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Speaker 1: All right, welcome to hoops tonight. You're at the ball,
Speaker 1: You'm having playoffs. Everybody happy Saturday as well. We had
Speaker 1: a jam packed slate tonight. My Lakers late a total
Speaker 1: lag at the tail end of the slate. We're gonna
Speaker 1: be leading with that one. But We're gonna hit all
Speaker 1: four games from tonight's slate. Lots of interesting stuff to
Speaker 1: get into. We're officially in the grind. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: doing film breakdowns in the morning. This is the fun part.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to be here. You guys know the Joe
Speaker 1: before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels.
Speaker 1: You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at underscore Jason lt so you guys don't
Speaker 1: miss show announcements. Forget about a podcast feed wherever you
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Speaker 1: helpful if you leave a rating and a review on
Speaker 1: that front. Jackson's doing great work on our social media
Speaker 1: feeds Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Make sure you guys get
Speaker 1: over there to get additional content throughout the year. And then,
Speaker 1: last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the
Speaker 1: YouTube comments. Will still get to a mailbag about once
Speaker 1: a week throughout the remainder of the playoffs. All right,
Speaker 1: let's talk some basketball. So I thought the Wolves threw
Speaker 1: an awesome punch tonight. Every one of these series that
Speaker 1: I've been picking, all of the teams are capable of
Speaker 1: winning The only series where I see like absolutely no
Speaker 1: path are the Orlando Magic over Boston and the two
Speaker 1: one eights. I think even though I've picked certain teams
Speaker 1: to win every series, every team is capable of beating
Speaker 1: that pick, so to speak. And that's why I talked
Speaker 1: a lot about the swing factors in every series, the
Speaker 1: specific things where hey, if this matchup goes one way
Speaker 1: or another. A classic example tonight in the Pacers Bucks game, like,
Speaker 1: I talked a lot about Miles Turner and brook Lopez,
Speaker 1: these two stretch bigs, and if one of them just
Speaker 1: badly outplayed the other could have a huge impact in
Speaker 1: the game. Miles Turner kicked Brook lopez'z butt tonight. It
Speaker 1: was a huge part of how the Pacers controlled that game.
Speaker 1: Every single swing factor that I discussed for the Timberwolves
Speaker 1: Lakers series went the Timberwolves way tonight, and what I
Speaker 1: thought was an ass kicking. I thought that was quite embarrassing.
Speaker 1: I sympathized with JJ Reddick in his early fourth quarter
Speaker 1: press conferences. He just you could just tell He's like,
Speaker 1: it ain't about schematics, We're just getting punked out here.
Speaker 1: And I thought the Wolves absolutely punked the Lakers tonight
Speaker 1: the first swing factor I discussed Ants playmaking. We all
Speaker 1: knew that the Laker defense since the Lukadancic acquisition and
Speaker 1: really dating all the way back to Anthony Davis's injury,
Speaker 1: has been geared around, you know, loading in the paint, swarming,
Speaker 1: a lot of stunting, a lot of helping, a lot
Speaker 1: of forcing teams to beat you by breaking you down
Speaker 1: with the pass. And one of the big things I
Speaker 1: talked about is if Ant goes into the series and
Speaker 1: he just tries to force his way through everybody, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna go well. But if he just takes these
Speaker 1: simple basic reads that are there, it could be the
Speaker 1: first domino in a much better offensive performance for the
Speaker 1: Timberwolves as they take control of the series. He was
Speaker 1: awesome all night tonight, not even just making simple swing
Speaker 1: passes like oh, you're sitting down off of the strong
Speaker 1: side corner off of nas Reed, like I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: throw a pass there, Like oh, you're gonna double teamy
Speaker 1: as I'm about to turn around over my left shoulder
Speaker 1: and take like an impossible fade away. Sure, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna drop it off to Julius Randall. Why would I
Speaker 1: take this super hard fade away, just taking every easy
Speaker 1: shot that came to him. Did you notice he didn't
Speaker 1: take any threes in the early part of the game.
Speaker 1: He wasn't trying to force the issue. He was just
Speaker 1: trying to take what the game delivered to him. And
Speaker 1: I just thought he had one of his better like
Speaker 1: floor general type of just control the flow of the
Speaker 1: game type of games that I've seen Anthony Edwards play.
Speaker 1: And if we remember, dating back to the parts of
Speaker 1: the Timberwolve excuse me, the Nugget series last year where
Speaker 1: it went south, it was a lot of that sort
Speaker 1: of thing Aunt struggling to solve the puzzle to the
Speaker 1: Dallas series, Ant struggling to solve the puzzle. Now, one
Speaker 1: of the things we talked about, the lack of rim
Speaker 1: protection is a big part of how he was able
Speaker 1: to do what he did to Phoenix and Denver and
Speaker 1: what he did to the Lakers tonight compared to Dallas.
Speaker 1: But still the swarming aspect still required him to make
Speaker 1: a lot of good decisions tonight, and he just made
Speaker 1: a lot of good decisions if Aunt plays like that
Speaker 1: for the rest of the series. Just strictly talking about
Speaker 1: decision making, because there's a lot of other factors we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about that will go the other way, Like
Speaker 1: I don't think Jaden McDaniels is going to outplay Austin
Speaker 1: Reeves for the entire series, Like there's gonna be games
Speaker 1: where you know, Jaden goes oh for three from three
Speaker 1: and Austin has twenty seven points. There are certain things
Speaker 1: that are gonna swing different, very different directions. But if
Speaker 1: ant can control just as decision making throughout the series,
Speaker 1: that's gonna give the Wolves a very good chance to win.
Speaker 1: Because even though there was crazy shooting, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about that in a minute, a lot of them were
Speaker 1: really good looks, and even streaky shooters, if they're given repeated,
Speaker 1: continued opportunities at getting comfortable, comfortable behind the three point line,
Speaker 1: they're gonna make shots. Second big swing factor lay role
Speaker 1: player shooting. When the Wolves pulled their starters, or I
Speaker 1: should say when the Lakers pulled their starters, the Wolves
Speaker 1: had finished to that point in the game twenty one
Speaker 1: for forty one from three, over twenty made threes and
Speaker 1: over fifty percent really impressive shooting every like streaky Wolves
Speaker 1: shooter that you're counting on missing shots. Was hitting Julius
Speaker 1: Randall four for six from three, Jaden McDaniels three for
Speaker 1: three from three. The Nas Reid threes I thought were
Speaker 1: entirely on jj Reddick. I thought that was a really
Speaker 1: poor bit of their game plan in this game. They
Speaker 1: were consistently helping off of him, and I just think
Speaker 1: Nas is too good of a shooter to be one
Speaker 1: of the guys that you're gapping so significant, so significantly
Speaker 1: off of, and a lot of Luka Doncic in those
Speaker 1: sorts of possessions just getting caught way down on the
Speaker 1: block for easy little kickouts to Nazri. That's a game
Speaker 1: plan thing that they've got to clean up. But the
Speaker 1: stuff like you gotta if you're gonna guard Anthony Edwards,
Speaker 1: if you're the Lakers, you kind of have to live
Speaker 1: with Jaden McDaniels taking some moderately contested threes, Julius Randall
Speaker 1: taking some moderately contested threes, and to their credit, they
Speaker 1: went seven for nine tonight. They just made them. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the key guys for the Lakers that are part of
Speaker 1: their five out spacing groups Ruey Hachimura, Dorian Finney, Smith,
Speaker 1: and gave Vincent a combined four for thirteen from three
Speaker 1: role players. Shoot skewed heavily towards Minnesota. Now, I want
Speaker 1: to be clear, especially when we talk more Lakers later
Speaker 1: in the show, that is not a factor that you
Speaker 1: can just sit there and just go I hope this changes.
Speaker 1: I talk about this all the time. Variance plays a
Speaker 1: role in shot resulting games, but it's a much smaller
Speaker 1: role than people are willing to give it credit. I
Speaker 1: know it's easier to just pretend it's like some math
Speaker 1: equation that can spit out a shot value number for us,
Speaker 1: But the truth of the matter is is these things
Speaker 1: are all intricately connected. Like you know, one of the
Speaker 1: big takeaways that I have from this team is that
Speaker 1: the Wolves, and dating even back to last year's postseason,
Speaker 1: they kind of have this like momentous avalanche feel to
Speaker 1: them when they get that part of their game going,
Speaker 1: and they're super confident and frankly, I think if the
Speaker 1: Lakers are just hoping those guys will miss, it could
Speaker 1: go poorly. You have to play them into misses by
Speaker 1: controlling different factors of the game.
Speaker 2: The third factor.
Speaker 1: I talked a lot about how Lebron and Austin when
Speaker 1: need to score the ball, like I'm not worried about Luca,
Speaker 1: like Luca's Luca figured it out tonight like he usually
Speaker 1: does against the timber Wolves to score at volume inefficiently.
Speaker 1: But Lebron and Austin are going to have to bring
Speaker 1: that level of shot creation themselves. Maybe not quite that level,
Speaker 1: but they need to be reliable. The two of them
Speaker 1: thirty five points combined on thirty one shots combined. That's
Speaker 1: just not going to cut it. Another massive swing factor
Speaker 1: that went towards Minnesota. I talked about how one of
Speaker 1: the biggest pathways for Minnesota to win the series would
Speaker 1: be defense to transition. They won the fast break points
Speaker 1: battle tonight twenty five to six. There was an early
Speaker 1: second quarter stretch as I'm banging in my head into
Speaker 1: the wall watching Ruey Hachemura and Lebron James repeatedly try
Speaker 1: to score at the rim on Rudy Gobert and nas Reed,
Speaker 1: which was driving me insane. But as they're doing that,
Speaker 1: they're making these mistakes that are leading to these runout opportunities,
Speaker 1: and it's just easy runout, not forcing it at the
Speaker 1: rim and transition, but taking the easy kickouts to the
Speaker 1: corner that were there guys running their lanes to make
Speaker 1: sure that their outlets In transition, everything went towards Minnesota
Speaker 1: and they kicked their ass pretty much. The only positive
Speaker 1: in the game for the Lakers was that Luca was
Speaker 1: able to score, and even then, I thought the Wolves
Speaker 1: did a good job of avoiding the wide open completely
Speaker 1: unguarded threes through ball pressure and closeouts. A couple of
Speaker 1: specific things I talked game plan before the series, how
Speaker 1: I thought the Wolves should switch with their fives for
Speaker 1: the most part in this game, they switched with their fives.
Speaker 1: That was another way they stayed out of rotation. Ball
Speaker 1: pressure on Luca so that his kickouts are not You
Speaker 1: saw that last one that he fired out of bounds.
Speaker 1: I think Luca had five turnovers in the game. A
Speaker 1: big part of those turnovers is when Luca gets two
Speaker 1: to the ball pressure him like hell so that he
Speaker 1: has a hard time finding a passing angle to get
Speaker 1: a ball out to a specific spot on the floor.
Speaker 1: Like you know, I talked to different fans of different teams.
Speaker 1: It's a big part of how I get perspective from
Speaker 1: people who root for a team every single night. I've
Speaker 1: always found. I just know this from personal experience. I
Speaker 1: have a understanding of this Lakers team as someone who
Speaker 1: has rooted for them every single.
Speaker 2: Night for the last several years.
Speaker 1: That you get intimately from being that type of fan, right,
Speaker 1: And so I was talking to a Wolves fan buddy
Speaker 1: of mine before the series, and one of the things
Speaker 1: he was talking about is like, just why Wolves fans
Speaker 1: feel so confident, And one of the things he talked
Speaker 1: about was, like, it's hard for us not to after
Speaker 1: everyone told us we were gonna lose the Phoenix, and
Speaker 1: he's not wrong. And that's really that momentous athletic avalanche
Speaker 1: thing that I'm talking about, Like there is an identity
Speaker 1: that this Wolves team has. I talked about it a
Speaker 1: little bit in the regular season. It was a big
Speaker 1: part of why Minnesota to me, was like a legitimate
Speaker 1: long shot contender relative to what their position was in
Speaker 1: the standings. The Timberwolves had the ability in the postseason
Speaker 1: to scale up athletically. Every team does to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: But what's weird with Minnesota is like it takes on
Speaker 1: this like confidence. It starts from Ant and flows outwards
Speaker 1: to the rest of the team. They're all having a
Speaker 1: great time just whooping your ass running up and down
Speaker 1: the floor, and like they are again, I think there
Speaker 1: is a real, a real problem here for the Lakers
Speaker 1: that they have to address. And I think the last
Speaker 1: thing I want to say in the Wolves before we
Speaker 1: get to some specific game plan stuff that the Lakers
Speaker 1: can do to try to regain control Jada McDaniels. He,
Speaker 1: you know, showed the job he did tonight was different
Speaker 1: than the job we've seen him do for the most
Speaker 1: part in his time in a Timberwolves jersey. He's had
Speaker 1: games like that before. I don't want to pretend like
Speaker 1: he's never done that before, but there's a difference between
Speaker 1: a D and three wing, meaning a wing whose job
Speaker 1: it is to guard the other team's best player who's
Speaker 1: gonna get concession three point shots on the other end
Speaker 1: of the floor, and he just kind of has to
Speaker 1: knock down thirty five percent of him and just you know,
Speaker 1: make basic reads and blah blah blah. There's another layer
Speaker 1: to that position when you can legitimately score the basketball.
Speaker 1: This is where it comes into the role that I've
Speaker 1: discussed a lot this year, which is the weak side
Speaker 1: scoring forward. If you can do like what Jaden was
Speaker 1: doing in this game, like driving closeouts and swallowing through
Speaker 1: guys with eurosteps for floaters in the lane. He had
Speaker 1: another one where he drove a Dorian Finney Smith close
Speaker 1: out off the left corner and got into Luca's chest
Speaker 1: and had a layup right at the basket. Those sorts
Speaker 1: of like aggressive scoring moves in conjunction with being three
Speaker 1: for three from three, in conjunction with bringing transition scoring.
Speaker 1: That's the stuff that could make Jaden McDaniels into a
Speaker 1: thirty million dollar player is when you bring that legitimate
Speaker 1: second side scoring piece in addition to the defense. I
Speaker 1: thought he was awesome tonight. The simplest way I could
Speaker 1: describe this game is like, once you get off of Luca,
Speaker 1: Jaden McDaniels and Nas Reed outplayed every other Laker tonight.
Speaker 1: And that's before we even get to other matchups down
Speaker 1: the roster. It was a total ass kicking tip of
Speaker 1: the caps of the Timberwolves. So let's talk some Lakers.
Speaker 1: I'll know everything I need to know about this team
Speaker 1: and about where this series is going. In the first
Speaker 1: half of Game two. I agree with JJ Reddick and
Speaker 1: what he said in the start of the fourth quarter.
Speaker 1: There's certain person like I thought he I thought he
Speaker 1: was doing a little too much blame shifting there by
Speaker 1: saying there's no schematic things that went wrong. You can't
Speaker 1: just be conceding threes to Nasri. That's not a good idea.
Speaker 1: You need to be coaching up your stars to be
Speaker 1: attacking the right types of matchups, like maybe get into
Speaker 1: Ruy and Lebron's ear and tell them to stop trying
Speaker 1: to shoot layups over Rudy Gobert like, there are certain
Speaker 1: things that he could improve, but the majority of this
Speaker 1: game came down to a good old fashioned punking and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really easy to be like, well, we were playing
Speaker 1: regular season basketball. We got to bring the requisite intensity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, but this could turn into last year's first
Speaker 1: round series against the Suns really quickly if you don't
Speaker 1: bring it. I did think the Lakers after like from
Speaker 1: that like late third quarter stretch to the mid fourth quarter,
Speaker 1: they started to fight, but it was too little, too late,
Speaker 1: and Minnesota was in such a groove with their shot
Speaker 1: making that it was just impossible for them to get
Speaker 1: over the hump and Anthony Edwards was hitting turn around
Speaker 1: Fadawase and Julius Randall's hitting turn around Fatawase and they're
Speaker 1: still hitting every damn three they're taking.
Speaker 2: And there's certain there's.
Speaker 1: Certain stuff like that where it's like, that's why you
Speaker 1: got to bring it early in the game. There's a
Speaker 1: certain point where like you try to ratchet up the
Speaker 1: defensive intensity, but these guys are already in a groove
Speaker 1: that they're gonna hit shots, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And like, but there they were at least competing physically
Speaker 1: in that stretch there in the late third to the
Speaker 1: early fourth quarter. But like, the reality is the reason
Speaker 1: why Phoenix lost to Minnesota and sweep last year was
Speaker 1: they got punked in Game one and then they were
Speaker 1: never able to regain control of the situation. There's a
Speaker 1: momentum to the way these things go. There is a
Speaker 1: version of this where it's like, Okay, you compete better physically,
Speaker 1: you don't get punked as much physically at the point
Speaker 1: of attacking on the glass. Several things like that. I
Speaker 1: thought Luca had a bad night on the defensive glass,
Speaker 1: for example, just like standing around while guys were just
Speaker 1: jumping over him to get the ball. Like if everyone
Speaker 1: just competes better, you do a better job making things
Speaker 1: a little bit tougher. Maybe guys miss a few more
Speaker 1: of those threes on the other end of the floor,
Speaker 1: Lebron and Austin, you pick the right types of matchups
Speaker 1: to attack. You do a better job generating shots. You
Speaker 1: stay out of transition, You do a better job executing
Speaker 1: in the half court. Now as that happens, Minnesota's not
Speaker 1: getting into their high octane transition. We're all having the
Speaker 1: time of our lives running and jumping through you type
Speaker 1: of confidence attack. You can derail that a bit, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, it's like we're trapping them
Speaker 1: in the half court. They're not hitting fifty percent of
Speaker 1: their threes. They're hitting thirty eight percent of their threes.
Speaker 1: We're doing a better job on the glass, Lebron, Austin
Speaker 1: and luc A generating better shots. There's a version of
Speaker 1: this where they can regain control of the situation as
Speaker 1: they head into game two, but it starts with all
Speaker 1: of those things. Lebron and Austin have to be better
Speaker 1: in their execution. Everybody has to battle better on the glass,
Speaker 1: battle better at the point of attack, close out sharper.
Speaker 1: The role players do have to be more confident, knocking
Speaker 1: down shots under duress. All of it has to swing
Speaker 1: to stop that Wolve's machine. And like, here's the thing,
Speaker 1: I will know everything I need to know in the
Speaker 1: first half of Game two. If the Lakers are serious,
Speaker 1: if they're serious about accomplishing the things that they want
Speaker 1: to accomplish, then they will go out to start Game two,
Speaker 1: bring the requisite intensity and control that game and take
Speaker 1: like a seven to ten point lead into the halftime buzzer.
Speaker 1: If I see that, now we have ourselves a series.
Speaker 1: If they lay down and do the exact same thing
Speaker 1: to start Game two, this is going to get ugly.
Speaker 1: I do think this team is more physically capable of
Speaker 1: hanging with Minnesota than Phoenix was last year. I don't
Speaker 1: expect it to get that ugly, but this could certainly
Speaker 1: get ugly, and you could be looking at a five
Speaker 1: or six game victory for the Wolves. If the Lakers
Speaker 1: don't wake up for Game two, they have some real
Speaker 1: problems that they got to deal with. That the Wolves
Speaker 1: demonstrated tonight. All right, let's work our way backwards through
Speaker 1: the games. Let's talk Pistons Knicks. So I thought the
Speaker 1: Pistons showed a lot of why they're a tough matchup
Speaker 1: for the Knicks. For the first three quarters of this game,
Speaker 1: Hey doing some nice playmaking out of action attacking Jaln
Speaker 1: Brunston and Karl Anthony Towns. All of the Pistons role
Speaker 1: players played well. Tobias Harris was great, Tim Hardaway Junior
Speaker 1: was great. Malik Beasley was great. Those guys combined for
Speaker 1: sixty four points. There was a Dennis Schroeder layup driving
Speaker 1: past Karl Anthony Towns in a little like slot iso
Speaker 1: off the left wing that put the Pistons up ninety
Speaker 1: eight to ninety and the Pistons did not score again
Speaker 1: until they were down thirteen points. The Knicks just completely
Speaker 1: blitzed them. Brunson found a matchup that he really liked
Speaker 1: in the half court, which was Tobias Harris, and he
Speaker 1: was doing a lot of really good work against him,
Speaker 1: just kind of semi transition attacks to get him where
Speaker 1: he's jumping to one side and hitting him with crossover moves.
Speaker 1: He was able to beat him with a regular crossover
Speaker 1: move in the half court to get inside position on him.
Speaker 1: He was doing a lot of quality work against Tobias Harris.
Speaker 1: They're down the stretch which is a little note to
Speaker 1: five away for the inevitable. You know, it's game four,
Speaker 1: two to one, five minutes left, games tied. That's a
Speaker 1: matchup that I think the Knicks feel good about. Is
Speaker 1: Brunson going after Tobias Harris. Campaign was great in that run.
Speaker 1: He actually started the run with a little crossover, one
Speaker 1: of his patented left left right crossovers into a scooping layup.
Speaker 1: He hit two massive threes to rescue possessions, one off
Speaker 1: of an offensive rebound, one off of a crazy stepback
Speaker 1: move at the end of the shot clock. Then the
Speaker 1: Knicks started forcing turnovers. Uh Oj and Andobi forced to
Speaker 1: turnover on Kate in the post. There's another turnover they
Speaker 1: forced on Kate on a baseline out of bounds. Kat
Speaker 1: forced a turnover on a high post entry where he
Speaker 1: jumped it and they were able to get out and transition.
Speaker 1: And that's when the Knicks are at their best right
Speaker 1: that defensive transition stuff, and literally in just that brief stretch,
Speaker 1: that brief little twenty one to zero run, they completely
Speaker 1: erased everything else that happened in that game. And then
Speaker 1: the Knicks are coasting to an easy win like what
Speaker 1: looked like a textbook like, oh, the road team steals
Speaker 1: game one type of thing turned into a one zero
Speaker 1: lead for New York with just that brief stretch of basketball.
Speaker 1: I thought the Nicks guarded Kid Cunningham really well all game.
Speaker 1: One of the things I talked about in the series
Speaker 1: preview is that I expected the Knicks coaching staff to
Speaker 1: look at the tape and to see that Og Andnobi
Speaker 1: was a better option to guard Kate Cunningham, and that's
Speaker 1: what they did. We talked a lot in the regular
Speaker 1: season about how Michael Bridges was just not big enough
Speaker 1: in terms of his base to stop Kate from being
Speaker 1: comfortable fighting for spots. And that's really the key, Like
Speaker 1: that's what Og does as a bigger, stronger player guarding Kate.
Speaker 1: Like it's like there's so many different examples, like just
Speaker 1: fighting for position, and like as Kid's trying to seal
Speaker 1: and create a passing angle, he's trying to seal and
Speaker 1: create a passing angle against the guy who's actually bigger
Speaker 1: and stronger than him instead of a guy that he's
Speaker 1: bigger and stronger than. Right, the last post up that
Speaker 1: Kate had against Og where he turned it over like
Speaker 1: he tried to swing through with his right shoulder and
Speaker 1: power up through Og with his right shoulder. And when
Speaker 1: he does that to most defensive players that guard him,
Speaker 1: he's so big and strong that he's just blowing through
Speaker 1: that player and getting to where he wants to for
Speaker 1: his little right shoulder fade away. Not Og, OG's holding
Speaker 1: his ground. He's having trouble fighting up through there to
Speaker 1: get a shot. He turns the basketball over, just making
Speaker 1: him uncomfortable. Like that's the thing when we talk about
Speaker 1: shot result, the number one thing you can do to
Speaker 1: make any star or role player shoot below their season
Speaker 1: averages or below their career averages or whatever you want
Speaker 1: to look at it is to make them uncomfortable. Take
Speaker 1: the little things that they do in games that come
Speaker 1: second nature and make them mature. Like, oh, you want
Speaker 1: to catch the ball coming off of like an iverson
Speaker 1: cut off of a screen at the high post. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to fight you like hell until you get
Speaker 1: the ball, and by the time you get it, there's
Speaker 1: going to be eleven seconds on the shot clock and
Speaker 1: you're going to be exhausted. That's the type of work,
Speaker 1: that's the type of value that comes from having size
Speaker 1: and strength, fighting you off of position, someone that Caid
Speaker 1: can't dislodge. I thought that was a really smart game
Speaker 1: plan thing from the Knicks. Kat made a couple of
Speaker 1: huge defensive plays late in the game after having some
Speaker 1: troubles and earlier phases of the game. He had a
Speaker 1: couple of plays where you know, Caide split him in
Speaker 1: pick and roll, or he just got caught out in
Speaker 1: space and struggled to contain the ball. But he made
Speaker 1: two massive plays during that run. A rotation back to
Speaker 1: the basket where he forced Jalen Duran into a miss
Speaker 1: on a catch layup where he was out of position
Speaker 1: behind the play, sprinted back and had a nice contest.
Speaker 1: He was the one who forced the turnover on the
Speaker 1: high post entry just with his uh just physical pressure
Speaker 1: like a three quarter front kind of thing.
Speaker 2: He was great.
Speaker 1: Just again, shout out to the Knicks. They turned what
Speaker 1: could have been easily a stolen game one into an
Speaker 1: early series lead, and I thought that that was a
Speaker 1: encouraging note to that. Brunson found a matchup that he
Speaker 1: really liked there down the stretch on the Pistons front.
Speaker 1: I talked all season law or all series excuse excuse me,
Speaker 1: it's been a long day. I've been watching basketball since today.
Speaker 1: In the season preview, pot I talked about how NBA
Speaker 1: history tells us that the Detroit Pistons usually lose this
Speaker 1: series because of the fact that they are just unfamiliar
Speaker 1: with the setting, specifically Kate right, and honestly, that was
Speaker 1: really the big thing that stood out in crunch time.
Speaker 1: Like Caid was badly outplayed during the run. There are
Speaker 1: some variant stuff right, Like I thought, Malik Beasley and
Speaker 1: Tim Hardaway Junior both got fantastic above the break three
Speaker 1: point looks that just didn't go in. During the run,
Speaker 1: Malik had a movement three going to his right off
Speaker 1: of a screen where he got plenty of separation that
Speaker 1: he happened to miss, Like during missing that shot on
Speaker 1: Kat as a shot we all know he can make.
Speaker 1: Like there were shots that they missed during that run.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is is that like a lot
Speaker 1: of that was off of chaos, Like Tim Hardaway Junior's
Speaker 1: three was on an offensive rebound. Malik Beasley's was on
Speaker 1: an offensive rebound. Like there's the actual shot creation piece.
Speaker 1: Cad lookes sloppy, he like, why is he trying to
Speaker 1: post ogn Nanobi down the stretch of the game. Jalen
Speaker 1: Brunson wasn't trying to attack a star Thompson if he
Speaker 1: could help it. He's getting a favorable matchup and trying
Speaker 1: to find a place to go to work. Caid attacking
Speaker 1: the best perimeter defender on the team in crunch time,
Speaker 1: that's a decision mistake. He had a very He was
Speaker 1: the guy who made the really sloppy inbounds pass on
Speaker 1: the baseline out of bounds, and that's the difference, right, Like,
Speaker 1: as things were kind of rounding into form down the stretch,
Speaker 1: Jalen Brunson kind of figured out how he wanted to
Speaker 1: attack and Cad kind of like was decomposing a little bit.
Speaker 2: Now. Again that's to be expected. He's young.
Speaker 1: This is playoff basketball super hard, right, and like it's
Speaker 1: just it's just relevant within the scope of this series.
Speaker 1: In this series, you're going against Jalen Brunson, who for
Speaker 1: two years now has led his team through multiple playoff
Speaker 1: rounds and is pretty comfortable in this setting. And it's
Speaker 1: just something new that Kate is dealing with. I did
Speaker 1: think Isaiah Stewart looked better than Jalen Duran tonight, but
Speaker 1: Duran ended up getting six more minutes, and they were
Speaker 1: closing with Duran during the run and Durn just there's
Speaker 1: there's several things he's a little bit late on some
Speaker 1: of his short role reads is finishing can be a
Speaker 1: tricky can struggle to guard cat in space. Like Isaiah
Speaker 1: Stewart has his own issues, but I think I would
Speaker 1: go with him a little bit more than I went
Speaker 1: with then JB. Bickerstaff went with Duran, and then I
Speaker 1: did like Dennis Schroeder on Jalen Brunson. I thought that
Speaker 1: was a matchup that they could look to try to
Speaker 1: give a little bit more attention to Schroeder played twenty
Speaker 1: six minutes. It's not so much that you can scale
Speaker 1: that up so much. But like I even thought just
Speaker 1: down the stretch when Asar and Dennis were out there,
Speaker 1: they went to Asar on Brunson, and like Dennis just
Speaker 1: kisses him off, Like it's not so much that a
Speaker 1: star is not a better defender. Of course, the sar
Speaker 1: is Asar is one of the best perimeter defense prospects
Speaker 1: I've ever watched, But like Dennis just has like a
Speaker 1: a little bit of like an anticipatory like he knows
Speaker 1: how to guard Brunson a little bit, and I just
Speaker 1: I think that I would lean on that a little
Speaker 1: bit more. I'd have every minute that Schroder's on the floor,
Speaker 1: I'd have him guarding Brunson and just trying to piss
Speaker 1: him off again. Like I'm going to be doing a
Speaker 1: film breakdown in the mornings throughout this throughout the entire postseason.
Speaker 1: We'll get into more details on the series as we
Speaker 1: go along. That was just my initial takeaways from tonight's game.
Speaker 1: All right, let's move on to Clippers Nuggets. Super interesting game.
Speaker 1: As we expected this was going to be a super
Speaker 1: interesting series. The Clippers came out and did what basically
Speaker 1: every team is done to the Nuggets for the second
Speaker 1: half of the season, and that's scored the basketball very easily,
Speaker 1: just about every single time down the floor. That's how
Speaker 1: it looked in the early part of that game. But
Speaker 1: right in the middle of the second quarter, there was
Speaker 1: a timeout, and out of the time out, Jokic just
Speaker 1: like the just applies a ton of ball pressure to
Speaker 1: I think it was Zoo catching out on the perimeter,
Speaker 1: and like the defensive intensity just skyrocketed for Denver and
Speaker 1: it happened to coincide with the stretch when Kawhi Leonard
Speaker 1: and James Harden were both in some foul trouble and
Speaker 1: Denver worked their way right back into the game, and
Speaker 1: then it was a dogfight the rest of the way.
Speaker 1: And like one of the big things that stood out
Speaker 1: to me, like there was a lot of people talking
Speaker 1: and including myself, about how the Clippers were sloppy in
Speaker 1: the way that they were capitalizing on some of those
Speaker 1: Denver coverage weaknesses that we've talked about, specifically like Denver
Speaker 1: being able to put two on the ball effectively and
Speaker 1: rotate out of it, which is a weakness for them
Speaker 1: all season, or handling, you know, mismatch attacking and shading
Speaker 1: and sending help and rotating out of it. They've been
Speaker 1: bad with that, right, And so there are a lot
Speaker 1: of these like sequences where like you can kind of
Speaker 1: see it take shape where it's like two on the ball,
Speaker 1: hit the short roller guy cutting out of the baseline,
Speaker 1: and like everything is just a little stilted. It's like
Speaker 1: the short roll guy is hesitating for just a second.
Speaker 1: The guy who cuts along the baseline, the passes a
Speaker 1: little off target and he fumbles it a little bit,
Speaker 1: and then he like second guesses himself in pump fakes
Speaker 1: or something. They're like there was a lot of like
Speaker 1: sloppiness and hesitance from the Clippers as they were attacking
Speaker 1: some of those gaps, and like I want to give
Speaker 1: the Nuggets credit, Like I don't think the Clippers are
Speaker 1: a particularly strong playmaking team relative to some of the
Speaker 1: other teams in the field. Like James Harden is a
Speaker 1: good playmaker, Kawhi can struggle with it from times, Norman
Speaker 1: Powell can struggle with it from sometimes, like their Chris
Speaker 1: Dunn can struggle with it sometimes, Like they they in
Speaker 1: their lineups have two or three guys on the floor
Speaker 1: at any given point that can hesitate when they need
Speaker 1: to make a decision that aren't necessarily the shark read
Speaker 1: and react players in the league, and so denver. Upping
Speaker 1: the intensity is what causes that, right, Like if you
Speaker 1: don't up the intensity, the reads are very easy, the
Speaker 1: runways are very wide. Everything looks easy, breezy as you're
Speaker 1: breaking the defense down. If you up the intensity, you
Speaker 1: make them have to make some tougher decisions. You make
Speaker 1: them have to make some decisions quicker than they would
Speaker 1: have to make if you weren't upping that intensity, and
Speaker 1: that led to a lot of those mistakes that led
Speaker 1: to a lot of the Clippers. What I'm saying is is,
Speaker 1: like the Clippers aren't going to pee down their leg
Speaker 1: on their own. You have to make them pee down
Speaker 1: their leg, and the only way you're going to do
Speaker 1: that is by upping the defensive intensity. Right in crunch time,
Speaker 1: that was where you could see that execution gap really
Speaker 1: take shape. The Clippers were doing a ton of helping
Speaker 1: off of Christian Brown and what Russell Westbrook, right, you
Speaker 1: have to find a way to make them pay. Christian
Speaker 1: Brown hits a massive three in overtime on the left wing.
Speaker 1: Russell Westbrook not just the open three that he hit
Speaker 1: at the end of regular that put him up too
Speaker 1: super active on the offensive glass. As he's getting ignored
Speaker 1: in a lot of those sequences into the Nuggets credit,
Speaker 1: they kept trusting him Yo Kitchen particular, just he you know,
Speaker 1: I talked a lot about in some other matchups, so
Speaker 1: specifically after the Lakers game earlier this year, about how
Speaker 1: like Yokich when he's getting swarmed, has to kind of
Speaker 1: force the issue a little bit from time to time,
Speaker 1: be like more willing to be like, yeah, I'm in
Speaker 1: a swarm, but I'm just gonna just put my head
Speaker 1: down and try to make something happen.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: I thought he did a really nice job of balancing
Speaker 1: that tonight, like forcing the issue sometimes and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: gonna hurt his efficiency. He didn't have the most efficient
Speaker 1: shooting night tonight, but forcing the issue sometimes, but then
Speaker 1: also being willing to take what the defense was giving him.
Speaker 1: That three that Russell Westbrook hit in the left corner,
Speaker 1: for instance, watch the way Jokic threw that pass. He
Speaker 1: threw that pass like I want Russ to take this shot.
Speaker 1: He was trusting him in that spot. I thought that
Speaker 1: was a big part of how Denver succeeded an offense
Speaker 1: late in the game, nixing spamming their best two players
Speaker 1: in spots where they can be aggressive, but then trusting
Speaker 1: what the Clipper game plan was giving up to them.
Speaker 1: Westbrook's Like it was kind of like a classic Russell
Speaker 1: Westbrook game in a lot of ways, because, like I thought,
Speaker 1: he was mostly great down the stretch, lots and lots
Speaker 1: of huge plays. Famously, at the end of the game,
Speaker 1: two gets that big steal as the Clippers have their
Speaker 1: chance to tie, but there's like bad plays mixed in,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But like everything with Russell
Speaker 1: Westbrook is a scale, and like if it's four good
Speaker 1: plays and five bad plays, it can be pretty damaging
Speaker 1: to the team. But tonight it was more like down
Speaker 1: the stretch, it was like six good plays, three bad plays,
Speaker 1: and it was like really impactful for the Nuggets in
Speaker 1: this game. They don't win this game without Russell Westbrook
Speaker 1: and the work he did down the stretch. And I
Speaker 1: thought it was a really smart move by Adleman as well,
Speaker 1: with how Michael Porter Junior just looked kind of unready
Speaker 1: for that level of intensity to go with Westbrook. It's
Speaker 1: a gamble, right, It's a gamble because you could have
Speaker 1: that scale flip the other way. But the gamble paid
Speaker 1: off tonight. Again, I thought Jokic was fantastic. I thought
Speaker 1: the two man game with Jamal Murray eve though Jamal
Speaker 1: struggled for Good a good portion of the game. I
Speaker 1: talked a lot before the series about how Jamal is
Speaker 1: such a rhythm player and how when he comes back
Speaker 1: from injuries sometimes he needs a long runway to kind
Speaker 1: of get his legs underneath them and to get his rhythm,
Speaker 1: and he struggled a.
Speaker 2: Little bit, but he made some shots.
Speaker 1: He made some place hit a couple of huge threes
Speaker 1: in two man game with Jokic down the stretch that
Speaker 1: were important in this game the crunch time. When we
Speaker 1: got down to game within five less than five minutes left,
Speaker 1: the Nuggets were up plus fifteen point eight points per
Speaker 1: one hundred possessions, a one twenty six offensive rating and
Speaker 1: a one to eleven defensive rating. That's really the key
Speaker 1: for Denver. If they can get to four minutes left,
Speaker 1: we're tied. I absolutely trust jokicch and Murray to out
Speaker 1: execute the Clippers in a close game with a few
Speaker 1: minutes left. As a matter of fact, like if every
Speaker 1: game in this series goes to crunch time, the Nuggets
Speaker 1: are gonna win. But it's about that competitiveness in avoiding
Speaker 1: the onslaught throughout the game. That's where the intensity cannot
Speaker 1: let up. If you come out in Game two and
Speaker 1: you let things get out of hand the way you
Speaker 1: did to start this game, Kawhi and James Harden might
Speaker 1: not get in foul trouble. You might be in a
Speaker 1: situation like the Lakers were with the Wolves tonight. Where
Speaker 1: you're just clawing from behind the whole time and you
Speaker 1: can't ever get over the hump. And so it's about
Speaker 1: bringing the requisite amount of intensity on the defensive end
Speaker 1: at the level in their ball pressure on the backside
Speaker 1: in rotation to keep the game close enough that you
Speaker 1: can stare down Kawhi Leonard and James Harden with three
Speaker 1: four minutes left, and I would execute them the way
Speaker 1: they did tonight. I thought Denver did a really really
Speaker 1: nice job playing the long game against the Clippers tonight,
Speaker 1: and really like there's another conversation to be had about
Speaker 1: how after the Clippers got their big lead, they never
Speaker 1: really truly looked as comfortable offensively as they did to
Speaker 1: start the game. Kawhi needs to do a much better
Speaker 1: job of handling double teams. I thought he did a
Speaker 1: poor job in this game of handling those aggressive double teams.
Speaker 1: He did a much better job against Golden State. Some
Speaker 1: of that spots on the floor to Denver was mixing
Speaker 1: up doubling him more when he got closer to the basket,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, Kawhi would just retreat
Speaker 1: like crazy and dribble out to half court while the
Speaker 1: pressure's coming and it just made it really difficult for
Speaker 1: him to make the pass. He missed the flasher a
Speaker 1: few times and was just throwing swing passes to the corner,
Speaker 1: which is not going to compromise the defense. You have
Speaker 1: to beat the double by making the right pass. That's
Speaker 1: always been Kawi's demon right is his ability to break
Speaker 1: down defenses with the pass. And the game plan was
Speaker 1: pretty clear with Denver Deny. There were a handful of
Speaker 1: ISOs in there, but there was a lot of swarming,
Speaker 1: a lot of digging down on him as he's dribbling
Speaker 1: into traffic. Kawhi is going to have to process in
Speaker 1: the half court and playmake out of it. And then
Speaker 1: in those tic tac toe situations like I talked about
Speaker 1: those four on threes, they have to do a better
Speaker 1: job of quickly processing the situation. You cannot hesitate on
Speaker 1: the short roll at making the read. You have to
Speaker 1: go up quick and strong on your baseline cuts. If
Speaker 1: you hesitate for a split second in the playoffs, someone's
Speaker 1: gonna rotate into your space and take that opportunity away.
Speaker 1: I do think this is gonna be a long series.
Speaker 1: My guess is that when the Clippers win, it'll be
Speaker 1: more in that, like we don't go to crunch time.
Speaker 1: They just control the game throughout and then when things
Speaker 1: get close, I think it's gonna go towards Denver. But like,
Speaker 1: this was a series again that I picked the Clippers,
Speaker 1: A lot of people picked the Clippers. The Clippers were
Speaker 1: heavily favored. Denver got the first one tonight, a big
Speaker 1: step forward in their process of potentially stealing this series.
Speaker 1: All right, last game before we get out of here
Speaker 1: for the night. The Bucks and the Pacers. I've talked
Speaker 1: a lot over the years about how when you see
Speaker 1: these different types of styles face each other, it's not
Speaker 1: about which style is inherently better. It's about which style
Speaker 1: wins that particular fight, which group is more capable of
Speaker 1: inflicting their strength on their opponent. The Pacers immediately came
Speaker 1: out and dictated the terms of this game, getting stops
Speaker 1: getting out. In transition, they outscored the Bucks seventeen to five.
Speaker 1: I even transitioned just in the first half. Andrew Nemhard
Speaker 1: was brilliant in transition to start that game like a
Speaker 1: crazy series of crossover moves to like cut through Ajreen
Speaker 1: and Toorium prints for a layup two plays where he
Speaker 1: just drove right at Brook Lopez's chest and like just
Speaker 1: knocked him over and had a little scooping lip. He
Speaker 1: had another little drive where he kind of dislodged Giannis
Speaker 1: in the second half. So, like I was certain think
Speaker 1: Andrew Nemhard might just be a lot stronger than he
Speaker 1: looks and just has a real low center of gravity,
Speaker 1: and he is really good at just dislodging. Like that's
Speaker 1: half the battle on offense is dislodging your defender. If
Speaker 1: you can dislodge your defender by just bumping him off
Speaker 1: of his base, he's not going to be able to
Speaker 1: recover in time for you to do anything. But they
Speaker 1: were great in transition. Siakam was finding openings in transition,
Speaker 1: both as a spacer and running the lane towards the rim.
Speaker 1: Their speed was on display all over the place, especially
Speaker 1: in their closeouts. Like I thought the Pacers just perimeter
Speaker 1: closeouts did such a great job of just rushing and
Speaker 1: catch an unprepared Milwaukee team off guard. There were two
Speaker 1: examples in the first half that I thought kind of
Speaker 1: demonstrated this. A Yana swing pass to Kyle Kuzma on
Speaker 1: the left wing and then a short roll sequence where
Speaker 1: Bobby port Is caught wide open in the right corner
Speaker 1: and Bobby Portas didn't even get a shot off, and
Speaker 1: Kyle Kuzma ended up taking a heavily contested shot because
Speaker 1: the two of them just like weren't ready to shoot
Speaker 1: under an intense closeout. And like, this is where I
Speaker 1: want to read you guys, a stat that I thought
Speaker 1: was the stat of the game for Pacers Bucks game one.
Speaker 1: Milwaukee logged thirteen guarded catch and shoot jump shots tonight,
Speaker 1: so like contested, like the computer logs that as if
Speaker 1: the defender's there, right, and Indiana logged twelve, So they
Speaker 1: both took about the same number of guarded ketch and
Speaker 1: shoot jump shots. Milwaukee went one for thirteen and Indiana
Speaker 1: went eight for twelve. Now, some of it was shooting variants,
Speaker 1: as we always talked about, that's far down the.
Speaker 2: List for me.
Speaker 1: Most of it was the Pacers were closing out and
Speaker 1: they weren't just there, they were disruptive. They were there
Speaker 1: with intensity and disruption. There were so many Bucks closeouts
Speaker 1: in this game where they were literally running up to
Speaker 1: the shooter and just standing there with their arms out
Speaker 1: to the side where the guy shot over the top
Speaker 1: of them and made an uncontested shot. Even though it's
Speaker 1: gonna log as guarded because they're standing there, they weren't
Speaker 1: bringing the requisite intensity and disruption to the closeout. Pascal
Speaker 1: Siakam hit one I think on Bobby Portos at the
Speaker 1: top of the key. Bobby closed out and then just
Speaker 1: stood there while Pascal turned and shot right over the
Speaker 1: top of him.
Speaker 2: I thought the best.
Speaker 1: Example of it was Andrew Nemhard's first three of the
Speaker 1: second half. So Nemhard HiT's two threes in the late
Speaker 1: first half like a It looked like one of Milwaukee's
Speaker 1: own possessions where Kuzma came way off of the right
Speaker 1: side of the floor and there was a skip to
Speaker 1: Nemhart in the corner. He's wide open, knocks it down,
Speaker 1: and then he had a switch I think against the
Speaker 1: honest if I remember correctly, but he just take took
Speaker 1: a step back three from like twenty six feet and
Speaker 1: it hits the three over the top. So Nemhart just
Speaker 1: hit two threes in a row right before the half,
Speaker 1: and I would argue at that point, even if it's
Speaker 1: in your game plan to close out short, you need
Speaker 1: to start closing out harder first three of the second half,
Speaker 1: Andrew Namhart catches in the left corner. Torian rotates and
Speaker 1: stands there, like just runs up to in front of
Speaker 1: Adrenamhart and just stands there with no contest while Andre
Speaker 1: Namhart shoots the three over the top, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you guys just aren't ready, like the Bucks
Speaker 1: and the Lakers today, not ready for playoff basketball and
Speaker 1: ended up getting embarrassed as a result. There is a
Speaker 1: level of intensity that this environment brings that you have
Speaker 1: to be ready for, and the Bucks just weren't ready
Speaker 1: for it tonight. They were like those examples that I gave,
Speaker 1: like the Torrian Prince one. There were a half dozen
Speaker 1: of those in this game where the closeouts just weren't there,
Speaker 1: And like when on the other end of the floor,
Speaker 1: Kuzma and Portis are second guessing themselves on the catch
Speaker 1: because of the intensity of the closeouts. That's a huge
Speaker 1: swing in Indiana's favor. Indie speed was on display everywhere
Speaker 1: in transition over and over again, like the Bucks just
Speaker 1: not stopping the ball, or like leaving a cutter open.
Speaker 1: Milwaukee sharpened that up a little bit in the later
Speaker 1: portion of the game, but Indy splitzed them so significantly
Speaker 1: that the game was basically over a couple of their
Speaker 1: shout outs. I wanted to give to Indy. Miles Turner
Speaker 1: badly out playing Brook Lopez. I talked in the series
Speaker 1: preview about how pick and pop was going to be
Speaker 1: one of the primary actions for both teams, and you
Speaker 1: know Joannison Brook, they do lots of different variations of it,
Speaker 1: or Brook a roll to the basket more, but like
Speaker 1: Brook's gonna pop a lot in ball screens, Miles Turner
Speaker 1: popping out of Tyree's Haliburton ball screens is one of
Speaker 1: the favorite pet actions for the Pacers, and so the
Speaker 1: ability of those guys to score in those situations was
Speaker 1: going to dictate the types of coverages that the teams
Speaker 1: are allowed to use. Right and Turner out scored him
Speaker 1: nineteen to nine actually forced the Bucks into switching some
Speaker 1: of the Turner Haliburton pick and rolls or picking pops
Speaker 1: in the second half, like he was a huge part
Speaker 1: of their success against the zone. Looks like he would
Speaker 1: screen the top man, which all allowed the Pacer player
Speaker 1: to get into the middle of the floor and if
Speaker 1: Brooke was hanging back too much. He would pop if
Speaker 1: on plays where Brooke would show high out to the
Speaker 1: foul line, then Miles would just cut behind him and
Speaker 1: get easy opportunities at the basket. I thought he dominated
Speaker 1: that matchup today and it was a huge swing factor
Speaker 1: in Indiana's favor. Shakham was great balance scoring, transition out
Speaker 1: of the post, spacing the floor, off ball, all of
Speaker 1: that balance scoring from all of those guys from Namhard,
Speaker 1: from TJ McConnell, from Siakam, from Turner that allowed the
Speaker 1: Pacers to survive what was a rough shooting night from
Speaker 1: Tyrese Halliburton and like I mean, relatively easily survive a
Speaker 1: rough shooting night from Tyre's Halliburton. I want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about Yannis Yiannis was a wrecking ball.
Speaker 1: Early in the game. He was a lot of Yannis
Speaker 1: Brooke ball screens where they were just switching, and so
Speaker 1: he got a lot of one on one opportunities against
Speaker 1: Myles Turner, and he was doing a lot of work
Speaker 1: getting to the basket and drawing fouls and getting buckets there.
Speaker 2: But you could tell that he started to realize.
Speaker 1: That some of his role players weren't super comfortable, and
Speaker 1: I thought Janis kind of went full hero ball, and
Speaker 1: that wasn't the way Yannis was playing over the final
Speaker 1: few weeks of the regular season. He was much more
Speaker 1: trusting of the kickout passes early in the game. What
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting is it looked to me like
Speaker 1: Yanna started to run out of gas a little bit
Speaker 1: in the late second quarter because he was just these
Speaker 1: extreme high degree of difficulty, like just bowling ball type
Speaker 1: of drives, started to settle for some jump shots, started
Speaker 1: to turn the basketball over a little bit. I think again,
Speaker 1: especially as Giannis develops in the future as into more
Speaker 1: of a point forward, this is a big part of it.
Speaker 1: Like it will serve Jianis well to trust the pass
Speaker 1: more early in games.
Speaker 2: These are long games.
Speaker 1: He needs to create a lot of shots over forty
Speaker 1: eight minutes, right, and so being more willing to just
Speaker 1: take easy reads early in the game will make it
Speaker 1: so that he has more gas in the tank to
Speaker 1: be more physically aggressive as the game progresses. Not to mention,
Speaker 1: you can loosen up the defense by doing that obvious
Speaker 1: adjustments from just like I said, for the Lakers, it's
Speaker 1: time to show up for the playoffs. You can't look
Speaker 1: surprised that the other team is playing super hard. You
Speaker 1: need to bring the intensity not just the closeouts, the
Speaker 1: other side of the closeouts. You need to be down
Speaker 1: in a shooting stands the one where Kyle Kuzma ended
Speaker 1: up taking that crazy like spinning three his first three
Speaker 1: off the left wing. Go watch Kyle Kuzma before the shot.
Speaker 1: He's standing completely upright and he's like twenty seven feet
Speaker 1: from the basket. Instead, be down in a shooter's crouch,
Speaker 1: ready to go, so that on the catch you can
Speaker 1: quickly rise up or quickly rip to the basket one way.
Speaker 1: Be ready to go on the catch. That's part of
Speaker 1: the intensity. That's part of the mental focus you have
Speaker 1: to bring during the postseason. Stop the ball and transition defense.
Speaker 1: You want to know why brook Lopez is picking up
Speaker 1: Andrew demhard at the rim and getting truck sticked because
Speaker 1: no one picked him up before he got to Brook Lopez.
Speaker 1: Siakim had won in transition too, where no one picked
Speaker 1: him up. There's so many examples where the Bucks just
Speaker 1: weren't ready for the intensity of the playoffs.
Speaker 2: Tonight.
Speaker 1: They can guard this team. They held the Pacers scoreless
Speaker 1: for more than five straight minutes in the fourth quarter
Speaker 1: during a run where they cut the lead to twelve,
Speaker 1: and in that run, aj Green got a couple of
Speaker 1: clean looks, Bobby Porter's got a clean look. They just
Speaker 1: didn't go down. The Bucks were out of gas at
Speaker 1: that point. There is a pathway though for them to
Speaker 1: be able to guard the Pacers and generate quality shots
Speaker 1: on the other end of the floor. They just have
Speaker 1: to bring the requisite intensity. Because this game was so
Speaker 1: early in the day, I was able to get more
Speaker 1: data out for the other games. I'll bring more data
Speaker 1: in tomorrow morning's show. But shooting went heavily towards the Pacers.
Speaker 1: The Bucks generated twenty nine catch and shoots, the Pacers
Speaker 1: generated twenty five catch and shoots. The Bucks got zero
Speaker 1: point seven to two points per shot. The Pacers got
Speaker 1: one point five to six, So they more than double
Speaker 1: them in ketch and shoot efficiency in this game. Again,
Speaker 1: that's including unguarded shots, but like we talked about earlier
Speaker 1: with the guarded shots, there's a level of execution to that.
Speaker 1: In the intensity of the closeouts transition points Indy twenty
Speaker 1: six to thirteen. Milwaukee allowed only nine of those twenty
Speaker 1: six in the second half. Those they did clean that
Speaker 1: up a little bit, but it's worth mentioning Indiana did
Speaker 1: win the half court battle, just half court efficiency won
Speaker 1: a one to twelve offensive rating for the Pacers, just
Speaker 1: a ninety eight offensive rating for the Bucks. So totally
Speaker 1: totally dominant performance from the Pacers in game one of
Speaker 1: that series. All right, guys, it's all I have for tonight.
Speaker 1: It's marathon, not a sprint. We're gonna be back tomorrow
Speaker 1: morning with some more film stuff, and then obviously we
Speaker 1: got four more games tomorrow.
Speaker 2: I will see you guys. Then what's up guys?
Speaker 1: As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting
Speaker 1: OOPS tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us
Speaker 1: if you guys would take a second and leave a
Speaker 1: rating and a review.
Speaker 2: As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us, But if
Speaker 2: you could take a minute to do that, I'd really
Speaker 2: appreciate it.
Speaker 1: The volume