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Speaker 1: welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by Fan Duel Here at
Speaker 1: the volume. I'm Jason timp Happy Friday. Everybody, congrats making
Speaker 1: it through the week. I hope you guys got big
Speaker 1: plans for the weekend. What an incredible start to the
Speaker 1: NBA Finals. Very clearly the two best teams in the
Speaker 1: league that we are watching play, and both teams who
Speaker 1: have had a massive talent advantage over most of the
Speaker 1: teams they've played up to this point, definitely look like
Speaker 1: much more of a match for each other, which is
Speaker 1: going to lead to what I hope is a long
Speaker 1: and interesting series that goes back and forth, which I
Speaker 1: expected to, which we'll get to here in a minute.
Speaker 1: Last night, obviously, I went on with Mr Colin Cowherd
Speaker 1: and we went for about a half hour. If you
Speaker 1: guys missed that or you haven't had a chance to
Speaker 1: check it out yet, go to the Volumes YouTube page.
Speaker 1: You can find it there, or you can find it
Speaker 1: on Collins podcast feed. But this morning I had the
Speaker 1: time to go back and rewatch the game and its
Speaker 1: entirety and really sift through on a possession by possession basis,
Speaker 1: especially that fourth quarter run in the way that Boston
Speaker 1: took command in resounding fashion to steal game one of
Speaker 1: this series. We're gonna get into a bunch of nitty
Speaker 1: gritty details from this game in today's show before we
Speaker 1: get started. Follow the Volumes YouTube channel so that you
Speaker 1: don't miss any more of our content. Follow me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Underscore Jason lt S, you guys can see
Speaker 1: all the video content that I released. You can see
Speaker 1: some visual representations of the concepts that I talked about
Speaker 1: on the show. And last but not least, if you
Speaker 1: happen to miss this show or miss any of our
Speaker 1: shows that are on YouTube, you can always find them
Speaker 1: on our podcast feed at Lakers tonight. Typically about an
Speaker 1: hour after things released on YouTube, you can find them
Speaker 1: on that front. But I wanted to start with kind
Speaker 1: of like a macro topic here, that kind of frames
Speaker 1: I think what amounts to the biggest mismatched manage that
Speaker 1: Boston has in this series. For those of you guys
Speaker 1: who have listened to me a lot over the course
Speaker 1: of the last couple of years, you'll recognize this concept immediately.
Speaker 1: I do think size is one of the most important
Speaker 1: things in the NBA, just not on the interior. Coaches
Speaker 1: and a lot of you know, older fashioned basketball minds
Speaker 1: are obsessed with interior size and rim protection. Everyone thinks
Speaker 1: that the layup is the highest percentage shot in basketball,
Speaker 1: which it is, and the idea there is, oh, if
Speaker 1: I can take away the paint, then everything else will
Speaker 1: work out fine for you. Ask Milwaukee. How that worked out.
Speaker 1: They defended the paint better than just about anybody in
Speaker 1: the league this year, and they just couldn't get enough stops,
Speaker 1: not only throughout the entire regular season, but in the
Speaker 1: playoffs when it mattered. Because more often than not, it
Speaker 1: has a lot more to do with perimeter size players
Speaker 1: that have the ability to be big in every facet
Speaker 1: of the game, not just standing around the basket. That
Speaker 1: means being big in transition, running the floor, being big,
Speaker 1: closing out on players in rotation, being big at the
Speaker 1: point of attack as a slasher, getting advantage against smaller players.
Speaker 1: This Boston team is huge, and they're big when they
Speaker 1: go big, with Al Horford at the four and Rob
Speaker 1: Williams at the five, but that's not the kind of
Speaker 1: size where they're having their biggest impact on Golden State.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk a little bit more about the Rob
Speaker 1: Williams thing with Boston later because I actually think they
Speaker 1: need to play him a lot less. But it's perimeter
Speaker 1: size for Boston that gives them their best physical advantage
Speaker 1: in this series. Big offensive players that are strong and
Speaker 1: have a quick first step are incredibly difficult to guard,
Speaker 1: even for good defensive players who are small. This happened
Speaker 1: to Boston in each of the last two series against
Speaker 1: Miami and against Milwaukee. They have two guys in their
Speaker 1: rotation that are kind of small and not overly strong,
Speaker 1: Derrick White and Peyton Pritchard. They're gonna be a massive
Speaker 1: part of this series because Golden State doesn't really have
Speaker 1: a big, rim, pressuring wing that can punish them. But
Speaker 1: against Jimmy Butler and against Janice, both Derrick White and
Speaker 1: Peyton Pritchard put email Uduka in a little bit of
Speaker 1: a conundrum. Can I play these guys because if I do,
Speaker 1: They're just gonna attack them in mismatches. To the point
Speaker 1: where Boston was doing the same stuff that Golden State's
Speaker 1: doing with Steph to try to avoid his switches. Boston
Speaker 1: was doing the same stuff with Derrick White and Peyton Pritchard,
Speaker 1: hard hedges to try to keep them from getting attacked
Speaker 1: by the bigger, strong wings Golden State. And we talked
Speaker 1: about this a lot, and when I did that video
Speaker 1: talking about the drama between Katie and and Draymond on
Speaker 1: Twitter the other day. But you know, Colin talks a
Speaker 1: lot on his show about how Golden State is a
Speaker 1: team without weaknesses. And he's right too. Relative to the
Speaker 1: rest of the league, they do everything well, but they
Speaker 1: do have one specific hole. Compared to other teams around
Speaker 1: the league, Golden State does not have a Jimmy Butler
Speaker 1: or a Janice or a Tatum or a Brown or
Speaker 1: a Lebron or a Kauai. You guys get the drift,
Speaker 1: a big slashing forward that can consistently and efficiently punish
Speaker 1: smaller players in rock fight playoff games. And they still
Speaker 1: have been a dominant basketball team without that, which is
Speaker 1: a credit to everybody in the organization and the credit
Speaker 1: to Steph Curry and his greatness. But there's the reason
Speaker 1: why when Kevin Durant joined the Warriors, they became unbeatable,
Speaker 1: and it's because he became that guy for them. Not
Speaker 1: in the you know, you know, bullyball sense, but he
Speaker 1: could persistently and efficiently attack mismatches on the perimeter. Boston
Speaker 1: doesn't have the issue anymore playing Peyton Pritchard or playing
Speaker 1: Derek White because Golden State doesn't have the ability to
Speaker 1: attack those matchups. Even Jordan Poole was struggling to score
Speaker 1: against Peyton Pritchard in switches last night because guess what
Speaker 1: Hayton Pritchard does compete on defense. Derek White does compete
Speaker 1: on defense. It is not a a effort or a
Speaker 1: focus thing. It's simply a physical tools thing. They're just
Speaker 1: small and Golden State not having that type of player
Speaker 1: is an issue. Now, let's flip it the other way. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum and their
Speaker 1: ability to persistently gain advantages against the Steph Curries and
Speaker 1: the Jordan Pools, and even a little bit of Clay
Speaker 1: Thompson and even a little bit of auto Porter Jr.
Speaker 1: When I was watching the tape last night or this
Speaker 1: morning from last night, anytime Jalen Brown or Jayson Tatum
Speaker 1: got Steph, Clay auto Porter Jr. Or Jordan Pool on
Speaker 1: a switch, their eyes lit up because they knew that
Speaker 1: just a simple rip through just taking the ball and
Speaker 1: just being aggressive to the rim, they'd be able to
Speaker 1: get dribble penetration as a result of them punishing that
Speaker 1: perimeter size mismatch. Again, not an interior size mismatch, I'd
Speaker 1: argue Kevin and and he kind of dominated the interior
Speaker 1: size elements of the game last night didn't matter because
Speaker 1: perimeter size. It ends up being the biggest mismatch problem
Speaker 1: for teams in the playoffs, and Golden State is a
Speaker 1: much much smaller perimeter team than Boston. As a result,
Speaker 1: Boston got persistent dribble penetration, which got their driving kick
Speaker 1: game going, which led to them having better shot quality,
Speaker 1: which led to them winning at the end of the game.
Speaker 1: This leads to the Golden State defensive conundrum that they're
Speaker 1: put in because, as everyone knows, the story of the
Speaker 1: game after the game was shooting. Boston made more than
Speaker 1: half of their threes. You got uh you had uh
Speaker 1: Al Horford, Derek White, and Marcus Smart combined to go
Speaker 1: fifteen for twenty three from three. And you heard Raymond go,
Speaker 1: those guys win from three, will be fine. And he
Speaker 1: is right in the sense that they're not gonna shoot
Speaker 1: that well throughout the whole series. They might have another
Speaker 1: game or two, or they get hot, right, but it's
Speaker 1: unrealistic to expect players to go that efficient from the perimeter,
Speaker 1: even when you're wide open. But it's important to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that they were wide open shots. Eleven of the fifteen
Speaker 1: made threes from Horford, White, and Smart were classified as
Speaker 1: wide open by NBA dot Com is tracking data, meaning
Speaker 1: the defender was at least six ft away on wide
Speaker 1: open shots in this playoff run. The Celtics as a
Speaker 1: team are shooting. So yeah, you're not gonna they're not
Speaker 1: gonna shoot on wide open threes, but they're gonna shoot
Speaker 1: in the aggregate. You know, they're gonna have some bad nights,
Speaker 1: but they're that. That's kind of how it manifests for
Speaker 1: this Boston team. They have games where it looks like this,
Speaker 1: and then they have games where they can't shoot. And
Speaker 1: if if you're gonna go by this strategy, if they
Speaker 1: happen to have four of those games, they're gonna win
Speaker 1: the series. That's just the way it works. So the
Speaker 1: conundrum is, you know, because this is the difference. And
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about Boston's defense here in a minute,
Speaker 1: because I mentioned in last night with Colin the threes
Speaker 1: that Golden State is giving up are by design the
Speaker 1: threes that Boston gave up last night to Golden State.
Speaker 1: They were there. There were plays where Golden State really
Speaker 1: got going in rotation and were able to generate high
Speaker 1: quality shots the same way Boston did. I don't want
Speaker 1: to undercut those but there were a lot of threes
Speaker 1: that Golden State got last night where it was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: Steph dribbled the ball up the floor in transition in
Speaker 1: the first quarter and nobody picks him up and he
Speaker 1: just walks into a pull up three. There were threes
Speaker 1: where it was like, Oh, Kevin Louney offensive rebound, baseball
Speaker 1: pitch to Steph, wide open, easy three that can be
Speaker 1: cleaned up by fixing your offensive rebound problem. There were
Speaker 1: a bunch of threes. This was my biggest takeaway early
Speaker 1: in the game, where Boston in their drawp coverage with
Speaker 1: both Horford and Rob Williams were way too low and
Speaker 1: guys like Clay Thompson and Jordan Poole and Steph were
Speaker 1: coming off of ball screens wide open. There's an easy
Speaker 1: fix there for Boston. You can come up higher to
Speaker 1: the level of the screen like they did in the
Speaker 1: fourth quarter, which we're talking about in a minute. Guards
Speaker 1: can do a better job fighting over the top. There's
Speaker 1: some execution things there that they can do to clean
Speaker 1: up those like guys. There's a reason why Steph had
Speaker 1: twenty one points in the first quarter. It was because
Speaker 1: they had a ton of defensive breakdowns. That's different than
Speaker 1: the conundrum that Golden State is in, because the conundrum
Speaker 1: that Golden State is in is you have to send
Speaker 1: help to manage these Jalen Brown and Jayson Tatum drives
Speaker 1: that they're persistently getting against your smaller perimeter players. So
Speaker 1: if you want to take away those, like all those
Speaker 1: wide open threes that Al Horford and Derek White and
Speaker 1: Marcus Smart we're making, then you were going to have
Speaker 1: to take guys that were in help and push them
Speaker 1: a step further out so that they're more equipped to
Speaker 1: close out. If you do that, then you run the
Speaker 1: risk of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum getting going as
Speaker 1: slashers to the rim. And that's the conundrum. Now what
Speaker 1: I recommend what I would do if I was Golden
Speaker 1: State because I've watched Boston, just like I watched all
Speaker 1: these playoff teams. I watched every single game Boston play
Speaker 1: this year, mostly twice in the playoffs. Boston is very
Speaker 1: you know, fickle Jekyll and Hide team. I've talked about
Speaker 1: this NonStop on the show. They when they are going
Speaker 1: on offense, when they're making their shots, they have a swagger,
Speaker 1: they have a confidence, They have an audacity, they have
Speaker 1: an extra gear that they can get to defensively when
Speaker 1: they're feeling themselves. But then the next night usually it
Speaker 1: doesn't go that way, and a lot of times they
Speaker 1: get sloppy, then they get indecisive, they lose a little
Speaker 1: bit of that confidence, their defense suffers as a result,
Speaker 1: and things can go poorly for them, And things did
Speaker 1: go poorly for them in each of the last two
Speaker 1: series Milwaukee in Miami. I don't think either of those
Speaker 1: teams are as good as Golden State, and those two
Speaker 1: teams combined to take six games off of Boston. So
Speaker 1: if you're Golden State, the way you gotta look at
Speaker 1: it is, here's the deal. A little bit more aggressive
Speaker 1: with our clothes outs, try to just you know, maybe
Speaker 1: instead of it being a wide open shot, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just an open shot, you know, where it's a mild
Speaker 1: contest instead of no contest, or a decent contest instead
Speaker 1: of a mild contest. Just a little bit more effort
Speaker 1: on those sirie, just a little bit more effort on
Speaker 1: those closeouts to take away those opportunity or just make
Speaker 1: them a little bit more difficult. But definitely stay in
Speaker 1: your pack to paint defense, because I do think it's
Speaker 1: vitally important to continue to contain Jalen Brown and Jayson
Speaker 1: Tatum in their easy stuff going to the rim. If
Speaker 1: you look at it last night, if you're Golden State
Speaker 1: and Tatum had a nightmare game as a score and
Speaker 1: Jaylen Brown did get to the basket a few times,
Speaker 1: but a lot of what he was doing was pull
Speaker 1: up jump shooting. You have to tip your cap to
Speaker 1: Jalen Brown if he's gonna attack you with drew a
Speaker 1: pull ups all game long and make a bunch of them.
Speaker 1: Good for him if he if he lives with that
Speaker 1: through the whole series that goes, that could go well
Speaker 1: for you. So if I'm a Golden State fan, I'm
Speaker 1: sitting there thinking, we don't have to do anything really differently,
Speaker 1: just do what we were doing a little bit better defensively,
Speaker 1: and just count on the fact that Boston gets arrogant,
Speaker 1: they slip out of their good habits, and they're prone
Speaker 1: to long, extended cold stretches, and that that's that That's
Speaker 1: the way you gotta look at it if you're Golden
Speaker 1: State in terms of Boston shooting. So I want to
Speaker 1: talk about the fourth quarter run for a minute, because
Speaker 1: you know it's stood. It stood out to me immediately
Speaker 1: that they played better on both ends of the floor
Speaker 1: without rob Um. But I thought it most importantly just
Speaker 1: had to do with a little tweak in their defensive scheme.
Speaker 1: And I talked a little bit about this last night,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to go into more detail now that
Speaker 1: I've taken a closer look at the film. So with
Speaker 1: Rob Williams on the floor, early fourth quarter, so the
Speaker 1: run for Boston started early fourth quarter, and it started
Speaker 1: offensively with Jalen Brown getting going. Jalen Brown had a
Speaker 1: monster beginning to that quarter, attacking Draymond Green, hitting a
Speaker 1: tough step back with his left hand. He hit a
Speaker 1: pull up three over the top of Jordan Pool. He
Speaker 1: had a pretty pretty decently contested three in the week's
Speaker 1: hide corner on a on a catching shoot. He had
Speaker 1: a really nice driving lob to Rob Williams. Amazing offensive
Speaker 1: performance from Jalen Brown to start the fourth quarter, but
Speaker 1: they weren't getting stops really uh. Golden State was still
Speaker 1: functionally scoring well when Steph came back in a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes into the fourth quarter. For that first stretch
Speaker 1: for a few minutes there before Rob Williams came in
Speaker 1: and two steps credit he was dissecting a variety of
Speaker 1: Boston defensive coverages against the drop coverage. Obviously, he punished
Speaker 1: them all night long, knocking down threes. And then there
Speaker 1: was a stretch there where they started trapping, and then
Speaker 1: you had that classic Golden State basketball where Steph is
Speaker 1: like coming off the ball screen, picking up that second defender,
Speaker 1: looping it over the top to Draymond under Iguadala rolling
Speaker 1: and then Draymond Arrigodala would roll down the lane and
Speaker 1: hit the other guy cutting out of the corner for
Speaker 1: a layup. They got to two layups just like that.
Speaker 1: Literally looked like a replay the two thousand fifteen finals.
Speaker 1: Some classic stuff there, and then they started switching as
Speaker 1: an alternative, and almost immediately Steph attacked Robert Williams and
Speaker 1: hit a step back. There was a play where he
Speaker 1: uh beat Robert Williams to the basket with a nifty crossover.
Speaker 1: It just ended up getting rotated around and they didn't score.
Speaker 1: But Steph was playing magnificently good basketball and they were
Speaker 1: struggling to deal with any pick and roll or Boston
Speaker 1: was struggling with any other pick and roll coverages to
Speaker 1: try to contain Steff. But then right around the seven
Speaker 1: minute mark, Al Horford checks into the game and checks
Speaker 1: in for Robert Williams, and two things happened. First of all,
Speaker 1: Robert Williams ran the same drop coverage that they were
Speaker 1: running earlier in the game, but one thing was completely different.
Speaker 1: He was coming up in his drop and he was
Speaker 1: above the three point line. Now, again, when I'm talking
Speaker 1: about pick and roll coverage is semantically there's a million
Speaker 1: different ways to do it, and we could argue about
Speaker 1: what they're what they're called, different teams, called different coverages,
Speaker 1: different things. But to me, there's basically three ways to
Speaker 1: guard a pick and roll. There's some variation of a
Speaker 1: drop coverage, which I call anything where the big man
Speaker 1: is effectively responsible for both the guarding and the rollman,
Speaker 1: where he's basically sagging back to help contain the entire action.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of different ways to do that, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you can do it with the guard chasing over the top,
Speaker 1: you do with the guard going underneath. You can do
Speaker 1: ice where the guard actually denies the screen and tries
Speaker 1: to send you away from the screen right, and then
Speaker 1: you can do there. You can have the guard the
Speaker 1: post player all the way back, or you can have
Speaker 1: him as high as the ball screen right. There's a
Speaker 1: million different ways to do that, but to me, that
Speaker 1: all constitutes drop coverage, some variation of drop coverage, and
Speaker 1: then you can switch it, and then you can trap it.
Speaker 1: Teams used to hedge. They don't hedge as much anymore.
Speaker 1: They really only had with guards, but that type of
Speaker 1: pick and roll coverage, each one of them has a
Speaker 1: specific strength and a weakness. The drop coverage that they
Speaker 1: ran against Miami and against Milwaukee was smart because they
Speaker 1: were more interested in containing the paint. But this is
Speaker 1: a Golden State Warriors team that shoots the ball way
Speaker 1: too well for you to let these guys get free
Speaker 1: space coming off of those screens. It's a suicide mission.
Speaker 1: So the adjustment was in that fourth quarter, Horford's drop
Speaker 1: went from hovering around the free throw line to above
Speaker 1: the three point line, and he's still backpedaling. He's still
Speaker 1: in a drop coverage, but just him being up there
Speaker 1: dissuades the pull up three as he's coming off the screen.
Speaker 1: And as soon as you dissuade the pull up three.
Speaker 1: That buys you just that little bit of time for
Speaker 1: Marcus Smart to fight over the top. Now, once he's
Speaker 1: over the top, then you can back pedal and work
Speaker 1: your drop back into the lane. And because Robert Williams
Speaker 1: was sitting way too far back, it wasn't working earlier
Speaker 1: in the game. But uh Al Horford is a lot
Speaker 1: more mobile and he did a much better job being
Speaker 1: up higher and taking that action away. This is a
Speaker 1: wild stat this this year in the playoffs because they
Speaker 1: played three teams that like to try to get to
Speaker 1: the basket. The Celtics had a nine point five defensive
Speaker 1: rating in the first three rounds with rob Williams on
Speaker 1: the floor. The NBA Finals are here, and so was
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Speaker 1: For game one, I like Golden State on the money line,
Speaker 1: steph over three and a half made threes and Jordan's
Speaker 1: pool over one and a half made threes. Golden States
Speaker 1: offense famously confuses teams at the beginning of series and
Speaker 1: Boston's coverage that they ran in the regular season. Lent
Speaker 1: Steph and Jordan's cool to get easy three's coming off
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Speaker 1: partner of the NBA. Last night a one sixteen defensive
Speaker 1: rating with Rob Williams on the floor, and the reason
Speaker 1: why is that same coverage is a suicide mission against
Speaker 1: Golden State and Rob's just not quite mobile enough and
Speaker 1: doesn't quite have the defensive instincts necessary to do what
Speaker 1: Al Horford was doing, which is to bring his drop
Speaker 1: all the way up to the top of the key
Speaker 1: in the fourth quarter. Last night with Al Horford on
Speaker 1: and Rob Williams off running the coverage I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: The Celtics had a forty defensive rating forty, roughly a
Speaker 1: third of what Rob Williams had for the entire game.
Speaker 1: That's how much of a difference that made. Because Al
Speaker 1: Horford was that high and taking away those dribble pull ups,
Speaker 1: pull ups off of those ball screens, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the entire Boston defense was able to engage itself in
Speaker 1: a way that they couldn't earlier in the game, and
Speaker 1: they were able to strangle Golden State Again. We all
Speaker 1: talked about offense, and Jalen Brown was off awesome on
Speaker 1: offense to start that fourth quarter, But that game was
Speaker 1: decided in the middle of the fourth quarter by a
Speaker 1: defensive run from Boston, a seventeen o run. It's the
Speaker 1: zero there that puts the game away. If that's a
Speaker 1: seventeen to seven run, Golden State is still has a
Speaker 1: puncher's chance to steal that game. But because you held
Speaker 1: them to zero points for a significant chunk of the
Speaker 1: fourth quarter, you end up winning going away. You end
Speaker 1: up winning comfortably, which is vitally important for this Boston
Speaker 1: Celtics team that struggles so much and crunch time. Like
Speaker 1: I've talked about a lot on the show. But here's
Speaker 1: the other thing with Rob being off that's so important.
Speaker 1: And I've been on this all postseason because I'm and
Speaker 1: for those of you guys who have listened to my
Speaker 1: show for a long time, you know how much I
Speaker 1: believe in five out basketball. Five out basketball with a
Speaker 1: vacated paint just simply makes defensive rotations way harder. If
Speaker 1: Robert Williams is sitting in the dunker spot and Draymond
Speaker 1: Green's guarding him, he can kind of sit on the
Speaker 1: block and effectively guard Rob and guard anybody who's driving
Speaker 1: into the lane. But if he's guarding Al Horford and
Speaker 1: Al Horford's all the way in the corner, now that's
Speaker 1: a much different, much more difficult conundrum. If he sits
Speaker 1: in the block, now Al Horford is gonna get wide
Speaker 1: open three is all game long. If he stays hugged
Speaker 1: up to Al Horford, driving lanes are there all night long.
Speaker 1: By spacing everybody out in a five out system, you
Speaker 1: make any defensive rotation around the paint, it's significantly more
Speaker 1: difficult to do. And if you do so, you're basically
Speaker 1: are inteed to give up a three last night with
Speaker 1: Rob on the floor, With Rob Willy Williams on the floor,
Speaker 1: so there four out one in they had a one
Speaker 1: oh seven point five offensive rating. With Rob off the floor,
Speaker 1: they had a hundred and forty offensive rating. And for
Speaker 1: this entire playoff run, they've been six point four points
Speaker 1: better per one possessions on offense with Rob off the floor.
Speaker 1: It's a simple five out concept which I've always been
Speaker 1: such a huge believer in, but every single time I
Speaker 1: see it bear out in these playoff environments, and I
Speaker 1: wish more people would kind of get behind that movement
Speaker 1: within the league, and I hope to see, you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch more teams try to adopt it over the
Speaker 1: course of the next couple of seasons, especially for a
Speaker 1: team like Boston that thrives and driving kick. We were
Speaker 1: talking about this with Colin Coward last night. You know
Speaker 1: what Dallas does, the heliocentric system. It's difficult for guys
Speaker 1: to get into a rhythm. But Boston's at their best
Speaker 1: when everyone's involved and Marcus Smartest having driving kicks and
Speaker 1: Derek White is having driving kicks. Like, think about that system.
Speaker 1: That's their best lineup in this series is gonna be
Speaker 1: Derek White and Smart Al Horford and Tatum Brown. Those
Speaker 1: five guys together can run a damn effective five out
Speaker 1: offense when they're all engaged and they're all touching the basketball,
Speaker 1: especially when Al Horford is shooting the ball as well
Speaker 1: as he did. Is one other interesting element in the
Speaker 1: series that I noticed last night. Kavan Looney continues to
Speaker 1: be an absolute monster on the offensive glass. We uh
Speaker 1: talked about this in the series preview. Had seven offensive
Speaker 1: rebounds in the two regular season games against Boston. He
Speaker 1: can get engaged with Horford in a box out and
Speaker 1: just reach over the top and grab him because he's
Speaker 1: such a monstrously large human being. It's just just physically
Speaker 1: imposing and just understands rebounding. He understands the angles, and
Speaker 1: it's like that that funny, funny clip from the MJ
Speaker 1: documentary with Dennis Rodmen talking about the ball bouncing off
Speaker 1: the rim and weird ways. He's just really, really good
Speaker 1: at that, and that's gonna be a serious problem for
Speaker 1: Boston that they're gonna have to address now. For me,
Speaker 1: I think the easiest way to do that, and I
Speaker 1: demonstrated this with a handful of clips on on the
Speaker 1: film that you guys saw. But it's not Horford's job
Speaker 1: to grab the rebound. It's Horford's job to box out Looney.
Speaker 1: If he boxes out Looney, Looney can't jump because if
Speaker 1: you're connected to someone's body and they jump, it's an
Speaker 1: over the back foul. So it's the easiest way to
Speaker 1: to to take him out of the play. But if
Speaker 1: the ball comes directly at them, Looney has the advantage
Speaker 1: because he's bigger than Horford, and Horford has to squat
Speaker 1: down load to get into his box out. You have
Speaker 1: to crash from the perimeter to secure rebounds. This is
Speaker 1: what Golden State is so good at. They're so good
Speaker 1: with Auto Porter Jr. And Andrew Wiggins and Andrea Guadala
Speaker 1: and all these bigger wings that they have. They all
Speaker 1: just come flying in and Draymond engages in the box out.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't give a damn about Draymond's rebound
Speaker 1: in numbers. His job is not to secure the rebound.
Speaker 1: His job is the box out. But the Celtics have
Speaker 1: to take on that same concept with his Looney situation.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of plays where I saw Looney
Speaker 1: grabbing offensive rebounds over Horford while Tatum and Brown were
Speaker 1: hugged up to their man and not doing their job
Speaker 1: to crash the defensive class from the perimeter. It's an
Speaker 1: easy thing that Boston has to clean up, but into
Speaker 1: a Golden State in general, like you're you're struggling. You know,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be the biggest issue that Golden State's
Speaker 1: gonna have to deal with for the rest of this series.
Speaker 1: Golden State's best offensive players are not their best defensive players,
Speaker 1: and so they're constantly going to have to tow the
Speaker 1: line of how much defense they want on the floor
Speaker 1: and how much offense they want on the floor. I
Speaker 1: think Looney, even though Golden State, even though Boston is
Speaker 1: not gonna guard him, is so impactful on the defensive
Speaker 1: end and so impactful as an offensive rebounder that I
Speaker 1: think it's worth the give and take there. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to see a little bit more Looney. Um uh,
Speaker 1: last touch for for Boston Tatum. Tatum at a rough
Speaker 1: night score in the basketball great night that stillitating, which
Speaker 1: is what you expect. I didn't you know, I picked
Speaker 1: tatums under an or over under show, which was which
Speaker 1: was a ship show. I think I only got like
Speaker 1: half of them, right, Uh, gambling in a nutshell. Um.
Speaker 1: But Jayson Tatum, I I thoroughly expected him to struggle
Speaker 1: last night, because almost every star in the history of
Speaker 1: the league, when they get initially exposed to the NBA
Speaker 1: Final stage, is caught off guard. It's just there are
Speaker 1: so many examples in NBA history of members of the
Speaker 1: media and players and coaches saying I've was completely blown
Speaker 1: away by the scope and the scale of the NBA Finals,
Speaker 1: the huge increase in media presence, the how early fans
Speaker 1: show up to games, just the pressure in the history,
Speaker 1: the Larry Obrian trophy being there. It used to be
Speaker 1: that they had the Larry O. Brian trophy painted on
Speaker 1: the court at center court. It used to add this
Speaker 1: whole other vibe there, which I wish they would go
Speaker 1: back to doing. But the point is is it is
Speaker 1: a It's just a lot. I mean Jayson Tatum, I
Speaker 1: think he had two air balls in the first quarter
Speaker 1: and mishandled the basketball a few times like that's to
Speaker 1: be expected. And so if you're Tatum, look you got
Speaker 1: your bad one out of the way. Your team got
Speaker 1: to win anyway. You need to settle down. Steph out
Speaker 1: playing Tatum in Game one was a pretty predictable thing
Speaker 1: because he is so experienced and he's been there so
Speaker 1: many times. So last, but not least, looking looking forward,
Speaker 1: not good for Golden State to blow a game where
Speaker 1: Steph plays as well as he does, to blow a
Speaker 1: game where Boston was as sloppy as they were in
Speaker 1: that first quarter. So not good, But this is survivable.
Speaker 1: Boston is all but guaranteed to have a handful of
Speaker 1: games in this series where they don't play well because
Speaker 1: they don't shoot well and everything falls apart for them.
Speaker 1: Chances are it will happen at least once in Boston,
Speaker 1: so you can recover home court by getting a win
Speaker 1: in Game two in capitalizing on one of those poor
Speaker 1: Boston efforts in Game three or Game four. In terms
Speaker 1: of adjustments, it's simply just a little bit sharper on
Speaker 1: your defensive rotations, a little bit more effort on closeouts
Speaker 1: to make those shots a little bit more difficult. But
Speaker 1: continue to pack the paint and trust that it's better
Speaker 1: to take away the easy driving lanes for Jalen Brown
Speaker 1: and for Jayson Tatum than it is to concede those
Speaker 1: at the at the expense of taking away those three
Speaker 1: point shots. I think Golden State is going to win
Speaker 1: big in Game two. I think they're desperate. I think
Speaker 1: they understand the gravity of the situation. I think they
Speaker 1: will be psychotic and desperate with their closeouts and take
Speaker 1: away a lot of those easier opportunities that Boston got.
Speaker 1: Each of those shots will just be a little bit
Speaker 1: more rushed, and when they're a little bit more rushed,
Speaker 1: they'll miss a few. When they miss a few, it'll
Speaker 1: get in their head and it will it will steamroll
Speaker 1: on them. So I would take Golden State against the spread.
Speaker 1: I think they're getting four points, are giving up four
Speaker 1: points right now. I expect him to cover that. I
Speaker 1: would not be surprised if this was a ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen point victory. I think Golden State the experienced team
Speaker 1: with the experience advantage, who understands just how important it
Speaker 1: is to win this game, and expecting Boston, just like
Speaker 1: they have throughout this entire playoff run, to let their
Speaker 1: foot off the gas and get sloppy and to start
Speaker 1: missing shots. I expect Golden State to win Game two.
Speaker 1: For Boston adjustments moving forward. If you're gonna run drop coverage.
Speaker 1: You've gotta be above the three point line. You can't
Speaker 1: just let the best shooters of all time come free
Speaker 1: and clear off of screens. You've gotta be sharper in
Speaker 1: terms of some of the mistakes that you made in
Speaker 1: that first quarter, botching switches, not picking up people in
Speaker 1: in transition. But I expect them to be and last,
Speaker 1: but not least a little bit less Robert Williams and
Speaker 1: a little bit more of your five out system that
Speaker 1: you thrive so much in. But I'm very, very excited
Speaker 1: for game too. It looks like we're gonna be going
Speaker 1: live with Colin again after that game, so I'll see
Speaker 1: you guys right after the final buzzer on Sunday. The
Speaker 1: Volume