Speaker 1: All right, welcome to Hoops tonight here at the Volume.
Speaker 1: Happy Tuesday, Everyboday. I hope all of you guys had
Speaker 1: an incredible weekend. We are live on AMPS, so if
Speaker 1: you're watching on YouTube or listening on the podcast feed,
Speaker 1: don't forget that AMP is the very first place that
Speaker 1: you guys can get these shows. Well, we just finished
Speaker 1: a list of twenty five players, so how about we
Speaker 1: do it again. This time, we're gonna do the top
Speaker 1: twenty five players of the last twenty five years, starting
Speaker 1: with twenty five, twenty four, twenty three and twenty two. Today,
Speaker 1: you guys have the JRP before we get started. Subscribe
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Speaker 1: of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason
Speaker 1: lt so you guys don't miss any show announcements. And
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Speaker 1: Under Hoops Tonight, all right, let's talk some basketball. So
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie. This was way harder than the
Speaker 1: last one because you're filtering through Well, let's just make
Speaker 1: it simple, you're filtering through twenty five times as much
Speaker 1: data as you're filtering through looking at one particular NBA season. Also,
Speaker 1: there are a lot more than twenty five really good
Speaker 1: basketball players from the last twenty five years, so a
Speaker 1: lot of really good players had to miss the cut.
Speaker 1: But honestly, I'm excited to do this for two reasons.
Speaker 1: One and it'll give you guys a general idea of
Speaker 1: how I view, you know, modern NBA history right this time,
Speaker 1: since basically since Michael Jordan, everything after Michael Jordan hit
Speaker 1: the shot. So we're not counting nineteen ninety eight, right,
Speaker 1: it's nineteen ninety nine to twenty twenty three, it's twenty
Speaker 1: five seasons. We're basically looking at the post Jordan era here,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of stuff that's happened in that
Speaker 1: era that I haven't really had a chance to talk
Speaker 1: about on this show. And so this kind of gives
Speaker 1: us a means with which to talk about players and
Speaker 1: historical events that I've never really gotten an opportunity to
Speaker 1: talk about on the show, and so I'm excited to
Speaker 1: do that. This list kind of gives us a means
Speaker 1: by which to do so. Now there are major There
Speaker 1: are six major accomplishments that I factored in in order
Speaker 1: to kind of make this list work, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read them to you guys here in list of in
Speaker 1: order of important. So, by far, the most important accomplishment
Speaker 1: you can make in the NBA, big shock you guys
Speaker 1: could probably guess, is to be the best player on
Speaker 1: a championship team. If you do what Nikola Jokic just
Speaker 1: just did, and you run through everybody and you hoist
Speaker 1: the trophy and you're clearly the best player on your team,
Speaker 1: that's the most valuable thing that you can do on
Speaker 1: a basketball court in the NBA. In my opinion, that's
Speaker 1: the number one most heavily weighted accomplishment. The second most
Speaker 1: heavily weighted accomplishment for me was to be the second
Speaker 1: best player on a championship team. So, for instance, what
Speaker 1: Kobe Bryant did with the early Shaq Lakers there in
Speaker 1: two thousand, two thousand and one, two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: that was a if you produce at a star slash
Speaker 1: superstar level at least in terms of winning impact within
Speaker 1: a context of winning an NBA championship with a team
Speaker 1: as the second best player, I factored that in heavily
Speaker 1: third was best player on a finals team. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: one of the guys who did not make my list
Speaker 1: is Tracy McGrady, and one of the guys who did
Speaker 1: make my list is Jimmy Butler. Tracy McGrady was unquestionably
Speaker 1: a better regular season player, and you look through his
Speaker 1: time in the NBA, he really dominated regular seasons, but
Speaker 1: he never made it out of the first round of
Speaker 1: the playoffs. Jimmy Butler has been the best player on
Speaker 1: a team that made it to the NBA Finals twice
Speaker 1: and has been one of the best playoff performers of
Speaker 1: this era. So I gave heavy preferential treatment to guys
Speaker 1: who have that type of accomplishment on their resume. The
Speaker 1: fourth most heavily weighted accomplishment for me was MVP awards
Speaker 1: won so for guys like Joel Embiid, James Harden, and
Speaker 1: Russell Westbrook. These are examples of guys that have a
Speaker 1: lot of limitations, but in my opinion, to be able
Speaker 1: to attack a season from start to finish and have
Speaker 1: us all leave that season and generally at least maybe
Speaker 1: not necessarily all agree, but at least most of us
Speaker 1: agree that this person was the best basketball player within
Speaker 1: that regular season. I think that that matters quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Also to me, that's like there is a narrative element
Speaker 1: to it, but at the end of the day, the
Speaker 1: narrative usually has some sort of grounds to it, and
Speaker 1: that grounds is usually based in basketball production, and they
Speaker 1: dominate that particular regular season in term of the headlines,
Speaker 1: and I think that matters in terms of the history
Speaker 1: of the NBA. Fifth I put all NBA selections, so
Speaker 1: for instance, a guy like Anthony Davis. A guy like
Speaker 1: Anthony Davis as somebody that a lot of people are
Speaker 1: not super high on, but the dude has four first
Speaker 1: team All NBA selections, So that means four times we
Speaker 1: left the season thinking that dude's the best player at
Speaker 1: his position. And I think that that matters a lot
Speaker 1: in a case like this, especially when you coupled it
Speaker 1: with the playoff success that he has now. Last, but
Speaker 1: not least, I just listed this as general consensus of
Speaker 1: opinion among your peers. So for instance, a guy like
Speaker 1: Dwight Howard, So this guy who consistently gets made fun
Speaker 1: of and we constantly talk about all of his downsides,
Speaker 1: but the truth is during that stretch from two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight to twenty twelve, Dwight was like consensus considered
Speaker 1: one of the very best superstars in the league, Like
Speaker 1: in that top tier there during Kobe's last run in
Speaker 1: the two thousand and eight to twenty ten range, it
Speaker 1: was like Kobe and Lebron, and then it was Dwight Howard,
Speaker 1: you know, like he was right there right and then
Speaker 1: after the Kobe ara you get in. It's like it
Speaker 1: was like right around the time of the decision, it
Speaker 1: was like Lebron James and Dwayne Wade, maybe Dwayne Wade
Speaker 1: at three, Dwight Howard at number two. Right, Like during
Speaker 1: that stretch, everybody view Dwight Howard as one of the
Speaker 1: very best players in the league. So I thought that
Speaker 1: mattered a lot in this particular type of conversation. So
Speaker 1: I narrowed it down to thirty one players for these
Speaker 1: twenty five spots. There were six guys who missed the cut,
Speaker 1: so I want to quickly go over them and just
Speaker 1: list off quickly why they didn't make it. So Carmelo
Speaker 1: Anthony did not make my list. He never made a
Speaker 1: first team All NBA and he only got out of the
Speaker 1: first round of the playoffs twice. That was pretty much
Speaker 1: the breakdown CP three. This was by far the hardest
Speaker 1: one for me to leave out. But he just didn't
Speaker 1: really have a career defining achievement. Like he was the
Speaker 1: best point guard in the league for a decent chunk
Speaker 1: of time, but never was really considered on the same
Speaker 1: level as the guys at the top of the league,
Speaker 1: at least the top top end, like kind of like
Speaker 1: we were just talking about Dwight Howard being in those
Speaker 1: kinds of conversations, Chris Paul was never in those kinds
Speaker 1: of conversations. Even as we look at Russell Westbrook, James Harden,
Speaker 1: and Joel mb during their absolute peaks, they were pretty
Speaker 1: consistently considered like one of the superstars, right. He had
Speaker 1: a lot of great regular seasons, but he never won
Speaker 1: an MVP. He had a bunch of good playoff runs,
Speaker 1: but there was always like some sort of weird story,
Speaker 1: whether a good playoff run ended with him making some
Speaker 1: catastrophic mistakes like some of the early Clippers years, or
Speaker 1: recently really good playoff runs ending an injury, whether it
Speaker 1: was the twenty eighteen series against the Warriors where he
Speaker 1: pulls his hamstring or the twenty twenty one NBA Finals.
Speaker 1: I think it was a quad injury in that series
Speaker 1: that kind of took him down, But he pretty consistently
Speaker 1: in the tail end of his career has had his
Speaker 1: good playoff runs cut short by injury. So there just
Speaker 1: wasn't really enough enough there for me to bump some
Speaker 1: of the guys ahead of him off that list. Tracey
Speaker 1: McGrady never made it out of the first round of
Speaker 1: the playoffs, so he missed my list. Damian Lillard, similar
Speaker 1: to Chris Paul, checks a lot of boxes but doesn't
Speaker 1: really have a career defining achievement. Paul George just not
Speaker 1: quite as good as the players above him. He made
Speaker 1: six All NBA teams and four All Defensive teams, but
Speaker 1: not really a significant playoff or regular season moment like
Speaker 1: his best moment is like probably leading the Clippers to
Speaker 1: within two wins of the NBA Finals in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one without Kawhi Leonard was good, like a good moment,
Speaker 1: but he still lost to a team that had Devin
Speaker 1: Booker as its best player, so it wasn't like an
Speaker 1: opportunity for how he won that series. Maybe that becomes
Speaker 1: a different story, right, and then Mayor Genobli was one
Speaker 1: of the harder ones. He was probably the second best
Speaker 1: player on the two thousand and five Spurs, right, and
Speaker 1: was a critical piece of that Spurs dynasty, but is
Speaker 1: missing too many of the regular season accomplishments and the
Speaker 1: consistent playoff dominance to really bump some of the other
Speaker 1: guys off of the list. So that leaves us starting
Speaker 1: with number twenty five, and these all four guys that
Speaker 1: are actually active NBA players. As it turns out, just
Speaker 1: by the way the list worked out, you'll notice we'll
Speaker 1: get to a lot of inactive guys later on in
Speaker 1: the list, But number twenty five for me was Joe
Speaker 1: el Embat. Now what I'm gonna do for each player
Speaker 1: is I'm gonna list out their awards that they won.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read their stats from their prime, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna pull out the chunky years that I consider to
Speaker 1: be their prime. We'll read out their stats both in
Speaker 1: the regular season and the playoffs. We'll go over there
Speaker 1: claim to fames, basically the thing that kind of defines
Speaker 1: them as a basketball player. Right. Then we'll look at
Speaker 1: their archetype, basically talk about what their basketball archetype is
Speaker 1: within a team, we'll talk about their career defining achievements,
Speaker 1: so basically their pinnacle moment, and then lastly will go
Speaker 1: over their biggest what if. That should give us a
Speaker 1: lot of opportunity to hit some interesting stuff. So Joel
Speaker 1: embiid his awards. He made First Team All NBA once.
Speaker 1: This team was the first year. He is five total
Speaker 1: All NBA selections. He has won the last two scoring titles,
Speaker 1: he has made three All Defense teams, and he was
Speaker 1: the winner of the twenty twenty three regular season MVP award.
Speaker 1: I put his prime down from twenty eighteen to twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, obviously the present in the regular season. In
Speaker 1: that span, he's averaged twenty eight points, twelve rebounds, and
Speaker 1: four assists on sixty one percent true shooting. In the playoffs,
Speaker 1: down a level from their twenty four points, eleven rebounds
Speaker 1: and three excuse me, three assists on fifty eight percent
Speaker 1: true shooting. Now, in my opinion, Joel Embid's claim to fameous.
Speaker 1: He's been the best scorer in the NBA for the
Speaker 1: last three years now. He leads the NBA in points
Speaker 1: per game over that span, and he's got a bliss
Speaker 1: during sixty four percent true shooting percentage over that span.
Speaker 1: So in terms of regular season basketball for the last
Speaker 1: third of a decade, nobody has been better than Joel
Speaker 1: Embiid ats scoring the basketball, so that is kind of
Speaker 1: his claim to fame. He's also been one of the
Speaker 1: best rim protectors in the league over that span. Doesn't
Speaker 1: really manifest all the time in shot blocks or block shots,
Speaker 1: I should say, but just in general in rim deterrence
Speaker 1: and anchoring a good defense, Joel Ebid's been one of
Speaker 1: the best guys in the league at that span. He's
Speaker 1: definitively been one of the top two guys at his
Speaker 1: position in that span, although I think he's consistently been
Speaker 1: a level below Nikole Jokic, and he's consistently been considered
Speaker 1: one of the ten best players in basketball for about
Speaker 1: ten years now. That kind of goes to that sixth
Speaker 1: item that I had in terms of the way you're
Speaker 1: discussed around your peers. If you're making top ten lists
Speaker 1: over the last half decade, Joel Embiid's on it, which
Speaker 1: I think is incredibly impressive, especially when you factor in
Speaker 1: the amount of talent that's in the league right now now,
Speaker 1: Joel ebids archetype. He's basically your throwback two way center,
Speaker 1: one of the few guys in the league now that
Speaker 1: you can act. I'd say there's two in the entire
Speaker 1: league between him and Nikola Jokic that you can actually
Speaker 1: run your offense through because they're skilled enough. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, Joel Embid's an old school throwback, you know,
Speaker 1: big old rimp protector, plays with a lot of the
Speaker 1: similar type of offensive style that you saw back in
Speaker 1: the nineties, that golden age of centers. That kind of
Speaker 1: is the type of player that Joel Embiid represents in
Speaker 1: my opinion, good mix of perimeter skill with power right,
Speaker 1: although I'd like to see his power game kind of
Speaker 1: go up a level. His limitations somewhat injury prone, struggles
Speaker 1: to handle double teams, and struggles to score in the
Speaker 1: postseason when he gets to the postseason for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: it's usually a combination of injuries, I think in just
Speaker 1: general fatigue and uh and you know, like stuff related
Speaker 1: to stamina. He just struggles to knock down his jump
Speaker 1: shot in that stage, doesn't get the same amount of
Speaker 1: foul calls as he normally gets, and has obviously dealt
Speaker 1: with some injury issues in those situations. So those are
Speaker 1: his limitations. His career defining achievement was winning the MVP
Speaker 1: this year. Really earned it too, Which was funny because
Speaker 1: I think there's this point there at two thirds of
Speaker 1: the way through the season where like a lot of
Speaker 1: people were saying Jokic, Jokics was a deserving candidate. I
Speaker 1: was kind of leaning towards Janis at that point, but
Speaker 1: Embiid was kind of like third on my list at
Speaker 1: that point. And then there was this whole kind of
Speaker 1: thing over whether or not it was too narrative based,
Speaker 1: and there was all these discussions. It kind of got toxic.
Speaker 1: But then legitimately, while Jokichen Jannis kind of both tailed
Speaker 1: off a little bit ten this season, and Beid just
Speaker 1: continued kicking everybody's ass the rest of the year, had
Speaker 1: a bunch of big wins and head to head matchups
Speaker 1: against important players, and like genuinely deserved the MVP award,
Speaker 1: like a truly earned MVP award. And that's where I
Speaker 1: shouted out in our player rankings. I shouted out his
Speaker 1: competitiveness and just how much I appreciated him wanting that thing,
Speaker 1: wanting it so bad and going out on the basketball
Speaker 1: court and earning it straight up. I think that was
Speaker 1: his career to finding achievement, and the next step for
Speaker 1: him obviously is translating it to the playoffs. His biggest
Speaker 1: what if in my opinion, will Joel Embiid ever be
Speaker 1: able to stay healthy for a full playoff run. Now
Speaker 1: we've talked about the different things in terms of his
Speaker 1: approach and his foul grifting and stuff that struggle in
Speaker 1: the postseason, but the biggest one in my opinion is
Speaker 1: the health. As soon as he deals with some sort
Speaker 1: of nagging knee injury, it throws off the energy transfer
Speaker 1: from his jump shot from his feet through his hands
Speaker 1: and it messes up his muscle memory and then he
Speaker 1: can't make a damn jump shot. I went over his
Speaker 1: jump shooting numbers in our player rankings videos, but like
Speaker 1: he was consistently a very good jump shooter in the
Speaker 1: regular season in the last few years and it just
Speaker 1: hasn't translated to the postseason. And I think injury injuries
Speaker 1: played the biggest role in that. So the biggest one
Speaker 1: if for me with Joel Embiid is will he ever
Speaker 1: be able to stay healthy for a full playoff run.
Speaker 1: All right, Moving on to number twenty four, James Harden
Speaker 1: six first team All NBA selections, seven total All NBA selections,
Speaker 1: back to back to back scoring titles twenty eighteen, twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen in twenty twenty. He also won the assist title
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen and this last year in Philly. Many
Speaker 1: of you guys probably aren't aware of that that James
Speaker 1: Harden led the league and assists this year. He won
Speaker 1: the MVP Award in twenty eighteen. I put his prime
Speaker 1: down from twenty thirteen to twenty twenty. There's been a
Speaker 1: significant drop off basically since he left Houston. In the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one one season. Regular season numbers over that
Speaker 1: span thirty points, six rebounds, eight assists on sixty one
Speaker 1: percent true shooting. Playoffs twenty eight points, six assists, seven
Speaker 1: rebounds on fifty eight percent true shooting. So, and then
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about this more in a little bit.
Speaker 1: But not a huge drop off from the regular season
Speaker 1: to the playoffs in terms of his production. A little
Speaker 1: bit of one, but not a huge drop off. But
Speaker 1: he's known as one of the worst playoff performers of
Speaker 1: his era. I want to dive into that concept a
Speaker 1: little bit here, in a little bit, now, what is
Speaker 1: what is James Harden's claim to fame? In my opinion,
Speaker 1: similar to Joel Embiid, he was the league's best regular
Speaker 1: season scorer for a while. Basically during that span there
Speaker 1: in the late twenty tens, there was nobody in the
Speaker 1: league that was better at scoring in the NBA regular season.
Speaker 1: I think at one point, like he to, he had
Speaker 1: the MVP season, but he followed that up averaging thirty
Speaker 1: six points a game for an entire season, shot sixty
Speaker 1: two percent true shooting. During that span, he kind of
Speaker 1: rigged the game, so to speak, in the sense that
Speaker 1: he just kind of figured out a way to spam
Speaker 1: a specific action essentially a pick and roll that would
Speaker 1: either lead to an ISO against switches or shot in
Speaker 1: the pick and roll where he could consistently generate a
Speaker 1: certain amount of points per possession. And Houston just leaned
Speaker 1: on that and spammed it and spammed it and spammed it,
Speaker 1: and teams really struggled to handle it in the regular season,
Speaker 1: which led to him having those ridiculous scoring numbers. He
Speaker 1: popularized this step back three. This was something that was
Speaker 1: a big story on Twitter a few weeks back, and like,
Speaker 1: the discussion was basically centered around, you know, whether or
Speaker 1: not James Harden is underrated in terms of his overall
Speaker 1: impact on basketball, and I tend to agree here. James
Speaker 1: Harden is known as an underperformer when it comes to
Speaker 1: the playoffs and things along those lines, but he is
Speaker 1: deeply impactful in the culture of basketball. Like I'll give
Speaker 1: you as an example, James Harden is not my favorite player,
Speaker 1: but one of the most significant chunks of my game
Speaker 1: that I've added in the last five years is an
Speaker 1: arsenal of step back threes that I literally added from
Speaker 1: watching James Harden. You watch young basketball players, now, there's
Speaker 1: a footwork too. It's basically that extra side step. And
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the really dramatic shuffle step that
Speaker 1: a lot of people think as a travel I'm just thinking,
Speaker 1: like that classic you're in your high hesitation and you
Speaker 1: just take that one extra step to the side when
Speaker 1: before you rise up, that's considered part of your gather. Right,
Speaker 1: That's a completely legal move that almost every star in
Speaker 1: the league uses. Now. James Harden popularized that footwork. He
Speaker 1: may not have invented it, but he popularized it. He
Speaker 1: made it basically, he basically made it a normal shot
Speaker 1: to take an NBA games by demonstrating that if you
Speaker 1: work hard enough at it, you can get good enough
Speaker 1: at it. I also put down here that he invented
Speaker 1: modern helio centrism. So helo centrism kind of started with
Speaker 1: Lebron in the early twenty tens, but it was never
Speaker 1: like a bread and butter thing. It was always something
Speaker 1: that Lebron would go to in specific playoff moments, so
Speaker 1: like when things would break down or in specific positions
Speaker 1: in like a fourth quarter situation or a late game situation,
Speaker 1: Lebron would go helio centric. It'd be like, rather than
Speaker 1: having the point guard bring the ball up the floor,
Speaker 1: let's just let our best player have the ball. He'll
Speaker 1: bring it up, we'll space the floor, and he'll either
Speaker 1: pick on a matchup, he'll run, pick and roll. Right.
Speaker 1: Lebron kind of invented the baseline for that, but he
Speaker 1: didn't do it very often. James Harden was basically the
Speaker 1: first guy to just be like, I'm doing this every
Speaker 1: single possession for an entire regular season. He basically took
Speaker 1: a singular concept and made it the foundation of their
Speaker 1: entire offense there in Houston for all those years, so
Speaker 1: that I kind of give him credit for that specifically
Speaker 1: kind of modern spacing as well. What you've seen before
Speaker 1: the Russell Westbrook trade. When he came to Houston, it
Speaker 1: was four out one in classic like Clincapella, setting the screens,
Speaker 1: rolling hard to the ram Dwight Howard a little bit
Speaker 1: in the early age or early era there with James Harden.
Speaker 1: When Russell Westbrook came, it became more of a five
Speaker 1: out kind of thing. But they kind of set up
Speaker 1: that like we're just gonna have a shooter in the corner,
Speaker 1: shooter in the corner. We're gonna have a long distance shooter.
Speaker 1: A guy was comfortable shooting from like twenty seven twenty
Speaker 1: eight feet, you know, that would sit on the right wing.
Speaker 1: You know, guys like Eric Gordon Anderson, the guys like
Speaker 1: that would sit on the wing. And that guy kind
Speaker 1: of like pulls that defender even further out because he
Speaker 1: can shoot from further behind the line. Then James Harden
Speaker 1: works from the opposite wing. He'll either call for the
Speaker 1: ball screen and then work off a switch if he
Speaker 1: doesn't need the ball screen anymore. He'll put Clint Capella
Speaker 1: back down in the dunker spot. That whole concept of
Speaker 1: modern spacing and helio centrism, in my opinion, was kind
Speaker 1: of invented by James Harden and the Houston Rockets. His
Speaker 1: archetype is interesting because is the body and skill set
Speaker 1: of an old fashioned two guard, like one of the
Speaker 1: ones we've used to see, right, like six five sixty
Speaker 1: six long arms, you know, a strong, good quickness, athleticism,
Speaker 1: tons of skill, but none of the old fashioned play style.
Speaker 1: Every other two guard had so much more offensive diversity
Speaker 1: in James Harden kind of became this classic modern, you know,
Speaker 1: helio centric shot creator, right. So I think that does
Speaker 1: lead to his playoff limitations, which we'll get to in
Speaker 1: a little bit. He also was a bad slash lazy
Speaker 1: defensive player who took pride when he would get hunted
Speaker 1: in post mismatches and had the size to kind of
Speaker 1: hold up well in those situations, which helped a lot
Speaker 1: in Houston's switching scheme that they used in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: which we're gonna talk about right now. So, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: James Harden's career defining achievement was winning the MVP in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. If you remember that Rockets team had a
Speaker 1: guy named Jeff Bizelic. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
Speaker 1: I always butcher it Bezdelic. I think Jeff Bizelic. They
Speaker 1: basically brought him in and he designed the rocket switching
Speaker 1: scheme essentially, like we're gonna switch everything, and it was
Speaker 1: entirely constructed around the idea of how to beat the
Speaker 1: Golden State Warriors. Essentially, the Golden State Warriors run this
Speaker 1: crazy motion offense, and they have this flow that just
Speaker 1: keeps everybody involved in it and no one can guard it. Right,
Speaker 1: But what if we switched everything and we basically turned
Speaker 1: them into an isolation team and baited them into their
Speaker 1: worst tendencies, Like, we have a better chance of beating
Speaker 1: the Warriors if Katie and Steph are just running ISO
Speaker 1: every time, then if we have them running in the
Speaker 1: flow of the offense and it's crazy, because it damn
Speaker 1: near worked. They were up three games to two before
Speaker 1: Chris Paul pulled his hamstring. But this is where I
Speaker 1: want to talk about a little bit about James Harden's
Speaker 1: playoff struggles, because there's a narrative that kind of came
Speaker 1: out of that sequence of years that they just couldn't
Speaker 1: get over the Warriors hump. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: truth to that that I've frequently said, the two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven team, twenty eighteen Warriors are the most talented
Speaker 1: team that I've ever seen assembled. Right, Like, I've seen,
Speaker 1: you know, great playoff performers like Lebron James lose to
Speaker 1: that team. I've seen, you know, they're they're not. There's
Speaker 1: no shame necessarily and losing to that particular team. But
Speaker 1: if you were there in the moment and you watched
Speaker 1: those games, what was unfortunate was James Harden didn't really
Speaker 1: fulfill his end of the bargain in those specific situations.
Speaker 1: So the defense actually worked, it really stagnated Golden State,
Speaker 1: caused them a lot of problems. They lost a lot
Speaker 1: of their flow and it was a huge part of
Speaker 1: how they were up three games to two. Those games
Speaker 1: were stuck in the mud. But over the final six
Speaker 1: games of the twenty eighteen Western Conference Finals, James Harden
Speaker 1: was fourteen for sixty nine from three. That's twenty percent.
Speaker 1: Fourteen for sixty nine. Everyone's like, oh, they missed twenty
Speaker 1: seven straight threes in game seven. A big part of
Speaker 1: that was they became so one dimensional in their offensive approach,
Speaker 1: where it was like they were just taking any three
Speaker 1: they got a decent look at, even if it was
Speaker 1: heavily contested. James Harden taking these extremely difficult step back
Speaker 1: threes and always falling and trying to draw fouls, it
Speaker 1: became easy to guard. And if you actually go back
Speaker 1: and watch that series, Golden State is vacating the middle
Speaker 1: of the floor to chase guys off the three point
Speaker 1: line and to play up on James Harden and make
Speaker 1: him feel uncomfortable. And the one dimensional nature of their
Speaker 1: approach specifically made them easy to guard, which is a
Speaker 1: big part of why James Harden was fourteen for sixty
Speaker 1: nine from three over the final six games of that series.
Speaker 1: And then we go down to the twenty nineteen series.
Speaker 1: Kevin Durant went down in game four. There was a
Speaker 1: two game stretch there in game five, in game six
Speaker 1: where they had an opportunity to win the series without
Speaker 1: Kevin Durant on the floor, and they literally went in
Speaker 1: and lost in Golden State, and then they went home
Speaker 1: and they lost at home, and at home they were
Speaker 1: within two with two minutes left, a chance to extend
Speaker 1: that series and send it to seven, where they would
Speaker 1: have had a good chance to win with Kevin Duran
Speaker 1: unavailable and James Harden had back to back to back
Speaker 1: careless turnovers at the end of the game, just throwing
Speaker 1: the ball away, that famous one there on the base
Speaker 1: line where he just imbounds it and basically just throws
Speaker 1: it to the Warriors, like time and time again, it's
Speaker 1: not about with James Harden the averages. Like I told,
Speaker 1: I'll reagi the averages again. James Harden regular season thirty
Speaker 1: six and eight, sixty one percent through shooting during his
Speaker 1: prime playoffs twenty eight six and seven on fifty eight
Speaker 1: percent try shooting. If I told you any other player
Speaker 1: in the league average twenty eight six and seven on
Speaker 1: fifty eight percentry shooting of an eight year span in
Speaker 1: the playoffs, you'd be like, that's awesome. But it was
Speaker 1: never about the averages with James Harden. It was always
Speaker 1: about what would happen in pivotal moments at the end
Speaker 1: of series, which takes you back to that helio centric
Speaker 1: concept early in series when teams are not prepared for
Speaker 1: you yet or not as prepared as they will be
Speaker 1: towards the end of the series. The James heliocentric spread
Speaker 1: pick and roll in ISO thing would work. I would
Speaker 1: encourage you guys to go look in that twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: playoff run, Go look at how well he played in
Speaker 1: the first game of a series, and then look at
Speaker 1: how he played at the end of the series, and
Speaker 1: you'll see it in a clear drop off, many times
Speaker 1: culminating in a two for eleven type of game when
Speaker 1: the series was on the line. In a game five,
Speaker 1: or Game six or a game seven, the averages are fine,
Speaker 1: but James Harden had these incredibly ugly games that in
Speaker 1: large part were fueled by that completely redundant and predictable approach.
Speaker 1: The biggest what if for me in James Harden's career
Speaker 1: was what if James Harden had played ten years earlier.
Speaker 1: It wasn't so analytically focused. I blamed Darryl Mory in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways for the way that James Harden's
Speaker 1: career went, and again I wasn't in those locker rooms.
Speaker 1: So a lot of this is pontification. But the way
Speaker 1: I think about it, I'm like, I could just see
Speaker 1: James Harden playing a certain way, and I could see
Speaker 1: Darryl Mory going like, hey, look, every time you run
Speaker 1: an ISO, we get one point two points per possession.
Speaker 1: Every time you run a spread pick and roll, we
Speaker 1: get you know, one point one five points per possession.
Speaker 1: Why are we doing anything else? Let's just do this
Speaker 1: every single possession, and the coaching staff getting invested in it.
Speaker 1: And then they almost it almost became comical in the
Speaker 1: sense that they just got rid of any sort of
Speaker 1: traditional basketball movement motion and flow and just leaned so
Speaker 1: heavily on the James Harden isolation and pick and roll thing.
Speaker 1: They completely erased any of his off ball movement. They
Speaker 1: completely erased his mid range pull up jump shot, both
Speaker 1: things that were big parts of his game when he
Speaker 1: was in Oklahoma City, and it caused him to reach
Speaker 1: these incredible statistical highs, but it limited him in the playoffs.
Speaker 1: And so I wonder if he played a more traditional style,
Speaker 1: had he been drafted in the early two thousands and
Speaker 1: and you know, came up under a more traditional coach,
Speaker 1: would he have been a better playoff player because he
Speaker 1: would have been more diverse in his offensive approach. Would
Speaker 1: he have been a better defender because he went have
Speaker 1: had to devote as many resources to just spamming, isolation
Speaker 1: and pick and roll every single time. I'm curious to see.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if we get rid of the ten
Speaker 1: years earlier modifier and just say, if he didn't have
Speaker 1: any sort of association with Daryl Morey, what would happen
Speaker 1: with James Harden in his career? I'd be really curious
Speaker 1: to see. Number twenty three Russell Westbrook. Two time first
Speaker 1: Team All NBA, nine time total NBA selections, two scoring
Speaker 1: titles twenty fifteen and twenty seventeen, three assists titles twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, twenty twenty one, and he won the MVP
Speaker 1: Award in twenty seventeen. His prime I put down from
Speaker 1: twenty eleven to twenty twenty. It was pretty much after
Speaker 1: he left Houston that things kind of fell off. Regular
Speaker 1: season twenty five eight to nine on fifty four percent
Speaker 1: true shooting, playoffs twenty five seven and eight on a
Speaker 1: fifty one percent true shooting. His claim to fame. In
Speaker 1: my opinion, Russell Westbrook is the most statistically impressive player
Speaker 1: of his era. Obviously, he was the first player since
Speaker 1: Oscar Robinson to average a triple double for an entire
Speaker 1: regular season. He's actually done that four times now. There
Speaker 1: was a peak run in Oklahoma City that was insane.
Speaker 1: His last three seasons in the thunder Jersey twenty seven, eleven,
Speaker 1: and ten just ridiculous statistical production. He also was the
Speaker 1: best athlete of his era pound for pound, in my opinion, really,
Speaker 1: like if in those of you guys who were old
Speaker 1: enough to watch Russell Westbrook when he was younger, there
Speaker 1: really wasn't anything like him when he was in his
Speaker 1: prime athletically. It just the burst that he had. And
Speaker 1: it's crazy because he still has a little bit of
Speaker 1: burst and he still looks like one of the best
Speaker 1: athletes on the floor in any given game. But back
Speaker 1: then he was on this entire different stratosphere. Again, like,
Speaker 1: there are better athletes in the league, but pound for
Speaker 1: pound is a six to three frame. There was nobody
Speaker 1: that moved the way that Russell Westbrook did. You probably
Speaker 1: all have a favorite Russell Westbrook dunk. My favorite there's
Speaker 1: one in particular that always sticks out to me, and
Speaker 1: it's if you were to do a top one hundred
Speaker 1: Russell Westbrook's dunk dunk thing I'm not sure it would
Speaker 1: make the top thirty, but this one, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: just kind of resonated with me personally. Was he was
Speaker 1: into the thunder jersey. It was after KD left. I
Speaker 1: think it might have been in the last year with Katie.
Speaker 1: It was somewhere in that twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen range.
Speaker 1: But he had a mask on because he had broken
Speaker 1: his nose or had some sort of orbital issue, right,
Speaker 1: And he got a rebound and went the length of
Speaker 1: the floor and just took off from just inside of
Speaker 1: the free throw line and dunked it with two hands,
Speaker 1: like rose up with two hands and slammed it down.
Speaker 1: And as the play was developing, you're like, there's no
Speaker 1: you're not even thinking dunk because it doesn't even make
Speaker 1: sense for a player to attempt to dunk in that situation.
Speaker 1: And he rises up and just throws down this easy
Speaker 1: two handed jam, and you're like, oh my god, what
Speaker 1: did I just watch? There really was nothing like Russell
Speaker 1: Westbrook in his athletic prime. His archetype was your classic
Speaker 1: hyperathletic rim pressuring guard. He was consistently one of the
Speaker 1: league's best rim attackers. He was also excellent at hitting
Speaker 1: shooters and dunkers as the team would kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: collapse around him as he was driving to the baskets,
Speaker 1: specifically shooters in the corner and hitting dunkers right under
Speaker 1: the basket. He was also a pretty good defensive player
Speaker 1: during the KD Era still had a lot of the
Speaker 1: mistakes that he makes now, like missing box outs, losing
Speaker 1: his man off ball. He still has mistakes like that,
Speaker 1: but he was just so unbelievably athletic that the positives
Speaker 1: outweigh the negatives in a lot of ways. He's also
Speaker 1: a good mid range pull up shooter. At that phase
Speaker 1: of his career, he could hit about forty percent of
Speaker 1: them there in that you know, twenty fifteen to twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen range. His biggest limitations he was not good at
Speaker 1: finishing at the rim. It's funny because everyone thinks of
Speaker 1: Russell Westbrook as struggling to finish at the rim in
Speaker 1: a Lakers jersey. That was always the case. He just
Speaker 1: got there more often. He was consistently one of the
Speaker 1: leaders in shot attempts in the restricted area in the NBA,
Speaker 1: but he always shot around fifty five percent. He just
Speaker 1: never got to that sixty sixty five percent that you're
Speaker 1: hoping for from a high level basket attacker. That prevents
Speaker 1: some of the issues that come from missing laps. There's
Speaker 1: advantages to missing laps, right, occupying rim protectors, opening up
Speaker 1: offensive rebound opportunities, but consistently missing layups at that tune. Like,
Speaker 1: it's one thing for me to say, hey, Kevin Durant,
Speaker 1: you're shooting seventy eight percent at the rim, Dude, take
Speaker 1: more shots there, you know, because you need to pressure
Speaker 1: the rim more. It's another thing when you're missing half
Speaker 1: of your rim attempts and it's just constantly leading to
Speaker 1: fast break opportunities. The other way, that was a consistent
Speaker 1: issue for Russ during that time. The biggest issue for
Speaker 1: me with Russ was he just always struggled to play
Speaker 1: at different pace, in different speeds. He just struggled to
Speaker 1: manage games, which is such an important part of the
Speaker 1: point guard position. It's a decision making position. My favorite
Speaker 1: example of this to kind of demonstrate it is the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen Western Conference Finals against Golden State, the game
Speaker 1: sixth Clay game. Right, we always think of that game
Speaker 1: as the Klay Thompson game, but if you actually go
Speaker 1: back and watch that game, the Thunder would have won
Speaker 1: it anyway, regardless of any Klay Thompson outburst if it
Speaker 1: wasn't for Russell Westbrook's decision making at the end of
Speaker 1: the game. He had four turnovers in the final two
Speaker 1: minutes of that game. Four. There were two in particular
Speaker 1: that I wanted to highlight that kind of demonstrate what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. At one point, the game was tied
Speaker 1: at one oh one, I believe, and he runs a
Speaker 1: two man game with Kevin Durant. He's being guarded by
Speaker 1: Clay Thompson, and Kevin Durant's being guarded by Andrea Guadala,
Speaker 1: who's probably the best perimeter defender in the league at
Speaker 1: that time. They run the screen and they get the
Speaker 1: switch and Kevin Durant kind of goes out to the
Speaker 1: wing and holds his arm up wanting the ball against
Speaker 1: Clay Thompson. Russell Westbrook decides to iso Andre Gudala instead,
Speaker 1: just objectively a bad decision in that specific situation. Tries
Speaker 1: to drive by Andre Andre beats him to the spot,
Speaker 1: loses his balance a little bit, tries to go into
Speaker 1: a fadeaway. Andre Gadala strips him clean right and then
Speaker 1: the couple possessions. Later, Clay hits that big three on
Speaker 1: the right wing. They're up one oh four to one
Speaker 1: o one. It's a one possession game still though you've
Speaker 1: got a chance. They get a stop on a miss
Speaker 1: steph Curry layup and instead of like walking the ball
Speaker 1: up the floor to run your set and try to
Speaker 1: get a good shot, it's a three on three break.
Speaker 1: There's no advantage. At one point, it's actually three on
Speaker 1: four as Golden State is sprinting back and Russ is
Speaker 1: just pushed the ball up the floor with no advantage,
Speaker 1: and he ends up getting stripped in traffic by Draymond Green,
Speaker 1: just a critical turnover. And that's the thing is, like
Speaker 1: we think about those mistakes now, we think about him
Speaker 1: taking the pull up jumper against the Blazers in the
Speaker 1: early season with the Lakers right or like bad decisions
Speaker 1: here or there. But he was doing that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff when he was in his prime, and it was
Speaker 1: a significant part of the limitations that the Thunder faced
Speaker 1: is in big time playoff moments, Russ was always playing
Speaker 1: the same speed and in a big sample size right
Speaker 1: where you have a hundred possessions, Russ making mistakes that
Speaker 1: version of Russ was so damn good that it outweighed
Speaker 1: the bad. Right, But in any small sample size, let's
Speaker 1: say you've got you're rolling the dice, and like, if
Speaker 1: it's one or two, three or four, it's a good outcome,
Speaker 1: but if it's five or six, it's a bad outcome.
Speaker 1: If I do that a hundred times, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: a lot more bad outcomes than good or good outcomes
Speaker 1: and bad outcomes. And that's great for my team. But
Speaker 1: in a pivotal situation, I'm rolling dice that has a
Speaker 1: one out of three chance to make a mistake, And
Speaker 1: in this particular situation, with the season on the line,
Speaker 1: he rolled mistake four times in a row down the
Speaker 1: stretch of a game, and so that was the big
Speaker 1: thing that kind of held him back. Otherwise he'd be
Speaker 1: much much higher on this particular list. Biggest what if
Speaker 1: of Russell Westbrook's career in my opinion, and this is
Speaker 1: one that I don't think is over, but what if
Speaker 1: he had evolved his game as he aged. Ever since
Speaker 1: he left Houston in twenty twenty, he has not been
Speaker 1: the same player, but he put up big numbers in
Speaker 1: a losing context with the Wizards, and then he really
Speaker 1: struggled to play in a winning context on the Lakers, right,
Speaker 1: And a big part of that is as his athleticism
Speaker 1: has declined in his good part. Now the dice is
Speaker 1: more like one, two, three is good and four or
Speaker 1: five six is bad. And on any given possession, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, one game, it comes out positively for you,
Speaker 1: in the next game, it comes out negatively for you.
Speaker 1: Now it's more important than ever for him to polish
Speaker 1: up a lot of his specific role player tendencies right,
Speaker 1: his off ball defense, his ability to box out, decision making,
Speaker 1: all these things are suddenly much much more and he's
Speaker 1: really struggled with those. You look at a guy like
Speaker 1: Jason Kidd, who had this huge prime in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands with the new Jersey Nets. He gets to
Speaker 1: Dallas and completely evolves and becomes this role player, spot
Speaker 1: up shooter guy who's not doing a lot on the ball,
Speaker 1: who really commits on the defensive end of the floor.
Speaker 1: Suddenly he becomes an imperative piece of a championship team.
Speaker 1: I'd like to see Russell Westbrook do that. We saw
Speaker 1: some glimpses of that with the Clippers this year and
Speaker 1: he's on a deal now that's a much lower dollar
Speaker 1: amount that I think will help Russ kind of come
Speaker 1: to terms with that fact. And I'm interested to see
Speaker 1: if he has that in his late prime. But to me,
Speaker 1: that's the biggest what if of his career to this
Speaker 1: point and will be the biggest what if of the
Speaker 1: remainder of his career. Will he evolve his game as
Speaker 1: he ages? All? Right, last, but not least for today.
Speaker 1: Number twenty two Jimmy Butler No first team All NBA selections,
Speaker 1: but five total all NBA selections, five All defense selections,
Speaker 1: and his prime I put down from twenty fifteen the
Speaker 1: present regular season twenty one point six rebounds, five assists,
Speaker 1: fifty nine percent you shooting, playoffs twenty three seven and
Speaker 1: five on fifty seven percent trough shooting. His claim to
Speaker 1: fame one of the best playoff performers of this era.
Speaker 1: How do you even describe Jimmy Butler? You heard me
Speaker 1: read the stats, even in the playoffs twenty three seven
Speaker 1: and five, fifty seven percent yourre shooting. Nothing exceptional happening there.
Speaker 1: But I'll keep it really simple. Jimmy Butler has twenty
Speaker 1: three to thirty point playoff games that ranks sixteenth out
Speaker 1: of all the players on my list. He has eight
Speaker 1: forty point playoff games that ranks seventh out of all
Speaker 1: the players on this list. For whatever reason, when he
Speaker 1: gets to the postseason in specific single game samples, typically
Speaker 1: big pivotal playoff games that have a chance to swing series,
Speaker 1: the dude just transforms into an all time great playoff players.
Speaker 1: There's no other way to describe it. And as a
Speaker 1: result of that, he has been the undisputed best player
Speaker 1: on two NBA finals teams. And this wasn't you know
Speaker 1: Lebron James making eight straight finals with the Cavs, where like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the best player in the league, but he
Speaker 1: probably doesn't make eight straight finals in the West, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like that. This was a top heavy East
Speaker 1: with teams that were favored over him. Bucks teams and
Speaker 1: Celtics teams. Even the Sixers teams were consistently considered better
Speaker 1: than Miami, and Miami just beat them and made to
Speaker 1: the finals twice. He outplayed Giannis in a playoff series twice.
Speaker 1: That's the It's just it's difficult, right, But I mean,
Speaker 1: here's how I'll describe it to my kids. Jimmy was
Speaker 1: one of those guys who always flew under the radar,
Speaker 1: but if you ever had to face him in a
Speaker 1: playoff series, he was absolutely terrifying. There's no other way
Speaker 1: to put it. I've said this in the player rankings video,
Speaker 1: but his approach kind of reminds me of Lebron. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a smaller version of the Lebron James playoff approach.
Speaker 1: It's like two way dominance fueled by on defense, being
Speaker 1: willing to take just about any assignment on ball or
Speaker 1: in help. He could pick you apart on the other
Speaker 1: end of the floor as this big point forward that
Speaker 1: was gonna matchup, attack and pick on your worst defender
Speaker 1: and bully his way to the basket and play make
Speaker 1: out of that. It just reminds me of the lesser
Speaker 1: version of Lebron James, which is exactly why he's been
Speaker 1: such a good playoff performer in his career. And the
Speaker 1: biggest part of it is you just always seem to
Speaker 1: be the most confident player on the court for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: and confidence just matters in basketball. You have a muscle
Speaker 1: memory that you go to and if you're nervous and
Speaker 1: you're hesitant, it can affect that. But if you're always
Speaker 1: so confident that even in big game situations, you are
Speaker 1: calm and your heart rate is under control and your
Speaker 1: body is relaxed, that's the way you feel when you're practicing,
Speaker 1: and then that practice translates to the game better. I
Speaker 1: think Jimmy Butler's insane levels of confidence I think fuel
Speaker 1: him a lot in these playoff situations. His archetype, he's
Speaker 1: a classic undersized point forward, right. He has the athletic
Speaker 1: tools to be a dominant perimeter defender, but he's not
Speaker 1: quite big enough to play some of the backline defensive
Speaker 1: positions that you see a lot of the other big
Speaker 1: forwards in the league play right, So offensively, he's more
Speaker 1: of like a three or a four excuse me. Offensively
Speaker 1: he plays more like a power forward right, more of
Speaker 1: a four power game. Back to the basket rim pressure
Speaker 1: and playmaking. And then on the defensive end, he's more
Speaker 1: of a primitive player right. He takes a lot of
Speaker 1: point of attack assignments, he plays passing lanes a lot.
Speaker 1: He's very forward aggressive right. So he's kind of a
Speaker 1: mix of two different archetypes of players. Back to the
Speaker 1: basket game, is that classic old school forward. He's very
Speaker 1: patient and methodical. He's got a good arsenal of hook
Speaker 1: shots and fadeaways over both shoulders. He also has a
Speaker 1: really good gift for getting players out of position and
Speaker 1: drawing fouls. And he's a high level playmaker. He has
Speaker 1: seven games in the playoffs where he's had at least
Speaker 1: ten assists, including three times in the NBA Finals. His
Speaker 1: limitations he was an inconsistent jump shooter, and he always
Speaker 1: seems to wear down, and especially in like the conference
Speaker 1: finals finals, he's prone to like bad games where he'll
Speaker 1: have a single digit nin er, a game where he
Speaker 1: just it doesn't even look like he's as engaged as
Speaker 1: he usually is. But then he'll follow that up and
Speaker 1: be freaking amazing the next game. So even as I
Speaker 1: talk about that as a limitation, none of it really
Speaker 1: makes any sense. It's a very difficult player to kind
Speaker 1: of compartmentalize in that sense. Biggest what if of his
Speaker 1: career in my opinion, what if Jimmy Butler had made
Speaker 1: that pull up three over Jason Tatum. I think it
Speaker 1: was over Jason Tatum. I can't remember who was over,
Speaker 1: but on the right wing, that could have won the
Speaker 1: Eastern Conference Finals last year. Why I had that as
Speaker 1: such a big one if I think that was easily
Speaker 1: their best chance to win the title. That Lakers team
Speaker 1: was too talented. They weren't gonna beat them. It was
Speaker 1: like Lebron James and Anthony Davis at the peak of
Speaker 1: their powers, two top five players. You just weren't gonna
Speaker 1: beat them. And they had all this size in athleticism
Speaker 1: and defense, and a good coach and all this stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: This Nuggets team was probably even better than that Lakers team, right,
Speaker 1: So they just didn't really have a chance. Steph Curry
Speaker 1: was the best player in the league in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two in my opinion, but Andrew Wiggins was the second
Speaker 1: best player on that team, and they were pretty undersized,
Speaker 1: and they had some legitimate personne elementations. Now, to be clear,
Speaker 1: I would have picked the Warriors to win that series,
Speaker 1: but I would have actually given Jimmy Butler in the
Speaker 1: heat a fighting chance to win that series in a
Speaker 1: way that I did not give them in the Nuggets
Speaker 1: series of the Lakers series. And so it's interesting to
Speaker 1: me because I actually think that was their best chance
Speaker 1: to win the title. Jimmy hits that shot they'd go
Speaker 1: to the finals. Obviously, he'd have to outplay Steph to
Speaker 1: have any chance to win the series, and I don't
Speaker 1: think he would have, but he would have had a
Speaker 1: chance at least, Like it didn't matter. He could have
Speaker 1: played Yolks to his stalilmate, they would have lost. The
Speaker 1: Nuggets were too good. He could have played Lebron to
Speaker 1: his stailmate, they would have lost. The Lakers were too good. So,
Speaker 1: like you kind of get the point like that, I
Speaker 1: as much as I respect the Warriors, that particular team
Speaker 1: was more of like a one of those situations where
Speaker 1: the total was more than the some of their parts, right,
Speaker 1: and they just had this one truly great player. I
Speaker 1: would have given the Heat a decent chance to beat
Speaker 1: those guys. So the biggest one if of Jimmy Butler's career,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, is what if the Heat would have
Speaker 1: won the Eastern Conference Finals in twenty twenty two and
Speaker 1: Jimmy would have had chance you play the Warriors in
Speaker 1: that finals. Alright, guys, that is all I have for today.
Speaker 1: We'll be back tomorrow with twenty one, twenty nineteen, and eighteen.
Speaker 1: As always, I appreciate you, guys, and I will see
Speaker 1: you that