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Speaker 2: All right, well, good hoops and I here at the volume.
Speaker 2: Happy Wednesday, everybody. I hope all of you guys are
Speaker 2: having a great week. Just a quick show for you guys. Today,
Speaker 2: we're gonna be hitting two games from last night's slate
Speaker 2: as the Golden State Warriors without Steph Curry put on
Speaker 2: a defensive masterclass against Giannis Dame in the Milwaukee Bucks.
Speaker 2: We're gonna be breaking that game down. I want to
Speaker 2: talk about some specific concepts in modern NBA defense and
Speaker 2: how it's a little bit more about a team concept
Speaker 2: than people are willing to give these schemes credit for.
Speaker 2: We're gonna be talking about that, and then a little
Speaker 2: bit of my concerns surrounding Milwaukee and the big picture.
Speaker 2: Tail end of the show, we had a showdown between
Speaker 2: a red hot Los Angeles Clippers team and the Cleveland
Speaker 2: Cavaliers and what was a shootout for most of the
Speaker 2: game until the Clippers were able to regain control with
Speaker 2: their defense late. Really fascinating game that taught us a
Speaker 2: bunch about both teams. You guys know the drill before
Speaker 2: we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels
Speaker 2: you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me
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Speaker 2: show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast few wherever you
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Speaker 2: We're releasing content throughout the year. Make sure you guys follow
Speaker 2: us there, and the last but not least, keep dropping
Speaker 2: mailbag questions in the YouTube comments so that we can
Speaker 2: keep getting to them throughout the remainder of the season.
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Warriors dropped
Speaker 2: a game a couple nights ago against the Nuggets at
Speaker 2: home without Jamal Murray and without Nicole Jokic playing for
Speaker 2: the Nuggets, And to be clear, my thoughts coming out
Speaker 2: of that game were, this is March in the NBA.
Speaker 2: You're gonna see this quite a bit in this time
Speaker 2: of year, because it's like a funky phase where half
Speaker 2: the league already knows exactly what they are and are
Speaker 2: in some variation of cruise control where you don't know
Speaker 2: what you're getting any given night because they're either saving
Speaker 2: legs for the playoffs or they're just not feeling that
Speaker 2: level of intensity. And even for the teams that made
Speaker 2: big deals at the trade deadline, the newness is starting
Speaker 2: to fade. It's been over a month and this is
Speaker 2: just kind of like this a lull that you're gonna
Speaker 2: see and you're gonna see some weird results. Denver, in particular,
Speaker 2: it has been a total shit show.
Speaker 1: Like they get.
Speaker 2: Smashed by the Thunder, but then they beat the Thunder,
Speaker 2: then they get smashed by the Wolves, then they nearly
Speaker 2: lose to the Lakers missing four starters. Then they do
Speaker 2: actually lose to the Washington Wizards at home, just to
Speaker 2: go the Golden State without Murray and jokicen beat the
Speaker 2: Warriors who were red hot. It doesn't make any sense
Speaker 2: that team is just bizarre. You're gonna see a lot
Speaker 2: of general or a lot of weird results in general
Speaker 2: this time of year, Like the Pacers without four starters
Speaker 2: just went into Minnesota and beat the Wolves at full strength.
Speaker 2: The Wizards also went into Detroit and beat a Pistons
Speaker 2: team at full strength a few days before they're winning Denver.
Speaker 2: Although it's worth mentioning that the Wizards have some real
Speaker 2: stuff to start getting excited about, with their young talent flashing,
Speaker 2: some real two way potential guys like Galaxar really shooting
Speaker 2: the ball well from three, defending really well, Bilakulabali Kishan,
Speaker 2: George bub Carrington. They've got a bunch of guys that
Speaker 2: are popping for them. But the point is is that's March,
Speaker 2: and so there's a certain amount of weird result that
Speaker 2: you're gonna see in there. And Steve Kerrin formed us
Speaker 2: that Steph really just needs a night off and that
Speaker 2: he's been dealing with some back Sorenice, and so the
Speaker 2: Warriors needed to beat the Bucks last night without Steph Curry.
Speaker 2: And so conventional wisdom would tell you go into that
Speaker 2: game thinking you're gonna win with defense, right, take Steph
Speaker 2: out of the equation. You're gonna put a probably a
Speaker 2: better defender than Steph into that rotation spot. Obviously you
Speaker 2: lose the world on the offensive end of the floor,
Speaker 2: but if you just defend extremely well, you give yourself
Speaker 2: a chance. And that's exactly what the Warriors did. They
Speaker 2: held the Bucks to just ninety two points. They had
Speaker 2: two separate seventeen point quarters that they held them to.
Speaker 2: They responded to two separate Bucks runs with defensive runs.
Speaker 2: There was a late third quarter run where it was
Speaker 2: really the only phase of the game where the Milwaukee
Speaker 2: offense was in like really really cooking. Dame had the
Speaker 2: pick and pop with brook Lopez going and Brooke was
Speaker 2: hitting threes. They had some two man game with Damon
Speaker 2: Giannis where they were passing well out of it. Giannis
Speaker 2: was drawing double teams in the post and passing well
Speaker 2: out of it. He made a nice pass to brook
Speaker 2: Lopez who sealed the low man and got an easy layup.
Speaker 2: They were skipping the ball to Kyle Kuzma, who hit
Speaker 2: three after three, after three. It was just the one
Speaker 2: phase in the game where Milwaukee's offense just looked like
Speaker 2: it was getting easy stuff. And so they go on
Speaker 2: this run and they go up seventy six to seventy
Speaker 2: and then promptly the Warriors put the clamps on them
Speaker 2: and hold them scoreless for three straight minutes, and they
Speaker 2: regain control. And then something similar happened in the fourth quarter.
Speaker 2: The Bucks go on another run, this time Giannis's on
Speaker 2: the bench, Dame is doing a lot of cooking and
Speaker 2: ball screens. They cut the lead down to three, but
Speaker 2: the Warriors hold them completely scoreless over the final four
Speaker 2: minutes of the game as they pull away and win
Speaker 2: by eleven. And so it was their defense that was
Speaker 2: able to completely strangle the Bucks at these stretches that
Speaker 2: allowed them, in the limited offensive production they were getting
Speaker 2: under the circumstances to have enough to win that game.
Speaker 2: I want to start by digging into the concept of
Speaker 2: being in two places at once on defense. This is
Speaker 2: really the superpower that Draymond Green has used to become
Speaker 2: one of the best defenders that the league has seen
Speaker 2: over the last decade. Right, we think of defense too reductively.
Speaker 2: Sometimes a lot of times we'll think of it like
Speaker 2: can I guard my man and can he.
Speaker 1: Guard his man? Do we have five guys that are
Speaker 1: all like.
Speaker 2: Elite defenders that can defend on an island and keep
Speaker 2: defenses out of r rotation and keep their defense out
Speaker 2: of rotation, and so on and so forth, And there's
Speaker 2: a certain amount of that where you do need guys
Speaker 2: that can hold up one on one. Draymond got a
Speaker 2: huge one on one stop against Giannis late in the
Speaker 2: game where he forced him into kind of a drifting,
Speaker 2: floating hook shot that he missed off the rim. But
Speaker 2: most of the best defenses that you'll see in the
Speaker 2: history of the league are centered around a concept that
Speaker 2: involves actually being aggressive on the ball, meaning like putting
Speaker 2: two defenders on the ball or overhelping, putting guys into
Speaker 2: situation to make stars play.
Speaker 1: In a crowd.
Speaker 2: But then those openings disappearing really quickly through excellent rotations
Speaker 2: and setting up the floor in a way where you
Speaker 2: have a plan for whatever it is that you're dealing
Speaker 2: with from the opposing star, and like again, like this
Speaker 2: is think about Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City's best defense in
Speaker 2: the league. They're not just out there letting all their
Speaker 2: guys play one on one on defense. That defense is
Speaker 2: predicated on aggressive coverages, leaving openings that quickly disappear as
Speaker 2: you rotate out of it with your speed. I thought
Speaker 2: the Warriors executed this concept to perfection in this game.
Speaker 2: I thought it all started with Draymond, who did an
Speaker 2: incredible job on Giannis all game, but especially in ball
Speaker 2: screens where he was consistently able to get up to
Speaker 2: the level to defend the ball, but to get back
Speaker 2: in time to handle Yiannis on the roll. We saw
Speaker 2: play early in the game where he got a block
Speaker 2: on Giannis where he was like kind of trailing the
Speaker 2: play a little bit and he jumped and squared up
Speaker 2: in mid air to get a piece of the ball
Speaker 2: on the way down to force some miss. He had
Speaker 2: a huge one late in the game when the ball
Speaker 2: screens were getting pushed a little bit further out towards
Speaker 2: half court. Really good ball pressure from Gary Payton. They
Speaker 2: were pushing the ball screens out further to half court
Speaker 2: and those rotations were more in like the short roll
Speaker 2: area and Draymond Green once again showing up to the level.
Speaker 2: He lets Giannis get past him, but he sprints back
Speaker 2: and by the time Giannis actually caught it, Draymond had
Speaker 2: him squared up again and then he was able to
Speaker 2: play one on one defense and forced Raymond into a
Speaker 2: tough faight away. Quentin Post, who had some issues defensively
Speaker 2: in this game, had a big one late where he
Speaker 2: showed on a ball screen Brooke Lopez slipped out of it.
Speaker 2: He was slipping towards like the top of the key area,
Speaker 2: and Post just sprinted back it, got back in front
Speaker 2: of Brook, kept him out of rotation, forced him into
Speaker 2: a tough fade away jump shot that he missed. So
Speaker 2: again that concept the ability to be on the ball
Speaker 2: to force a star ball handler to get rid of it,
Speaker 2: but then also the ability to recover in rotation to
Speaker 2: where the opening is gone. That is the concept that
Speaker 2: makes an elite defense reach that level. Is their ability
Speaker 2: to make you constantly feel like you're playing in a
Speaker 2: crowd while never actually conceding the openings that lead to
Speaker 2: the wide open shots that'll cook you in this sort
Speaker 2: of situation. And then in those one on ones with Gianni's.
Speaker 2: Draymond is one of the few defenders in the entire
Speaker 2: NBA that has the strength and the quickness to force
Speaker 2: Giannis into actually taking over the top shots. We talked
Speaker 2: about this concept in the Thunder Game. If you remember
Speaker 2: with Isaiah Hartenstein with Yannis, there's a specific amount of
Speaker 2: like you need to have the strength so that when
Speaker 2: Yanna sees those small openings he can't just blow through
Speaker 2: your shoulder, but you also have to have the mobility
Speaker 2: to get to a spot so that Jannis actually has
Speaker 2: to make a move right. Once you have the ability
Speaker 2: to slide your feet and hold that strength on that shoulder,
Speaker 2: you can flatten Drives out with Giannis. Once you start
Speaker 2: flattening drives out with Giannis, it turns into drifting, tougher
Speaker 2: contested layups. It turns into the hooks and the floaters
Speaker 2: that like he can't make, and he's gotten better at them.
Speaker 2: But over the years, even with that improvement, he's still
Speaker 2: getting less than a point per shot. He's still missing
Speaker 2: almost sixty percent of his hooks and his floaters and
Speaker 2: things like that. That big Iso stop ed late big
Speaker 2: possession Janis against Draymond on the left elbow extended area,
Speaker 2: Jannis makes an aggressive move towards the right, Draymond slides
Speaker 2: his his feet, absorbs the contact, flattens out the drive,
Speaker 2: forces him into that tough little hook in the lane
Speaker 2: that he leaves short off the front of the rim.
Speaker 2: And again, like we've talked about how Isaiah Hartenstein held
Speaker 2: Giannis to his worst shooting game of the season, he
Speaker 2: held Gianness to forty seven percent from the field. Well,
Speaker 2: I should say Hartenstein and the thunder held Giannis to
Speaker 2: forty seven percent from the field, which was his worst
Speaker 2: shooting night of the season. Well, Draymond Green and the
Speaker 2: Warriors just held him to thirty one percent from the field,
Speaker 2: sixteen percent lower from the field than he has against
Speaker 2: anybody else in the NBA this season. Just a casual
Speaker 2: reminder that Draymond Green is still very much one of
Speaker 2: the very best defensive players in the NBA. And you
Speaker 2: know the second place that you're going to see that
Speaker 2: be in two places at once. Type of concept come
Speaker 2: into play is with gapping in closing out. I talk
Speaker 2: about this concept a lot, but gapping all it is
Speaker 2: is if you're one pass away, meaning like you're in
Speaker 2: the driving lane, if there's a ball handler and there's
Speaker 2: a defender scored up with him. He's got a driving
Speaker 2: lane to the right, driving lane to the left. If
Speaker 2: you're guarding one of the guys that's one pass away,
Speaker 2: almost every defense is gonna have you gap into the
Speaker 2: lane a little bit so that person's gonna step over
Speaker 2: and exist in the driving lane, so that even if
Speaker 2: he does beat his primary defender off the dribble, he's
Speaker 2: just running into help. But in those situations, it requires
Speaker 2: really sharp closeouts to prevent giving up those wide open
Speaker 2: threes that can that can come from just a simple
Speaker 2: swing pass right. I thought a perfect example of this
Speaker 2: was the late three, the tying three that Gary Trent
Speaker 2: Junior missed again that could have tied the games ninety
Speaker 2: six to ninety three. Was a little over two minutes left.
Speaker 2: Dam and Giannis are trying really hard to run a
Speaker 2: cleared side pick and roll on the right side, and
Speaker 2: it was hilarious because Giannis is having a meltdown because
Speaker 2: Torian prince like would not get out of the corner,
Speaker 2: and he's over there just like waving.
Speaker 1: Like, get out of there, get out of there.
Speaker 2: So Torrian finally clears out of the corner and they're
Speaker 2: set up to run their cleared side ball screen. Why
Speaker 2: I've talked a lot about this. The Bucks I think
Speaker 2: are at their best sometimes with Giannis in his some
Speaker 2: of his limitations as a play maker to keep the
Speaker 2: floor in front of him. And so if you clear
Speaker 2: the side, then when he rolls into that space in
Speaker 2: the short corner, he's got the entire floor in front
Speaker 2: of him and he can just barrel downhill to the
Speaker 2: rim and have really easy passing raids available. That's why
Speaker 2: he's wanting that cleared side. He wants to roll into
Speaker 2: space right. So the Warriors decide to defend it by icing.
Speaker 2: What that means is Gary Payton the second is going
Speaker 2: to completely close off the drive towards the middle and
Speaker 2: force Dame towards the sideline where Draymond is going to
Speaker 2: be sitting, and basically a deep drop coverage kind of
Speaker 2: right around the elbow extended, so that if Dame drives,
Speaker 2: he's basically driving into a bracket. He drives into a
Speaker 2: bracket where Janis and Gary Payton are there, kind of
Speaker 2: trapping him on both sides, and then Jannis has to
Speaker 2: roll not towards the cleared side. Yannis would have to
Speaker 2: roll towards the middle, which is where all the traffic is.
Speaker 2: That's why teams try to ice those side ball screens, right,
Speaker 2: So Jannis flips the screening angle and tries to screen
Speaker 2: Gary Payton so that Dame can at least get towards
Speaker 2: the sideline with a little bit more of an advantage.
Speaker 2: So Draymond identifies it immediately and goes, oh, Yiannis flips
Speaker 2: the screen. I don't want Dame just gets screaming downhill.
Speaker 2: So Draymond rushes up to the level like he's gonna
Speaker 2: blitz Dame coming off the ball screen. This causes Dame
Speaker 2: to panic, and Dame dribbles back out to half court,
Speaker 2: but Gary Payton loses contain on him, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, Dame comes screaming downhill from the top of
Speaker 2: from out by half court. As he comes screaming downhill, though,
Speaker 2: where's the next defender in the chain. It's Brandon Pajemski,
Speaker 2: who's gapping off of Gary Trent right there at the
Speaker 2: top of the key to help contain on the Dame drive.
Speaker 2: So Dame obviously sees the read and goes, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: swing it over to Gary Payton or excuse me to
Speaker 2: Gary Trent Junior on the left wing right. But if
Speaker 2: you watch Pods, Pods identifies it in real time and
Speaker 2: he sees Dame picking up his dribble to make that
Speaker 2: swing pass, starts his rotation early and ends up getting
Speaker 2: a great contest on Gary Trent's three. That three would
Speaker 2: have tied the game, but because of the great contest
Speaker 2: from Pojemski, he rushes it. You can see Gary Trent
Speaker 2: rush the shot and he leaves it way short and
Speaker 2: ends up grazing the side of the rim.
Speaker 1: It had no chance of going in.
Speaker 2: And again that entire play got blown up because you
Speaker 2: had an ice coverage that caused the Bucks to do
Speaker 2: something they didn't want to do. So then when Giannis
Speaker 2: flipped his screening angle, Draymond threw a blitz which forced
Speaker 2: Dame to audible into dribbling the other way. But even
Speaker 2: when Gary Payton lost control, there was another defender there
Speaker 2: in the gap to make it feel like he was
Speaker 2: playing in a crowd, make it feel like there's an opening,
Speaker 2: but there's actually not an opening. Pods is on top
Speaker 2: of it. He gets a great close out and so
Speaker 2: essentially there's no paint touch there's no compromising of the
Speaker 2: interior of the defense. There's nothing at the rim. It's
Speaker 2: a smothered catch and shoot three that gets rushed and
Speaker 2: badly missed by Gary Trent And again like the Bucks
Speaker 2: shot extreemly well on open threes. On unguarded catch and
Speaker 2: shoot threes, they were seven for nine, but they only
Speaker 2: generated nine of them. When Golden State got a good
Speaker 2: contest on a catch and shoot Milwaukee jumper, they were
Speaker 2: just five for seventeen on those catch and shoots. The
Speaker 2: contested catch and shoots again like that, those gapp being
Speaker 2: closeouts are one of the big ways that Golden State
Speaker 2: can make those perceived openings disappear in a heartbeat. Again,
Speaker 2: it was just a defensive masterclass from the Warriors. On offense,
Speaker 2: it was just about timely contributions. Like when Milwaukee took
Speaker 2: their six point lead in the late third, Jimmy started
Speaker 2: going to work and did some nice grift work to
Speaker 2: get to the line a few times. I thought he
Speaker 2: was brilliant. Over the last like fifteen minutes or so.
Speaker 2: On offense, he just kept getting to the line. He
Speaker 2: hit a few pull up jump shots, including a four
Speaker 2: point play like an and three point shot on the
Speaker 2: left wing. He made some nice driving kick plays, like
Speaker 2: a really nice bounce past the Quinton post in the
Speaker 2: right corner. Where as he was driving along the baseline,
Speaker 2: the defender was there in the passing lane, and so
Speaker 2: he had to change his pass angle to like bounce
Speaker 2: right next to the defender so that it can sneak
Speaker 2: through to Quinton post. The Bucks were also doing a
Speaker 2: lot of aggressive helping late in the game off of
Speaker 2: Gary Payton and Brandon Pajemski. They put Lopez on Gary
Speaker 2: Payton and just sitting him under the basket. Gary Payton
Speaker 2: had a really nice relocation to the top of the
Speaker 2: key where Jimmy just shoveled it to him and Gary
Speaker 2: Payton knocked down the three. Gary Payon keeps sitting in
Speaker 2: these uncontested threes and it's been part of the way
Speaker 2: that he's maintained his value on offense. And then late
Speaker 2: in the game they ended up in rotation in a
Speaker 2: ball screen at Pajemski ended up rotating up to the
Speaker 2: right wing. Jimmy sprays it out the pods and he
Speaker 2: ends up hitting the big uncontested three. But Jimmy just
Speaker 2: kept making smart plays as that primary handler in those situations,
Speaker 2: and credits to those guys they knocked down the shots.
Speaker 2: I thought Buddy healed the two transition pull up threes
Speaker 2: he hit after Milwaukee took that six point lead. I
Speaker 2: thought both of those were huge shots. He had won
Speaker 2: on the right wing, one on the left wing. Those
Speaker 2: were just really important shots in the flow of the game.
Speaker 2: A really impressive bounce back win for the Warriors after
Speaker 2: the disappointment of that loss to Denver, and then on
Speaker 2: the Milwaukee front again. Yiannis's three worst shooting games of
Speaker 2: the season have all taken place in the last week.
Speaker 2: You know, the Lakers one is whatever. The Lakers have
Speaker 2: been one of the best defenses in the league for
Speaker 2: the last several months, but they were down a bunch
Speaker 2: of guys and they were just doubling him constantly. And
Speaker 2: the Bucks did burn the Lakers by just skipping the
Speaker 2: ball across the court and hitting threes. But the Thunder,
Speaker 2: the Warriors, and the Lakers are three of the best
Speaker 2: defenses in the NBA, and Giannis has really struggled to
Speaker 2: get easy stuff at the rim against them again, Thunder
Speaker 2: and Warriors being his two worst shooting literally. The Lakers
Speaker 2: Thunders and Warriors games. All three of those are his
Speaker 2: three worst shooting games of the season. I just hope
Speaker 2: he's not dealing with any sort of like nagging lower
Speaker 2: body injury because I would really like to see Yannis
Speaker 2: healthy in the playoffs again after what happened the last
Speaker 2: couple of years, and it just seems like he's trending
Speaker 2: downward right now, and I just hope everything's all right
Speaker 2: with him physically. The concerning thing for me with Milwaukee
Speaker 2: is they just haven't been able to put things together
Speaker 2: on offense, which is concerning because they that was a
Speaker 2: strength of Theirs for most of the season last year.
Speaker 2: And again like with their defense, even though it's performed
Speaker 2: well statistically, they have a tendency to break down relatively easily.
Speaker 2: Despite those defensive rating numbers. You look at the numbers
Speaker 2: and it's like their tenth and defensive rating on the season.
Speaker 2: They've been the best clutch defense in the NBA this year. Statistically,
Speaker 2: it all looks great, but time and time again, in
Speaker 2: these spots, especially against the best teams in the league,
Speaker 2: it's the same issue. It's Brook Lopez in space, like
Speaker 2: he's either sitting at the rim and leaving a shooter open,
Speaker 2: or he's going out on the perimeter and guys are
Speaker 2: running right around him. Every time they end up in rotation.
Speaker 2: You see these sequences like the Pajemski three late in
Speaker 2: the game. Watch Dame and Gary Trent on that play.
Speaker 2: They just look lost in rotation on the backside, and
Speaker 2: it's like, when you really get down to it, it's
Speaker 2: like their best lineup is probably what you saw there
Speaker 2: right like with Gary Trent and with Kyle Kuzma, and
Speaker 2: it's like, when you have that group out there, there's
Speaker 2: just too many players on the floor that are prone
Speaker 2: to defense's mistakes. That's separate from any sort of big picture,
Speaker 2: large sample sized metric they might put together. Make their
Speaker 2: defense a little rickety when they need to get stops
Speaker 2: in these situations, and it's hard to overcome that unless
Speaker 2: you're a world beater on offense. And the Bucks just
Speaker 2: haven't been that good on that end of the floor
Speaker 2: this year. They look to me like a team that's
Speaker 2: like destined for a disappointing finish at this point.
Speaker 1: Pile Let's move on to Cavs Clippers.
Speaker 2: So the Clippers big test for them last night, an
Speaker 2: opportunity to legitimize some of their recent success. The Clippers
Speaker 2: had won six out of seven, including a three game
Speaker 2: winning streak against Detroit, New York and Sacramento, playing some
Speaker 2: really good ball. They're top five in both offense and
Speaker 2: defense in that span. Why Leonard has started to look stronger.
Speaker 2: They're just coming together, right. But the Caves present a
Speaker 2: real challenge, particularly on the offensive end, because they can
Speaker 2: just be so difficult to keep up with. And the
Speaker 2: Cavs made it abundantly clear right out the gates of
Speaker 2: this game that they were going to make it very
Speaker 2: difficult to keep up with them. They came out in
Speaker 2: lace three straight threes. Max Strew hit two in a row,
Speaker 2: Darius Garland Lace is at three ouf the dribble. They
Speaker 2: hit forty five points in the first quarter, so pretty
Speaker 2: quickly the game took on the feel of a shootout.
Speaker 2: I talk a lot about the concept of winning games
Speaker 2: in different ways. Why, because in the playoffs you got
Speaker 2: to beat four different teams in a seven game series,
Speaker 2: usually for very different types of opponents, and one round
Speaker 2: you might face like a big, physical defense that drags
Speaker 2: you down into the mud. Everybody's legs are tired. Jumpers
Speaker 2: stop falling and it turns into like winning a rock fight, right,
Speaker 2: But then in the next round, you might fight fight
Speaker 2: against a thinner, faster team that plays really fast and
Speaker 2: scores a lot of points, and it becomes more about
Speaker 2: your offensive firepower and your ability to keep up with
Speaker 2: your perimeter speed. Even just stars can present different challenges. Oh,
Speaker 2: this team has you know, nikolea jokicch sor if you
Speaker 2: get Zubas right, a big, strong center that we have
Speaker 2: to match up. Or maybe it's a super quick guard
Speaker 2: like Darius Garland, Like how are we going to keep
Speaker 2: Darius Garland from getting out of his spots? Every team
Speaker 2: presents different types of challenges. That's why it's so important
Speaker 2: to be able to win different types of wins. I
Speaker 2: thought this particular game was a test of the Clippers
Speaker 2: offensive firepower. Cleveland is the best offense in the league,
Speaker 2: and while the Clippers did have some success against their
Speaker 2: offense late in the game by getting some stops, for
Speaker 2: two and a half quarters, the Cavs were just red hot.
Speaker 2: They were in the zone. Sometimes that's just how it is.
Speaker 2: It's not like Chris Dunn and Kawhi Leonard weren't guarding
Speaker 2: at the start of the game, it's just good offense
Speaker 2: beats good defense every time. So sometimes you're kind of
Speaker 2: just hanging on for dear life, and you just have
Speaker 2: to find a way to score at a similar pace,
Speaker 2: just to weather the storm until they cool start missing shots,
Speaker 2: or until your defense settles in and you start making
Speaker 2: them uncomfortable. That's what I mean when I say the
Speaker 2: game took on a feel of a shootout, like the
Speaker 2: Clippers were just trying to keep up for the first
Speaker 2: two and a half quarters of that game. Now, in
Speaker 2: order for you to be able to consistently score against
Speaker 2: a good defense, and again we've talked a lot about
Speaker 2: the Cavs offense. They're seventh in defense. It's not an
Speaker 2: exceptional defensive team, but they're a very good defensive team.
Speaker 2: And if you're going to generate consistent offense against a
Speaker 2: top ten defense like that, you need to have a
Speaker 2: bunch of different guys that can generate quality shots from
Speaker 2: a bunch of different types of actions or sequences. And
Speaker 2: the Clippers proved that they were more than capable last night.
Speaker 2: Kawhi looked absolutely amazing. It's crazy because like a few
Speaker 2: weeks ago, he just didn't look good physically, it looked
Speaker 2: like he wasn't getting lyft. It looks like his base
Speaker 2: was getting disrupted by basically every team that he ran into.
Speaker 2: Last night, the Clippers play by play guy set on
Speaker 2: the broadcast quote, this is the Kawhi Leonard we know
Speaker 2: and remember, and this is the Kawhi Leonard we need,
Speaker 2: And he was absolutely right. I had thirty three, seven
Speaker 2: and four with for steals. He was twelve for nineteen
Speaker 2: from the field, five for six from three several specific
Speaker 2: types of plays that I thought were great signs of
Speaker 2: the improving strength of his base, and again that's always
Speaker 2: been where Kawhi beats people. He's got such a strong
Speaker 2: base that he's dislodging you from your base, and he's
Speaker 2: getting such great lift that he can knock down consistently,
Speaker 2: pull up jump shots from everywhere on the floor and
Speaker 2: get to the room. He's just that pure three level
Speaker 2: score that.
Speaker 1: You can't keep.
Speaker 2: From his spots, you can see the base strength coming
Speaker 2: together with some of these types of plays. He had
Speaker 2: a tap in offensive rebound putback on a shot that
Speaker 2: he missed where he beat everyone else back up off
Speaker 2: the floor on his second jump. That's always a sign
Speaker 2: of athletic dominance when you can win on the second jump,
Speaker 2: that was a big sign. He hit a right shoulder
Speaker 2: fade over Dean Wade big shot late in the game.
Speaker 2: Dean Wade defends him super well, gets a great contest.
Speaker 2: Kawhi has to fade dramatically over his right shoulder, but
Speaker 2: he just gets excellent lift and if you watch the shot,
Speaker 2: he gets such great lift that even though he's drifting
Speaker 2: away from the basket, his body is perfectly still imbalanced
Speaker 2: while he's rising up and knocking down that shot. He
Speaker 2: had another right shoulder fade over Evan Mobley late. It
Speaker 2: was a different kind of fade. It was like a
Speaker 2: quick spinning fade out of a drive and like, once again,
Speaker 2: look at his balance, and that's a great sign because
Speaker 2: those quick spins, those quick moves, those are the hardest
Speaker 2: moves to stop your body and get balance as you're
Speaker 2: coming up off the ground.
Speaker 1: All night long, he just looked like Kawhi.
Speaker 2: We know that at his best he has this like
Speaker 2: scissor dribble combination that he'll go to for pull up
Speaker 2: threes where he'll just pound the ball between his legs
Speaker 2: and just go straight up into a three out of it.
Speaker 2: He does it out of a couple different footworks and
Speaker 2: a couple of different dribble combinations, but it's basically it's
Speaker 2: like a live dribble jab step where he'll like use
Speaker 2: that between the legs dribble to essentially jab and get
Speaker 2: the defender to take a step back so that he
Speaker 2: can just rise up and knock it down. He was
Speaker 2: hitting that all night long. He just looked great. James
Speaker 2: Harden was really smart with his attacks all night. He
Speaker 2: was using guard screens to get favorable matchups before getting
Speaker 2: into ball screens, and then he was attacking those guards
Speaker 2: in ISO as well.
Speaker 1: He didn't shoot the ball super well, but he.
Speaker 2: Got to the line eleven times, so he finished with
Speaker 2: twenty two points and nine assists with zero turnovers. That's
Speaker 2: a pretty damn good James Harden game. But it wasn't
Speaker 2: just those two guys BOGGEDA mcgdonovitch had one of his
Speaker 2: best games as a Clipper, some nice secondary shot creation
Speaker 2: with the bench group. He also closed the game with
Speaker 2: James Harden and Kawhi and did some really nice connective playmaking.
Speaker 2: He was being guarded by Garland, so Kawhi was trying
Speaker 2: to attack Garland by bringing Bogdanovitch into the action as
Speaker 2: a screener. At first, they try to hedge and recover,
Speaker 2: which is the most common coverage that you'll see teams
Speaker 2: use when you've got a small quick guard that a
Speaker 2: team's trying to attack. Because quickness is the ability to
Speaker 2: rotate right, he can throw a hedge and he can
Speaker 2: get out of there as quick as possible. Garland hedges, Bogdanovich, slips,
Speaker 2: throws the pass to him. He makes a nice read
Speaker 2: out to James Harden in the corner. James Harden gets
Speaker 2: a close out, drives the close out and makes the floater.
Speaker 2: That is that like excellent breaking down, that incremental breaking
Speaker 2: down of the defense. Right, Kawhi draws two Magdonovich extends
Speaker 2: the advantage with a nice kickout read. Harden gets a
Speaker 2: close out that he scores against with a driving floater.
Speaker 2: Getting three high level offensive players in those sequences makes
Speaker 2: some more resilient against better defense. Right then, after the
Speaker 2: hedge didn't work, they just straight up blitz Kawhi with
Speaker 2: Darius Carlin floated out to Bogdanovic. He beats Donovan Mitchell,
Speaker 2: who rotates to the top. He gets into the lane
Speaker 2: and hits that tough floater that he knocked down in
Speaker 2: the lane. He was eight for eight in this game
Speaker 2: for twenty points. That's how you're going to keep up
Speaker 2: in a shootout, all of those offensive initiation points that
Speaker 2: you have, all those connective playmaking pieces, all the play
Speaker 2: finishing coming together right, And then there was Zubas. Zubach
Speaker 2: has been snikky kicking the shit out of some of
Speaker 2: the best centers in the league all year. I saw
Speaker 2: tweet last night that he's hung twenty and twenty on
Speaker 2: a bunch of the All Star centers, and that's not
Speaker 2: exactly true, but it's close enough to true. He had
Speaker 2: twenty one and twenty two against Wemby, he had twenty
Speaker 2: and nineteen against Jaron Jackson, he had twenty one and
Speaker 2: nineteen against Anthony Davis, twenty three and eighteen against Straymond,
Speaker 2: and then last night he puts up twenty eight and
Speaker 2: twenty against Jared Allen. And it was just as bad
Speaker 2: for Jared as it looked on the box score. Zubats
Speaker 2: whooped his ass straight up, scored on him in the
Speaker 2: post a bunch of times, one on one, just absolutely
Speaker 2: butchered him on the offensive glass shot goes up. He
Speaker 2: was just leaning on him and just shoving him out
Speaker 2: of his spot, getting whatever he wanted. He had eight
Speaker 2: offensive rebounds in the game. There's huge play late Cleveland
Speaker 2: cuts the lead to seven and gets two stops in
Speaker 2: a row against the Clippers offense. But on both plays
Speaker 2: Zubas just wrecking balls into the lane and taps the
Speaker 2: ball out and they keep the ball alive two times
Speaker 2: in a row. He was hitting shots in the roll
Speaker 2: off of Harden, he was ducking in on cuts. He
Speaker 2: was just an absolute monster. He kicked Jared Allen's ass.
Speaker 2: There's no way around it. So the question is why
Speaker 2: does Zubac keep kicking ass against some of the best
Speaker 2: bigs in basketball. It's an interesting part of the way
Speaker 2: the modern game has changed at the center position. As
Speaker 2: things have changed with pace and the way teams run
Speaker 2: up and down the floor and attack in ball screens
Speaker 2: with rim runners in vertical spacers, we've seen a massive
Speaker 2: increase in these like thinner rim running types of bigs.
Speaker 2: Jared Allen and Mobiley are great examples. Victor Women, Yama,
Speaker 2: Chet Holmgren, Anthony Davis kind of fits this.
Speaker 1: Mole. Rudy go Bear Derek Lively.
Speaker 2: That type of guy has become way more common in
Speaker 2: the league as the league has become faster, more of
Speaker 2: a transition game, more of a pick and roll, rolling
Speaker 2: hard to the rim. You need vertical spacing type of league.
Speaker 2: Back in the day, there were two or three huge,
Speaker 2: bruising centers on every team. Now half the teams in
Speaker 2: the league don't even have a guy like that. I
Speaker 2: actually think it plays a role in how dominated a
Speaker 2: guy like NICOLEA. Jokic is in this era. And by
Speaker 2: the way, I don't mean that as a shot at Jokic.
Speaker 2: It actually reminds me a lot of the dynamic with
Speaker 2: Michael Jordan in the nineties. Back then, teams were so
Speaker 2: loaded up on size and strength that overwhelming quickness was
Speaker 2: a game breaker in a lot of ways that Michael
Speaker 2: Jordan took advantage of. These days, the league is so
Speaker 2: loaded up on quickness that size and strength can be
Speaker 2: a game breaker, and that is how guys like Zubach
Speaker 2: and Jokic to a much greater extent, have had a
Speaker 2: lot of success. If you're really really big and strong,
Speaker 2: and you have the footwork to actually use that physical
Speaker 2: leverage and the touch in the IQ to make teams
Speaker 2: pay by winning ground battles. You're gonna win a lot
Speaker 2: of battles in this league. It's a matchup problem for
Speaker 2: a lot of these teams. Zubach is just too big
Speaker 2: and strong for these guys. I had Frank Friscilla, who
Speaker 2: was doing the color commentary last night, he was saying
Speaker 2: after the game that, uh, early in the game, on
Speaker 2: Zoo's first post up, he's like, he literally said, he's
Speaker 2: just too much for him. He can't hold his ground.
Speaker 2: And it really was that simple. So you get great
Speaker 2: offensive games from Kawhi, Zoo, and Bgdonovic. You get a
Speaker 2: good game from Harden, even Norman Powell in his limited minutes.
Speaker 2: I mean he played eighteen minutes and dropped eleven points
Speaker 2: in a thirty six minute game. That's twenty two points.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a high offensive output for a limited role.
Speaker 2: That allowed them to keep up with that red hot
Speaker 2: scoring effort from the Caves. But they're in the late
Speaker 2: third quarter, their defense finally started to settle in. I
Speaker 2: thought Derek Jones Junior was instrumental in this stretch. Had
Speaker 2: some great reps on both Garland and Mitchell Kawhi. I
Speaker 2: thought was great all night on Donovan Mitchell. The Clippers
Speaker 2: really started to force some more difficult shot angles from
Speaker 2: the guards that forced some misses. That was what triggered
Speaker 2: their run when they started to pull away. We talked
Speaker 2: a lot about their offense earlier, but the Clippers held
Speaker 2: the Calves to just nineteen points over the final fifteen
Speaker 2: minutes and change of this game. It was just a
Speaker 2: really impressive win for the Clippers. And here's the thing.
Speaker 2: We can't completely right off this upside that they're showing.
Speaker 2: This team build always had this capability of putting everything together,
Speaker 2: and suddenly Kawhi gets his leg strength and just stays healthy,
Speaker 2: and like, what if Kawhi just stays healthy to mid June, Well,
Speaker 2: then they're absolutely a threat. It's just going to be
Speaker 2: really difficult to shake the pessimism that surrounds Kawhi and
Speaker 2: his health. This time last year, he was kicking ass
Speaker 2: two and so were the Clippers. March twenty ninth of
Speaker 2: last season in Orlando, Kawhi drops twenty nine to eleven
Speaker 2: and five with four steals and two blocks. Goes twelve
Speaker 2: for twenty one from the field and three for six
Speaker 2: from three looks incredible. He played one more game that
Speaker 2: season and we didn't see him again. So it is
Speaker 2: what it is. There's a version of this story where
Speaker 2: Kawhi holds up and the Clippers are a real threat,
Speaker 2: but that question mark is just always.
Speaker 1: Going to be there with it.
Speaker 2: On the Cleveland front, I had a bunch of Cavs
Speaker 2: fans pissed off at us the other day for talking
Speaker 2: about some of their struggles with Sizing and s Orlando.
Speaker 2: Most of it was people just getting hung up on
Speaker 2: a title. But I want to be clear, like I
Speaker 2: wasn't saying the Calves as a team got exposed and
Speaker 2: that they're fraudulent or anything like that. I just think
Speaker 2: that there's value in looking at why a team is
Speaker 2: struggling because it helps us learn about them. It's so
Speaker 2: rare for a team like Boston last year or Denver
Speaker 2: the year before to kind of run through the playoffs
Speaker 2: without facing much in the way of adversity. The vast
Speaker 2: majority of the time, you're gonna find yourself trailing in
Speaker 2: a playoff series, even if you win the title. That's
Speaker 2: what happened to the twenty twenty two Warriors. That's what
Speaker 2: happened to the twenty twenty one Bucks. That's what happened
Speaker 2: to the twenty twenty Lakers, That's what happened to the
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen Raptors. Even the twenty eighteen Warriors trailed in
Speaker 2: a playoff series, the twenty sixteen Calves trailed, the twenty
Speaker 2: fifteen Warriors trailed. Like usually, adversity is a part of
Speaker 2: the grind all the way through to the finish line.
Speaker 2: There's no perfect basketball team in the NBA that just
Speaker 2: beats the shit out of anybody and everybody. And so
Speaker 2: with that being the case, again, that does happen occasionally.
Speaker 2: It's rare though, and again like even with a team
Speaker 2: like Boston, like part of it was that caught some
Speaker 2: favorable matchups along the way. There's a version of that
Speaker 2: where they win the title, but it looks tougher if
Speaker 2: they have to face Denver in Milwaukee.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, like it's one of those things where when we're
Speaker 2: talking about these flaws with these teams, it's just about
Speaker 2: learning so that we can try to figure out what
Speaker 2: makes them struggle so we can at least identify that
Speaker 2: sort of thing when it pops up down the line.
Speaker 2: Once again, last night, they struggled with size, Zubos kicked
Speaker 2: Allen's ass, but similar to the Orlando game, I was
Speaker 2: talking about how their perimeter size caused issues for the
Speaker 2: Cavs guards, the length of Kawhi, the length of Derek
Speaker 2: Jones Junior, the overall size of the Clippers on the floor, Darius, Garland,
Speaker 2: Don and Mitchell went just eleven for thirty two. Kawhi
Speaker 2: on the offensive end, show to relatively easy willingness to
Speaker 2: target Cleveland's perimeter players and get pretty easy over the
Speaker 2: top shots. They chewed Cleveland up and spit them out
Speaker 2: on the glass. It's just worth keeping an eye on
Speaker 2: when we see Cleveland struggle in the playoffs. This is
Speaker 2: probably what it will look like. Bigger physical teams, especially
Speaker 2: on the perimeter, making life tough for them, making them
Speaker 2: feel like they're playing in a crowd, and leading to
Speaker 2: some inefficiency from their guards. All right, guys, that's all
Speaker 2: I have for today is always as sincerely appreciate you
Speaker 2: guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We are
Speaker 2: back tonight after the final buzzer of Nuggets Lakers. We
Speaker 2: have our course correction segment that we're also doing there.
Speaker 2: Plan on hitting at least another team or two in
Speaker 2: that show as well, So make sure you guys come out,
Speaker 2: come hang out later tonight live on YouTube.
Speaker 1: I'll see you guys.
Speaker 2: Then VO what's up guys. As always, I appreciate you
Speaker 2: for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight. They would actually
Speaker 2: be really helpful for us if you guys would take
Speaker 2: a second and leave a rating and a review. As always,
Speaker 2: I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could
Speaker 2: take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.