Speaker 1: The volume Lakers Tonight is presented by FanDuel Sports Book.
Speaker 1: There's no better place to make every moment more than
Speaker 1: with FanDuel. You get great odds in markets for the
Speaker 1: NBA and a gel college, and so much more. It's
Speaker 1: America's number one sports book. It's super easy to use.
Speaker 1: Plus you can combine multiple bets from the same game
Speaker 1: into a same game parlay. If you are new, just
Speaker 1: download the fandel Sports Book app to get started. Now
Speaker 1: sign up with promo code Jason T so they know
Speaker 1: I sent you twenty one plus in president Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana,
Speaker 1: permitted parishes only, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Virginia
Speaker 1: or West Virginia. First online real money wager only. Refund
Speaker 1: issued as non withdrawable site credit that expires in fourteen days.
Speaker 1: Restrictions apply see terms at sports book dot FanDuel dot com.
Speaker 1: Gambling problem called one eight hundred, next step or text
Speaker 1: next step to five three three four two in Arizona
Speaker 1: one eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven
Speaker 1: seven or visit CCPG dot org slash chat in Connecticut
Speaker 1: one eight hundred gambler or visit FanDuel dot com slash
Speaker 1: RG in Colorado, Indiana, New Jersey, in Virginia one eight
Speaker 1: seven seven seven seven zero stop in Louisiana one eight
Speaker 1: hundred to seven zero seven one one seven for confidential
Speaker 1: help in Michigan one eight seven seven eight Hope and
Speaker 1: Why or text hope and Why to four six seven
Speaker 1: three six nine in New York. In Tennessee redline dial
Speaker 1: one eight hundred eight eight nine nine seven eight nine
Speaker 1: in Tennessee. Visit www one dot one eight hundred gambler
Speaker 1: dot net in West Virginia. All right, welcome to Lakers Tonight,
Speaker 1: presented by FanDuel. Here at the volume, I Jason timp
Speaker 1: having Monday, everybody. I hope your week is off to
Speaker 1: a good start. Another mostly predictable Lakers disaster tonight. We're
Speaker 1: gonna spend a few minutes talking about that game. I
Speaker 1: don't want to spend too much time on it, just
Speaker 1: simply because the Lakers do not deserve to be discussed
Speaker 1: at length with the product they're putting on the floor.
Speaker 1: But we are going to touch on that for a
Speaker 1: little bit. I wanted to dive into the Yokichen bead
Speaker 1: battle tonight, which I thought was super interesting on a
Speaker 1: bunch of different levels. And then if you guys stick
Speaker 1: around for the end. I have some thoughts on the
Speaker 1: Milwaukee Bucks and some really interesting stats from this them
Speaker 1: this year that concerned me about whether or not they
Speaker 1: can repeat as champions. So let's start with the Lakers.
Speaker 1: So again, there's a huge difference between like being big
Speaker 1: and playing big, because we've talked about at length that
Speaker 1: the Lakers don't have size at any of the positions
Speaker 1: that they needed to succeed at the NBA level. It's
Speaker 1: hilarious tonight to watch the Raptors bully them physically and
Speaker 1: to have their big audible to be Here comes DJ Augustine,
Speaker 1: Here comes Avery Bradley, Here comes Carmelo Anthony. This is
Speaker 1: how we're gonna throw the curveball to try to hang
Speaker 1: with your freakishly athletic lineups. But that's the reality of
Speaker 1: their predicament. But it goes deeper than that, because you know,
Speaker 1: the Lakers are obviously not able of They're not capable
Speaker 1: of hanging with the Raptors physically. That goes without saying. However,
Speaker 1: they're capable of hanging with them more than they did
Speaker 1: in the early phases of that game, which brings me
Speaker 1: to an ancient basketball idea that is debated at all levels.
Speaker 1: It's the concept of being big versus playing big, because
Speaker 1: there's a way to play bigger than your size, and
Speaker 1: it has a lot to do with your physicality. We've
Speaker 1: all seen this if you've been involved with sports at
Speaker 1: any level, even if it's baseball, if it's football, if
Speaker 1: it's basketball, you've all seen that freakishly large athlete that
Speaker 1: looks like a grown men amongst boys. That doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense, but for whatever reason, he's just not as
Speaker 1: good as he's supposed to be. Maybe he's passive, maybe
Speaker 1: he doesn't like the physicality. I played high school football
Speaker 1: and basketball. I saw a little bit of both. I
Speaker 1: saw it in the college level as well. You'd see
Speaker 1: guys that have great physical tools, but for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: there's just something missing with their aggression and it leads
Speaker 1: to them playing smaller than they are. And then you'll
Speaker 1: see the exact opposite. You'll see a guy like Draymond
Speaker 1: Green or a guy like p J. Tucker. You'll see
Speaker 1: a guy like past like Fred van Fred van Fleet
Speaker 1: is an awesome example of this, a guy who's incredibly
Speaker 1: undersized and lacks almost everything that you would consider to
Speaker 1: be NBA tools for the position. But he's a great
Speaker 1: defensive player and a great offensive player in the NBA.
Speaker 1: It's a testament to the fact that he plays bigger
Speaker 1: than he actually is and his work ethic and everything
Speaker 1: that comes along with that. But the Lakers are have
Speaker 1: a team full of guys that, in addition to being small,
Speaker 1: also play small. You know, like Malik Monk. He's six
Speaker 1: three and he's very athletic, but he's thin and wiring,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't do great in how eye contact situations.
Speaker 1: You know, Carmelo Anthony, because of his lack of foot speed,
Speaker 1: he's gonna struggle against bigger athletes as well. Even though
Speaker 1: he has some size, he's going to struggle in a
Speaker 1: lot of those matchups because his lack of foot speed
Speaker 1: causes him to play small. They went with when in
Speaker 1: Gabriel as an audible at one point in the game
Speaker 1: to try to get some size and athleticism on the court.
Speaker 1: He played really hard, he battled, but he's thin and
Speaker 1: wiry and he's not a super physical player, so he's
Speaker 1: gonna struggle in a lot of those settings. And so
Speaker 1: what you saw there was a combination of a massive
Speaker 1: physical match, physical mismatch in conjunction with the Lakers team
Speaker 1: that has really shied away from the physical areas of
Speaker 1: the game all season long. It's been a huge problem
Speaker 1: for them. It's manifested in a ton of different ways.
Speaker 1: They've had rebounding issues all season. They've had defensive issues
Speaker 1: all season, even when they've had their bigger personnel on
Speaker 1: the floor. It's something we've all been critical of with
Speaker 1: Anthony Davis from time to time. He can float in
Speaker 1: and out of games and not play as big as
Speaker 1: he is. It's been an issue with the roster, and
Speaker 1: I'm not surprised at all that it manifested the way
Speaker 1: it did tonight with the Raptors. The other thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about with the Raptors that I think
Speaker 1: is really interesting, and this is an issue that goes
Speaker 1: deeper because it has a lot to do with the
Speaker 1: problems that I have with advanced metrics and the way
Speaker 1: that the very very smart statistical analysts that work in
Speaker 1: the league, the way that they try to portray data
Speaker 1: to us. Because what you saw tonight from the Raptors
Speaker 1: was one of the most impressive bits of defensive pressure
Speaker 1: that I have ever seen. And they've always been like this.
Speaker 1: They've been like this for as long as I can remember,
Speaker 1: with Nick Nurse at the Helm and with and with
Speaker 1: Massi Eugeria as the general manager, with the guys that
Speaker 1: he's brought into this franchise, and the way that that's
Speaker 1: led to a specific type of on court product. But
Speaker 1: from the time the ball is thrown up in the air,
Speaker 1: they are in your jersey. There is nothing that is easy.
Speaker 1: No one is ever comfortable. And that's that's what I
Speaker 1: always talked about. There's a difference between being on a
Speaker 1: player and having your arm extended and playing a little
Speaker 1: bit of defense. But there's a difference between that and
Speaker 1: literally making that person uncomfortable, getting into getting up underneath
Speaker 1: underneath them, making every single dribble, every single swing pass,
Speaker 1: even just bringing the ball up the floor becomes a
Speaker 1: royal pain in the ass. And when you set that
Speaker 1: tone from the opening tip, it makes everybody uncomfortable. It
Speaker 1: causes teams to not shoot well, it causes teams to
Speaker 1: have turnovers, it causes a dip in confidence. It's a
Speaker 1: huge part of what has made the Raptors so successful
Speaker 1: over the years, and it's a credit to them. You know,
Speaker 1: Laker fans all the time will say things like, oh,
Speaker 1: so and so is come into town, he's gonna shoot,
Speaker 1: He's gonna shoot better than he has all season, or
Speaker 1: like that. You know, every star plays their best game
Speaker 1: against the Lakers, and that's not a coincidence. A lot
Speaker 1: of times fans have a way of convincing themselves that
Speaker 1: is related to luck, like oh we got bad luck
Speaker 1: Gary Trent Jr. Shooting really well tonight, or oh we
Speaker 1: got really bad luck, Kyle Lowry's going off again, or
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. It's never that it's not luck.
Speaker 1: The reason why players have good games has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with how comfortable they are, and if you
Speaker 1: come out with a lack of defensive pressure, if they
Speaker 1: bring up the ball, if they bring the ball up
Speaker 1: the floor with no ball pressure, if they throw swing
Speaker 1: passes with no resistance, if there's very little physicality, if
Speaker 1: there if you can run a if you can set
Speaker 1: a down screen or cut through the lane and there's
Speaker 1: nobody throwing a forearm shiver in your chest as you're
Speaker 1: coming through the lane, or if no one's really fighting
Speaker 1: through the screen, you just operate at a level of
Speaker 1: comfort and confidence in the game that leads to you
Speaker 1: having a big night. Those things are very much related
Speaker 1: to each other. And what Toronto did tonight is make
Speaker 1: the Lakers feel really uncomfortable from the start and exposed
Speaker 1: them as a team that had a lack of fundamentals,
Speaker 1: which is something I talked about last night, because how
Speaker 1: do you handle that When a team comes at you
Speaker 1: with a ton of size and athleticism and a ton
Speaker 1: of defensive pressure. The only way to counter that is
Speaker 1: to play incredibly fundamentally sound basketball. Every past needs to
Speaker 1: involve a past fake. Every cut needs to involve a
Speaker 1: V cut where you fake cutting the other direction. Every screen,
Speaker 1: you have to set your man up. Everything that you
Speaker 1: do on the floor has to be so fundamentally sound
Speaker 1: in order to counter what the super athletics, super high
Speaker 1: pressure team is doing. And the Lakers are not that team.
Speaker 1: They were obviously gonna fold under that kind of pressure.
Speaker 1: It was a very predictable outcome. So bottom line, I
Speaker 1: just want to throw shout outs to the Toronto Raptors
Speaker 1: because they play basketball in a way that I think
Speaker 1: is highly It's it's very underestimated by NBA fans in
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways. People will look at that
Speaker 1: roster and be like, how does Pascal siakam and and
Speaker 1: Fred van Vleet hang with all of the best star
Speaker 1: duos that we have in the league. And that's the
Speaker 1: reason why they are a good basketball team from the
Speaker 1: top to the bottom. From mass mass Eu Jerry bringing it.
Speaker 1: Look at their wings and all the guys they have
Speaker 1: between six seven and six nine that can run up
Speaker 1: and down floor compared to what the Lakers have, which
Speaker 1: is basically Lebron James. And when you and Gabriel and
Speaker 1: Stanley Johnson and Stanley Johnson's closer to six five and
Speaker 1: he is to six seven. So I the massugery has
Speaker 1: done a great job. Nick Nurse has done a great job.
Speaker 1: And then the players in that locker room are so
Speaker 1: bought into that system. They compete and they deserve They
Speaker 1: went out there and they whoop the Lakers asked tonight
Speaker 1: and they very much deserved it. Last note on the
Speaker 1: Lakers before we move on. The Lakers are in a
Speaker 1: lot more danger than people realize of missing the plan. Now.
Speaker 1: I know everyone wants to talk about, you know, Brandon
Speaker 1: Ingram's injury, and the Zion Williams situation is Zion Williamson
Speaker 1: situation and C. J. Mccollumn and the fact that the
Speaker 1: Pelicans are trending downwards and you look at a team
Speaker 1: like the Spurs and you're like, there's no way they're
Speaker 1: coming back, right, But the Lakers only have a two
Speaker 1: and a half game lead on the eleven seat, And
Speaker 1: if you look at their schedule and you look at
Speaker 1: the type of basketball they're playing, it's really difficult to
Speaker 1: see where the winds are coming from. And so yes,
Speaker 1: they only have to be better than those teams, but
Speaker 1: those teams are probably more likely to manufacture wins over
Speaker 1: the course of the next month than the Lakers are.
Speaker 1: That's a real concern. They might by the time Anthony
Speaker 1: Davis comes back, they could very well be entirely out
Speaker 1: of the playoff picture. Now. I would imagine if you
Speaker 1: gave a bunch of truth serum to those guys, they'd
Speaker 1: probably be fine with that, because I don't judging by
Speaker 1: the product that we're seeing on the floor night in
Speaker 1: night out, especially in this back to back, these two ugly,
Speaker 1: ugly losses, they don't seem to be very interested in
Speaker 1: being here to begin with. But there's real danger here.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of like, there's a lot of I
Speaker 1: see a sentiment coming from Laker fans that they think, oh,
Speaker 1: the there's nothing that could happen that could cause them
Speaker 1: to miss the play, and I completely disagree. I think
Speaker 1: that the Lakers are very much headed in that direction.
Speaker 1: They only will continue to play better teams as time
Speaker 1: goes on, and they're not playing good enough basketball to
Speaker 1: even stay remotely competitive with these guys. Is and Lebron
Speaker 1: just can't can't just drop fifty every night, Okay. As
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, the Lakers are completely winless
Speaker 1: since the All Star Break and games where Lebron doesn't
Speaker 1: drop fifty, So that doesn't bode well for this whole scenario.
Speaker 1: That's all I have for the Lakers. They don't deserve
Speaker 1: to get any more discussion tonight. So let's move on
Speaker 1: to the Nuggets sixers. So there's a couple of different
Speaker 1: ways to look at this, and I want I want
Speaker 1: to be clear upfront because these topics get conflated often
Speaker 1: when we're debating and beat verse Yokich. The m v
Speaker 1: P discussion is very separate from the discussion of which
Speaker 1: player is better. Okay, because the best player in the
Speaker 1: league doesn't win m v P every year. That's just
Speaker 1: never has been how it works. The m v P
Speaker 1: discussion is very different than what happened in this game.
Speaker 1: They're way too often in NBA history will take a
Speaker 1: head to head match up and use it to determine
Speaker 1: the outcome of a of a m v P race
Speaker 1: when that they play ad two games. That's really silly.
Speaker 1: That's a silly way to do it. For instance, I
Speaker 1: thought Yoki was not I thought Ebat outplayed Kich tonight,
Speaker 1: but I think Yoki very much deserves should be the
Speaker 1: m v P. Will get to that in a second,
Speaker 1: But the point is is these these topics have to
Speaker 1: be approached separately. Yokis, to me, is the runaway m
Speaker 1: v P. If you look at those two teams and
Speaker 1: you look at the talent between the two of them,
Speaker 1: even though mb might be a better player, you could
Speaker 1: make that argument. I wouldn't make that argument, but you
Speaker 1: could make that argument. In terms of what the m
Speaker 1: v P race always has entailed, Yokich is a much
Speaker 1: stronger MVP candidate the Nuggets this season. Coming into tonight,
Speaker 1: we're sixteen point eight points better with Yoki on the
Speaker 1: floor than with him off. Now that's not what happened tonight. Ironically,
Speaker 1: they were minus nine in the Yokich minutes, and they
Speaker 1: were plus thirteen in the minutes when Yokis was off.
Speaker 1: The floor is a weird game. Bones Highland got outrageously hot.
Speaker 1: He hit three gigantic three's in the fourth quarter. All
Speaker 1: of them were tough. There was one that he hit
Speaker 1: from the logo, there was one he hid in transition,
Speaker 1: and then the one the the key one at the
Speaker 1: end of the game, the what amounted to the game winner.
Speaker 1: He was literally up against the shot clock. He released
Speaker 1: it with about a tenth of a second left, just
Speaker 1: a huge shot from Bones Highland, and then uh Jamichael
Speaker 1: Green made a bunch of huge plays down the stretch
Speaker 1: at a couple of mid range jumpers that were huge.
Speaker 1: It was an interesting game in the sense that lesser
Speaker 1: players for the Nuggets made plays that shifted the outcome
Speaker 1: of the game, even though Embiid played better than your kids.
Speaker 1: But it's funny to see those two teams juxtaposed against
Speaker 1: each other, to see the difference in the talent, because
Speaker 1: you can kind of see, like, you know, Aaron Gordon
Speaker 1: is a is a vaguely similar player to a Tobias Harris, right,
Speaker 1: like a highly paid wing that definitely is an offensively
Speaker 1: skilled enough to be a number one option, but brings
Speaker 1: defensive versatility and if you attack specific matchups with him,
Speaker 1: he's gonna have success and on any given night he
Speaker 1: can give you a thirty. That's the Aaron Aaron Gordon
Speaker 1: versus Tobias Harris type of dynamic. But outside of that,
Speaker 1: it's a complete like train wreck of talent difference between
Speaker 1: the two teams. You've got James Harden on the perimeter,
Speaker 1: who's at a whole other stratosphere of a player than
Speaker 1: any of the guards who play for Denver. You've got
Speaker 1: Tyrese Maxie, who is like basically a much more developed
Speaker 1: and established pro version of Bones Highland. You know, a young,
Speaker 1: super talented guard, but that's just further along in his
Speaker 1: development and much more consistent. You look at a guy
Speaker 1: like Matisse Thybel, he's a better defensive player than anybody
Speaker 1: on the Denver roster. You take him over Jeff Green
Speaker 1: in a heartbeat. When you're really looking at it, there's
Speaker 1: a giant chasm and talent and when you look at
Speaker 1: what Yokich has been able to do this year with
Speaker 1: that team, he has to be the m v P
Speaker 1: in my in my opinion, there's no way around it
Speaker 1: at this point. And when you a factor in the
Speaker 1: hard and trade here at the end, I think that
Speaker 1: just kind of puts the nail in the coffin. Maybe
Speaker 1: not necessarily fair that and be getting more talent is
Speaker 1: it is a demerit to him, but that's just kind
Speaker 1: of the way it works. Unfortunately, that's the way it works.
Speaker 1: I think Yokis deserves to win the m v P.
Speaker 1: What's so funny about it, though, is even though I
Speaker 1: very much think that Yokis deserves to be be the
Speaker 1: m v P, he's playing bad basketball right now by
Speaker 1: his standards relative to what he was playing the rest
Speaker 1: of the season. He is starting to really struggle in
Speaker 1: this recent stretch of games because he's been going against
Speaker 1: more athleticism and better defensive teams. Dove into the tape
Speaker 1: of the his last two matchups against Toronto and against
Speaker 1: Golden State, and he really really struggled with the length
Speaker 1: that those teams have. Those teams are big, with the
Speaker 1: tons of athletic wings they fly around in rotations, they
Speaker 1: play passing lanes, and you're seeing a guy like Nicola Yokich,
Speaker 1: who's one of the best passers to ever set foot
Speaker 1: on an NBA court, who has incredible court vision, throwing
Speaker 1: the ball away all over the place. It's like he
Speaker 1: couldn't even see matistible half the time on the floor tonight,
Speaker 1: he wasn't seeing the floor and it was bizarre. You
Speaker 1: could see Yokis get flustered by the size and athleticism
Speaker 1: of these teams. I saw, literally, I saw Kavan Looney
Speaker 1: completely locked Yokis down at the end of the Golden
Speaker 1: State Warriors game and forced him into a ton of
Speaker 1: turnovers and crunch time. You know, Yokich is still amazing.
Speaker 1: He's gonna make crazy shots. He made some crazy shots
Speaker 1: at the end of the game against the Warriors. He
Speaker 1: made some He made an absolute wild falling out of bounds,
Speaker 1: leaning floater thing over and beat Today, yoki is incredible.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to undercut him by any stretch of
Speaker 1: the imagination, but what you've seen in this last week
Speaker 1: is some limitations for him when he faces some real
Speaker 1: size and athleticism, which is exactly what happened in the
Speaker 1: bubble when he ran into Lebron and Anthony Davis and
Speaker 1: Dwight Howard and that Lakers team that was flying around
Speaker 1: in rotation. All of a sudden, the same Yokich that
Speaker 1: was picking the Clippers apart was struggling against that Laker defense.
Speaker 1: And I think that's where I digress from most of
Speaker 1: the Yoki hype. I very much think he is the
Speaker 1: m v P, but I think we got way out
Speaker 1: in front of ourselves with this Yoki is the best
Speaker 1: player in the world business. I think I could say
Speaker 1: the same thing with them Beat. Both of those guys
Speaker 1: have played well enough in the last two seasons. Both
Speaker 1: of them are I think Yokis was Yokis one MVP
Speaker 1: last year and Beat was an m VP candidate last year.
Speaker 1: Yoki is gonna win this year and Beat is an
Speaker 1: MVP candidate again this year. They both are playing some
Speaker 1: of the best regular season basketball that we can see.
Speaker 1: But I've seen a lot of limitations from them in
Speaker 1: in recent weeks that remind me of why I have
Speaker 1: guys like Janice, like Lebron, like Kevin Durant ahead of them.
Speaker 1: A huge part of it is their foot speed all
Speaker 1: over the all over the court. In this last week,
Speaker 1: when Yokis R. And b get caught under the basket
Speaker 1: after some sort of miss, teams are making Philly and
Speaker 1: Denver pay just by sprinting down the floor and beating
Speaker 1: Yokis are too slow to hang in the foot race
Speaker 1: when the when the the collective foots beat of their
Speaker 1: opponent is fast enough to make them pay for having
Speaker 1: a slow player on the floor. You're not doing that
Speaker 1: to Kevin Durant. You're not doing that to Janna's antenna compo.
Speaker 1: You're not doing that to Lebron James. Now, Nicola Yokich,
Speaker 1: he's this amazing playmaker, which is something that you guys know,
Speaker 1: I value so much, But he doesn't have that same
Speaker 1: level of individual offensive ability that you see from those
Speaker 1: top level guys, and and Bead has all that individual
Speaker 1: offensive ability, but he doesn't have the playmaking side. These
Speaker 1: guys have some pretty gaping holes for guys that are
Speaker 1: being loosely thrown around in that best player in the
Speaker 1: World conversation. I love them both. I enjoyed watching that
Speaker 1: game tonight. It was it was like a vintage Battle
Speaker 1: of the Bigs. They both had success scoring on each other.
Speaker 1: They both had defensive success on each other. But I
Speaker 1: think we need to remember that there's a difference between
Speaker 1: that type, that archetype of player, and that all world
Speaker 1: super versatile forward that Kevin Durant, the Lebron, the janna Us,
Speaker 1: the guy that can guard all five positions, that can
Speaker 1: initiate everything from the perimeter, that can hang in a
Speaker 1: foot race, and that can do all of the things
Speaker 1: that those guys do. That will always. There may be
Speaker 1: a point in the future where the size advantages of
Speaker 1: those guys become so valuable that maybe it swings the pendulum.
Speaker 1: But for right now, you're best putting your money with
Speaker 1: those big wings. Those are the guys that are controlling
Speaker 1: the outcomes in the league today. I think we got
Speaker 1: a little ahead of ourselves with our you know, worshiping
Speaker 1: the bigs. Al Right, before we get out of here tonight,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about that Bucks game against the Jazz.
Speaker 1: So first of all, I do not care that they
Speaker 1: beat the Jazz. As you guys know, I think the
Speaker 1: Jazz are frauds. The Jazz are the textbook example of
Speaker 1: a regular season win producing machine. They have a bunch
Speaker 1: of offensive minded perimeter players in one All World All
Speaker 1: Universe defensive player. So in the regular season, when teams
Speaker 1: can't game plan as much, you can run a basic
Speaker 1: scheme where you have your offensive minded players just chase
Speaker 1: guys off the three point line and funnel everybody to
Speaker 1: Rudy Gobert and that works great. And then on the
Speaker 1: offensive end, because other defenses aren't as dialed in, those
Speaker 1: limited offensive players can create enough offense to be a
Speaker 1: productive NBA team, but they do not have that superstar
Speaker 1: offensive player and their defense gets utterly exposed in the
Speaker 1: postseason when they can game plan and expose them for
Speaker 1: being a weak perimeter defense team. This is what happened
Speaker 1: with the Clippers in last year's playoffs. The The Clippers
Speaker 1: literally hung a one thirty offensive rating on the Utah
Speaker 1: Jazz despite them being one of the best defenses in
Speaker 1: the league, because they spread them out, got Rudy Gobert
Speaker 1: out of the paint. And they understood too that if
Speaker 1: Rudy helped, all they had to do was do one
Speaker 1: extra rotation with the ball and have Rudy rotate out
Speaker 1: to the perimeter. All of a sudden, no one was
Speaker 1: under the basket. Guys could get to the paint Jordan Clarkson,
Speaker 1: Mike Conley, Boon Bogdanovich, these Bogdon Bodonovitch, these guys are
Speaker 1: not great defensive players and they don't have any were
Speaker 1: near as much defensive talent on the perimeter as any
Speaker 1: of the other contenders. I think they're fraud So good
Speaker 1: nice job for the Bucks tonight to get that win.
Speaker 1: But I just wanted to frame that with this because
Speaker 1: I'm worried about the Bucks on a couple of different levels.
Speaker 1: The Bucks are eighteen in defense. Since the New Year,
Speaker 1: they had a defensive rating of one five point eight
Speaker 1: against Golden State one fifty six point five in the
Speaker 1: third quarter when Golden State went on their run to
Speaker 1: bump the lead from single digits up to twenty. And
Speaker 1: so we're starting to have some really big red flags
Speaker 1: surrounding their defense, which is something that is a perennial
Speaker 1: all like. It's one of the most consistent themes in
Speaker 1: NBA history is if you're not a top ten defense,
Speaker 1: you cannot win an NBA championship unless you have an
Speaker 1: otherworldly talent advantage, meaning if you don't have Steph Clay,
Speaker 1: K D and Draymond, or if you don't have Shack
Speaker 1: and Kobe. You're not If you don't have a che
Speaker 1: malaje Uan at the top height of his powers with
Speaker 1: m J sitting on his couch, then you're not winning
Speaker 1: the title. If you don't have a top ten defense.
Speaker 1: That is just an established truth in NBA history. And
Speaker 1: the Bucks do not have a top ten defense, and
Speaker 1: in fact, they're getting worse as time is going on.
Speaker 1: And before they went into Utah tonight, they laid another
Speaker 1: egg against Golden State. So I wanted to dig into
Speaker 1: their defense a little bit and see what's going on
Speaker 1: and see if it's something that I thought was rectifiable. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, they're great at defending the paint. They're
Speaker 1: one of the best paint defenses in the league. They're
Speaker 1: great at rebounding. They're great at defensive rebounding, which is
Speaker 1: a huge part of defense. They're great in transition defense,
Speaker 1: they don't commit fouls. They do everything really well defensively,
Speaker 1: except they lead the league in three pointers made a
Speaker 1: loud per game. They give up twenty plus wide open
Speaker 1: threes per game according to NBA dot Com and what
Speaker 1: which leads the entire NBA. And this is what's crazy
Speaker 1: about that stats. So they're giving up more wide open threes,
Speaker 1: meaning the defenders at least six ft away. They're giving
Speaker 1: up more wide open threes than anybody in the NBA.
Speaker 1: But amongst opponents wide open three point percentage, they have
Speaker 1: the third lowest, meaning even though they're giving up a
Speaker 1: ton of wide open threes, they're not even making them.
Speaker 1: Opponents are shooting just thirty five point five per cent
Speaker 1: on wide open threes against the Bucks, So their defense
Speaker 1: is even worse than what the results would show you
Speaker 1: because giving up that many wide open threes, especially the
Speaker 1: NBA competition, allows teams to get in a rhythm and
Speaker 1: start making shots. But for whatever reason, they just haven't
Speaker 1: made shots against them this year. And there's a couple
Speaker 1: of things that come into that. Part of it is
Speaker 1: defensive scheme. Budden holes has always been huge, unpacking the paint.
Speaker 1: This is what drives me nuts about everyone saying, oh,
Speaker 1: brook Lo Brook Lopez is coming back, that's gonna fix everything.
Speaker 1: The paint is not the issue. They're having no issues
Speaker 1: controlling the paint. Defensively, they are guarding the three point line.
Speaker 1: So some of this is championship hangover. It's normal after
Speaker 1: you get the trophy. To not want it as bad
Speaker 1: as the other twenty nine teams in the league. That
Speaker 1: can lead to some slippage. That's that disease of more,
Speaker 1: that thing that pat Riley used always talking about. It's
Speaker 1: all the stuff that we've always talked about about defending
Speaker 1: champions That's why it's so hard to repeat in the
Speaker 1: n B. A part of it is the fact that
Speaker 1: they have the sixth fastest pace in the league, so
Speaker 1: they play so fast, and when teams play up and
Speaker 1: down the floor, defense is usually the first thing to
Speaker 1: go as they fatigue, they're struggling with rotations, they're not
Speaker 1: getting around to the perimeter. So the question becomes, can
Speaker 1: this team win the championship? Now, I saw in that
Speaker 1: fourth quarter tonight them really lock in and make things
Speaker 1: extremely difficult on Utah. So we saw an example of
Speaker 1: the switch being flipped tonight. But like I always say,
Speaker 1: that's why defensive writing is a great indicator of a
Speaker 1: team's overall effort. Is the switch getting flipped the usual
Speaker 1: occurrence or is it the outlier occurrence? And the numbers
Speaker 1: tell us that that fourth quarter against the Jazz tonight
Speaker 1: was an outlier more often than not this season, and
Speaker 1: They've tried to tap into that and it hasn't been there.
Speaker 1: So the Bucks have to understand the urgency of the situation.
Speaker 1: They have about a month's worth of games here to
Speaker 1: try to establish the defensive identity that they let slip away,
Speaker 1: and if they don't, they're gonna lose, because if they
Speaker 1: give up twenty plus wide open threes to a team
Speaker 1: like the Miami Heat, or to a team like the
Speaker 1: Philadelphia seventy sixers, or god forbid, a team like the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Nets, they're gonna lose. Even if Janice is Janice,
Speaker 1: even if Chris Middleton's Chris Middleton, and even if Drew
Speaker 1: Holidays Drew Holiday. They have to fix that. It's a
Speaker 1: huge problem. Everything in NBA history tells us that that's
Speaker 1: a massive indicator of a team's limitation in their pursuit
Speaker 1: of a championship, and it's serious for them now. They
Speaker 1: have to solve this problem over the course of the
Speaker 1: next month. All right, guys, that is all I have
Speaker 1: for tonight. I sincerely appreciate your guys support as always,
Speaker 1: especially you like your fans, for hanging with us through
Speaker 1: this complete and utter travesty of a season. Your support
Speaker 1: means the world to me. The Lakers play on Wednesday
Speaker 1: the I believe the game starts at five Pacific Standard time,
Speaker 1: so it's a little bit earlier, but we'll be going
Speaker 1: live right after the final buzzer. As always, I appreciate
Speaker 1: your guys sport, and I'll see you in a couple
Speaker 1: of days. The volume