Speaker 1: The Volume. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at
Speaker 1: the Volume. Happy Saturday, everybody. I hope all of you
Speaker 1: guys had a great week Round one coverage of the
Speaker 1: NBA Playoffs. Here at Hoops Tonight is brought to you
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Speaker 1: is our last show from Portland. IM flying home today,
Speaker 1: so tonight when we go live after Lakers Grizzlies, I'll
Speaker 1: be back in the studio. I appreciate you guys bearing
Speaker 1: with me with a little bit of a weird travel schedule.
Speaker 1: This week, We're just gonna be breaking down all three
Speaker 1: games from last night. As the Knicks take a two
Speaker 1: to one lead over the Calves, the Atlanta Hawks get
Speaker 1: a game from Boston now that they trail two to one,
Speaker 1: and then the Nuggets take a three to zero lead
Speaker 1: over the Minnesota Timberwolves. You guys have the joke before
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Speaker 1: let's talks and basketball. So this was an absolute defensive
Speaker 1: slug fest in Madison Square Garden between the Knicks and
Speaker 1: the Cavs. You know, it's funny. I talk a lot
Speaker 1: about how, like when you see it the same defensive
Speaker 1: matchup time and time and time again, how defenders tend
Speaker 1: to start to pick up on your cues. The example
Speaker 1: I always used to use is like playing against your
Speaker 1: little brother, your older brother, or your older sister, younger sister.
Speaker 1: When you're playing against a sibling every single day in
Speaker 1: your front yard, even if you're better than them, sometimes
Speaker 1: just because they play against you every day, then kind
Speaker 1: of pick up on your moves and figure out how
Speaker 1: to guard you, you know what I mean? And like
Speaker 1: that kind of dynamic takes place in a playoff series
Speaker 1: to a certain extent. You know, in the random comings
Speaker 1: and goings of the regular season, you bump into a
Speaker 1: guy once, you're not going to be necessarily ready to
Speaker 1: guard him to the best of your ability. But man,
Speaker 1: come game three, come four, come Game five of a
Speaker 1: playoff series, you know all of his moves. You've picked
Speaker 1: up on everything. You're gonna do a much better job.
Speaker 1: And everybody in this series is struggling with their core matchups.
Speaker 1: Like both Quinton Grimes and Josh Hard have been giving
Speaker 1: Donovan Mitchell some problems, just chasing over the top of
Speaker 1: screens and forcing him into difficult pull up jump shots.
Speaker 1: Jalen Brunson and Emmanuel Quickly have both done a great
Speaker 1: job on Darius Garland. You can see that RJ. Barrett
Speaker 1: has had some success guarding Krris Lavert. On the other
Speaker 1: end of the floor, Karris Lavert and Isaac Koro have
Speaker 1: both been giving Jalen Brunson some issues just with their
Speaker 1: length and athleticism. He's been doing better when he's trying
Speaker 1: to get off of those guys, but in his core
Speaker 1: matchup he's struggling to get good shots against them. And
Speaker 1: then after game one, Evan Mobley struggled with Julius Randall.
Speaker 1: He's actually starting to have a lot of success with
Speaker 1: Julius Randall defensively, so all these guys are starting to
Speaker 1: kind of figure out their defensive matchups and the result
Speaker 1: was just this super low scoring, super ugly basketball game.
Speaker 1: In MSG and I was actually messaging a buddy of
Speaker 1: mine and that I was talking about this particular series
Speaker 1: with and I told him as like, if Jalen Brunston
Speaker 1: and Julius Randall don't figure it out soon, they could
Speaker 1: be in some trouble because Donovan Mitchell was still kind
Speaker 1: of playing a little bit better than those other guys
Speaker 1: there in the beginning of this particular game, and right
Speaker 1: there in the second quarter, with about six minutes left,
Speaker 1: Jalen Brunston finally started to find his groove. And I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a coincidence because I talked about this
Speaker 1: a lot before the series, But Jalen Brunson has a
Speaker 1: much more methodical approach to the way he attacks defenses,
Speaker 1: and I think he's smarter. It's textbook like work, smarter,
Speaker 1: not harder kind of thing. Like Donovan Mitchell is unquestionably
Speaker 1: a better player that is capable of making that is
Speaker 1: capable of generating more separation and making tougher shots. He's
Speaker 1: got all of the talent in the world, but sometimes
Speaker 1: he makes it so difficult on himself in a way
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily needed under the circumstances. Jalen Brunson. You'll
Speaker 1: notice in this series he's not isolating Carris Lavert or
Speaker 1: Isaaca Coorro unless he absolutely has to, like if it's
Speaker 1: a late cl like there was a play in the
Speaker 1: second quarter he calls up Donovan Mitchell to try to
Speaker 1: get Donovan Mitchell on a switch and a screen, and
Speaker 1: Mitchell's doing this like hedge and recover thing, and he
Speaker 1: can't get Mitchell on the switch, and suddenly there's like
Speaker 1: five seconds left and he's at the top of the
Speaker 1: key and he's got Karris Lavert, so he's got to
Speaker 1: take him to work. And he actually scored on this
Speaker 1: one with like a really nice up and undermove. But
Speaker 1: he's not doing that unless he has to. There's no
Speaker 1: point in taking that super difficult shot until the end
Speaker 1: of the shot clock when you've tried everything else and
Speaker 1: around that, he's finding smart ways to attack. Early in
Speaker 1: that shift in the mid second quarter, he calls up
Speaker 1: Darius Garland into the screen, rejects the screen, gets downhill,
Speaker 1: gets Jared Allen to step up, drops it off to
Speaker 1: Isaiah Hartenstein. He gets a dunk. Then we have that
Speaker 1: play that I told you guys about where it isolates
Speaker 1: Karris Lavert. Very next possession, he calls up Donovan Mitchell
Speaker 1: again and knows that he's gonna hedge because he just
Speaker 1: had tried that same hedge and recover move twice on
Speaker 1: the previous position and Jalen Brnson couldn't actually get him
Speaker 1: on the switch. So he calls him up again, and
Speaker 1: he knows that if he stunts to one side, he's
Speaker 1: gonna be able to get Donovan Mitchell to hedge out
Speaker 1: to that side, which is going to create an opening.
Speaker 1: So he does this hard in and out dribble with
Speaker 1: his left hand to the right side, and Donovan Mitchell
Speaker 1: hedges out to that right side, and Jalen Brunston just
Speaker 1: goes back to the left instead. I think r J.
Speaker 1: Barrett was setting the screen. RJ. Barrett gets a really
Speaker 1: good screen on Karis Lavert. Suddenly Jaln Brunson is completely downhill,
Speaker 1: engages mobilely, makes a really nice kickout pass to Julius
Speaker 1: Randall in the corner. He knocks down the three. Then
Speaker 1: Cheddy Osmon checks into the game and immediately Jalen Brunson
Speaker 1: calls Cheddy Osmond into the screen, gets him on a switch,
Speaker 1: hits him with this nasty like double between the legs
Speaker 1: crossover move and gets all the way to the rim
Speaker 1: and lays it in. Like again, everyone is struggling, but
Speaker 1: it makes sense to me that Jalen Brunson was the
Speaker 1: first guy to kind of figure it out, so to speak.
Speaker 1: He just a little bit smarter in his approach, a
Speaker 1: little bit more versatile in the way that he's that
Speaker 1: he attacks. You know, one of the things that stood
Speaker 1: out to me in a big way in this particular game,
Speaker 1: and really in this series overall so far, it's just
Speaker 1: how much more comfortable the Knicks are playing multiple different
Speaker 1: styles offensively. Like, obviously the Knicks can run pick and roll,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna run a lot of pick and roll,
Speaker 1: but they are way more comfortable attacking matchups in isolation.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, the Cavs have only run
Speaker 1: sixteen ISOs in this entire series. The Knicks have run forty,
Speaker 1: so more than twice as much, and they're scoring and
Speaker 1: just under a point per possession in those ISOs. And
Speaker 1: that's because they're just more comfortable with guys like Julius Randall,
Speaker 1: Jalen Brunson, and RJ Barrett attacking specific matchups that they like.
Speaker 1: It gives them more versatility in their offense, and it's
Speaker 1: a big part of why I picked them to win
Speaker 1: this series. R J. Barrett finally got it going in
Speaker 1: this game. I thought he generated a couple of wide
Speaker 1: open threes courtesy of his teammates that he knocked down
Speaker 1: early in the game, and you could just tell it
Speaker 1: was like the way the world got lifted off his shoulders.
Speaker 1: He played much more comfortable and relaxed the rest of
Speaker 1: the game. But really, the Knicks defense was the story
Speaker 1: of this game. They held the Cavs to just seventy
Speaker 1: nine points. That's the lowest scoring performance from any team
Speaker 1: in the NBA this season. This was where the damage
Speaker 1: was done in pick and roll. The Cavs ran forty
Speaker 1: five pick and roles in this game and scored just
Speaker 1: twenty five points on them. That's including passes, so that's
Speaker 1: zero point five to six points per possession and pick
Speaker 1: and roll. That's almost half what you would hope for
Speaker 1: in that type of play type. The most concerning part
Speaker 1: in general from Cleveland coming out of this series so
Speaker 1: far through three games is their offensive struggles primarily have
Speaker 1: to do with their two best guards, with Garland and Mitchell.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. Coming into the series, we thought
Speaker 1: it'd be the opposite of that problem. We thought it
Speaker 1: would be the inability of the role players to convert
Speaker 1: point a spot of possessions and rollman possessions into points.
Speaker 1: We thought that would be the issue. That has not
Speaker 1: been the issue at all. The Cavs role players played
Speaker 1: really well in spot up situations. In fact, they're averaging
Speaker 1: well over a point per possession in those situations. The
Speaker 1: role players are doing their jobs, they're shooting well, that's
Speaker 1: not the issue. The issue is Darius Garland can't make
Speaker 1: a shot, shooting thirty seven percent in the series. And
Speaker 1: Donovan Mitchell, despite having a little bit better statistical series
Speaker 1: than you would think, he's just not managing games well
Speaker 1: and he's not making very good decisions, and so there's
Speaker 1: not very much rhythm and flow in their offense. He
Speaker 1: forces it sometimes when they shouldn't. The one time he
Speaker 1: played advantage creation basketball in Game two and really focused
Speaker 1: on just creating that initial advantage to get the defense
Speaker 1: and rotation to help his team, that was the time
Speaker 1: the Cavs won. And again, like you know, the same buddy,
Speaker 1: I was texting earlier, he made a really interesting point.
Speaker 1: He goes it kind of feels like Julius or in fact,
Speaker 1: it kind of feels like Donovan Mitchell's trying to have
Speaker 1: a moment in the garden, And yeah, like probably, but
Speaker 1: not a good idea under the circumstances, especially since like
Speaker 1: the team plays their best when they have more flow
Speaker 1: offensively from Donovan Mitchell acting as an advantage creator. As
Speaker 1: of right now, I feel pretty good about my prediction
Speaker 1: about with the Knicks winning and six. My guess is
Speaker 1: they win Game four, lose Game five, and then win
Speaker 1: Game six to win the series. All right, Moving on
Speaker 1: to Celtics Hawks. This was a bizarre game. The Celtics
Speaker 1: were like disgustingly hot from three in the first half,
Speaker 1: and none of the Hawks starters were playing particularly well.
Speaker 1: They were kind of playing a little bit off at
Speaker 1: de Jontay Murray and trying to bait him into some
Speaker 1: longer contested jump shots and making him a little bit
Speaker 1: hesitant on how to attack. The guy who really broke
Speaker 1: things open for Atlanta in the first half is Bogna mcdonovich,
Speaker 1: who got hot. I think he had like sixteen in
Speaker 1: the first half or something like that. That was a
Speaker 1: huge part of Atlanta getting going offensively. But what I
Speaker 1: want to focus on in this particular game because I
Speaker 1: don't think it has a huge impact on the series,
Speaker 1: Like the Celtics let go of the rope several times
Speaker 1: defensively in this game, had a handful of bad decisions
Speaker 1: in the fourth quarter. But really this is just this
Speaker 1: is just kind of the natural ebb and flow of
Speaker 1: playoff basketball, especially when you're playing against a good team.
Speaker 1: And say what you want about this Hawks team, they're
Speaker 1: playing better basketball ever since Quinn Snyder came on board.
Speaker 1: And at home they're like twenty four and seventeen this year.
Speaker 1: So that's a tough place to win. You're up two
Speaker 1: zero in the series, you're still in control. I expect
Speaker 1: the Celtics to win this series in five. But I
Speaker 1: did want to make a shout out to Trey Young
Speaker 1: because he struggled mightily in this series in the first
Speaker 1: two games, and I thought he was masterful in this
Speaker 1: particular game, particularly in the fourth quarter, and in just
Speaker 1: the really smart way that he was attacking and pick
Speaker 1: and roll so started the started things in the fourth quarter,
Speaker 1: getting downhill and making like a little floater over Al Horford,
Speaker 1: and so the Celtics made a simple adjustment. They put
Speaker 1: Jason Tatum on on Yeka coong Wu and put Al
Speaker 1: Horford on DeAndre Hunter, so that when Trey Young calls
Speaker 1: on Yka Kongu up for the pick and roll, they
Speaker 1: could just switch it. And they do that. You know,
Speaker 1: the idea there is like when you call for a
Speaker 1: ball screen, you want a roll man who is capable
Speaker 1: of making a certain type of play, right, Like Trey
Speaker 1: Young loves to throw lobs in pick and roll, so
Speaker 1: he wants to call and Yeka into the screen so
Speaker 1: that he has a lob threat. Right. Well, now when
Speaker 1: he does, it's just a switch and Tatum on Trey
Speaker 1: Young isn't exactly a great matchup for them. But Trey
Speaker 1: made a really interesting adjustment himself. He just had both
Speaker 1: of them comes at his screen, so he'd have like
Speaker 1: ayekis at the first screen and then DeAndre Hunters at
Speaker 1: the second screen, and he kind of just methodically pulled
Speaker 1: over to the side and waited for Al Horford to
Speaker 1: step over too far, and then he hit DeAndre Hunter
Speaker 1: for the layup, and then you know, they started switching
Speaker 1: with Al Horford as well. Towards the end of the quarter,
Speaker 1: and it was funny because Al Horford switches on to
Speaker 1: Trey Young, and Trey doesn't want to iso al Horford,
Speaker 1: so he sprints over and hands the ball to de
Speaker 1: Jontay Murray at the end of the clock and says,
Speaker 1: you go ISO. De Jontae ends up actually hitting like
Speaker 1: a little short step back jumper on the left wing.
Speaker 1: But later in the game, with I believe just under
Speaker 1: two minutes left, he gets Horford on a switch again
Speaker 1: and there's not enough time on the shock clock for
Speaker 1: him to get it to de Jontay Murray, so he
Speaker 1: has to go try to make a play and he
Speaker 1: takes like this impossible step back three in the corner
Speaker 1: and sinks it. You could tell Trey was just feeling
Speaker 1: himself at that moment, which is kind of cool because
Speaker 1: after how bad he struggled in the first two games,
Speaker 1: it's cool to him have a real winning impact on
Speaker 1: the series. That three was a massive shot. A couple
Speaker 1: possessions later, just under a minute left, I want to
Speaker 1: say it was like a three point game at this
Speaker 1: point or four point game at this point. Derek White's
Speaker 1: pressuring him in the backcourt and Trey, like most great
Speaker 1: point guards do, leverages that ball pressure to get Derek
Speaker 1: White on his backside and kind of pins him on
Speaker 1: his backside. He gets downhill and makes a floater that
Speaker 1: ends up icing the game. Again. Like, we could talk
Speaker 1: all we want about Trey, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: bad that comes with Trey, but at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, he's an outstanding passer and an outstanding high
Speaker 1: pick and roll decision maker that's got a great deal
Speaker 1: of offensive skill. He's still a guy who can help
Speaker 1: basketball teams. He just has some limitations that you have
Speaker 1: to account for, especially when you're considering him the best
Speaker 1: player on a team that has real championship aspirations. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I still feel good about the Celtics and
Speaker 1: five though at this point. All right, moving on to
Speaker 1: Nuggets Wolves. This was an extremely impressive and dominant win
Speaker 1: from Denver. In my opinion, I am pretty high on
Speaker 1: this Timberwolves team, especially on the defensive end of the four.
Speaker 1: But you know, once again, and they keep running into
Speaker 1: the same problem with Carl Towns. They have more freedom offensively,
Speaker 1: they have more driving lanes, and when he's at center
Speaker 1: with Rudy Gobert, they have a higher defensive ceiling obviously,
Speaker 1: although they have not defended better with Rudy in this
Speaker 1: particular series. But they have a higher defensive ceiling with
Speaker 1: Rudy Gobert, but he junks things up for them offensively.
Speaker 1: The big thing that stood out to me in this
Speaker 1: game was the Nuggets started with Jokic in especially in
Speaker 1: the conley. The conley Gobart picking rolls, they'd have Jokic
Speaker 1: basically just do like a soft trap where he's ignoring
Speaker 1: Gobert and stepping out all the way to the three
Speaker 1: point line, just basically conceding that short roll pass to Gobert.
Speaker 1: And what really janked up the Timberwolves offense in this
Speaker 1: game is Gobert is incapable of doing anything out of
Speaker 1: that short role position. There's a hilarious play in the
Speaker 1: first half of this game where he catches on the
Speaker 1: short roll with the head of steam going to the rim,
Speaker 1: and Jamal Murray is the guy who is from the
Speaker 1: low man position tagging over on the roller, and Gobert
Speaker 1: does like every other big in the entire league that
Speaker 1: you know, and Gobert just kind of like like takes
Speaker 1: a hard step towards Jamal Murray and then panics and
Speaker 1: then makes like a kickout pass to Nikhil Alexander Walker
Speaker 1: on the perimeter right, and now the possession is dead
Speaker 1: on arrival, even though you drew a double team out
Speaker 1: at the perimeter, and you know he'd catched on the
Speaker 1: roll and try to do like a eurostep and fumble
Speaker 1: it out of bounds or or just find some way
Speaker 1: to blow it at the rim. Then there was a
Speaker 1: huge play at the end of the game. He finally
Speaker 1: draws a foul I think it was one of his
Speaker 1: one five ninety eight. Finally manages to draw a foul
Speaker 1: on the short roll and then goes to the line
Speaker 1: and misses both free throws, and so at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, Like you know, I've always said, even
Speaker 1: even back when Gobert is with the Jazz, because Rudy's
Speaker 1: not the same defensive player now that he was in Utah.
Speaker 1: But in Utah, I thought a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: said about him defensively wasn't necessarily true. He was being
Speaker 1: looped in with all of this criticism surrounding what really
Speaker 1: was problems with the perimeter players defensively that Rudy was
Speaker 1: catching flak for that said all of the criticism of
Speaker 1: Rudy Gobert on the offensive end of the floor is real.
Speaker 1: I don't care what people say about how good of
Speaker 1: a screener he is. I don't care what people say
Speaker 1: about how good of an offensive reboundary is. When you've
Speaker 1: got a player that, even with his physical advantages, cannot
Speaker 1: score or make make a play in a four on
Speaker 1: three when he is being completely unguarded, that is a problem.
Speaker 1: All these other guys we talk about that can't shoot,
Speaker 1: Draymond Green, that dude can make plays rolling down the
Speaker 1: floor in that short role position that you have to
Speaker 1: be able to at least do something coherent offensively even
Speaker 1: if you can't score. And Rudy Gobert can't score and
Speaker 1: he can't pass out of that specific position, and that's
Speaker 1: what really janks things up for them on the Nuggets front.
Speaker 1: Jokich was this typical dominant self twenty points, eleven rebounds,
Speaker 1: twelve assists. I've always amazed by how easily he can
Speaker 1: dislodge Rudy Gobert from post position. I've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: but on the perimeter, you want to move your feet
Speaker 1: as little as possible because it's about efficiency. Of movement
Speaker 1: in lateral space, like you don't want to take negative
Speaker 1: steps right in the post, like Jokic keeps his feet
Speaker 1: chopping all the time, and each time he does that
Speaker 1: allows him to reset his center of gravity and hit
Speaker 1: Gobert again. And so a lot of times Gobert will
Speaker 1: absorb the first piece of contact, but then when he
Speaker 1: gets dislodged, Jokic has already reset himself and is hitting
Speaker 1: him again, and it's like that second or third bump
Speaker 1: that'll send Gobert way out of position and then he's
Speaker 1: getting the shot that he wants. I thought Michael Porter
Speaker 1: Junior did a really nice job attacking the rim early
Speaker 1: in this game. That kind of set a tone. Then
Speaker 1: he hit a huge three early in the fourth quarter
Speaker 1: when the Wolves were going to run. They got it
Speaker 1: down to like five, and then the Wolves went into
Speaker 1: his own possession and he had a really nice relocation
Speaker 1: three to the right corner that he knocked down to
Speaker 1: put him back up eight. And then Christian Brown was
Speaker 1: the other guy I wanted to shout out. He made
Speaker 1: three really big athletic plays to start the fourth quarter.
Speaker 1: On a play where Gobert was guarding him and stepped
Speaker 1: up into help. He cut out of the baseline, jumped
Speaker 1: into Gobert. Gobert blocked the shot, and he powered through
Speaker 1: him with his left hand and just kind of like
Speaker 1: feathered it into the back. Then he had another play
Speaker 1: running in transition where he made a left handed layup,
Speaker 1: and then a couple of plays later, he's on the
Speaker 1: left wing step first step with Anthony Edwards, one of
Speaker 1: the best athletes in the league, and he takes off
Speaker 1: and makes a really nice left handed finish over the
Speaker 1: top of Anthony Edwards during a Nuggets run. His athleticism
Speaker 1: I thought was really impressive. This series is headed quickly
Speaker 1: towards a sweep, and I'll tell you right now. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I'm not gonna say anything until the end
Speaker 1: of the first round, but as of right now where
Speaker 1: we stand here on Saturday morning, I think Denver has
Speaker 1: been the most impressive team in the Western Conference so far,
Speaker 1: and if things stay this way through the end of
Speaker 1: the first round, I'm gonna be tempted to adjust my
Speaker 1: pick of who's coming out of the Western Conference. Obviously, though,
Speaker 1: the Lakers and Warriors have plenty of time to get
Speaker 1: things together over the end of their series, and the Suns.
Speaker 1: It's just really hard to tell when they're playing a
Speaker 1: Clippers team without Kawhi and Paul George. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: that's all I have for today. Like I said, flying
Speaker 1: back to Tucson, so I will see you guys from
Speaker 1: the studio later tonight after Lakers Grizzlies. I appreciate you
Speaker 1: guys rocking with us and supporting the show. See you
Speaker 1: later today. The volume