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Speaker 1: net in West Virginia. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight,
Speaker 1: presented by FanDuel. Here at the volume, I'm Jason timp
Speaker 1: Happy Sunday again, everybody, Yes, we're the One hour of
Speaker 1: talking about about basketball was not enough today. We clearly
Speaker 1: have to get into it some more. After one of
Speaker 1: the wildest playoff outcomes I can remember seeing, I would
Speaker 1: say that this is at least the wildest since the
Speaker 1: Clippers lost to the Nuggets in the Bubble in terms
Speaker 1: of just the feeling I got watching the game, just
Speaker 1: the utter disbelief at at watching a team that has
Speaker 1: less talent not just beat a better team. In terms
Speaker 1: of talent, but kind of demoralized them to the point
Speaker 1: where everywhere everyone on the team started to behave strangely
Speaker 1: and there's some quit going on. And that was just
Speaker 1: an incredible like like just an absolute underdog as whipping
Speaker 1: is all that was. UM, we're gonna get into everything
Speaker 1: from this game, very very excited about that. UM, before
Speaker 1: we get started, a couple of quick housekeeping notes. Make
Speaker 1: sure you liked this video and subscribe to the Volumes
Speaker 1: YouTube channels so you don't miss any more of our content. Um,
Speaker 1: make sure you check out this channel. The rest of
Speaker 1: the night. Colin Cowhard is back from his vacation in Europe.
Speaker 1: He's gonna be doing a breakdown of both games. Draymond
Speaker 1: Green is going to be reacting to both games as
Speaker 1: well as reacting to that back and forth and some
Speaker 1: of the beef that's going on between him and Kendrick Perkins,
Speaker 1: which is obviously going to be gold. I personally can't
Speaker 1: wait to see that, so you're gonna want to check
Speaker 1: out that. And then, last but not least, follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Underscore Jason lt so you guys can
Speaker 1: see the XS and o's videos and things that I
Speaker 1: do along those lines to break down the things that
Speaker 1: we talked about on the show. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: any place we can start tonight other than with Jason
Speaker 1: Kidd and the Dallas defense. Obviously, any time that a
Speaker 1: team like Phoenix, who was a six and a half
Speaker 1: point favorite coming into this game, anytime a team like
Speaker 1: that comes in and gets absolutely shellacked, chances are a
Speaker 1: bunch of different things went wrong. So obviously we're gonna
Speaker 1: try to get to as many of those things as
Speaker 1: we can. But to me, the biggest thing was Dallas's defense.
Speaker 1: You know, And it's interesting because a lot of people
Speaker 1: think with coaching that it's all about like fancy moves, right,
Speaker 1: like some crazy wild card or curveball that you would
Speaker 1: throw that would just completely change the dynamic of the
Speaker 1: game and and and turn the tables in your favor.
Speaker 1: But to me, like that's that's fool's gold, that's few
Speaker 1: and far between. That's gimmicky. To me. Great coaching is
Speaker 1: about getting your players to do the simple things every
Speaker 1: single time, and to do them right. It's dependability. And
Speaker 1: I've been blown away by how good of a job
Speaker 1: Jason Kid has done with this group, because there are
Speaker 1: some really really good defensive players on this roster during
Speaker 1: Phinney Smith and Reggie Bullock or the two that come
Speaker 1: to mind, but there's a lot of guys that throughout
Speaker 1: their careers were not fantastic defensive players. Have done a
Speaker 1: great job within this scheme, and it's because everyone's always
Speaker 1: in the right spot. Everyone always does the right thing
Speaker 1: every single time, and that is discipline instilled from the
Speaker 1: coaching staff down. This series has been such an amazing
Speaker 1: example of that because the number one play that allows
Speaker 1: the Sons offense to function is the high pick and roll,
Speaker 1: and they run in a bunch of different ways. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they run it as a kind of a dribble handoff
Speaker 1: instead of a pick a screen and roll. Sometimes they'll
Speaker 1: they'll run a decoy action first that feeds into the
Speaker 1: pick and roll. Sometimes they run their Spain pick and
Speaker 1: roll where they have a shooter underneath the basket that
Speaker 1: replaces to the top of the key after the screen
Speaker 1: and roll is run. They have a bunch of different
Speaker 1: variations of it, but the gist of it is their
Speaker 1: offense is predicated, especially with Chris Paul on his ability
Speaker 1: to come off of a DeAndre a and ball screen
Speaker 1: and either score in the mid range, or feed to
Speaker 1: DeAndre and under the basket to a mismatch, or unguarded
Speaker 1: for a lot of dunk, or if the defense collapses
Speaker 1: around him, to kick the shooters on the weak side.
Speaker 1: That's that's what allows everything to function with this Phoenix offense.
Speaker 1: They have other elements. Obviously, occasionally they'll just toss it
Speaker 1: to DeAndre in the post, and obviously Devin Booker attacks
Speaker 1: a lot in mismatches. He'll attack and dribble handoffs and
Speaker 1: coming off the pin downs and things like that. Obviously
Speaker 1: it's more complicated than that, but the simplest foundation action
Speaker 1: of the Sun's offense is pick and roll. Dallas doesn't
Speaker 1: do anything crazy to cover it. It's a pretty standard coverage.
Speaker 1: It starts as a drop. So let's say that Etan
Speaker 1: is set the screen and clappers the big as Chris
Speaker 1: Paul is coming over the top of the screen. What
Speaker 1: they've been doing in this series is they put Dorian
Speaker 1: Phinney Smith on Chris Paul, and they put Reggie Bullock
Speaker 1: on Devin Booker, and essentially, as Chris comes off the screen,
Speaker 1: cleipers at the screen. So it's a drop coverage, but
Speaker 1: it's an elevated drop. The big is up at the
Speaker 1: level of the screen, which is a concept we talked
Speaker 1: about on this show. It's essentially to dissuade the quick
Speaker 1: pull up shot coming off of the screen right. But
Speaker 1: Dorian Phinney Smith or Reggie Bullock, wherever it is, whether
Speaker 1: it's Devin book or Chris Paul, will chase over the
Speaker 1: top if they get caught on the screen. So for instance,
Speaker 1: if Eton just gets a monster screen or sets a
Speaker 1: moving screen or whatever it is that catches during Phinney Smith,
Speaker 1: then they'll just switch and Cleverer will stay on Chris
Speaker 1: Paul or stay on Devin Booker, and during Phinney Smith
Speaker 1: will just roll with Etan down to the post. And
Speaker 1: while Aton's rolling, they'll help out of the weeks side
Speaker 1: corner to take away the easy lot and essentially that's
Speaker 1: the end of the coverage. They'll rotate out of that,
Speaker 1: you know, like the guy who helps on the roll
Speaker 1: man will get out to the corner. It's nothing spectacular.
Speaker 1: They're not doing anything super like like groundbreaking with their coverage.
Speaker 1: They just do that specific thing perfectly every single time,
Speaker 1: so Chris Paul can't attack Kliba on that quick switch
Speaker 1: or on that quick coming off the screen because there's
Speaker 1: back pressure coming from behind, and so the only way
Speaker 1: he can really do it is to pull that dribble
Speaker 1: out until Phinney Smith gets caught on the screen and
Speaker 1: then you can attack Cliba and the switch. Right. But
Speaker 1: here's the problem. Chris Paul for some reason, just doesn't
Speaker 1: want to shoot anymore. We'll get a little bit further
Speaker 1: into that later. But when you couple Chris Paul's lack
Speaker 1: of aggression with a very basic coverage that Dallas is
Speaker 1: running extraordinarily, well, they couldn't score anymore. It was wild
Speaker 1: to see the the offensive ratings in this series for
Speaker 1: Phoenix game one points per one hundred possessions, Game two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty seven points per one hundred possessions. We
Speaker 1: talked about how Luca didn't really particularly bring it defensively.
Speaker 1: The whole team didn't really bring it defensively, which made
Speaker 1: it hard to make a judgment call about what was
Speaker 1: gonna happen the rest of the series. You guys heard
Speaker 1: me on the show. I was like, how were we
Speaker 1: supposed to understand or predict what Dallas is going to
Speaker 1: do in the rest of the series. When they didn't
Speaker 1: even try really defensively in the first two games. Well
Speaker 1: they started trying rite Game three they only allowed hundred
Speaker 1: and four points per Hunter possessions. Game four, the only
Speaker 1: allowed hundred nine. Game five, Phoenix had another really good
Speaker 1: offensive game hundred and twenty points per one hundred possessions.
Speaker 1: But then in game six back in Dallas, they got
Speaker 1: a bunch of stops again ninety four points per one
Speaker 1: hunter possessions. That's why we picked Phoenix at the show,
Speaker 1: because Phoenix could score pretty much at will against Dallas
Speaker 1: at home. For whatever reason, Dallas's defense didn't keep up
Speaker 1: with the level they needed at needed to to compete.
Speaker 1: But tonight they came out dialed in. And that's on
Speaker 1: the coaching staff. Like again, it's nothing spectacular. There's no
Speaker 1: gimmicky thing they're doing in terms of like some hy
Speaker 1: old help coming from some crazy place or anything out
Speaker 1: of the ordinary happening. It's a basic coverage that is
Speaker 1: extremely well coached, that has ran extremely well. The beautiful
Speaker 1: thing about it is they are allowed by doing that.
Speaker 1: They're making it so that Dorian Phinney Smith and Reggie
Speaker 1: Bullock at least have an opportunity to try to stay
Speaker 1: connected to Chris Paul and Devin Booker. It's giving them
Speaker 1: fewer opportunities to attack other switches. Certainly helps when Devin
Speaker 1: Booker has his war shooting night of the postseason by far,
Speaker 1: that's again, if you're gonna, if you're gonna get, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna be down seventy to thirty one at one point,
Speaker 1: a whole lot of things gotta go wrong, and a
Speaker 1: whole lot of things did. But I thought the core
Speaker 1: foundational problem here was Dallas running really really smooth and
Speaker 1: disciplined pick and roll coverage and Chris Paul just being
Speaker 1: unwilling to try to make him pay, unwilling to try
Speaker 1: to score even when he was coming off those screens.
Speaker 1: He's throwing the past before he even really draws the defense.
Speaker 1: And it's a whole other thing. We'll get to Chris
Speaker 1: Paul in a second, but it's just I wanted to
Speaker 1: give that shout out to Jason Kidd and and you know,
Speaker 1: most importantly with Jason Kidd, last note on him. You
Speaker 1: know he got a lot of crap for is the
Speaker 1: job he did in Milwaukee. Talk to Bucks fans and
Speaker 1: they'll tell you Jason kids an awful coach. And my
Speaker 1: thing with that is, like talk to Cavs fans and
Speaker 1: they'll tell you Tyler wasn't a great coach. Towards the end,
Speaker 1: I didn't think he did a fantastic job with the
Speaker 1: Cavs and I did a good job, not a great job.
Speaker 1: And then that year after Lebron left, things went south
Speaker 1: and he ended up getting fired. But like sometimes it's
Speaker 1: as a coach, we have all these examples throughout sports history.
Speaker 1: They just go look at like some of the jobs
Speaker 1: that Bill Belichick did in the NFL, some of the
Speaker 1: jobs that like Nick Saban did when he was in
Speaker 1: the NFL. A lot of coaches struggle in specific environments
Speaker 1: for one reason or another. To me, it's the coaches
Speaker 1: that are malleable, that are willing to change. Those are
Speaker 1: the coaches that have the most success. And so this
Speaker 1: is one of those things when you're when you're if
Speaker 1: your team has a vacancy right now, be a little
Speaker 1: bit more willing to accept a coach maybe that's in
Speaker 1: their second and third gig. Now, if we're talking Doc
Speaker 1: Rivers and he's been in the lead forever and he
Speaker 1: still is making the same mistakes that he's been making.
Speaker 1: That's a different story. But like these younger coaches, especially
Speaker 1: players that are familiarizing themselves with a new type of gig,
Speaker 1: cut them some slack in that first gig because it's
Speaker 1: not always gonna go smoothly. And I think Jason Kidd
Speaker 1: has done an unbelievable job. Let's move on to Luca
Speaker 1: came out scored the first eight points of the game.
Speaker 1: Two incredible step back threes, turnaround fade away out of
Speaker 1: the high post. Both of the step backs he hit
Speaker 1: were over Phoenix's best defenders, to step back over DeAndre
Speaker 1: Ayton that was heavily contested in the left corner, and
Speaker 1: then a step back over the Kail bridges on the
Speaker 1: left wing. Both extremely high, high, high degree of difficulty shots,
Speaker 1: but they sucked the life out of this team. And
Speaker 1: Lucas had stretches like that over the course of this
Speaker 1: series where he's made some shots, but he made a
Speaker 1: bunch of shots to start this game. And then Spencer Dinwood,
Speaker 1: he guys, I've been Spencer Dinwood. He has been horrifically
Speaker 1: bad in this postseason run. He's averaging twelve points per
Speaker 1: game on thirty six percent shooting. Coming into tonight and
Speaker 1: I think you had twenty one just in the first half.
Speaker 1: And I told you, guys like Luca desperately needed someone
Speaker 1: else to help carry that load. Tonight it was Spencer.
Speaker 1: And especially in a Game seven environment, especially as an underdog,
Speaker 1: you need a wild card, you need something big to
Speaker 1: go your way, and tonight it was Spencer Dinwoody. But
Speaker 1: what was wild was you know, I always thought one
Speaker 1: of the big reasons why I picked Phoenix, and for
Speaker 1: the record, when these when we're talking about these predictions,
Speaker 1: guys like it's impossible to predict sports. If it was easy,
Speaker 1: if we all knew what was going to happen, one
Speaker 1: of us would watch professional gamblers. People who pick sports
Speaker 1: for a living are typically only right, you know, in
Speaker 1: the high level, typically with their picks. This is extremely
Speaker 1: hard to do. So that that day for me picking games,
Speaker 1: that is for sure. And I paid. I paid for
Speaker 1: it in the old wallet on FanDuel. But you guys
Speaker 1: know how that goes is But you know the you
Speaker 1: typically the reason why I was so the reason why
Speaker 1: I was so confident in Phoenix was I thought that
Speaker 1: they could tighten the screws defensively to a level especially
Speaker 1: over the course that game to where they would just
Speaker 1: be able to get significantly higher shot quality than Dallas.
Speaker 1: If you guys remember game five in this series, Luca
Speaker 1: came out scorching again. Dallas had a big lead early again,
Speaker 1: but over the course of the game the game stayed
Speaker 1: relatively close, and then Dallas really turned the screws defensively
Speaker 1: late second quarter and then into the third quarter, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it was, you know, fifty five
Speaker 1: or whatever. It was like it just their defense engaged
Speaker 1: over the course of the game war on Dallas, and
Speaker 1: their shot quality fell apart. But this was what was wild.
Speaker 1: And this is where Spencer dinwity you know, Luca better
Speaker 1: buy a mistake dinner tonight, because the power of Luca
Speaker 1: and Spencer together going off in that first half, I
Speaker 1: think the two of them combined for like forty seven
Speaker 1: points or something like that in the first half. Them
Speaker 1: doing that utterly sat Phoenix of all of their confidence.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, they didn't There was
Speaker 1: nothing to motivate them to tighten the screws because it
Speaker 1: just felt like it wasn't their night. They weren't getting anything.
Speaker 1: It completely destroyed that team. You know what's interesting and
Speaker 1: this is this is what reminds me about of golf.
Speaker 1: Like basketball is a sport where there are areas of
Speaker 1: the game we're trying harder has a positive effect, like defense, rebounding,
Speaker 1: running floor and transition, attacking the basket, things along those lines.
Speaker 1: But there are so many elements to basketball that are
Speaker 1: up here and that our finesse oriented skill to hand
Speaker 1: eye coordination. You know. That was during the pandemic when
Speaker 1: I couldn't play basketball anymore for like the first six months,
Speaker 1: I got big into golf because I had to scratch
Speaker 1: the competitive which somehow, and what was so wild to
Speaker 1: me about it was like when things started to go south,
Speaker 1: like if you hit a couple of bad shots, trying
Speaker 1: harder accomplishes nothing in golf, Like swinging harder is like
Speaker 1: arguably the worst thing you can do right. It's so
Speaker 1: much about standing over the ball and being calm and
Speaker 1: trusting your form and trusting your muscle memory, which is
Speaker 1: precisely what's so difficult when you're frustrated and you're annoyed
Speaker 1: and your body like wants to lash out physically somehow,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, And that's why we all
Speaker 1: have that drive that we slice three yards off the
Speaker 1: course to the right because we're piste off that we
Speaker 1: missed a putt on the previous hole right, and basketball
Speaker 1: is the same impact. There was no level of effort
Speaker 1: that Phoenix could tap into to compensate for the fact
Speaker 1: that they couldn't score the basketball. Every open shot, guys
Speaker 1: are choking on those. Chris Paul like you could tell
Speaker 1: first shot he got of the game how to pick
Speaker 1: and roll pump fake Dorian Phinney Smith went flying by,
Speaker 1: He's wide open at fift and he just missed it.
Speaker 1: And you could just see like that like shrug from
Speaker 1: Chris Paul, like, oh man, again, I missed another one,
Speaker 1: and it's like it's it's wild because Dallas on the
Speaker 1: other end of the floor. Meanwhile, their confidences at level ten,
Speaker 1: they really trust their muscle memory, they really trust their
Speaker 1: jump shot form. Spencer and Luca are getting to these
Speaker 1: tough shots, but they are rising into the shots supremely
Speaker 1: confident in their ability to knock them down, while Phoenix
Speaker 1: was just imploding mentally in all of those hand eye coordination,
Speaker 1: all of those decision making, all those mental elements of
Speaker 1: the game fell apart and there's no trying hard to
Speaker 1: fix that problem. It was. It was a train that
Speaker 1: got off the tracks and there was no way to
Speaker 1: get it back. But that's the That's again, like I
Speaker 1: told you guys before the game, like I picked Phoenix,
Speaker 1: but don't bet against Luca. And I bet against Luca
Speaker 1: and I paid for it, you know, Like that's what
Speaker 1: happens when you have a guy like that who's the
Speaker 1: best player on the floor. He has the capability of
Speaker 1: tapping into something that can have a huge psychological impact
Speaker 1: on the game. And he was so so good tonight
Speaker 1: that it took very very good basketball players I've been
Speaker 1: all year. I said, Phoenix is the most talented team
Speaker 1: from top to botty. They don't have the top end
Speaker 1: talent or he get to that in a sec. But
Speaker 1: from top to bottom they have more talent than anybody
Speaker 1: in the league. And that team had like points but
Speaker 1: two minutes left in the third quarter. That's how much
Speaker 1: Luca mentally destroyed those guys. The CP three and Book
Speaker 1: thing is weird. Book just had a bad night for
Speaker 1: the record. Like that guy, for the most part in
Speaker 1: this postseason run, has been remarkably consistent. He just had
Speaker 1: a bad night. Now, the weird thing is is when
Speaker 1: Devin's not making his pull up jump shot, he doesn't
Speaker 1: impact the game in a ton of other ways. He's
Speaker 1: a above average to good isolation defender against normal guards
Speaker 1: and wings. Right, can't guard Luca, but he can guard
Speaker 1: normal guards and wings. But he's not like some dominant,
Speaker 1: impactful defensive player. He's not a dominant and impactful playmaker.
Speaker 1: So when the shots aren't missing, then he doesn't have
Speaker 1: a ton of impact on the game. But that's why
Speaker 1: he's not a superstar. That's why he's something less than that. Right,
Speaker 1: Chris Paul, the same thing we saw through eight games
Speaker 1: of this playoff run. Like a lot of things were
Speaker 1: going for him. You're scoring the basketball, shooting the ship
Speaker 1: out of it from the perimeter, make him plays, but
Speaker 1: then his you know, his shot left him and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the defense wasn't committing to him as much.
Speaker 1: So a lot of his playmaking gets canceled out. Now,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, he's not impacting the game very much,
Speaker 1: arguably hurting them, And that's where that lack of a
Speaker 1: superstar comes in, you know, like you need in these environments,
Speaker 1: it's very hard for everybody to score. When you get
Speaker 1: especially when you get to these late rounds, everyone is
Speaker 1: so good. All the defenses are incredible. There are no
Speaker 1: easy opportunities. You need to have somebody that can truly
Speaker 1: ultimately compromise the defense on a consistent basis. And and
Speaker 1: it's amazing to me how often an NBA history, the
Speaker 1: one single superstar can beat the collection of talent. You know, Boston,
Speaker 1: if you replaced Jayson Tatum with another Jalen brown If
Speaker 1: I just took Jayson Tatum and had to Jalen Browns instead,
Speaker 1: that team is significantly worse and they would never have
Speaker 1: been able to score against this Milwaukee defense. That ultimate
Speaker 1: superstar talent and their ability to compromise the defense is
Speaker 1: still the most valuable skill in the NBA, especially as
Speaker 1: a perimeter initiator. You guys know who I am about
Speaker 1: the mbiads and the Yokches of the world. Like, Luca
Speaker 1: just completely and utterly destroyed the better team, the best team,
Speaker 1: the team that had that coming into this playoff run
Speaker 1: I thought was the favorite. Luca just destroyed them, you know.
Speaker 1: But the CP three thing is weird, man, Like my
Speaker 1: guess is, And again we're recording this live. I haven't
Speaker 1: been paying attention to the postgame. My guess is that
Speaker 1: Monty Williams or CP three will come out in the
Speaker 1: postgame presser and reveal some kind of injury because the
Speaker 1: type of dip in his aggressiveness from the first eight
Speaker 1: games of this playoff run to the last five are
Speaker 1: completely inexplainable. If I if I tried to explain him,
Speaker 1: I'd say he started missing shots as a result, the
Speaker 1: defense wasn't committing to him as much. As a result,
Speaker 1: a lot of his playmaking was limited, and then he
Speaker 1: just became a superlimited player. But I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how many times I'd see him coming off of that
Speaker 1: screen and Dorian Finney Smith would get caught a little bit,
Speaker 1: but instead of trying to attack Kliba, he would throw
Speaker 1: the swing pass to the other corner before the defense
Speaker 1: had even collapsed, and then it was an easy rotation.
Speaker 1: Or instead of just pulling it out and getting the
Speaker 1: switch and attacking Kliba, he just keep moving the ball around.
Speaker 1: There was a blatant lack of aggression, and I just
Speaker 1: don't know how to explain it. I mean, he is old,
Speaker 1: so I mean maybe it's as simple as that the
Speaker 1: lift was gone, the confidence was gone. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I hope we find out something because, man, like guys,
Speaker 1: after Game two of this series, do you remember the
Speaker 1: conversations we were having about Chris Paul His close out
Speaker 1: game over the Pelicans was one of the most dominant
Speaker 1: playoff performances I've ever seen, fourteen for fourteen from the field.
Speaker 1: He was destroyed, like surgically destroyed the Mavericks in Game
Speaker 1: two and then never was heard from again in this series.
Speaker 1: Truly bizarre. I don't I don't know what to make
Speaker 1: of it. But again, that's that will always be the
Speaker 1: thing that puts a cap on Phoenix's potential. You know,
Speaker 1: the last thing I wanted to hit on this before
Speaker 1: we bring my guy Carson on. There's a huge difference,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, between the strategy that Phoenix had this
Speaker 1: regular season and the strategy that Dallas had, you know,
Speaker 1: all the time during the regular during the dregs of
Speaker 1: the regular season in like February, you'll see you know,
Speaker 1: bloggers and and NBA writers right like Wax eloquent about
Speaker 1: things like oh I love the motion of Dallas, or
Speaker 1: I loved the motion of Phoenix's offense. I love how
Speaker 1: sophisticated everything to do is. And then you'll you'll hear
Speaker 1: them talk about Dallas and they'll say, like it's too heliocentric,
Speaker 1: like it's too Luca dependent, this is that this is
Speaker 1: not sustainable. And they'll say the same thing about like
Speaker 1: Lebron and a d and the Lakers. They'll be during
Speaker 1: that entire playoff run like they're literally are during the
Speaker 1: entire regular season there far and away better than everybody,
Speaker 1: But all the bloggers were like, Oh, their offense is
Speaker 1: is too it's too redundant, it's too it's too stagnant,
Speaker 1: there's not enough fall movement, blah blah blah. But it's
Speaker 1: proven to work in the playoffs. In the playoffs, your
Speaker 1: motion offense, with all your with all of your sets
Speaker 1: that you run, in all the actions that you run,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't work in the postseason when you can scout, really,
Speaker 1: when you can really scout for a team, there's not
Speaker 1: a pick and roll coverage that that there's not a
Speaker 1: pick and roll that Phoenix can run that Dallas didn't
Speaker 1: have down to down to a science on how to cover.
Speaker 1: By the end of that By the end of that series,
Speaker 1: it just more often than not, it comes down to
Speaker 1: can you space the floor properly and do you have
Speaker 1: a player that can be your supreme offensive and shader,
Speaker 1: And then do you have one or two guys that
Speaker 1: can spell your supreme initiator by running some quality offense
Speaker 1: and on any given night one of them can go off.
Speaker 1: That dynamic is proven to work in the playoffs, the
Speaker 1: five out dynamic, the Maxi Kleiba at center during the
Speaker 1: regular season not gonna do a lot of damage, but
Speaker 1: DeAndre Aton at center, traditional drop coverage is running a
Speaker 1: super traditional scheme like that, We'll eat up a lot
Speaker 1: of innings in the regular season and generate a ton
Speaker 1: of wins. But then they get into the postseason and
Speaker 1: everything that they do is solvable. And then the teams
Speaker 1: like Dallas that navigate through the season as a team
Speaker 1: that's under the radar, they are prepping for the playoff environment.
Speaker 1: Is it harder to eat innings in the regular season
Speaker 1: that way, sure, But in this setting that style has proven.
Speaker 1: You know, It's one of the big reasons why it
Speaker 1: was high on Boston towards the end of the regular season,
Speaker 1: Like they were running stuff that has proven to work
Speaker 1: in the playoffs. Tatum was doing a great job taking
Speaker 1: double teams and passing out of them. They were switching
Speaker 1: everything on defense, which is the defensive scheme that I
Speaker 1: believe most in. They were doing stuff that I knew
Speaker 1: would work in the postseason. And and it's just like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe how often us as basketball fans and
Speaker 1: analysts fall for the regular season crap all the time.
Speaker 1: There will be some team next year that's running a
Speaker 1: traditional center, that's running traditional coverages, that has a really
Speaker 1: pretty ball movement player movement offense that will lose again
Speaker 1: in the postseason next year will fall for it again,
Speaker 1: just like we did with the Utah Jazz. For the
Speaker 1: last few years, the Utah Jazz looked like a dominant
Speaker 1: regular season team and then consistently get their ass kicked
Speaker 1: by lesser teams in the playoffs. We have to eventually
Speaker 1: learn from this. And to me, I thought, I thought,
Speaker 1: I thought this series was the greatest example of that
Speaker 1: most talented team in the league, Phoenix. But they were
Speaker 1: built in a way that was easy to scheme for.
Speaker 1: And Dallas literally completely neutered their offense in Game seven
Speaker 1: on their home floor, completely wild stuff. We're gonna get
Speaker 1: a little bit further into the details of the series,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna bring my guy Carson on to do so, Hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: haven't seen you. Yeah, it's been a few hours, hasn't it. Well,
Speaker 1: it's great to be back. We've got we've got a
Speaker 1: few big questions from tonight. So let's start with this
Speaker 1: because you talked about obviously an off night from book
Speaker 1: you talked about just sort of the staggering lack of
Speaker 1: production from CP down the stretch. But who do you
Speaker 1: think Jason is most at fault for the Sun's collapse? Man,
Speaker 1: I would tie it mostly to CP three. Um Again,
Speaker 1: like the Booker thing is a wild card. Like he
Speaker 1: just didn't shoot well tonight. Don't get me wrong, they
Speaker 1: guarded him well, but he got to a lot of
Speaker 1: his typical spots, and he got to a lot of
Speaker 1: his typical go to moves and he just wasn't knocking
Speaker 1: them down right, which is again that that's variants there.
Speaker 1: And for a player like him, who's not the best player,
Speaker 1: like he's not like a top five player in the league, Like,
Speaker 1: it's unrealistic to expect him to go out and shoot
Speaker 1: as poorly as he did and had a monster impact,
Speaker 1: but so much about what makes Phoenix's offense work is
Speaker 1: Chris Paul has to be enough of a threat to
Speaker 1: either score or to draw the defense in. So he's
Speaker 1: kicking to the Cam Johnson's of the world and the
Speaker 1: Michael Bridges of the world that are super talented off
Speaker 1: ball players that can persistently make them pay attacking clothes outs.
Speaker 1: But they you know, they that that has always been
Speaker 1: the scariest thing about Phoenix is not the first action.
Speaker 1: It's like the second side action has always been terrifying
Speaker 1: with Phoenix, and they just didn't even get to that
Speaker 1: nearly enough for when they did. Like I don't know
Speaker 1: if you notice that, Carson, but Chris Paul is like
Speaker 1: literally coming off the screen and before he's even looking
Speaker 1: to shoot, he's whipping the ball across the court. I
Speaker 1: just didn't think that was sustainable. And I thought I thought,
Speaker 1: like I thought that some of those problems started to
Speaker 1: manifest in game three, and I don't think they ever
Speaker 1: really went away. Like that offensive rating of one twenty
Speaker 1: in Game five was elevated by the fourth quarter. I thought, um,
Speaker 1: through three quarters, I think they had held him to
Speaker 1: like seventy seven points or something like that. So, like Dallas,
Speaker 1: I think figured out some stuff and but up a
Speaker 1: huge part of it was just CP three. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, I don't know if the injury news
Speaker 1: is coming or if it's just simply that he's old.
Speaker 1: But the CP three the last five games was not
Speaker 1: the same guy as the guy from the first eight games. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not even close. And just to give some stats that
Speaker 1: contextualize that last five games, he's nine point four points
Speaker 1: and five point eight assists per game. And it's not
Speaker 1: like his efficiency is poor or anything, but he's taken
Speaker 1: seven shots a night. And so regardless of what variable
Speaker 1: you attribute a majority of that too. That's inexcusable. And
Speaker 1: I think that CP three is a guy who is
Speaker 1: consistently unfairly maligned for his playoff resume when he actually
Speaker 1: individually has often overperformed his regular season production has been
Speaker 1: more assertive as a score, and we saw those stretches
Speaker 1: within these playoffs right where he is just dissecting out
Speaker 1: of the pick and roll. Five games ago, he was
Speaker 1: shooting seventy three percent from mid range. Throughout the playoffs,
Speaker 1: it was like Chris Paul pick and roll was surgical
Speaker 1: every single time, So I don't know that there is
Speaker 1: a person you could put more at fault. I would
Speaker 1: look maybe to the overall roster construction and talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the same things that maybe playing Milwaukee
Speaker 1: in a way, just in terms of you need more
Speaker 1: guys who can really go out there and create a shot.
Speaker 1: And you talk about the beauty of the regular season
Speaker 1: offense and all that, and the cutting of the macau
Speaker 1: Bridges and whatnot and eight and feeding off of what
Speaker 1: those lead guards can do. But when that stuff is
Speaker 1: taken away, when you're facing a high level switching defense
Speaker 1: like you've talked about, then you maybe they just needed
Speaker 1: more actual firepower. So what do you think, I mean,
Speaker 1: does this roster need legitimate reconstruction and what are the
Speaker 1: things that they would need to do. Man, I thought
Speaker 1: they had the mo was talent in the league, Carson,
Speaker 1: Like I thought in terms of off ball creation, I
Speaker 1: don't know that there was anybody that had more talent
Speaker 1: this year. Like no one's kicking to a Michale Bridges
Speaker 1: as their fourth best player anywhere in the league right now.
Speaker 1: Like it's just like, I mean, here's the thing, Like
Speaker 1: this is the this is the real conversation to have. Uh,
Speaker 1: Chris Paul fell apart at the end of the Milwaukee
Speaker 1: series through Holiday completely shut him down and it changed
Speaker 1: the series. Right, Um, there wasn't just true Holiday was
Speaker 1: team effort. Holiday also spent a lot of time on
Speaker 1: Devin Booker in that series. But the point is is
Speaker 1: that everything worked for Phoenix until Chris Paul fell apart
Speaker 1: in the finals last year. This year, everything worked for
Speaker 1: Phoenix until Chris Paul Paul fell apart in the second
Speaker 1: in the second round against Dallas. So the reality of
Speaker 1: the situation is is as great as Chris Paul is
Speaker 1: and as much as he's contributed to the rejuvenation of
Speaker 1: the Sun's franchise, ah, He's just he's not nearly as
Speaker 1: valuable when when when their backs are against the wall.
Speaker 1: So I love the Devin Booker Yeas again, tonight was
Speaker 1: not a representation of this playoff run from Devin Booker.
Speaker 1: He has become a very reliable two way three level
Speaker 1: score Okay, Uh, DeAndre, I think maybe maybe the move
Speaker 1: is Carson like next year is the year that Michale
Speaker 1: Bridges and DeAndre and need to become featured in the offense.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's that simple, and they need to become more
Speaker 1: you know, dependable in that regard like I but at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, like they need to eventually
Speaker 1: consider moving on from the Chris Paul era and finding
Speaker 1: another guy who's a little bit more reliable as an
Speaker 1: initiator and that specific circumstance, you know, I know the
Speaker 1: Lakers are trying to get rid of Russell Westbrook. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if anybody's interested, but my point, my point
Speaker 1: is is that my point is is that like like
Speaker 1: love Chris Paul. We've done nothing but you know, the
Speaker 1: compliment him in this playoff run, at least until things
Speaker 1: went south. But it's just whatever is going on with
Speaker 1: Chris Paul right now has been the driving force between
Speaker 1: them falling apart in the last two playoff runs, So
Speaker 1: that has to be accounted for somehow. Yeah, we'll get
Speaker 1: back to I think some of the interesting stuff with
Speaker 1: the Sun's future and what's next for them in a second,
Speaker 1: but we do first have a question in a donation
Speaker 1: from Clyde macassara, so shout out to you Clyde, Jason,
Speaker 1: and Carson. This is a question how can a VET
Speaker 1: Warriors three exploit the MAVs in the Western Conference Finals. Jason,
Speaker 1: what do you think? Oh, that's a good question. So
Speaker 1: this if you guys listened to the to the preview
Speaker 1: we released on YouTube a couple I think it was
Speaker 1: either yesterday or the day be for um the I thought,
Speaker 1: even though Phoenix I think is a better team overall
Speaker 1: in terms of talent than Dallas. UM, I thought Dallas
Speaker 1: was a worst matchup for Golden State because what scares
Speaker 1: me is Luca was trying to knock down a lot
Speaker 1: of shots over the likes of DeAndre Ayton and Michael
Speaker 1: Bridges in this series. And not that Golden State doesn't
Speaker 1: have great defensive players, because they do. Golden State is
Speaker 1: great defense. They're kind of like Dallas in the sense
Speaker 1: that there there there, They are just absolutely incredibly well code,
Speaker 1: always in the right place, always do the right thing.
Speaker 1: Their star leads by example, everyone follows. They're an extremely
Speaker 1: good defensive team, but they are not a physically imposing
Speaker 1: defensive team. They're not a big and long defensive team.
Speaker 1: They are a lot of it's it's everything outside of
Speaker 1: that's perfect, but they don't. Luca specifically thrives in by
Speaker 1: shooting over people. He's a guy that loves to pin
Speaker 1: you on his backs that he's basically guard yokis right,
Speaker 1: Like he's pinning you on his backside or on his
Speaker 1: hip and getting two spots on the floor, he could
Speaker 1: shoot over the top of you, and he's gonna have
Speaker 1: a size advantage over everybody in that series, which is
Speaker 1: gonna make things really complicated. I think that this is
Speaker 1: the thing if Phoenix's offense has a lot of dynamic action,
Speaker 1: for sure, but Golden State's offense has a ton of
Speaker 1: dynamic off ball action. So I think the biggest thing
Speaker 1: would be trying to capitalize on Luca on the other
Speaker 1: side of the floor. You know, tax Dallas is switching
Speaker 1: defense with just over like just by complicated actions, three
Speaker 1: player actions that make the switch. Is more difficult to
Speaker 1: pull off things along those lines. But I mean, man,
Speaker 1: this is again. You guys, stay tuned either late tomorrow
Speaker 1: or early on Tuesday. I am going to watch a
Speaker 1: ton of film tomorrow morning, and I'm gonna release a
Speaker 1: couple of previews of both of these series and I
Speaker 1: will do a further deep dive into it. But my initial,
Speaker 1: my initial kind of uh, my initial kind of idea
Speaker 1: would be You're not gonna be able to guard Luca.
Speaker 1: He's gonna get whatever he wants to try to turn
Speaker 1: him to a score. See if he can outscore you
Speaker 1: for the series. But it's on the other end. How
Speaker 1: much can you punish this Dallas defense. Punish got the
Speaker 1: likes of Luca, the likes of Genalen Brunson, the likes
Speaker 1: of Spencer Dinwoodie that aren't great defensive players in a vacuum,
Speaker 1: but that are good within the scheme, and see if
Speaker 1: you can wear them out that way. How do you
Speaker 1: feel that Steph matches up individually in this matchup? I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the thing. You're Lucas gonna pick on him,
Speaker 1: and they'll do certain things Like Golden States really smart
Speaker 1: at pre switching. So basically all that pre switching is
Speaker 1: is like, imagine that Steph Curry is guarding Let's say
Speaker 1: Steph Curry's guarding Reggie Bullock in the week's side corner
Speaker 1: and Lucas up at the top, and he calls for
Speaker 1: Reggie Bullock to come set a screen. Basically, instead of
Speaker 1: Steph following Reggie Bullock, you know, Draymond or some other
Speaker 1: perimeter defender, someone like you know let's just say Andrew
Speaker 1: Wiggins will just leave his man instead and go up
Speaker 1: with Reggie Bullock to the screen, and then Steph will
Speaker 1: just go run over and guard Andrew Wiggins man. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a pre switch. It's a way to prevent Luca
Speaker 1: from getting on. They'll do they'll do all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff like that to try to keep Steph from getting
Speaker 1: onto Luca, but forgetting like Phoenix was trying all the
Speaker 1: same things, and and Luca was still finding himself on
Speaker 1: Chris Paul or Cam Johnson and attacking specific matchups. Like
Speaker 1: you just have to trust that any possession that Luca
Speaker 1: goes isolation and tries to score over the top of
Speaker 1: you is stagnating the rest of the roster. Again, like
Speaker 1: Luca had a lot of games in this place in
Speaker 1: this particular series where he made a lot of shots,
Speaker 1: but Dallas's offense didn't function very well, including game five
Speaker 1: in this series. So obviously tonight it looked terrific, right
Speaker 1: with everything that went wrong, But you gotta just dare
Speaker 1: Luca to score forty five, stay home off the ball
Speaker 1: and just hope that then at then at certain points
Speaker 1: you can stunt at Luca with help and hopefully at
Speaker 1: that point all of Dallas's shooters will be out of
Speaker 1: rhythm because they haven't touched the ball in forever. That's
Speaker 1: that's the strategy that I would go with. But I mean,
Speaker 1: Steph does not stack up with Luca as a defensive player,
Speaker 1: like he's just he's gonna get beat in that matchup,
Speaker 1: but that's to be expected. The same thing is gonna
Speaker 1: happen to Jordan Pool. The same thing is gonna. I
Speaker 1: think Luca is gonna have success scoring against Andrew Wiggins. Like,
Speaker 1: that's not the point. The The idea is Steph has
Speaker 1: to match what everything that Luca is doing, and then
Speaker 1: some on the offensive end of the floor, like especially
Speaker 1: with how much Dallas can switch from time to time,
Speaker 1: like that, they're gonna they're gonna try to have. My
Speaker 1: guess is they'll put Reggie Bullock on Steph because Reggie
Speaker 1: Bullock is a better lock and trail defender than Dori
Speaker 1: and Phinney Smith Um and bigger, bigger defenders struggle fighting
Speaker 1: over the top of screens. So my guess is Bullock
Speaker 1: will be chasing him like crazy all over the floor
Speaker 1: and it's on him to uh to capitalize on that
Speaker 1: one way or another draft, whether that's drawing attention or
Speaker 1: or attacking Reggie Bullock in isolation rather than trying to
Speaker 1: chase him around screens. But step Steph's biggest impact on
Speaker 1: this series is gonna be him reaching m v P
Speaker 1: level impact offensively mhm. And I think the secondary creation
Speaker 1: is also going to be pivotal from both sides because
Speaker 1: we key in on the superstar matchup. Obviously, Luca feels
Speaker 1: like he's a given to produce that just meteoric levels
Speaker 1: every single night. Steph, we'll see if he can quite
Speaker 1: get there, if his individual creation is where it needs
Speaker 1: to be. But obviously, I mean, you look at a
Speaker 1: game like this and it's Bronson and Din Witty who
Speaker 1: make all the difference. It was Bronson in that first
Speaker 1: series who was so pivotal. Din He's been wildly and
Speaker 1: consistent for the Warriors. We've talked a million times about
Speaker 1: Jordan Pool and how crucial he has been. So we'll
Speaker 1: have plenty of time to look at that series because
Speaker 1: obviously that is what's up next for us now to
Speaker 1: focus on. But tonight is the night in which it's
Speaker 1: seems like the Sons are the story of the league
Speaker 1: was as incredible as Luca was, and as great of
Speaker 1: a story as this is for the MAVs, the Sons
Speaker 1: have been the story of this season. The Golden Boys.
Speaker 1: They were sixty four win team in the regular season
Speaker 1: last year. Obviously it seemed like the title was right
Speaker 1: within their reach, and they had the second best regular
Speaker 1: season record, and they had it felt like the best
Speaker 1: cast of role players. They were an incredibly complete two
Speaker 1: way team. They had the coach of the Year Booker.
Speaker 1: A lot of people were saying took another ascension with
Speaker 1: some of his defensive progress, and CP at thirty seven
Speaker 1: now felt like he was still playing at that all
Speaker 1: NBA level and all these things that just made it
Speaker 1: feel like, well, this is the year for it to
Speaker 1: all come together. And they ended up being healthy unless
Speaker 1: we hear something about CP to the contrary, and yet
Speaker 1: they fall short. And I think that that's obviously devastating
Speaker 1: in a vacuum, but even harder, Jason, do you think
Speaker 1: that the Son's title window is over? Now here's the thing, like, so,
Speaker 1: this is what happened to Janice after the bubble, right,
Speaker 1: and this is what happens to every team that suffers
Speaker 1: like the Clippers too, Like, no one really has taken
Speaker 1: the Clippers dead serious ever since they lost to the Nuggets. Right,
Speaker 1: It's just the problem is is they are now. They
Speaker 1: are now beyond the point of any sort of acknowledgement
Speaker 1: of regular season success. Like if they come back status quote,
Speaker 1: same group of guys and and they start the year
Speaker 1: forty and eight, no one's gonna be like, oh man,
Speaker 1: sons are taking it all because they're now. They are
Speaker 1: now they have now been officially diagnosed as a team
Speaker 1: whose playoffs ceiling is lower than the regular season series ceiling.
Speaker 1: You know, there was this thing that happened with h
Speaker 1: Let let me think of a good example, the two
Speaker 1: fifteen Warriors, for instance, Like they had some good fortune
Speaker 1: along the way and in the playoffs, right, Like I
Speaker 1: think Patrick Beverley was hurt in that first round series
Speaker 1: with the Rockets, and then in the second round series
Speaker 1: with the Grizzlies. You had like a I think it was,
Speaker 1: um gosh, who was it that was hurt? Oh it
Speaker 1: is Mike Conley and the Grizzlies series. Mike Conley I
Speaker 1: think was hurt and missed games in that series, and
Speaker 1: then they got to the finals and then Kyrie Irving
Speaker 1: got hurt, remember, and Kevin Love was out right, so
Speaker 1: like everyone was like, okay, they won, but is it real?
Speaker 1: You know? And then they went into the next season
Speaker 1: and just whooped everybody's ask to kind of like prove like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: what we did was real. And obviously what happened in
Speaker 1: the finals that was more about Lebron James and the
Speaker 1: fact that Steph Curry had a bad knee. Like that
Speaker 1: was that the seventy three win Warriors proved that would
Speaker 1: happen in two thousand fifteen was not a fluke. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that's like the situation at play here.
Speaker 1: Like you you you go into that first round series
Speaker 1: and you're down to one to the Lakers, and then
Speaker 1: Anthony Davis gets hurt and you win the next three
Speaker 1: games and win the series. Right. Then you go into
Speaker 1: the next round and you sweep a a Denver Nuggets
Speaker 1: team that's missing their second best player. Okay, then you
Speaker 1: go into the third round and you get dragged to
Speaker 1: six games by a Clippers team that's missing Kawhi Leonard
Speaker 1: and like blew a closeout game at home in Game five,
Speaker 1: or Paul George came in and let you on fire.
Speaker 1: Then you go into the finals and you come up
Speaker 1: to oh, but you're up to oh against Dave of
Speaker 1: Milwaukee team that has Janice playing on hyper extended knee,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, the series flips on
Speaker 1: you and you lose four games in a row. Right, So, yes,
Speaker 1: you're two wins from an NBA championship, But you had skeptics, right,
Speaker 1: including myself. I was a big Sons skeptic, right, And
Speaker 1: so this season is your opportunity to prove that last
Speaker 1: season was not a fluke. And during the regular season
Speaker 1: they did that to their credit. But as we've talked about,
Speaker 1: and Chris Paul teams in particular, because he's such a
Speaker 1: good closer, and because he's so procedural and what he does,
Speaker 1: and because in a regular season environment he's so hard
Speaker 1: to guard, like, you expect a certain level of regular
Speaker 1: season success from a Chris Paul team, and that was
Speaker 1: even true when he was in Oklahoma City that one year.
Speaker 1: But they got into a first round series against the
Speaker 1: New Lens Pelicans, who scraped their way way in out
Speaker 1: of the playing tournament and got dragged to six games,
Speaker 1: and it took a fourteen for fourteen performance from Chris
Speaker 1: Paul on the road to barely win that game. There
Speaker 1: was a version of that story where you're going back
Speaker 1: to a game seven there and then you losing seven
Speaker 1: to the Mavericks, Like all of a sudden last year
Speaker 1: is starting to look not fraudulent, but like a little
Speaker 1: bit like some stuff broke your way, Like all of
Speaker 1: a sudden last year looks a little bit more like
Speaker 1: Trey Young taking the Hawks to the Eastern Conference Finals
Speaker 1: than you know, a legitimate finals run, right, Like, that's
Speaker 1: what it starts to look like now. It's that there
Speaker 1: are a lot better than that is a very talented
Speaker 1: team for the record, but the point is is there's
Speaker 1: a level that you have to get to to win
Speaker 1: an NBA Championship, and Phoenix has demonstrated two years in
Speaker 1: a row now that they can't reach that level. Specifically,
Speaker 1: they can't reach that level when going up against a
Speaker 1: true legitimate, super duper star. Well, Janice did to them
Speaker 1: last year and what Luca did to them this year,
Speaker 1: they looked helpless under that, Like look at what Luca
Speaker 1: did tonight and then look at what Janice did in
Speaker 1: Game six, dropping fifty on them. And they're literally just
Speaker 1: sitting there like they might as well have their hands
Speaker 1: tied behind their back. There was nothing they could do
Speaker 1: to keep up with it. And so this is like,
Speaker 1: you know, do you remember this, Carson we talked about
Speaker 1: before the playoff run? I said, this would be an
Speaker 1: interesting year two determine whether or not the Superstar era
Speaker 1: was over. Do you remember me talking about that and
Speaker 1: my whole idea. No, I shouldn't say over, but the
Speaker 1: value I thought, the value of the Superstar laid in
Speaker 1: teams was starting to get diminished as a result of
Speaker 1: teams going five out and suddenly there being a great
Speaker 1: deal of importance on backside players, like how good are
Speaker 1: your guys at attacking closeouts on the backside because we
Speaker 1: don't have a traditional bruising refrigerator power forward on the
Speaker 1: floor anymore, we don't have a traditional center on the floor.
Speaker 1: No, no no, no, It's like everyone's fast and everyone can
Speaker 1: cover a ton of ground. So it's a lot easier
Speaker 1: to double Superstars and recover out of it. So I
Speaker 1: was saying, I was like, this will be an interesting
Speaker 1: playoff run. I'm curious to see what will happen. Will
Speaker 1: the Superstar teams continue to to to win or will
Speaker 1: it be the team teams that that kind of rise
Speaker 1: to the top of the food chain. And this was it,
Speaker 1: This was this was that conversation personified Dallas. Dallas had
Speaker 1: a significantly lesser amount of talent on the floor in
Speaker 1: this game and in this entire series and one player
Speaker 1: and the psychological impact he was able to have on
Speaker 1: everybody on the floor. And I used to talk about
Speaker 1: this all the time with Lebron, Like when Lebron would
Speaker 1: hit that level, everyone would just crumble around him under
Speaker 1: like like he was so confident on the floor and
Speaker 1: his control of the game that DeMar de Rosen would implode,
Speaker 1: Kyle Lowry would implode. Everyone that he would play against
Speaker 1: in these Eastern Conference playoff series would just completely implode,
Speaker 1: partially under the greatness of what Lebron was doing. And
Speaker 1: you saw Luca do that tonight. And so again, if
Speaker 1: there's a if there's a time coming when the super
Speaker 1: duper star becomes less valuable in the NBA, it sure
Speaker 1: as how wasn't here now, because Luca just just completely
Speaker 1: obliterated the best team of basketball tonight. It's just unbelievable stuff.
Speaker 1: And it is particularly difficult for the Son's just because
Speaker 1: I mean they're at such a crossroads now where you
Speaker 1: have to make the decision with Aidan, and obviously they
Speaker 1: have been highly reluctant to pay him max level money
Speaker 1: and now his contract is up, and as incredible as
Speaker 1: Chris Paul is, it's just so completely unprecedented for a
Speaker 1: thirty seven year old small guard to be closer this good.
Speaker 1: There's like one other guy of that portfolio, of that
Speaker 1: profile who has even been like a good player in
Speaker 1: NBA history, and it's John Stockton. I mean you look
Speaker 1: at like how far he and Lebron for that matter,
Speaker 1: are outpacing everybody previously in that age range. It's just unthinkable,
Speaker 1: and especially for the little guys. So given that all
Speaker 1: their role guys got better, right Bridges and Aidan and
Speaker 1: Cam Johnson, it just all really did feel like it
Speaker 1: was coming together for a time. And so I think
Speaker 1: that it is an incredibly difficult loom to try to
Speaker 1: recover from for the Suns. And it's very difficult for
Speaker 1: me to see them coming back and winning a title
Speaker 1: because everybody around them is constantly getting better. I don't
Speaker 1: know how they conceivably get better from here. The big
Speaker 1: one is gonna be Michael and DeAndre because like, and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm with you, Like I wouldn't say that Phoenix's
Speaker 1: window is closed. I just think it's temporarily closed, Like
Speaker 1: I think I think the Chris Paul Soun's window is closed.
Speaker 1: But the future version of the Suns that's built around Booker,
Speaker 1: Bridges and eight and being better players, that that window
Speaker 1: will open up eventually. But they're clearly not ready yet,
Speaker 1: you know. So we we talked a lot about how
Speaker 1: like Michael Michael Bridges guys like he's in a situation
Speaker 1: where he's not exactly just getting tossed a ton of
Speaker 1: on ball reps right eating the same thing. Like if
Speaker 1: I if I threw Eighton into the to the Process
Speaker 1: six ors five years ago, there's a good chance that
Speaker 1: I don't like again, don't think he's Joel embat but
Speaker 1: there's a good chance that he's closer to that than
Speaker 1: what he is now, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance that Eighton is a and twelve
Speaker 1: guy playing for the Process sixers. Right, these guys Micaal
Speaker 1: Bridges and DeAndre Ayton are they're not going to complain
Speaker 1: about it. Because winning is fun. If you've ever played
Speaker 1: for a winning basketball team, that ship is a blast. Okay.
Speaker 1: I played on an n ai A team with that
Speaker 1: BEATA Division one team and started the year thirteen and
Speaker 1: oh we were top five in the country. Those are
Speaker 1: like the most fun days I've ever had playing basketball. Okay,
Speaker 1: like winning is fun. They're having a good time. But
Speaker 1: Eighton and Bridges, there's clearly a development element that they
Speaker 1: might have to lean into in the next couple of years,
Speaker 1: which is, we need to start feeding the ball to
Speaker 1: Eton in the post. We need to start hitting him
Speaker 1: on the short roll all the time. We need to
Speaker 1: get a ton of Michael Bridges on ball reps because
Speaker 1: you need to figure out what those guys are because
Speaker 1: if the core of Bridges and Booker and Eighton is
Speaker 1: enough to win a title, you need to find out. Okay,
Speaker 1: you need to find out soon. So it might take
Speaker 1: an experimental year where you just feed those guys a
Speaker 1: ship ton of touches and just see what they can
Speaker 1: figure out in terms of their own individual offensive ceiling,
Speaker 1: and then you can make a read like, Okay, McHale
Speaker 1: is not enough, Atan's not enough. Why don't we trade
Speaker 1: McHale and eton for a legit superstar, put a legit
Speaker 1: superstar next to Booker and then we make a run
Speaker 1: for it. You don't know what whether or not that's
Speaker 1: a smart move until you really lean into their offensive
Speaker 1: development and see what they're capable of. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: it might even be worthwhile to just to move Chris
Speaker 1: and then try to really lean into two Bridges and
Speaker 1: eight and and just try to see what they're capable
Speaker 1: of in the next couple of years. That's interesting. I
Speaker 1: do feel like, I mean, CP has been so essential
Speaker 1: obviously to establishing just their offensive identity, the tempo they
Speaker 1: play with, putting everybody in positions to succeed, and Bridges.
Speaker 1: To me, you're absolutely right about playing winning basketball in
Speaker 1: a winning context. He does just feel like the perfect
Speaker 1: complimentary offensive guy, like the cutting, the pure shoe doing,
Speaker 1: I mean, the attacking close outs. It's just like you
Speaker 1: fit him in anywhere, and he excels in that role.
Speaker 1: It is a little difficult for me to see him
Speaker 1: being like that lead twenty plus kind of guy though,
Speaker 1: and eight and I've always just been skeptical of offensively
Speaker 1: because he just has some troubling tendencies. You know, I
Speaker 1: just think he's kind of fundamentally passive. He really isn't
Speaker 1: comfortable ever, like putting the ball on the floor, you know,
Speaker 1: you get him a mismatch and unless he has the
Speaker 1: guy literally buried, like, he doesn't back people down nearly
Speaker 1: nearly enough. Given that he's a physical behemoth, his post
Speaker 1: games kind of underdeveloped. So I don't know. You're right, though,
Speaker 1: at the same time, that's never been like a point
Speaker 1: of emphasis for him. It's been kind of okay, especially
Speaker 1: since cp got there. You're in this plug and play role.
Speaker 1: You're like kind of playing that replacement big role, but
Speaker 1: you're just better at it than the average guy, So
Speaker 1: we'll see. I don't know. I do have a healthy
Speaker 1: level of skepticism about what the Suns can be in
Speaker 1: a post CPI era because I think they have some
Speaker 1: really talented players, but he, to me, has been just
Speaker 1: the engine that has made it all go. So I'm concerned.
Speaker 1: I really think that this was the moment and they
Speaker 1: did not grab it. This did feel like their last chance,
Speaker 1: didn't it. And as good as Booker has become, he's
Speaker 1: he's not an engine. He's definitely not an engine. So, like,
Speaker 1: you're right, someone someone's got to be the engine and
Speaker 1: and and maybe and maybe that's what they have to do,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's the tough decision they have to make.
Speaker 1: Especially you don't feel like paying eighton then then maybe
Speaker 1: that's what you gotta do, is you gotta move them.
Speaker 1: But my thing is like if I were running the suns,
Speaker 1: I don't want to know what I have. I would
Speaker 1: wanna because again, like to your point, like I'm with you,
Speaker 1: agree with you, eton seems really uncomfortable in terms of
Speaker 1: the high level offensive stuff. And Michael Bridges like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he'll he'll hit this these drifting jumpers through the lane
Speaker 1: and and he'll tack close out and make a nifty
Speaker 1: finish and do some things like that. But there's just
Speaker 1: there's you you need the brandon Ingram treatment. You need
Speaker 1: to be throwing the basketball like as a primary initiator
Speaker 1: for two years to really learn stuff, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And so because again there's just like there's
Speaker 1: a huge gap in player development from each level. I
Speaker 1: talked about this with my high school players all the time.
Speaker 1: Like step one is learn how to do it in
Speaker 1: the gym by yourself. So like, for instance, if you're
Speaker 1: a guy who wants to learn how to take post
Speaker 1: up fade aways, Like get sit in the gym and
Speaker 1: take post up fade aways all day long, you know,
Speaker 1: like like turn over your left shoulder over your right
Speaker 1: shoulder from both blocks, you know, make at least five
Speaker 1: going each way every single day for like a couple
Speaker 1: of months. Okay, Then the next step is like get
Speaker 1: to the point where you can do it in practice
Speaker 1: or and in a five on five situation. Right, But
Speaker 1: even then there's another level past that to doing that
Speaker 1: in an actual game setting, because when when there's actual
Speaker 1: pressure in a real flow to a five on five
Speaker 1: basketball game, there's a whole other level of intensity, especially
Speaker 1: for like high school kids. Like it's one thing to
Speaker 1: to do something in a practice, it's another thing to
Speaker 1: do it when you're playing against the local rival team
Speaker 1: here in town. You know, like it's a totally different five.
Speaker 1: And so again, like there's been a huge wall in
Speaker 1: their development in the sense that they are playing alongside
Speaker 1: two primary ball handlers that function that run basically the
Speaker 1: vast majority of their actions, and so they just I
Speaker 1: would like to see what it looks like. But again,
Speaker 1: you you just gotta find you yet to find out
Speaker 1: one way or another, and they might know. They might
Speaker 1: know internally. They might know internally like, hey, we've been
Speaker 1: given Michale, you know, a ton of reps in practice
Speaker 1: and he's just not figuring it out. Or we've been
Speaker 1: given it in a ton of reps in practice and
Speaker 1: he's just not figuring out. They might know, but either way,
Speaker 1: to your point, they need to find out what they
Speaker 1: which of these core pieces are worth keeping and which aren't.
Speaker 1: And to me, I love the idea with Booker being
Speaker 1: an awesome three level score. I love the idea of
Speaker 1: having a great playmaker next to him, and it just
Speaker 1: so happens that Chris Paul at this point can't dictate
Speaker 1: enough attention with his scoring to open up his playmaking.
Speaker 1: But again that that that's the type of thing that
Speaker 1: they need to target. They need to find somebody that
Speaker 1: can actually be the offensive engine alongside Devin Booker. Completely
Speaker 1: agree with you there, all right, So we've done a
Speaker 1: lot of talking about the Sun's Let's slip to the
Speaker 1: MAVs for a second, because this was obviously utterly dominant
Speaker 1: Game six, they also won by seven, Like this was
Speaker 1: a dominant close to this series from the four seed
Speaker 1: and a team that at a certain point halfway through
Speaker 1: the year, Luca wasn't really looking like himself, and I
Speaker 1: don't think expectations were that they would be here in
Speaker 1: the Western Conference finals. But the story is Luca and
Speaker 1: what he is capable of doing night tonight. So, Jason,
Speaker 1: do you think he's the best offensive player alive? I
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna go with yes. The two guys that
Speaker 1: I view as the you have to prove you're better
Speaker 1: than these guys is Lebron and Steph Um. I think
Speaker 1: Steph's combination of nuclear scoring punch in combination with his
Speaker 1: ability to dictate attention everywhere on the floor that opens
Speaker 1: up things for his teammates. I know you're big on
Speaker 1: Kitch there as well, and I think Yoka just creeping
Speaker 1: into that conversation really well, especially with Stephan Lebron's decline.
Speaker 1: And my guess is that you and I will be
Speaker 1: having a conversation at some point in the next couple
Speaker 1: of years where it's Luca and Yokich that are those
Speaker 1: two guys. But here's the thing, and the reason why
Speaker 1: I would take Luc over Yokich is like, just in general,
Speaker 1: you guys know how I feel I want a big
Speaker 1: wing that can score and pass. Those are the that
Speaker 1: that to me, has always been the type of player
Speaker 1: that I've been drawn to. It's why I always liked
Speaker 1: the way Lebron James played basketball. It's what I've always
Speaker 1: thought that he was the best player in the world
Speaker 1: up until recently. That's that to me, I think is
Speaker 1: the most the most uh reliable playoff archetype specifically, and
Speaker 1: when I say big wing, I mean big, like powerful,
Speaker 1: A big, powerful wing that can that can thrive in physicality,
Speaker 1: thrive in and punish smaller mismatches, and that has the
Speaker 1: ability to capitalize on defensive attention thrown towards them. I
Speaker 1: think is the most valuable skill in the league. And again,
Speaker 1: like this Phoenix defense was specially equipped to handle Luca
Speaker 1: in a lot of different ways because of their overall size.
Speaker 1: That's why I was so worried about them in this series.
Speaker 1: I think Luca is going to put on a clinic
Speaker 1: offensively against the Golden State Warriors. It remains to be
Speaker 1: seen whether that's enough, and I definitely want to watch
Speaker 1: some more film before I make a pick. But like
Speaker 1: like Luca, I think that his ability to punish smaller
Speaker 1: defenders and to punish defensive attention throwing his way is
Speaker 1: going to put Golden State in a pickle that entire series.
Speaker 1: It's just to me, that's the every other type of
Speaker 1: offensive player that we look at, Like Kevin Durant, as
Speaker 1: great as he is, he missed way too many reads
Speaker 1: against Milwaukee or against Boston and it really hurt them
Speaker 1: in that series. His his lack of high end playmaking,
Speaker 1: in his lack of ability to handle physicality took literally
Speaker 1: the best individual score in the history of the league
Speaker 1: to most people, and rendered him ineffective in a playoff
Speaker 1: series because he couldn't pass very well and because he
Speaker 1: couldn't an'll physicality. You look at you know, Steph has
Speaker 1: just lost a little bit of a step in his
Speaker 1: individual shock creation and it's been, you know, a big
Speaker 1: drop off from what he was literally just last season, right.
Speaker 1: And you know, just in general, the mbiads and the
Speaker 1: Yokiches of the world, they struggle so much with foot
Speaker 1: speed and their ability to cover ground compared to a
Speaker 1: lot of the guys in the league, like that big
Speaker 1: power wing that can punish mismatches and pass through the
Speaker 1: ship out of the basketball it's literally the next it.
Speaker 1: I've always said Luca reminds me of two thousand eighteen Lebron,
Speaker 1: but not athletic, you know. It lacks all the defensive upside,
Speaker 1: lacks all of that high, high above the rim action
Speaker 1: type of stuff. But he has that level of control
Speaker 1: over the half court environment in the sense that he's
Speaker 1: always aware where the help is, he's always one step
Speaker 1: ahead of what the defense is trying to do, and
Speaker 1: he's always going to get what he wants. It's just
Speaker 1: a question of whether or not he's gonna make it,
Speaker 1: or whether or not his teammates is his teammate is
Speaker 1: gonna make it, And to me, that is the quintessential
Speaker 1: offensive engine and the modern NBA and appears to be
Speaker 1: the next the next iteration of that. I think you're
Speaker 1: spot on there. And what he lacks in obviously the
Speaker 1: high end athleticism of Lebron, and this is not to
Speaker 1: say he's the equal, but he certainly makes up for
Speaker 1: a lot of that with just his next level difficult
Speaker 1: shot making and the fact that you have the turnarounds
Speaker 1: and the fadeaways and the advanced stuff out of the
Speaker 1: post when he wants to, and it's just like any mismatch.
Speaker 1: He can attack in any way. He can beat a
Speaker 1: big off the bounce, or he can step back on them.
Speaker 1: He can take the little guys into the post and
Speaker 1: just destroy them. And the entire time he's aware of
Speaker 1: every single pass on the floor. And there's the physical
Speaker 1: imposition too. I mean, he's a big, strong guy who
Speaker 1: just keeps coming at you and the volume never stops
Speaker 1: with him. And these playoffs he's thirty one and a
Speaker 1: half a game, six and a half a sist per game,
Speaker 1: almost fifty percent true shooting, doing that from the perimeter,
Speaker 1: controlling the game as he does. You're right, it probably
Speaker 1: is the most valuable thing. I do still really think
Speaker 1: Yogich makes a case because I don't don't think he's
Speaker 1: like any big man we've ever seen in terms of
Speaker 1: he is obviously the one initiating and running your offense
Speaker 1: and amplifying all the other talent around him. You know,
Speaker 1: he's not a great one on one player. He gets
Speaker 1: involved in so many different ways within an offense. And
Speaker 1: I will say Luca at his best, I don't think
Speaker 1: you can beat when Luca is making half of his
Speaker 1: step back threes, and when he is just brutalizing guys
Speaker 1: out of the post, and the difficult shot making is
Speaker 1: on that to me is the best offensive player on
Speaker 1: the planet. I will say, though, I do think Luca
Speaker 1: is a more inconsistent score in terms of efficiency than Yokich,
Speaker 1: than certainly Katie, than Lebron, because sometimes those shots just
Speaker 1: start falling, you know. As dazzling of a three point
Speaker 1: shooter as he is, he's also like a career thirty
Speaker 1: percent guy from three, I want to say, so when
Speaker 1: he's at his best, I do think he is the
Speaker 1: best offensive player on the planet. I am tentative to
Speaker 1: say point blank that he is, though I would agree
Speaker 1: with you if you kitch in his perimeter shooting didn't
Speaker 1: completely fall apart at the end of the season and
Speaker 1: now in your defense, no, you're right, And in your defense,
Speaker 1: Yokich had extensive stretches of of good shooting previous in
Speaker 1: his career, so Nuggets fans will tell you it was
Speaker 1: an anomaly. But he did not shoot well from the
Speaker 1: perimeter to end the regular season or in this postseason,
Speaker 1: and specifically against Golden State. It costs some issues where
Speaker 1: when he would pop away from the rim, Draymond could
Speaker 1: roam a little bit. And remember there was that one
Speaker 1: part where, uh where I think it was Mike Malone
Speaker 1: was like Draymond's not even guarding anybody, and what they
Speaker 1: were specifically referencing there was like Draymond, especially when Yokis
Speaker 1: would pop to the perimeter, just was like daring Yokich
Speaker 1: to shoot and he just couldn't make them pay from
Speaker 1: out there. But here's the thing we're splitting hairs here, Carson,
Speaker 1: Like these are to me, Yokich literally is the is
Speaker 1: basically Luca but the big man version of it. So
Speaker 1: for me personally, I always am going to favor the
Speaker 1: perimeter guy that can do it, you know, from a
Speaker 1: little bit more verse the lead in terms of locations
Speaker 1: on the floor. But dude, yeah, like I mean, I can't,
Speaker 1: I can't disagree with anything you're saying about Yokis because
Speaker 1: it's just simply factual. So so I'm with you, and
Speaker 1: it's very close and too and I think as Lebron
Speaker 1: ages out and as Steph ages out, those two guys
Speaker 1: are the guys. Those are the guys that are gonna
Speaker 1: be the primary offensive engines in the league. And Janice
Speaker 1: is going to be that all around Swiss army knife
Speaker 1: kind of type of dude. And you know what will
Speaker 1: end up happening and what'll what'll we'll basically determine the
Speaker 1: you know, the next ten years of the n b
Speaker 1: A is gonna be. You know what happens first? Does
Speaker 1: Luca get in shape and become like this kind of
Speaker 1: pretty damn effective two way player that has crazy stamina,
Speaker 1: or does Janice become the surgical half court presence that
Speaker 1: can shoot over the top of everybody and task extremely well.
Speaker 1: Like whichever one of those two things happens first could
Speaker 1: end up being the indicator of of what happens over
Speaker 1: the course of the next decade. But man like for
Speaker 1: for the league aging out, for Kevin Durant, Evan Ran
Speaker 1: and Lebron on their couches, and and and you know,
Speaker 1: Steph showing some signs of decline. Like we're in good hands.
Speaker 1: We got a lot of we got a lot of
Speaker 1: good players coming along the horizon. Alright, guys, So we
Speaker 1: are going to talk some Celtics and Bucks. But before
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Speaker 1: we thank Bluetoo for sponsoring the podcast. The question was
Speaker 1: what were we going to see tonight? Because I knew
Speaker 1: all of those things before game one, and they came
Speaker 1: out flat and got beat, wouldn't even attempt a mid
Speaker 1: range shot, had a bunch of turnovers, never ran back
Speaker 1: on defense on the turnovers, and they got beat soundly.
Speaker 1: Then they went back and beat the ship out of
Speaker 1: him in game two. But then they roll up in
Speaker 1: Milwaukee and lay an egg, and then they come in
Speaker 1: in game four and come back from downten and have
Speaker 1: this incredibly impressive win. It was like a roller coaster
Speaker 1: up and down, and so you never knew what you
Speaker 1: were going to get from this team. Then I started
Speaker 1: to kind of look at the film, and what I
Speaker 1: could tell from looking at it is it seemed to me, again,
Speaker 1: this is a new entity in the league, this Boston
Speaker 1: Celtics team, so we're all learning on the fly. And
Speaker 1: what seemed to me to be the the problem, the
Speaker 1: source of their poor decision making on offense, was when
Speaker 1: Milwaukee would ditch brook Lopez and start switching everything. Because
Speaker 1: when brook Lopez was on the floor, they would run
Speaker 1: this high screen and roll right and Brooke would be
Speaker 1: in drop coverage, and guys like Tatum and Brown and
Speaker 1: Smart We're getting disconnected from their defender and cleanly operating
Speaker 1: in the middle of the floor and drawing help and
Speaker 1: kicking the shooters, and they were getting fantastic shots every time.
Speaker 1: When Milwaukee would switch everything with Brook Lopez off the floor,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, they're not getting separated from their defender.
Speaker 1: Guys are in isolation situations, and Tatum and Brown and
Speaker 1: Smart kept going to pull up jump shots off the dribble,
Speaker 1: and it was ugly offense, and it actually worked and
Speaker 1: led to a Milwaukee win in Game five, and I
Speaker 1: believe it would have worked in Game six had it
Speaker 1: not been for Jason and Tatum getting insanely hot at
Speaker 1: the end of the game and making a bunch of shots.
Speaker 1: And if you're a Bucks fan, you have to be
Speaker 1: infuriated because all of that data was readily available to
Speaker 1: everybody in the Bucks organization. I sent out the numbers
Speaker 1: earlier today, but Brooke played basically half the series before
Speaker 1: Game seven, and in the half that he was on
Speaker 1: the floor, the Bucks got absolutely destroyed. They were minus
Speaker 1: sixteen per one possessions. And in the half that he
Speaker 1: didn't play when they primarily switched, there was some Janice
Speaker 1: drop stuff in there, but for the most part they
Speaker 1: switched with those lineups, they were plus six per one possessions,
Speaker 1: so at twenty two point swing. And so what did
Speaker 1: I tell you, guys? I said, I thought that Milwaukee
Speaker 1: would finally go to a switching lineup for most of
Speaker 1: the night tonight, and I thought that Boston would struggle
Speaker 1: offensively and that the game would be a coin flip.
Speaker 1: And I said that I trusted Janice a little bit
Speaker 1: more than I trusted Boston's defense. Well, Coach Budd played
Speaker 1: brook Lopez for thirty seven minutes. Thirty seven minutes in
Speaker 1: the face of all of that evidence that I just
Speaker 1: laid out for you, guys, And so if you're a Bucksman,
Speaker 1: you gotta be infuriated. In fact, when things were going
Speaker 1: south there in the third quarter, Budd went to three
Speaker 1: bigs before he benched brook Lopez. His audible when things
Speaker 1: were going bad was to go to that, uh, Bobby
Speaker 1: port Is at small forward next to Janice at the four,
Speaker 1: with brook Lopez at the center, which is like the
Speaker 1: exact opposite of what I would have done in that
Speaker 1: specific situation. It was really really strange stuff. But to
Speaker 1: to Boston's credit, you know, they they I've always talked
Speaker 1: about their their offensive process and their shot selection. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's nothing wrong with taking a wide open three.
Speaker 1: But there's a difference between taking a quick three early
Speaker 1: in the possession off the dribble, or a quick three
Speaker 1: in transition, and the three when your feet are set
Speaker 1: on a kickout. And it's not just as simple as
Speaker 1: the psychology of shooting early in the clock, because that's
Speaker 1: part of it too, But I want you guys to
Speaker 1: think of it strictly as if you were the shooter. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you're running up the floor full speed in transition
Speaker 1: and you have to set your feet while you're running
Speaker 1: to knock down a shot, that's tougher than a stand
Speaker 1: still shot when you're facing the rim. Right Now, Let's
Speaker 1: say you're the ball handler and you come off of
Speaker 1: a ball screen and there is a defender who gets
Speaker 1: caught on the screen, and a defender and drop and
Speaker 1: you have a little bit of space and you pull up.
Speaker 1: That also is a tougher shot. You have to handle
Speaker 1: the basketball and get into your shooting pocket. You're on
Speaker 1: the moves, you have to get your feet set. That's
Speaker 1: a tougher shot. Now, let's pretend Marcus Smart drives to
Speaker 1: the basket, gets both feet in the paint, and you
Speaker 1: are standing on the right wing, standing facing the rim,
Speaker 1: facing Marcus Smart, and your feet are already set. And
Speaker 1: Marcus Smart kicks out to you and you catch and
Speaker 1: your feet are already set. You've been standing still, so
Speaker 1: you're not fatigued. It's a much much easier shot. That's
Speaker 1: why it's not as simple as open verse not open.
Speaker 1: It's good process. You have to have good shot process,
Speaker 1: and throughout this entire game, I thought Boston's process of
Speaker 1: attacking the rim and kicking two shooters rather than settling
Speaker 1: for quick early shots and transition and out of ball
Speaker 1: screens was a huge part of why their shot quality
Speaker 1: was better. The textbook version of this tonight was Grant Williams,
Speaker 1: who was wide open all night, and some of that
Speaker 1: Game seven stuff was happening early right like Grant. I
Speaker 1: think Grant Williams started two for seven from three and
Speaker 1: the announcers were getting on them, but they were saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: these are the open shots. And as we've talked about,
Speaker 1: this is this is Milwaukee's defense. Milwaukee ranked twenty it
Speaker 1: than defense from the All Star break to the end
Speaker 1: of the season, and during the entire regular season, I
Speaker 1: think they were four and as if you looked at
Speaker 1: their numbers, they locked down the paint and they gave
Speaker 1: up wide open threes. They gave up more wide open
Speaker 1: threes than any team in the NBA. They gave up
Speaker 1: more than twenty wide open threes per game according to
Speaker 1: NBA dot Com, meaning the defenders at least six ft away.
Speaker 1: Those are wide wide open threes. And so that's that's
Speaker 1: what the Milwaukee defense gives up. Now, over the course
Speaker 1: of this series, Boston has neglected to generate those really
Speaker 1: high quality ones at stretches where they would take those
Speaker 1: quick shots. But when they when they had that process
Speaker 1: down and got into the paint and kicked out, they
Speaker 1: got great looks and they knocked them down. And here's
Speaker 1: the thing you start too. For seven. To Grant Williams credit,
Speaker 1: he didn't get scared. We've talked a lot about this
Speaker 1: on the show. We were talking about it with Dylan
Speaker 1: Brooks and Clay Thompson after that Game six the other night.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people that don't want to shoot
Speaker 1: in these environments. There's a lot of people that have fear.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people that they miss a couple
Speaker 1: and they just think it's not their night and they
Speaker 1: don't want to take them. Grant just kept taking them,
Speaker 1: and after starting two for seven, he caught fire in
Speaker 1: the second half and made a bunch of them and
Speaker 1: that blew the game open. But that's but that's the
Speaker 1: game is it's one of two things. Is gonna happen
Speaker 1: when you're giving your opponent wide open three, because Milwaukee
Speaker 1: got a lot of wide open threes tonight too. The
Speaker 1: differences is they were four for thirty three. The difference
Speaker 1: is is as the miss is piled up, they seemingly
Speaker 1: got more and more discouraged and the shots were further
Speaker 1: and further off target, Whereas with Grant Williams, he just
Speaker 1: took those as opportunities to build his rhythm and then
Speaker 1: as the game progressed, he just started knocking them down.
Speaker 1: But it was that poor shooting from Milwaukee changed the
Speaker 1: game because everything in basketball is connected. The more your
Speaker 1: shooters are making teams pay for helping, the less teams
Speaker 1: can help on your star. Janice came out like like
Speaker 1: the Tasmanian Devil today. He had ten points and eight
Speaker 1: rebounds and six assists in the first quarter. He scored
Speaker 1: or assisted on twenty four of Milwaukee's twenty six first
Speaker 1: quarter points. He came out like a monster. But what
Speaker 1: did you guys notice over the course of that game,
Speaker 1: Because you didn't have to guard Pat Conaton, because you
Speaker 1: didn't have to guard Grayson Allen, because he didn't have
Speaker 1: to guard Wesley Matthews, because none of those guys were
Speaker 1: making shots, they started helping more on Janice. I remember
Speaker 1: I saw this phenomena for the first time and that
Speaker 1: Son's Lakers series last year and the you know, everyone
Speaker 1: looks at Anthony Davis getting hurt, which obviously was a
Speaker 1: huge part of that series, but part of the issue
Speaker 1: too was every Laker just got outrageously cold. Kent David's
Speaker 1: call with Pope couldn't shoot, Kyle Kuzma couldn't shoot, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody on the Dennis Shrewder was like a wall, like
Speaker 1: he would pump bake at nobody out on the perimeter.
Speaker 1: And as a result, every time Lebron caught the ball
Speaker 1: on the wing and turned to face the basket, there'd
Speaker 1: be a defender right in front of him, and there'd
Speaker 1: be a defender in his left driving lane and a
Speaker 1: defender in his right driving lane. There there was no
Speaker 1: option other than to shoot over the top. And that's
Speaker 1: what happened to Janice in this game as it progressed.
Speaker 1: Even though he was phenomenal in that first quarter, the
Speaker 1: worst that Milwaukee shot, the more manifested in Boston building
Speaker 1: a more dramatic wall, and it took away those options,
Speaker 1: you know. Special shout out to Chris Mannix here at
Speaker 1: the volume he called this after game five. He was like,
Speaker 1: I want to see Boston put Marcus smart on on
Speaker 1: Janice more. And they actually did that starting in Game six,
Speaker 1: and they did it a lot again tonight. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that it would have worked had Milwaukee shot better,
Speaker 1: because not because of the bad strategy, it just honest
Speaker 1: is the best basketball player alive. But I did think
Speaker 1: it was an interesting wrinkle over the course of the
Speaker 1: last couple of games because of his quickness and his
Speaker 1: ability to stay in front of Janice and discourage some
Speaker 1: of the more like physically aggressive moves, the elbows that
Speaker 1: ripped throughs, the swim moves, the eurosteps and things like that,
Speaker 1: because he's gonna just flop every time and it just
Speaker 1: discourages your honest a little bit. But all of that
Speaker 1: piled up that the spacing the Marcus Smart getting up
Speaker 1: underneath him, the lack of shooting in the way that
Speaker 1: it caused the wall to become more dramatic. And then
Speaker 1: I thought fatigue played a role. You know, Janice tapped
Speaker 1: into something in this series that we haven't seen in
Speaker 1: a really long time from any basketball player, and it
Speaker 1: it took a certain level of physical exertion that was
Speaker 1: inevitably going to take a toll on him. And I thought,
Speaker 1: especially in that second half, he started to look tired
Speaker 1: and he started to show some of that fatigue and
Speaker 1: he started started to manifest in a lack of willing
Speaker 1: is to plow through that wall, because that's the whole
Speaker 1: thing with you, honest as, you just keep plowing through
Speaker 1: the wall because eventually it's gonna fatigue. Eventually it's gonna
Speaker 1: lead to guys getting out of your way, and that's
Speaker 1: when you have those opportunities. But you know, as far
Speaker 1: as as far as Milwaukee goes like, there's some serious
Speaker 1: stuff you gotta look at after the season. The league
Speaker 1: is stacked right now. Chris Middleton being out is a
Speaker 1: huge deal, obviously, but there was nowhere near enough offensive
Speaker 1: talent on the floor for Milwaukee to score against this
Speaker 1: Boston defense when they were loading up on your honest,
Speaker 1: that's something they're gonna have to figure out. But some
Speaker 1: of its games, some of it's Game seven, and you know,
Speaker 1: this is the thing, and I was talking about this
Speaker 1: with some other people on Twitter during the game, but
Speaker 1: you know, Boston's gonna make you look bad. You know. Uh,
Speaker 1: Brooklyn actually put up a decent offensive rating in that
Speaker 1: first round, but the context there was Katie and Kyrie
Speaker 1: on the floor in the regular season was giving you
Speaker 1: damn near a hundred points per hunter possessions. So it's
Speaker 1: like an unbelievably dominant offense that ran into Boston's defense
Speaker 1: and became average. And what you're seeing here is an
Speaker 1: average offense. The Bucks this year without Chris Middleton average
Speaker 1: about a hundred and nine points per one hunder possessions,
Speaker 1: which is okay, right, it would have been it would
Speaker 1: have been towards the bottom of the league, obviously, but
Speaker 1: it's the offense depends on Chris Middleton, right, But it
Speaker 1: took it from a bad to blow average offense to
Speaker 1: an absolutely untenable offense that could not score in the
Speaker 1: half court. That's Boston and we we need to and
Speaker 1: we we need to stop making excuses for what has
Speaker 1: been transpiring in this in these playoffs series. It's not
Speaker 1: about Katie and him not being multifaceted enough to attack
Speaker 1: Boston's defense. It's not about Kyrie and him being kind
Speaker 1: of a weirdo that probably, you know, shouldn't be playing
Speaker 1: a team sport and should probably be in a soul No, no,
Speaker 1: none of that, None of that is the case. Boston
Speaker 1: shut them down. That's what happened in that series. This
Speaker 1: is not about Chris Middleton being out. Obviously it plays
Speaker 1: a role, but Boston's defense is really, really good. They
Speaker 1: caused Janice, literally the best player in the world's efficiency
Speaker 1: to tank in this series. Literally a Shaquille O'Neil type
Speaker 1: Shaquille O'Neal two point oh perimeter version. His shooting percentage
Speaker 1: is tanked in this series. That's that's Boston. And we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk a little bit more here in just a
Speaker 1: minute with Carson about Boston's ceiling and whether or not
Speaker 1: they have the capability to win the title. And that
Speaker 1: gets more complicated because then we're diving back into those
Speaker 1: Boston offensive issues. But make no mistake, this Boston defense
Speaker 1: is by far the best defense in this field, arguably
Speaker 1: the best defense of this era, and that is a
Speaker 1: massive weapon looking forward in this playoffs, in these playoffs,
Speaker 1: that is a dependable thing. Milwaukee shooting wide upen threes,
Speaker 1: they might go in, they might not. Tonight they didn't
Speaker 1: go in. Boston's defense is the safest bet in sports
Speaker 1: right now. Every single night, they're gonna come out and
Speaker 1: make life a living hell for you. And they did
Speaker 1: it for seven games. Credit to Milwaukee for dragging it out,
Speaker 1: Credit to Janice for dragging it out. But Boston is
Speaker 1: really good man, and uh, I think we all need
Speaker 1: to be a little bit prepared for Boston potentially being
Speaker 1: around for a long time into June. All Right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna bring my guy Carson on. Let's talk about Jayson
Speaker 1: Tatum because we had a debate just the other day
Speaker 1: on whether or not he's been the second best guy
Speaker 1: throughout these playoffs. We've talked many times about his ascent
Speaker 1: throughout the second half of this year. Has he officially
Speaker 1: proven that he is a top tier superstar? Absolutely? I
Speaker 1: I think navigating through those two series the way he did,
Speaker 1: um it's it's undenied able at this point and again,
Speaker 1: it is a team effort. This Boston team has a
Speaker 1: lot of talent, but to be clear, a huge portion
Speaker 1: of this Boston defense is what Jayson Tatum can do.
Speaker 1: A huge portion of what allows this Boston offensive function
Speaker 1: is what Jayson Tatum can do. I know Marcus Smart
Speaker 1: one defensive player of the Year, but I actually think
Speaker 1: Jayson Tatum is the best defensive player on their roster.
Speaker 1: I think his versatility to be able to guard opposing wings,
Speaker 1: to play passing lanes, to help around the rim, I
Speaker 1: think I think Jayson Tatum is the best defender on
Speaker 1: the team. So he's the best defensive player and the
Speaker 1: best offensive player on the best team in basketball. And
Speaker 1: that's something that only a top tier two superstar could
Speaker 1: pull off. You know. His performance in Game six was,
Speaker 1: like we've talked about it on the show, the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that when you're showing when when they make
Speaker 1: a documentary one day about Jayson Tatum, you know, thirty
Speaker 1: or forty years from now or whatever, like that game
Speaker 1: is gonna be on the reel as as the first
Speaker 1: signature playoff moment of Jayson Tatum's career. Tonight, he was
Speaker 1: very under control. He I put him in him and
Speaker 1: Marcus Smart were the two guys in particular. I thought
Speaker 1: that made the concerted effort to touch the paint before
Speaker 1: kicking the shooters, which I thought was hugely important. And
Speaker 1: then also when Boston wasn't shooting well early, Jason Tatum
Speaker 1: made his first four threes, and in a game like that,
Speaker 1: kind of like with Milwaukee going for for thirty three,
Speaker 1: sometimes it just takes one guy that catches a heat
Speaker 1: or makes a few to change the psychology of those
Speaker 1: open shot opportunities, because when you're four for thirty three,
Speaker 1: usually everyone on the floor just feels like the rim
Speaker 1: is tiny, you know what I mean. But I thought
Speaker 1: Tatum coming out and knocking down his first four threes did.
Speaker 1: I did a great job of just loosening up Boston's nervousness.
Speaker 1: He played a really controlled game tonight. They're not all
Speaker 1: gonna be You're not always gonna make every step back
Speaker 1: three and pull up three that you take like he
Speaker 1: did in that fourth quarter in Game six, But you
Speaker 1: have to find ways to impact the game in other ways.
Speaker 1: He's great defensively, did a great job making plays first
Speaker 1: teammates and I made made enough offensive plays to to
Speaker 1: you know, continue the offensive flow that they had. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's well, we're gonna have to after this
Speaker 1: season really dive into where all these guys specifically land.
Speaker 1: But you know, I should say, when you say top
Speaker 1: tier superstar, I think the top tier is Joannice by himself.
Speaker 1: But I think I don't think it's because everyone else
Speaker 1: got worse. I think it's because Joanna's elevated over everybody.
Speaker 1: So the the tier of superstars that has like the
Speaker 1: Lebron and the Kadi and stuff, I think Tatum is
Speaker 1: absolutely Like I think Jayson Tatum can look Lebron or
Speaker 1: Katie in the I and be at the same level
Speaker 1: as them. Yeah, that's remarkable, but I think it's undeniable
Speaker 1: ities at that top tier superstar level. Now he has
Speaker 1: eliminated effectively every weakness that existed within his game, and
Speaker 1: there's still some inconsistency with maybe some decision making, and
Speaker 1: he still does rely on the difficult shot making, but
Speaker 1: less than before. He's great at it. And the production,
Speaker 1: the two way ability, the efficiency, it's just all there.
Speaker 1: I mean, he is undeniably at that level, I think,
Speaker 1: and the Celtics are undeniably at that top tier contender level,
Speaker 1: and you have been on that for a long time,
Speaker 1: an adamant lever in their ceiling and what they've been
Speaker 1: able to do. So is the Celtics season officially title
Speaker 1: or bust? Now? Oh? Absolutely? I think. I think if
Speaker 1: you're Boston, Miami, Golden State, or Phoenix in particular, it's
Speaker 1: title or bust. The only teams that you should feel
Speaker 1: okay with not winning is this Dallas team, right because
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily have enough talent to to compete. You know,
Speaker 1: Milwaukee shouldn't be hanging their heads either, because you were
Speaker 1: a massive underdog in this series without Chris. You know,
Speaker 1: after the Brooklyn series, I thought Boston was a the
Speaker 1: the the the number one contender like with everyone else
Speaker 1: below them. And the main reason why was Devin Booker
Speaker 1: at the time was injured, right, So, like I didn't
Speaker 1: know what that was gonna due to the Western Conference
Speaker 1: situation and Steph Curry obviously we didn't know what to
Speaker 1: expect with his foot injury and and what all could
Speaker 1: happen there. Um. But one of the things I've learned
Speaker 1: in this series is you can't trust their offense, especially
Speaker 1: against switching defenses. You know, Uh, this Miami matchup is
Speaker 1: gonna get super interesting like this, I would hammer the
Speaker 1: under on every single game of this Boston Miami series
Speaker 1: because I think both of these teams are gonna switch
Speaker 1: every single screen, and Miami in particular doesn't have nearly
Speaker 1: enough isolation shot creation I think in order to really
Speaker 1: have an affect to create generate enough offense. But I
Speaker 1: also think that Miami switching attack will stagnate Boston a
Speaker 1: lot and get them into those isolation contests. The difference
Speaker 1: was with Milwaukee, they were coming down after those switching possessions,
Speaker 1: after they forced Tatum to miss a fifteen footer, or
Speaker 1: they were coming down in honest was just barreling everybody
Speaker 1: over and going right to the rim. Miami doesn't have
Speaker 1: that luxury. As a matter of fact, I think Boston's
Speaker 1: gonna be able to get away with pretty basic single
Speaker 1: coverage against every player on that roster, and as a
Speaker 1: result of that, like I think they're gonna be like, hey,
Speaker 1: if if if Jimmy Butler wants to pick on matchups
Speaker 1: all night long, be our guest, Like he's just not
Speaker 1: the same stratosphere a player as Johannest. So that series
Speaker 1: is gonna get really, really ugly, But I think Boston
Speaker 1: is going to control it. Will end up doing a
Speaker 1: preview of that series at some point in the future.
Speaker 1: That's a little bit more detailed. Hi, it's Colin Coward.
Speaker 1: I started the volume to bring you some of the
Speaker 1: most apathetic voices in sports. While you're here, make sure
Speaker 1: you hit subscribe. Thanks. We've talked a lot about how
Speaker 1: spectacular he was throughout this series, trying to overcome the
Speaker 1: Middleton absence and what you have called the best defense
Speaker 1: of this era. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: the Bucks did fall short. So does Janice deserve any
Speaker 1: criticism for that? Hell, absolutely not. Now, he didn't have
Speaker 1: a great night tonight, but I did think it was
Speaker 1: a product of all those things that I talked about.
Speaker 1: He came out absolute gangbusters, doing everything to try to
Speaker 1: steal this game in that first quarter, and nobody else
Speaker 1: on the team showed up, literally nobody. And then as
Speaker 1: the like we talked about, as the shooting started to
Speaker 1: pile up and become a problem, the wall just got
Speaker 1: more and more dramatic and it just became impossible for
Speaker 1: Joannice at that point. Now, will there be if there
Speaker 1: ever comes a time where Jannie can start punishing people
Speaker 1: over the top by knocking down consistent jump shots, then
Speaker 1: then that's when that's when we're talking about potentially the
Speaker 1: best basketball player that's ever played the game. Right, But
Speaker 1: like in this in this specific case, like to me
Speaker 1: that the box score numbers tonight were more product of
Speaker 1: just the way the game unfolded. But this is my
Speaker 1: biggest pet peeve because you know, I obviously I'm a
Speaker 1: Lebron fan, but this doesn't just apply to Lebron. This
Speaker 1: applies to all of the basket while players of this era.
Speaker 1: Because there is no Michael Jordan in this field. We
Speaker 1: don't have a guy that went six and oh in
Speaker 1: the finals, even though Michael Jordan lost plenty of playoffs
Speaker 1: series in his career. But how many of you guys
Speaker 1: are familiar with the the three six mafia phrase? I
Speaker 1: got used to get thrown around all the time referencing
Speaker 1: Lebron fans, right, and obviously four six mafia just doesn't
Speaker 1: quite have the same ring to it. But that phrase
Speaker 1: used to always bother me, just simply in the sense
Speaker 1: that it was such a weird way to look at
Speaker 1: this particular sport. Don't get me wrong, like, basketball is
Speaker 1: unique in the sense that one player can impact winning
Speaker 1: more so than any other sports that I'm aware of
Speaker 1: in terms of team sports. You know, even if you
Speaker 1: are Clayton Kershaw, the best picture of this era, if
Speaker 1: you can shut the other team down in Game one
Speaker 1: of the World Series, that's great. We're not seeing you
Speaker 1: again until game five, you know, like if we we've
Speaker 1: seen Tom Brady with a bad offensive line lose in
Speaker 1: early playoff rounds, right, like you just the uniquely in basketball,
Speaker 1: one player can put a stamp on the game in
Speaker 1: ways that other other sports that's not the same. However,
Speaker 1: even that only goes so far. Tatum is really good,
Speaker 1: but Tatum is not nearly as good as Yournice, not
Speaker 1: in the same stratosphere. Be honest, I think he's on
Speaker 1: a tier by himself atop the league right now. And
Speaker 1: he literally had there was nothing he could have done
Speaker 1: tonight to win that game and there and there and
Speaker 1: too often anytime any individual player loses. And this is
Speaker 1: part of that stupid stand culture that's kind of taken
Speaker 1: over with NBA fans, where it's like, no, everyone just
Speaker 1: really like kind of aligns behind one player and then
Speaker 1: everything that they do in the way they talk about
Speaker 1: the game is to denigrate all of his rivals and
Speaker 1: to uplift his It's like apologists for they're just all apologists, basically.
Speaker 1: And not only is it bad for just the way
Speaker 1: we talked about the game of basketball, but it's really
Speaker 1: unfair to these guys because it's just not realistic. It's
Speaker 1: not the way that this works. I thought Kevin Durant
Speaker 1: was the best basketball player in last year's playoffs. I
Speaker 1: thought he tapped into an incredible level of basketball last
Speaker 1: year in that series against the Bucks with his co
Speaker 1: star injured with an ankle and his other co star
Speaker 1: on a bad hamstring, and he damn near stole that series.
Speaker 1: But he lost. And I had Janice fans calling me
Speaker 1: crazy for saying that I thought Katie was the better
Speaker 1: player in that series, but he was. He played better
Speaker 1: basketball than Yannie in that series, and damn near swung
Speaker 1: the outcome of a series that he had no business
Speaker 1: even being competitive in. And that's what happened here. Janice
Speaker 1: had no business even being competitive in this series. I
Speaker 1: picked Boston in five. They were a massive favorite before
Speaker 1: the series. There was no reason in the world why
Speaker 1: they should have even been playing this game today except
Speaker 1: for how great Janice is two eighteen. That so many
Speaker 1: parallels between that that series with Lebron and the Celtics
Speaker 1: in two thousand eighteen, same thing they're They're sitting in
Speaker 1: overtime of Game one of the NBA Finals against the
Speaker 1: Golden State Warriors. They have no business being there except
Speaker 1: for Lebron tapping into something that no basketball player in
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen could tap into. All three of those
Speaker 1: guys and those specific scenarios I mentioned, I thought were
Speaker 1: the best players in the world in those seasons, and
Speaker 1: none of them got the trophy. So as much as
Speaker 1: winning is all that matters within the team concept, and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm big on that, I don't like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not I'm not I don't like diminishing
Speaker 1: winning because winning is all that matters. But that's within
Speaker 1: the team concept. Criticizing individuals every time they don't hoist
Speaker 1: the trophy to me is super disingenuous, It's unfair, and
Speaker 1: it's just it's just low brow, you know, the unintelligent
Speaker 1: basketball conversation. It's just not something I'm interested in, Like
Speaker 1: your honest to me is unquestionably the bad basketball player
Speaker 1: in the world, and he lost in his second round
Speaker 1: this year. Here's what I don't want to hear us
Speaker 1: having a goat conversation in twenty years and someone going,
Speaker 1: remember when Janice lost in the second round two that,
Speaker 1: like that's weak, No, it's not. He he was the
Speaker 1: best player like that. That's just something that we got
Speaker 1: a ditch and in the entire way that we talked
Speaker 1: about this game. Yeah, I totally agree with you philosophically,
Speaker 1: and we do see it very consistently. And I think
Speaker 1: to a specific debate, like after it was announced that
Speaker 1: Yoki was m VP, there was a lot of talk about, okay,
Speaker 1: but he isn't still here, and specifically EMBIID advocates and
Speaker 1: stands pointed to that fact. But it really says a
Speaker 1: lot about the way that you lose. Obviously, EMBID lost
Speaker 1: in pretty humiliating fashion. Yokich lost playing basically an offensive masterpiece,
Speaker 1: and Janice lost averaging thirty fifteen and seven against the
Speaker 1: best defense in the league. So I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I'll try to play Devil's advocate a little bit. I
Speaker 1: think obviously this was a herculean task, right because this
Speaker 1: team is just not equipped in terms of shot creation,
Speaker 1: like you said, and it wasn't just be honest. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think Drew had to take on much more significant
Speaker 1: offensive volume for a lot of this series than he
Speaker 1: probably would have wanted because they don't have shot creators elsewhere.
Speaker 1: But it is an inefficient series from you, honest, there's
Speaker 1: probably too many of the bad jump shots and he
Speaker 1: only shoots from three and forty six percent from the field.
Speaker 1: I don't know that you could really say that he
Speaker 1: forced it because it did feel necessary. But I know
Speaker 1: you said that he did everything, and I think that
Speaker 1: I largely agree. But is there anything that you would
Speaker 1: look at from this series and say Janice should have
Speaker 1: done this better? And is there any part of you
Speaker 1: that resonates at all with the well, I mean, a
Speaker 1: guy really does have to be held accountable for if
Speaker 1: his team comes up short again. But here's the thing, Carson, Like,
Speaker 1: let's say, okay, let's say that Janice also has Kevin
Speaker 1: Durant's jump shot, so like he and mix in all
Speaker 1: these possessions is coming down and like pulling up three,
Speaker 1: he's off the dribble and making him you know, for
Speaker 1: first of all, now we're talking about a mon star. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about an NBA player, We're talking about
Speaker 1: an alien. We're now we are now building a created
Speaker 1: player in NBA two K with the sliders all the
Speaker 1: way up. Who seven ft tall? That's just not realistic. Okay,
Speaker 1: like that, If that guy ever exists, then I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going to happen in the game
Speaker 1: of basketball. But the second thing is Milwaukee shop four
Speaker 1: for thirty three from three tonight and all of them
Speaker 1: were open because of Janice. So here's the thing. Like,
Speaker 1: I think the best basketball player that I have seen
Speaker 1: live in my lifetime is two thousand eighteen Lebron. I
Speaker 1: still think MJ is the goat based on all of
Speaker 1: the film that I've read, all the books that I've read,
Speaker 1: and I trust people that were around during that time,
Speaker 1: But like I can't, I didn't see him with my
Speaker 1: own eyes live. Okay, I watched Lebron James live in
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, and that was the best basketball player
Speaker 1: that I had ever seen. I could have dropped him
Speaker 1: into this game tonight and he's losing because his teammates
Speaker 1: are gonna a four for thirty three from three there's
Speaker 1: this is a team sport. There is a dynamic. We
Speaker 1: always talk about that, like cascading effect. It's like the
Speaker 1: more guys, the more shots you guys make, the more
Speaker 1: things are opened up. The more the more they miss,
Speaker 1: the more things closed down on you. What would inevitably
Speaker 1: happen if I dropped two thousand eighteen Lebron into this
Speaker 1: game is he'd be turned into a jump shooter because
Speaker 1: there'd be absolutely no driving lanes because nothing would be
Speaker 1: open around the basket because his teammates aren't often aren't
Speaker 1: knocking down open threes, and he might go he might
Speaker 1: make two or three of the threes that Janice smissed
Speaker 1: and two or three of the midrange pull ups that
Speaker 1: Janice missed, and they lose by nine instead of by
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen or whatever. It was, Like you just
Speaker 1: it's just not a realistic it's it's people, and I
Speaker 1: get it. I like to me, where it becomes an
Speaker 1: issue is when you're looking at the Joel Embiide situation,
Speaker 1: where it's like, dude, you're you're playing a minami heat
Speaker 1: team that's not as talented as you like. Now I
Speaker 1: have to look at the results with you Okay, did
Speaker 1: you did some of your teammates not play well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, but you should have been able to overcome that.
Speaker 1: You had the talent. You know, last year when uh
Speaker 1: and beat in the Sixers lost the Atlanta Hawks, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's Lane Blaman, Ben Simmons when you were
Speaker 1: playing you know, Trey Young and a bunch of role
Speaker 1: players and you lost at home in a game seven
Speaker 1: like that, I can't look at But like when you're
Speaker 1: watching a game and there's a clear talent chasm, it's
Speaker 1: just it's not real. It's not it's not fair criticism.
Speaker 1: Like the my least favorite example of this is people
Speaker 1: will point to k D hitting a pull up three
Speaker 1: over Lebron in Game three of the two thousand seventeen
Speaker 1: Finals as like some huge marker of him out playing
Speaker 1: Lebron in the series, when literally that was the fifteen
Speaker 1: consecutive game that Golden State team had won in the playoffs,
Speaker 1: they were undefeated in the playoffs. That's not That's not
Speaker 1: any sort of mono imano type of battle between Katie
Speaker 1: and Lebron. That's the greatest basketball team ever assembled going
Speaker 1: against that caste. It's a totally different vibe, and so
Speaker 1: again with this kind of stuff, it's just I understand
Speaker 1: that it's part of like the take culture, and I
Speaker 1: understand that we as a society we love to lift
Speaker 1: people up when they win and burn them down when
Speaker 1: they lose. But sometimes it's more complicated than that. And
Speaker 1: that's all I'm saying. All Right, guys, that is all
Speaker 1: I have for tonight. As always, I sincerely appreciate your support.
Speaker 1: I am super excited for these Conference Finals. It's going
Speaker 1: to be incredible. Stay tuned either late tomorrow or early
Speaker 1: on Tuesday. I'll have a couple I'll watch some film
Speaker 1: tomorrow morning, and I'll have a couple of Conference Finals
Speaker 1: previews coming out that you guys will see. As always,
Speaker 1: I sincerely appreciate your support and we will see you
Speaker 1: on Tuesday night. After the final buzzer of Heat Celtics,
Speaker 1: the volume