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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Best of Hoops Tonight, featuring my top
Speaker 1: takes from recent shows. All right, let's talk some basketball.
Speaker 1: So the Warriors dropped a game a couple of nights
Speaker 1: ago against the Nuggets at home without Jamal Murray and
Speaker 1: without Nicole Jokich playing for the Nuggets. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: my thoughts coming out of that game were, or this
Speaker 1: is march in the NBA. You're gonna see this quite
Speaker 1: a bit in this time of year, because it's like
Speaker 1: a funky phase where half the league already knows exactly
Speaker 1: what they are and are in some variation of cruise
Speaker 1: control where you don't know what you're getting any given
Speaker 1: night because they're either saving legs for the playoffs or
Speaker 1: they're just not feeling that level of intensity. And even
Speaker 1: for the teams that made big deals at the trade deadline,
Speaker 1: the newness is starting to fade. It's been over a
Speaker 1: month and this is just kind of like this a
Speaker 1: lull that you're gonna see, and you're gonna see some
Speaker 1: weird results. Denver, in particular, it has been a total
Speaker 1: shit show. Like they get smashed by the Thunder, but
Speaker 1: then they beat the Thunder, then they get smashed by
Speaker 1: the Wolves, then they nearly lose to the Lakers missing
Speaker 1: four starters. Then they do actually lose to the Washington
Speaker 1: Wizards at home, just to go into Golden State without
Speaker 1: Murray and jokicen beat the Warriors who were red hot.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make any sense. That team is just bizarre.
Speaker 1: You're gonna see a lot of general or a lot
Speaker 1: of weird results in general this time of year, like
Speaker 1: the Pacers without four starters just went into Minnesota and
Speaker 1: beat the Wolves at full strength. The Wizards also went
Speaker 1: into Detroit and beat a Pistons team at full strength
Speaker 1: a few days before they're winning Denver. Although it's worth
Speaker 1: mentioning that the Wizards have some real stuff to start
Speaker 1: getting excited about, with their young talent flashing some real
Speaker 1: two way potential, guys like Galaxar really shooting the ball
Speaker 1: well from three, defending really well, Bilakula Bali Kishan, George
Speaker 1: bub Carrington. They've got a bunch of guys that are
Speaker 1: popping for them. But the point is is that it's March,
Speaker 1: and so there's a certain amount of weird result that
Speaker 1: you're going to see in there. And Steve Kerrin formed
Speaker 1: us that Steph really just needs a night off and
Speaker 1: that he's been dealing with some back sorenice, and so
Speaker 1: the Warriors needed to beat the Bucks last night without
Speaker 1: Steph Curry. And so conventional wisdom would tell you you
Speaker 1: go into that game thinking you're gonna win with defense, right,
Speaker 1: take Steph out of the equation. You're gonna put a
Speaker 1: probably a better defender than Steph into that rotation spot. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you lose the world on the offensive end of the floor.
Speaker 1: But if you just defend extremely well, you give yourself
Speaker 1: a chance. And that's exactly what the Warriors did. They
Speaker 1: held the Bucks to just ninety two points. They had
Speaker 1: two separate seventeen point quarters that they held them to.
Speaker 1: They responded to two separate Bucks runs with defensive runs.
Speaker 1: There was a late third quarter run where it was
Speaker 1: really the only phase of the game where the Milwaukee
Speaker 1: offense was in like really really cooking. Dame had the
Speaker 1: pick and pop with brook Lopez going and Brooke was
Speaker 1: hitting threes. They had some two man game with Damon
Speaker 1: Giannis where they were passing well out of it. Giannis
Speaker 1: was drawing double teams in the post and passing well
Speaker 1: out of it. He made a nice pass to brook Lopez,
Speaker 1: who sealed the low man and got an easy layup.
Speaker 1: They were skipping the ball to Kyle Kuzma, who hit
Speaker 1: three after three, after three. It was just the one
Speaker 1: phase in the game where Milwaukee's offense just looked like
Speaker 1: it was getting easy stuff. And so they go on
Speaker 1: this run and they go up seventy six to seventy
Speaker 1: and then promptly the Warriors put the clamps on him
Speaker 1: and hold them scoreless for three straight minutes, and they
Speaker 1: regained control. And then something similar happened in the fourth quarter.
Speaker 1: The Bucks go on another run, this time Giannis's on
Speaker 1: the bench, Dame is doing a lot of cooking and
Speaker 1: ball screens. They cut the lead down to three, but
Speaker 1: the Warriors hold them completely scoreless over the final four
Speaker 1: minutes of the game as they pull away and win
Speaker 1: by eleven. And so it was their defense that was
Speaker 1: able to completely strangle the Bucks at these stretches that
Speaker 1: allowed them in the limited offensive production they were getting
Speaker 1: under the circumstances to have enough to win that game.
Speaker 1: I want to start by digging into the concept of
Speaker 1: being in two places at once on defense. This is
Speaker 1: really the superpower that Draymond Green has used to become
Speaker 1: one of the best defenders that the league has seen
Speaker 1: over the last decade. Right, we think of defense two reductively.
Speaker 1: Sometimes a lot of times we'll think of it like
Speaker 1: can I guard my man and can he guard his man?
Speaker 1: Do we have five guys that are all like elite
Speaker 1: defenders that can defend on an island and keep defenses
Speaker 1: out of rotation and keep their defense out of rotation,
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth, and there's a certain
Speaker 1: amount of that where you do need guys that can
Speaker 1: hold up one on one. Draymond got a huge one
Speaker 1: on one stopping against Gianness late in the game where
Speaker 1: he forced him into kind of a drifting, floating hook
Speaker 1: shot that he missed off the rim. But most of
Speaker 1: the best defenses that you'll see in the history of
Speaker 1: the league are centered around a concept that involves actually
Speaker 1: being aggressive on the ball, meaning like putting two defenders
Speaker 1: on the ball or overhelping, putting guys into situation to
Speaker 1: make stars play in a crowd, but then those openings
Speaker 1: disappearing really quickly through excellent rotations and setting up the
Speaker 1: floor in a way where you have a plan for
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you're dealing with from the opposing star.
Speaker 1: And like again, like this is think about Oklahoma City.
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City's best defense in the league. They're not just
Speaker 1: out there letting all their guys play one on one
Speaker 1: on defense. That defense is predicated on aggressive coverages leaving
Speaker 1: openings that quickly disappear as you rotate out of it
Speaker 1: with your speed. I thought the Warriors executed this concept
Speaker 1: to perfection in this game. I thought it all started
Speaker 1: with Draymond, who did an incredible job on Yanis all game,
Speaker 1: but especially in ball screens, where he was consistently able
Speaker 1: to get up to the level to defend the ball,
Speaker 1: but to get back in time to handle Giannis on
Speaker 1: the roll. We saw play early in the game where
Speaker 1: he got a block on Giannis where he was like
Speaker 1: kind of trailing the play a little bit and he
Speaker 1: jumped and squared up in mid air to get a
Speaker 1: piece of the ball on the way down to force
Speaker 1: some miss. He had a huge one late in the
Speaker 1: game when the ball screens were getting pushed a little
Speaker 1: bit further out towards half court. Really good ball pressure
Speaker 1: from Gary Payton. They were pushing the ball screens out
Speaker 1: further to half court and those rotations were more in
Speaker 1: like the short roll area and Draymond Green once again
Speaker 1: showing up to the level. He lets Giannis get past him,
Speaker 1: but he sprints back and by the time Giannis actually
Speaker 1: caught it, Draymond had him squared up again and then
Speaker 1: he was able to play one on one defense and
Speaker 1: force Draymond into a tough fight away. Quentin Post, who
Speaker 1: had some issues defensively in this game, had a big
Speaker 1: one late where he showed on a ball screen Broke
Speaker 1: Lopez slipped out of it. He was slipping towards like
Speaker 1: the top of the key area and Post just sprinted
Speaker 1: back it, got back in front of Brook kept him
Speaker 1: out of rotation, forced him into a tough fade away
Speaker 1: jump shot that he missed. So again that concept the
Speaker 1: ability to be on the ball to force a star
Speaker 1: ball handler to get rid of it, but then also
Speaker 1: the ability to recover in rotation to where the opening
Speaker 1: is gone. That is the concept that makes an elite
Speaker 1: defense reach that level. Is their ability to make you
Speaker 1: constantly feel like you're playing in a crowd while never
Speaker 1: actually conceding the openings that lead to the wide open
Speaker 1: shots that'll cook you in this sort of situation. And
Speaker 1: then in those one on ones with Yannis, Draymond is
Speaker 1: one of the few defenders in the entire NBA that
Speaker 1: has the strength and the quickness to force Jiannis into
Speaker 1: actually taking over the top shots. We talked about this
Speaker 1: concept in the Thunder Game. If you remember with Isaiah
Speaker 1: Hartenstein with Jannis, there's a specific amount of like you
Speaker 1: need to have the strength so that when Yanna sees
Speaker 1: the small openings, he can't just blow through your shoulder.
Speaker 1: But you also have to have the mobility to get
Speaker 1: to a spot so that Jannis actually has to make
Speaker 1: a move right. Once you have the ability to slide
Speaker 1: your feet and hold that strength on that shoulder, you
Speaker 1: can flatten drives out with Giannis. Once you start flattening
Speaker 1: drives out with Giannis, it turns into drifting, tougher contested layups.
Speaker 1: It turns into the hooks and the floaters that like
Speaker 1: he can't make, and he's gotten better at them. But
Speaker 1: over the years, even with that improvement, he's still getting
Speaker 1: less than a point per shot. He's still missing almost
Speaker 1: sixty percent of his hooks and his floaters and things
Speaker 1: like that. That big iso stop ed late big possession.
Speaker 1: Janis against Draymond on the left elbow extended area. Jannis
Speaker 1: makes an aggressive move towards the right. Draymond slides his feet,
Speaker 1: absorbs the contact, flattens out the drive, forces him into
Speaker 1: that tough little hook in the lane that he leaves
Speaker 1: short off the front of the rim. And again, like
Speaker 1: we've talked about how Isaiah Hartenstein held Jannis to his
Speaker 1: worst shooting game of the season, he held jannest to
Speaker 1: forty seven percent from the field. Well, I should say
Speaker 1: Hartenstein and the Thunder held Yannis to forty seven percent
Speaker 1: from the field, which was his worst shooting night of
Speaker 1: the season. Well, Draymond Green and the Warriors just held
Speaker 1: him to thirty one percent from the field, sixteen percent
Speaker 1: lower from the field than he has against anybody else
Speaker 1: in the NBA this season. Just a casual reminder that
Speaker 1: Draymond Green is still very much one of the very
Speaker 1: best defensive players in the NBA. The Suns are not
Speaker 1: a good matchup for the Lakers in a bunch of
Speaker 1: different ways. They The big fundamental thing that makes it
Speaker 1: really difficult for the Suns to guard this version of
Speaker 1: this Lakers team is they don't feel comfortable switching with
Speaker 1: their fives with their centers. That puts you in a
Speaker 1: really tough spot dealing with Luka Doncic in pick and roll.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this a while. JJ Reddick has mentioned
Speaker 1: it in the postgame presser, like running drop coverage against
Speaker 1: Luka Doncic is death. And I look at that as like,
Speaker 1: you know, drop coverage can mean a lot of different things,
Speaker 1: but basically all that means is anytime you're chasing Luca
Speaker 1: over the top of the screen and the big man
Speaker 1: is waiting on the other side, either up at the
Speaker 1: level and what they call a high drop or further
Speaker 1: back and what they call a deep drop. That sort
Speaker 1: of coverage makes for these really easy reads for Luca
Speaker 1: that he's been immediately great at in a Lakers jersey.
Speaker 1: What's been interesting is like they've struggled a little bit
Speaker 1: against switching for a lot of different reasons. Luca wasn't
Speaker 1: in shape for a lot of those tough switching teams
Speaker 1: that they faced earlier in that stretch, and as a team,
Speaker 1: they haven't shot the three ball well in large part
Speaker 1: because they're playing super super hard on the defensive end
Speaker 1: of the floor and adjusting to the new types of
Speaker 1: three point looks that they're getting as part of the
Speaker 1: Luka Doncic offense. And so their offense, even in the wins,
Speaker 1: has sputtered at times against teams that can switch with
Speaker 1: their five man. But again with this Phoenix Suns team
Speaker 1: with Nick Richards, with Mason Plumley, they're just not doing
Speaker 1: a lot of switching with the five men, and so
Speaker 1: that just allows Luca to play read and react basketball
Speaker 1: with baked, durable penetration. And we've got over this a
Speaker 1: million times, but it's a simple set of reeds. If
Speaker 1: the lowman and the screen defender stay back, Luca gets
Speaker 1: to just work his way into the lane until he
Speaker 1: can take a little floater off the glass. If the
Speaker 1: big steps up, it creates a simple read behind it
Speaker 1: with the lowman. If the lowman steps over and tags
Speaker 1: the roller, he's skipping it to the weak side. If
Speaker 1: he doesn't tag the roller, then he can hit the
Speaker 1: hit Jackson Hayes runnerneath the basket. That was the big
Speaker 1: thing that Phoenix kept messing up in this game. They
Speaker 1: were running a good mix of high and low drop
Speaker 1: and a lot of high drop early in the game,
Speaker 1: and they weren't tagging Jackson Hayes. And part of this is,
Speaker 1: like I've been talking a lot about how the Suns
Speaker 1: lately look to me like a team that is basically
Speaker 1: quit trying to be the best basketball team they can be,
Speaker 1: in large part because they know that their best isn't
Speaker 1: good enough to beat the best teams in the league.
Speaker 1: And so there were a lot of weak side possessions
Speaker 1: with Bradley Beale, Devin Booker, and KD all three of
Speaker 1: them where they just didn't bother to tag Jackson Hayes,
Speaker 1: or some really sloppy tags. I saw both Devin Booker
Speaker 1: and Bradley Beal have tags where they just kind of
Speaker 1: like ran up to Jackson. So what you're supposed to
Speaker 1: do on a tag if they come up to the
Speaker 1: level of the screen and Jackson Hayes is rolling hard
Speaker 1: to the rim, your jobs, the low man is to
Speaker 1: literally get between the rollman and the rim and hit
Speaker 1: him so that he can't throw the lob up to
Speaker 1: the basket. He has to post and usually some teams
Speaker 1: will counter that by posting there or by skipping the
Speaker 1: ball to the weak side. Right, You've got to literally
Speaker 1: put your body on the line as a small against
Speaker 1: a rolling big. It's a hard job, and the Sons
Speaker 1: just weren't really interested in doing it last night, and
Speaker 1: so you'd see them kind of like run over to
Speaker 1: Jackson and like put their hands on him, but they're
Speaker 1: not really doing anything to make him feel uncomfortable, and
Speaker 1: he's just catching and finishing. Here's an easy little stat
Speaker 1: to demonstrate that for you. He had nineteen points. Jackson
Speaker 1: Hayes nineteen points in this game, seventeen of which were
Speaker 1: on cuts and rolls. He has had nineteen points twice
Speaker 1: so far with Luca. He had nineteen points one time
Speaker 1: total in the entirety of the rest of his Lakers
Speaker 1: ten years. And that goes to show you the benefit
Speaker 1: of Jackson Hayes in the system. I have been talking
Speaker 1: a lot about this concept lately, but the idea of
Speaker 1: your value as a basketball player is kind of unique
Speaker 1: to the system that you're in, Right Like, there are
Speaker 1: guys that are deeply valuable in a certain system that
Speaker 1: would be less valuable in another system. Whether it's like
Speaker 1: Aaron Gordon in Orlando as like a swing forward star
Speaker 1: type of player looks really underqualified for that job, but
Speaker 1: you put him in Denver where he can operate on
Speaker 1: the back line because their center kind of inverts their spacing,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, he becomes immensely valuable in that
Speaker 1: type of role. Right Like, everybody's value is unique to
Speaker 1: their individual system, and Jackson Hayes, specifically, when Luka Doncic
Speaker 1: is on the Lakers, is immensely valuable because Luca is
Speaker 1: one of the best passers in the league at making
Speaker 1: team pay by hitting a vertical spacer. And I mean
Speaker 1: there were a lot of issues that have gone wrong
Speaker 1: for the Lakers in the four game losing streak, most
Speaker 1: of which have come down to injuries. I mean, you're down,
Speaker 1: You're you're starting front court. Literally, if you're down Lebron,
Speaker 1: Ruey and Jackson, it's such a difficult thing to overcome.
Speaker 1: But it's funny to say Jackson Hayes is so valuable
Speaker 1: because it felt so different in previous iterations of the Lakers,
Speaker 1: But on this version of the Lakers, Jackson Hayes is
Speaker 1: incredibly valuable to this offense because he is the guy
Speaker 1: that allows them to function in four out one in spacing.
Speaker 1: I've talked a lot about this concept when you're when
Speaker 1: you're running a lot of motion, ball flowing side to side,
Speaker 1: everyone's involved in the action. It's like a five out
Speaker 1: spacing concept. Right. You got ball handlers on the wings,
Speaker 1: guys in the corner, and then a big man at
Speaker 1: the top of the key whos functioning is like this,
Speaker 1: passing folkrum, screening folkrum out at the top of the key.
Speaker 1: This Lakers team is very much going back to the
Speaker 1: old version of their offense, way back when they were
Speaker 1: the West Conference Finals team in twenty twenty three where
Speaker 1: it's like we're spreading the floor running pick and roll
Speaker 1: like it's a lot of that sort of thing. And
Speaker 1: in those situations you don't want five out spacing because
Speaker 1: in five out spacing, when the gaps on the perimeter
Speaker 1: shrink to get pretty small and it gets harder to
Speaker 1: drive as defenders are able to gap into driving lanes
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And so the way you prefer
Speaker 1: to set up your spacing when you're more of a
Speaker 1: matchup attacking, spread, pick and roll type of team is
Speaker 1: four out one in spacing, and once your shooters in
Speaker 1: the corner, you got a shooter on the wing, and
Speaker 1: you're basically occupying either the dunker spot with a dunker
Speaker 1: or a screen and roll threat where the roller is
Speaker 1: occupying that spot when he rolls to the basket. And
Speaker 1: so guys like Jemison, guys like Jared Vanderbuilt, even Christian
Speaker 1: KloCo he botched two lobs last night in the first half,
Speaker 1: where it's just the easy dunks that he's struggling to
Speaker 1: make because he's got a little bit of an issue
Speaker 1: catching and finishing. Sometimes you can see just how incredibly
Speaker 1: valuable Jackson Hayes is to the Lakers as a vertical
Speaker 1: spacer in this verse of the team. They did a
Speaker 1: lot of damage on that Sun's back line in this game,
Speaker 1: and after in the early third quarter, they generated yet
Speaker 1: another easy lob dunk for Jackson Hayes, kind of like
Speaker 1: a behind the back lob, a ridiculous pass from Luca,
Speaker 1: and from that point forward, the Sun's basically just decided
Speaker 1: to blitz him and double team him all over the floor,
Speaker 1: and so the Lakers were able to play with an
Speaker 1: advantage and they were able to stiff arm the Suns.
Speaker 1: The rest of the way. The Suns fought back. They've
Speaker 1: been resilient. This has been a consistent theme for the
Speaker 1: Suns in the last month, is like they'll get off
Speaker 1: to an ugly start and then rather than get humiliated,
Speaker 1: they'll like suddenly start competing really hard towards the end
Speaker 1: of the game. And it's the U Lakers fans are
Speaker 1: familiar with this concept from last year. It's the fake
Speaker 1: comeback concept, right, because that Laker team used to have
Speaker 1: a very similar personality last year. But KD had seventeen
Speaker 1: points in the second half and they kind of battled
Speaker 1: a little bit, but they never got any closer than
Speaker 1: eight the rest of the way, How do you perceive
Speaker 1: Steph Curry's two finals that he won eight that he
Speaker 1: won with Kevin Durant on the roster. Seems to me
Speaker 1: the larger NBA fan base and analysts write them off
Speaker 1: because Steph didn't win finals MVP, although he played at
Speaker 1: an extremely high level. How did they factor into his legacy?
Speaker 1: In your view, this is a super complex and loaded question.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody cares necessarily that he didn't win
Speaker 1: finals MVP. I've seen like some lowbrow stuff, like just
Speaker 1: like trolls kind of focusing on that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I do think that there's some reality to the basic
Speaker 1: fact that every NBA championship has a different level of
Speaker 1: resonance with people. This goes like, let's just go back
Speaker 1: through through recent NBA history, Like there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of people that are profoundly moved by the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four Celtics, who have five players who catch over thirty
Speaker 1: million dollars a year on the open market, beating the
Speaker 1: and the injury ravage Pacers and the injury ravaged Calves
Speaker 1: along the way to winning a title against a good
Speaker 1: Western Conference team, but a team, a Western Conference team
Speaker 1: that nobody thought was the best Western Conference team last year.
Speaker 1: Like that title still a title. They're not gonna get
Speaker 1: a lot of casual fans that are like, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 1: this is the most impressive thing anyone's ever done. Same
Speaker 1: sort of thing goes with the Denver Nuggets. If you
Speaker 1: look through like they were considered one of the better
Speaker 1: teams in the league, but they faced a lot of
Speaker 1: like semi limited teams along the way, and then they
Speaker 1: didn't have to face the team out of the Eastern
Speaker 1: Conference that everybody feared, which was the Boston Celtics or
Speaker 1: the Milwaukee Bucks. And so it has a certain amount
Speaker 1: of like just a little bit of a weird kind
Speaker 1: of like public perception of that title twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: when Steph Curry beat that Celtics team and that team
Speaker 1: didn't have a secondary star, Like, of all of the
Speaker 1: championships Steph won, that is by far the most resident
Speaker 1: That is the championship that when you look back, like,
Speaker 1: that's the one that's unassailable. That's the one that even
Speaker 1: the people that don't like Steph that much are like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, that was crazy, Like down two to one
Speaker 1: on the road in Boston, hitting all those crazy, insane
Speaker 1: shots he did to drop a forty piece to win
Speaker 1: the title, Like that was crazy, right, Like even I
Speaker 1: could say the same thing in reverse about Lebron, Like
Speaker 1: Lebron's twenty twenty title when he won with Anthony Davis,
Speaker 1: that title is the least resonant of the four that
Speaker 1: Lebron won. If you go back to twenty sixteen, that
Speaker 1: was Lebron's title. That was similar to the Steph one
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three, where it's like that's unassailable, you
Speaker 1: can't shit on that. That is the accomplishment, that is
Speaker 1: the defining moment of Lebron's career. That twenty twenty title
Speaker 1: is still championship. It still counts in the leisure but
Speaker 1: it's not the one that's going to resonate for the
Speaker 1: length of time that we talked about Lebron James the
Speaker 1: way that twenty sixteen title does, or the twenty thirteen
Speaker 1: when they're down three to two in the finals and
Speaker 1: they have to go to seven games in the Eastern
Speaker 1: Conference Finals and the NBA Finals, those resonate differently with Steph.
Speaker 1: As you look back to the twenty seventeen finals here's
Speaker 1: the simplest way that I could put it to you, guys.
Speaker 1: In twenty seventeen, before the season, and in twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: before the season, the Warriors were so favored over the
Speaker 1: field that before the season started, so in early October,
Speaker 1: the sports books had them as a negative odds favorite
Speaker 1: to win the title, meaning if you bet a dollar
Speaker 1: in October for the Warriors to win the title, you
Speaker 1: were gonna win less than a dollar. That is how
Speaker 1: clearly more talented that team was than anyone else in
Speaker 1: the league. Doesn't mean they're not champions, doesn't mean those
Speaker 1: titles don't count, but yeah, like think about what think
Speaker 1: about a bet you've placed recently on DraftKings where you
Speaker 1: receive negative odds, and like, think about how you expected
Speaker 1: that team to win, or you expected that player to
Speaker 1: hit those points, rebounds, assists, score a touchdown, whatever it was,
Speaker 1: you expected it with the negative odds. That's how everyone
Speaker 1: felt about those Warriors teams before we even started playing basketball.
Speaker 1: So at a certain point, I do think it's worth
Speaker 1: at least acknowledging that those titles carry a different level
Speaker 1: of weight in the court of public opinion, But it
Speaker 1: doesn't change the fact that at the time, I still
Speaker 1: believed Steph was one of the greatest players in NBA history,
Speaker 1: who was more than good enough to be the best
Speaker 1: player in a championship team, thus a champion and should
Speaker 1: be respected as such. So on and so forth for KD.
Speaker 1: Like to me, I didn't need to see KD go
Speaker 1: to the Warriors in twenty seventeen to know that he
Speaker 1: could be a champion. He was playing with Russell Westbrook,
Speaker 1: who was like, you know, like a kind of a
Speaker 1: hectic basketball player that made a lot of big mistakes
Speaker 1: in big spots, and his team didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of offensive talent around him, was very big, bruising type team.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to say that, you know, KD doesn't
Speaker 1: share some blame for the failures of the Thunder beforehand.
Speaker 1: But I knew in twenty fourteen that KD was good
Speaker 1: enough to be a champion and thus a championship level player.
Speaker 1: He just hadn't done it yet, And so like, that's
Speaker 1: the thing. It shouldn't take us seeing Steph in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four or twenty twenty two winning a title against
Speaker 1: long odds for us to acknowledge that he's a champion.
Speaker 1: It shouldn't take Lebron winning a title in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: against long odds for us to acknowledge that he's a champion,
Speaker 1: type of that type of all time great. But it's
Speaker 1: just kind of unfortunately the way that it works in
Speaker 1: the court of public opinion. To put it simply, just
Speaker 1: like anytime you watch anybody do everything or anything, the
Speaker 1: degree of difficulty matters and how impressed you are. I
Speaker 1: watched John Mayer once at the Sphere play an entire
Speaker 1: two shows missing his index finger on his fretting hand,
Speaker 1: and that was far more impressive than anything I've ever
Speaker 1: seen him do because of the degree of difflty it is.
Speaker 1: It is just a natural part of the way that
Speaker 1: we process information. So yeah, like to me, they were
Speaker 1: champions championships to me, they you know, kind of add
Speaker 1: to the story of Steph Curry's career. But like when
Speaker 1: someone asks me to explain to them, tell me about
Speaker 1: Steph Curry twenty years from now, Tell me about Steph Curry,
Speaker 1: tell me about why he was as good as he was,
Speaker 1: tell me about his greatest accomplishments. I'm probably not going
Speaker 1: to talk a ton about twenty seventeen in twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: because there there was very little in the way of
Speaker 1: adversity in those seasons. Like I've said this before on
Speaker 1: the record, everyone says, oh, if Chris Paul didn't get hurt,
Speaker 1: they might have lost in twenty eighteen. I don't feel
Speaker 1: that way. I think that the Warriors and must win
Speaker 1: games in Game six and Game seven would have got
Speaker 1: it done. I think that lineup that Steph kd Klay
Speaker 1: Thompson at the peak of his powers, Draymond Green, best
Speaker 1: defensive player in the league, Andre Gudala is still good
Speaker 1: and mobile at that point. That was the best five
Speaker 1: man lineup that has ever been constructed on a normal
Speaker 1: basketball team, not counting like All Star teams or Team USA.
Speaker 1: And so that certainly is going to play a role
Speaker 1: in their ability to win a championship. Next question, why
Speaker 1: can't the Mavericks just stop? It's embarrassing talking about the
Speaker 1: Patrick Dumont interview that was released the other day. So
Speaker 1: the Patrick Dumont interview, you guys saw that when he
Speaker 1: gave that long spiel. There's a bunch of really problematic
Speaker 1: stuff in that interview. There's one where he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have you running the MAVs as like a family operation.
Speaker 1: It's something I do with my wife and kids. Immediately,
Speaker 1: I'm like, boom, you're setting yourself up for failure because
Speaker 1: it's like like that, I've seen this. This happens a
Speaker 1: lot more in the NBA than you think. This is
Speaker 1: why it's so ridiculous that everyone's hyper critical of Lebron
Speaker 1: forgetting his kid a end of the bench spot on
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Lakers. Is like, there are many franchises
Speaker 1: around the league that are rampant with nepotism, like rampant
Speaker 1: with it. There are front offices that I won't get
Speaker 1: into it, but there are multiple front offices where it's
Speaker 1: like a known commodity around the league that they let
Speaker 1: incompetent people make decisions because they're related to the owners.
Speaker 1: Like it is a problem around the entire league. But
Speaker 1: when I saw that from Patrick Demona, I was like, dude, like,
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to say the quiet part out loud,
Speaker 1: Like I let my wife and kids and my mother
Speaker 1: in law make these big picture decisions about our basketball team.
Speaker 1: That's just foolishness. Let basketball experts who have dedicated their
Speaker 1: life to understanding the game of basketball make your basketball decisions.
Speaker 1: If you're not interested in doing that, you're not a
Speaker 1: serious team. The second piece of it was that long
Speaker 1: drawn out expression of why they traded Luca. And there
Speaker 1: wasn't a ton of substance offered in there, but one
Speaker 1: of the big things that he kept harping on was
Speaker 1: the idea that they weren't close. You know, we felt
Speaker 1: like we weren't close in the finals, and then we
Speaker 1: get into the regular season and all these other teams
Speaker 1: are better and blah blah, blah blah. And the part
Speaker 1: that bothered me about that is, you guys, remember how
Speaker 1: I was talking about the Mavericks in the early part
Speaker 1: of the season. I viewed them as the most talented
Speaker 1: roster in the Western Conference overall when Luca was healthy,
Speaker 1: Like when I looked at that roster as a roster
Speaker 1: that can cause some serious problems. When Luca was healthy,
Speaker 1: they were competitive all year without Luca. And so it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where like any take he had,
Speaker 1: as it pertains to oh, the rest of the league
Speaker 1: got better. You added Klay Thompson, you added Naji Marshall,
Speaker 1: you brought in a bunch of ball handling, You addressed
Speaker 1: some specific problems that you had last year. PJ. Washington
Speaker 1: was shooting better on above the break threes after being
Speaker 1: terrible on him last year in the postseason, like a
Speaker 1: lot of specific things were tilting towards this is gonna
Speaker 1: work when Luca comes back, and so like, here's the thing,
Speaker 1: there is no case for trading Luca the way they did.
Speaker 1: So what these people need to do is get the
Speaker 1: hell out of the media and just go. If you
Speaker 1: have some ulterior motive, whether it's moving the team to
Speaker 1: a different city or maybe you just hate Luca as
Speaker 1: a personal beef, whatever the issue is, stop talking about it.
Speaker 1: Because when you talk about it, you guys just sound
Speaker 1: like imbeciles, every single one of you. There's no good take.
Speaker 1: There's no rationale that holds up for shipping off a
Speaker 1: twenty five year old prospect who's already one of the
Speaker 1: greatest players in the history of the league in that
Speaker 1: span of his career and who continued to trend forward.
Speaker 1: It was completely acidine. There's no way around it. And honestly,
Speaker 1: I just feel really bad for MAVs fans, and I'm
Speaker 1: with you, guys, why can't the Mavericks just stop? I
Speaker 1: agree they need to just stop. What's done is done.
Speaker 1: Stop the media tour. You don't sound savvy explaining to
Speaker 1: everybody how you run your team and why you got
Speaker 1: rid of Luca. You look like an imbecile the volume so, guys,
Speaker 1: as always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting
Speaker 1: OOPS tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us
Speaker 1: if you guys would take a second and leave a
Speaker 1: rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys
Speaker 1: supporting us, but if you could take a minute to
Speaker 1: do that, I'd really appreciate it.