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Speaker 1: All right, well, coome to hoops tonight here at the
Speaker 1: volume heavy Monday, everybody. If all of you guys had
Speaker 1: a great weekend, we have a jam packshow for you today.
Speaker 1: We are going to hit the two big games from
Speaker 1: yesterday where the top two seeds in each conference faced
Speaker 1: off against each other. As the Cleveland Cavaliers got some
Speaker 1: revenge on the Boston Celtics, albeit short handed. We're gonna
Speaker 1: get into that game. It turned into a really interesting
Speaker 1: chess match down the stretch. And then two of the
Speaker 1: best young athletic teams in the league, the two top
Speaker 1: seeds in the Western Conference, the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma
Speaker 1: City Thunder faced off as the Houston Rockets got a
Speaker 1: big win, kind of a wild finish on that game.
Speaker 1: So we're going to hit both of those games from
Speaker 1: the perspective of both teams. Then we're going to do
Speaker 1: a new edition of power Rankings. We're going to go
Speaker 1: over the top ten teams in the league. And then
Speaker 1: at the tail end of the show, I have thirty
Speaker 1: four clips of film that we are going to go
Speaker 1: through hitting from both of the games we talked about
Speaker 1: off the top of the show, but also some other
Speaker 1: stuff as well. Just a ton of basketball to get into.
Speaker 1: It's going to be a lot of fun. You guys
Speaker 1: are the joke before we get started. Subscribe to the
Speaker 1: Hoops to Night YouTube channels. You don't miss any more
Speaker 1: of our videos. Follow me on Twitter and underscore JSNLTS.
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Speaker 1: mail back questions in the YouTube comments. We will be
Speaker 1: doing a mail bag in the Friday Show later this week.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk some basketball. So Celtics Calves turned
Speaker 1: into an interesting chess match. Both teams were attacking the
Speaker 1: weak spot in each other's defense. So obviously, for the
Speaker 1: Calves the weak spot is Darius Garland, and it was
Speaker 1: a steady dose of the Celtics looking to attack Darius
Speaker 1: Garland every time down the floor. For the Calves, it
Speaker 1: was about attacking the Celtics bigs in pick and roll.
Speaker 1: Now we're gonna get into it. It's more complicated because
Speaker 1: when Derek White and Jalen Brown are out there, they're
Speaker 1: just more athletic and long and more better overall, like
Speaker 1: basketball defensive instincts to be able to cover for those guys.
Speaker 1: But Al Horford at this phase of his career and
Speaker 1: Chrisops Porzingis with some of his mobility limitations, they can
Speaker 1: be attacked in ball screens, right, And so that was
Speaker 1: kind of the dynamic. It was Darius Garland and Donovan
Speaker 1: Mitchell trying to attack Porzingis and Horford and Ball screens
Speaker 1: incessantly down the stretch of the game, and then the
Speaker 1: Celtics hunting Darius Garland. The Celtics were getting great looks
Speaker 1: just about every time down the floor. I even thought
Speaker 1: they got some great looks at the end of this
Speaker 1: game that didn't go down. Al Horford got a wide
Speaker 1: open corner three off of a Darius Garland switch on
Speaker 1: to Jason Tatum where he kicked it out. He had
Speaker 1: another wide open corner three in the right corner that
Speaker 1: he missed late in the game. All that the pass
Speaker 1: was a little funky. Jason Tatum smoked a layup right
Speaker 1: at the rim with Darius Garland, but for the most
Speaker 1: part it was the same sort of thing. They were
Speaker 1: attacking through a bunch of different functions, Like Christops Porzingis
Speaker 1: in a switch, ended up attacking Garland, drew a double
Speaker 1: team kickout pass, Howser made a really nice three on
Speaker 1: the left wing. Is actually kind of a crazy play
Speaker 1: because Donovan Mitchell closed out to the passing lane and
Speaker 1: Howser just like really really calm, just like sat there
Speaker 1: and let him fly by and knocked down the jump shot.
Speaker 1: Peyton Pritchard even attacked Darius Garland late in the game,
Speaker 1: just buried him underneath the basket and kind of a
Speaker 1: really funky looking play where he just kind of just
Speaker 1: took a bunch of drop step dribbles or just power
Speaker 1: dribbles and then just kind of shoved off Darius with
Speaker 1: his left arm and then sunk a little bank shot.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, it was Jason Tatum and
Speaker 1: same sort of thing every down. Every time down the floor,
Speaker 1: he'd kind of get him onto his switch and then
Speaker 1: he'd get either into that wing position or that top
Speaker 1: of the key position. They'd space the floor and the
Speaker 1: Calves were letting him go to work one on one.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that he was doing is,
Speaker 1: you know, the the Calves were occupying or the Celtics
Speaker 1: were occupying the dunker spot, and they usually would have
Speaker 1: a defender getting ready to help at the rim. And
Speaker 1: so what Jason Tatum did that was really smart during
Speaker 1: the majority of the second half possessions is he didn't
Speaker 1: try to just go all the way through Garland to
Speaker 1: the rim, because in a lot of those cases that's
Speaker 1: where the help is. Right you beat Garland, you just
Speaker 1: run into another defender. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: Jason Tatum did is he just got surgical with that
Speaker 1: little short jump shot. A couple of times he just
Speaker 1: dribbled into his space and then a shot just right
Speaker 1: over the top of him from ten feet. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: was a little left shoulder fade as he turned, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of into like a half spin into his little
Speaker 1: fade away jump shot. But he was killing Garland in
Speaker 1: the short range right. The reason why that's so important is,
Speaker 1: like I want you to think about Nikolea Jokic for example,
Speaker 1: when you're playing with the size advantage in particular, and
Speaker 1: you're dealing with guys that are helping on the back line,
Speaker 1: then over penetrating can actually become an issue as you
Speaker 1: run into more help like I was talking about. And
Speaker 1: so one of the best ways to attack those sorts
Speaker 1: of mismatches, as long as you have the touch for it.
Speaker 2: Is short range shot making.
Speaker 1: What Yokic will do will be like, oh, you're putting
Speaker 1: your forward on me and you're going to have your
Speaker 1: center roaming on the back line. Well, I won't go
Speaker 1: just threw my guy into an extra defender. I'll just
Speaker 1: kind of body and shoot that little left shoulder hook
Speaker 1: shot over the top Now, in Jason Tatum's career, he's
Speaker 1: been somewhat inconsistent with that short range shot making, but
Speaker 1: last night he really had it going. And as long
Speaker 1: as he continues to build out that shot over the
Speaker 1: course of his prime here in his late twenties, that's
Speaker 1: going to be a deadly thing for him against size mismatches,
Speaker 1: because it's a problem when you can attack a mismatch
Speaker 1: without having to engage in traffic around the basket, when
Speaker 1: there's tons of bodies in front of you. Sometimes fouls
Speaker 1: don't get called. Sometimes you just miss shots. Like if
Speaker 1: you can work in that short range, you can be
Speaker 1: effective there. And so he was burning Garland in the
Speaker 1: short range. That turned into double teams. Out of the
Speaker 1: double teams, they started getting good looks out of it,
Speaker 1: offensive rebounds out of it. Remember, even when you're in
Speaker 1: scramble situations in rotation, even if you don't necessarily give
Speaker 1: up a great shot, you're still in position. You're not
Speaker 1: in rebounding position, right because guys aren't matched up, they're
Speaker 1: all running around. This is where you end up giving
Speaker 1: up offensive rebounds. Remember in the thunder Lakers game, that
Speaker 1: was something that Lebron James was talking about after the game,
Speaker 1: it's like we're in rotation, we're shading towards Shay or
Speaker 1: not in rebound position.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There was a huge offensive rebound that Porzingis got late
Speaker 1: in this game off of a double team of Tatum
Speaker 1: when he was attacking Garland in a switch that they
Speaker 1: forced Peyton Pritchard into a pretty tough three point shot
Speaker 1: from above the break on the right side, but Porzingis
Speaker 1: was un guarded on the weak side because they were
Speaker 1: in rotation. He swooped in and grabbed the rebound swing swing.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, Drew Holliday has a wide open layup.
Speaker 1: So they were like consistently getting great stuff out of
Speaker 1: those switch attacks with Jason Tatum on Darius Garland. Jayson
Speaker 1: Tatum was just absurdly good in that second half. There
Speaker 1: were a couple of ugly possessions, but overall, I thought
Speaker 1: he did an insanely good job of consistently generating great
Speaker 1: shots for his team against a very good defense.
Speaker 2: It was some of the.
Speaker 1: Most calm and surgical half court work I've ever seen
Speaker 1: Jason Tatum do. And if he makes that easy layup,
Speaker 1: and if Val Horford hits one of his two wide
Speaker 1: open corner threes. All of a sudden we're looking at
Speaker 1: potentially a different result. So I was really impressed by
Speaker 1: Jason Tatum in this game. But on the other side
Speaker 1: of the floor they were getting great looks. The Calves
Speaker 1: were out of ball screens. So the two dynamics that
Speaker 1: we saw there was one Darius Garland ball screens when
Speaker 1: he was bringing Poorzingis into the action. They were showing
Speaker 1: high with Porzingis up at the level, and so twice
Speaker 1: down the stretch of the game and crunch time, the
Speaker 1: Calves were able to get great looks out of the
Speaker 1: Celtics putting two on the ball. So the first one
Speaker 1: they put two on the ball on the right wing
Speaker 1: on a Garland ball screen, Porzingis comes up high, Garland
Speaker 1: hits the roll man, swing to the corner, swing to
Speaker 1: the above, the above the brake on the left wing,
Speaker 1: Donovan Mitchell gets a wide open three because you put
Speaker 1: two on the ball against Darius Garland. And then the
Speaker 1: shot that ended up being the dagger. If you remember
Speaker 1: the one where Moblei got the dunk, same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Porzingis up at the level, a Coorro slips the screen,
Speaker 1: Garland hits him, and then a coro draws in the
Speaker 1: help drops it off to Moblei, and Mobley goes up
Speaker 1: and dunks it. So they were getting stuff out of
Speaker 1: those Garland ball screens by bringing Porzingis up to the level,
Speaker 1: and then Donovan Mitchell was just attacking the bigs and
Speaker 1: drop whatever he could. He was specifically going at Al
Speaker 1: Horford a lot late in the game, the lead changing floater,
Speaker 1: the floater that he hit after Tatum missed his first shot.
Speaker 1: He got in the lane and snaked the pick and
Speaker 1: roll on the left side and Horford was just a
Speaker 1: bit too far back and he hit that little floater.
Speaker 1: And then one of the most common moves you'll see
Speaker 1: really good guards do is reject ball screens at the
Speaker 1: moment that the defensive guards starts to fight over the
Speaker 1: top of the screen, and that was how Donovan Mitchell
Speaker 1: got that other really good look pull up three from
Speaker 1: the top of the key. By the way, a lot
Speaker 1: of these actions that I'm discussing are going to be
Speaker 1: in the film session later today, So if you happen
Speaker 1: to be watching this in a breakout clip, if you
Speaker 1: want to see video representation of this, it's just going
Speaker 1: to be at the tail end of the show. I
Speaker 1: always do film at the tail end of the show
Speaker 1: instead of in the middle because of our podcast audience
Speaker 1: and I want this to be something that functions for
Speaker 1: them as well. So if you want to see visual representations,
Speaker 1: just hang out for the tail end of the show.
Speaker 1: But the second three that Donovan Mitchell hit late, he
Speaker 1: actually hit three late because he hit a huge one
Speaker 1: over a switch a same houser before all this, but
Speaker 1: he the one where he kind of put Drew Holliday
Speaker 1: in the blender. All he's doing there is he's dribbling
Speaker 1: at the ball screens. So there's a ball screen at
Speaker 1: the top of the key and he's dribbling like he's
Speaker 1: going to go off the ball screen. What does Drew
Speaker 1: Holliday have to do there? He is one of the
Speaker 1: hard jobs in basketball, when we talk about all the
Speaker 1: time on the show. Screen navigation at the point of
Speaker 1: attack is one of the most challenging things that NBA
Speaker 1: guards have to deal with defensively, Drew Halliday started to
Speaker 1: fight over the screen and like right when he started
Speaker 1: to commit to that process, Donovan snatched it back to
Speaker 1: the left hand and just had all the separation in
Speaker 1: the world and was able to rise up and knock
Speaker 1: down a shot. But again we had both offenses getting
Speaker 1: great stuff by virtue of the Calves attacking in ball
Speaker 1: screens and the Celtics attacking Darius Garland and switches. But
Speaker 1: the Calves were able to get two big stops late.
Speaker 1: And this is where I want to give Darius Garland
Speaker 1: some credit, because it was a real problem. Tatum was
Speaker 1: scoring on him every time in single coverage. There were
Speaker 1: double teams that were giving up wide open threes in
Speaker 1: offensive rebounds. Sometimes you just have to do a better job.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that's the adjustment from the coaching staff. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: we came up with this magical scheme to finally get
Speaker 1: a stop on Jason Tatum or whatever. It is a
Speaker 1: lot of times we want to try to look for
Speaker 1: something like that because it's tana right, Like it's easy
Speaker 1: for us to point to something like that and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's how they did it right. But a lot of
Speaker 1: times it's like the same guy that was the problem
Speaker 1: just does a better job and now all of a
Speaker 1: sudden he's not a problem anymore. And Darius Garland, after
Speaker 1: getting fried a lot throughout this game, got two really
Speaker 1: big stops. The second one was kind of lucky, right
Speaker 1: Tatum beat him to the right, went all the way
Speaker 1: to the ram, and Garland did a good job trying
Speaker 1: to get in his way. But I felt like that
Speaker 1: was a layup Jason Tatum's going to make nine times
Speaker 1: out of ten. He just happened to smoke it right
Speaker 1: the first one, though he legitimately did a better job.
Speaker 1: One of the things that Tatum was doing was kind
Speaker 1: of methodically getting into that short to mid range to
Speaker 1: shoot over the top of Garland. One of the things
Speaker 1: that Garland did in that first stop that he got
Speaker 1: was he got more aggressive at the point of attack
Speaker 1: out past the three point line early in Tatum's attack
Speaker 1: of the switch to disrupt rhythm, and you guys will
Speaker 1: see this in the video, but he immediately starts slip
Speaker 1: swiping at the ball, trying to poke at it, trying
Speaker 1: to disrupt Tatum's flow. And then Tatum promptly gets sped
Speaker 1: up by that and over penetrates, goes past Garland into
Speaker 1: a bunch of help and missus a shot pretty badly
Speaker 1: in traffic. And again, like that's one of those things,
Speaker 1: like a lot of times, like, yeah, if you if
Speaker 1: you're giving up size and you just let a guy
Speaker 1: work down to whatever spot he wants and shoot over
Speaker 1: the top of you, then there's nothing you can do
Speaker 1: that's going to make him feel uncomfortable. Right, But if
Speaker 1: you actually use your advantage, which is quickness and just
Speaker 1: being scrappy, maybe you can force a player to just
Speaker 1: make an uncharacteristic mistake, right, And that's the thing. Like,
Speaker 1: Jason Tatum is an excellent of one of the best
Speaker 1: half court shot creators we've seen in the league so
Speaker 1: far to start this year, and he did a lot
Speaker 1: of damage to you, But in a game this close,
Speaker 1: you made him make one mistake, and that one mistake
Speaker 1: ended up being a big difference. Shout out to Darius
Speaker 1: Garland because, like again I'd like, it wasn't pretty all
Speaker 1: the time, but he did get a couple of big
Speaker 1: stops at the tail end and that ended up being
Speaker 1: enough for the Calves to get the win. Now, obviously
Speaker 1: it's a big win for the Calves, but I did
Speaker 1: think that they demonstrated a couple of their biggest advantages
Speaker 1: in this matchup, and the two biggest advantages that Cleveland
Speaker 1: has in this matchup are one, Boston's Biggs can struggle
Speaker 1: to handle in pick and roll. To handle them in
Speaker 1: pick and roll, which is to be expected, right, especially
Speaker 1: when you're down bodies like that. It's just those are
Speaker 1: the easiest ways to attack. We saw a lot of
Speaker 1: two big looks in this game as well, and so
Speaker 1: Cleveland was able to generate great shots. The second piece
Speaker 1: of it is Donovan Mitchell is capable of out gunning
Speaker 1: a guy like Jason Tatum at the end of games.
Speaker 1: But there are two big caveats right. Number One, Derek
Speaker 1: White and Jaylen Brown are both outstanding defensive players with
Speaker 1: a lot of length and quickness, specifically as athletes in rotation,
Speaker 1: and that's a big part of their ability to cover
Speaker 1: for Al Horford and chrisops porzingis it's just not going
Speaker 1: to be that easy when the Celtics are healthy. And two,
Speaker 1: it's one thing to outgun Jason Tatum one time, but
Speaker 1: it's different to do it four.
Speaker 2: Times in two weeks.
Speaker 1: First of all, you got to keep all the games
Speaker 1: close enough for late game shot making to actually be
Speaker 1: the differentiator, which is really hard to do against Boston.
Speaker 1: And then two, Tatum has the second most clutch points
Speaker 1: in the entire league this year, only Dearon Fox has more.
Speaker 1: It's got like a dozen clutches cists as well, Like
Speaker 1: he's gonna win that matchup sometimes, so in addition to
Speaker 1: keeping games close enough for you to try to out
Speaker 1: execute them in those situations like yeah, like Tatum was
Speaker 1: a mislayup and like I said, maybe one of those
Speaker 1: corner threes going in away from that being a game
Speaker 1: that Boston won anyway despite being down Derek White and
Speaker 1: Drew Holliday or excuse me, Derek White and Jalen Brown
Speaker 1: because of the ability Jason Tatum has to play at
Speaker 1: that level he's playing, I mean, and again that really,
Speaker 1: that really is why I still feel like Boston has
Speaker 1: a substantial advantage in this matchup. Like one, I don't
Speaker 1: think the Garland problem is going away, Like Boston just
Speaker 1: is going to be able to get them in rotation
Speaker 1: by attacking Garland. It's just gonna continue to be a problem.
Speaker 1: And I think it's a bigger problem for Cleveland than Cleveland.
Speaker 1: Attacking Boston centers and pick and roll is a problem
Speaker 1: for the Celtics, if that makes sense. And then secondly,
Speaker 1: this is the best that Jason Tatum has ever been
Speaker 1: at basketball. He's up over a point per shot on
Speaker 1: pull up jump shots on a pretty large volume to
Speaker 1: start the season. It's the first time for a whole
Speaker 1: season he's been over one point per pull up jump
Speaker 1: shots since the twenty nineteen twenty twenty campaign. Like that,
Speaker 1: that's the type of shooting that we're getting out of
Speaker 1: him in a couple of like ridiculous off the dribble
Speaker 1: jump shots. In that third quarter run, He's shooting a
Speaker 1: preposterous one point two to six points per shot in
Speaker 1: catch and shoot jumpers. That's just outrageous. Don't even know
Speaker 1: what to say about that. And his playmaking and overall
Speaker 1: feel for the game is the highest that I've seen
Speaker 1: in his time in the NBA. You know, Like even
Speaker 1: when he was struggling last year during the playoffs, I
Speaker 1: kept saying that I just thought it was a slump,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, I said that this Boston team would
Speaker 1: likely be way better this year just on account of
Speaker 1: gaining a better version of Jason Tatum. And even what
Speaker 1: I anticipated from Tatum this year has not come close
Speaker 1: to the player that he has actually been. He's encroaching
Speaker 1: on the top guys. For me, I don't think he's
Speaker 1: quite there yet, but he's close and on a roster
Speaker 1: this talented. It just doesn't matter with this version of Tatum,
Speaker 1: I'm having a really hard time even conceptualizing a team
Speaker 1: that has the juice to beat them. We're about to
Speaker 1: talk about Okay, see here in a minute, But to me,
Speaker 1: they just feel a lot like Boston a few years ago.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of bad process still taking place there
Speaker 1: for them. On the offensive end of the floor, I
Speaker 1: don't think they're ready, And then the other teams in
Speaker 1: the league, I just don't think they have the talent necessary.
Speaker 1: So I've seen Celtics fans behaving very confidently, and they should.
Speaker 1: This is a team that looks to me like they're
Speaker 1: on a tier by themselves at the top of the league.
Speaker 1: Moving on to Thunder Rockets. Crazy late game sequences. Tied
Speaker 1: it one hundred and five late and the Thunder get
Speaker 1: it three out of case on Wallace on a tag
Speaker 1: of Isaiah Hartenstein such just a basic ball screen. They
Speaker 1: tag Hartenstein cross court pass in the corner, knocks down
Speaker 1: the three right, but then the Rockets go to Shangoon
Speaker 1: in the post and case on Wallace right after making
Speaker 1: the big play to give him a lead, kind of
Speaker 1: over digs down. You gotta just kind of let Shangun
Speaker 1: go at hard and sign one on one when he's
Speaker 1: that far out, he was kind of like ten twelve
Speaker 1: feet out. Overhelped kicks out to Fred van Vliet. He
Speaker 1: knocks down the three and now we're tied at one awight.
Speaker 1: Then both teams get offensive rebound put backs very different
Speaker 1: ways too, which was fascinating. Shay gets all the way
Speaker 1: to the rim and Dylan Brooks does a really nice
Speaker 1: job of pursuing over the top of the screen and
Speaker 1: gets a block on Shay, but it falls right back
Speaker 1: into his hands and he puts it back in.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like bad luck right on the other one.
Speaker 1: Though, we talked about rejecting ball screens in the Celtics video.
Speaker 1: If you remember, like just that play where Donovan Mitchell
Speaker 1: just whipped it across to his left hand right as
Speaker 1: Drew Holliday was getting ready to fight over screen. Fred
Speaker 1: van Vliet did a similar thing to Cassan Wallace and
Speaker 1: beat him downhill, and this really weird thing happened where
Speaker 1: Fred van Vliet goes in and misses a layup in traffic,
Speaker 1: but you know how it goes when you miss layups
Speaker 1: against rim protectors. There's usually just like more athletes coming
Speaker 1: in behind them to finish up the play. Right, But
Speaker 1: as Hartenstein and and Shangun were both up at the
Speaker 1: level of the screen, Shane gun like ran right down
Speaker 1: the middle of the lane and got an offensive rebound
Speaker 1: put back, And I'm like, what the hell was Hartenstein doing?
Speaker 1: So I rewind and I watched the clip again. Hartenstein
Speaker 1: like veered way off to the right and like ran
Speaker 1: to the short corner for some reason, I couldn't really
Speaker 1: figure it out. It it was like maybe he was trying
Speaker 1: to box out the guy crashing from the corner, but
Speaker 1: he wasn't in any real position to do that. So
Speaker 1: it was like a bad luck situation gives the Thunder
Speaker 1: an easy two, and then a really weird play by
Speaker 1: Hartenstein ends up giving the Rockets an easy to. Now,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, we're tied at one ten again,
Speaker 1: and then we got a really big play from Fred
Speaker 1: van Vliet Andrew Aaron Wiggins ends up iving a closeout
Speaker 1: off the left wing and he smokes the layup, but
Speaker 1: when he misses the leyup, Hartenstein comes flying in to
Speaker 1: get the offensive rebound. He's trying to catch it and
Speaker 1: finish it in one fluid motion, but Fred van Vliet
Speaker 1: comes in out of that right corner and slaps down
Speaker 1: on the basketball and just forces Hartenstein to come down
Speaker 1: with it. So Hartenstein's thinking, I'm gonna get an easy
Speaker 1: offensive rebound put back, but Fred van Vliet just makes
Speaker 1: him come down with it first. And when he comes down,
Speaker 1: he's got so much momentum that he lands on the baseline.
Speaker 1: So like just a little detail, just swiping out the basketball,
Speaker 1: making things a little difficult, a little bit more of
Speaker 1: an effort, right. A lot of players in the league
Speaker 1: just let Hartenstein finish that because they think the play's over.
Speaker 1: Little competitive burst there for fred van Vliet forces a turnover.
Speaker 1: Then on the next possession there's a jump ball late
Speaker 1: clock situation and Fred van Vliet literally hits like a
Speaker 1: forty foot prayer, kicking his legs as the shot clock expires.
Speaker 1: Biggest shot of the night was really what kind of
Speaker 1: turned things around off the like literally off of a
Speaker 1: jump ball with like three seconds on the shot clock,
Speaker 1: just throws it up and it goes in. It's one
Speaker 1: thirteen to one ten. Then Dylan Brooks does a really
Speaker 1: nice job in ISO defending shake Yalders Alexander along the
Speaker 1: left wing and forces him into a tough step back
Speaker 1: three and he misses. But alprin Shang Gun is face
Speaker 1: guarding Hartenstein on the offensive glass, really trying to box
Speaker 1: him out. Hartenstein just reaches over the top pitches it
Speaker 1: out to Kason Wallace on the right corner and he
Speaker 1: knocks it down case on Wallace a couple of massive
Speaker 1: threes that he hit. At the tail end of this game,
Speaker 1: we're back tied at one thirteen. As we go to
Speaker 1: the other end of the floor one thirteen, one to thirteen,
Speaker 1: Shang Gun slips on the ball like as he's trying
Speaker 1: to post up on a roll where he just kind
Speaker 1: of falls on the ground right and he's got the
Speaker 1: ball in his hands. And another just like little detail,
Speaker 1: Dylan Brooks and shake Yalders Alexander are matched up in
Speaker 1: the left corner and as Shane Gun goes down, Dylan
Speaker 1: Brooks alertly just flashes to him to try to get
Speaker 1: the ball, and Shay is just a split second late
Speaker 1: react to Dylan Brooks's cut and so Dylan gets the
Speaker 1: ball from Shanguon and just turns immediately over his left shoulder,
Speaker 1: shoots a little ten foot fade away, and Shake gets
Speaker 1: back in the play and gets an okay contest on it.
Speaker 1: But if he was sharper, if he was paying more attention,
Speaker 1: he would have taken that shot away.
Speaker 2: He did it.
Speaker 1: Dylan Brooks sinks the left shoulder fade, puts him up
Speaker 1: one fifteen to one thirteen. And then on the other
Speaker 1: end of the floor, Tari Easton got a really good
Speaker 1: contest on a Shae Gilders Alexander mid range pull up
Speaker 1: that actually forced Shay to double pump, and when he
Speaker 1: forced him to double pump, he ended up just kind
Speaker 1: of flinging in that the rim, it had no arc
Speaker 1: on it, hit the front of the room and bounced off.
Speaker 1: They ended up playing the foul game, and the Thunder
Speaker 1: got like a prayer off that could have potentially tied it,
Speaker 1: but that essentially was the game and the Rockets ended
Speaker 1: up getting it. So again, a lot of times in
Speaker 1: a game like that, it's like a couple shots go here,
Speaker 1: a couple shots go there, and it's a different type
Speaker 1: of game, right, Like we're talking about a prayer from
Speaker 1: forty feet from Fred van Vliet. We're talking about kind
Speaker 1: of a chaotic sequence where Upper and Shangun falls on
Speaker 1: the floor, right, So it's like it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: So I just kind of want to focus on the
Speaker 1: specific basketball that both of these teams are playing beyond
Speaker 1: the craziness of just that individual game.
Speaker 2: A'l Burn.
Speaker 1: Shangoon is going to make his first All Star Game
Speaker 1: this year. In his last twelve games, he's had twenty
Speaker 1: plus points in eight of those twelve games. He's averaging
Speaker 1: twenty one points, eleven rebounds, and six assists. In those
Speaker 1: twelve games, he's got two point five stocks per game
Speaker 1: steals plus blocks in that span, now averaging for the
Speaker 1: season nineteen points, eleven rebounds, and five assists. Really high
Speaker 1: level production, really greases the wheels for this team on offense. Now,
Speaker 1: they're fifteen points better per one hundred possessions overall according
Speaker 1: to Cleaning the last nine points better on defense, but
Speaker 1: they're also six points better on offense per one hundred possessions.
Speaker 1: Win Chenggoon's on the floor versus off and the main
Speaker 1: thing there is he's a perfect screening partner for Fred
Speaker 1: van Vliet. He sets good hard screens. He has a
Speaker 1: good feel for when to rescreen or to slip out
Speaker 1: of his screen, so he's got good screening technique.
Speaker 2: If he gets to his.
Speaker 1: Clean work on a roll, like he'll dunk on you.
Speaker 1: Like he's got the length and the footwork down to
Speaker 1: kind of take off off of right lefts and left
Speaker 1: rights and off of one foot, so like, if he
Speaker 1: gets his runway, he can really take off and dunk
Speaker 1: on you. But if her rolls into traffic, he's an
Speaker 1: excellent decision maker in terms of spraying it out in
Speaker 1: four on threes, and he's a very good short range scory.
Speaker 1: He's over fifty percent on fifty nine hooks and floaters
Speaker 1: this year, so that's a good shot for him there
Speaker 1: in the short range. And he's a three to one
Speaker 1: assist the turnover guy. So really really good ballscreen partner
Speaker 1: for Fred van Vliet. But he also can run offense
Speaker 1: out of the post and that was something that he
Speaker 1: struggled with to start the year, but he's really coming
Speaker 1: on strong as of late. The Rockets ran thirteen post
Speaker 1: ups through Shang Gun against the Thunder last night and
Speaker 1: they generated seventeen points out of him. That's one point
Speaker 1: three to one points per possession, a lot of really
Speaker 1: good work, a key kickout pass to Fred van Vliet
Speaker 1: and crunch time out of the post that ended in
Speaker 1: a bucket. And again it's about distraction, like even on
Speaker 1: the play where he fell over kind of with his
Speaker 1: back turned to Hartenstein, just all eyes are on him
Speaker 1: and that's what opens up that cut for Dylan Brooks
Speaker 1: to come through the and get that bucket as well.
Speaker 1: And then lastly, he's been one of the best offensive
Speaker 1: rebounders in the league this year. I'll brin Shangun has
Speaker 1: seventy four offensive rebounds. Only Musa Dibate, Ivi Kazubac and
Speaker 1: Yakapurtle have more in the entire NBA this year. He
Speaker 1: just snatched his fourth consecutive twenty point game. Now where
Speaker 1: it gets weird for the Rockets is outside of Shangun,
Speaker 1: nobody is consistent offensively like Jaleen M. Green has been
Speaker 1: wildly and consistent. He has four This is crazy. I
Speaker 1: pulled the stat on Twitter earlier this morning, but look
Speaker 1: at the dispersion of the scoring for Jalen Green and
Speaker 1: for Fred van Vliet. Jalen Green has four games with
Speaker 1: at least ten points or excuse me, with less than
Speaker 1: ten points. His four games with less than ten points,
Speaker 1: five games between ten and fifteen points, three games between
Speaker 1: sixteen and twenty points, five games between twenty and twenty
Speaker 1: five points, two games between twenty six and thirty five points,
Speaker 1: and two games with thirty six points or more. So
Speaker 1: it's like wild dispersion of production from him. Like he
Speaker 1: just had nine points against the Thunder, he had forty
Speaker 1: one the game before that, and then nine the game
Speaker 1: before that. That's some of the wildest oscillation in production
Speaker 1: that I've seen. They got thirty eight points out of
Speaker 1: Fred van Vliet last night. He was amazing in that game,
Speaker 1: got timely dribble penetration, it's several huge jump shots late.
Speaker 1: But he also has crazy point distribution. He has four
Speaker 1: games with single digits, six games between ten and fifteen,
Speaker 1: five games between sixteen and twenty in five games with
Speaker 1: more than twenty. So your two best guards are like
Speaker 1: feast or famine. On the offensive end of the four,
Speaker 1: Dylan Brooks is shooting the three better and he has
Speaker 1: some decent polish and he can make some plays off
Speaker 1: the bounds. A huge shot over his left shoulder in
Speaker 1: that game, but fifty three percent true shooting this season,
Speaker 1: and he can still make some really boneheaded decisions with
Speaker 1: the ball because he still kind of thinks he's better
Speaker 1: offensively than he actually is. Jabari Smith is starting to
Speaker 1: shoot the ball better. He's fifty percent from three on
Speaker 1: five attempts per game over the last six games, but
Speaker 1: he's also had nine games with single digit scoring output
Speaker 1: this year, only six games with fifteen points or more.
Speaker 1: So he's inconsistent offensively. A Men Thompson and Tari Easan,
Speaker 1: they can provide some rim pressure, like there are moments
Speaker 1: where the Houston Rockets offense bogs down and someone like
Speaker 1: Tari or Men will just beat somebody off the dribble
Speaker 1: and something good will happen. There's a lot of good
Speaker 1: that they bring there, but again they aren't high level
Speaker 1: shot creators. And then Raid Shepherd has been struggling. It
Speaker 1: seems to me in my time watching him on tape
Speaker 1: that he's struggling a little bit with the size and
Speaker 1: athleticism here in the NBA to get separation from people.
Speaker 1: So like in the half court, they have no choice
Speaker 1: but to play through Shangun or through Jalen Green or
Speaker 1: Fred van Vliet and just Shangun is really really good,
Speaker 1: but he's not one of the you know, top level
Speaker 1: shot creators in the league. And then Jalen and Fred
Speaker 1: are just so inconsistent, Like it's that inconsistency from Fred
Speaker 1: and Jalen that gets them beat. Look at their losses
Speaker 1: this month, the Portland loss at home, Fred van Vliet
Speaker 1: and Jalen Green go for eighteen points on twenty seven shots.
Speaker 1: When OKC blew them out earlier this month, Fred went
Speaker 1: four for nine. Jalen went five for fourteen. When Golden
Speaker 1: State beat them earlier this month, Fred and Jalen went
Speaker 1: four for twenty five from the field combined. So that's
Speaker 1: the main reason why I think the Houston Rockets are
Speaker 1: kind of like this season's surprise regular season wins juggernaut
Speaker 1: that probably can't win their conference. We've seen this sort
Speaker 1: of thing a lot of times in recent NBA history, right,
Speaker 1: like young athletic plays extremely hard every single night and
Speaker 1: have good injury luck throughout the year, like that kind
Speaker 1: of team. Right last year was Minnesota. They actually upset
Speaker 1: Denver in the playoffs, but then they ran into a
Speaker 1: team that could slow things down and protect the rim
Speaker 1: and then they fell apart, right Like, that's the thing,
Speaker 1: these young kind of inconsistent, limited shot creators that struggle
Speaker 1: with the surgical stuff you need to win three four
Speaker 1: playoff rounds.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The year before Minnesota, it was Sacramento. The year before that,
Speaker 1: it was Memphis. Right like there, it's a pretty consistent theme. Now,
Speaker 1: this Rockets defense is so good that they're gonna be
Speaker 1: in every single game, and it's a defense structured around
Speaker 1: what works in the modern NBA, which is athletic size, switchability,
Speaker 1: good ball pressure, and physicality. Right and on the nights
Speaker 1: where Jalen and Fred can actually reach that star level
Speaker 1: offensively to compliment what Shane Gun does, they can even
Speaker 1: be at the elite teams at the top of the league.
Speaker 1: But I just don't think they have the consistent shot
Speaker 1: creation to even be a second tier contender for me.
Speaker 1: But I do think they'll hold their own near the
Speaker 1: top of the West standings throughout the year. And for
Speaker 1: Rockets fans, this is not an insult. Yeah, I'm predicting
Speaker 1: you guys to win a lot of regular season games
Speaker 1: and then losing the first or second round, but this
Speaker 1: is part of the journey. To becoming a contender doesn't
Speaker 1: happen overnight for young teams, and it can happen overnight
Speaker 1: for teams that are built through things like you know,
Speaker 1: the Celtics make a trade for KG, they immediately go
Speaker 1: win the title. Lakers make a trade for Anthony Davis,
Speaker 1: they immediately go win the title. The Bucks make a
Speaker 1: trade for Drew Holliday, they immediately go win the title.
Speaker 1: The Warriors make a trade for KD. They immediately go
Speaker 1: win the title. Like they're examples of teams that do that.
Speaker 1: But for the young teams that are in the development process,
Speaker 1: it's about steps, and the important thing to remember is
Speaker 1: this is not the last step. There's a lot that
Speaker 1: happens from this phase where like look at Minnesota this year,
Speaker 1: they seem to kind of be struggling with the grind
Speaker 1: of the regular season. It's about like guys have to
Speaker 1: continue to develop in their skill development, right, they have
Speaker 1: to continue to get better year after year. You have
Speaker 1: to make the right tweaks to the roster. It's very
Speaker 1: possible that Minnesota made the wrong tweak to the roster
Speaker 1: bringing in Julius Randam. We'll see in the long run, right,
Speaker 1: And so that's the thing, Like, what is this team's
Speaker 1: move eventually going to be? And like my guess is
Speaker 1: that they end up trading Jalen Green at some point.
Speaker 1: He just kind of strikes me as the guy that's
Speaker 1: kind of an awkward fit and most importantly, like he's
Speaker 1: the type of young talent that could actually help them
Speaker 1: bring in a super.
Speaker 2: High level player.
Speaker 1: But ideally, if you could find a way to maintain
Speaker 1: the identity of the team in terms of the athleticism
Speaker 1: around them and bring in the type of superstar level
Speaker 1: half court shot creator you need to really contend in
Speaker 1: this league, sky's the limit for this team. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I do view them as more or less just a
Speaker 1: regular season wins juggernaut this year on the thunderfront isay
Speaker 1: Harden's sein is such an incredible pickup.
Speaker 2: I mean, we all knew this.
Speaker 1: It's not exactly some sort of basketball rocket science, right
Speaker 1: Like this is he's just a really really good role
Speaker 1: player that is going to play really well alongside a
Speaker 1: team that has a lot of talent on the perimeter
Speaker 1: and specifically had need of what he bring brought to
Speaker 1: the table. Right, Like, he completely changes the physical profile
Speaker 1: of the team. He sets monster screens to free up
Speaker 1: the guards, something that the Thunder really haven't had since
Speaker 1: Steven Adams. It's such a simple thing, but it's an
Speaker 1: important thing. You know, Like you if you set a
Speaker 1: really good screen to free up your ball handler and
Speaker 1: he doesn't have to worry about the dude draped over
Speaker 1: his back, then he can comfortably operate in the mid
Speaker 1: range and he's going to be a lot better there
Speaker 1: shot making and playmaking out of it. But if the
Speaker 1: guys gets over the top of the screen and he's
Speaker 1: draped on his backside, he can funnel him into the
Speaker 1: help take away the shot making piece in the middle
Speaker 1: and make it easier for guys to stay home off
Speaker 1: the ball. Setting really good screens at the point of
Speaker 1: attack for your ball handlers is a vital part of
Speaker 1: freeing things up for your offense. Something Isai Hartenstein is
Speaker 1: excellent at. He's an excellent defensive rebounder. The Thunder this season,
Speaker 1: when Isaiah Hartenstein is off the floor get just sixty
Speaker 1: seven percent of opponent's misses. When Isaiah Hartenstein's on the floor,
Speaker 1: they get seventy three percent of their opponent's misses. Basically,
Speaker 1: the difference between being a batterybounding team and an OK
Speaker 1: rebounding team like a middle of the pack rebounding team
Speaker 1: is having Isaiah Hartenstein on the floor. He's also a
Speaker 1: good smart defender with good size and mobility to anchor
Speaker 1: their defense, but he does so much more on the
Speaker 1: offensive end beyond the screening. In this Houston game, we
Speaker 1: saw him hit multiple back cuts where like he was
Speaker 1: at the top of the key and like Shay's driving.
Speaker 1: You know, Dylan Brooks has got his back turned to
Speaker 1: the ball and he's just holding on to Shae with
Speaker 1: two hands, and Shae could just throw a hard cut
Speaker 1: towards the basket and time can hit him on the bounce.
Speaker 1: Now it's like you just be It's the same effect
Speaker 1: as beating him off the driple because now you have
Speaker 1: the ball and you're past Illan Brooks. That's an important
Speaker 1: part of attacking teams in space, right, having bigs that
Speaker 1: can make those backcut passes. Right, we saw him. We
Speaker 1: talked about, you know, those strong left handed drives. Like
Speaker 1: a lot of times, like Hardenstein's sitting there looking around
Speaker 1: and a team is just doing a really good job
Speaker 1: denying and everyone's glued up off the ball and there's
Speaker 1: just a chasm of space around the rim. You had
Speaker 1: to play like that in the second half where he
Speaker 1: just hard drove left at shanegun and then spun into
Speaker 1: a right handed layup at the basket. That's how you
Speaker 1: capitalize on the space that's provided by everyone off ball
Speaker 1: being denied. That's an important part. And then he's a
Speaker 1: release valve when things stall out, he can flash to
Speaker 1: the top of the key, get the ball, and flow
Speaker 1: into action on the other side of the floor. Oh
Speaker 1: like it's late shot clock, Well, he'll flash to the elbow.
Speaker 1: He had a play where he caught at the left elbow,
Speaker 1: so like sixteen sixteen and a half, seventeen feet away
Speaker 1: from the rim. Cott turned took one step in and
Speaker 1: shot a little like kind of thirteen foot floater that
Speaker 1: he made, by the way, thirteen for twenty two on
Speaker 1: floaters this year. That's fifty nine percent or one point
Speaker 1: one to eight points per shot. As I mentioned, he's
Speaker 1: just a professional role player center and when you put
Speaker 1: him around elite perimeter talent like what Okayse has, he
Speaker 1: can push them to a special level. A couple other
Speaker 1: small bits on the thunder Kison Wallace I thought he
Speaker 1: lost contain on Fred van Vlid a few times in
Speaker 1: the clutch. Definitely not his best defensive game. I thought
Speaker 1: he overhelped on that Fred van Vliet three in the
Speaker 1: post as well, but he had a couple of gigantic
Speaker 1: threes in this game to give Okasee a chance. And again,
Speaker 1: this has been an issue for OKAC this year, role
Speaker 1: players hitting shots, and Cassan has been off. A bunch
Speaker 1: of guys have been off. Those are some big ones
Speaker 1: and a good positive sign for the Thunder. Then Jalen Williams,
Speaker 1: He's been playing really well this season, but this was
Speaker 1: another game this year where I thought his decision making
Speaker 1: was a bit rough. He took some tough early clock
Speaker 1: jump shots, and then they had three or four plays
Speaker 1: in the fourth quarter. The big one with Jaylen Williams
Speaker 1: that stood out to me in the Dallas series last year.
Speaker 1: He challenges rim protectors and a lot of times missus
Speaker 1: easy kickout raads, and he had three or four plays
Speaker 1: in the fourth quarter of that Houston game where he
Speaker 1: just drove into tons of bodies and tried to force
Speaker 1: stuff up. He got blocked twice at the rim in
Speaker 1: this one in the fourth quarter, missed a couple of
Speaker 1: layups too, and it's like, I think he could loosen
Speaker 1: things up for himself. He's a good enough playmaker to
Speaker 1: see it. It's just a decision making thing, like he
Speaker 1: just has to be a little bit more willing to
Speaker 1: make those kickout passes. Everything about this Thunder team screams
Speaker 1: to me that they still lean another year to just
Speaker 1: kind of improve their experience and collective basketball IQ. But
Speaker 1: then I remember that they have Chet Holmer coming back,
Speaker 1: and that Alex Cruso will come back and he'll probably
Speaker 1: play better than he did to start the year. They
Speaker 1: just have so much margin for error, and Shay is
Speaker 1: really that good, and so like, I'm not at the
Speaker 1: point where I as of right now, Boston to me
Speaker 1: feels like the clear number one, but I still have
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City kind of clinging to that tier just because
Speaker 1: of their sheer amount of talent, and I do think
Speaker 1: they can play a lot better than they have. But like, again,
Speaker 1: every my basketball heart is screaming to me that Boston
Speaker 1: is just far and away the best team in the
Speaker 1: league this year, and that's kind of where I'm at
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 2: All right, let's.
Speaker 1: Move on to our power rankings, So we're gonna also
Speaker 1: from now we're gonna start including championship odds and conference
Speaker 1: odds as part of this process, and I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: read them off to you guys when we get to
Speaker 1: the tail end of each team in this list. And
Speaker 1: then also, as you can probably imagine, the top four
Speaker 1: teams in this list are teams that we hit today,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to go into too much detail
Speaker 1: on them. You can find that if you happen to
Speaker 1: have clicked on a breakout clip for the Power Rankings
Speaker 1: and you want to hear for the top four teams.
Speaker 1: Remember that's at the top of today's full episode. All
Speaker 1: lines and odds are provided by our partner DraftKings, just
Speaker 1: so you guys know. And then also, Lakers fans not
Speaker 1: gonna do any Lakers today because they play the Timberwolves tonight,
Speaker 1: and we will talk a lot of Lakers tomorrow. So
Speaker 1: everything involving them in the crappy basketball they've been playing
Speaker 1: as of late, we will discuss in detail in tomorrow's show.
Speaker 1: But without any further ado, let's get going. The Golden
Speaker 1: State Warriors at number ten, an oh to three week
Speaker 1: for the Warriors losses to Brooklyn, OKC and Phoenix. They've
Speaker 1: lost four in a row. Overall, in their offense has
Speaker 1: just really fallen apart. They have one hundred and seven
Speaker 1: offensive rating in the four game slide. Steph just hasn't
Speaker 1: been good. He's obviously a little banged up with the
Speaker 1: he's had some bilateral knee tendonitis. Twenty one points seven
Speaker 1: points per game on thirty nine percent from the field
Speaker 1: in this four game slide. Andrew Wiggins is scoring eighteen
Speaker 1: points a game, but he hasn't been very efficient. He's
Speaker 1: taken like seventeen shots to get those eighteen points. Kaminga's
Speaker 1: been awful, but he's been fine. But he's just like
Speaker 1: the old buddy, who's a guy who can hit a
Speaker 1: couple of shots and make a couple of plays, but
Speaker 1: isn't good enough to really be an offensive hub. Brandon
Speaker 1: Pajemski is still cold, Lindy Waters has gone cold, Draymond
Speaker 1: Green hasn't been hitting the threes the way he did
Speaker 1: to start the year. Moses Moody is cold, and so
Speaker 1: obviously the Warriors have some offensive personnel limitations, but also,
Speaker 1: as I said a couple of times with other teams
Speaker 1: in the last few weeks. Sometimes you just play bad basketball.
Speaker 1: Sometimes a team enters into a little bit of a
Speaker 1: funk and you just have to find a way to
Speaker 1: snap out of it. Part of the eighty two game
Speaker 1: journey is there will be three or four different times
Speaker 1: during the season where for about a week you play
Speaker 1: bad basketball and you just have to find a way
Speaker 1: to figure out what's causing it and snap out of it.
Speaker 1: And the thing is there's no relief on the schedule
Speaker 1: right now. The next eleven games for Golden State at Denver,
Speaker 1: home for Houston, home for Minnesota, home for Minnesota, at
Speaker 1: Memphis at Minnesota, home for the Pacers and the Lakers,
Speaker 1: at the Clippers, and then home for Phoenix and Cleveland. Now,
Speaker 1: the thing there is a lot of home games, so
Speaker 1: specifically that three game stretch at home with Houston and
Speaker 1: two at Minnesota, two against Minnesota. That's a good spot
Speaker 1: for them to ride their home crowd. You hopefully hit
Speaker 1: some shots and regain some confidence and play some better basketball.
Speaker 1: Gold State Warriors right now are plus seventeen hundred to
Speaker 1: win the title on draft Kings and plus nine hundred
Speaker 1: to win the Western Conference. Number nine. The Milwaukee Bucks
Speaker 1: a light week for them. They went two to zero
Speaker 1: to extend their straight to six games that have won
Speaker 1: eight out of nine as well, huge road win in
Speaker 1: Miami where Dame just shot the ball so well that
Speaker 1: Miami had no choice but to double team him every
Speaker 1: time down the floor. And then AJ Green was the
Speaker 1: hero at the end of that one, made a couple
Speaker 1: of huge threes to beat double teams. They also defended
Speaker 1: extremely well as a team, and that's the really exciting
Speaker 1: part if you're a Bucks fan. The Bucks are eighth
Speaker 1: in defense over the last nine games, up to fourteenth
Speaker 1: on the season, thanks to a renaissance from guys like
Speaker 1: Brook Lopez and Janis Antennacumbo in some really level of
Speaker 1: really high level perimeter defense from guys like AJ Green
Speaker 1: and Andre Jackson giannas Antena Kupo's averaging thirty five points
Speaker 1: per game over this nine game span. The Milwaukee Bucks
Speaker 1: right now are plus twenty two hundred to win the
Speaker 1: title in plus one thousand to win the conference. Number
Speaker 1: eight the Los Angeles Clippers. Two and two week for
Speaker 1: them all over the place, Like they get annihilated by
Speaker 1: Boston where they give up fifty points in the second quarter,
Speaker 1: then they go blow out the Wizards in Washington. Then
Speaker 1: they lose an absolute heartbreaker to Minnesota in this rock
Speaker 1: fight of a game where they still had a chance
Speaker 1: to win late christn slips and loses.
Speaker 2: Control of the ball.
Speaker 1: And then they get a big win against Denver. So
Speaker 1: the very up and down week. But the big highlight
Speaker 1: is James Harden. I had a feeling coming into the
Speaker 1: season that the Clippers would be a very good regular
Speaker 1: season team because of their roster and the way it
Speaker 1: fits modern basketball so effectively on both ends of the floor.
Speaker 1: But James Harden was a big part of that in
Speaker 1: his ability to raise the floor on the offensive end,
Speaker 1: and he was pretty inefficient to start the year, and
Speaker 1: they were just still winning anyway because he was doing
Speaker 1: enough and Norman Powell was so so so hot and
Speaker 1: they were defending so well. Now James Harden's breaking out.
Speaker 1: He had thirty nine to nine and eleven in the
Speaker 1: win against Denver. In James Harden's last seven games, he's
Speaker 1: averaging twenty seven points, six rebounds, and nine assists on
Speaker 1: sixty two percent true shooting, and the Clippers are five
Speaker 1: and two in that span. So, like, I know, this
Speaker 1: is a upfront I know this is a preposter is
Speaker 1: lee big if, But if Kawhi Leonard can rejoin this
Speaker 1: team and reach a superstar level, I do think they
Speaker 1: have the ability to contend for a championship because of
Speaker 1: their personnel strengths, because of the hard and fit as
Speaker 1: long as Kawhi Leonard can actually remain healthy through the
Speaker 1: end of the playoffs. At that level, this roster does
Speaker 1: have that type of talent, respectfully in the ways that
Speaker 1: you need to get through this conference. A big body
Speaker 1: to match up with Jokich in the form of Zubas
Speaker 1: right perimeter talent, good secondary and tertiary shot creation with
Speaker 1: Harden and Powell. If Harden, if Kawhi Leonard gets healthy again,
Speaker 1: like that's the issue. Kawhi Leonard is the guy that
Speaker 1: gives this team a real upside, and it's just about
Speaker 1: whether or not even to get back. Now again, that's
Speaker 1: a preposterously big if. What do you think what do
Speaker 1: I think is going to happen? I think Kawhi Leonard's
Speaker 1: not going to be able to get back to form,
Speaker 1: and the Clippers will have that ceiling that prevents them
Speaker 1: from getting there. But it's hard to not get a
Speaker 1: little bit of excited if you're a Clippers fan and
Speaker 1: if you believe in that, plus fifty five hundred to
Speaker 1: win the title, plus twenty five hundred to win the conference.
Speaker 1: So like again, if Kawhi gets back, they got a
Speaker 1: chance to win the conference. So it's something to keep
Speaker 1: in mind in terms of the odds in the value
Speaker 1: there all right. Number seven, the Memphis Grizzlies four to
Speaker 1: oh this week, six straight wins overall, capitalizing on a
Speaker 1: stretch of week schedule. They beat Philly, Chicago, Portland, Detroit,
Speaker 1: New Orleans, and Indiana in the span. But starting to
Speaker 1: get some tougher games here in December. They've had the
Speaker 1: number one offense in the league over the six game span,
Speaker 1: really balanced scoring. Seventy two percent of Memphis Grizzly baskets
Speaker 1: have been assisted over the course of the six game
Speaker 1: win streak. They're almost fully healthy now. Zaki's the main
Speaker 1: guy they're waiting on, and they're looking super deep with talent.
Speaker 1: But again, schedule's about to get tougher. They're at Dallas
Speaker 1: tomorrow night. They have Boston, Golden State, the Clippers, the Thunder,
Speaker 1: and the Suns all before the end of this month.
Speaker 1: So we'll get to learn a lot more about the
Speaker 1: Grizzlies over that span. The Grizzlies are currently plus thirty
Speaker 1: five hundred to win the title and plus sixteen hundred
Speaker 1: to win the Western Conference Number six. The Dallas also
Speaker 1: a four to OH league. This team is one of
Speaker 1: the hottest teams in basketball right now. They've won eight
Speaker 1: out of nine and if not some really impressive wins
Speaker 1: one at Denver and at Oklahoma City in that span.
Speaker 1: Luca did not play in five of the eight wins,
Speaker 1: including either of the Oklahoma City or Denver games. Over
Speaker 1: this nine game span, they are fourth and offense, seventh
Speaker 1: in defense, and second in net rating. They're playing with
Speaker 1: a lot of pace in transition in the half court,
Speaker 1: getting a lot of production down the roster. Kyrie obviously
Speaker 1: is awesome, but Naji Marshall has really taken off. Quinton
Speaker 1: Grimes is like shooting the seams off the basketball. Spencer
Speaker 1: Dinwoode has provided big shot making and he's one of, like,
Speaker 1: kind of the underrated playmaking guards in the league. He's
Speaker 1: been doing some really high level playmaking in the stretch.
Speaker 2: PJ.
Speaker 1: Washington has been great and has made some big plays
Speaker 1: in big spots at the end of games and now
Speaker 1: Luca's back, and it just feels to me like this
Speaker 1: team is about to go on a run. And Dallas
Speaker 1: fans just go look at your schedule for the rest
Speaker 1: of the month of December. You get Luca back, get
Speaker 1: into a groove, keep everybody's minutes reasonable. This could be
Speaker 1: a situation where you head into January with a really
Speaker 1: strong pass in the standings, good opportunity in front of Dallas.
Speaker 1: A lot of people were just like off of Dallas
Speaker 1: early in the year as they're trying to incorporate new
Speaker 1: pieces and Lucas clearly just banged up and not playing
Speaker 1: good basketball. I just thought it was way too early
Speaker 1: to jump off of them, like their team that we're
Speaker 1: going to see get stronger and stronger over the course
Speaker 1: of this season. The Dallas Mavericks right now are plus
Speaker 1: eleven hundred to win the title and plus five point
Speaker 1: fifty to win the conference. Some decent odds there to
Speaker 1: get them to win the conference. Number five the Orlando
Speaker 1: Magic another four o week really light schedule, though they
Speaker 1: beat Charlotte, Chicago and Brooklyn twice last week. CACP, though,
Speaker 1: is back and starting to get it going for them.
Speaker 1: Seven three point attempts per game last week shot fifty
Speaker 1: four percent from three, and that's made a bunch of
Speaker 1: big plays at him. The Magic have won twelve out
Speaker 1: of thirteen without Palo. They have the number one defense
Speaker 1: in the league over that span. In their twelfth in offense,
Speaker 1: some of the best offense we've seen out of the
Speaker 1: Magic in this era. And so I'll be really interested
Speaker 1: to see how they choose to reincorporate palavon Kara he
Speaker 1: comes back from his injury again, like he's too talented
Speaker 1: to just be like, oh, go stand in the corner
Speaker 1: and let Franz run the show. But got to find
Speaker 1: a way to make sure that you maintain this comfort,
Speaker 1: the level of comfort that you're seeing out of Fronds
Speaker 1: over this span. And I think they'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: A lot of staggering, a lot of like finding ways
Speaker 1: to keep them both involved in the action. Jamal Moosey
Speaker 1: is gonna have his work cutout for him. But I
Speaker 1: think it'll be really cool to see. No way to
Speaker 1: look at that as other than optimistic that you lose
Speaker 1: your who I think is their best player in Palamoncaro
Speaker 1: and you go in a win twelve out of thirteen games.
Speaker 2: Really interesting stuff there. Again.
Speaker 1: The last four teams, again we also with the Magic
Speaker 1: their odds. They're plus five thousand to win the title
Speaker 1: and plus fifteen hundred to win the Eastern Conference. And
Speaker 1: again our last four. We hit all of these teams
Speaker 1: in detail at the top of the show, So if
Speaker 1: you're clicking on the Power Rankings breakout clip and you
Speaker 1: want to hear Thunder, Rocket, Celtics, Cavs stuff. In our
Speaker 1: full episode from today, we did a full breakdown on
Speaker 1: those two teams at the top. Number four, I have
Speaker 1: the OKC Thunder. They are currently plus four to twenty
Speaker 1: five to win the title, plus two to ten to
Speaker 1: win the West. Number three the Houston Rockets plus five
Speaker 1: plus fifty five hundred to win the title, plus two
Speaker 1: thousand to win the West. I actually like that number
Speaker 1: just because these West teams are so injury prone and
Speaker 1: really anything can happen, and also Houston could be potentially
Speaker 1: a team that makes an aggressive trade this year, So
Speaker 1: for them at plus fifty five hundred to win the
Speaker 1: title or plus two thousand to win the West, kind
Speaker 1: of some interesting odds there. And then the Celtics number
Speaker 1: two plus two forty to win the title, plus one
Speaker 1: hundred to win the East, and the Cleveland Cavaliers plus
Speaker 1: fourteen hundred to win the title plus five point fifty
Speaker 1: to win the East. Again, all of those odds are
Speaker 1: provided by our partner Draft Kings. And then also really
Speaker 1: simply the reason why I put the Rockets over the Thunder.
Speaker 1: Obviously I think the Thunder are a better team, but
Speaker 1: the Rockets won that individual game. For the purposes of
Speaker 1: our regular season power rankings, they get the edge for
Speaker 1: this week. Same thing goes for the Celtics. I'd pick
Speaker 1: the Celtics beat the Calves in five or six games
Speaker 1: that they played in the playoff series, but the Calves
Speaker 1: won last night, so we'll give them the nod for
Speaker 1: right now. All right, let's get into our film before
Speaker 1: we get out of here for the day. If you're
Speaker 1: listening on the podcast fee and you're gonna want to
Speaker 1: head over to YouTube to see that part to actually
Speaker 1: get the visual representations of what we're talking about. We're
Speaker 1: going to head out to Phoenix to start and this
Speaker 1: first possession here is an ISO of Kevin Durant of
Speaker 1: Gary Payton. One of the things I wanted to talk about,
Speaker 1: do you guys, Remember how often I talk about attacking
Speaker 1: the base to disrupt rhythm rather than trying to contest shots.
Speaker 1: I want to just play this in slow motion and
Speaker 1: then I'll play it in full. I'll play it in
Speaker 1: a fast motion first, and then we'll play it in
Speaker 1: slow motion. Watch the way Gary Payton is not so
Speaker 1: concerned about attacking up top to contest the shot, but
Speaker 1: rather to disrupt his base. See I was shoving on
Speaker 1: his body. All of that damage is being done down low,
Speaker 1: fighting down the leaning on him, shoving on him, and
Speaker 1: you can actually see KD get his power just disrupted
Speaker 1: in that lift, and that ends up causing the shot,
Speaker 1: the shot to miss. I'm gonna play it in slow
Speaker 1: motion here. Watch again how aggressive he is attacking the base,
Speaker 1: leaning on him, pushing, leaning right there. That little shove
Speaker 1: there caused him to lose balance and then he ends
Speaker 1: up taking a really tough fallaway and missing. I've always
Speaker 1: believed small guys in mismatches don't try to contest, Especially
Speaker 1: professional shooters, find a way to disrupt their rhythm down low.
Speaker 1: This next clip here very very impressive defensive possession for
Speaker 1: the Phoenix Suns Warriors post splits right so we're gonna
Speaker 1: go to the block. Watch the attachment off the ball.
Speaker 1: So we have Booker on Moody, we have Royce O'Neil
Speaker 1: and Buddy Healed. Watch the attachment here. Royce O'Neil stays
Speaker 1: through boom switch stay attached, Chase over the top, attached
Speaker 1: from Monty Morris. Take away that three in the corner.
Speaker 1: Kaminga has a chance to attack, but Ran Dunn contains. Now,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, there's two seconds on the shot
Speaker 1: clock and you have to throw up a heavily contested,
Speaker 1: really really high level defense there from the Phoenix Suns. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Ryan Dunn's been getting a lot of the hype, but
Speaker 1: also A Gadaro has been playing really really well as
Speaker 1: one of the backup centers for Phoenix. I thought this
Speaker 1: was a really smart step up screen right here. Watch
Speaker 1: how Kevon Looney is running really hard as his back turn.
Speaker 1: Agdaro sees an opportunity to get Devin Booker a quick shot,
Speaker 1: but Kadawi just gives a little shove to Looney and
Speaker 1: to sprints into his screen.
Speaker 2: Boom.
Speaker 1: Just that little detail there, capitalizing on Looney over playing
Speaker 1: the paint in transition and setting that little impromptu screen
Speaker 1: gets a clean look for Devin Booker, who knocks it down.
Speaker 1: Really smart stuff there, Agadaro again, here are just a
Speaker 1: week side cut as a lowman on a low man possession.
Speaker 1: So again, little guard guard screen. Devin Booker gets downhill
Speaker 1: as the Warriors botched the switch, Cavan Loney has no choice.
Speaker 1: Put to step up. Don't make this a three. You
Speaker 1: have all the space in the world. It's a runway.
Speaker 1: Throw it up, boom dunk. Easy stuff there. One of
Speaker 1: the things I've been talking about, by the way that
Speaker 1: I put in my notes Obi Toppin in Indiana, Remember
Speaker 1: that was how Obi Toppin like kind of reinvigorated his career.
Speaker 1: Was like he just figured out how to time baseline
Speaker 1: cuts perfectly and made himself a real threat in the
Speaker 1: weakside corner as a vertical spacer out of those situations.
Speaker 1: That's that athletic spacing. It's a different type of spacing,
Speaker 1: but it is a form of spacing. One of the
Speaker 1: things I've talked about a lot for the Suns this
Speaker 1: year is how good their closeouts have been. I want
Speaker 1: you guys to watch Grayson Allen on this one again.
Speaker 1: The closeouts are everything because they're the ability to get
Speaker 1: into the paint and help while also maintaining your contained
Speaker 1: on the perimeter.
Speaker 2: So we got Kaminga getting downhill. Watch Grayson Allen.
Speaker 1: He gets relocated, so he's in a really tough spot here,
Speaker 1: but watch how sharp this closeout is gets there, contains slides,
Speaker 1: cuts him off. That's excellent defense from Grayson Allen containing
Speaker 1: in the perimeter because again, if you look at where
Speaker 1: this is at right here, as Kaminga's driving boom right
Speaker 1: here on the relo, you could be in big trouble here.
Speaker 1: That's a heavy advantage for Moses Moody and just a
Speaker 1: really really sharp close out from Grayson Allen. Here's a
Speaker 1: good driving kick possession for the Suns. It's gonna start
Speaker 1: with Devin Booker on the strong side of the floor,
Speaker 1: but it's gonna work its way back to Devin Booker
Speaker 1: and the driving kick, so it just beats his man off.
Speaker 1: The dribble brings all these bodies into the paint right,
Speaker 1: So just dribble penetration our kick to the corner here.
Speaker 1: All we're gonna get is a quick dribble handoff. Agadaro
Speaker 1: gets a little bit of contact there that allows him
Speaker 1: to slip the screen as Looney shows. Now we got
Speaker 1: our four on three right, here's our four on three
Speaker 1: kick out to Royce O'Neill. Swing over to Monti Morris.
Speaker 1: There's the rotation off of Booker's man. Now Booker gets
Speaker 1: a wide open three in the corner out of it.
Speaker 1: So again it's all about advantage creation and advantage extending.
Speaker 1: Devin Booker creates the initial advantage. Right, there's our initial advantage.
Speaker 1: Agadaro's job here is to extend the advantage. The way
Speaker 1: he does that is through a quick dribble handoff. Hey,
Speaker 1: I can't actually do anything with this, but I can
Speaker 1: get you more open. Oh wait, now I've got two
Speaker 1: on the ball. So now we went from Devin Booker
Speaker 1: driving as the early advantage. This is a bigger advantage.
Speaker 1: Now this is a four on three. Now it's about
Speaker 1: decision making. Buddy Heald is playing this two on one,
Speaker 1: but he's closer to Grayson Allen than he is de
Speaker 1: Royce O'Neil. If he throws this ball to Grayson Allen
Speaker 1: might not end in an open three. For your best
Speaker 1: shooter makes the kickout. Now we have the two on
Speaker 1: one working back over to Devin Booker. It's all about
Speaker 1: advantage creation, advantage extending, and making the right decision for
Speaker 1: the kill pass. Kevin Durant's been just having an unbelievable
Speaker 1: defensive season this year. I thought he was incredible in
Speaker 1: this possession, helps at the rim twice, beats Looney there
Speaker 1: on the slip. Another drive from Lindy Waters contains him
Speaker 1: dribbles out. Now it's an ISO, so he's shut down
Speaker 1: two actions at the rim. Now we're in a late
Speaker 1: clock situation with four point six seconds left and just
Speaker 1: completely smothers Lindy Watt like actually literally smothers Lindy Waters
Speaker 1: and just takes the ball away from him, like child's
Speaker 1: play over there.
Speaker 2: All right, we're moving on to O Case Houston.
Speaker 1: That was a game that I watched over Thanksgiving break
Speaker 1: and I just shared some clips so that I thought
Speaker 1: we could get into a little bit. This was a
Speaker 1: play that the Thunder ran twice for dunks in this game.
Speaker 1: A great example of using your best player on the
Speaker 1: strong side for spacing and then weak side action to
Speaker 1: occupy help defenders, so that all that happens here is
Speaker 1: they run a little pin down for Jalen Williams with
Speaker 1: caseon Wallace so he can catch and then immediately come
Speaker 1: off of a ball screen with Isaiah Hartenstein. That's all
Speaker 1: the action is. The only difference is after kaseon Wallace
Speaker 1: sets the pin down, he runs through off of this
Speaker 1: exit screen from lou Dort. So again you can see
Speaker 1: Case on Wallace set's the pin down, Jalen Williams comes up,
Speaker 1: forces the switch. Here's our ball screen. The two things
Speaker 1: I want you to watch. Don't even worry about the
Speaker 1: ball screen for a second. Up top here, Dylan Brooks,
Speaker 1: because he's guarding Shake, kills Alexander's face, guarding him out
Speaker 1: of the play. And now I want you guys to
Speaker 1: watch Jalen Green and Jabari Smith Junior. And what they
Speaker 1: do is Lou dor and case On Wallace run this action.
Speaker 2: Look at them.
Speaker 1: Both of them have their heads completely turned away from
Speaker 1: the play because Jalen is like, hey man, a screen's
Speaker 1: about to come, or excuse me. Jabari is about, hey man,
Speaker 1: a screen's about to come, and Jalen Green is like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm about to get screen right. This is an exit screen.
Speaker 1: All it is is a little baseline screen for the
Speaker 1: shooter coming out to the corner. It is designed to
Speaker 1: keep these guys busy. Now, as a result, there's nobody
Speaker 1: guarding the ball screen except for Shangoun and Fred van Vliet,
Speaker 1: and it ends an easy dunk. Watch it again again
Speaker 1: as Jalen comes off, watch the two help defenders immediately
Speaker 1: get occupied. Now we have our simple drop coverage. Hartenstein
Speaker 1: gets behind. That's the value of offball action. It occupies
Speaker 1: help defenders. Here's an example of the waves of athleticism
Speaker 1: that Houston can bring. This is just a little semi
Speaker 1: transition drive from Dylan Brooks misses it, gets in the lane,
Speaker 1: but then you got this Stephen Adams size advantage. He
Speaker 1: stabs at the ball that gets it to a Men
Speaker 1: Thompson who lays it up bucket. That's not any sort
Speaker 1: of surgical offensive process. It's just waves of athleticism. Watch
Speaker 1: it again. Dylan Brooks hard drive, misses the shot, Steven
Speaker 1: Adams stabs at it, a Men Thompson is the bigger,
Speaker 1: better athlete, grabs it and finishes a bunch of just
Speaker 1: size and strength and athleticism advantage in that one. Here's
Speaker 1: the exact same action that they started the game with
Speaker 1: that I showed you guys pinned down, Jalen Williams comes
Speaker 1: up ball screen exit screen. This time Jabari Smith sees
Speaker 1: it coming, but by the time he sees it coming,
Speaker 1: Isaiah Hartenstein already has a head of steam and it's
Speaker 1: just too late boom, And once again you're kind of
Speaker 1: dead to rights because it's like lou dord is setting
Speaker 1: this exit screen. So if Jabari Smith just overplays that,
Speaker 1: Jalen Williams has an easy kickout past to Aaron Wiggins
Speaker 1: here in the corner. Here's an example of Isaiah Hartenstein
Speaker 1: creating dribble penetration just through backcut. So again, look at this,
Speaker 1: Hartenstein catches Dylan Brooks is top blocking, so he's denying
Speaker 1: Shay Gilders Alexander the ability to go get this dribble handoff.
Speaker 1: So the way you counter that is back cutting, and
Speaker 1: the only way you can counter it with back cutting
Speaker 1: is if your big man can make the pass. This time,
Speaker 1: Shay Gilviss Alexander makes the right read. My man is
Speaker 1: full deny, I'm just gonna cut. And by the way,
Speaker 1: if he's grabbing and holding, if you cut hard, you'll
Speaker 1: draw the foul as the ref season holding you. So
Speaker 1: it's like the right decision to just cut out of this.
Speaker 1: Hartenstein hits him, they get a layup out of it,
Speaker 1: easy basketball that Isaiah Hartenstein unlocks with his passing ability.
Speaker 1: Here's an example of Isaiah Hartenstein with all off ball denial.
Speaker 1: So again Lou Dort again is running that action. Off
Speaker 1: of that, jenlel Williams has the early transition drive. It
Speaker 1: gets pitched to Lou Lou drives. Here's the release valve. Right,
Speaker 1: there's fifteen seconds on the shot clock. The play is contained,
Speaker 1: everyone is guarded, so we need to find a way
Speaker 1: to reinvigorate the offense. Well, Isaiah Hartenstein will do this
Speaker 1: all the time, where he'll just flash, He'll flash up
Speaker 1: high and he'll be like, all right, I've got the ball.
Speaker 1: Now there's twelve seconds on the shot clock. Let's get
Speaker 1: back into our offense. And so usually what he'll do
Speaker 1: here is try to then get the offense flowing back
Speaker 1: this way. And so I think this is Jay Dub
Speaker 1: up here. Yeah, so j Dub is gonna come off
Speaker 1: of this dribble handoff right, But Jabari Smith does a
Speaker 1: good job chasing and it's not open. It's not open,
Speaker 1: but everyone's glued up. Jabari Smith is glued up, Fred
Speaker 1: Van Blid is glued up. Dylan Brooks is kind of
Speaker 1: in help, but he's not in a strong position. Jalen
Speaker 1: Green's on the weak side. So Hartenstein just turns and
Speaker 1: goes spins. He's got Look at all the space. He's
Speaker 1: got all this space because they're not respecting him. They're
Speaker 1: worried about this whirling dervish of action that they have
Speaker 1: going around him. Right, this is where Isaiah can look
Speaker 1: to attack, gets an easy layup. Here's another release valve possession,
Speaker 1: this time that it happens later in the clock. So
Speaker 1: again early clock. Okay, nothing's there, right, Jadub Drives gets
Speaker 1: contained all right, So we need a release valve just
Speaker 1: to keep the action running. Okay, Isaiah Hartenstein is gonna
Speaker 1: fly flash now once again.
Speaker 2: What are we gonna do. Let's try to run some action.
Speaker 2: Shae cuts, Shaye drives.
Speaker 1: This is where Isaiah Harten design makes himself available right here,
Speaker 1: seventeen feet from the basket. Catch easy pop shot and
Speaker 1: again he's shooting like fifty nine percent on those this season.
Speaker 1: All right, moving on to Boston Cleveland this time, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna show you a bunch of stuff of Tatum attacking Garland.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get into a bunch of details from this game.
Speaker 1: I got like twenty clips from this game. I thought
Speaker 1: it was super fascinating down the stretch. But this one
Speaker 1: is transition cross match, so Darius Garland ends up picking
Speaker 1: up Tatum just because it's in transition, so it's no
Speaker 1: real screening action to get there. But watch how Tatum
Speaker 1: just kind of easily methodically marches down and gets to
Speaker 1: that like little fifteen foot jump shot. Easy work there.
Speaker 1: That's where he felt most comfortable. You can also see too,
Speaker 1: as he's attacking, notice where the help is. Like if
Speaker 1: he tries to really drive to the left, Donovan Mitchell
Speaker 1: will engage now and then he could make a kickout potentially,
Speaker 1: but then he could also lose the basketball. He's purposefully
Speaker 1: working in this range because this is where he can
Speaker 1: get away from the help. This is a big way
Speaker 1: that the Celtics were getting or that the Caves are
Speaker 1: attacking the Celtics on the offensive end in this game,
Speaker 1: just attacking porzingis in a deep drop coverage. Good ball
Speaker 1: screen set on Drew forces him to go under a rescreen,
Speaker 1: gets into the lane, Porzingis is a bit too far back,
Speaker 1: works into the floater, so this time they run the
Speaker 1: double drag that ends up in a couple switches right.
Speaker 1: So Tatum switched on to Garland, but then he goes
Speaker 1: off the second screen. Now Garland's on Porzingis, so now
Speaker 1: we're gonna try to throw it to him at the
Speaker 1: elbow right, creates the angle, does a good job fighting
Speaker 1: that front by creating a passing angle there. A coorro
Speaker 1: comes over to help. As that double team comes, Houser
Speaker 1: relocates up a little bit higher on the wing. This
Speaker 1: is where I was talking about Sam Houser just like
Speaker 1: staying super cool, calm and collected against a passing lane
Speaker 1: close out. So a lot of times in these two
Speaker 1: on ones on the weak side, this guy will just
Speaker 1: close out to the passing lane to try to bait
Speaker 1: on this guy's indecisiveness, because if he passes to Drew Holliday,
Speaker 1: he's in the passing lane to intercept it. If he
Speaker 1: just pump fakes and does nothing, your team has a
Speaker 1: chance to rotate. Right if he shoots it, it's the
Speaker 1: same problem that you were giving up. If you give
Speaker 1: up a shot anyway, right, so this passing link closed out.
Speaker 1: Really smart play from Donovan Mitchell. But Watchhouser just completely
Speaker 1: ignore it. Watch how like calmly he just pass fakes
Speaker 1: out of it. So Porzingis creates the passing angle on Garland.
Speaker 1: There's the pass double Watchhouser and watch how calm he
Speaker 1: is pass fake easy shot, just ice in his veins
Speaker 1: under pressure. There another transition cross match right, so misshot.
Speaker 1: Everyone just gets back and grabs a person that's relatively close.
Speaker 1: In this case, Coro ends up picking up back here
Speaker 1: or Lavert ends up picking up back here. So Garland's
Speaker 1: on Tatum straight up, same sort of thing, left shoulder
Speaker 1: fade again, that's a tough shot, but a couple of
Speaker 1: big details here left shoulder face. But look he goes
Speaker 1: right up and down. Okay, so he barely fades because
Speaker 1: he doesn't need to because he's got size. And look
Speaker 1: at how close he is to the basket. This is
Speaker 1: a ten foot shot. Like, yeah, technically a left shoulder
Speaker 1: fade is a tough shot for a right handed player,
Speaker 1: but not when you have that size advantage, when you
Speaker 1: don't fade that much, and when you're that close to
Speaker 1: the rim. That was where He looked really comfortable in
Speaker 1: this game. This is that switch interchange that I always
Speaker 1: talk about. So here comes the screen, and then right
Speaker 1: in the interchange, right before the switch actually takes place,
Speaker 1: he rises into the shot knocks it down. It's also
Speaker 1: like a twenty nine footer, so that's pretty tough to
Speaker 1: guard under any circumstances. Really nice skip pass and pick
Speaker 1: and roll here from Tatum basic. Here's our low man
Speaker 1: right as the ball handler. You're typically watching this guy
Speaker 1: the most come off of the screen. He helps easy
Speaker 1: swing across the court. Peterson knocks it down. Drew Peterson,
Speaker 1: by the way, eight points and four rebounds, twenty five minutes.
Speaker 1: Not a bad night for him. Another little fadeaway jump shot,
Speaker 1: this time against Donovan Mitchell, who does a really good
Speaker 1: job fighting over the screen. The entire possession. Once again
Speaker 1: just kind of methodically works into that space. You could
Speaker 1: tell that was where he felt most comfortable, in that
Speaker 1: short fadeaway range. All right, here we are in crunch time.
Speaker 1: Inside five minutes, we get a ball screen. Garland is
Speaker 1: on the switch. He's gonna beat him off the dribble.
Speaker 1: When he does, he draws Jared Allen in help. We
Speaker 1: have our week side two on one, Tatum's eyes are
Speaker 1: on Hawser, which forces Merrill to commit no look past,
Speaker 1: generates the opening for Horford. Again, look at Tatum's eyes.
Speaker 1: Tatum's eyes create that opening, doesn't actually look at Horford
Speaker 1: until the ball's out of his hands. That was one
Speaker 1: of the two wide open corner threes that Horford missed
Speaker 1: down the stretch of this game. Really big play from
Speaker 1: Isaac Occory here. One of the things they were doing. Again,
Speaker 1: We've seen this with the Celtics a lot. Put Tatum
Speaker 1: on your center, put Al Horford on your weakest above
Speaker 1: the break shooter. In this case, he's guarding a coral.
Speaker 1: Tatum stays home on Allen, look at Al Horford, Al Horford,
Speaker 1: and so it's a kind of like a Spain pick
Speaker 1: and roll, right and roll. Merrill's relocating to the top.
Speaker 1: Horford has contained which allowed Hawser to stay attached. But
Speaker 1: the prices you leave a coral wide open knocks down
Speaker 1: the three. Big time shot this time another switch attack
Speaker 1: of Garland in the short range. Get him on the switch.
Speaker 1: Notice one of the big differences I want you to
Speaker 1: pay attention to here compared to the big stop he
Speaker 1: got late watch how Garland makes no attempt to disrupt
Speaker 1: Tatum's rhythm, so he's just letting him dribble comfortably, letting
Speaker 1: him dribble, work him down, work him down, easy shot.
Speaker 1: You'll notice on the stop that Darius Garland does a
Speaker 1: much better job attacking the pocket and disrupting Tatum's rhythm.
Speaker 1: Little transition cross match here Tatum ends up on Lavert.
Speaker 1: This leaves all guards guarding the Spain pick and roll
Speaker 1: at the top of the key or the double drag
Speaker 1: in this case, no ut stack because he's trying to
Speaker 1: backscreen for Jared Allen. Either way, though, because Tatum's not
Speaker 1: on Jared Allen, they have a post mismatch, so they
Speaker 1: throw the ball to Jared Allen against Hawser. But now
Speaker 1: Horford just got burned by a coro on the previous
Speaker 1: a couple possessions earlier, so he doesn't feel comfortable committing.
Speaker 1: Jared Allen gets the end one all those like little details.
Speaker 1: Cora doesn't hit that shot. Horford probably just hard doubles there,
Speaker 1: right alrighty, another switch onto Darius Garland. Garland gets a
Speaker 1: little more aggressive here, not at the start, but you
Speaker 1: watch him reach a little bit right here pokes at
Speaker 1: it a little bit, but at this point Tata just
Speaker 1: kind of methodically works him down and hits that little
Speaker 1: right shoulder fade away again, right shoulder step back. I
Speaker 1: should say this was a tough shot, late clock situation
Speaker 1: they try to run with Allen. Ball gets swung back
Speaker 1: to Mitchell. We're down to seven seconds on the shot clock.
Speaker 1: A Korra runs in in screen, so it's like, all right,
Speaker 1: Donovan's gonna have to ISO. Let's at least have him ISO,
Speaker 1: a lesser defender than Drew Holliday gets Houser. This is
Speaker 1: honestly a really good defense, but like, look at this
Speaker 1: shot boom, that's a really good defense. He just stuck
Speaker 1: it because he's a star and that's what he can do. Now,
Speaker 1: Jason Tatum has been torching the Garland double teams, right,
Speaker 1: So I skipped ahead in this possession because it's an
Speaker 1: offensive rebound. This is our double team, right, So two
Speaker 1: on the ball on Tatum, Prichard is the kickout gets
Speaker 1: a decent look from on like a little twenty seven footer, right.
Speaker 1: But the key here is in rotation, right, because we
Speaker 1: put two on Tatum, which ended up in three players
Speaker 1: on two Celtics over here above the break on the right,
Speaker 1: Donovan Mitchell runs over to box out or to deal
Speaker 1: with Al Horford in the right corner, and Jared Allen
Speaker 1: is dropping to potentially deal with Drew Holiday right. See
Speaker 1: what does that leave Chris tops Porzingis on a wide
Speaker 1: open rim run, gets the rebound kick out. Prichard makes
Speaker 1: the pass to Drew Holliday underneath the basket. So again,
Speaker 1: if you watch this in full speed, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: stop it. This is a Tatum double team that ends
Speaker 1: in a layup, even though it won't show up as
Speaker 1: an assist for him because Porzingis got an offensive rebound
Speaker 1: out of the chaos from the Calves being in rotation.
Speaker 1: Two on the ball, kick two on Pritchard, easy offensive rebound, swing,
Speaker 1: swing layup. Here's the action that the Calves were getting
Speaker 1: good stuff off for Garland at the end of the game.
Speaker 1: Just basically anything that had Porzingis involved. Porzingis at the
Speaker 1: level that means an easy slipice. Notice a Korro's not
Speaker 1: even trying to set a screen, He's just trying to slip.
Speaker 1: Look see pushes off Slipcord did this twice in the
Speaker 1: crunch Time did a really good job on both. Tatum
Speaker 1: has to step up, Horford has to sink right. That
Speaker 1: makes Mobley the kickout. Mobley catches Drew Holiday rotates that
Speaker 1: leaves Donovan Mitchell wide open.
Speaker 2: Boom three.
Speaker 1: Another double team of Tatum Mcgarland double Prichard slips that
Speaker 1: allows him to catch the ball deep against Garland. And
Speaker 1: this is where Pritchard just goes right through Garland his
Speaker 1: chest just dribble, dribble, dribble, push off bucket. It's a
Speaker 1: rock fight. You can get away with that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff in a situation like that. This was the play
Speaker 1: where Donovan Mitchell rejects the screen on Drew Holliday and
Speaker 1: breaks him off. Let's watch it full speed first Boom three.
Speaker 1: But again watch watch right as Drew Holliday gets Drew
Speaker 1: Halliday's got his head and his body turned. He's prepping
Speaker 1: for this screen. It's trying to get that top foot
Speaker 1: over the top right. That's right when Donovan Mitchell crosses over.
Speaker 1: That's the beauty of it. First of all, this is
Speaker 1: why this job is so damn hard. Like I talked
Speaker 1: about earlier in the show, it's the hardest thing that
Speaker 1: any NBA guard has to do, and it's one of
Speaker 1: the hardest defensive jobs in the sport. You you have
Speaker 1: to stay in front.
Speaker 2: Of a man one on one while navigating an.
Speaker 1: Obstacle like all in the obstacle moves and a lot
Speaker 1: of screens in the NBA moving and don't get called.
Speaker 1: So it's like it's just it's a really difficult job.
Speaker 1: Andrew Drew just gets caught on the screen there and
Speaker 1: Donovan Mitchell knocks down the shot. Here's where Darius Garland
Speaker 1: finally gets the stop. I want you to pay attention
Speaker 1: to how much more aggressive Garland is right at the beginning.
Speaker 1: So this first gram porzingis to get Jared Allen. Here
Speaker 1: comes Pritchard to get Garland. Now watch watch seven seconds
Speaker 1: on the shoclock. Garland immediately picks up Tatum. Reach, grab
Speaker 1: his arm. We're gonna reach again. Reach, swat, swat, reach,
Speaker 1: We're being aggressive and it forces him to speed up.
Speaker 1: Then he over penetrates into all of this help and
Speaker 1: forces up a bad shot. The only bad shot that
Speaker 1: Jason Tatum took in the fourth quarter of this game,
Speaker 1: because you sped him up, because you made things more difficult.
Speaker 2: Again, like if you do that all quarter.
Speaker 1: Jason Tatum's gonna make a lot of good plays because
Speaker 1: he's one of the best players in the world, right.
Speaker 1: But the point is, if you want to make every
Speaker 1: player in the world makes mistakes, even the best players,
Speaker 1: and if you want to make it more likely for
Speaker 1: them to make a mistake, you have to be an
Speaker 1: active participant in your own survival. If you're in these switches,
Speaker 1: you just got to find a way to do better.
Speaker 1: And in this case, Darius Garland, who had been getting cooked,
Speaker 1: finally decided to show some fight on a switch, fought
Speaker 1: really hard and aggressively sped Jason Tatum up and forced
Speaker 1: to miss Reach Reach again.
Speaker 2: Hands on.
Speaker 1: That's good disruptive defense from Darius Garland. As we go
Speaker 1: to the other end, this is where Donovan Mitchell gets
Speaker 1: at Horford in a ball screen you can see quick
Speaker 1: early screen from mobiley.
Speaker 2: Now we're downhill against.
Speaker 1: Horford in space, which is again one of the weak
Speaker 1: points for the Celtics defense. Easy little floater in the
Speaker 1: mid range knocks it down.
Speaker 2: This is like.
Speaker 1: Just Tatum missing a shot, like you just I don't
Speaker 1: know what else to say. I feel like Tatum is
Speaker 1: gonna make this nine times out of ten, Crossover gets
Speaker 1: into the lane. Like Garland does a good job of
Speaker 1: putting himself in his way, but like he should he
Speaker 1: just should have made this as all. And then here
Speaker 1: we go, same exact Garland action with Porzingis. Actually this
Speaker 1: time it was Mitchell, but again poor Zingis is up high.
Speaker 1: A Chorro slips gets behind Porzingis that forces Horford to
Speaker 1: step up. Forford has to step up, Porzingis kind of
Speaker 1: commits to blocking a Korro that leaves Mobile in for
Speaker 1: the dunk. All right, guys, that is all I have
Speaker 1: for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for
Speaker 1: supporting me and supporting the show. We'll be back tomorrow
Speaker 1: with a breakdown of a couple of good Monday night
Speaker 1: games as well as some more film.
Speaker 2: I'll see you guys then the volume. 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. As always, I appreciate you guys
Speaker 1: supporting us, but if you could take a minute to
Speaker 1: do that, I'd really appreciate it.