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Speaker 1: Well, they were favored to win gold, but There's been
Speaker 1: a lot of storylines with Team USA at the Olympics
Speaker 1: in France. Jason Timpf hoops tonight, who works about as
Speaker 1: hard as anybody in this business. And I want to
Speaker 1: start with Jason Tatum. So there's two reasons why a
Speaker 1: normally good shooter doesn't shoot well. One his legs, he's tired.
Speaker 1: That happens you go on a five games, eight day
Speaker 1: Eastern road trip. You know you're an older player, back
Speaker 1: to backs, so you lose your legs. The only other
Speaker 1: way a good shooter shoots poorly usually is you lose
Speaker 1: your confidence. We've seen Lebron, especially early in mid career,
Speaker 1: like just lose his confidence in the three point shot.
Speaker 1: He acknowledg that. Then he would say, okay, how about
Speaker 1: to go score at the basket for about two games,
Speaker 1: and then he would build it back up. Jason Tatum's
Speaker 1: lost his jump shot, and I think it's and I
Speaker 1: think what it is, it really is it defines who
Speaker 1: he is. It's one thing that he didn't play in
Speaker 1: one of the games. And I can get into that
Speaker 1: in a second. But I believe the Celtics traded Marcus
Speaker 1: Smart because their problem was Okay, It's one thing that
Speaker 1: Tatum is slightly more skilled than Jason Jalen Brown. If
Speaker 1: Jalen Brown takes over late in games, he's still a
Speaker 1: great player. But when Marcus Smart also started taking the
Speaker 1: ball out of his hands late, then it was a timeout.
Speaker 1: This isn't gonna work, and they got him out of town.
Speaker 1: They got a more talented player with the same skill
Speaker 1: set defensively, Drew Holliday, who more understands his role he's
Speaker 1: got in the bag. You know, it's a different player,
Speaker 1: different mindset. And I think Brad Stevens has told us
Speaker 1: time and time again the truth about Jason him.
Speaker 2: He loves him.
Speaker 1: He's smart, he works hard, he's collaborative. But in big
Speaker 1: spots against great players or playing with great players, he
Speaker 1: can kind of lose his confidence. And when I watch
Speaker 1: him against Aalsunani, I'm like, where's what's going on? And
Speaker 1: I don't think it's mechanics, Jason. I think it's a
Speaker 1: confidence thing, and we're going to have to acknowledge this
Speaker 1: is a little bit of who he is from time
Speaker 1: to time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it goes deeper than the Drew Holiday thing. It
Speaker 3: even extends to Porzingis because like the reality is is
Speaker 3: those moves are aggressive in the sense that there is
Speaker 3: actually some fallout. It's not just the draft compensation, although
Speaker 3: they actually made out pretty well in terms of asset
Speaker 3: usage in those deals, but it's a lot of it
Speaker 3: has to do with the second apron. Like you, by
Speaker 3: virtue of bringing those two guys in and making it
Speaker 3: so that you have five thirty plus million dollar players
Speaker 3: on your roster, you limit your ability to be flexible
Speaker 3: in the future. And we talked a lot after the
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two series about whether or not it is
Speaker 3: one of those things where the Celtics could bank on
Speaker 3: Tatum and Brown just improving naturally as time progressed, or
Speaker 3: if there was a certain ceiling there and they needed
Speaker 3: to be more aggressive. And to your point, I think
Speaker 3: Brad Stevens has made that pretty clear with the moves
Speaker 3: that he's made. He understands that Tatum is what he
Speaker 3: is and that he does need a large amount of support.
Speaker 3: And to Tatum's credit, I do think he's kind of
Speaker 3: the perfect collaborative superstar because if you're playing on a
Speaker 3: team that has that kind of talent, you don't want
Speaker 3: a dude who's gonna hijack things and play super helio centric.
Speaker 2: You want a ball mover.
Speaker 3: And I do actually think there is something a little
Speaker 3: bit mechanical going on with Tatum. I don't know if
Speaker 3: it's from how much muscle he's put on that he's
Speaker 3: just a little tight, or if he's tinkering with his
Speaker 3: mechanics now because he's been missing, but his shot just
Speaker 3: it looks like it has a little bit of a
Speaker 3: hitch in it, like right is he's starting to gather.
Speaker 3: And that is a little funky to me because this
Speaker 3: extends beyond the Tmuosa stuff. As you mentioned, he's struggling
Speaker 3: with Tmosa person Energy's oo for eleven on jump shots
Speaker 3: in the x Phibition Games and the Olympic Games so
Speaker 3: far with Team USA. But he took one hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty eight jump shots in the playoffs and got just
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty one points out of them. That's
Speaker 3: zero point eight points per shot, which is not good.
Speaker 3: Anything below one point is bad, and he's well below
Speaker 3: one point in a large sample side. So we're in
Speaker 3: a extended span here of Tatum really struggling to shoot
Speaker 3: the basketball. And like, there's two ways to look at that.
Speaker 3: You could take a glass half full and be like, hey,
Speaker 3: what if he figures it out this summer and then
Speaker 3: we have the Celtics from last year plus Tatum shooting
Speaker 3: the ball, Well, that's scary, right. But the other side
Speaker 3: of it is if this is something, if this is
Speaker 3: one of those things where it's an indicator of him
Speaker 3: at this physical build struggling to shoot the basketball, it's
Speaker 3: going to make it really difficult for him to impact
Speaker 3: winning at the level of the top five players in
Speaker 3: the league because when you go up into that group,
Speaker 3: when you look at Shay, when you look at Luca, like,
Speaker 3: the shooting at that position is incredibly valuable unless you're Yannis,
Speaker 3: unless you're Jokic, and as physically gifted as Tatum is,
Speaker 3: he's not like those guys. And so I'm just concerned
Speaker 3: for him from the standpoint of, like, he needs to
Speaker 3: be a good jump shooter to be a legitimate superstar
Speaker 3: level player.
Speaker 1: So let's talk Embiid who you know, when he comes
Speaker 1: into the league, there was a sign early first couple
Speaker 1: of years, can't play it unhealthy. So it's like, uh, oh,
Speaker 1: Biggs get hurt early. Biggs usually get hurt often, So
Speaker 1: he's always had an injury history, but most bigs eventually
Speaker 1: do right, like almost all of them.
Speaker 2: Y'aw ming shack.
Speaker 1: You can just Greg odin sam BOUI couldn't get on
Speaker 1: the floor, like it's the position. People probably aren't built
Speaker 1: to last at seven to two, you know, or shack
Speaker 1: size with those feet back. It wears out, like I
Speaker 1: get it. But Embiid presents something else beyond the injuries,
Speaker 1: and because he is more dynamic and more fun to
Speaker 1: watch than Jokic or a Yiannis, and there was a
Speaker 1: shack component with better ball handling skills. There is also
Speaker 1: something that I find my eyes keep telling me this
Speaker 1: when I watch the Sixers. Is that And the Olympics
Speaker 1: just heightened this is that they can keep running coaches
Speaker 1: through Philly and teammates through Philly. I mean even Ben
Speaker 1: Simmons for a while he wasn an All Star like
Speaker 1: his first year right, like Ben did have promise that, yeah,
Speaker 1: Embiid really needs to stay close from the basket. So
Speaker 1: coaches kind of pushed a D out for a couple
Speaker 1: of years. It was like fashionable and ad didn't even
Speaker 1: good shooting from out there. A D said I want
Speaker 1: to go back, and he has been for two years.
Speaker 2: A monster.
Speaker 1: I mean, to me, the most underrated player in the
Speaker 1: Olympics and the league right now is Ad.
Speaker 2: He is just fun.
Speaker 1: Turn the sound down, watch you can't if he's on
Speaker 1: the floor. It's like Lebron, you can't take your eyes
Speaker 1: off him.
Speaker 2: He's dominant.
Speaker 1: Embiid to me, somebody has to just acknowledge fella. Get
Speaker 1: away from the perimeter. He fashions himself or is told
Speaker 1: that he is such an important part sometimes a perimeter basketball.
Speaker 1: He's big, he's aging, he's not as quick. I thought
Speaker 1: he literally got in the way of this offense. I'd
Speaker 1: seen it in Philly, but it was so profound with
Speaker 1: this team. It bothered me. I'm screaming at the TV,
Speaker 1: get him out of the game. Your thoughts on Embiid
Speaker 1: and are any of these valid? That I watch him offensively.
Speaker 1: I know the numbers probably say is great, but he
Speaker 1: can he stops I just feel like he can stop
Speaker 1: offenses too often.
Speaker 2: So it's both.
Speaker 3: It's the jump shot and it's the ball movement piece
Speaker 3: the jump shot piece. This has been a consistent story
Speaker 3: and Embiad's career, especially over the previous couple of years.
Speaker 3: This last year, he actually shot the ball okay against
Speaker 3: the Knicks, But like in the previous couple of seasons,
Speaker 3: he would shoot like fifty percent on these like mid
Speaker 3: range pull up jump shots in the regular season, but
Speaker 3: then he'd get in front of Al Horford and he
Speaker 3: couldn't make them like he would he would struggle to
Speaker 3: knock him down in the postseas. That was a consistent
Speaker 3: theme and be you to get to the postseason, his
Speaker 3: jump shot would go away. And one of the biggest
Speaker 3: things that he ever built out the way Jokic did
Speaker 3: is those short range shots, the hooks, the floaters, all
Speaker 3: that stuff that's within like exactly, and those are way
Speaker 3: more dependable in this kind of setting. The second piece
Speaker 3: of it is learning how to play basketball with other people.
Speaker 3: This is a this is an epidemic around the league
Speaker 3: with certain guys, and we see this. It's kind of
Speaker 3: like this with Luca a little bit with more of
Speaker 3: a perimeter sense, but we see it with him need
Speaker 3: where it's like as long as everything is flowing through
Speaker 3: him and he's deciding every single possession, he has this
Speaker 3: otherworldly value as almost like.
Speaker 2: A force of nature.
Speaker 3: So for instance, if you took ad or Bam and
Speaker 3: you put them on last year's Sixers team with Tyrese Maxi.
Speaker 3: They're not as good because you can't just give the
Speaker 3: ball to Ad and Bam like every single possession and
Speaker 3: ask them to determine outcomes. They're not good enough on
Speaker 3: the offensive end of the floor. But when you're actually
Speaker 3: playing with people other good basketball players, and this will
Speaker 3: be really interesting this year with Paul George now in
Speaker 3: the equation when you actually need to keep everybody in
Speaker 3: rhythm and there's ball in player movement, and Be for
Speaker 3: lack of a better term, sucks at that style of basketball.
Speaker 3: He doesn't know how to play quick decision making flowing
Speaker 3: from side to side, and especially at the center position
Speaker 3: in modern NBA basketball, when you play five out, the
Speaker 3: center is the bridge between the two sides of the floor.
Speaker 3: He's the guy who has to catch and turn and
Speaker 3: go to the other guard and flow on the other side.
Speaker 3: So when you're trying to keep Booker and Steph and
Speaker 3: Lebron and all these guys in rhythm at the same time,
Speaker 3: it's better to have a guy like Ad who his
Speaker 3: entire life has been a screen and roll big. He's
Speaker 3: going to pitch the ball to the other side, set
Speaker 3: a screen, roll hard to the rim, run up and
Speaker 3: down the floor, and transition. It's a foot speed thing.
Speaker 3: It's a decision making thing. You put him in this
Speaker 3: setting and it's just a completely different kind of basketball
Speaker 3: than what he was doing for the Sixers last year.
Speaker 3: And it's quite frankly, he has years of needing to
Speaker 3: learn how to play that style if he's ever going
Speaker 3: to play in more of a five out, read and
Speaker 3: react type of system.
Speaker 1: So during COPA, team you I say struggled, and I
Speaker 1: not to make an excuse or defend Greg Berholt or
Speaker 1: the coach at the time, but our style is more European.
Speaker 1: We have more players now soccer players in America playing
Speaker 1: in Europe and flourishing. So COPA is a smaller, shorter field.
Speaker 1: It didn't play to our space, our strength, which is
Speaker 1: speed and spacing. So as we've become more skilled and
Speaker 1: more European, which is the Goldwyn World Cup, COPA has
Speaker 1: become a bad tournament for US, which is a grittier,
Speaker 1: lower ranked teams, more physical soccer. Similarly, Steph with FEBA
Speaker 1: three point shooting is almost it plays with your head,
Speaker 1: it's closer, it's more physical you don't get the whistle.
Speaker 1: More physicality allowed. And as I watched Steph struggle, it's
Speaker 1: not like Tatum struggling, It's not a confidence issue. It's
Speaker 1: a is it possible that FIBA Olympic basketball isn't really
Speaker 1: it's not really built necessarily for Steph all the time.
Speaker 1: I mean, Lebron's good everywhere, But as Steff struggles, I'm
Speaker 1: how do I reconcile that he's a great shooter? It's
Speaker 1: closer he should be shooting the lights out he's not.
Speaker 3: Why So Sudan in particular, and I think their reputation
Speaker 3: obviously that them as an organization within FIBA don't have
Speaker 3: the reputation of the other great European teams or South
Speaker 3: American teams that we faced over the years, Like even
Speaker 3: back in the old days when it was like Argentina,
Speaker 3: you know that that was or France that was given
Speaker 3: his issues, they don't have that history. But I think
Speaker 3: South Sudan is the most athletic team in this field
Speaker 3: by far, Like they have just an enormous amount of
Speaker 3: fast dudes with really long wingspans. They're athletic by NBA standards,
Speaker 3: let alone by the Phoebe standards. And so if you
Speaker 3: remember last year when Golden State needed to get some
Speaker 3: big wins down the stretch of the season, the two
Speaker 3: teams that were giving them a lot of trouble were
Speaker 3: Sacramento and New Orleans, two teams that were really fast
Speaker 3: and really long on the perimeter. And that's like kind
Speaker 3: of one of those things. Whereas Steph has aged, he's
Speaker 3: become a little bit susceptible to specific types of matchups,
Speaker 3: particularly teams that are closing those gaps on him. And
Speaker 3: then the piece you mentioned about spacing is real, like
Speaker 3: the lack of a defensive three seconds is a real
Speaker 3: thing that people are factoring in. So to put it simply,
Speaker 3: the vast majority of teams, when they're spacing, will put
Speaker 3: their big man on the opposite block from where the
Speaker 3: ball is. And so with defensive three seconds, that defender
Speaker 3: has to step in and out of the lane on
Speaker 3: the far end of the court, whereas in FIBA he
Speaker 3: can park his ass right underneath the basket and he
Speaker 3: doesn't have to move at all whatsoever. And so this,
Speaker 3: by the way, is why I'm far more concerned about
Speaker 3: teams like Germany and France or even Serbia against USA
Speaker 3: than a team like Canada who just doesn't have the
Speaker 3: bigs to deal with USA underneath the basket. Teams that
Speaker 3: can park big bodies under the rim can force you
Speaker 3: to make jump shots. And as soon as you force
Speaker 3: a team to make jump shots, they can go cold.
Speaker 3: They can have issues, which is what happening in South
Speaker 3: Sudan last time. But yeah, as far as Steph goes
Speaker 3: like he, I mean, we let's put it. Let's put
Speaker 3: it straight up, Colin. He struggled most of the tail
Speaker 3: end of the season last year too, So this is
Speaker 3: an extension of that. And I'm really hoping as a
Speaker 3: basketball fan that this is just a blip and he's
Speaker 3: going to figure it out, because I really want the
Speaker 3: Warriors to be interesting next year.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, when you have a bunch of kids, I
Speaker 1: have six in my life, the early years can be
Speaker 1: frustrating and a lot of work. But what's fascinating about
Speaker 1: the early years is kids make giants social and emotional
Speaker 1: and physical leaps in nine months. I mean, my son
Speaker 1: had a biting stage, he had a coughing stage where
Speaker 1: he would make coughing noises, and I always told my wife,
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's just just nine year old boys go
Speaker 1: through weird, weird you know cycle phases.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just do.
Speaker 1: Like and I want to use that as as sort
Speaker 1: of a pivot to watching young NBA players, is that
Speaker 1: when they're eighteen, nineteen twenty, the players just come back
Speaker 1: of an off and off season and you're like, damn,
Speaker 1: he got a jumper. So I'm watching Wemby and I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm watching a kid grow, Like I'm watching
Speaker 1: him in some of these games and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is terrifying for the league. Like he you go
Speaker 1: to his first month in the league and now Jason offensively,
Speaker 1: he plays with so much more confidence. Defensively, he's blocking
Speaker 1: stuff with his elbow. He is now way more aggressive
Speaker 1: and asserting himself. And I'm watching this and I'm like
Speaker 1: I said by the Trade Deadline. I said this on
Speaker 1: our previous podcast, By the Trade Deadline, he and Ann
Speaker 1: will be the faces of the league. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it's going to take that long. Like Jokich is still
Speaker 1: the best player. His ability to not only dominate but
Speaker 1: compliment other players and elevate them it kind of separates
Speaker 1: Lebron's magic.
Speaker 2: Certain guys.
Speaker 1: I would say Michael didn't make everybody better, not every
Speaker 1: teammate Lebron, Magic Jokic, Chris Paul, every teammate's better. You
Speaker 1: play her best with him, get Chris ball with Wemby.
Speaker 1: But I'm watching him, and maybe it's maybe I don't
Speaker 1: see him as much as you do. I'm seeing major
Speaker 1: jumps from Wemby even in these Olympics.
Speaker 3: No. Absolutely, they've been running a lot more offense through
Speaker 3: him than you would expect. And a big part of
Speaker 3: that is France doesn't have an amazing guard corps like
Speaker 3: Evan Fournier is their best guard, a guy who couldn't
Speaker 3: crack the rotation for the Knicks last year, right, so like,
Speaker 3: but what they're doing in a lot of cases is
Speaker 3: they're feeding him at the elbow and they're like running
Speaker 3: literally ball screens like the way you would typically with
Speaker 3: a point guard in a center. They're running with him
Speaker 3: and Gobaer at the foul line, and they're letting him
Speaker 3: determine the outcome of possessions. They're throwing it to him
Speaker 3: down on the blocks. He's become a lot quicker at
Speaker 3: like reading the floor and making reads then I would
Speaker 3: expect a player at his age. And part of this
Speaker 3: I think has a lot to do with him playing
Speaker 3: professionally as opposed to coming up through the college system.
Speaker 3: Like he's just been around a lot of really smart
Speaker 3: basketball minds in his development. The big ones that stands
Speaker 3: out is the dude is just a savage competitor and
Speaker 3: is not scared of the moment. Like he was kind
Speaker 3: of on the back burner for a good portion of
Speaker 3: that second half against Japan, and then it went to
Speaker 3: ot and he just took over. Immediately was demanding the
Speaker 3: ball in the block, got an and one, he missed
Speaker 3: a three on the right wing, and then immediately called
Speaker 3: for the ball back and knocked one down at the
Speaker 3: top of the key. He's got like just incredible scoring
Speaker 3: polish all over the floor. He's handling physicality really really well.
Speaker 3: Obviously you mentioned the defensive stuff. It's hard to even describe.
Speaker 3: It doesn't even look like other NBA players that have
Speaker 3: come before him.
Speaker 2: I'm with you.
Speaker 3: I think I think we got to think long and
Speaker 3: hard about him being a top ten player right now,
Speaker 3: right now, and then and right now, and I think
Speaker 3: by the deadline next year, we could be talking about
Speaker 3: a guy who's who's second team All NBA, Like This
Speaker 3: is a real, a real potential outcome for him in
Speaker 3: the short term.
Speaker 1: Now for a segment called making It Look Easy, brought
Speaker 1: to you by Morgan and Morgan, America's largest injury law firm,
Speaker 1: BAM Gonna Buy You Team USA made it look easy.
Speaker 1: Couple of corner threes, eighteen point seven rebounds over the
Speaker 1: win against South Sudan at the Olympics in Paris. Well,
Speaker 1: just like BAM made it look easy, so does Morgan
Speaker 1: and Morgan. They have over one hundred offices nationwide. They
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Speaker 1: With Morgan and Morgan fighting for the people for three
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Speaker 1: com slash Colin That's me for the People dot com
Speaker 1: slash Colin, or dial pound five to nine to check
Speaker 1: out America's largest injury law firm. Winning gold medals is hard.
Speaker 1: Hiring Morgan and Morgan is easy. You know. It's you
Speaker 1: put a bunch of alphas together and some alphas will
Speaker 1: shrink and some alphas will rise. Lebron is now the
Speaker 1: best player on this team. It's like it's now, it's
Speaker 1: gone past. But what's interesting is that Nick Wright said
Speaker 1: this to me today on the show in FS one.
Speaker 1: He said, deep down, Lebron may realize these are the
Speaker 1: last games of his career that people are really gonna watch,
Speaker 1: like have a huge audience and are gonna matter and listen.
Speaker 1: You and I have been critical of the executive wing
Speaker 1: of the Lakers. Ad and Lebron on any given game
Speaker 1: that I've watched, Team USA are the two best players
Speaker 1: and they're struggling to win a playoff game. It's really frustrating.
Speaker 1: There's Jeremy Grant may come to town.
Speaker 2: He would be.
Speaker 1: A solid three, a better a four on a really
Speaker 1: really good team. He's probably a four, not a three.
Speaker 1: But be that as it may. But I as I
Speaker 1: watched Lebron, what it tells me is he's not having
Speaker 1: to fight to be the alpha. He is so respected
Speaker 1: that other young players are like, hey, big fella, you
Speaker 1: run the offense. I mean, I mean like Magic and
Speaker 1: Michael when they went together, they were fighting. They Magic
Speaker 1: didn't want to give up the baton. Michael grabbed it
Speaker 1: like even Ant all these guys, it's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is Lebron's. This is Lebron's world. And I know
Speaker 1: you're not surprised by it, but it it does jump
Speaker 1: out of the TV, does it not.
Speaker 3: I'm glad everyone's seeing it too. First of all, to
Speaker 3: what Nick said, I agree. I think Lebron has always
Speaker 3: been very aware of the narrative surrounding him, and I
Speaker 3: think that he saw an opportunity here to be like,
Speaker 3: if I am the best player on Team USA, it
Speaker 3: will resonate with people for a long time. And for
Speaker 3: the record, I think Lebron came right out of the
Speaker 3: season and started prepping forward. He looks like he's in
Speaker 3: great shape.
Speaker 2: He is flexing every other time down the floor.
Speaker 3: I know, like he's he clearly prepped for this as
Speaker 3: though it was an NBA playoff run. Like that is
Speaker 3: abundantly clear. And he's and he's playing at that crazy
Speaker 3: high level. I'm glad you mentioned the Lakers because like
Speaker 3: so many people are like, oh, they're they're a playing team.
Speaker 3: They're this, they're that, and it's like, guys, the reason
Speaker 3: they're a playing team is they don't have a single
Speaker 3: player on the roster other than Lebron and Ad who
Speaker 3: can play both ends of the floor. That's literally why
Speaker 3: they've struggled. It is a personnel issue. It is not
Speaker 3: a Lebron James and Anthony Davis issue. Those two pull
Speaker 3: their weight. They pulled their weight in a major way
Speaker 3: last season, and the organization is what let them down.
Speaker 3: And so I don't really see it that way. As
Speaker 3: far as as far as Lebron with his team USA context,
Speaker 3: what's been super fascinating from a basketball perspective is what
Speaker 3: you're seeing is what it would look like to run
Speaker 3: five out offense with all the ball and player movements,
Speaker 3: Steph lying off of screens with the best playmaker of
Speaker 3: this era kind of orchestrating it at the top of
Speaker 3: the key. He's not taking a ton of shots. He's
Speaker 3: seeing his openings and he's shooting the gap and he's
Speaker 3: attacking the basket. But they're ducking under all those picks
Speaker 3: at the top of the key. He's not jacking up
Speaker 3: threes and hijacking possessions. He's just reading the floor as
Speaker 3: Steph is running around and as Devin Booker's running around
Speaker 3: and waiting for guys to make mistakes. One of the
Speaker 3: most classic decisions that you'll see from that part of
Speaker 3: the floor is Steph runs off a screen and the
Speaker 3: guy screens for him. If those defenders make a mistake,
Speaker 3: that guy can slip it, and Lebron is just making
Speaker 3: reads based on what the mistake the defense has made.
Speaker 3: And so it's kind of like a juiced up version
Speaker 3: of Draymond with the Warriors, but surrounded by all of these,
Speaker 3: you know, world class types of players, and it's been
Speaker 3: the perfect role for him. And then, quite frankly to
Speaker 3: your point, and this is where it gets really scary, Colin,
Speaker 3: I would argue KAD and Lebron and Steph have been
Speaker 3: the only consistent offensive forces on this team, and we've
Speaker 3: been disappointed by Jason Tatum. Anthony Edwards has given us
Speaker 3: some mixed results. There's been good games, there's been bad games.
Speaker 3: I think it's just a bad look that if you're
Speaker 3: in the year twenty twenty four, Steph, Lebron and KD
Speaker 3: are playing the way they are and the younger generation
Speaker 3: is struggling to keep up. It's like, thank god for
Speaker 3: Ad and Band being as good as they've been, because
Speaker 3: it's just been It's been a disappointing performance from some
Speaker 3: of the younger American players.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has.
Speaker 1: And I let me just say this again, is that
Speaker 1: I do a segment every week called Colin Wright Colin Wrong.
Speaker 1: And I wish somebody in politics did it because I
Speaker 1: don't think being right should be the be all end all.
Speaker 2: Of being a host.
Speaker 1: Being interesting and informative and being fun should And I
Speaker 1: was so anti ad when we started doing this podcast together.
Speaker 1: I went, like two years, I'm like, it's a dad bod.
Speaker 1: He doesn't work out, he's out of shape, he never
Speaker 1: plays hurt. And some of that was confirmation biased because
Speaker 1: I had said I had heard that going in, and
Speaker 1: he became it. The last two years he is aft.
Speaker 1: Take Jokichow. I'm not sure there's a big eye take
Speaker 1: over him, including Jannis. I. I mean, I always use
Speaker 1: this rule. There are time when you turn the sound
Speaker 1: down of a game when and I'll use Magic Johnson
Speaker 1: when more than Michael, when Magic was on the floor,
Speaker 1: he had the ball so much unmistakable, you can literally just.
Speaker 2: Go, Magic's there. Magic's there.
Speaker 1: Magic literally was a six to nine point and then
Speaker 1: Lebron comes in and he kind of plays points. So
Speaker 1: the point guard you always kind of knows on the floor,
Speaker 1: but a lot of times forwards, especially guys who aren't
Speaker 1: aesthetically beautiful games, you cannot mistake Anthony Davis in a
Speaker 1: game dominant defender. He's gotten significantly more physical.
Speaker 2: To me, I don't know what.
Speaker 1: Happened, but he was almost This is weird. He was
Speaker 1: a rugged finesse player, like you'd be like run over people.
Speaker 2: Dude.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is, but when I watch him,
Speaker 1: he goes after people. He attacks players. Now, some of
Speaker 1: this he's playing against second team guys in this space,
Speaker 1: but he's aggressive against Jokic, and I just think to myself,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is, but it does prove
Speaker 1: young people improve, young people are coachable. Young people here criticism.
Speaker 1: This is weird because he was already good, but he's
Speaker 1: one of the most improved players, and he did it
Speaker 1: like as an established great player. To me, he's taken
Speaker 1: another level. This is the ad we thought we were
Speaker 1: getting out of college, and he just wasn't emotionally ready
Speaker 1: for it.
Speaker 3: I think the injuries played a role. Like to your
Speaker 3: point about I agree, Like in that twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty two stretch. He was kind of like
Speaker 3: a finesse dude that was really big, but it didn't
Speaker 3: seem like he was inflicting it on people. But in
Speaker 3: his defense, he had like repeated ankle injuries and he
Speaker 3: had an achilles injury during that time. So I really
Speaker 3: think Ad just didn't trust his body. And I think
Speaker 3: the reason why we're seeing him be so physically dominant
Speaker 3: now is he just is in a really good physical place,
Speaker 3: and I think that's gone a long way towards helping
Speaker 3: him facilitate that you mentioned it bouncing off the screen.
Speaker 3: It's crazy, like his block that he had on one
Speaker 3: of the first possessions against Sudan, he he just just
Speaker 3: pogo sticks above everybody, or that dunk he had on
Speaker 3: the feed from KD tonight where he takes off from
Speaker 3: the foul line off of two feet and just throws
Speaker 3: it down clean. He just has the craziest combination of
Speaker 3: like length and mobility in the league, still even at
Speaker 3: his phase of his career where he's a little bit
Speaker 3: bigger and not quite as mobile as he was when
Speaker 3: he was younger, and and you know, at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, like a lot of the focus has
Speaker 3: been on what he hasn't been since the bubble, Like
Speaker 3: he hasn't been knocking down all these crazy jump shots
Speaker 3: the way he did in the bubble. And that's true,
Speaker 3: but he's improved so much as a passers overall fear
Speaker 3: feel for the game. He is a lot better at
Speaker 3: those short shots, like the stuff I was talking about
Speaker 3: with em beat. Ad was well over fifty percent on
Speaker 3: hooks and floaters last year. That's what he does. And
Speaker 3: to your point about attacking lower level bigs in FEBA,
Speaker 3: he was awesome against Jokich. He was awesome most of
Speaker 3: the tail end of the season. Ad has been playing
Speaker 3: in the calendar year, Calendar year twenty twenty four, he's
Speaker 3: been playing at an MVP level and he deserves more
Speaker 3: credit for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in a weird way, you watch more film than
Speaker 1: I do. I wonder if it wasn't this when he
Speaker 1: was a perimeter player, when he was almost forced to
Speaker 1: go outside, it was like, well, he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: play five, so instead of just backing up three feet,
Speaker 1: let's back him up nine and go shoot threes. He
Speaker 1: ended up slashing to the basket a lot. He ended
Speaker 1: up being a bit of a slasher and when you
Speaker 1: slash and go to the floor, you fall hard. When
Speaker 1: you take out the perimeter, he's much more around the
Speaker 1: free throw line route. He's not slashing as much, and
Speaker 1: therefore he's not crashing as much.
Speaker 2: And I'm just.
Speaker 1: Throwing this out there because he went through a stage
Speaker 1: with a Lakers that like he was just hitting the
Speaker 1: floor hard, like three times a night, and it just
Speaker 1: and he's playing twice as physical and doesn't hit the
Speaker 1: floor as often. So I do wonder. I do wonder
Speaker 1: a little bit, Jason if as he's reduced his perimeter touches,
Speaker 1: he's just not in a position to have to race
Speaker 1: inside for the rebound, put the ball on the floor,
Speaker 1: come off a screen that he's just not in position
Speaker 1: to crack because he hits the floor occasionally. But it
Speaker 1: was like an epidemic those bubble years. It's like you
Speaker 1: would watch a Laker game at least twice you would wins.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, he's not getting up like that.
Speaker 2: That's he doesn't seem to do that as much.
Speaker 3: I think that's completely fair, and I think a huge
Speaker 3: part of it is roster construct. I mean, for going
Speaker 3: from that, JaVale McGee, Dwhite, Howard group, where like like
Speaker 3: Ady was playing the vast majority of his minutes at
Speaker 3: the four in that twenty twenty year, and then even
Speaker 3: going into twenty twenty one. I mean you add Marc
Speaker 3: Gasol to the equation. That was when they added Andre
Speaker 3: Drummond at the tail end of the year. If you remember,
Speaker 3: like they were going with Ad at the four almost
Speaker 3: exclusively and one of the big impacts there. To your point,
Speaker 3: it's not just the slashing and operating from the perimeter,
Speaker 3: it's constantly having a big.
Speaker 2: Guy in help.
Speaker 3: We talked earlier about that geometry of the guy being
Speaker 3: in the opposite block and the guy stepping in and
Speaker 3: out with the defensive three seconds. They're still sliding over
Speaker 3: and getting in the way all the time. It's just
Speaker 3: there steps slower than Feba. But that's the thing Ad
Speaker 3: was constantly contending with. If he got past his man,
Speaker 3: there was another center waiting underneath the basket for him
Speaker 3: to deal with. And I do think just in general,
Speaker 3: him kind of functioning more as a big man scroll screening,
Speaker 3: rolling into space, but not rolling hard to like he
Speaker 3: doesn't always roll directly to the rim, like he'll roll
Speaker 3: into that short area around the foul line like you
Speaker 3: talked about, he'll take jumpers there, he'll take more floaters.
Speaker 3: He's just playing more of a grown adult, like grown man,
Speaker 3: old school style of basketball, and I think I think
Speaker 3: it suits him well. I like, honestly, like to your point,
Speaker 3: like Ad, you always will have these moments where you're
Speaker 3: watching the Nuggets series and you're like, man, like Lebron
Speaker 3: is still so good, like is he the best player?
Speaker 3: Blah blah blah. But if you get past the shot
Speaker 3: creation piece and just zoom in strictly on winning impact
Speaker 3: on both ends of the floor, there just aren't many
Speaker 3: guys who bring as much to the table as he does.
Speaker 3: And the simplest explanation or example is this, if Ad
Speaker 3: or to spring his ankle and his fifteen games next year,
Speaker 3: as the Lakers are currently constructed, and you say got
Speaker 3: Jackson Hayes or Christian Wood into that spot, they're going
Speaker 3: three and twelve. They're going three and twelve. And that's
Speaker 3: really all you need to know. Like so much of
Speaker 3: the duct tape that is holding the Lakers organization together
Speaker 3: is Anthony Davis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but if Lebron misses a Knight and Austin Reeves
Speaker 1: can be the shot creator with ad if you get
Speaker 1: a favorable interior matchup, they can win the game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they did, and they did last year, and
Speaker 3: like and that that really is the crux of it,
Speaker 3: like they he And by the way, I don't know
Speaker 3: if you noticed, did you see that deal with Jared
Speaker 3: Allen just signed. He signed a three year like ninety
Speaker 3: something million, So Jared Allen's going to be over thirty
Speaker 3: million a year at the tail end of his current deal.
Speaker 3: Isaiah Hartenstein just signed a deal with the Thunder this
Speaker 3: summer for twenty seven million a year. These are guys that, like,
Speaker 3: you know, Jared Allen's in that like like eighth or
Speaker 3: ninth best center in the league. Hartenstein's in that fourteenth, fifteenth.
Speaker 2: Best complimentary guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, isn't it crazy that they're getting that much money though,
Speaker 3: And that to me is a really strong indicator of
Speaker 3: the league telling us that, like, oh shit, we need
Speaker 3: big dudes underneath the basket that can do the work.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the game's getting longer and longer. Players
Speaker 1: are getting more skilled. And you know, I've said this
Speaker 1: had nauseum, but the whole small ball thing to me
Speaker 1: was such nonsense. It was like, no, the Warriors have
Speaker 1: the best shooting backcourt ever. You can try duplicating it,
Speaker 1: but like there's some things Patrick Mahomes does that your
Speaker 1: quarterback can't. Said, let's just just do what you do
Speaker 1: and play to your you know, the Rockets tried so
Speaker 1: desperately to do small ball, and it's like sometimes you
Speaker 1: just you know, i mean, let's face it, the Splash
Speaker 1: Brothers next to West and Goodrich. There's never been a
Speaker 1: backcourt like that. Now I'm old enough to have seen both.
Speaker 1: But this is a big man's sport, you know, Like
Speaker 1: the NFL is a big dude sport. The NBA is
Speaker 1: a length sport. It's always been that. I mean that
Speaker 1: I can remember standing at a Laker game once on
Speaker 1: the court next to Pauga Sol and I'm like, like,
Speaker 1: what planet created? I mean, his arms were so long
Speaker 1: and I'm just sitting there and I'm like with a buddy,
Speaker 1: and I'm like.
Speaker 2: That's just an NBA player, Like what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Like they're just not you know, just so much of
Speaker 1: it just you know, obviously skill matters, but this is
Speaker 1: a length league. I remember talking to Mark Warkin, team
Speaker 1: former executive in the NBA. I think Mark passed away
Speaker 1: years ago. He was a un l V Tarks number
Speaker 1: three guy, and he always said to me, he said Colin,
Speaker 1: he goes, people do not understand.
Speaker 2: He said, Tart gets this.
Speaker 1: Length. He goes, the Bulls were a great team, but
Speaker 1: they were the one of the longest teams ever.
Speaker 2: He goes.
Speaker 1: The only team in the Eastern Conference that had their
Speaker 1: length was the Cleveland teams with.
Speaker 2: John Williams e Loo.
Speaker 1: He said that was the only team in the league
Speaker 1: that could match up length wise. And he said, length
Speaker 1: gives you three possessions a game. Tip passes, He goes,
Speaker 1: Michael scored two baskets in those three possessions. He's like,
Speaker 1: if you have a great finisher and you're long, that's
Speaker 1: three possessions. And if you can get two baskets NBA
Speaker 1: game are you known? Now, this was in the pre
Speaker 1: three shot era, so maybe those three possessions don't equal
Speaker 1: as many wins. But I think that the reality of
Speaker 1: it is is you know, that's why Wemby, it's it's
Speaker 1: the whole small ball thing outside of Isaiah Thomas in
Speaker 1: a different league, and staff guards don't lead you the titles.
Speaker 1: They lead you to wins that don't lead you to
Speaker 1: titles historically, So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really quick.
Speaker 3: The my buddy Sam Vasini came on the show after
Speaker 3: the NBA Finals. He works at the Athletic does an
Speaker 3: amazing job, and we and we we tried to come
Speaker 3: up with the two biggest things that we learned from
Speaker 3: this playoff run, one for offense and one for defense.
Speaker 3: And what we settled on was on offense with spacing
Speaker 3: and that's it goes beyond shooting, but that it has
Speaker 3: to do with like how you actually set up the floor,
Speaker 3: the way you actually run your offense, and we won't
Speaker 3: get into it. But on the defensive end, what we
Speaker 3: settled on was ground coverage and that does not just
Speaker 3: mean footspeed. Length is a direct like so for instance,
Speaker 3: like if you have a big on your back line
Speaker 3: who can help at the rim, but all also can
Speaker 3: test the shooter in the weak side corner. It's like
Speaker 3: being in two places at once. And that's what Yannis
Speaker 3: did on the Bucks with with brook Lopez that made
Speaker 3: him so dominant as a devender, Like your ability to
Speaker 3: eat up chunks of the floor with an athlete that
Speaker 3: has a seven to two wingspan.
Speaker 2: South Sudan Yeah, it's exactly.
Speaker 3: And that's the thing, like everyone's like, oh, they're struggling
Speaker 3: with South Sudan and Susu Dan. By the way, as
Speaker 3: good as the USA team played today, they were within
Speaker 3: eleven in the in the.
Speaker 2: Early part of the fourth quarter like that.
Speaker 3: Just having a long, athletic team that plays hard, like
Speaker 3: automatically check so many basketball boxes.
Speaker 1: Also much it's not it's not even blocks, it's shot alteration.
Speaker 2: It's exactly.
Speaker 1: It's literally it's penetrating and then circling out and saying
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go there. Like you stop shots, you
Speaker 1: alter shots, you block shots. It's like certain things don't
Speaker 1: have to happen to have an effect. And length is
Speaker 1: one of those things where you know, you'll see sometimes
Speaker 1: a Chris Paul or a stuff going the lane and
Speaker 1: they see the redwoods and they're like, yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do a U turn and get out of here. There's
Speaker 1: there's no happy ending to this story.
Speaker 2: Jason tim and.
Speaker 3: Derek White and Drew Holiday by the way, the two
Speaker 3: guards for Boston. But they have the length of wings
Speaker 3: and so that could be a problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, boy, Derek White's good player. Darry Waite's such a
Speaker 2: good player.
Speaker 1: Hoops tonight, Jason timp This was a fun forty minutes.
Speaker 1: Good good seeing you and we'll talk soon.
Speaker 3: Good to see you, Colin.
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