hunting New York's
(19:16):
weakest defenders and scoring on them. So as a result
down the stretch, when Jalen Brown started hunting Jalen Brunson
in screens again in the fourth quarter, the Knicks just
started blitzing and hard doubling, and so Jalen just kept
hitting the short roller and then we got some really
fascinating four on three sequences led by a lot of
good short roll passing from Jordan Walsh and from Josh Maynott,
(19:38):
and the Celtics ended up getting wide open threes every
single time out of those Jalen Brown blitzes in doubles,
they made several of them, and they ended up winning
the game. And that's the impressive piece of this. It's
the game management from Jalen Brown. That's the growth that
you're excited to see if you're a Celtics fan. Obviously,
an exciting game box score wise, I think he only
(19:59):
had four assists. That doesn't tell the full story when
you're getting trapped and they're playing four on three and
the assist is going to the short role man some
really high level playmaking. It was impressive game management because
of that deliberate method with which he was attacking. We
talked about this a lot, but like having intentionality on
offense instead of just playing for the sake of playing,
where it would drive me crazy when I'd watch a
team like Orlando and it's like, why is Palo isoting
(20:22):
bam Adebayo on a switch? Like that's just bad process.
Like even if you want to get to your mid
range game, like do something early in the possession so
that you're not attacking the other team's best defender, Like,
it just doesn't make a lot of sense. That's a
lack of intentionality, right, And like that is really the
big difference. If Jalen Brown goes like I'm just going
to try to score on Mikale Bridges over and over again,
it ain't gonna work out, Right, There was a level
(20:43):
of intentionality the attacking of the weaker Knicks defenders in space,
doing it in the middle of the floor where it's
hard to double team having the spacing set up, especially
when the blitzer started coming, so that you can quit
capitalize on the four on three. Just really deliberate, high
level offense of basketball from Jalen Brown. And again, this
is a Celtics team that over I think they're seven
(21:05):
to two in their last nine games, and they have
like a one to twenty six offensive rating in those
nine games, and Jalen Brown deserves the line's share of
the credit for that, for the damage that he's done
matchup attacking and getting them into their driving kick sequences
that can unlock their high level three point shooting. In
Jalen's last fourteen games, he's averaging thirty one points, seven
rebounds in five assists, just doing phenomenal work. He's uh.
(21:29):
I was looking at some shot creation data. He's been
the fourth best high volume ISO guy in the league
this year. There are twelve players in the NBA that
I've run at least one hundred ISOs including passes already.
He's fourth on that list. Only Luca Shay and Julius
Randall have been better. He's been getting just over one
point one points per possession on ISOs including passes. Jalen Brown,
(21:50):
fueled again by that high level shooting there in the
mid range. Derek White poured in another twenty two. You
remember how like inefficient he was to start this season.
He's eighteen points per game in his last eight games
on fifty eight percent for shooting, so way more efficient
than he was last year in this stretch I shouldn't
say last year to start the year. And that eighteen
points per game number is actually ahead of where he
(22:12):
was last year in his scoring volume. So finally starting
to kind of find his comfort in his more you know,
high usage offensive role in this particular team construct. But
I want to zoom in on the Celtics role player
wings for a minute, specifically Jordan Walsh, Josh Maynot, and
Hugo Gonzales. So obviously their size, athleticism an activity are
(22:33):
vital to the Celtics because of their lack of a center.
Rotation right like Cada has been good for the Celtics
this year, but it's been rough once you get past that,
and so the Celtics have started to go a little
bit more and more into centerless looks. They're actually they've
run lineups without a center for three hundred and twelve
possessions this season, according to Cleaning the Last, and they
(22:53):
have a plus nine net rating in those minutes without
a center all offense. By the way, they're they're scoring
one hundred and thirty five points per one hundred possessions
in those centerless groups, just spacing the floor with tons
of shooting and allowing Jalen Brown to hunt matchups as
they get the defense into rotation. The Celtics ended up
playing centerless for twenty seven of the forty eight minutes
(23:14):
last night, So definitely something to keep an eye on
with Boston is they're going to kind of lean into
that more and more. When you're small, that's going to
dictate swarming, right Like you, if you're smaller, you have
to be faster and you've got to cover a lot
of ground in rotation to feel bigger than you actually
are by being able to like double a guy like
Cat Samwich, rebound, do all these different kinds of things,
(23:36):
and it just puts a lot of emphasis on covering ground,
right and like having athletes that play hard, that's the
way that you get this done right. And again, like
the Celtics have not been necessarily winning games with defense,
but you have to get a certain number of stops
to win games, and those guys deserve a lot of
credit for that, Like they're getting major on ball assignments.
(23:57):
Jordan Walsh saw a ton of Brunson in this game
and did phenomenal work played him and do an inefficient
shooting night. The swarming of cat and like help and
double team situations rotating out the shooters off of it.
That is a lot of those role player wings doing
the work. And most importantly, I want to actually move
to the other end of the floor here. Those guys
are killing teams on the offensive glass. Just those three
(24:18):
guys Jordan Walsh and Hugo Gonzalez and Josh Maynot had
eight offensive rebounds last night. Just between the three of them,
they had twelve points just on easy little putbacks. It
was literally the difference in the game last night. Like
shot goes up and Jordan Wallash just runs right by
(24:38):
Jalen Brunson for a putback, or Josh may Not just
runs right by his man for a putback, or Hugo
Gonzalez just runs right by his man for a putback.
Like they're turning misses into layups because those guys keep
beating everybody to the ball. And again, the Celtics shoot
a lot of threes, which means a lot of long rebounds.
They consistently corner crash they beat teams to those long
(24:59):
rebound and I've actually found this to be a really
fascinating trend with the Celtics because the Celtics are the
worst defensive rebounding team in the league. They're thirtieth in
defensive rebound percentage, which is to be expected, right, they
don't have the front court talent for it, like Nimi
Keita's I guess you could call him the starting caliber center,
but certainly in like the bottom third of the league
(25:19):
in terms of starting caliber centers. And then you don't
have another guy who's really a quality rotation level center.
You don't really have a traditional power forward. You have
a bunch of bench level dudes that are playing that
power forward role. You don't have the front court talent
to be a good defensive rebounding team. Yet they're still
grabbing just under fifty percent of available rebounds because they
(25:42):
do so much damage on the offensive glass. They're rebounding
thirty three percent of their own misses, which ranks ninth
in the NBA, and again there's a different dynamic that's
taking place here. So many of these Celtics offensive rebounds
are dudes crashing out of the corner or off the
wing and literally getting layups, like he grab it put
it right back in underneath the basket because they space
(26:04):
you out so much and then they crash. There's like runways,
legit runways for these forwards to run in and grab
an offensive rebound and put it back on the other
end of the floor. The Celtics are certainly trying to
get defensive rebounds. They're swarming, and so there's a lot
of plays where like a big dude underneath the basket
gets an offensive rebound on the Celtics, but he's immediately
(26:24):
surrounded by three dudes and he either throws up a
putback that he misses or has to kick the ball out.
And if he kicks the ball out, the Celtics can
reset their defense and they have a better chance to
get a stop compared to one of those putbacks. And
so this is the most fascinating stat about the Celtics
rebounding that demonstrates this concept of the Celtics getting a
(26:45):
lot offensive rebounds that are easy putbacks and then making
sure the offensive rebounds they concede are in swarms that
are leading to either misses or kickouts to where they
can reset their defense. The Celtics are winning the second
point a second chance points margin. The Celtics score seventeen
point six second chance points every game. Their opponents score
(27:10):
seventeen point one second chance points every game. They are
winning the second chance points margin. It's it's it's unbelievable
to me. It's such a fascinating, like little bit of
basketball like margin play. And I want to shout out
Joe Mazoula on this, because like you're sitting there and
you're and you're trying to determine how you're gonna win
(27:32):
basketball games and how to construct lineups, and and you know,
obviously every team it's you know, in the same way
that in the NFL you're looking at like offense, defense,
special teams and limiting turnovers. Similarly in the NBA you're
looking at like your half court offense, your half court defense,
your transition defense, and you're looking at margins. Are we
gonna do damage as a turnover force, turnovers, get out
(27:52):
and transition kind of team? Are we gonna do damage
on the offensive glass? Are we gonna do damage by
you know, winning the free throw margin, by not fouling
and by getting to the foul line a lot. Like
there's all these like different little margins you're looking to hunt.
And if you were the Celtics coming into the season,
and if you're a Celtics fan, and I just went
up to you and I was like, you guys are
gonna literally win the second chance points battle this year.
(28:14):
None of you would have believed me because they don't
have the front court talent to be a good defensive
rebounding team and they're getting destroyed on the defensive class
like it's a problem. And yet they're turning that into
something in their favor by having these high motor wings
that are consistently crashing and capitalizing on the attention that
their stars draw, and they're getting these runways to just
(28:34):
grab the ball and put it right back up in
the basket. It's a really fascinating trend. And again, just
shout out to Joe Mizoula for that. Again, the Celtics
seven and two in their last nine games, number one
offense in the NBA, and that span a one to
twenty six offensive rating, just some really impressive work from
them on the knickt front. Again, I don't want to
overreact to a single regular season game, but that was
(28:55):
quite literally the embodiment of every single negative Knicks talking point. So,
for instance, the easy entry points into their defense, Boston
was able to easily just attack Jalen Brunson, score on
him one on one a bunch, and then draw second
defenders that unlocked open shots as the defense was in rotation.
(29:16):
Not just that, but like targeting Karl Anthony Towns in action,
beating him in a deep drop coverage, beating him one
on one the way that Jaylen Brown did. We've talked
about Kat's mistake making on defense like Jalen Brunson. Jaylen
Brunston ended up making a lot of mistakes last night himself.
He ended up missing a lot of those box outs
that led to easy putbacks. But generally speaking, in like
(29:38):
a big playoff game, Jalen Brunson is like pretty attentive,
and it's more just like he has physical limitations. But
then you have this other type of bad defender, which
is like the mistake making like pays no attention to
the defensive game plan type of defender and Kat, and
we saw a bunch of examples of that last night.
Kat was hilarious to watch on defense in that game.
(30:00):
It feels like he's freelancing all the time. Like there
was a sequence of ball screens at the beginning of
the game that I thought were a good example of this.
So Derek White comes off of a ball screen off
the top one of the first possessions of the game,
and Kat's just like, go ahead, shoot it. He's second
way back, He's like back almost at like the charge circle,
and he's kind of just standing there and he just
lets Derek White take a pull up three off off
(30:22):
of a ball screen. Derek White misses the shot. And
then the very next two ball screens Derek White and
Me Mei Kayta ball screens that Boston runs. Kat like
on the first one comes up in like a catch.
Heage so he's like not quite up at the level
but pretty close and easy easily lets Nimi get behind him.
Derek White just pitches it over the top, Nemi gets
(30:44):
a dunk, and then on the third one, he like
closes out at Derek White, like Derek White comes over
the top of the screen and he like sprints out
at Derek White, who then just throws it right to
me Kata and gets a dunk. So we got three
ball screens between Derek White and Kata, and we got
three completely different coverages from Cat to start the game.
Because there's no game plan discipline, he's just doing his
(31:09):
own thing. It's freelancing in crunch time, which again because
Michel Bridges made every damn shot he took, the knicks
were right there, they were within three late in the game,
and like there were just a couple of these hilarious
mistakes from Cat. There was this play where Jalen Brown
gets downhill and a screen off of a this little
spin off of Jordan Clarkson, and he loses his balance
(31:31):
on the move and so he's like falling down and
he's like drifting away all the way out kind of
past the left block, and he's just kind of throwing
up like a bullshit little right handed floater that has
like no chance of going in because he's falling over
and Kat is not there. Kat's kind of back around
the basket. He had stunted up at Jalen Brown, which
made him make a countermove, and Jalen had kind of
(31:51):
gotten away from him, but again Jalen was falling over
and so Kat's there and he has a decision to make.
He can either turn around and box out Jordan Walsh
and get the rebound after Jalen misses this crazy one
leg floater that he's taking, or he can do what
he ended up doing, which was take a step towards
Jalen where he's not even close to Jalen, like he's
not in position to contest the shot at all, jumps
over towards Jalen. It just kind of goes like this
(32:12):
and just like waves both of his arms up in
the air, gets himself out of position. Jordan Walsh boom
put back and it's like it's like those kinds of
little decisions hurt the team. Jordan Walsh has made three
corner threes all season on nine attempts. There's a play
where he catches it open in the left corner and
(32:34):
Kat chases him off the line like he's Steph Curry,
goes flying out to the corner, jumps out of his shoes.
Jordan Walsh just easily rips the clothes out and gets
a lamp. You're like, what are you doing? And It's
like when you combine that the legit mismatches that you
can hunt, which involves both Kat and Jalen Brunson, but
(32:55):
also when you have a guy that's legitimately one of
the most mistake prone defenders I've ever watched, with absolutely
no discipline within the defensive game plan, it's really difficult
to overcome. All of that was on display last night
against the Celtics. On offense, we saw some of the
other things too, like Jalen Brunson kind of struggling to
score efficiently against more of like a swarming athletic perimeter.
(33:17):
Look Karl Anthony Town struggling with double teams, teams putting
their center on Josh Harten Daringham to shoot, which again
the Knicks ended up burning in the first quarter, but
not for the rest of the game. Again, if it
wasn't for Michale Bridges, that's probably a blowout last night,
a fifteen to twenty point win for Boston. Now, to
be clear, none of this necessarily changes my opinion as
(33:38):
it pertains to the Knicks. The decline, excuse me of
Cleveland has just kind of made it look like every
team at the top of the East is flawed in
one way or another. So, you know, I don't want
to just sit here and pretend like the Knicks are
the only team at the top of the East that
has issues. They're not. All these teams have issues, and
I would argue that they have as good a chance
(33:58):
as anybody to win this come Renference. It's wide open.
It's basically there for anybody to win. But like every year,
when I start to buy into the Knicks a little bit,
the same three or four issues come up to the surface,
and it just is one of those things that I
think is like a insurmountable barrier between them being one
of these like second tier teams and a legitimate team
(34:19):
that you feel like has a shot to win the title.
All Right, before we get out of here tonight, I
wanted to talk briefly about what the Thunder ended up
doing to the Warriors and crunch time last night. So
Thunder Warriors went about as you would have expected in
the first half with Steph Curry out, but then the
(34:41):
Warriors ended up catching fire in that second half. The
you know, we got a Pat Spencer show. He was
getting like one on one buckets, like hitting tough shots
to eat like a little right shoulder fade away over
Chet Holmgren on the right block. That was an insane shot.
Draymond Green's hitting threes, Gary Payton's hitting threes pods hits
like a bomb, and the third quarter like a leaning,
drifting bomb from like thirty feet. Jonathan Kamena is getting
(35:05):
in on the action, hitting threes, running action with Seth Curry.
Seth Curry ends up getting hot all of a sudden.
The Warriors had a four point lead in the kind
like earlyish part of the middle part of the fourth quarter,
and then the Thunder just played perfect basketball from there
and ended up winning by twelve. The Warriors went zone
during this stretch and it briefly flustered the Thunder, but
(35:26):
then they methodically broke him down. In crunch time. They
got a little pass to the middle to Case and
Wallace and Chet just kind of relocates right to the
top of the key, pitch it back to Chet. He
knocks down to three. Aj Mitchell beats the zone just
by driving off the wing and hitting like a little
left a left handed scoop shot over Draymond Green. Then
the Warriors bail on the zone and they go one
on one or man to man, excuse me, and Shade
(35:47):
just starts relentlessly hunting Buddy. Heeled walks him down for
a couple little elbow jumpers there on the left side.
HiT's like a nasty step back three off of the
right wing. That step back has become just such a
reliable shot for Shay. At the end of the game,
something I want to talk about in a little bit,
he had a really nice piece of advantage creation where
he gets Buddy out on the right wing, snatched left
(36:09):
right crossover just toasts him off the dribble. The entire
Warriors defense just kind of rotates right low man steps over.
They rotate on the weak side, the left wing is open.
Jdub's there, Shay just whips a cross court pass that
hits JDub right in the hands. Extra pass Isa Joe
in the corner he knocks down at three. JDub himself
got in on the action with like a really tough,
driving right handed layup that he scooped high off of
(36:30):
the glass and then on the other end of the floor.
I mean, i'llbeit against the limited Warriors lineup just stop
after stop after stop after stop in the thunder end
up winning like twelve, he had another game again like
As the schedule has gotten tougher for OKC, they've ended
up in a bunch of these clutch games and yet
another time where they just look unbeatable in that setting.
They've played in ten clutch games so far this season.
(36:53):
They're nine and one in those games, the one loss,
of course, being the Portland game. They have a one
thirty seven offensive rating in the clutch, a ninety five
defensive rating in the clutch. Shake Gilda Alexander is twenty
five for forty six from the field in crunch time
this season. That's fifty four percent. He's hit six clutch threes.
(37:15):
He's hit a bunch of them in every one of
these games. Hit a huge one against Minnesota, hit a
huge one against Phoenix, hit a huge one again last
night over Buddy Healed on the right wing. He's just
getting into his bag and he can either go to
that little pound dribble with his left hand step back,
or that like little side step with his h going
towards his right, like the one he hit over Buddy Healed,
and he's just really confident. He's trusting it right now.
(37:38):
It's made six of them so far this season in
crunch time, hitting forty percent, and most of those misses
were earlier in the season. He's been in a great
groove as of late, nine assists to just one turnover
in crunch time and like you want to be like, Okay,
you got to send doubles, and the Warriors were pretty
content to let Shay just work one on one against Buddy.
But at the same time, like guys are hitting shots.
(37:59):
We talked about the clutch three that chet Holmgren hit.
Isaiah Joe hits a big clutch three last night. On
the season. If you leave Cason Wallace open for three
in crunch time, he's three for six. You leave chet
Holmgren open for three in crunch time, he's three for five.
Like they're just they're burning you when you help and like,
(38:22):
and it's one of those things where we've seen teams
manage to keep it somewhat close against Oklahoma City for
one reason or another, and then down the stretch it's
just shake Gildas Alexander looking like far and away the
most comfortable player on the floor. But it's not just
his one on one play. It's the awesome passing sequences,
(38:43):
the methodical ball movement through the zone. It's the role
players knocking down catch and shoot threes. Having guys like
AJ Mitchell and j Dubb who can hit a gap
and create some dribble penetration and get something up off
of the rim that they can score on in crunch time,
and they just look unbeatable. And again, if this keeps up,
like we're gonna do our contender rankings again in a month.
(39:05):
You know, we did our first contender rankings update like
a week ago or so, and I think it was
just last Friday, And in that Contender rankings for the
first time, I moved to OKAC back up to the
number one spot. But I still have them in the
same tier with OKAC and or with Denver in Houston.
If this keeps up, like if they're sitting in a
similar spot a month from now, I like it's starting
(39:27):
to look to me like Oklahoma City is in their
own tier. I see a separation building. Houston and Denver
are really good. There are a couple teams too that
are a trade away, like if Detroit makes some sort
of big splashy move for scoring forward, or if the
Lakers get someone like Herb Jones. There are teams that
might be able to move up into that tier, but
to me, that tier is beginning to look like a
(39:48):
tier that is beneath Oklahoma City. As yet again they
get a big win in crunch time last night. All right, guys,
that is all I have for tonight or today, I
should say, is always as sincerely appreciate you guys for
supporting us since supporting the show again. Remember we have
playback streams coming the next two nights. Thursday at I
want to say four pm Pacific time against or No,
(40:10):
it's four thirty pm Pacific time Toronto Lakers Raptors again.
I'm going to be trying to get a Raptor's got
to come on and join us for that one. And
then Friday night four pm Pacific time Lakers Celtics. Also
going to try to get a Celtics guy for that one.
Come hang out again playback dot Tv slash Shops tonight
will have a live watch along party for both of
(40:31):
those games. We'll obviously have more content coming this week too.
We'll have a show tomorrow as well as a mailbag
on Friday. Again, as always, sincerely appreciate you guys for
supporting us. In supporting the show. Have a good rest
of your day and I will see you guys tomorrow morning.
The volume. All right, Well, go to hoops tonight. You're
at the volume heavy Wednesday, everybody, hope if you guys
are having an incredible week, got a jam packed show
(00:21):
for you guys today. We got some wild news this
morning when we woke up, very weird morning for me.
I woke up to my first like real snow day
in Denver. I woke up to over six inches of
snow around my house. My dogs were going crazy. I
don't know if I'm gonna be able to leave the
house today. We'll see how that goes. But I've heard
good things about the way that Denver cares for their roads.
But also woke up to the news that Chris Paul
(00:44):
is gonna be shipped away from the Los Angeles Clippers
at some point in the next few weeks. We got
an announcement saying that this is from Lawrence Frank. We
are parting ways with Chris and he will no longer
be with the team. We will work with him on
the next step of his career. And then he goes
on into some more details that we'll get into in
(01:05):
a minute of a Chris no longer with the Clippers.
I want to talk about how weird. This is why
cooler heads probably should have prevailed here, considering no one
actually is having fun and having a good time when
you're getting your butt kicked every night. And then I
want to talk a little bit about some specific lineup
numbers that point me more towards the Stars when it
(01:25):
comes to the struggles that the Clippers are having. And
then after that we're gonna hit a couple of National
TV games from last night. So the New York Knicks
jumped the Boston Celtics early, but the Celtics pretty much
dominate them throughout the remainder of that game. Some really
fascinating shot creation from Jalen Brown, some exciting trends for
the Celtics in terms of the simple fact that, believe
(01:48):
it or not, even though the Celtics are thirtieth in
defensive rebounding percentage, they are winning the rebound margin in
a way that I want to dig into, thanks to
the effort of their athletic wings, guys like Jordan Walsh
and Hugo Gonzalez and Josh may Not so some Celtics talk. Also,
if you're a Nicks, if you're a skeptic in the
(02:09):
Knicks at any way, shape or form. Last night was
like just a giant advertisement for every single one of
the Knicks issues. We'll dig a little bit into that. Then,
at the tail end of the show, what was supposed
to be just a blowout as Oklahoma City goes into
Golden State with Steph Curry out of the lineup, turned
into another intense clutch basketball game where the Thunder just
(02:31):
played perfect basketball down the stretch. I want to dig
into some of the specifics there, just how good shake
out as Alexander has been in the clutch this season,
their role players, their ball movement, their willingness and to
make the right play and knock down shots, and some
exciting trends with the Oklahoma City Thunder. You guys are
the job. Before we get started. To subscribe to Hoops
Tonight YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos.
(02:51):
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follow us there for more content throughout the season. And
the last but not least, if you want to get
mailbag questions into our mail bag, make sure you go
into our full episodes on YouTube, scroll down Levy comment
(03:14):
and write mail bag with a colent. Write your comment
or your question and we'll get to them in our
Friday mail bags. Obviously we'll have a mailbag coming this
coming Friday. One last quick thing. Two last quick things. Actually,
make sure you like this video helps us a lot,
so if you just take a second to scroll down
and hit that like button, we'd really appreciate it. And
then lastly, we have our first playback stream of the week.
We're hitting two Eastern Conference Laker games this week, Lakers
(03:38):
Raptors tomorrow night and Laker Celtics on Friday night. I've
reached out to some people who cover the Raptors and Celtics.
I'm going to try to get some guests on so
that we can get some more joint coverage of the
two teams throughout the show from people that are intimately
involved with covering the Raptors and the Celtics. But at
the very least, we will be live on playback Thursday
(03:59):
night for Lakers RAP as well as Friday night for
Laker Celtics. Should be a couple of fun ones there.
All right, let's talk some basketball. So this is the
latest in a long line of hilarious treatment of stars
by the Clippers' front office. We all remember the Blake
Griffin fiasco and everything associated with that, the crazy meeting,
(04:19):
the t shirts that were printed, all of the hooplaine
basically fake investment, fake emotional investment, and Blake Griffin in
his future with the Clippers before they promptly shipp him
out of town, juxtaposed with the bizarre Kawhi Leonard aspiration
fiasco and the fact that he's been getting paid underneath
the table millions and millions and millions of dollars allegedly
(04:40):
as part of a cap circumvention scheme that just continues
to get more and more crazy the more details that
come out. And then four days ago, the Clippers team
account tweets a press conference clip of Chris Paul talking
about how much he loves it in Los Angeles, and
there's a quote of an actual statement in the tweet
(05:01):
from the Clippers that says CP three will end his
Hall of Fame career at home. Well not anymore. And
you know, we know there's going to be more to
this story as Chris Paul has been shipped home, and
like Laurence Frank for the Record has come out and
said that he's not blaming Chris Paul. We have read
the beginning of this quote at the start of the show,
but he says, we are parting ways with Chris and
(05:23):
he will no longer be with the team. We will
work with him on the next step of his career,
so they're going to find a new home for him.
But he also said Chris is a legendary Clipper who
at a historic career. And I want to make one
thing very clear. No one is blaming Chris for our underperformance,
accept responsibility for the record we have right now. There
are a lot of reasons why we've struggled. We're grateful
for the impact Chris has made on this franchise. We
(05:43):
ended up just before we started recording getting some more details.
Shan Sharania tweeted Chris Paul and his leadership style clashed
with the Clippers. Sources tel ESPN. Paul had been a
vote had been vocal in holding management, coaches and players accountable,
which the team felt became disruptive. Specifically, hy Lou was
not on speaking terms with Paul for several weeks. Chris
Haynes then ends up tweeting sources. Weeks ago, Chris Paul
(06:07):
requested to have a meeting with Tyrone Lou to discuss
allegations of being a negative presence on the team. Lou
refused to meet with him. Lawrence Frank traveled to Atlanta
to deliver the news of parting ways. Paul desired a
final season to be with the Clippers. Now, there's gonna
be a lot more that comes out about this. That
tweet from Chris Haynes is very clearly Chris Paul's perspective
on the situation. I'm sure there's more to it. One
(06:31):
of the biggest things that I think about there is
like they're getting smashed every night. They've lost fourteen of
their last sixteen games. Like, who's gonna have a good
attitude right now, who's gonna be all hunky dory smiley
and infusing positive energy into the situation. They suck. They're
playing trash basketball, right It's gonna be really hard to
(06:52):
keep a good attitude in a situation like that. We've
even seen James Harden and Kawhi Leonard themselves go into
postgame pressers and essentially be like the team's not good
enough and start talking about the role players. It's just
weird and so like, it's one of those things where
I kind of just feel like cooler heads should have prevailed.
And we don't know if what Chris Paul is essentially
(07:13):
channeling through Chris Haynes is true that he requested to
have a meeting with Tyron Lou but ultimately, like this
should have been one of those situations where people get
together and they go, look, I know you're pissed. I'm
pissed too, He's pissed. We're all pissed. We were a
legitimate championship contender last year and now we're a bad
(07:33):
basketball team. We're getting our butts kicked every single night,
even with our stars healthy. Like, this is just bad.
Let's find a way to kind of work this out
and try to move forward towards our goals, especially when
you you know, the last thing the Clippers need right
now is fewer good basketball players. So like, on a
certain level, I just wish cooler heads would have prevailed,
(07:54):
but it's just weird, and I'm sure we're gonna get
more details. I'm sure we're gonna get some sort of
detailed reporting that comes out from both the story over
the course of the next couple of days. We'll obviously
have more thoughts about that as it information comes out.
But what has happened to the Clippers to me is
pretty simple. It's an across the board declined from their
stars in combination with a lack of some key pieces
(08:18):
that contributed to the team last year. But I'm always
going to point towards the stars when the stars themselves
aren't able to leverage their gifts the way that they
typically do. There's a very simple stat to demonstrate this,
and I know Kawhi and James Harden are putting up
counting stats, but the actual shock creation data and especially
their effort on the defensive end, has not been the same.
(08:39):
And there has been a massive drop off in the
defensive performance of this Clippers team, which is undercutting any
sort of statistical success that James Harden and Kwhi Leonard
might be having so in twenty twenty five. So last season,
when Kawhi, Leonard, James Harden and if it's Zubots were
on the floor together, they outscored teams by fourteen points
(08:59):
per one hundred possessions, a plus fourteen net rating, super impressive.
They had a one oh eight defensive rating. That's elite.
They were elite on the offensive end, they were over
one twenties, like right around one twenty one in offensive rating.
That same trio. This year, that same group Kawhi, Leonard,
James Harden and Beats the Zoubots all on the floor
together are getting outscored by ten points per one hundred possessions.
(09:26):
They have a one twenty seven defensive rating and their
offenses average. So yeah, Jason, Kawhi, Leonard, and James Harden
are putting up monster numbers. Their lineups are not scoring
nearly as well as they did last season. And of
course there's context here. The loss of Norman Powell obviously hurts.
I don't even blame the Clippers for that. They were
(09:48):
in a weird situation with their timeline, or it didn't
really make sense to tie up a bunch of salary
in Norman Powell. The move to kind of pivot to
Bradley Peel as Bradley Peel Bradley Beal as a stop
gap solution. It was defensible in this in the moment. Obviously,
having no Norman Powell and no Bradley Beal obviously hurts them.
(10:08):
Norman was such an important offensive weapon for them. I
think the loss of Derek Jones Junior has been bad
for their defense. Although here's the thing. Even when Derek
Jones was on the floor to start the year, it's
not like they were guarding in those minutes. And that's
why I keep coming back to the stars like Chris
Dunn and John Collins and Nick Batoom. Is it the
same high level role player core that they had last year.
(10:32):
It's obviously not due to the injuries and the loss
of Norman Powell, but you should still be able to
win your minutes with James Harden Kawhi Leonard, Chris Dunn,
John Collins and a Vitza Zubats on the floor. And
that lineup is getting ran minus seven net this season.
That five man grouping. When you're getting shit canned with
(10:54):
your best three players on the floor with league average
role players around them, I'm not gonna blame the role players.
It starts with the Stars. They're not playing any defense,
the team as a unit isn't scoring as well as
they used to, and now they're pouting after games and
blaming the role players. To me, it's been all of it.
(11:15):
It's been the drop off from the core foundational stars.
It's been the injury to Bradley Beal in the context
of losing Norman Powell. It's all of it combined. But
in those situations, I always think it's pretty lame to
go to the dudes who make very little money and
the dudes that have small roles and be like, it's
(11:37):
your fault, we're bad. When the dudes that are making
all the money that are on the floor and they're
not doing the same level of work that they did
last year, I'm gonna always look at the stars in
a situation like that. I could not have been more
wrong about the Clippers this season. We're gonna do a
prediction check in soon. This is something that I think
is fun because there have been like several predictions this
(11:58):
year that I've been like dead on about, and there's
been several that I've been dead wrong about, and so
I think it'd be fun to kind of go back
and look at all of the different predictions I made
this offseason and how things are going on those fronts.
We're going to do that at some point down the
line in the next week or two. But this one
in particular, I said, I thought that the Clippers, beyond
the Houston OKC Denver tier, had the best chance to
(12:19):
like rack up regular season wins and get that fourth
seed or be a team that has home court in
the first round, because I believed in their depth, because
I believed in the compatibility excuse me, of all the
different types of players that they have on that roster. Literally,
one of my worst takes ever could not have been
more wrong. They're just bad, man, And again, it wasn't
(12:43):
a Chris Paul issue, And like, I just feel like
cooler heads should have prevailed here, because now you're adding
insult to injury. Literally, the injury being this basketball team
being bad, and the insult being you taking arguably the
best Clipper ever and trashing him and kicking him off
the team. And it's just really unfortunate. All right, Let's
(13:06):
get into a couple of basketball games from last night.
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gambler or start with Nick Celtics. Really a dominant performance
(15:19):
from the Celtics after a hot Knicks start. If it
wasn't for Mikale Bridges just being like an absolute laser
off the catch, even over contests from three, Celtics probably
win this game by fifteen twenty points. And shout out
to Michale Bridges. He's shooting like nine percent better from
three this year than he did last year. It's every
time he rises up. I just feel like it's going
in this season and that has been a big boost
to the Knicks offense. But the Celtics, after getting off
(15:41):
to a rough start, really played some great basketball down
the stretch of this game to get a big win
versus the Knicks. I thought Joe Miszula showed good patience
with his game plan. I get a couple of things
early on, like he had Nimi Kita guarding Josh Hart
and just sagging off in the paint and heart was
burning him in the first quarter in threes and quick
little drives and little mid range jump shots, and it
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was not working for Boston. Early in the game, they
were sending aggressive help on Karl Anthony Towns's drives in
post up. As soon as he put the ball on
the floor, they'd be swarming around him trying to turn
him over and force him into into bad misses. And
that wasn't working for the first like quarter and a half,
and the Nicks ended up leading by as much as fourteen.
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Early in the game, Kat was scoring sometimes over double
and triple teams, Josh Hart hitting shots, Jalen Brunson got
off to a good start, like a lot of things
went the next way early, and also Jaln Brown, who
had a fantastic game which we're gonna get into, but
he got off to a rough start, and so the
Nicks ended up getting off to that fourteen point lead.
But the Celtics just kept playing hard and they kept
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to their game plan. Like Kat the rest of the game.
He had a nice box score game because he did
a bunch of damage off the ball, like some offensive rebounds,
a couple of like driving kick sequences where he just
ended up wide open underneath the basket, and the Celtics
ended up going centerless for the majority of this game,
which I which ended up also benefiting CAT in some
of those like dunker spot offensive rebound sequences, But as
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far as his one on ones went, or I should
say his individual attacks those ISOs in his post ups.
Over the course of the game, he just kept trying
to shoot through double teams, and he was turning the
ball over and having some bad misses, and overall, I
thought that their coverage in set half court situation started
to work pretty well against Cat, And then Josh Hart
missed his last three threes and over the final three
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quarters of the game was a minus thirteen. So the
game plan there ended up working as time went on,
albeit in some stretches without a center on the floor.
But Jalen Brown eventually found his footing and he ended
up having just a really really nice shot creation game
just completely picked apart the Knicks defense, mostly with methodical
matchup attacking, relentless attacking Jalen Brunson in action early in
(17:51):
the game. The Knicks were willing to essentially concede that
switch and let Jalen work against Jalen and Jalen Brown
just bullied him. And he's been so incredibly comfortable in
the mid range this year, just kind of making some
sort of aggressive move to get down to that like
ten to twelve foot range, and then just little quick
step backs or little short right shoulder fades and little
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step through short jump shots and floaters and things like that,
and he's torching teams on that. He's shooting fifty five
percent this season, forty seven for eighty five on jump
shots inside of seventeen feet and Jalen Brown scored directly
on Jalen Brunson one on one five times in this game,
including a nasty blowby dunk in transition where he got
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him with a little crossover and went up and dunked
in traffic. He picked on Tyler Kollok on a little
transition drive, beat him to the basket, just bullied him
with his left shoulder, got all the way to the basket.
He picked on Mitchell Robinson in a switch, mixed him
up with a series of off the dribble moves and
hit a little mid range pull up. He was picking
on Cat and ball screens, beating him in deep drop coverage.
He had him in a ISO one on one off
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the right wing, and Cat was just sagging off and
he just did a little methodical, little slow jack step,
rose up and hit a three. Just consistently beating the
weaker Knicks defenders in space over and over again. He
made it abundantly clear through those first three quarters that
he was going to be deliberate about hunting New York's
(19:16):
weakest defenders and scoring on them. So as a result
down the stretch, when Jalen Brown started hunting Jalen Brunson
in screens again in the fourth quarter, the Knicks just
started blitzing and hard doubling, and so Jalen just kept
hitting the short roller and then we got some really
fascinating four on three sequences led by a lot of
good short roll passing from Jordan Walsh and from Josh Maynott,
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and the Celtics ended up getting wide open threes every
single time out of those Jalen Brown blitzes in doubles,
they made several of them, and they ended up winning
the game. And that's the impressive piece of this. It's
the game management from Jalen Brown. That's the growth that
you're excited to see if you're a Celtics fan. Obviously,
an exciting game box score wise, I think he only
(19:59):
had four assists. That doesn't tell the full story when
you're getting trapped and they're playing four on three and
the assist is going to the short role man some
really high level playmaking. It was impressive game management because
of that deliberate method with which he was attacking. We
talked about this a lot, but like having intentionality on
offense instead of just playing for the sake of playing,
where it would drive me crazy when I'd watch a
team like Orlando and it's like, why is Palo isoting
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bam Adebayo on a switch? Like that's just bad process.
Like even if you want to get to your mid
range game, like do something early in the possession so
that you're not attacking the other team's best defender, Like,
it just doesn't make a lot of sense. That's a
lack of intentionality, right, And like that is really the
big difference. If Jalen Brown goes like I'm just going
to try to score on Mikale Bridges over and over again,
it ain't gonna work out, Right, There was a level
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of intentionality the attacking of the weaker Knicks defenders in space,
doing it in the middle of the floor where it's
hard to double team having the spacing set up, especially
when the blitzer started coming, so that you can quit
capitalize on the four on three. Just really deliberate, high
level offense of basketball from Jalen Brown. And again, this
is a Celtics team that over I think they're seven
(21:05):
to two in their last nine games, and they have
like a one to twenty six offensive rating in those
nine games, and Jalen Brown deserves the line's share of
the credit for that, for the damage that he's done
matchup attacking and getting them into their driving kick sequences
that can unlock their high level three point shooting. In
Jalen's last fourteen games, he's averaging thirty one points, seven
rebounds in five assists, just doing phenomenal work. He's uh.
(21:29):
I was looking at some shot creation data. He's been
the fourth best high volume ISO guy in the league
this year. There are twelve players in the NBA that
I've run at least one hundred ISOs including passes already.
He's fourth on that list. Only Luca Shay and Julius
Randall have been better. He's been getting just over one
point one points per possession on ISOs including passes. Jalen Brown,
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fueled again by that high level shooting there in the
mid range. Derek White poured in another twenty two. You
remember how like inefficient he was to start this season.
He's eighteen points per game in his last eight games
on fifty eight percent for shooting, so way more efficient
than he was last year in this stretch I shouldn't
say last year to start the year. And that eighteen
points per game number is actually ahead of where he
(22:12):
was last year in his scoring volume. So finally starting
to kind of find his comfort in his more you know,
high usage offensive role in this particular team construct. But
I want to zoom in on the Celtics role player
wings for a minute, specifically Jordan Walsh, Josh Maynot, and
Hugo Gonzales. So obviously their size, athleticism an activity are
(22:33):
vital to the Celtics because of their lack of a center.
Rotation right like Cada has been good for the Celtics
this year, but it's been rough once you get past that,
and so the Celtics have started to go a little
bit more and more into centerless looks. They're actually they've
run lineups without a center for three hundred and twelve
possessions this season, according to Cleaning the Last, and they
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have a plus nine net rating in those minutes without
a center all offense. By the way, they're they're scoring
one hundred and thirty five points per one hundred possessions
in those centerless groups, just spacing the floor with tons
of shooting and allowing Jalen Brown to hunt matchups as
they get the defense into rotation. The Celtics ended up
playing centerless for twenty seven of the forty eight minutes
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last night, So definitely something to keep an eye on
with Boston is they're going to kind of lean into
that more and more. When you're small, that's going to
dictate swarming, right Like you, if you're smaller, you have
to be faster and you've got to cover a lot
of ground in rotation to feel bigger than you actually
are by being able to like double a guy like
Cat Samwich, rebound, do all these different kinds of things,
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and it just puts a lot of emphasis on covering ground,
right and like having athletes that play hard, that's the
way that you get this done right. And again, like
the Celtics have not been necessarily winning games with defense,
but you have to get a certain number of stops
to win games, and those guys deserve a lot of
credit for that, Like they're getting major on ball assignments.
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Jordan Walsh saw a ton of Brunson in this game
and did phenomenal work played him and do an inefficient
shooting night. The swarming of cat and like help and
double team situations rotating out the shooters off of it.
That is a lot of those role player wings doing
the work. And most importantly, I want to actually move
to the other end of the floor here. Those guys
are killing teams on the offensive glass. Just those three
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guys Jordan Walsh and Hugo Gonzalez and Josh Maynot had
eight offensive rebounds last night. Just between the three of them,
they had twelve points just on easy little putbacks. It
was literally the difference in the game last night. Like
shot goes up and Jordan Wallash just runs right by
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Jalen Brunson for a putback, or Josh may Not just
runs right by his man for a putback, or Hugo
Gonzalez just runs right by his man for a putback.
Like they're turning misses into layups because those guys keep
beating everybody to the ball. And again, the Celtics shoot
a lot of threes, which means a lot of long rebounds.
They consistently corner crash they beat teams to those long
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rebound and I've actually found this to be a really
fascinating trend with the Celtics because the Celtics are the
worst defensive rebounding team in the league. They're thirtieth in
defensive rebound percentage, which is to be expected, right, they
don't have the front court talent for it, like Nimi
Keita's I guess you could call him the starting caliber center,
but certainly in like the bottom third of the league
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in terms of starting caliber centers. And then you don't
have another guy who's really a quality rotation level center.
You don't really have a traditional power forward. You have
a bunch of bench level dudes that are playing that
power forward role. You don't have the front court talent
to be a good defensive rebounding team. Yet they're still
grabbing just under fifty percent of available rebounds because they
(25:42):
do so much damage on the offensive glass. They're rebounding
thirty three percent of their own misses, which ranks ninth
in the NBA, and again there's a different dynamic that's
taking place here. So many of these Celtics offensive rebounds
are dudes crashing out of the corner or off the
wing and literally getting layups, like he grab it put
it right back in underneath the basket because they space
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you out so much and then they crash. There's like runways,
legit runways for these forwards to run in and grab
an offensive rebound and put it back on the other
end of the floor. The Celtics are certainly trying to
get defensive rebounds. They're swarming, and so there's a lot
of plays where like a big dude underneath the basket
gets an offensive rebound on the Celtics, but he's immediately
(26:24):
surrounded by three dudes and he either throws up a
putback that he misses or has to kick the ball out.
And if he kicks the ball out, the Celtics can
reset their defense and they have a better chance to
get a stop compared to one of those putbacks. And
so this is the most fascinating stat about the Celtics
rebounding that demonstrates this concept of the Celtics getting a
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lot offensive rebounds that are easy putbacks and then making
sure the offensive rebounds they concede are in swarms that
are leading to either misses or kickouts to where they
can reset their defense. The Celtics are winning the second
point a second chance points margin. The Celtics score seventeen
point six second chance points every game. Their opponents score
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seventeen point one second chance points every game. They are
winning the second chance points margin. It's it's it's unbelievable
to me. It's such a fascinating, like little bit of
basketball like margin play. And I want to shout out
Joe Mazoula on this, because like you're sitting there and
you're and you're trying to determine how you're gonna win
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basketball games and how to construct lineups, and and you know,
obviously every team it's you know, in the same way
that in the NFL you're looking at like offense, defense,
special teams and limiting turnovers. Similarly in the NBA you're
looking at like your half court offense, your half court defense,
your transition defense, and you're looking at margins. Are we
gonna do damage as a turnover force, turnovers, get out
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and transition kind of team? Are we gonna do damage
on the offensive glass? Are we gonna do damage by
you know, winning the free throw margin, by not fouling
and by getting to the foul line a lot. Like
there's all these like different little margins you're looking to hunt.
And if you were the Celtics coming into the season,
and if you're a Celtics fan, and I just went
up to you and I was like, you guys are
gonna literally win the second chance points battle this year.
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None of you would have believed me because they don't
have the front court talent to be a good defensive
rebounding team and they're getting destroyed on the defensive class
like it's a problem. And yet they're turning that into
something in their favor by having these high motor wings
that are consistently crashing and capitalizing on the attention that
their stars draw, and they're getting these runways to just
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grab the ball and put it right back up in
the basket. It's a really fascinating trend. And again, just
shout out to Joe Mizoula for that. Again, the Celtics
seven and two in their last nine games, number one
offense in the NBA, and that span a one to
twenty six offensive rating, just some really impressive work from
them on the knickt front. Again, I don't want to
overreact to a single regular season game, but that was
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quite literally the embodiment of every single negative Knicks talking point. So,
for instance, the easy entry points into their defense, Boston
was able to easily just attack Jalen Brunson, score on
him one on one a bunch, and then draw second
defenders that unlocked open shots as the defense was in rotation.
(29:16):
Not just that, but like targeting Karl Anthony Towns in action,
beating him in a deep drop coverage, beating him one
on one the way that Jaylen Brown did. We've talked
about Kat's mistake making on defense like Jalen Brunson. Jaylen
Brunston ended up making a lot of mistakes last night himself.
He ended up missing a lot of those box outs
that led to easy putbacks. But generally speaking, in like
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a big playoff game, Jalen Brunson is like pretty attentive,
and it's more just like he has physical limitations. But
then you have this other type of bad defender, which
is like the mistake making like pays no attention to
the defensive game plan type of defender and Kat, and
we saw a bunch of examples of that last night.
Kat was hilarious to watch on defense in that game.
(30:00):
It feels like he's freelancing all the time. Like there
was a sequence of ball screens at the beginning of
the game that I thought were a good example of this.
So Derek White comes off of a ball screen off
the top one of the first possessions of the game,
and Kat's just like, go ahead, shoot it. He's second
way back, He's like back almost at like the charge circle,
and he's kind of just standing there and he just
lets Derek White take a pull up three off off
(30:22):
of a ball screen. Derek White misses the shot. And
then the very next two ball screens Derek White and
Me Mei Kayta ball screens that Boston runs. Kat like
on the first one comes up in like a catch.
Heage so he's like not quite up at the level
but pretty close and easy easily lets Nimi get behind him.
Derek White just pitches it over the top, Nemi gets
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a dunk, and then on the third one, he like
closes out at Derek White, like Derek White comes over
the top of the screen and he like sprints out
at Derek White, who then just throws it right to
me Kata and gets a dunk. So we got three
ball screens between Derek White and Kata, and we got
three completely different coverages from Cat to start the game.
Because there's no game plan discipline, he's just doing his
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own thing. It's freelancing in crunch time, which again because
Michel Bridges made every damn shot he took, the knicks
were right there, they were within three late in the game,
and like there were just a couple of these hilarious
mistakes from Cat. There was this play where Jalen Brown
gets downhill and a screen off of a this little
spin off of Jordan Clarkson, and he loses his balance
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on the move and so he's like falling down and
he's like drifting away all the way out kind of
past the left block, and he's just kind of throwing
up like a bullshit little right handed floater that has
like no chance of going in because he's falling over
and Kat is not there. Kat's kind of back around
the basket. He had stunted up at Jalen Brown, which
made him make a countermove, and Jalen had kind of
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gotten away from him, but again Jalen was falling over
and so Kat's there and he has a decision to make.
He can either turn around and box out Jordan Walsh
and get the rebound after Jalen misses this crazy one
leg floater that he's taking, or he can do what
he ended up doing, which was take a step towards
Jalen where he's not even close to Jalen, like he's
not in position to contest the shot at all, jumps
over towards Jalen. It just kind of goes like this
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and just like waves both of his arms up in
the air, gets himself out of position. Jordan Walsh boom
put back and it's like it's like those kinds of
little decisions hurt the team. Jordan Walsh has made three
corner threes all season on nine attempts. There's a play
where he catches it open in the left corner and
(32:34):
Kat chases him off the line like he's Steph Curry,
goes flying out to the corner, jumps out of his shoes.
Jordan Walsh just easily rips the clothes out and gets
a lamp. You're like, what are you doing? And It's
like when you combine that the legit mismatches that you
can hunt, which involves both Kat and Jalen Brunson, but
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also when you have a guy that's legitimately one of
the most mistake prone defenders I've ever watched, with absolutely
no discipline within the defensive game plan, it's really difficult
to overcome. All of that was on display last night
against the Celtics. On offense, we saw some of the
other things too, like Jalen Brunson kind of struggling to
score efficiently against more of like a swarming athletic perimeter.
(33:17):
Look Karl Anthony Town struggling with double teams, teams putting
their center on Josh Harten Daringham to shoot, which again
the Knicks ended up burning in the first quarter, but
not for the rest of the game. Again, if it
wasn't for Michale Bridges, that's probably a blowout last night,
a fifteen to twenty point win for Boston. Now, to
be clear, none of this necessarily changes my opinion as
(33:38):
it pertains to the Knicks. The decline, excuse me of
Cleveland has just kind of made it look like every
team at the top of the East is flawed in
one way or another. So, you know, I don't want
to just sit here and pretend like the Knicks are
the only team at the top of the East that
has issues. They're not. All these teams have issues, and
I would argue that they have as good a chance
(33:58):
as anybody to win this come Renference. It's wide open.
It's basically there for anybody to win. But like every year,
when I start to buy into the Knicks a little bit,
the same three or four issues come up to the surface,
and it just is one of those things that I
think is like a insurmountable barrier between them being one
of these like second tier teams and a legitimate team
(34:19):
that you feel like has a shot to win the title.
All Right, before we get out of here tonight, I
wanted to talk briefly about what the Thunder ended up
doing to the Warriors and crunch time last night. So
Thunder Warriors went about as you would have expected in
the first half with Steph Curry out, but then the
(34:41):
Warriors ended up catching fire in that second half. The
you know, we got a Pat Spencer show. He was
getting like one on one buckets, like hitting tough shots
to eat like a little right shoulder fade away over
Chet Holmgren on the right block. That was an insane shot.
Draymond Green's hitting threes, Gary Payton's hitting threes pods hits
like a bomb, and the third quarter like a leaning,
drifting bomb from like thirty feet. Jonathan Kamena is getting
(35:05):
in on the action, hitting threes, running action with Seth Curry.
Seth Curry ends up getting hot all of a sudden.
The Warriors had a four point lead in the kind
like earlyish part of the middle part of the fourth quarter,
and then the Thunder just played perfect basketball from there
and ended up winning by twelve. The Warriors went zone
during this stretch and it briefly flustered the Thunder, but
(35:26):
then they methodically broke him down. In crunch time. They
got a little pass to the middle to Case and
Wallace and Chet just kind of relocates right to the
top of the key, pitch it back to Chet. He
knocks down to three. Aj Mitchell beats the zone just
by driving off the wing and hitting like a little
left a left handed scoop shot over Draymond Green. Then
the Warriors bail on the zone and they go one
on one or man to man, excuse me, and Shade
(35:47):
just starts relentlessly hunting Buddy. Heeled walks him down for
a couple little elbow jumpers there on the left side.
HiT's like a nasty step back three off of the
right wing. That step back has become just such a
reliable shot for Shay. At the end of the game,
something I want to talk about in a little bit,
he had a really nice piece of advantage creation where
he gets Buddy out on the right wing, snatched left
(36:09):
right crossover just toasts him off the dribble. The entire
Warriors defense just kind of rotates right low man steps over.
They rotate on the weak side, the left wing is open.
Jdub's there, Shay just whips a cross court pass that
hits JDub right in the hands. Extra pass Isa Joe
in the corner he knocks down at three. JDub himself
got in on the action with like a really tough,
driving right handed layup that he scooped high off of
(36:30):
the glass and then on the other end of the floor.
I mean, i'llbeit against the limited Warriors lineup just stop
after stop after stop after stop in the thunder end
up winning like twelve, he had another game again like
As the schedule has gotten tougher for OKC, they've ended
up in a bunch of these clutch games and yet
another time where they just look unbeatable in that setting.
They've played in ten clutch games so far this season.
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They're nine and one in those games, the one loss,
of course, being the Portland game. They have a one
thirty seven offensive rating in the clutch, a ninety five
defensive rating in the clutch. Shake Gilda Alexander is twenty
five for forty six from the field in crunch time
this season. That's fifty four percent. He's hit six clutch threes.
(37:15):
He's hit a bunch of them in every one of
these games. Hit a huge one against Minnesota, hit a
huge one against Phoenix, hit a huge one again last
night over Buddy Healed on the right wing. He's just
getting into his bag and he can either go to
that little pound dribble with his left hand step back,
or that like little side step with his h going
towards his right, like the one he hit over Buddy Healed,
and he's just really confident. He's trusting it right now.
(37:38):
It's made six of them so far this season in
crunch time, hitting forty percent, and most of those misses
were earlier in the season. He's been in a great
groove as of late, nine assists to just one turnover
in crunch time and like you want to be like, Okay,
you got to send doubles, and the Warriors were pretty
content to let Shay just work one on one against Buddy.
But at the same time, like guys are hitting shots.
(37:59):
We talked about the clutch three that chet Holmgren hit.
Isaiah Joe hits a big clutch three last night. On
the season. If you leave Cason Wallace open for three
in crunch time, he's three for six. You leave chet
Holmgren open for three in crunch time, he's three for five.
Like they're just they're burning you when you help and like,
(38:22):
and it's one of those things where we've seen teams
manage to keep it somewhat close against Oklahoma City for
one reason or another, and then down the stretch it's
just shake Gildas Alexander looking like far and away the
most comfortable player on the floor. But it's not just
his one on one play. It's the awesome passing sequences,
(38:43):
the methodical ball movement through the zone. It's the role
players knocking down catch and shoot threes. Having guys like
AJ Mitchell and j Dubb who can hit a gap
and create some dribble penetration and get something up off
of the rim that they can score on in crunch time,
and they just look unbeatable. And again, if this keeps up,
like we're gonna do our contender rankings again in a month.
(39:05):
You know, we did our first contender rankings update like
a week ago or so, and I think it was
just last Friday, And in that Contender rankings for the
first time, I moved to OKAC back up to the
number one spot. But I still have them in the
same tier with OKAC and or with Denver in Houston.
If this keeps up, like if they're sitting in a
similar spot a month from now, I like it's starting
(39:27):
to look to me like Oklahoma City is in their
own tier. I see a separation building. Houston and Denver
are really good. There are a couple teams too that
are a trade away, like if Detroit makes some sort
of big splashy move for scoring forward, or if the
Lakers get someone like Herb Jones. There are teams that
might be able to move up into that tier, but
to me, that tier is beginning to look like a
(39:48):
tier that is beneath Oklahoma City. As yet again they
get a big win in crunch time last night. All right, guys,
that is all I have for tonight or today, I
should say, is always as sincerely appreciate you guys for
supporting us since supporting the show again. Remember we have
playback streams coming the next two nights. Thursday at I
want to say four pm Pacific time against or No,
(40:10):
it's four thirty pm Pacific time Toronto Lakers Raptors again.
I'm going to be trying to get a Raptor's got
to come on and join us for that one. And
then Friday night four pm Pacific time Lakers Celtics. Also
going to try to get a Celtics guy for that one.
Come hang out again playback dot Tv slash Shops tonight
will have a live watch along party for both of
(40:31):
those games. We'll obviously have more content coming this week too.
We'll have a show tomorrow as well as a mailbag
on Friday. Again, as always, sincerely appreciate you guys for
supporting us. In supporting the show. Have a good rest
of your day and I will see you guys tomorrow morning.
Hosts And Creators
Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre
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