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Speaker 1: b ball. All right, welcome to hoops tonight. You're at
Speaker 1: the volume. Happy Saturday, everybody, If all of you guys
Speaker 1: are having a great start to your weekend. Well the
Speaker 1: For as long as I can remember, the Denver Nuggets
Speaker 1: have completely owned the Los Angeles Lakers. As someone who
Speaker 1: roots for that team, I've had to do some pretty
Speaker 1: uncomfortable shows over the years, including last year having to
Speaker 1: come up onto this stream right after Jamal Murray ended
Speaker 1: games with buzzer beaters. As the Nuggets have seemingly won
Speaker 1: a million games in a row against the Lakers. The
Speaker 1: one that they won was the down three to zero
Speaker 1: in the series last year game in Los Angeles. It's
Speaker 1: a matchup the Nuggets have dominated, even as recently as
Speaker 1: this season, as they blew them out in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: in a second half avalanche that they didn't seem to
Speaker 1: have any chance to control. We're gonna be breaking that
Speaker 1: game down from the perspective of both teams as the
Speaker 1: Lakers go into Denver and blow them out tonight. You
Speaker 1: guys know the joke before we get started to subscribed
Speaker 1: to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels. You don't miss any
Speaker 1: more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore
Speaker 1: json LTC. Guys, guys, don't miss show announcements. So forget
Speaker 1: about a podcast feed wherever you get your podcast on
Speaker 1: our Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave
Speaker 1: a rating and a review on that front. Don't forget
Speaker 1: about our brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram,
Speaker 1: and Facebook where we release content throughout the year and
Speaker 1: last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the
Speaker 1: YouTube comments. So we can get to them on our
Speaker 1: Friday shows throughout the remainder of the season. All right,
Speaker 1: let's talk some basketball. So I want to be clear
Speaker 1: front here. I don't think any single regular season matchup
Speaker 1: is any sort of sweeping decoration about what two teams
Speaker 1: could look like in the postseason. I would even go
Speaker 1: as far as to say a dominant entire regular season
Speaker 1: series between two teams wouldn't make that much of a difference. Famously,
Speaker 1: last year, the Phoenix Suns owned the Minnesota Timberwolves all
Speaker 1: regular season. They had a specific game plan that worked
Speaker 1: against them in the regular season, and then they got
Speaker 1: into the playoffs and got swept because the dynamics can change,
Speaker 1: and more often than not, what I'm looking at in
Speaker 1: these regular season situations is not so much what can
Speaker 1: happen in one single game, but rather the problems that
Speaker 1: either team present for each other. Those problems that they
Speaker 1: present are the things you can lean on during a
Speaker 1: two week long playoff series to try to gain an advantage.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I had a debate with a fellow volume coworker of mine,
Speaker 1: Carson Breber from Nerd Sash the other day as we
Speaker 1: kind of talked about Denver Vers La and got into
Speaker 1: a bunch of different dynamics that in that show, And
Speaker 1: one of the things that I was trying to emphasize
Speaker 1: was simply that everyone's focused on whether or not the
Speaker 1: Lakers can guard Yokic. And there's no doubt that Yokis
Speaker 1: presents a huge problem to this team. No one, no
Speaker 1: one wearing a Lakers jersey, can guard him one on one.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna talk in a little bit about the
Speaker 1: defensive game plan the Lakers had, because I actually thought
Speaker 1: they did a really nice job on yokicch in this game.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that I kept trying to
Speaker 1: harp on was, like everyone's focused on whether or not
Speaker 1: the Lakers can handle Yokic. Why is no one paying
Speaker 1: attention to the simple fact that on the other end
Speaker 1: of the floor, how is Denver going to guard the Lakers.
Speaker 1: There's a simple dynamic taking place in this game that
Speaker 1: was leading to the Nuggets being in rotation constantly and
Speaker 1: the Lakers being able to move the ball around for
Speaker 1: wide open threes for guys that are all pretty damn
Speaker 1: good and knockdown, catch and shoot three point shooters. And
Speaker 1: it was a simple fact that when Luka don would
Speaker 1: come off of a ball screen. Michael Malone was bringing
Speaker 1: the cool of jokicch up to the level of the screen.
Speaker 1: This is the coverage that the Nuggets use most frequently.
Speaker 1: This is the coverage that the Nuggets are going to
Speaker 1: use when they get into the playoffs. This is how
Speaker 1: they defend teams. They force you to skip the ball
Speaker 1: and then they plan on their rotations trying to funnel
Speaker 1: you into shots that they're okay with. Right well, when
Speaker 1: you bring Jokic up to the level, when you bring
Speaker 1: him up onto Luca out twenty five feet from the
Speaker 1: basket behind, that is a four on three. And it
Speaker 1: really starts with a simple dynamic, which is Jackson Hayes
Speaker 1: rolling to the rim in Denver having to decide whether
Speaker 1: they're gonna tag it when they tag him with Gordon,
Speaker 1: the skip passes open. They try to play early in
Speaker 1: the game where they didn't tag him. Jackson had an easy,
Speaker 1: uncontested layup a seven footer under the basket when nobody
Speaker 1: within fifteen feet of him on any side because they
Speaker 1: didn't tag it. So then Denver started tagging him with Gordon.
Speaker 1: Now it's a skip past every single time, and who's
Speaker 1: in that corner. It's either Ruy Hatchramura, who's shooting over
Speaker 1: fifty percent on catch and shoot threes this year, or
Speaker 1: it's Lebron James who can drive it for a dunk
Speaker 1: or drive it to make the next play. They when
Speaker 1: they used Ruey as a screener on Yokic, when Yokich
Speaker 1: was on Ruey instead of Jackson, He's just popping the
Speaker 1: pick and pop is always wide open unless you switch
Speaker 1: it or you rotate from the weak side. Ruey is
Speaker 1: catching up at the top wide open three, or a
Speaker 1: rotation moving the ball around someone else is getting a
Speaker 1: wide open shot. Luka Doncic has this. He's one of
Speaker 1: the very best in the world at this. The Lakers
Speaker 1: have had guys like Lebron who can do this in
Speaker 1: the past, but because Luka can do it, it puts
Speaker 1: Lebron off the ball. And when you're dealing with an
Speaker 1: offense that has Jackson, Hayes who can dunk everything under
Speaker 1: the back, and Lebron, Ruey and Austin who can all
Speaker 1: be knocked down catch and shoot guys but can also
Speaker 1: drive closeouts and make plays that can also cut along
Speaker 1: the baseline that can also oh you threw a good rotation.
Speaker 1: But guess what. Austin's a score. He can get buckets,
Speaker 1: Lebron's a score, buckets, Rui's a score. So even when
Speaker 1: you rotate well, these guys are in advantages. You're asking
Speaker 1: high level offensive players to score with a nugget sprinting
Speaker 1: at them from like ten to fifteen feet away. They
Speaker 1: tried a bunch of different things in this game. They
Speaker 1: tried going to a three to two zone there in
Speaker 1: the late third quarter, which was the only thing they
Speaker 1: actually did in this game that made the Lakers a
Speaker 1: little bit uncomfortable on offense, and it was because Jared
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt was in the game and the three to two
Speaker 1: kind of forces Van Doh to do a lot of
Speaker 1: high level skill stuff in the middle of the floor,
Speaker 1: which is not his game, and they were able to
Speaker 1: get a couple of stops there, but even then they
Speaker 1: just took him out. Then they started screening the top man.
Speaker 1: They got a couple buckets against the three to two
Speaker 1: to start.
Speaker 2: The fourth quarter.
Speaker 1: Then in the fourth quarter they tried switching with Yokic,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't work, so they ended up having to
Speaker 1: double to help Yokic. They ended up just passing out
Speaker 1: of that and getting wide open threes. The Lakers are
Speaker 1: built for every single coverage they could possibly face, even
Speaker 1: the two primary coverages we didn't talk about. Switching in
Speaker 1: a deeper drop coverage come with their own.
Speaker 2: Set of issues.
Speaker 1: If you switch, you're now asking Jokic to guard Lebron,
Speaker 1: Luca and Austin on the perimeter all series.
Speaker 2: How's that gonna work out for you?
Speaker 1: If you try the deep drop coverage that force the
Speaker 1: deep drop coverage involves Jokic sitting further back in the
Speaker 1: ball screen. When he sits further back in the ball screen,
Speaker 1: he can keep the roll man in front. Well, there's
Speaker 1: two problems there. If it's Ruey, he's popping, he's still
Speaker 1: wide open. But let's say you run that against Jackson.
Speaker 1: You've got Jackson running at you. You're keeping the ball
Speaker 1: in the front, you're staying out of rotation. But I'd
Speaker 1: argue at Reeves, Lebron, James and Luka Doncic is one
Speaker 1: of the best personnel groupings you'll find in the league
Speaker 1: for attacking a drop coverage. You want to let Lebron
Speaker 1: come screaming downhill against Jokic backpedaling towards the rim. Rim
Speaker 1: protection's not his strength. You want to let Luca methodically
Speaker 1: work downhill. What does he do every single time? He
Speaker 1: just drops that shoulder, bumps you off, and hits that
Speaker 1: little bank shot from five feet. Austin Reeves is like
Speaker 1: a magician in the middle of the floor, hitting little
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen footers, drawing fouls, doing all of the
Speaker 1: scoring stuff that he can do there in the middle
Speaker 1: of the floor. Like, there's a lot of like overthinking
Speaker 1: it that I've seen in terms of the way the
Speaker 1: Lakers have been covered. Look, I don't leave this game
Speaker 1: tonight thinking they're Boston. I don't leave this game tonight
Speaker 1: thinking they might be that. But we need to see
Speaker 1: a lot more basketball. But there's a simple, basic reality
Speaker 1: with this roster now that people need to acknowledge, and
Speaker 1: that's that Lebron, Luca, and Austin are as good a
Speaker 1: set of shot creators as you find in the league.
Speaker 2: They lean into.
Speaker 1: Luca on the ball, which we're gonna get to when
Speaker 1: he's on the floor, but Lebron and Austin are so
Speaker 1: great playing off the ball, and then they've got all
Speaker 1: these guys that are play finishers. Dorian Phinney Smith. He's
Speaker 1: a forty percent catch and shoot guy. Ruey Hatcha Murray,
Speaker 1: He's a fifty percent catch and shoot guy and a
Speaker 1: great baseline cutter and a guy that's got some high
Speaker 1: level of scoring moves. Jackson Hayes can finish everything around there.
Speaker 1: In even the guys that gave Vincent that you would
Speaker 1: look at as a somewhat average shooter, he's been shooting
Speaker 1: the ball pretty well. There's not really an answer there, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't need to see much more to know that
Speaker 1: the Lakers are gonna score. Whether or not they have
Speaker 1: the potential to get to the ultimate goal is gonna
Speaker 1: come down to their ability to achieve peak unguardability, and
Speaker 1: that will require them to show a lot of success
Speaker 1: against elite switching teams. Them to show a lot of success.
Speaker 1: Like what if it is a team like Dallas and
Speaker 1: they sit Anthony Davis down in a big drop coverage
Speaker 1: and he's a guy that's sitting around the rim and
Speaker 1: that ends up being a problem, Like they'll need to
Speaker 1: They'll need to check a lot more boxes to get
Speaker 1: to that point. But I absolutely think that they can
Speaker 1: achieve that they have the personnel to attack all of
Speaker 1: those different things that they can see. The last thing
Speaker 1: I want to talk about with the Lakers on offense
Speaker 1: before we move on. I loved how when Luca was
Speaker 1: on the floor, they leaned into him as the on
Speaker 1: ball creator. This is something that we talked about a
Speaker 1: lot in the first week after the trade, which is
Speaker 1: that Lebron's like turned himself into one of the best
Speaker 1: catch and shoot guys in the league. And you saw
Speaker 1: what he can do driving clothes outs. He drove that
Speaker 1: close out on the baseline and got a dunk. He
Speaker 1: drove a close out and dumped all over Mark Williams
Speaker 1: last week or earlier this week. I should say the
Speaker 1: Lebron can play off the ball, Austin can play off
Speaker 1: the ball. All these guys can play off the ball.
Speaker 1: Luca can, but it's not like his strength. So I
Speaker 1: love the idea of like Luca's on the floor, let's
Speaker 1: just give him the ball and he has one job.
Speaker 1: Just make the first read. They chase over the top,
Speaker 1: they sit back in a deep drop. His read is
Speaker 1: to methodically work downhill and get a nice easy shot
Speaker 1: closer to the wrint. They bring the screen defender up
Speaker 1: to the level. His job is to either is to
Speaker 1: read the low man. Okay, they're tagging Jackson, I'm making
Speaker 1: the skip pass they don't tag Jackson, or a ball
Speaker 1: fake to the skip pass. I'm dropping it to Jackson.
Speaker 1: He's got a dumb he just has to make the
Speaker 1: first read. Oh they're switching. Okay, Well, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: a lesser defender on me.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Now that I got this lesser defender, I'm going to
Speaker 1: work to a place on the floor where I feel comfortable,
Speaker 1: and when I get there, I'm either going to take
Speaker 1: the easy shot that I can get, or if they
Speaker 1: bring a second defender, I'm going to make that next read.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty straightforward process from there, and then when
Speaker 1: Luca comes out of the game, Lebron and Austin can
Speaker 1: scale up their on ball aggression the way they need to,
Speaker 1: and then they have just these short windows of time
Speaker 1: where they really need to test their bodies to create advantages.
Speaker 1: Lebron was super aggressive to the rim tonight. There was
Speaker 1: a specific play a late shotcock a late shot clock
Speaker 1: play in the early fourth quarter against Zeke Naji where
Speaker 1: Lebron kind of had a predicament clock's running down and
Speaker 1: he had a triple thread against Naji at the top
Speaker 1: of the key before Luca came to town. Lebron's taken
Speaker 1: that three. You know why, because he's got a lot
Speaker 1: of basketball left, and when you get to five four, three,
Speaker 1: two minutes left, He's gonna be the guy that has
Speaker 1: to create all the shots. So, like he didn't really
Speaker 1: have a choice in times past but to try to
Speaker 1: conserve energy by settling from time to time, that's no
Speaker 1: longer the case. He can go like it's the early
Speaker 1: fourth quarter. I just got to carry this unit till
Speaker 1: about seven to six it's left. Then I get to
Speaker 1: go sit down, and when I come back, Luca is
Speaker 1: the guy that's gonna be able to help me down
Speaker 1: the stretch.
Speaker 2: So you know what he does.
Speaker 1: He puts his head down and he tries to drive
Speaker 1: to the right, and now he does a great job
Speaker 1: sliding with him.
Speaker 2: He's being physical and he's.
Speaker 1: Holding him up, and Lebron just just keeps backing him down,
Speaker 1: backing him down. Plump fake Zeke leaves his feet patiently
Speaker 1: waits for him to come down and banks it off
Speaker 1: the glass. It's an exertion of energy that Lebron would
Speaker 1: not have made in times past because he was trying
Speaker 1: to save his legs. One of the most jarring things
Speaker 1: about this game is like you're like, okay, Yokic, just
Speaker 1: checking out. Let's see who's on the floor now, Well,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be Luca and Lebron, or it's gonna be
Speaker 1: Lebron in Austin, or it's gonna be Luca in Austin.
Speaker 1: It's wave after wave after wave of high level shot creation. Again,
Speaker 1: they're gonna have to achieve a level of peak unguardability
Speaker 1: from matchup to matchup, and they're gonna have to maintain
Speaker 1: this type of defensive game planning that we've seen. But
Speaker 1: I think we would all be foolish, even though we
Speaker 1: don't know how they're going to be yet, I think
Speaker 1: we would be foolish to not consider this team a threat.
Speaker 2: Of course, they're a threat. How are you.
Speaker 1: Gonna stop them from getting good shots? There's this interesting
Speaker 1: thing that happens in basketball games where everything is intricately connected.
Speaker 1: The offensive end is connected to defense transition. Defense transition
Speaker 1: is connected to defense. Defense is connected to offense transition.
Speaker 1: Offense transition is connected to offense. If you can create
Speaker 1: an advantage, you can play off of that, all four
Speaker 1: phases of the game are are attached to each other.
Speaker 1: When you continually get great shot after great shot after
Speaker 1: great shot, it has an impact on the flow of
Speaker 1: the game. It has an impact on the rhythm of
Speaker 1: the game. Like, for instance, one of the things that
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about when we talk about the
Speaker 1: Lakers defensive scheme, they were trying to shade everything towards
Speaker 1: Russell Westbrook, Christian Brown and Aaron Gordon making threes just
Speaker 1: like I said they would.
Speaker 2: That's exactly how.
Speaker 1: Teams are to try to guard Denver in the postseason,
Speaker 1: and they made eight threes. Those guys made eight threes,
Speaker 1: and it still didn't matter because it doesn't become about
Speaker 1: making them pay a couple of times. It becomes about
Speaker 1: keeping up. You're a you're in a foot race. Now
Speaker 1: you're in a shooting contest. It's it's a shootout, and
Speaker 1: you're asking Christian Brown, Aaron Gordon, and Russell Westbrook to
Speaker 1: keep up making shots. When I look back to some
Speaker 1: of the most dominant Luca playoff performances ever Game seven
Speaker 1: against Phoenix, Game five against Minnesota, many of them come
Speaker 1: down to he sucks the life out of the other
Speaker 1: team by strangling the flow of the game, by continually
Speaker 1: generating fantastic shots, and it allowing you to set your defense.
Speaker 1: It leading to the opponent not being confident, because how
Speaker 1: how can you be super confident when Luca is like
Speaker 1: strangling the game? It becomes very difficult to do. And
Speaker 1: there's only a handful of players in the league that
Speaker 1: have the ability to go.
Speaker 2: Punch for punch with a guy like him, and with.
Speaker 1: Luca or with Jokic. JJ had a game plan, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about that game plan. One of the things
Speaker 1: I talked about is for the record, I actually do
Speaker 1: think that in the big picture, Denver will find more
Speaker 1: ways to score against the Lakers. They have too big
Speaker 1: of an advantage in Yokish. One of the big things
Speaker 1: I think they could do is just when they're bringing
Speaker 1: that double from the baseline, Jokic has just got to
Speaker 1: look to score like he just needs to shoot and
Speaker 1: shoot and shoot, and even when he misses, he can
Speaker 1: follow it and get the rebound. He's too much bigger
Speaker 1: than all those guys. He's got to try to like
Speaker 1: try to force his way through. Sometimes I think a
Speaker 1: little bit more. But one of the things I talked
Speaker 1: about even though Denver presents issue to the Lakers for
Speaker 1: seventeen games coming into tonight, and I haven't seen the
Speaker 1: updated stats, but I would assume it's tonight. After eighteen
Speaker 1: games two, the Lakers have been the very best defense
Speaker 1: in all of NBA basketball. That doesn't mean they're gonna
Speaker 1: strangle Jokis for a seven game series, but what it
Speaker 1: does mean is they're probably gonna get some stomps. The
Speaker 1: two things that I talked about when we talked about
Speaker 1: the Laker defense were they've got good defensive personnel, better
Speaker 1: defensive personnel than people think. Vando's a great defender. Defense
Speaker 1: is a good defender, Gabe's a good defender. Lebron when
Speaker 1: he's engaged is a good defender. They Austin when he's
Speaker 1: engaged as a good defender. They've got good defenders. But
Speaker 1: the second piece of it was defensive game planning, which
Speaker 1: has been a strength an underdiscussed strength of JJ Reddick's
Speaker 1: coaching job this entire season. The game plan with Jokisch
Speaker 1: was simple, starting with Ruyanim put Jackson on Aaron Gordon
Speaker 1: in help, but regardless of who was on him, because
Speaker 1: they were transition cross matches and other different things where
Speaker 1: the Lakers would end up with kind of different matchups.
Speaker 1: But it started with fronting the post. Anytime anyone else
Speaker 1: had the ball, if Jokic was trying to post, the
Speaker 1: guy guarding him was getting in front. Funding the post
Speaker 1: is a very difficult job. Jokic is good at sealing
Speaker 1: people on his backside. You gotta use swim moves, you
Speaker 1: gotta use move your feet quickly. You gotta sit low.
Speaker 1: You gotta squat down and push him back to force
Speaker 1: an over the top pass. What happens with an over
Speaker 1: the top pass. The Miami Heat are the best at this.
Speaker 1: You bracket it with backside help to shrink the passing window.
Speaker 1: Makes it much harder.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: One of the ways that Jokis was countering that was
Speaker 1: he was catching the ball further out, which is one
Speaker 1: of the upsides of fronting. When you front the post,
Speaker 1: a lot of times, it forces the offensive player to
Speaker 1: come further and further out so that he has less
Speaker 1: traffic behind him that he can create a passing angle.
Speaker 1: Once the ball came into Jokich, they did the exact
Speaker 1: same thing every time. The guy who was fronting the
Speaker 1: post would quick disengage and get behind. Then he would
Speaker 1: start playing the inside shoulder, the paint side shoulder of
Speaker 1: Jokic and try to force him towards the baseline. As
Speaker 1: soon as Jokic spun out of the baseline, he would
Speaker 1: spin down towards the baseline and the Lakers would double
Speaker 1: off of Aaron Gordon, whoever it was that was in
Speaker 1: the dunker spot from the baseline. Then whoever was guarding
Speaker 1: the weak side shooter would dig down on Aaron Gordon.
Speaker 1: They were packing the paint doubling on that baseline side.
Speaker 2: They did a good.
Speaker 1: Job of attacking Jokic with that double, so they got
Speaker 1: a lot of deflections. That was a big part of turnovers.
Speaker 1: Turnovers were a huge part in this game as Denver
Speaker 1: and Jokic tried to solve this problem and kept throwing
Speaker 1: the ball into arms as the Lakers would go running
Speaker 1: out the other way looking to score. And look, here's
Speaker 1: the thing. You gotta concede stuff. If you're gonna front Jokic,
Speaker 1: bracket Jokic double him on the baseline side, guys are
Speaker 1: gonna get open, and guys made shots. There's a version
Speaker 1: of this game where Aaron Gordon, Christian Brown and Russell
Speaker 1: Westbrook don't make eight threes and the Lakers are up
Speaker 1: twenty five in the first half. They gave up, they
Speaker 1: gave up some of those looks, but they never overreacted.
Speaker 1: They stuck to their game plan. They stayed disciplined and
Speaker 1: did their jobs. They tilted the shots towards other players.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the game plan for JJ. What JJ
Speaker 1: is saying is, We're gonna have to give up some stuff,
Speaker 1: but good luck keeping up with us on the other
Speaker 1: end of the floor, because you're gonna have Aaron Gordon
Speaker 1: taking jump shots. You're gonna have Christian Brown taking jump shots.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have Russell Westbrook taking jump shots. The Lakers
Speaker 1: are gonna have Ruy Hatchamuria Lebron, James, Dorian Finney Smith,
Speaker 1: Austin Reeves, Luka Doncics reigning threes, and they're all gonna
Speaker 1: be pretty open. And all of those guys are forty
Speaker 1: plus percent except for Austin. And you tell me how
Speaker 1: you feel when you're a fan rooting against Austin Reeves
Speaker 1: when he has a wide open look. Tell me if
Speaker 1: you think it's going in. I thought it was a really,
Speaker 1: really well like secuted game plan. The Lakers battled on
Speaker 1: the glass. They did a great job of digging down
Speaker 1: and deflecting the ball away from the bigger Nuggets players.
Speaker 1: Like that's the other big chess piece here, right, is
Speaker 1: like can Denver use their size to dominate the Lakers
Speaker 1: on the glass? They had twelve offensive rebounds, the Lakers
Speaker 1: had nine. It wasn't a substantial factor in this game.
Speaker 1: I want to start on defense for Denver because there's
Speaker 1: gonna have to be something they do. Bringing Jokic up
Speaker 1: to the level I don't think is going to work.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're going to be able to stop
Speaker 1: the Lakers from getting wide open threes if they do that.
Speaker 1: They were very fortunate in the first half that Gabe
Speaker 1: Dfs and Rui were two for eleven from three in all.
Speaker 1: Eleven of them were wide open, and eventually they stuck
Speaker 1: with that coverage and in the second half they started
Speaker 1: going in and it caused problems. So the two potential
Speaker 1: routes that we talked about earlier are switching or a
Speaker 1: deeper drop coverage. I don't think switching would work. I
Speaker 1: think Luka Doncic excuse me, Nikola Jokic to guard on
Speaker 1: the perimeter against Lebron, Austin and Luka all night long
Speaker 1: would be a terrible mistake. So that really leaves it
Speaker 1: to a deeper drop. And I tweeted this at halftime.
Speaker 1: I actually think it's possible that Mike Malone is going
Speaker 1: to hold this for a potential playoff matchup to try
Speaker 1: to like kind of mix things up. What's the difference
Speaker 1: between a deeper drop and an at the level coverage
Speaker 1: in and at the level coverage when you bring Jokic
Speaker 1: up to the level, meaning as the ball handlers coming
Speaker 1: off the screen, Yokic is waiting there. When you do that,
Speaker 1: the roller gets behind Jokic. If the roller gets behind Jokic,
Speaker 1: you're creating a two on one between the skip pass
Speaker 1: and the lob pass that Aaron Gordon has to account for.
Speaker 1: If you sit Jokic deeper back, then Aaron Gordon can
Speaker 1: stay on that skip pass and now Jokic can keep
Speaker 1: the roll man in front. There's a way for Jokic
Speaker 1: to guard that to where he can force Luka, Doncic,
Speaker 1: force Lebron James, force Austin Reeves to make drop covered shots.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of shots in the mid range right now.
Speaker 1: To be clear, like I mentioned earlier, that might be
Speaker 1: the best group of drop coverage attackers that we have
Speaker 1: in the league. But at least you're taking You're making
Speaker 1: them take contested twos instead of wide open threes when
Speaker 1: all those dudes are wide open forty plus percent shooters.
Speaker 1: We didn't see much deep drop tonight. There was a
Speaker 1: late possession in the late fourth quarter where Austin Reeves
Speaker 1: hit a pull up three, but again that's a tough shot.
Speaker 1: That's what you gotta ask yourself. Do you want to
Speaker 1: watch Austin Reeves take tough, contested pull up threes in
Speaker 1: ball screens? Or do you want to watch Dorian Phinney
Speaker 1: Smith and and Ruy Hatchamura just standing completely wide open
Speaker 1: at the three point line all season long or all
Speaker 1: series long. Right, that's the type of decision that they're
Speaker 1: going to have to make. I think that's probably their
Speaker 1: best bet is to go with a deeper drop. As
Speaker 1: for the offensive end of the floor, again, there's certain
Speaker 1: things you can do with your spacing to try to
Speaker 1: make it so that when Jokic spins, he's got easier reads.
Speaker 1: They did some stuff with Russell Westbrook in the second
Speaker 1: half where they had him tee up or like basically
Speaker 1: cut right in front of the rim, so that Yokic
Speaker 1: would have two cutreads. As he's spinning to the baseline,
Speaker 1: he has Gordon on the baseline waiting, and he's got
Speaker 1: Russ right in front of the rim. Do you remember
Speaker 1: that play where Russ got the layup right by Lebron
Speaker 1: and then he fell down and slid into camera row.
Speaker 1: That's a perfect example of that type of sequence where
Speaker 1: you can try to at least attack it with cutting
Speaker 1: instead of all of these skip passes to mediocre shooters.
Speaker 1: But like, I think Jokic is gonna have to just
Speaker 1: start trying to be a bowling ball. He's gonna have
Speaker 1: to just pound and spin off of that first defender,
Speaker 1: try to go through the double and just get those
Speaker 1: arms out wide, start hitting bodies, get offensive rebounds and
Speaker 1: put backs. Like Yokic is gonna have to start trying
Speaker 1: to attack this as a score. I think that's something
Speaker 1: that they're gonna have to look into. They did get
Speaker 1: good stuff with Jamal Murray. That was an encouraging piece.
Speaker 1: The Lakers were doing a lot of going under actions
Speaker 1: with Jamal Murray and just forcing him to make those
Speaker 1: mildly contested pull up jump shots, and he was hitting them.
Speaker 1: I think he had six threes in this game. Again,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna piece together a successful offense, it's gotta
Speaker 1: be multiple different things you can do. The Jamal Murray
Speaker 1: stuff worked. I thought Michael Porter Junior got some decent
Speaker 1: looks coming off of curls that he missed. There's a
Speaker 1: version of that where some of more of those go in.
Speaker 1: You actually hit quite a few shots with your mediocre shooters.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to get Jokic to provide more scoring pop, though,
Speaker 1: and the only way he's gonna do that is if
Speaker 1: he looks at the double and says, screw that, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to score anyway. Really interesting game. We're gonna see
Speaker 1: a lot more from the Lakers and learn a lot
Speaker 1: more about them in time. Their schedule is brutal at
Speaker 1: this point. They're gonna face a bunch of different types
Speaker 1: of teams that are gonna force their offense to try
Speaker 1: to shape shift and.
Speaker 2: Score different ways.
Speaker 1: But I thought that this was kind of a proof
Speaker 1: of concepts tonight that like teams that don't have elite
Speaker 1: personnel defensively at all, five positions are going to struggle
Speaker 1: to guard the Lakers, and if the Lakers score enough,
Speaker 1: their defense just has to be good enough. And this
Speaker 1: was a Denver offense that had been annihilating everyone for months,
Speaker 1: and the Lakers did a great job holding them in
Speaker 1: check tonight. After seventeen games of being the number one
Speaker 1: defense in the NBA, I think it's time to start
Speaker 1: taking this team seriously as a championship contender. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: that is all I have for tonight. As always, as
Speaker 1: sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show.
Speaker 1: We are taking tomorrow off, but we'd be back on
Speaker 1: Monday to cover a jam packed Sunday slate and a
Speaker 1: bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 2: I'll see you guys.
Speaker 1: Then the volume. What' so, guys, As always, I appreciate
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