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Speaker 1: Kicked off the NBA season with an absolute ass kicking
Speaker 1: of the New York Knicks by the Boston Celtics and
Speaker 1: then the Los Angeles Lakers, a team that I've been
Speaker 1: higher than the consensus on coming into the season, had
Speaker 1: an impressive first showing versus the new look Minnesota Timberwolves.
Speaker 1: Are gonna be breaking down both games from the perspective
Speaker 1: of both teams, and then we'll get out of here
Speaker 1: for the night. You guys have the joe before we
Speaker 1: get started. Subscribe to the Hoops to Night YouTube channels.
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Speaker 1: mail back questions in those YouTube comments. We can keep
Speaker 1: getting to those throughout the remainder of the season. All right,
Speaker 1: let's talk some basketball. So Anthony Davis was the story
Speaker 1: of the night for the Los Angeles Lakers. Thirty six
Speaker 1: points and sixteen rebounds. Just an absolute monster. And you
Speaker 1: know this is obviously he's been playing like a monster
Speaker 1: for the majority of twenty twenty four. I want to
Speaker 1: get to that here in a minute, like this is
Speaker 1: not some revelation like oh my gosh, ad he's back.
Speaker 1: He's been awesome almost NonStop this entire year. It's been
Speaker 1: a big part of why I've been high on this team.
Speaker 1: But this was a particularly great game from him, and
Speaker 1: I didn't even expect it to be after the way
Speaker 1: the game started. Because one of the most important parts
Speaker 1: of Ad in his you know ceiling, because AD's floor
Speaker 1: is so high, because he's such a good defensive rebounder,
Speaker 1: and because he's such a good defensive anchor for everything
Speaker 1: you're trying to do on the defensive end of the floor.
Speaker 1: So like, even AD's bad games sometimes get you know,
Speaker 1: attributed as bad games when they really are just maybe
Speaker 1: not the most impressive box score performances, but he creates
Speaker 1: such a sound foundation for you to build a basketball
Speaker 1: team on that that just gets conveniently looked over.
Speaker 2: But one of the important.
Speaker 1: Pieces of unlocking AD's ceiling is his ability to finish
Speaker 1: short range shots, like the little pop shots in the lane,
Speaker 1: the little left shoulder hooks, the finishes when he's driving
Speaker 1: to the basket and through the first like two and
Speaker 1: a half quarters, he was really struggling to make those shots,
Speaker 1: and that usually is an indicator of like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: may not be one of those great Anthony Davis games.
Speaker 1: But he broke out of that slump in the middle
Speaker 1: of the third quarter by virtue of him appsbsolutely needing
Speaker 1: to Lebron checks out of the game early into that
Speaker 1: quarter like he's been doing so far a since JJ
Speaker 1: Redick look over the team. He's checking out like around
Speaker 1: that seven six minute mark in the first and third quarters.
Speaker 1: And then there's this long extended stretch there of like
Speaker 1: five or six minutes a game time where AD's running
Speaker 1: the show without Lebron out there. And this is where
Speaker 1: the matchup becomes fascinating because one of the things I
Speaker 1: talked about going into this matchup is that with Minnesota,
Speaker 1: they are going to give all sorts of problems to
Speaker 1: all the Laker perimeter players, right Like, they just are
Speaker 1: so good and so long, and so athletic and so strong,
Speaker 1: and they play so physical, and you guys probably saw
Speaker 1: a lot of that in the second half, right Like,
Speaker 1: just look at how as d Lo or Austin are
Speaker 1: bringing the ball up the floor. There is physical ball
Speaker 1: pressure from Nikkeiel Alexander Walker, from Dante DiVincenzo, hicking those
Speaker 1: guys up full court, making them turn a bunch of times,
Speaker 1: making it so that by the time they make that
Speaker 1: high post entry pass to get started in that offense,
Speaker 1: there's already like thirteen fourteen seconds on the shot clock,
Speaker 1: you know, And like that's what Minnesota can do. They
Speaker 1: can get really physical with your guards. The especially as
Speaker 1: the league has allowed more physicality, players that are not
Speaker 1: particularly big and strong can kind of get contained and
Speaker 1: corrowded by those guys. And so how you beat Minnesota
Speaker 1: is you have to attack their front line with size.
Speaker 1: You have to go through them with strength, through some
Speaker 1: of their thinner players. And so Anthony Davis and Lebron
Speaker 1: are critically important in this particular matchup, And of course
Speaker 1: Lebron had I thought Lebron's game was pretty solid in
Speaker 1: terms of how dialed in he was on defense and
Speaker 1: a lot of like passing reads that he made little
Speaker 1: plays here and there. But he didn't have a big
Speaker 1: box score game, and so a lot fell on Anthony
Speaker 1: Davis to kind of carry that load. And you could
Speaker 1: tell in that third quarter stretch there were just a
Speaker 1: bunch of possessions that ended with like seven or eight
Speaker 1: seconds on the shot clock, and AD's got the ball
Speaker 1: at the top of the key and it's time for
Speaker 1: him to go to work, and you could tell there
Speaker 1: was a little it's when he hit that little step
Speaker 1: back shot over Ridy Gobert kind of around the left
Speaker 1: elbow area. That was where you could tell Ad was like,
Speaker 1: I just got to keep shooting through this. I know
Speaker 1: I'm not making shots right now, but I just got
Speaker 1: to keep shooting through this. And then that one fell,
Speaker 1: and then he got to the foul line a couple
Speaker 1: of times, and then he got that and one on
Speaker 1: Anthony Edwards, and then he hits a three, and then
Speaker 1: he hits.
Speaker 2: That little driving fade away along the left block.
Speaker 1: You could just see like the confidence building, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you just saw him start shaking his head.
Speaker 1: He's like, all right now, I'm in full groove and
Speaker 1: I got every part of my game going. Dominating the glass, dominating,
Speaker 1: protecting the rim. He was just an absolute monster in
Speaker 1: this game. The exciting part is the jump shot piece
Speaker 1: of it, right, And like again, it's all every time
Speaker 1: we're looking at jump shot results, we want to make
Speaker 1: sure that we wait until we get larger sample sizes, right,
Speaker 1: But it's such an important part of elevating a half
Speaker 1: court offense. Like if you're gonna be elite half court offense,
Speaker 1: you gotta have guys that can make shots over the top.
Speaker 1: Like when we talk about offensive ratings, what are the
Speaker 1: best offensive ratings in the league. Usually they're usually around
Speaker 1: like what point one, twenty two on twenty three, around
Speaker 1: that range, right, But the worst offensive ratings in the
Speaker 1: league are they're still like, you know, one, twelve, one eleven,
Speaker 1: and I can't tell off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: but they're right around that area, right, talking about ten
Speaker 1: points over one hundred possessions on average, right, And a
Speaker 1: big part of that is usually like on the possessions
Speaker 1: where he plays great defense and they shut down your
Speaker 1: action and they take away the easy catch and shoot
Speaker 1: threes and the easy driving layup opportunities. It's like, who's
Speaker 1: gonna just kind of turn this possession into something when
Speaker 1: when no one else can. Right, Ad hit three or
Speaker 1: four shots tonight where he turned nothing into something, and
Speaker 1: that's an important elevator for this offense. Remember, as we
Speaker 1: go back through this like kind of progression of the
Speaker 1: last few years of the Lakers offensively, two years ago,
Speaker 1: both Lebron and Ad were abysmal jump shooting and their
Speaker 1: offense was really bad and it became a big problem
Speaker 1: for them. They actually won on their defense as they
Speaker 1: made that Western Conference Finals run. Would go into the
Speaker 1: following season and Lebron James becomes a forty one percent
Speaker 1: pretty high volume three point shooter. Just that fundamentally changed
Speaker 1: the offense for the Lakers. Right If they can get
Speaker 1: to the point where both Lebron and Ad are hitting
Speaker 1: some of these over the top jump shots with so
Speaker 1: much other physical imposition they can put against other teams,
Speaker 1: that would be a huge ceiling raizer for this team.
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing to me, though, is that Lebron
Speaker 1: and Ad have been basically awesome for all of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. I expected them to be awesome. Go look
Speaker 1: at their numbers. Just go look for the final forty
Speaker 1: six games the last year's regular season, when the Lakers
Speaker 1: were the fourth best record in the league and the
Speaker 1: third best offense. Lebron and AD were consistently awesome. And
Speaker 1: then they were awesome with Team USA. They were awesome
Speaker 1: in the Nugget series. That series was lost on the
Speaker 1: margins and with some issues with some role player matchups.
Speaker 1: Lebron and AD were awesome in that series. Lebron and
Speaker 1: Ad are awesome. It's a huge part of why I'm
Speaker 1: high on this team. What I'm specifically excited about is
Speaker 1: the details that help you win basketball games. I talk
Speaker 1: about this concept all the time on the show. Basketball
Speaker 1: games are one on the margins in many cases, and
Speaker 1: if you do not win or fight in those margins,
Speaker 1: you're setting yourself up to fail. It's like playing with
Speaker 1: an arm tied behind your back. And last year with
Speaker 1: Darvin Ham, there was one margin that the Lakers consistently
Speaker 1: kicked asid in and that was free throw differential, right.
Speaker 1: But aside from that, they were really weak and a
Speaker 1: bunch of the other areas of the game. And so
Speaker 1: one of the specific things I was excited about with
Speaker 1: JJ Reddick was he came in talking about that I
Speaker 1: want to find more opportunities for margin attacking the offensive glass.
Speaker 1: JJ Reddick talks about this concept called limbo, right. It's
Speaker 1: this very simple idea between in that kind of transition
Speaker 1: between a defense to offense. If you're not sprinting back
Speaker 1: in transition defense or you're not crashing the offensive glass,
Speaker 1: you were accomplishing nothing. And there were way too many
Speaker 1: possessions last year where the Lakers were not crashing the
Speaker 1: offensive glass and not getting back transition defense. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of guys getting caught in limbo there, and
Speaker 1: what you saw tonight is like, oh, actually the Lakers
Speaker 1: are pretty big. Rueyjachimura can get downhill in some of
Speaker 1: these corner crashes and secure some of these rebounds. They
Speaker 1: got some athletes out there, why not try to build
Speaker 1: margin there. That was a huge part of the Lakers
Speaker 1: winning the possession battle tonight. They generated fifteen additional possessions
Speaker 1: off of offensive rebounds. Help side defense, the Lakers were
Speaker 1: this weird passive defense last year where it was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna ignore this guy, we're gonna pack the paint,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do these kind of basic concepts. And there's
Speaker 1: the same type of limbo that occurs in help side defense.
Speaker 1: If you're not taking away a shot on the weak
Speaker 1: side or actually helping, you're in limbo. You're not helping anything.
Speaker 1: Look at how much more active the Lakers were in
Speaker 1: passing lanes just by virtue of being in the right spot,
Speaker 1: so that when Minnesota made mistakes, they were making mistakes
Speaker 1: to Laker hands that were in passing lanes as they
Speaker 1: were forcing turnovers and getting out in transition again, won
Speaker 1: the offensive glass battle, nine fewer turnovers, ten more fast
Speaker 1: break points. Those little details. There's a possession in the
Speaker 1: second half, Julius Randall tries to take a shot, smokes
Speaker 1: it falls down or no, he actually made it made
Speaker 1: the layup falls down. Lebron and Ad immediately identify it
Speaker 1: inbound to Lebron. Lebron sprints down the floor, throws a
Speaker 1: love to Jackson Hayes for an easy layup on a
Speaker 1: possession while the Minnesota was down a man. Those are
Speaker 1: little details, little things on the margins that help you
Speaker 1: win basketball games. That is what is the potential for
Speaker 1: this particular team taking what you had last year is
Speaker 1: a strong foundation, which is Lebron and Ad are two
Speaker 1: of the ten best players in the world, and you've
Speaker 1: got a good starting lineup. It's not a perfect starting lineup.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a starting lineup that could contend
Speaker 1: with the best starting lineups in the league. I don't
Speaker 1: think they have enough two way talent. But it's a
Speaker 1: good starting lineup. That's a good foundation. So if you
Speaker 1: can take the thing thing that you struggled with over
Speaker 1: the course of the season, like actually playing your best
Speaker 1: players as much as possible, which was a huge problem
Speaker 1: with Darvin Ham last year. Didn't start playing his best
Speaker 1: players until the second half of the season, and that
Speaker 1: dug them in a hole in the staindings right. Paying
Speaker 1: attention to those details on the margins, like if you're
Speaker 1: just sharp crashing the offensive glass and getting back in
Speaker 1: transition defense and in your help side defense and defensive
Speaker 1: rebounding and all these different situations, you dramatically increase your
Speaker 1: probability of winning basketball games. It's not rocket science. There
Speaker 1: is so much that you can control with your execution.
Speaker 1: This was a huge thing I talked about after that
Speaker 1: WNBA Finals game. Everyone's talking about the officiating. The Liberty
Speaker 1: were the sharper basketball team the entire second half of
Speaker 1: that game. It built them an opportunity to steal a
Speaker 1: game that they had no business winning. And so that's
Speaker 1: the part I'm excited about with JJ Redick in the
Speaker 1: long run, it's just those little details. I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot that they can get better at. Lebron still
Speaker 1: wasn't great tonight. I think he can be better. The
Speaker 1: Lakers were five for thirty from three. I thought they
Speaker 1: generated a lot of really good looks for good shooters
Speaker 1: that did not go down. There were multiple times tonight
Speaker 1: where I'm watching that game where I'm like, Laker should
Speaker 1: be up twenty twenty five right now, and they're they're
Speaker 1: just not making shots.
Speaker 2: I think that the Phoenix.
Speaker 1: Game coming up here on the horizon, a much much
Speaker 1: lighter defensive matchup, could be a game where we see
Speaker 1: the Lakers have a bigger breakout game offensively. One last
Speaker 1: guy I wanted to shout out for the Lakers was
Speaker 1: Ruby Hotcha Mura. I thought, especially in that first half,
Speaker 1: he was just an absolute monster, hitting above the break
Speaker 1: three start the game, multiple offensive rebounds, on corner crashes,
Speaker 1: defensive help rotations. He had a big block on Rudy
Speaker 1: Gobert some other big defensive rebounds. I thought rually looked awesome.
Speaker 1: The Browny stretch, you know, is interesting because I was
Speaker 1: a little nervous because you cram a five minute Brownie
Speaker 1: shift in there or a three minute Brownie shift in there,
Speaker 1: and you go minus eight and you lose a close game.
Speaker 1: It's a really bad look, especially in the Western Conference
Speaker 1: where like the four seed I had home court advantage
Speaker 1: in the first round, was two games better than a
Speaker 1: playing team like that's the nature of the Western Conference.
Speaker 1: You can't afford a trick off games. But I thought
Speaker 1: JJ found a nice time for it. The time in
Speaker 1: the game when the Lakers were up by double figures
Speaker 1: definitely got a little weird. But it just kind of
Speaker 1: felt like the Lakers were laying around this lebron and
Speaker 1: Bronny concept rather than just kind of playing basketball the
Speaker 1: way they had been. But you know, I thought Bronnie
Speaker 1: was fine. He got isoed twice by Julius Randall by
Speaker 1: Anthony Edwards, forced them both into tough, contested mid range
Speaker 1: jump shots. Julius Randall made his, Anthony Edwards missed his.
Speaker 1: I thought he held up fine there. I thought the
Speaker 1: shot that he took on the right wing was a
Speaker 1: good look, he just missed it. Had a decent little
Speaker 1: offensive rebound attempt that Rudy Gobert got. But like as
Speaker 1: far as like a really high pressure like whatever you do,
Speaker 1: don't shit the bed type of situation, I thought Bronnie
Speaker 1: held up pretty well. He looked like a basketball player
Speaker 1: out there. And now you got that out of the way,
Speaker 1: and now Bronnie can get his reps when he has
Speaker 1: opportunities in practice or with the State Ready group, get
Speaker 1: his reps with the G League, and just focus on
Speaker 1: becoming a really good basketball player over the next few
Speaker 1: years and see if he can't turn himself into an
Speaker 1: NBA player that has a meaningful spot in a rotation
Speaker 1: on the Wolves front. You know, and this is something
Speaker 1: I want to keep in mind for both the Wolves
Speaker 1: and the Knicks. These are dramatically different basketball teams now
Speaker 1: in terms of their playing style. Dante DiVincenzo is like
Speaker 1: an entirely different weapon that you have to incorporate. By
Speaker 1: the way, I thought Dante was amazing tonight. So many
Speaker 1: big defensive plays, little rotations, deflections here and there. His
Speaker 1: ball pressure on d Lo really changed the pace of
Speaker 1: the game in the second half of this one. His
Speaker 1: shooting it's like he's open. It just feels like it's
Speaker 1: going in every single time. He's just going to be
Speaker 1: a monster for this team. That's like that kind of
Speaker 1: guy is just so easy to plug in. It's just
Speaker 1: not an issue. But Julius Randall is just a fundamentally
Speaker 1: different type of basketball player than Karl Anthony Towns. Like
Speaker 1: you could literally feel the dynamic at play where was
Speaker 1: like Ant didn't really know when to be aggressive in
Speaker 1: the second of like once the Lakers went up double
Speaker 1: digits and just said, screw it, I'm putting everything up,
Speaker 1: and he started just being super aggressive. But like to
Speaker 1: start the game, he didn't really know when to attack.
Speaker 1: Julius Randall didn't really know when to attack. You could
Speaker 1: tell that Julius in particular didn't know what to do
Speaker 1: when he was off the ball.
Speaker 2: It just looked really clunky.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, like we're talking about in tonight's matchups,
Speaker 1: two different types of teams. Obviously, Boston's way better than
Speaker 1: the Lakers, but Boston is an established team that is
Speaker 1: bringing back the exact same roster from last year, and
Speaker 1: their core guys, guys like Jaylen Brown, Drew holl excuse me,
Speaker 1: Jaylen Brown, Jason Tatum, and Al Horford have been together
Speaker 1: for many years. Derek White's already been there for two
Speaker 1: full years. That like they've got a lot of continuity.
Speaker 1: Right on the Lakers front, it's literally the same roster
Speaker 1: as last year with a couple of young guys coming
Speaker 1: in for some bench veterans, right, but like it's the
Speaker 1: same group of guys from last year. Yeah, there's some
Speaker 1: new things that JJ Reddick is plugging in, but it's
Speaker 1: a lot of the same. Right, So you've got two
Speaker 1: teams that know exactly how they want to play, that
Speaker 1: are going in and unleashing this kind of known commodity.
Speaker 1: And then you've got two teams that a month before
Speaker 1: the start of the regular season fundamentally altered everything about
Speaker 1: what they do. And so, like, I don't really want
Speaker 1: to get into the let's have sweeping declarations about the Wolves, like, oh,
Speaker 1: they butchered everything we talked about this this summer. They
Speaker 1: needed to like I shouldn't say they needed They wanted
Speaker 1: to build more cat flexibility. By virtue of gaining that
Speaker 1: cat flexibility, they took a risk by bringing in Devincenzo
Speaker 1: and Randall. Everyone knew is a risk. I promise you.
Speaker 1: The Wolves knew. I promise you the Wolves front office
Speaker 1: deep down new. There's a version of this where we're worse,
Speaker 1: but there's also a version of this where we're better,
Speaker 1: and it's going to take time to figure out. It's
Speaker 1: going to take a lot of time. Julius in particular,
Speaker 1: because he's a little bit of a ball stopper, and
Speaker 1: you can tell he's just he's not like that, just
Speaker 1: a super fluid, connective piece alongside other basketball players. It's
Speaker 1: gonna take some time for to include incorporate Julius Randall.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if the Wolves don't really hit
Speaker 1: the gas in terms of like hitting their ceiling as
Speaker 1: a team until the second half of the year. It's
Speaker 1: possible that they're middling in that four or five six
Speaker 1: range by the time we get to mid December. It's very,
Speaker 1: very possible that that's the case. And that's to me,
Speaker 1: is not some sort of, you know, a tombstone for
Speaker 1: the Minnesota Timberwolves. There's a lot of time for us
Speaker 1: to figure out what this team is capable of. They
Speaker 1: also just for kind of sloppy tonight, Like this was
Speaker 1: a team that was a top ten rebounding team last year.
Speaker 1: Julius Randall is a better rebounder than Karl Anthony Towns.
Speaker 1: They just didn't rebound well tonight. Those corner crashes like
Speaker 1: there's a battle that takes place there. It's like as
Speaker 1: the dudes crashing out of the corner, the guy who's
Speaker 1: guarding him has to box them out coming from the corner.
Speaker 2: Or those guys.
Speaker 1: A lot of teams will just have those guys hard
Speaker 1: crash instead of boxing out themselves and just go high
Speaker 1: point the basketball somewhere. They didn't do a very good
Speaker 1: job right, and a lot of turnovers, like one of
Speaker 1: the classic signs that you see of a team that
Speaker 1: is still learning how to play together as turnovers, because
Speaker 1: they are making passing raids that are not second nature.
Speaker 1: They're making passing raids that aren't just like something they've
Speaker 1: been doing for years with that particular unit, and it
Speaker 1: can lead to some sloppiness. So again, I don't want
Speaker 1: to overreact to that sort of thing. I think the
Speaker 1: Dante DiVincenzo fit is perfect. You still saw what we
Speaker 1: know the Wolves can do there. This is a very
Speaker 1: good Laker offense. Mind you, they didn't shoot the ball well,
Speaker 1: but like in that second half, you saw what the
Speaker 1: Wolves do to everybody when they really tighten the screws
Speaker 1: on the perimeter. It's like, ah shit, like we can
Speaker 1: barely get the ball up the floor, and we can
Speaker 1: barely get into our sets. When the Wolves were throwing
Speaker 1: that punch, it was Ad who saved the day by
Speaker 1: just kind of squeezing points out of there with his greatness,
Speaker 1: but like the ceiling is still in there. The team
Speaker 1: is going to be very good. It's just going to
Speaker 1: take some time for them to figure things out. And
Speaker 1: on the upside, I've on Aunt looked for the most
Speaker 1: part great again. He got in the second half, we
Speaker 1: started forcing the issue a lot, and so obviously the
Speaker 1: shooting percentages aren't gonna look great, but i mean hit
Speaker 1: a lot of jump shots tonight. Again, that's a big
Speaker 1: thing I'm gonna be keeping an eye on as we're
Speaker 1: tracking him throughout the rest of the season, is just
Speaker 1: if this jump shooting, you know, improvement from him is real.
Speaker 1: It's such an exciting thing for the potential of this
Speaker 1: team in the long run because it's one of the
Speaker 1: most dynamic downhill athletes that we have in this league.
Speaker 1: There's play in the second half tonight where he just
Speaker 1: cleanly toasted Anthony Davis off the dribble for a layup.
Speaker 1: He's just still such a dynamic downhill athlete. But yeah,
Speaker 1: let's not overreact to anything with the Wolves. Want to
Speaker 1: see a lot more opportunity for them to kind of
Speaker 1: just learn how to play with each other. It's gonna
Speaker 1: take a few months for us to really see what
Speaker 1: they're capable of New York and Boston. Boston is perfected
Speaker 1: modern basketball. It was a very simple concept that they
Speaker 1: were unleashing tonight in order to generate all these quality threes.
Speaker 1: They generated twenty threes that were catching shoot threes that
Speaker 1: Synergy logged as uncontested, and they got over one point
Speaker 1: six points per attempt on those shots. It all stems
Speaker 1: from a very basic concept. They want to create a
Speaker 1: weak side two on one, meaning like where you have
Speaker 1: a shooter on the wing, shooter on the corner with
Speaker 1: one defender that's kind of splitting the difference between those two.
Speaker 1: And they do that with a bunch of different ways.
Speaker 1: They usually find a matchup that they can hunt or
Speaker 1: an action that they can run that either brings two
Speaker 1: to the ball or brings the low man over from there.
Speaker 1: It's very basic, and they just play their driving kick.
Speaker 1: In this particular game, it was two actions that they
Speaker 1: were consistently running. And this is something that we talked
Speaker 1: about in when we talked about the Knicks and what
Speaker 1: they could potentially look like this year. The two things
Speaker 1: that concerned me were Brunson and kat in the starting lineup. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they use some really dynamic defensive talent between those guys.
Speaker 1: But those two guys, Brunson's gonna hedge and recover. That
Speaker 1: means put two on the ball for a second, and
Speaker 1: Karl Anthony Towns is gonna run some variation of a
Speaker 1: drop coverage and so consistently in this game, they'd bring
Speaker 1: Brunson's man over to set a screen and they'd have
Speaker 1: I think it was Derek White, Derek Whiter, Drew Holliday,
Speaker 1: whoever's on him slip out of it, because again the hedge.
Speaker 1: The idea with the hedge is like, Okay, Tatum's got
Speaker 1: the ball, we have Derek White come set the screen.
Speaker 1: If Jalen Brunson just runs up with him, Tatum's going
Speaker 1: right downhill to the rim, probably dunkin on somebody, especially
Speaker 1: with your five out spacing, and there's nobody underneath the rim, right,
Speaker 1: so Brunson has to cut off the driving lane. If
Speaker 1: he hedges out to cut off the driving lane, then
Speaker 1: Derek White can slip out of it. Tatum throws that
Speaker 1: little pass over the top. Now we're in our week
Speaker 1: side two on one right, Carl Anthony Towns. This is
Speaker 1: a big part in the early part of the game,
Speaker 1: Tatum's first three really really deep drop coverage from Karl
Speaker 1: Anthony Towns. Tatum comes right off and hits the shot.
Speaker 1: There were like four baskets that Boston got in the
Speaker 1: opening minutes on plays where Kat was sagging really far back.
Speaker 1: And then in the later portions of the game, Kat
Speaker 1: started to come out to the level, but once again
Speaker 1: they were doing it as a drop coverage, so he'd
Speaker 1: show at the level, but the guard would still be
Speaker 1: chasing over the top two on the ball. Now that
Speaker 1: there's two on the ball, we have our week side
Speaker 1: two on one right, and from that week side two
Speaker 1: on one, Boston is just the best team in the
Speaker 1: league of getting the ball to the guy that can
Speaker 1: be the decision maker who can then make that kickout
Speaker 1: pass to the shooter on the weak side. There's three
Speaker 1: major elements to it. There's the driver as the decision maker,
Speaker 1: off ball spacing like making sure you're always in a
Speaker 1: spot that make help defenders make a decision. Way too
Speaker 1: often in the NBA, you will see teams when they
Speaker 1: get sloppy as the driving kick gets going, guys will
Speaker 1: stand too close to each other, they'll end up in
Speaker 1: the same spot and like all of a sudden, you
Speaker 1: make yourself easy to guard. Those spacing principles are critical.
Speaker 1: It's not just five out either. Boston will have guards
Speaker 1: and bigs cut along the baseline. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: this a constantly churning machine where guys always know like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this guy's driving and he's gonna be coming out to
Speaker 1: the corner. That means I need to relocate up here
Speaker 1: to the wing, and this guy might need to cut through.
Speaker 1: Like there's all these different, like little spacing dynamics that
Speaker 1: they're great at. Right, So the driver is the decision
Speaker 1: maker off ball spacing and then elite shot making ability.
Speaker 1: Eighteen of the Celtics catch and shoot threes in this
Speaker 1: game in this game were guarded, and they still got
Speaker 1: one point seven points per attempt on those shots. Because
Speaker 1: elite shooters, it doesn't matter if the hand comes in late.
Speaker 1: As soon as they catch and they get their rhythm,
Speaker 1: they don't even see that hand. The only way you're
Speaker 1: really bothering them is if you can bother the shooting
Speaker 1: pocket or bother their base. And what's interesting to me
Speaker 1: is all those concepts feed into each other and it
Speaker 1: just kind of goes off the rails right, like elite
Speaker 1: shooting creates hard closeouts. Hard closeouts make for easier drives.
Speaker 1: Drives to the rim, create those week side two on
Speaker 1: ones in proper spacing and good decision making gets the
Speaker 1: ball to the open man. That's where the elite shooting
Speaker 1: comes back game as these guys are knocking these shots down,
Speaker 1: Like it's so interesting, because like there's a conversation to have.
Speaker 2: I've been talking.
Speaker 1: There were fifteen teams in preseason, fifteen teams that attempted
Speaker 1: over forty threes per game. There's a conversation to have
Speaker 1: about three point shooting in the NBA and if it's
Speaker 1: a good television product to just drive up the ball
Speaker 1: and take threes. But it's not about Boston. Boston plays
Speaker 1: beautiful team basketball that generates lots of quality three point shots,
Speaker 1: and it honestly is fun to watch. It's the teams
Speaker 1: that just take threes for the sake of taking threes
Speaker 1: that's when it turns into ugly basketball. We're gonna see
Speaker 1: a lot of teams this year try to mimic Boston.
Speaker 1: In the coming years, it'll probably get worse and worse.
Speaker 1: And if you don't do it the right way, you
Speaker 1: won't get the results and it will look ugly. And
Speaker 1: so I think it's interesting to me because everyone talks
Speaker 1: about Boston and them being this like high volume three
Speaker 1: point shooting team, but it goes so much deeper than
Speaker 1: that to the process. They have such a beautiful process
Speaker 1: for generating elite catch and shoot opportunities for elite shooters,
Speaker 1: and they just that is what makes this team so
Speaker 1: difficult to guard. Tatum was absolutely amazing. One of my
Speaker 1: big predictions for this year, if you guys remember, is
Speaker 1: like his shooting slump was real, the real shooting slump
Speaker 1: that lasted the entire postseason and the Team USA experience.
Speaker 1: But I consistently said, it's just a slump. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of talk about go to Tatum, get too buff. No,
Speaker 1: he didn't get too buff.
Speaker 2: Buff.
Speaker 1: Dudes have been making jump shots forever. That that's ridiculous,
Speaker 1: Like it's not about putting on muscle, it's about like
Speaker 1: sometimes you can enter it, like that jump shooting is hard.
Speaker 1: You can shoot thousands and thousands and thousands of reps
Speaker 1: over months and months and months and then go three
Speaker 1: for seventeen in your first three games, Like it is
Speaker 1: a mind fuck and so it is possible to enter
Speaker 1: into slumps where you start to overthink your shot and
Speaker 1: it just kind of expands on itself and it becomes
Speaker 1: worse and worse and worse, And like Tatum has just
Speaker 1: been too good of a jump shooter for too long
Speaker 1: for it to be any more than just an actual slump. Well,
Speaker 1: how about eight for eleven from three tonight. How about
Speaker 1: ten for thirteen on jump shots overall? He had one
Speaker 1: game all year last year where he made eight threes.
Speaker 1: He hit eight jump shots just off the dribble. He
Speaker 1: was eight for ten on off the dribble jump shots.
Speaker 1: That's about as resounding of a you bet your ass
Speaker 1: I can shoot the basketball type of statement from Tatum
Speaker 1: that you could see. Again, super small sample size, but
Speaker 1: that's some of the best jump shooting we've ever seen
Speaker 1: from Jason Tatum. One of the most common mail bag
Speaker 1: questions I got this summer was like, Okay, so Jason
Speaker 1: Tatum is not considered one of the top tier superstars.
Speaker 2: In the league.
Speaker 1: What does he need to do? What can he do
Speaker 1: to enter into that tier? This is certainly one way
Speaker 1: to do it. If he can become a guy who
Speaker 1: is truly deadly with the jump shot, both off the
Speaker 1: catch and off the dribble and off of movement off
Speaker 1: the catch, then he enters into that tier. So let's
Speaker 1: keep an eye on it over the course of the
Speaker 1: beginning of the season and see just how much of
Speaker 1: a leap he can take there. This is a guy
Speaker 1: that has never been able to go in recent years.
Speaker 1: He's he's like three or four years in a row
Speaker 1: where he's been below a point per possession on pull
Speaker 1: up jump shots. If he gets set up to like
Speaker 1: one point zero five one point one points per attempt
Speaker 1: on volume and he's hitting threes off the move and
Speaker 1: that sort of thing like that would be a massive
Speaker 1: ceiling razer for him because he's just so damn tall,
Speaker 1: and especially in this system. I mean, you saw there
Speaker 1: was a play in the first half where he had
Speaker 1: like a drive against Josh Hart, just easy, breezy, little
Speaker 1: left handed drive for Lea. This team creates so much space,
Speaker 1: you're gonna see teams go like, Okay, we need to
Speaker 1: stay home off the ball, and that's where those opportunities
Speaker 1: for him to drive to the basket will be there.
Speaker 1: But the better he is as a pull up shooter,
Speaker 1: the more those guys have to be on their toes
Speaker 1: to contest, which creates easier opportunities to blow by them
Speaker 1: off the dribble. Just a resounding statement from Jason Tatum.
Speaker 1: Super super excited to see how much of this is real.
Speaker 1: Over the course of this season, every starter was awesome
Speaker 1: for Boston. They were combined twenty six for forty one
Speaker 1: from three. We talked about margins for the Lakers. The
Speaker 1: Celtics dominated the margins in this game. Did a really
Speaker 1: good job of chasing the Knicks off the three point line.
Speaker 1: Like we talked so much about three point volume, that's
Speaker 1: two sides of the floor. If you take a million threes,
Speaker 1: that's great, but if you give up a million threes,
Speaker 1: you're gonna lose. And they just did a really nice
Speaker 1: job of chasing the Knicks off the line. They held
Speaker 1: him to only thirty three point attempts. Like the Knicks
Speaker 1: actually shot fifty five percent from the field in this game,
Speaker 1: but because they chased him off the three point line,
Speaker 1: they kept him off the offensive glass only five offensive rebounds.
Speaker 1: They Boston took care of the basketball so which prevented
Speaker 1: any sort of live ball turnover situations. They had just
Speaker 1: four turnovers. They allowed only four fast break points for
Speaker 1: the Knicks. They dominated the margins. It was like a
Speaker 1: complete and total outclassing of the Knicks that we saw
Speaker 1: from Boston tonight. Again, above and beyond anything having to
Speaker 1: do with shot making, the Celtics just looked like a
Speaker 1: sharper basketball team tonight. And that's the scary part on
Speaker 1: the Knicks front. Again, similar to what I talked about
Speaker 1: with the Wolves. I don't care about the offensive end.
Speaker 1: It's basically a brand new basketball team. There's no Devincenzo,
Speaker 1: there's no Randall, there's no Mitchell Robinson. Think about how
Speaker 1: much Isaiah Hartenstein was a cog for them in their
Speaker 1: five out attack last year. Isaiah Hartenstein, like you're gonna
Speaker 1: see him with the thunder this year when his hand heels,
Speaker 1: that dude is a He just greases the wheels for
Speaker 1: those five out offenses and not having in there as
Speaker 1: a change. Adding McHale Bridges, adding Karl Anthony Towns, you
Speaker 1: can tell, especially the Karl Anthony Towns, oh Gannnobi and
Speaker 1: mchal Bridges, all of them don't really know when to
Speaker 1: be aggressive or when to keep the ball moving. Like
Speaker 1: you can tell they're still feeling out like their order
Speaker 1: of operations on offense, that's guaranteed to lead to super
Speaker 1: inconsistent and sloppy play over the first few months. Same
Speaker 1: goes for Minnesota. So I don't really want to have
Speaker 1: any sort of sweeping declarations about either of these teams
Speaker 1: until we get out a minimum like twenty games into this.
Speaker 1: It's gonna take some time for them to figure it out.
Speaker 1: McKale Bridges made some bizarre tweak to his shooting form
Speaker 1: and he hasn't shot the ball well at all since
Speaker 1: it started training camp. He is two for sixteen on
Speaker 1: catching choot jump shots in preseason, two for seven from
Speaker 1: three to night. Again, I think they'll be fine, but
Speaker 1: just give them time. I was really disappointed in their
Speaker 1: defensive effort though. They did a terrible job of containing
Speaker 1: the ball, which is like a death sentence against I
Speaker 1: talked about it earlier. Karl Anthony Towns was way too
Speaker 1: passive and his help and drop situations to start the
Speaker 1: game just sitting back in the paint. That won't work
Speaker 1: against Boston either. I thought their rotations were slow, they
Speaker 1: got killed on the glass, and it was disappointing because,
Speaker 1: like you built this team to contend with Boston. So like,
Speaker 1: even with you adding all this talent, you're still at
Speaker 1: a talent disadvantage. What did I say in the season preview?
Speaker 1: If you guys remember I said to me the Knicks
Speaker 1: are basically a lesser version of the Celtics. Yes, Jalen
Speaker 1: Brunson is better than any of their guards, but Brunson,
Speaker 1: Josh Hart or Brunsonduce McBride is not that much better
Speaker 1: than Derek White and Drew Holliday. And when you factor
Speaker 1: in their defensive contributions, you could argue it's close to
Speaker 1: even ognnob Michal Bridge is really damn good basketball players,
Speaker 1: They're not as good as Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum.
Speaker 1: Like I personally think, even though kat If I was
Speaker 1: starting a franchise with, he's a better basketball player than
Speaker 1: Christaps Porzingis, but within these roles on these teams, because
Speaker 1: Porzingis has better rimp protector, because Porzingis is nearly as
Speaker 1: good as an above the breakshooter, because Porzingis can post
Speaker 1: mismatches and score so well, Porzingis is every bit as
Speaker 1: good as as Cat, if not even better, in his
Speaker 1: specific role on these teams. So like I was having
Speaker 1: a hard time conceptualizing anyway for the Knicks to beat
Speaker 1: Boston anyway. But you're already at a disadvantage. You can't
Speaker 1: afford to also be the sloppier team. And that's the
Speaker 1: disappointing part is it's not like you went in there
Speaker 1: and Boston shot your face off and you lost by fifteen.
Speaker 1: But you played a great game. You played an awful
Speaker 1: basketball game. But it is very early. I'd just like
Speaker 1: to see when teams are locked in to start the year,
Speaker 1: because to me, that's an indicator of how serious you are.
Speaker 1: But it's definitely a disappointing start to the season for
Speaker 1: the Knicks. I will be covering both of these games
Speaker 1: in more detailed tomorrow in an episode of TIMPs tape
Speaker 1: that probably won't be on the podcast feed, that will
Speaker 1: probably just be on YouTube. But I'm gonna wake up
Speaker 1: tomorrow morning, I'm gonna rewatch both games, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put together a bunch of film and we're gonna get
Speaker 1: into more detail on these concepts. So make sure you
Speaker 1: guys check out the YouTube feed. That's all I have
Speaker 1: for tonight.
Speaker 2: Oops.
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Speaker 1: All right, guys, That's all I have for tonight. Is
Speaker 1: always as sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show.
Speaker 1: I'm stoke that we're starting this season back up. We're
Speaker 1: not going live tomorrow night, but we will be going
Speaker 1: live on Thursday night and I will be covering Wednesday
Speaker 1: night's games and Thursday Morning show.
Speaker 2: As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys re support me.
Speaker 2: See you guys tomorrow the volume.
Speaker 1: What's up?
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Speaker 1: As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting
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