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Speaker 1: Happy Thursday, everybody. I hope all of you guys are
Speaker 1: having a great week so far. We are live on AMP.
Speaker 1: Don't forget if you're watching YouTube or listening on the
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Speaker 1: you guys can get these shows. Jay Packs show Tonight
Speaker 1: the Grizzlies kick the Warriors ass something. I kind of
Speaker 1: saw it coming. I just don't think the Warriors were
Speaker 1: playing well enough to overcome their physical disadvantages for this
Speaker 1: type of matchup. We're talking a little bit about the
Speaker 1: Kevin Durant injury. And then at the end, I want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about the Mavericks from a
Speaker 1: more optimistic point of view. You guys know the joke
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Speaker 1: can find them wherever you get your podcasts. Under Hoops tonight,
Speaker 1: all right, let's talk some basketball. So one of the
Speaker 1: themes of tonight's show is going to have to do
Speaker 1: with physicality and athleticism in the MBA. Make no mistake,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, skill is monumentally important
Speaker 1: in this game. But I think through narratives, you know,
Speaker 1: just some of the beef that you see between the
Speaker 1: way that you know the NFL is handled by the
Speaker 1: players versus the MBA, some of the old heads in
Speaker 1: the NBA and the way they talk about the modern
Speaker 1: game and they want to pretend like it's all offense
Speaker 1: and they want to pretend like, you know, there's no physicality.
Speaker 1: You know, this guy wouldn't be able to survive in
Speaker 1: my era, which is all just stupid. People lose sight
Speaker 1: of the fact that the game of basketball is an
Speaker 1: incredibly physical game and that there's a lot more contact
Speaker 1: that takes place on the court than you'd think, and
Speaker 1: things like size and strength really do matter coming into
Speaker 1: this game, and I was especially worried, you know, coming
Speaker 1: off of the Draymond trash talk with Dylan Brooks, which
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a little bit more here
Speaker 1: in a little bit. Coming off of that, I was
Speaker 1: worried about Golden State's ability to win this game because
Speaker 1: the one thing that's guaranteed when you play hard is
Speaker 1: that your physical advantages will come through. Sometimes you shoot
Speaker 1: all the same shots you work on a million times,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they go in, sometimes they don't. Sometimes your
Speaker 1: mental focus isn't quite as sharp as it needs to be.
Speaker 1: But usually if you play hard, your physical attributes will
Speaker 1: come through to the surface in a basketball game. And
Speaker 1: they were motivated to get that win tonight even without
Speaker 1: John morand a lot of people saw a lot of
Speaker 1: people going like, oh, they're without you know, John Moran.
Speaker 1: They're without Steven Adams, there without Brandon Clark and all
Speaker 1: that's true. But even when you get past those guys,
Speaker 1: it's like Tyas Jones is a bigger, stronger guard, a
Speaker 1: good size point guard compared to John morand in a
Speaker 1: much better defensive player. You know, Desmond band is as
Speaker 1: big and strong of a you know, of a physical
Speaker 1: two guard that you'll see in the league. Dylan Brooks
Speaker 1: is one of the most physical perimeter defenders in the league.
Speaker 1: Jaron Jackson is a big, strong, monster of a rim protector.
Speaker 1: Davier Tillman is a big, strong center. Like they still
Speaker 1: are very much a very physically imposing team, and it
Speaker 1: was just gonna be tough for them to win that game.
Speaker 1: And again, like Golden State was never the biggest or
Speaker 1: most athletic team, make no mistake, but they did have
Speaker 1: some supreme level athletes last year when they won the
Speaker 1: championship that we're not playing tonight. Andrew Wiggins still dealing
Speaker 1: with a personal issue. Hopefully he'll be back soon. You know,
Speaker 1: Gary Payton's still nursing an injury. Hopefully he'll be back soon.
Speaker 1: Those are two top tier athletes at their position in
Speaker 1: this league. And then in warmups for the second time
Speaker 1: in as many nights, and an extremely strange circumstance, we
Speaker 1: have an NBA player get injured in warmups I think
Speaker 1: the same type of ankle spraining, although I haven't seen
Speaker 1: the video of the Jonathan Cominga injury. But now Jonathan
Speaker 1: Cominga is out. So with Andrew Wiggins and Gary Payton out,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Cominga is your best athlete that you have on
Speaker 1: the roster, and so without him, it just put him
Speaker 1: in a really tough to put them in a really
Speaker 1: tough spot. I mean, there was a bench lineup out
Speaker 1: there for the Warriors tonight that was Steph Curry, Dante DiVincenzo,
Speaker 1: and I Jerome So three guards, a thirty nine year
Speaker 1: old Andre Iguadala, and Jamichael Green who's an undersized and
Speaker 1: not very not very big center who mainly plays for
Speaker 1: the Warriors because he can't miss from three as of late,
Speaker 1: that's been his big winning impact. And he's a smart player,
Speaker 1: doesn't take bad shots and things along those lines. So
Speaker 1: they were kind of it was kind of stacked against them,
Speaker 1: and in that situation, you have to be incredibly sharp
Speaker 1: in every other detail of the game. I've seen the
Speaker 1: Warriors win tons of games without that physicality advantage, or
Speaker 1: I should say with a huge physicality disadvantage, even in
Speaker 1: the playoffs last year. Just in recent weeks without Andrew Wiggins,
Speaker 1: without Gary Payton, they've been able to win games with
Speaker 1: physical disadvantages because they've been very sharp elsewhere. Clay Thompson
Speaker 1: emerging as this awesome half court shot creator, wasn't very
Speaker 1: good on offense tonight. Right like Steph Curry. He's back,
Speaker 1: but he's not like one hundred percent. So he struggled
Speaker 1: a little bit with Dylan Brooks tonight, although he still
Speaker 1: was above fifty percent from the field and at twenty
Speaker 1: seven because he's one of the best players in the
Speaker 1: world and that's the kind of thing that he's going
Speaker 1: to do. But in order to win a game when
Speaker 1: you don't have when you're when you have disadvantages in
Speaker 1: the physicality of the game, you have to be really
Speaker 1: sharp everywhere else. You've got to take care of the basketball.
Speaker 1: They didn't take care of the basketball tonight. I can't
Speaker 1: believe how many unforced errors the Warriors had tonight. Inability
Speaker 1: to make a post century pass or a swing pass,
Speaker 1: or just botching advantage situations on fast breaks just by
Speaker 1: throwing the ball away. And it's so unusual because the
Speaker 1: Warriors have had issues with turnovers time again in the past,
Speaker 1: but it's usually like a game here, a game there,
Speaker 1: and they and they typically can overcome it with overwhelming skill.
Speaker 1: But they weren't hitting a ton of shots tonight. They're
Speaker 1: fifteen for forty five from the field. Those unforced errors
Speaker 1: then start to really come to the surface. And you know,
Speaker 1: the Warriors for being as good of an execution team
Speaker 1: as they've been over the course of the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, it's it's been an iffy year for them
Speaker 1: on the front of execution and it's presented some problems
Speaker 1: for them. I want to credit Memphis. You know, Jaron
Speaker 1: Jackson Junior did a great job locking down the paint.
Speaker 1: Kevon Looney missed an easy layup under the basket because
Speaker 1: he was overthinking it a bit. Draymond Green turned down
Speaker 1: some shots around the rim and missed a couple shots
Speaker 1: around the rim that he normally makes, so credits to them.
Speaker 1: Dylan Brooks did a really good job on staff, like
Speaker 1: he's done on a lot of players in the league
Speaker 1: this year. But they just weren't sharp enough. They didn't
Speaker 1: win the skill battle. You're a more skilled team than Memphis. Memphis'
Speaker 1: skills showed through tonight in a way that yours did not.
Speaker 1: You know, you're a better execution team than Memphis. Memphis
Speaker 1: executed better than you did tonight. And so when you
Speaker 1: have all of those things and you struggle in the
Speaker 1: physicality of the areas of the game, that's going to
Speaker 1: be a really tough game to win. And most importantly,
Speaker 1: they just weren't very sharp defensively, especially when you know
Speaker 1: you're gonna give up some offensive rebounds, you have to
Speaker 1: get a lot of stops because you know you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to get more stops than that on the rebounding mismatch,
Speaker 1: so like you're already the deck is already stacked against
Speaker 1: you in that regard. The big problem they were having
Speaker 1: tonight was help defense. There's a lot of situations tonight
Speaker 1: where whether it was Taias Jones and a methodical ball
Speaker 1: screen rejecting a ball screen, or whether it was Desmond
Speaker 1: Bain was doing some really good work in semi transition tonight,
Speaker 1: just really hard, straight line moves to the rim. When
Speaker 1: the Warriors weren't quite set and taking advantage of the
Speaker 1: fact that if you beat that first man off the dribble,
Speaker 1: there was nobody on the back line, and a lot
Speaker 1: of it was on the guards. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of plays where the guards were pointing at each other like, Hey,
Speaker 1: that's your help. Hey, that's my help. Everyone's looking around,
Speaker 1: like whose help is that. You can't hope to win
Speaker 1: in a setting like that without being sharp in all
Speaker 1: of those details of the game. And the concerning thing
Speaker 1: is these have all been consistent problems for the Warriors
Speaker 1: on the road all year this year. Not to be clear,
Speaker 1: as I've said one hundred times this season, I'm not
Speaker 1: out on the Warriors. You know why because this story
Speaker 1: that I'm telling right now, this like, we rip off
Speaker 1: a five game winning streak with all those details sharpened,
Speaker 1: and then we immediately drop a game in Oklahoma City
Speaker 1: that we shouldn't have lost, and then we go into
Speaker 1: Memphis and get our ass kicked. That sort of dynamic
Speaker 1: has happened to almost every team in the Western Conference
Speaker 1: this year. Clippers have won a couple of tough games
Speaker 1: in a row. What happened before that, they dropped a
Speaker 1: bunch of games that they shouldn't have lost and couldn't
Speaker 1: execute at the end of games. You know, the Lakers
Speaker 1: are on a run now, but they've had a bunch
Speaker 1: of down stretches during the season and they've dug They've
Speaker 1: dug too big of a hole. I don't think they're
Speaker 1: gonna be able to really get up into the top
Speaker 1: of the standings, so they're gonna be making an uphill
Speaker 1: climb all season long. Minnesota will drop four out of
Speaker 1: five and then rip off three games in a row,
Speaker 1: right like. It's been like this for everyone in the
Speaker 1: Western Conference except for Sacramento, who I don't think anyone's
Speaker 1: scared of because they can't defend, and Denver, who has
Speaker 1: their own question marks. I pointed this out earlier today,
Speaker 1: but the Denver Nuggets are allowing one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: points per one hundred possessions when they play a top
Speaker 1: ten offense this year, which is twenty third in the league.
Speaker 1: Kind of a great example of what I've always talked about,
Speaker 1: where you know, you can put forth a fact simile
Speaker 1: of a good regular season defense. If you run certain
Speaker 1: coverages and you've got a decent guy who can protect
Speaker 1: the rim, you can do a decent job in the
Speaker 1: eighty two. We saw this for years with the Utah
Speaker 1: Jazz with Rudy Gobert. Problem is, as you get into
Speaker 1: the postseason, then personnel starts to come to the surface,
Speaker 1: as scouting becomes a bigger issue, and now all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, those limitations that you have in personnel can
Speaker 1: become a problem. So there really isn't that big scary
Speaker 1: team like Milwaukee or Boston in the conference. And aside
Speaker 1: from Sacramento and Denver, all the other teams are up
Speaker 1: and down all season long. So like the lucky thing
Speaker 1: for Golden State is they can't get their ship together,
Speaker 1: but neither can anyone else. And like you saw for
Speaker 1: the Lakers, they put together like three solid week of
Speaker 1: basketball and now they're right back into the mix. So
Speaker 1: for the Warrior's perspective, they're running out of time, but
Speaker 1: they do have some weeks left and they just have
Speaker 1: to be There's gonna be somebody or one or two
Speaker 1: teams in this mix. They're in the Western Conference that
Speaker 1: gets it together. Who's it gonna be? And I will
Speaker 1: say that it will be a lot easier for the Warriors.
Speaker 1: They will buy themselves a lot more margin for error,
Speaker 1: when Andrew Wiggins gets back, when Gary Peyton can start
Speaker 1: playing in games again, when everyone starts getting slotted properly
Speaker 1: so that you don't have as many minutes for you know,
Speaker 1: like PBJ played a lot tonight, and you know he's
Speaker 1: a young player. That's a big game. He's a good shooter,
Speaker 1: but you know he missed a lot. I think he's
Speaker 1: one for six from three. That's gonna happen for a
Speaker 1: young player who's a little bit in over his skis
Speaker 1: in a big, tough road game like that. Ideally don't
Speaker 1: have to play a guy like that, so it will
Speaker 1: get easier for them as they slot, but they are
Speaker 1: running out of time and the urgency to kick in eventually.
Speaker 1: A couple notes on the Draymond trash talk thing. First
Speaker 1: of all, I am not a Dylan Brooks fan. I
Speaker 1: have very you guys know how I feel about the
Speaker 1: game of basketball. It's sacred to me. I think I
Speaker 1: have the utmost respect for players who make it to
Speaker 1: the NBA. I think that's a sacred achievement. The game
Speaker 1: of basketball itself is something that I love so much
Speaker 1: that I hate it when it gets disrupted by Shenanigans.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're not gonna talk about it tonight, but
Speaker 1: I agree with some of the stuff that Fred van
Speaker 1: Vliet has been saying about the officials and them thinking
Speaker 1: they're the show I hate. But it goes the other
Speaker 1: way with players too. The foul grifting, to me is
Speaker 1: like offensive and sacrilegious to the game of basketball. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that Dylan Brooks does that I
Speaker 1: have a huge problem with is he does unnatural basketball
Speaker 1: acts that can hurt basketball players. Obviously, I had a
Speaker 1: huge problem with what he did to Gary Payton in
Speaker 1: the playoffs last year. He had a couple of instances
Speaker 1: like that this year. There was one recently where he
Speaker 1: liberately did like two barrel rolls to go up into
Speaker 1: Donovan Mitchell's legs, which could have tore up his knee
Speaker 1: or messed up his ankle, and and he hit him
Speaker 1: in the crotch in the process. Like to me, once
Speaker 1: you start doing things that blatantly start to threaten the
Speaker 1: health and safety of players, I'm out on you. Like
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of things that I respect about
Speaker 1: Dylan Brooks, and I like the fact that he's grind
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of similarities between him and Draymond
Speaker 1: at their positions with like, you know, Dylan's not an
Speaker 1: outstanding athlete, but like, and he's incredibly unskilled offensively, but like,
Speaker 1: he just competes his ass off every single night and
Speaker 1: has good instincts defensively, and he's weaponized all that to
Speaker 1: carve out like a really nice place in the league,
Speaker 1: which I respect. But I just I can't handle the
Speaker 1: trying to injure players thing. That's just that's a line
Speaker 1: for me that I'm completely unwilling to cross when it
Speaker 1: comes to supporting a player. And the other thing with
Speaker 1: the Draymond trash talk thing is he was right like regardless, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's two trash talkers talking trash, but there's a huge
Speaker 1: difference there, you know, like trash. I've never been a
Speaker 1: trash talker, but I don't have any problem with it
Speaker 1: where I start to get a little bit like I
Speaker 1: think it's a bad look when you're not respectable, when
Speaker 1: you're not respectful to people that have accomplished a lot.
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example on my front, Like it'd
Speaker 1: be like if I just was like imagine if I
Speaker 1: didn't work for the volume and I was just going
Speaker 1: at Colin cowhard every day. It's like, that's so disrespectful
Speaker 1: to the work that he's put in this industry to
Speaker 1: establish himself the way that he has. Regardless of how
Speaker 1: Dylan Brooks feels about Draymond Green is a person, he
Speaker 1: might dislike him, he might think he's a jerk. But
Speaker 1: when you start to like say things like like undercut
Speaker 1: his winning impact, you look like the idiot, and Draymond
Speaker 1: called him an idiot. Like think about it, Like, Draymond
Speaker 1: has won a Defensive Player of the Year. There are
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty players in the NBA and he
Speaker 1: got rated the very best defender. I think he's the
Speaker 1: best defender of this era. He's made a second team
Speaker 1: All NBA. We finished an NBA season and the media
Speaker 1: voted him as one of the ten most winning, impactful
Speaker 1: winning players in the league. The guy has won four
Speaker 1: NBA championships. Like, he didn't even play very well and
Speaker 1: last year's a postseason, and they still were nine plus
Speaker 1: points better when he was on the floor versus when
Speaker 1: he was off, and they won all their minutes when
Speaker 1: Draymond was on the court with Steph off by a lot,
Speaker 1: Like by twelve points per one hundred possessions, regardless of
Speaker 1: If you don't like him, that's fine, But you look
Speaker 1: like an idiot when you start trying to tell us
Speaker 1: he's not a very good basketball player or that he
Speaker 1: wouldn't succeed somewhere else. It's objectively false. You come off
Speaker 1: looking super disrespectful, and I mean, what do you expect?
Speaker 1: And look, he got to have some moments to night.
Speaker 1: He played a good game, good defensive game on Steph,
Speaker 1: had a couple of moments at Draymond's expense, had a
Speaker 1: nice driving layout. But everything Draymond said is true. The
Speaker 1: reason why you guys aren't ready to contend for a
Speaker 1: championship yet is in that locker room you have an
Speaker 1: elevated sense of what you've already accomplished. And the truth
Speaker 1: of the matter is is it's incredibly hard to win
Speaker 1: an NBA championship, and most of the guys who do
Speaker 1: it are humbled in the time before that. Lebron James
Speaker 1: humbled in twenty eleven before he won in twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: There's pain and suffering and loss on the way because
Speaker 1: you have to learn that, like you, that it is
Speaker 1: an incredibly difficult journey, and it's a long pathway to
Speaker 1: get there. And I do think that Draymond's right that
Speaker 1: there's an issue within that locker room with understanding their
Speaker 1: ultimate goal and how far away they still are from
Speaker 1: getting there, and how much better all of them have
Speaker 1: to get and how much more locked into the details
Speaker 1: they have to be in order to actually achieve that goal.
Speaker 1: So it's two trash talkers talking trash, but it's one
Speaker 1: guy who I don't like because he tries to injure
Speaker 1: people and you know, is being disrespectful to an established
Speaker 1: great player in this league. But that's all I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say about that. So let's move on to the Suns.
Speaker 1: In the KD injury so super freaky, like I can't
Speaker 1: even remember this happening ever, I can't even think of
Speaker 1: I'm sure it has happened in recent years, but I
Speaker 1: can't think of a time recently where a NBA player
Speaker 1: got injured in warm ups And we just had it
Speaker 1: happened twice in two nights. And it really sucks because
Speaker 1: it probably takes Phoenix out of the running for the
Speaker 1: three seed. I think they probably could have passed Memphis,
Speaker 1: but now that's going to be pretty tough, and that
Speaker 1: sucks for their event eventual playoff path because that four
Speaker 1: seed means you'll have to play Denver in the first round,
Speaker 1: and you'll probably have to play a much tougher opponent
Speaker 1: in that five seed versus somebody in that three seed.
Speaker 1: But once again, like I said with the Warriors, what's
Speaker 1: working in their favor is they shouldn't drop any lower
Speaker 1: than fourth because every team below them cannot maintain good
Speaker 1: play for more than a week or so. We just
Speaker 1: talked about this earlier. The Clippers, the Warriors, the MAVs,
Speaker 1: and the Wolves. They all it's one week on, one
Speaker 1: week off with them playing good basketball. And the Lakers,
Speaker 1: who are playing really good basketball and have a lot
Speaker 1: more talent now they're too far back. They're not going
Speaker 1: to pass Phoenix, right. So it is unfortunate. But we
Speaker 1: know how Kevin Durant is. He always seems to come
Speaker 1: back from these injuries at the top of his game.
Speaker 1: Doesn't have nearly the runway to get back in rhythm
Speaker 1: that we see from some of the other players in
Speaker 1: the league. The dude just like steps on the court
Speaker 1: and is the same bucket that he was when he
Speaker 1: got hurt, right so I'm not overly concerned about it.
Speaker 1: The way I look at it is it limits your
Speaker 1: opportunity to get the three seed, which is not it's
Speaker 1: not entirely out of the equation. Job misses a bunch
Speaker 1: of time, and Devin Booker starts playing like you know,
Speaker 1: the player he did early in the season for the
Speaker 1: last month. They have a chance, but I think more
Speaker 1: than likely this means they're gonna end up with the
Speaker 1: four seed, which is going to make things just a
Speaker 1: little bit tougher for them. All Right, So I've talked
Speaker 1: a lot about the bad for the MAVs in recent weeks,
Speaker 1: and it kind of was on display again last night.
Speaker 1: They lost on the road in New Orleans one thirteen
Speaker 1: to one oh six. Luca and Kyrie both played poorly.
Speaker 1: Luca left the game early with the quad strain, but
Speaker 1: the MRI was clean, so he shouldn't miss more than
Speaker 1: a game or two, so that's some good news. They
Speaker 1: got absolutely obliterated in all the physicality areas of the
Speaker 1: game again. They got outrebounded forty nine to thirty four.
Speaker 1: They lost points in the paint, they lost second chance points,
Speaker 1: they lost transition points, all things that are directly tied
Speaker 1: to your size and athleticism on the court. They got
Speaker 1: lit up by C. J. McCollum, and yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to be clear, within this season, I don't see any
Speaker 1: hope for the Maps. There's there's no way they're gonna
Speaker 1: be able to overcome these physical advantages that they're giving
Speaker 1: up every night. But I do think that they're not
Speaker 1: overly far away within this summer to be able to
Speaker 1: go and target these sorts of things that they need.
Speaker 1: So and I want to use the Lakers as an
Speaker 1: example because with the Lakers, you know, again all the
Speaker 1: focus was on the Russell Westbrook trade and Russ wasn't
Speaker 1: a good fit. And it's not an apples and apples
Speaker 1: thing to apples to apples thing with Kyrie, because Kyrie
Speaker 1: is a much better player than Russell Westbrook. But take
Speaker 1: Russ out of the equation for a second and just
Speaker 1: look at who they lost, you know, losing Kyle Kuzma,
Speaker 1: who was a great rebounder for them and who was
Speaker 1: a solid on ball defender, Andy really good help defender
Speaker 1: for them. He was a very good above average spot
Speaker 1: up player for them. He's given him about one point
Speaker 1: zero five points per spot up possession, just a big
Speaker 1: forward that could do a lot of things. Contavious Cabo Pope,
Speaker 1: one of the best lock and trail defenders in the league,
Speaker 1: one of the best transition guards in the league. He
Speaker 1: was a very very good spot up player for the
Speaker 1: Lakers too. In the ensuing salary crunch, they lost Alex
Speaker 1: Crusoe's top tier guard defender in the league, who has
Speaker 1: the size and strength to switch on to bigger forwards
Speaker 1: and is like a connective piece on the offensive end
Speaker 1: of the four great cutter he shot forty percent the
Speaker 1: last year with the lay from three. They gave up
Speaker 1: all these different things, and then in the process they
Speaker 1: had nothing left. A completely devoid of offensive skill, completely
Speaker 1: devoid of size on the perimeter, and so basically for
Speaker 1: a year and a half when Lebron and even when
Speaker 1: Lebron and ad would play together, they were only about
Speaker 1: a five hundred team. Now, part of that was Lebron
Speaker 1: and Nady were constantly in and out of the lineup,
Speaker 1: so they were never in rhythm, which can disrupt those
Speaker 1: sorts of things. But like still, for the two of
Speaker 1: them to play together and to be five hundred is
Speaker 1: pretty jarring, But it comes back to that thing that
Speaker 1: I talked about on this show all the time. There
Speaker 1: is a list of responsibilities on both ends of the
Speaker 1: floor that you have to fulfill as a basketball team.
Speaker 1: And what happened was is by get sending out all
Speaker 1: those guys when Lebron and Adi were in and out
Speaker 1: of the lineup, they just weren't checking enough boxes and
Speaker 1: so they were a bad basketball team. Again, like basketball
Speaker 1: is a like, it's of all the American sports team sports,
Speaker 1: the major American team sports. The individual impacts winning in
Speaker 1: basketball more than any other sport, that's a fact, but
Speaker 1: it is still a team sport at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, and it does get much harder for even
Speaker 1: the best players in the world to win games when
Speaker 1: they don't have guys that can go out and fulfill
Speaker 1: responsibilities for them. And there are a lot like let's
Speaker 1: zoom in on the MAVs for a minute, Like they
Speaker 1: have all the offensive boxes checked. They have two outstanding
Speaker 1: shot creators, Kyrie Irving excellent pick and roll, excellent isolation,
Speaker 1: can attack switches, can destroy drop coverage. Luca can do
Speaker 1: all those same things. Luca can also attack out of
Speaker 1: the post and create a lot of high quality opportunities there.
Speaker 1: They have, you know, some reasonable movement shooting right, like
Speaker 1: like Tim Hardaway Junior can come off the screen and
Speaker 1: hit a shot. They have a lot of really good
Speaker 1: spot up players. They've got a They've got two pick
Speaker 1: and pop bigs with Maxi Kliba and Christian Wood. They've
Speaker 1: got a lob threat in Dwight Powe. They check a
Speaker 1: lot of box on the offensive end of the floor,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of boxes on the defensive end
Speaker 1: of the floor too. You need guys who can guard
Speaker 1: at the point of attack, dribble drive guards. You need
Speaker 1: guards that can fly over the or that can fight
Speaker 1: over the top of screens and compete and pick and
Speaker 1: roll coverages. You need guards who can lock and trail
Speaker 1: and chase shooters around. You need guard. You need um.
Speaker 1: You need big guys that can fight in box out
Speaker 1: against big physical uh bigs that like to crash the
Speaker 1: offensive glass. You need big wings on the perimeter that
Speaker 1: can crash from the perimeter to win those contested rebound
Speaker 1: battles or to um you know, to to run up
Speaker 1: and down the floor and transition and cover a lot
Speaker 1: of ground. You need those wings to guard the bigger
Speaker 1: forwards in the league that will try to attack you
Speaker 1: in mismatches and things along those lines, and the Mavericks
Speaker 1: are just about devoid of all of those things. They
Speaker 1: don't have rim protection, they don't have wing defenders, they
Speaker 1: don't have athleticism that can crack down from the wings
Speaker 1: and grab contested rebounders. They've got like a pretty versatile
Speaker 1: defensive forward and Naxi Kliba, a center in JaVale McGee
Speaker 1: that they can't seem to find a playtime for. They've
Speaker 1: got a good lock and trail defender and Reggie Bullock.
Speaker 1: You know, Josh Green has shown some flashes of that
Speaker 1: winging defense, but like they're really thin in all of
Speaker 1: those areas. But this is where I want to go positive,
Speaker 1: because what sucked for the Lakers is they were in
Speaker 1: the difficult position where because of the way that Anthony
Speaker 1: Davis and Lebron James liked to play, they needed offensive
Speaker 1: skill off the ball to open up everything for them
Speaker 1: in the paint and to generate those high quality three
Speaker 1: point shots that they could convert at a high rate
Speaker 1: or close out opportunities and things along those lines. They
Speaker 1: needed offensive skill. They tried that the first year with
Speaker 1: guys like Mellow and Malik Monk, right, and what happened
Speaker 1: They couldn't defend. Then this year they went all in
Speaker 1: on defense, but they didn't have any skill and so
Speaker 1: they couldn't score. They could only score and transition. It's
Speaker 1: expensive as all hell to get players that can do both.
Speaker 1: The advantage with how good Kyrie Irving and Luca donche
Speaker 1: Jar offensively is you do not need nearly as much
Speaker 1: offensive skill off of them, because Kyrie's an outstanding pull
Speaker 1: up shooter, because Luke Dontage is an outstanding isolation player,
Speaker 1: shoot shots over the top, and the quality of looks
Speaker 1: that they're going to get off the ball are so
Speaker 1: high that even limited offensive players will be able to
Speaker 1: convert them at a decent rate. Again, it's all relative
Speaker 1: to the shot quality. A stand still three for a
Speaker 1: average shooter is a just as valuable of a shot
Speaker 1: as a contested three is for a great shooter, right,
Speaker 1: And so that's the advantage that they're bought. They can
Speaker 1: afford to do what the Lakers did at the start
Speaker 1: of the season, target veteran minimum contracts players that are
Speaker 1: considered offensively limited, that have struggled fitting offensively. Other in
Speaker 1: other places around the league. Guys like a Troy Brown junior.
Speaker 1: That's a great example. Guys like a Dennis Schroeder, that's
Speaker 1: a great example. You can afford to go after limited
Speaker 1: offensive players that succeed on the defensive end and plug
Speaker 1: them in alongside Luca don Chich and Kyrie Irving, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna be able to fulfill. You're gonna be able
Speaker 1: to steal survive offensively like the offensive drop off, like
Speaker 1: right this year, Kyrie Irving. Since Kyrie started playing basketball
Speaker 1: for the MAVs, which was February eighth, I think the
Speaker 1: MAVs are scoring about one hundred and twenty points per
Speaker 1: one hundred possessions on offense. That's amazing. I think it's
Speaker 1: fourth in the league over that span. That's not going
Speaker 1: to drop off Berry fall far. If you bring in
Speaker 1: some size and athleticism on the perimeter or on the
Speaker 1: wing that have some offensive limitations, it might drop from
Speaker 1: one twenty to one eighteen or whatever. But defensively, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be able to survive to a much greater stent.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be hard, they're gonna have. You know, there's
Speaker 1: the mid level exception. Reggie Bullocks on a team friendly deal,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure if he's the kind of guy
Speaker 1: you want to give up. Again, maybe it's a piece
Speaker 1: for peace type of thing, a team that's looking for
Speaker 1: shooting in a lock and trail guy. Maybe you can
Speaker 1: flip Reggie Bullock for a team that has a plethora
Speaker 1: of size and athleticism on the wing. Hell, like the
Speaker 1: Toronto Raptors. Call the Raptors get one of their wings, right,
Speaker 1: They've got it. At least one tradeable first round pick.
Speaker 1: Tim Hardaway Junior is a good mid size contract that
Speaker 1: they can attach the stuff you've got your mid level exception.
Speaker 1: They have options, and they have a larger scope of
Speaker 1: players that they can consider because of the offensive skill
Speaker 1: that Luca and Kyrie present. So again, I've been super
Speaker 1: negative about the Mavericks. I don't think they can win
Speaker 1: this year. But I do believe that they have a
Speaker 1: very straightforward path this offseason to get it to get
Speaker 1: into a situation where Kyrie's offensive skill and Luca's offensive
Speaker 1: skill can come to the forefront. So I don't think
Speaker 1: it's all lost. I just think it's all lost within
Speaker 1: this season, all right, guys. That is all I have
Speaker 1: for tonight we will be back on I'm recording a
Speaker 1: video on Saturday night that will be uploaded on Sunday morning,
Speaker 1: covering tomorrow night's games and Saturday night's games. As always,
Speaker 1: I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show, and
Speaker 1: I will see you on Sunday morning. The volume