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No, the Wells Fargo Active Cash Credit card visit wells fargo.com ActiveCash Terms apply the Volume. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume Heavy Monday, everybody. Hope all of you guys had an incredible weekend. We had an insane weekend of basketball. A bunch of entertaining and interesting NBA stuff going on and my Arizona Wildcats are going to the Final Four for the first time since I was 10 years old. I'm very, very excited. I am very scared or worried or at least I have the appropriate fear of Michigan. We're going to talk about that later on in the show, but I've kind of liked this format when we've had these crazy weekends. I want to go through 10 big takeaways from a wild weekend of basketball. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Make sure you like this video and sign up for post notifications. That helps us a lot. And last but not least, if you guys want to get mailbag questions into our weekly mailbags, drop them in the YouTube comments underneath these videos. Right? Mailbag colon. Write your question. We'll get to them in our weekly mailbags throughout the remainder of the season. All right, we're going to start NBA Our first big takeaway from the weekend Shay Gil Alexander got out of his bizarre slump just in time to save the Thunder against the New York Knicks. Shea has been in a very rare slump over the last couple of games. At one point in the fourth quarter yesterday, he missed 25 of his previous 35 shots. Che is generally immune to these types of stretches compared to most perimeter players because he's relatively low volume from three and he's lethally efficient from mid range. For example, that 8 for 24 performance against Chicago is just the third time this season that he's missed at least 2/3 of his shots. I saw a lot of Luca fans talking about how, you know, Shea had this bad stretch and for the record, it was a bad stretch. It was deeper than just the shooting. I thought it affected his all around game. He was really trying to force his way out of the sh, taking a lot of out of the slump by taking a lot of bad shots over the two games. I didn't think he was at his best defensively yesterday either, was making some mistakes off the ball, getting back cut, missing on offensive rebounds. Now again, like it's important to call that stuff out but I just don't think it's something that is a general negative in like Shay's MVP case For example, because he's just been way less prone to these stretches than his peers around the league. For example, Luka has had twice as many games this year where he's missed at least two thirds of his shots. And his true shooting percentage is dramatically lower because he does lean on the three point shot more. And that leads to more volatility on a game by game basis. But he did get out of it with a brilliant stretch to close out the Knicks yesterday. The Knicks bench group ended up closing the gap midway through the fourth quarter. Carl Anthony Towns continues to be very effective in this matchup for a variety of reasons. He's just way too big for Oklahoma City. Around the rim can really do damage attacking matchups and especially on the offensive glass and then on defense, the Knicks kind of just load up and pick and roll behind him. And that can play Oklahoma City into some of their worst tendencies. Like some bad process where they force issue, force the issue in the lane a little bit. Or they can have, you know, they got some guys that can go cold from three. And so they actually did defend pick and roll really well, especially for the first three quarters when they, when the Thunder were trying to attack Carl Anthony Towns. But then Shea comes in halfway through the fourth quarter and was absolutely brilliant down the stretch. Found a way to get his rhythm at the foul line. He did a low gather move on a little drive off of the right wing where he just caught Mikhail Bridges on a dig down. Just raked him across the arms that got him to the foul line. Get a couple free throws, you find your rhythm right. He attacks Josh Hart in a switch, hits a tough little right handed step back around the right elbow area. Then he starts going at Carl Anthony Towns with much more success in pick and roll. With about four minutes left, New York had a really bad rep where they didn't load up. It was a double drag at the top of the key. Carl Anthony Towns is in his deep drop coverage. You have Chet Holmgren in the right corner, AJ Mitchell in the left corner, and all game long the Knicks had just been loading up in that situation, but they did not, in this case, no help off of the corners. That left Cat by himself in a drop. Shea was able to go right at him and get a left handed layup. Then he finally gets a pull up, three to go. Another kind of deep drop look along the left wing. They were kind of allowing Shay to get to those tougher threes if he could get separation off the ball. Screen like Cat wasn't coming up too high and Shea ends up getting a pretty clean look off of the left wing. Knocks down a three after getting just 0.9 points per possession, including passes in pick and roll in the first three quarters. They got 14 points on 10 ball screens in the fourth quarter. So Oklahoma City explodes in pick and roll in that fourth quarter thanks to Shay. Next thing you know, the Knicks are hard doubling Shea 30ft from the rim to get the ball out of his hands and the game is over. So that slump for Shea was short lived and he blew that game open and led his team to victory against the Knicks last night. Also, J Dub finally has a pretty much his best game since coming back from his hamstring injury. We've talked about this concept a lot, but there's like a conditioning element when you first come back, you're back, you have your leg strength, you may even have some of your athletic pop, but then you start running up and down the court a couple times, you just get gassed out and then it starts to affect every part of your game. You're finishing that little extra bit of burst, the lift you have on your jump shot things along those lines. J dub was awesome. 22 points on just 11 shots, was attacking the rim like crazy, which is always when he's been at his best. He had this transition driving layup in the second half where he went coast to coast through four Knicks and just bulldozed through all of them and got all the way to the rim for his right handed layup. And I was like, that's a hamstring play. Anybody who's ever been a transition player knows when you start taking those big long steps in traffic, every time you pound that leg into the ground, you feel it in your hammy. So I thought that that was a good sign for how J Dub is feeling athletically. Really nice win for the Thunder number two. We got another look at a potential 27 matchup between the Charlotte Hornets and the Boston Celtics. And this time Boston got their revenge. A month or so ago, the Hornets went into Boston and crushed the Celtics on their home floor. I was actually really excited to watch yesterday's game because I think there's a decent chance that these two teams see each other in the first round. I think Charlotte's capable of passing Orlando in the standings before the end of the season. Those back to back losses didn't help the losses to Boston into Philly and that has hurt their chances slightly. But they're only one game back in the loss column and they have the tiebreaker there. So they Only have to make up one game between now and the end of the season and they'll pass Orlando to get up into that eight seat. Do I think Charlotte can go into Philly and win a play in game? Yeah. Do I think they can go into Atlanta and win a play playing game? Absolutely. So like this Celtics matchup is at least worth looking at closely because I think there's a pretty substantial chance, maybe less than 50% but certainly a lot more than zero chance that we're going to see Boston verse Charlotte in that first round series. And Boston just dominate them. Dominated them in this game from the start. Even without Jalen Brown and without Derek White. I've long thought that Charlotte's biggest weakness right now is just big physical ball pressure. That's not some sort of indictment on the long term future of Charlotte or anything. Every young up and coming team has a demon they have to conquer. Whether it's like Oklahoma City in years past conquering shooting. I feel like that's going to be what San Antonio has to deal with this year and in the coming years. Like being able to consistently knock down open catch and shoot jump shots in their ball handlers, being able to handle some coverages that concede jump shots. That's going to be a big part of those teams developments. Right? Denver, the Denver Nuggets, for a while there it was like are they going to be able to figure out what they need to do defensively to reach their goals and all The Oklahoma City and Denver obviously figured those things out. I think San Antonio will eventually figure those things out for Charlotte. They really only have two guys that can handle the ball at a high level. 2 Now thanks to the addition of Kobe White. Right. The rest of their guys, they kind of prefer to score in the flow of the offense like Con or Brandon or they're play finishers. Right. So that's why the on off numbers are so crazy with Lamelo. They need Lamelo to break the defense down. To be clear, I think Charlotte's gonna be fine in the long run. Khan has shown plenty of on ball chops this year in a relatively small sample. I'm sure that will continue to grow. Miles Bridges has been showing some upside as like a matchup attacker. A guy that can take smaller guards down to the post as like a different type of bully ball attack for them. Brandon Miller will continue to get better. So again I don't think this is going to be a long term issue. I just think it's probably how Charlotte loses this year. Some team will get physical up into Lamelo, throw him off his game, they'll rotate well enough to rush their shooters a little bit, their shot quality will tank and they'll lose to somebody either in the play in or or in the first round. Again. That's just what I view as like Charlotte's short term like barrier between where they're at, where they are now and sustained playoff success. And Boston showed that formula last night. Jordan Walsh got the start obviously with the injuries and he just did an awesome job on Lamelo right away. We've seen several examples of this this year when, when Jordan goes against more of the upright, skinnier skill guards or skill players in the league. He's just bigger, faster and stronger and plays so insanely hard that he's so good at staying attached and he can cause problems for them. And I thought he did an amazing job from the start of this game, viciously fighting over screens and staying attached over the top, which works really well alongside Nimi K and drop coverage. We talk about this all the time. Drop coverage is a bracket. And yeah, like if the guy's getting caught up on the screen all the time and the big is too far back, there's all sorts of comfortable space in the middle there for the guard to operate. But if you're staying attached, you can funnel into the size. Right. And that can cause all sorts of problems. Or if you have some crazy rangy big that can get up to the level and protect the rim, that can fix the bracket on the other side of the coverage. Right. And I thought Jordan Walsh just did an amazing job on the ball on Lamelo and immediately played him into a pretty rough night. Just he had some over penetration possessions where once again the bracket forced him into the paint, into some tough shots and he started taking some bad threes. Baylor Shireman came in. I thought he did some good work on Lamelo as well. Just Lamelo had a rough game. And then as a team, the Celtics showed that aggregate perimeter speed, communication in and out of action, overall effort in intensity and rotation getting out to shooters. It sped the Hornets up off the catch. They shot poorly. They generally struggled to score. The Celtics held him under 100 points and the Celtics controlled this game from start to finish. Jayson Tatum had his first 30 point game of the season. He had a couple of big drives early in the game. A dunk where he kind of split a ball screen, went up and dunked it with two hands. Another one where he went all the way to the rim on Cockburn or finished through contact at the rim with his right hand. Both of those are really strong signs of strength from him. And his conditioning starting to come around. That same concept we were talking about earlier. Right. It was funny. Brian Scalabrini was getting super hyped on the broadcast early because he could just, he could tell as someone who's obviously watching the Celtics every single night, that there was another gear to Jason athletically in that game that I think is a strong sign for him. He got his ISO 3 point shot going early in the game. The dead giveaway is he, I think it was Lamelo. He got him to bite on a pump fake and he was able to get to the foul line. But like when Tatum's got his three point shot going, guys start to play up on him more and that can unlock both the foul drawing but also the drive. And then he had his usual excellent floor game. Just reading late double teams like, oh, I'm attacking at the elbow and there, here comes a player from behind, there's Peyton Pritchard on the left wing. Pitch it back wide open 3. Or just like simple coverage stuff like, oh, Keda comes in, sets a screen, two on the ball for a second, flip it over the top to Cato or guard slipping out of an inverted screen. He ended up having eight assists to just zero turnovers. Just a really encouraging performance from Jason Tatum. I talked about this when, if you guys remember, when LeBron went out and everyone was like, oh my gosh, look at Austin, he's playing way better without LeBron. Austin and LeBron were always capable of playing well together. Just when Austin was coming back from an injury, the building rhythm process took a long time. And so taking LeBron out for a couple of games just kind of forced a bunch of additional reps onto Austin, which accelerated that process. And that's the thing, like Tatum would have eventually found his rhythm even if Jaylen Brown didn't have this Achilles tendonitis that he's been dealing with. But the Achilles tendonitis just kind of gave Jason Tatum a bunch of extra reps that are helping accelerate the process of him building his conditioning and his rhythm. As an on ball handler. Peyton Pritchard and Nimi Keda had, I thought they had a great game. Attacking the Kalkbrenner drop coverage. Obviously there's a two man element to that. The vertical spacing from Nimi Keta. I thought Nemi was great on the offensive glass in this game as well. Just kind of attacking loose balls and going up with physicality after he get him Peyton, obviously the Drop coverage, scoring and passing. Pritchard and Tatum combined for 60 points in this game. The Celtics are really rounding into form as a top tier championship contender. I don't think Charlotte has much of an upset chance there. The Celtics are basically just a more developed and experienced version of that Charlotte Hornets team. I still like the Hornets in the long run way more than I did to start this year for sure, but I think they're more likely to upset someone like Detroit. So we'll see if they end up landing in the 18 or the 2 7. That could end up being a big part of whether or not they could get a long first round series in there. Number three. Sometimes you just need to play better and that's how Alper and Shangoon is saving the Rockets. The Rockets dominated the Pelicans in New Orleans yesterday and that Pelican team is actually pretty feisty now that they're healthy. Although Trey Murphy was out in yesterday's game. But the story of the game was Alper and Shangoon who had 36 points, 13 rebounds and 7 assists with 0 turnovers and 6 stocks. A couple of the steals were just the ball kind of landing in his hands as someone lost it. But still he had several really good defensive rotations at the rim where he either stripped the ball or blocked somebody up top. And look, his defensive inconsistency is super frustrating. Like that Wolves game was the classic example. He's like amazing at the tail end of regulation and like almost single handedly just as a wrecking ball on both ends of the floor brings his team back in the game and then in overtime he just like lets his foot off the gas and is straight up terrible on defense for five minutes and it costs his team the game. But when he's engaged defensively he has the physical tools to be very impactful. He had several help side rotations yesterday where he's anticipating the driver, the cut before it happens, getting there athletically in time and he's able to blow up a play at the rim. It's all about engagement and anticipation for Sengun and when he is locked in in those areas he actually can be a very impactful defender which I think is going to be a major swing factor for the Rockets in the postseason this year and he's really starting to put it all together on offense right now. That was his third 30 point game in the last four and his third seven assist game in the last four. I talk about this concept all the time, but more often than not the answer to your team's problems is just play better. I've noticed this just especially around the league in NBA media. But like, we always feel the need to identify some sort of magical adjustment. And to be clear, adjustments matter, tactics matter. Strategy does help win basketball games. We talk about tactics and strategy and adjustments on the show all the time. But usually the biggest difference between where you are as a player or as a team and where you want to go as a player and as a team is just play better as a team. Maybe you need to just play with more physical force to help you win all of the battles on the floor. Containing at the point of attack. We talk about that shoulder battle, sliding your feet, anticipating angles, and then not getting that shoulder blown through. Just playing with more force at the point of attack makes everything way easier for your team. Box out. Those are physical confrontations that you either win or lose on a possession to possession basis. Loose balls, whether it's crashing the offensive glass or just any general loose ball that happens on the floor, whether or not you beat the other team, there can make a huge difference in whether or not you're winning the game. That's a physical force piece. When you're on the ball, are you attacking the paint and using the jump shot as a counter, or are you settling without putting any pressure on the defense? These are all examples of things that aren't necessarily tied to tactics, but that can swing basketball games far more often than. Than any sort of tactical adjustment will. And it's literally just a measure of whether or not you're bringing the requisite force to win all of those little physical battles on the floor. Even individually as a basketball player, like, you're. You're having a stretch where you're not playing well. Maybe it's. You get in better shape, you improve your conditioning. I found that with me, like, I had a. I had a while back at a slump that was causing me some issues on the court. And I was like repping all this stuff off the floor, like jump sh. Jump shooting, getting all these reps in, and it wasn't helping. And then finally I was like, I need to get in better shape. And I like, worked on my conditioning and all of a sudden I went back to the gym and I just wasn't getting tired on the court, which was all of a sudden helping me in every phase of the game. Next thing you know, I'm making shots and everything starts to come around. Like there's, there's all these, like, little things that you can do individually as a basketball player that can turn things around for you. And more often than not, whether it's you individually or as a team, just playing better can go a long way to fixing your problems. As an Arizona fan, I saw that in the Purdue game. Like, yeah, there was an adjustment. They went from having Karchenkov guard Braden Smith to start the the first half where he was just kind of bigger and he's just a, a much larger human being that's not as fast. And he was getting caught up on screens too much. And so Braden Smith was just able to comfortably operate in drop coverage and either hit shots or get, get Krivos to commit, which would then open up the pocket pass and other little things that were breaking them down. And then, yeah, Tommy Lloyd made an adjustment in the second half. He put Jaden Bradley on Braden Smith, and he's just a smaller, quicker player who was able to get over the top of screens more and stay more attached to Braden Smith, which was allowing Krivos to stay closer to the paint and closer to the roll, man. And yeah, that really helped them. It was an adjustment that absolutely helped the team. But if you watch that game as an Arizona fan, there was a gigantic difference in the overall physical intensity of the entire team in that second half. Kos had been losing battles to clough around the basket, just physical intensity, battles getting to loose balls, like efforts at the rim that he suddenly started winning in the second half. And so, like, again, like, this is why you see so many coaches in post game interviews talk about effort and energy and intensity and that sort of thing, rather than stepping up and being like, oh, I made this magical adjustment in the second half. It's because the coaches know, the coaches know that, yeah, they can give you a strategy that gives you your best chance to win. And it's certainly a part of how teams win and lose games. But more often than not, it's just about playing better. Your individual stars playing better, your team collectively bringing more force to bear in every phase of the game and how that helps you win all these little battles. That's how you win and lose basketball games. And when Alper and Shangun is playing at the level of a superstar, the Rockets are just a much better basketball team. Too often this year, Shangun was playing well below that level. Shangun had gone for 30 points just once in his previous 20 games before going for 33 of the last four games. When he plays better, that does a lot to help the Rockets on both ends of the floor. I know it's such a simple, kind of like reductive thing, but it makes a huge difference in whether basketball teams can reach their goals. Today's show is brought to you by presenting sponsor Hard Rock Bet, Florida's sportsbook. The biggest weekend in college basketball is almost here. The round of four is set and a national champion is just days away from cutting down the net. Now's the time to step up your game with daily dance and boosts on Hard Rock Bet. You'll get a live profit boost and a parlay profit boost for the games. More ways to shoot your shot. More ways to cash in with boosted odds when the stakes are at their highest. In those heart stopping, zero on the clock moments we've all seen in the tournament, they still pay on Hard Rock Bet. 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number four. Paul George and Joel Embiid are both back. They both look great. And suddenly the Eastern Conference looks like it has the deepest playoff field in years. I had basically written off the Sixers as they had been resting all their three best players for such a large chunk of time. Now there was reporting that the Sixers were going to try to bring everybody back and make a run at some point. But you know how that goes with guys like Joel Embiid and Paul George. You're always just like, yeah, okay, but we'll believe it when we see it, right? But here they all are. Paul George and Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxi are all back. They all look great. Embiid is averaging 32 points per game in his first two games back. Paul George is averaging 27 points per game in his first two Games back. Both guys are shooting the shit out of the ball from three. Both guys made huge plays down the stretch in the win. And Charlotte. Paul George hits basically the game winner coming off of a sideline, out of bounds there towards the left corner. Really tough movement three that he just strokes. It was like perfect. Joel Embiid's making a defensive rotation in the left corner, blocking a shot. The bench is all fired up. There's like an energy around the Sixers now. That win in Charlotte was massive. That was right after they hung 157 points on the Bulls a couple of nights prior. Tyrese Maxey came back from his long absence and looked like Tyrese Maxey. And all of a sudden the Sixers look like a legit threat in the Eastern Conference. Now we look at the east and this is the deepest Eastern Conference playoff field that I can remember in a very, very long time. For many years there, a decade ago, the east was basically just Cleveland and then like one or two teams that would have strong regular seasons before they'd get dominated by LeBron. And then the rest of the conference was terrible. Then we had that recent stretch where it was like the last half decade or so. It was like the top three or four teams would be awesome, but then there'd be a massive drop off. The first round was always bad, and the bottom of the conference was terrible. It felt like a JV conference. Now I look at the field and I think we're going to have six or seven really good Eastern Conference playoff teams. Obviously we have our top four, Detroit, Boston, New York and Cleveland. But Philly could be really dangerous. Charlotte could be really dangerous. And between that, like Toronto, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando tier, they're all super inconsistent and super flawed, but like, one of those teams is going to pop and give somebody a run for their money. And so we're probably going to get like three really good first round series in the Eastern Conference. We're going to get like a really good Eastern Conference playoff from start to finish, which really hasn't been a thing basically in my entire adult life. So it's a good sign for the NBA that the east has popped in the way that it has this year. And obviously we're going to get a return of a team like Indiana into that field next year. Charlotte is going to continue to get better. Who knows what we'll get from Washington with Trey Young and Anthony Davis. Like, the east is on the way up, by the way. This year the west was just 220 and 204in head to head games against the east, which is a far better performance from the east than we had in the previous two seasons. Number five, Friday night was an absolute travesty. But I do have an idea for how to fix tanking. So we had this kind of like, consistent theme on Friday night from several teams, mainly the Clippers, the Lakers and the Nuggets. You have a really good team who plays a really bad team, plays really bad basketball just because they have no real interest in being there. And then the really bad team benches all their best players in the fourth quarter and the really good team ends up getting the win, satisfying the tanking needs of those teams. And all I could think while I was watching is, why are these teams even playing each other? It's terrible for everyone involved, like for the great teams. They just are practicing playing bad basketball. Why? Because they don't want to be there as competitors. They're just completely disengaged. I know as a Lakers fan, I've been worried about this stretch because the Lakers need to win because they have Denver hot on their heels. And Denver's probably going to win out. They have basically one tough game left on the schedule. That's that spurs game. And like, if the spurs and the Thunder bench their stars for this final couple games of the season, like, Denver's going to win out and so the Lakers need to win. And so I'm scared of this, like, Cleveland game on Tuesday and this Oklahoma City game on Thursday. And it worries me that, that they're playing Indiana, Brooklyn, Washington back to back to back right before those games. Why? Because it builds bad habits. They don't want to be there. They go out on the court and they practice playing Bad basketball. And then what happens is you run into a Cleveland and it's like a buzz saw that chews you up and spits you out because you're just not ready for that level of competition. It's bad for the good teams, it's bad for the bad teams because you have these good competitive young players on the teams that actually are playing well and then their competitive nature just gets jammed down in the mud as they get pulled out and they don't even get an opportunity to try to win. And then it's bad for us because it's objectively a terrible basketball product. Like, it's hard to watch those games. The basketball is not good. And so as I'm sitting there watching, like, look, I know I don't think tanking is as big of a deal as people make it sound. I saw some numbers going around. Like there's just as big of a problem in the NFL as with teams like intentionally losing to try to get high draft position. And generally speaking, I think the league is in a really good spot. There's all these young stars on the rise. The, obviously the social media part of the game is still exploding. It's arguably the best social media sport in the world right now. You have TV ratings up, like things are good for the NBA. I just generally think it's always a good idea to be trying to improve and to try to make things better. And there are way too many games in this final third of the season that are absolute garbage because you have good teams that don't want to be there and bad teams that aren't allowed to win. And so I had an idea. I've been thinking about this for a few weeks and like, look, I don't think the league's going to do much of anything and if they do, it'll just be more flattening of the lottery odds in all, in all likelihood. And it's just going to continue to lead to similar problems. And look, tanking is what it is and teams are going to try to be bad to get to the top of the draft. I understand that as a reality, no matter what the league does, a franchise altering talent that you get at the top of the draft is still the best pathway between point A and point B. Point A being bad and point B being consistently good. So teams are going to do that no matter what. My thing is like, cool, why are we having them play the good teams? And so what I would do is I would split the schedule into two portions from the beginning of the season. To the All Star break, have everybody play everybody. Normal schedule, just like we've had for years and years. Obviously, you'd have to do some tweaks to make sure everybody plays everybody in that span, so you'd have less repeat opponents and more, you know, variety as you play all 29 other teams at some point in that stretch. But then when I get to the All Star break, I would cut a new schedule, and I'd have the top 10 teams in both conferences. So the top 20 teams in the league separate and continue to play each other as they jockey for position and tune up for the postseason. They're always playing a serious team that's trying to win. And then I would take the bottom 10 teams, so the bottom five in each conference just have them play each other. Then what you get and, like, whether or not you want to. What you want to do with the odds, that's up to Adam Silver. If he wants to flatten them completely and give everybody, you know, so I'd have the teams that lose the play and obviously end up in the same lottery in some capacity. So, like, whether you want to flatten the odds and have all of them get the same, or you want to tweak the odds so that the worst team does get the best draft odds, and you do have teams tanking, at least let them tank against each other so we don't have to watch. And there would be incentive. If you're on the cusp, it now becomes more complicated if you're in that right around the 21st, 22nd best record, or you're right outside the top 10 in your conference, you're sitting there as an owner, and you're like, man, like, do I want to be playing against the best teams in the league over the final third of the season, or do I want to be playing against the bad teams in the final third of the season? There's a revenue conversation there that might drive teams to be like, let's try to win here, right? I think at the end, what you'd end up getting is a much better thing, a much better deal for the broadcast partners, because now the broadcasters just get a. A plethora of awesome games to choose from. Cause all the good teams are playing against each other, and all the bad teams, like, at least if they're tanking against each other, they have an opportunity to build some semblance of a winning culture, as all the young talent that's just trying to get reps is playing against the other young talent trying to get reps. It would essentially function as like a temporary relegation, not a full season relegation, but like, hey, I don't want the Denver Nuggets playing the Utah Jazz, who are intentionally trying to lose. When we get to late March, it's utterly pointless. During that first two thirds of the season, everybody plays, everybody, everybody gets their shot at the All Star break. You have a full week to put together a new schedule in that new schedule and have all the good teams play against each other, have all the bad teams play against each other. And I've heard people say, like, oh, well, how do you do this? With this, they found a way to add a bunch of games to the schedule surrounding the play in tournament, or, excuse me, the in season tournament. And like, oh, if you make it or you don't make it, we populate all these new games. The yes, the concert schedules are complicated. Things are complicated. The league could absolutely do this. They could absolutely build a schedule in a week. Towards the tail end of the season. I just think they got to try something because I was watching. And look again, like the league. There's a reason why all those games were on Friday night. It's because the NCAA tournament, the NBA knew not many people would be watching. But ultimately, why are we doing anything? That's a complete waste of everybody's time. Even though the league is healthy, even though things are trending in the right direction, why not make a tweak to try to again, tanking is tanking is tanking. Teams are going to tank. They want to get the stars. But there's no reason in the world to have a team that is intentionally losing playing against a team that is trying to win. That should never happen in the first two thirds of the season. There's a certain amount of that you can't avoid. But it always is especially egregious in the tail end of the season. Cause why in the first chunk of the season, the young teams are like, hey, let's see what we got. Let's play our guys and like, identify where we're at in this process. Then they go, oh, we suck. Okay, let's shut it down and let's see if we can't try to get a high draft pick. That the best chance for the bad teams to see their young talent actually perform and play hard is in that first two thirds of the season. All these games at the tail end are trash. And by the way, the owners still get satisfied. LeBron James still comes to town. You still, you still get your stars into your arenas. You still get the high profile matchups in that first 2/3 of the season. I just don't see any point post All Star break in having the Washington Wizards play the Los Angeles Lakers. It's a huge waste of time for everybody involved. Number six, the MVP discourse is completely off the rails, but I actually think the top five is pretty clear at this point. Barring some weirdness to end the season, the MVP discussion has become incredibly toxic. I think it mainly stems from stand culture because you you can't make a point about one player having an advantage over another for one reason or another without that player's fans becoming outraged that you would ever be nitpicky about the highest standard of basketball individual greatness in the world. And I will freely admit that the media doesn't do itself any favors here. I've seen plenty of ridiculous reasoning get thrown around by actual NBA awards voters. I get on. I understand that that throws everybody into consternation. You have the discussion about Wemby as people have pointed out and this is factually accurate. He just hasn't played as much as the other guys and that's certainly a factor, but it also lacks context. Yes, Wemby hasn't played as many minutes as the other stars in the NBA this year, but he's literally second in the league in raw plus minus despite being 103rd in total minutes played. That means nobody in the NBA is doing more to impact winning per minute than envy than Wemby. Everybody gets caught up in these cherry picked stats like oh, he's only averaging 24 points and three assists or he's been a bad isolation defender this year, something we've actually talked about on this show. But even in the context of those numbers, his overall impact is so overwhelming it cannot be ignored. We've talked about it before, but he's way better offensively than his numbers look because his vertical spacing and his roll gravity and how it consistently breaks the defense at the rim consistently generates open threes for the Spurs. They generate the most corner threes in the history of the NBA even with the bad isolation defense. The spurs with Wemby off the floor have a 118 defensive rating which is terrible. And they have a 104.5 with with him on which is awesome. So yeah, some social media dude for the NBA posted a stupid tweet of Taurean Prince passing up on a mid range jumper because he's under a directive to market an up and coming star. It was a dumb tweet. It doesn't change the fact that Wemby is already the most impactful defender in the history of the NBA. And for all the talk about Wemby's minutes as A team, they're plus 630 when he's on the floor this year, which is second in the NBA. And they're minus 28 when he's off the floor in a massive sample because his minutes are so low. So they're like actually legitimately threatening for the number one overall seed in the entire NBA, literally because of how earth shatteringly dominant Wemby has been when he's been on the floor. And the thing is, there's some precedent for this with Giannis in 2020. He only played 30 minutes a game that year. And what's funny is, is like I actually thought Giannis shouldn't have won MVP that year because they were blowing out a terrible Eastern Conference. That conference was legitimately terrible. The Lakers were right behind Milwaukee in the standings with LeBron James being just a better basketball player playing against way better teams every single night. Like, I didn't even think Giannis should have won that year. But the minute totals are kind of similar to what we're seeing with Wemby. Giannis was playing 30 minutes a game and they were cruising through a weak Eastern Conference schedule. Wemby, again, his team is losing the minutes when he's off the floor and he is so incredibly dominant when he's on the floor that in the brutal bloodbath of a Western Conference, he legitimately has a shot over the final couple of weeks here to get the number one overall seed. I personally have Shea as the MVP right now, and unless he like gets badly outplayed by Luca in these next couple of games and he gives up the one seed to San Antonio, I think he, I think Chase should win the award. In my reasoning, they're simple because Shays case is that he's looked like the best player in the world this year and he's on the best team. So like, if he had two bad losses to Luca, where Luca just looked better, that undercuts his best player in the world case. And if Wemby gets the one seed, that undercuts his, his, his best team in the league case. Right. So if that's certainly a chance there, but I don't think that's going to happen. And I think Shay's probably, I think Oklahoma City will probably win at least one, if not both of those games. And Shea will probably look every bit as good as Luka if, if not better than Luka. In those two games, right? So like, I think Shea's going to win the award, but we would be absolutely foolish to pretend as though Wemby doesn't have an awesome MVP case this year. He does. No one has done more to impact winning on a per minute basis this year than Wemby. And even if you take out all the time he's been off the floor, he's been so incredibly good in those minutes that it's been enough to drive maybe the best team in the league. We'll see over the last couple of weeks. And the Lucas stuff is insane to me. His stands has been the craziest that I've seen because like even saying something simple like hey, Luca's amazing, he might even be the best player in the world post All Star break. But Wemby and Shea have had better start to finish seasons and have impacted winning more overall. So they should probably be ahead of Luca and the MVP voting. Even if you say something like that to Luca stands, it's like slanderous. And again, I'll repeat this from earlier. I've heard some really dumb shit from some actual NBA voters about Luca's MVP case over the last few weeks, so they have some reason to be upset. But I'm sorry guys, Luca has zero shot to win the MVP this year. Like the conversation surrounding the defense. First of all, defensive metrics are super flawed. Even stuff like steals and blocks and like advanced metrics like the defensive catch alls are especially flawed. You have to trust your eyes with defense more than any other part of the game. And guess what? Luca has been great on defense post All Star break. But he was bad on defense pre All Star break. I don't care what the ISO numbers say. Any objective Laker fan that was watching the game, watching their games every night pre All Star will tell you the same. Yeah, it wasn't all his fault. The Lakers as a team were a terrible defense. But Luca was a huge part of that problem pre All Star break. Now the team is playing way better on that end and Luca has been a big part of that solution and he's upped his scoring volume and efficiency and he's turning the ball over less. That's why he might be the best player in the world right now, but MVP is a season long award. It's not who played the best defense in March and Luca finishing third in MVP isn't going to affect his standing in the league much. It sure as hell isn't going to save the Rockets or the Timberwolves from him in late April. No one's going to care whether or not he has the trophy when they're trying to guard him in psycho scoring mode in game four of a 2:1 series. Who cares? It's an award. Luke is not going to win it. He shouldn't win it and it will be okay. Like I said at the start of the segment, the top five to me is pretty clear. Here are the odds right now. And again, all of our lines are provided by a partner. Hard Rock bet. Shea is the favorite at minus 275. Wemby's in second place at plus 210. That feels right to me. Shea's the clear number one. But yeah, if Shea gets his butt kicked by Luca twice and loses that best player in the world aura and the spurs pass the Thunder in the standings like we mentioned earlier, Wemby has an awesome case and he'll probably win. I think that line, those lines, minus 275 plus 210, that strikes me as an accurate representation of the likelihood of those two things happening. More likely than not that Shea, at a very least, at the very least, plays Luca to a draw and WINS at least one of those two games, they'll probably keep the 1 seed. Even if they do get the. Even if the spurs do poach the one seed, if Shea still has that aura of best player in the world, he's probably the MVP. Minus 275 kind of reflects that. Wemby. There's this long shot of him getting it. That makes sense. Huge drop off to number three, Luca plus 1500. That makes sense to me. I don't think he has any real shot to win. It would require Luca kicking Shay's ass and Shay being in an awful shooting slump the rest of the season and Wemby missing games and getting disqualified. That's the shot. That's a long shot from there. Big drop off to Jokic. I think that makes sense. I saw a lot of people have Jokic over Luka and some of the conversations I've seen in the last few weeks, I thoroughly disagree. I think Jokic was clearly better than Luka up to his knee injury, but then he missed a bunch of time with his knee injury and I don't think Jokic has been nearly as good as Luka post injury. So I think Luka clearly has the edge over Jokic. That makes sense. And then there's another massive drop off from Yokich at +6000 to Jalen Brown at number five at +25000. That makes sense to Me, maybe Cade gets that if he stays healthy, but he doesn't. Cade's not going to qualify. Here's Jalen Brown. That makes sense to be at number five. And the number six is Donovan Mitchell at plus 50,000. Another massive gap. So like I said, like, the toxicity has been insane. There's been so much unreasonable shit getting thrown around by everybody. Everyone's entirely too sensitive about it. But like, the top five feels pretty clear to me. Shea's probably going to win. Slight chance for Wemby. Luka's a clear number three. Jokic is a clear number four. Jalen Brown's a clear number five. That's how I think it's going to end. And I think that that's right. That's exactly how I would have it.

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Basketball Analyst (51:12)

Number 7 Some injury weirdness is starting to pop up and we would do well to remember that most of the time it ends up playing a bigger role in any other than any other thing when it comes to the NBA playoffs. Jalen Brown's has dealing with some Achilles tendonitis. Aaron Gordon missed last night's game with some tightness in his calf. As we look back through NBA history, looking at last year, whether it was Damian Lillard tearing his Achilles in the first round or it was Jason Tatum tearing his Achilles in the second round, or if it was Aaron Gordon pulling his hamstring in Game six of the second round series against the Thunder, whether it was Tyrese Halliburton Terry's Achilles in Game 7 of the Finals when the Pacers were playing really well. Like more often than not we talk about all this stuff. We talk about matchups, we talk about what teams are good at, what teams are bad at. We would do well to remember that a lot of this is just who wins the war of attrition who actually has their best players available and at the top of their games when they get to the postseason. Number eight, the assist stat is broken and should probably be replaced with something that actually captures playmaking talent. This was the other big thing that kind of went wildfire, like, wildfire around the NBA. There was a game that Nicole Jokic had last week where he had 19 assists. And if you dig into the actual assists, a lot of them were like him throwing a dribble handoff to Jamal Murray. And the Jamal Murray, like, getting into his bag and hitting like, multiple dribble, multiple step back combination step back contested, crazy shots that he was making. And you're watching it and you're like, this is silly. This shouldn't be an assist. And of course, it bled right into stand culture because then every Nicola Jokic fan was like, oh, my God, we're trying to undercut Nicole Jokic. And it's like, come on, guys, we can have common sense here for a second. I think Nicole Jokic is the best passer in the NBA. I also think Nicola Jokic is literally the best offensive player I have ever seen. I have said that on this show many times. And those assists were bullshit. It can be both. It's not an indictment of Jokic that some of these assists are ridiculous. By the way, it's a league wide problem. Way too often you throw a swing pass to a dude on the wing and he hits a dribble combination to hit a shot and it counts as an assistant. I just generally think that it's okay for us to be like, hey, Jokic is the greatest offensive player ever. Jokic is the best passer in the league. Let's. Let's fix the assist stat. I take it a step further. Like. Like, because I. I saw a lot of Yokage fans be like, oh, well, he has this gravity when he sets his screens. He sets really good screens, and then his man stays attached to him. And then that gives Jamal Murray an advantage. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It gives Jamal Murray an advantage. You don't think Steph Curry has, through his gravity as a screener, created a million dunks as a screener for the exact same threat that you're talking about with Jokic. How many of those counted as assists for Steph Curry? I would j. I would tweak it to where anything that involves an action where the player is getting free off of a screen, the person who throws in the pass should not get credited with an assist. The assist stat should be reworked to specifically reflect a player hitting a player in finishing position. Catch and shoot threes, lob dunks, cuts underneath the basket, kick ahead, pass to a guy in transition who's open for a layup. The assist stat should reflect a player identifying a broken defense and making a read to a player in finishing position. A player coming off of a screen and scoring. There's too many moving parts. What happened before the screen, who's setting the screen, who's passing to the guy who's coming off of the screen. There's too many moving parts to give one single player the credit for that shot going in. And again, Jokic fans, don't be like the Luka fans, don't be like. Like Stan Behavior is literally ruining basketball discourse. I love Nikola Jokic. He's one of my favorite players to watch when I'm doing my film sessions and I get to watch the Nuggets. I'm stoked you guys know how I feel about him as a player. Those assists are bullshit. They shouldn't be assists. We should fix the stat. I don't think that that's a hot take. Number nine. Arizona and Michigan are playing for the national championship on Saturday night. We had a crazy weekend of college hoops. Once again, as an Arizona fan, I was panicking a little bit in that Purdue game. We talked about it earlier. They just came out kind of lacking that intensity. I thought they forced the issue a lot on offense in that first half. Just taking a lot of shots on the first attack that were kind of like sketchy contested twos. The Kov drop coverage with Kos and Aaka and every other one of their bigs who played like they. That wasn't working. Car was getting caught on the screens. Kos and A. Walker were struggling in space. So was Co A Pete. It. It just wasn't working. The Clough was kicking their ass on the offensive glass. They were knocking down threes. Their bench came in and was super active and did a lot of damage in that stretch. It was. It was. It was tough. Purdue looked like they were in control of that game. And then Arizona just came out and slight adjustment. Jaden Bradley goes on to. Goes on to Braden Smith instead of Carchenkov. That puts more speed on the ball, which helped their drop coverage. All of their guys up to their defensive intensity and their rotations and just beating Purdue to the ball on some plays that they weren't beating to the ball. And then I thought Kobe really saved their ass on offense. It's been really fascinating to watch Kobe this year. In the sense that he just had such a brutal offensive season for most of the middle chunk of the season. And then he's been one of the most reliable players in this NCAA tournament. Just his relentless rim pressure and his ability to either finish on the first attack or follow his own miss. Because he just like bulldozes to the rim and he'll miss a layup, but he'll bump the dude with the shoulder so hard that it'll like, clear out all this space. Then he'll just get his own rebound and go back up with it. Crevasse has been amazing at stretches. Jaden Bradley continues to just like, provide the big shot making in big spots. I thought, like in the Utah State game, he had a bunch of big buckets late. He had that crazy, like, double pump, step through lefty soft finish off the glass at the end of the Purdue game. That was insane. Braden Burry's like, the dude is just such a knockdown shooter and he just continues to hit tons of big threes as a team. All the little bits of defensive effort here and there. It was just really fun watching Arizona in that comeback. Now Michigan scares me again. If you looked at the one seeds, it was fascinating. Coming into the tournament, Florida was clearly the weak link. All the other teams were both elite on offense and on defense, statistically speaking. And then you looked at Florida and they just, they were like, they weren't a very good jump shooting team. It was very clear that they were not quite as good offensively as the other three in one seeds. And so Florida was the most likely one seed to get upset, and they did. Right? And then we get into the tournament and then it obviously looked like Duke was a level below the that Arizona, Michigan tier. They just, they really struggled in their first round game. They. They struggled in their Sweet 16 game. They like, they just. It was clear that Duke just didn't quite have the juice of the other two teams. And Duke ends up blowing yet another big lead in a tournament game. Yesterday in that wild finish in the Yukon game, I was Jo. I was joking with Jackson before the end of that game was absolute chaos. Because you have, obviously you have like, okay, what are they going to do? Are they going to foul after. After they make this free throw or are they not? And it's like. Cause they were in the one and one, right? So you think like, oh, just foul. Because if he misses the front end and then you get the ball back down too. And it's like, no, Dan Hurley decides not to foul. They end up getting the turnover. You can literally see on the camera that Dan Hurley's calling a timeout, but he doesn't get it, which, thank God, because that ended up leading to the Mullens wide open. Three. Mullins then bombs the three. Then one of the the Yukon players briefly runs on the floor, which is hilarious. We hear the Duke radio broadcast saying, like, oh, that should be a technical. Which obviously it shouldn't be. But then, like, Dan Hurley straight up headbutt the ref. Like, straight up headbutt the ref. And I'm watching that, and I'm like, oh, my God. Like, that. That could have been a technical. Like, if we woke up this morning and Duke. And Duke had won that game because Mullins hits the three, and then Dan Hurley headbutts the ref, and the ref step backs and steps back and tees him up. We're having a conversation this morning about how Dan Hurley runs too hot and he just cost his team a Final Four berth because he had but a damn ref like the kid running on the court. That would have been a travesty if they called that a technical. Dan Hurley is extremely lucky he did not get called for a technical when he headbutt the damn ref after a guy hit the shot. So Yukon advances. That game was just absolute batshit. That Illinois team is fascinating. They've got, like, just a bunch of dudes from Europe, and they're super skilled and good offensive rebounding team. And they ended up just kind of wearing Iowa down over time. I thought. I thought that Bennett Sturts could have been more aggressive in that game. I thought that was one of the big things that bothered me in the Iowa game is, like, just no one else for Iowa really had anything else going offensively. And it felt like the best shot for Iowa was just Bennett throwing something up. So I thought. I felt like he could have probably taken 10 more shots. But ultimately, Illinois just wore them down physically. To me, Illinois and Yukon are both like, a clear tier, like, if not two tiers below that Michigan and Arizona group. So to me, Michigan, Arizona on Saturday night, that is your national championship game. I'm worried about it specifically because I think Michigan has the size to match up with Arizona, and they both kind of neutralize each other in that way physically. But I think Michigan's frontline is just a little bit more experienced and a little more skilled. And so that scares me if, like, the physical battle turns into, like, the physical battle, you're always trying to go through people, but if the physical battle stops you from going through it, Turns into an over the top kind of game. And I trust Michigan over the top a little bit more than Arizona on the front line. Now obviously the equalizer. There are Buries and Bradley. I think they do have a slightly better backcourt. So like if Arizona can dominate there, that can make a huge difference. I, I would be, we would all be foolish to count Arizona out there. Just too resilient of a team. I haven't seen the line since but I know it opened at a pick em like a minus 110 bone going both ways. But like with, as a, as an Arizona fan, like I obviously have belief but like Michigan is just a completely different animal than the other teams that, that Arizona faced along the way. So that's going to be a really fun one on Saturday night. Whoever wins, I think is going to beat the winner of that Yukon Illinois game on Monday night. And just I, I was telling Jackson before like I. Arizona has gotten me into college hoops in a way that I haven't been in years. Just simply because when I was a kid, like I literally, it was like religion in Tucson. Every time Arizona played, we all were in front of the TV and like, you know, one of my buddies, a groomsman in my wedding, ended up actually playing at the U of A. And I remember, I still remember the day when he got the call from Sean Miller. At the time like it was just like, like it was every kid's dream to go play at Arizona. It was such a big deal for me growing up. But then when I started covering the NBA, I just. So much NBA, so much basketball for so long. I just didn't really have the bandwidth for it. And this year has been the closest I've followed college basketball in years. And I just, I love it so much. And I was telling Jackson like, I think I'm just going to try to do a better job of following it in the future because of how much I love it and how much I've enjoyed it this year. Last one, number 10. The tough coaching style has its place in moderation, but I am really fascinated, I would have been fascinated to see what a guy like Dan Hurley would have looked like if he coached an NBA team. Like if you would have taken that Lakers job. So there was all this conversation surrounding tough coaches because we had, you know, several coaches in this tournament have moments where yelling at, screaming, yelling and screaming at players. The overall level of intensity and like my, my opinion lands kind of firmly in the middle there because like on the one hand you have these, some of these coaches I think Dan Hurley specifically is, I, I'm trying to prep men for the real world and it's like, yeah, like that doesn't mean you have to be an asshole all the time either. You know what I mean? So like, I, I, I, I think that tough coaching has its place, but I think that when it's kind of like the only thing you do, and I'm not, I'm not accusing Hurley of this, I'm just saying, like, I think that coaches that run at like that crazy, off the charts intensity all the time can be a little much. And I actually think it can have drawbacks. Like, to me, the, the, like the best style of coaching is a coach that has a control over his emotions, but that can bring the intensity when it's needed. The reason why I feel that way is like, basketball games are very emotional things. And especially at the college level, in the high school level, you're dealing with kids. Like, I've coached high school basketball. Like they're, they're kids and they are very emotional and they do lose their composure often. And so having a coach that like, even when you're playing really well, comes to the huddle and is like measured and under control, but then also when you're playing really shitty is like measured and under control, but that also when shit that cannot be allowed is happening can step up and bring the intensity. Like one of the defining moments I can think of of my basketball development was in my second year playing in college in Juco. I'm up in Price, Utah. It's like winter time and we used to have 6am workouts out on the soccer field and it was cold and wet and miserable and we were just doing like planks and I was like giving up on the plank. And I remember shout out coach Carter Rowe. Literally my favorite assistant coach that I ever had in my time playing. And he's just a really good friend of mine and a dude that I absolutely loved playing for. He like got down in my face and basically called me a pussy and said that I, that I, my problem was that I wasn't tough. And he was like screaming in my damn face at like 6 o' clock in the morning while I'm in a plank position in like 37 degree weather. And it's like wet, like it was like, and I think it was like a wake up call for me because it's like, yeah, like there's a toughness element that I was missing as a player at that point. Or like, you know, I, that's just One example, but there are dozens of examples over the years where, when I was playing where like, a. A coach was able to reach a point emotionally with me as, like, an intense level of coaching that resonated with me. But there are also times when, like, you're down on yourself and the last thing you need is a coach that gets in your face and calls you a pussy. Right? Like, there's also a point where, like, you need someone that can help infuse you with confidence. Right? And so, like, I just think it's complicated. Like, to me, everything is on an individual basis. There are certain players that handle tough coaching really well, and there are certain players that don't. There are certain situations that call for tough coaching, and there are certain situations that don't. So, like, the answer to my kind of. My kind of take on the tough coaching thing is, like, as a coach, it should be something you're capable of doing, but you should be able to have enough control over your emotions as the coach to be able to pick and choose when you bring that level of intensity. That's just my take on it. The other small, important detail here is, like, there are super calm coaches that have won lots of championships, and there are super intense asshole coaches that have won lots of championships. So just like anything else, there's a million ways to skin a cat and, like, you can do the job in a million different ways and be successful. Dan. No. Good luck telling Dan Hurley he's doing anything wrong. Like, even the headbutt thing. Good luck telling Dan Hurley is doing anything wrong. The dude keeps winning. So, like, there is no, like, right way to do it. My personal opinion on that profession is that if you have control over your emotions and you can pick and choose when to be intense, that's for the best. Because you're dealing with kids that don't have control over their emotions. So you kind of have to be the adult in the room, if that makes sense. Lastly, how funny would it have been just watching Dan Hurley trying to coach the Los Angeles Lakers, like, to. To coach this team with, like, Luka and LeBron and Austin and, like, I think it could. I think it would go one of two ways. It would either go amazing and the dudes would all go to war for him, or he'd get in a fistfight behind closed doors with one of his players within the first three weeks and he'd get quit or he'd get fired. Like, there's no middle ground there. Because, like, again, there's something about the reverence you get from youth. That kind of allows Hurley to get away with a lot of the stuff he does that like grown ass men might be like, dude, chill the fuck out and get out of my face. You know what I mean? So like I, I, I think it would have been really, really interesting just to, just to watch from an entertainment standpoint, to watch Dan Hurley try to coach an NBA team. All right guys, that's all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. We will be back tomorrow with more game reaction. I will see you guys there.

Podcast Host (68:21)

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Basketball Analyst (68:50)

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