NBA Analyst (2:03)

The Volume. All right. Welcome to Hoops tonight here at the Volume. Happy Thursday everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week. Got a jam pack show for you guys today. Kind of a crazy night in the NBA. Last night we had 41 year old LeBron James giving up a dunk fest in Indiana in the sixth road game in 10 nights including two ridiculous posters of Jay Huff. Jamal Murray dropped a 50 piece. Jokic almost had a 20, 20, 20. Atlanta won this crazy overtime thriller in Detroit. But we are going to focus on the two national TV games last night, which also happen to be very important games. A potential NBA Finals preview between the Thunder and the Celtics where Jaylen Brown ended up getting the best of Shay Gils Alexander. We're going to be diving into that game from a bunch of different angles. Then at the tail end of the show, Houston and Minnesota both actively tried to lose. What is what I think the second really, really, really important game that we've had so far this season in terms of playoff seating. I talked about that Lakers Rockets game last week on Wednesday night. That was really important for the three seed in the West. This one was really important for the five and six seeds in the West. Both teams tried to lose. Minnesota ended up coming back and winning. So now Minnesota has the inside track on that five seed in the Western Conference. We're going to be breaking down those games from the perspective of both teams. 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. Don't forget to 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 mailbags in mailbag questions into our weekly mailbag, drop them in our full episodes on YouTube and we'll get to them on Fridays throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Celtics get a big win last night. I cannot overstate how big of a win this was for the Celtics. In many ways it was proof of concept for their championship formula. I talked earlier this week after they lost to Minnesota about how if I absolutely had to pick a team to win the Eastern Conference, I'd lean ever so slightly towards Boston because the Celtics, excuse me, the Cavs have looked so bad post Hardin trade. Although Jared Allen being out obviously plays a role, a role there and I just trust the Celtics a little bit more than the other flawed teams in that tier. But I had not seen anything from them to clearly demonstrate that they were like a full level above the teams in that tier. I didn't see any like real separation and the reason for that was how bad they had fared in the big high profile games this season. Going into last night, the Celtics had been 6 and 14 in games that were a game in games against teams that were in the top 10 in point differential and some consistent themes had shown up in Those losses one, of the inconsistency of their shot creation at the top of their roster and then two, the lack of defensive versatility that they had shown in previous iterations of the Celtics that had made deep playoff runs and even won a championship. Last night was the kind of signature win that alleviated most of my concerns on those two fronts and actually for the first time all season, made me feel like the Boston Celtics are clearly the best team in the east with some clear separation from that tier of teams at the top of the conference. Not only was it a convincing win where they seem to be in complete control, especially in the second half versus what I believe is the best team in the NBA, but it also directly addressed some of my biggest concerns about the team, starting with the shot creation piece. I thought last night was one of their best offensive process games of the season, especially relative to the competition and especially in that second half. It wasn't perfect. I thought Jalen, especially early in the game was forcing things a little bit, made some bad reads. Sam Houser was like getting wide open every time to start the game and was just smoking open look after open look after open look which was failing to pay off those sequences of Celtics offense. But the second half in particular was one of their best offensive halves of the season. The Celtics hung a preposterous 1:46 offensive rating in the second half against that vaunted OKC defense and all of their strengths were on display. We got to start with Jalen Brown though. There is still a consistency piece that separates him from the top guys, but all of the reps that he's gotten as a true number one this year have led to a ton of improvement in his floor game. What I mean when I say floor game, I talk about this a lot. It's just the possession to possession flow. Understanding not just this possession and getting a bucket or filling your individual box score but but running a team over a hundred possessions, not five possessions, right? That's floor game in my opinion. It's the kind of thing that point guards are known for. But as the game has changed and primary ball handlers have become more positionless, it's something that we've looked at for, for basically every spot on the floor right in the second half. Jalen Brown goes for 24 points, four rebounds, five assists in just two turnovers. It was honestly Shea esque the way he was punishing okc and I want to set that aside for a minute cause I want to talk a little bit later about what Jalen needs To do to actually become a guy that's viewed on the same tier as the players on the top of the league. But it was Shea esque in the sense that he was getting consistent dribble penetration in the middle of the floor, getting baskets for himself at the rim, getting to the foul line. A ton of good kickouts to shooters. When the team was loading up on him, I thought he handled the, the ball pressure really well. Like his dribbling. His ball handling was really solid in traffic. He used the same kind of grifty tricks that Shea uses to punish defenders for being aggressive. Like got Alex Crusoe with a rip through move. He was using pump fakes to get to the fouling. Had a big one against Shay Gilders Alexander in the second half, seeking contact on his drives. He shot 14 free throws in the second half alone because, okay, he couldn't guard him and he wasn't settling. He took seven shots in the second half. Aside from that one, the, the, like there's a. The jumper he took on Shay, which was more of like a. Like he took it because he knew he had an opportunity to draw. Foul drives into Shea's chest. Gives him the same kind of Shay offarm. Shay tries to recover on the pump fake, gets up into his space and he draws the foul. But other than that, all of his shots in the second half were at the rim and he was doing it against apex defenders. He had three half court driving finishes against Caruso, Dort and Kason. Wallace had a beautiful one against Lou Dort in the right corner where flashes to the corner, throws a pump fake that gets Lou Dort to get out of his stance just a little bit. Comes out of the pump fake, rips nice and low so Lou can't get to the basketball. Gets past him, gets all the way to the rim and finishes Caruso out of a horn set on the right elbow, just spins right off of him and dunks all over Jalen Williams at the basket. Kayson Wallace pressuring him out 40ft from the basket. Just taking care of the basketball, using his body to protect it and weaponizing that pressure against Case and gets all the way to the basket and finishes. This forced Oklahoma City to guard Jaylen Brown the way that they were guarding Shea. Aggressive nail help before he looked to drive hard help in the lane. When he did get downhill, Jalen was using a lot of guard screens to try to attack guys like Isaiah Joe and Jared McCain. And OKC was briefly putting two on the ball and like hedging recover sequences that turned into a bunch of opportunities for easy threes. Nail help swing pass Peyton Pritchard. Knock it down, guys. Slipping out of a guard screen when there's a hedge wide open three at the top of the key, get into the lane, swing it out to Baylor Shireman on the left side of the floor. He was generating a bunch of wide open threes off of his drives because he was relentless getting to the rim. He wasn't settling and it was forcing Oklahoma City to really compromise their defense to stop him from getting to the rim. It was a wonderful second half from him. Mike Wilbon had that I'd vote Jaylen Brown for MVP take the other day that he got absolutely shredded for and frankly he deserved it. He's an actual voter and Jaylen Brown is nowhere even remotely close to the MVP this year. There is a very large consistency and efficiency gap between him and his peers and the value metrics are kind of like a stratosphere away from the top candidates. I don't think he could be any higher than fifth. I mean his true shooting percentage, it's literally 10% below Shea. I'm a big Wilbon fan. I grew up watching pti like many sports fans. But voting Jalen Brown number one is completely irresponsible and honestly should have his vote taken away. But that doesn't mean that Jalen doesn't have that ceiling in there or that he can't get to that point eventually. I talk about this all the time, but the difference between the top tier guys in the second tier guys is literally just that consistency piece. The guys that are on that second tier, they're capable of on any given night reaching the level of the top tier superstars, but they just can't get there consistently. There are nights where you watch Jalen Brown, you watch Jalen Brunson, Anthony Edwards, Donovan Mitchell, Cade Cunningham. There's a few other players in that group too. When you're watching those guys on any given night they can look like the best player in the world. They can even outplay the top guys in a one game sample. I thought Jaylen Brown straight up outplayed Jake Eldest Alexander last night. 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Apple Card Advertiser (13:30)

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Verizon Advertiser (14:22)

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Ryan Seacrest (15:09)

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NBA Analyst (15:40)

And that was a huge part of why the Celtics won. But those guys tend to struggle to sustain that level for one reason or another. And this is where it gets interesting. For guys like Cade or Ant, it's a youth thing. They need time to develop that consistency as they just get more experience in the league. For guys like Jalen Brunson and Donovan Mitchell, it's because they are not physically imposing enough. Even Tatum over the years failed to like really stake a consistent claim in that level because he doesn't have a very quick first step and his jump shot was just always so inconsistent over the last few years. Although I do feel like Tatum was really on the precipice of getting there before his injury, so we'll see if he can get back there if he gets an extended time. And we have pretty large sample of guys making pretty solid recoveries from Achilles, so I wouldn't write Tatum off in that regard. Jaylen Brown is kind of a unique case, though. I really think Even at age 29 there's a pathway for him to get there because he's just such an incredible athlete. I think the partnership with Tatum, which was completely worthwhile. They're both champions now and they've had some of the most consistent playoff success in the league over the last half decade. Decade or so. Half decade plus, let's just call it. But that partnership has prevented him from getting the reps that he needed as a number one to reach that level in this year in the extended reps as A number one that has allowed Jalen to flash that ceiling like he never has before. I actually think Jaylen Brown's pathway, and this is where I want to go back to the Shay piece. I actually think Jaylen Brown's pathway resembles kind of what Shea Gilgis Alexander's game looks like just more of a hybrid two way version of it. That second half is the formula relentless rim pressure that leads to simple reads. Most of Jalen Brown's inefficient nights or his nights where he doesn't look like a top tier star. Most of them center around like a poor floor game like we talked about earlier, forcing things that aren't there at the rim, or settling for mediocre jump shots when he's physically aggressive towards the rim like he was in that second half. And when he takes the easy kickout reads that come available to him as a result of that aggression and the lack of settling, he's borderline unstoppable. I don't even think he would need to become as refined as a jump shooter as Shay because he brings some different elements to the table like his ability to play bully ball, which Shea can't play, or the fact that he can be one of the apex perimeter defenders in the NBA. This guy has on his highlight reel an NBA Finals where he really did an amazing job on Luka Doncic. And I'd argue he's already a good enough mid range shooter to counter his ability to attack the rim. I don't think he needs to become dramatically better as a mid range shooter or a way better three point shooter. To me it's all about the process piece. If he doesn't settle and he focuses on attacking and he takes the easy reads that are available and he can consistently do that night in and night out while also being one of the best perimeter defenders in the league that is a top tier superstar in this league. If he can tie the consistency piece to that process, I actually think that ceiling exists in there. In that second half he was drawing a lot of similar coverages that Shay draws. The aggressive nail help, the aggressive help on drives, the two on the ball sequences and guard guard screens especially. And he was punishing them in similar ways to what Shea does just with that unique little bit of Jaylen Brown flair, the bully ball, the athleticism at the rim. In other words, is Michael Wilbon right, that Jaylen Brown is the MVP of the league this year? Absolutely not. But this season, for the first time in his career, I have felt like Jalen is capable of Becoming a legit top tier superstar in this league before he exits his prime. He's got a few more years here where he can do that. He just has to bottle up that process from the second half last night and be consistent with it again. I thought he straight up outplayed Shay and it was a sight to behold. And frankly, that's the version of Jalen that is capable of leading this Celtics team back to the trophy. Now we got to shout out some other elements of the Celtics offense last night. Each guy kind of made their mark in their own way. Tatum and Derek White had their struggles last night against the Oklahoma City defense, but they both also had important runs that helped the team win. Jason Tatum had like an eight point burst in like two minutes in the second quarter that was massive in this game. Derek White, there was a sequence where OKC started to build some separation. Derek White banged back to back threes that helped kind of stymie in Oklahoma City run. Peyton Pritchard had a really nice second half. How about Baylor Shireman? Man, he was killing the thunder off the ball. Smart relocations to punish okc help defenders when they would turn their heads. That was generating quality spot up opportunities that he was paying off with catch and shoot threes. Even had a really nice kind of like pump fake relocate off of one dribble, knock down three off of the left wing. He caught J Dub with his back turn and crashed out of the right corner and got a tip dunk. He had 11 points all in the second half and in 13 second half minutes he was plus 14. An amazing night for Baylor. Shireman, he's been a revelation this year. I thought Kato was a monster in the second half. He ran some quality drop coverage on Hartenstein and Caruso, which I want to set that aside. We're going to get to that more when we talk the defensive end of the floor. But he had a really good defensive second half. He had some big offensive sequences in the second half. Like he had this play where him and Hartenstein were tied up around the right elbow and he just hit him with a swim move just out scrapped him. Got the offensive rebound, went up with the left shoulder hook in the lane and hit. It was a big put back in that second half run. Get a beautiful short roll read the Celtics run a lot of stack, pick and roll. It's one of their pet actions. All that is is just a ball screen with, you know, Jalen Brown at the top of the key coming off the screen. Kate is rolling and they'll have Peyton Pritchard or Derek White set a back screen for Keda as he's rolling. It's a pet action that we see a lot around the league, but the Celtics run at a ton and it works really well because not only do they have really good guards that can shoot that set the back screens, but Peyton Pritchard and Derek White are very good at making sure they go out of their way and see where the big is and make sure they actually make contact on that screen and so they'll get, you know, Derek White got an easy driving layup out of their stack, pick and roll. They got some good quality threes out of their stack pick and roll. Like they get a lot of good looks out of that. But like there was one where Nemi K because again like a lot of those sequences they actually forced tags because they're so difficult to guard, which means Kate is going to catch on the roll and have to make a complicated read in the middle of the floor. He'd have really nice kick out read to Baylor Shireman in the left corner on one of those stack pick and roll reps. Sam Houser, to his credit after being absolutely broke to start the game, stayed aggressive and hit two massive threes in the second half. Even Luca Garza and Hugo Gonzalez contributed in their own ways. I thought, I thought Garza was actually really good yesterday. Him and Hugo both hit a three. Garza was rolling hard and had some success at the basket. Again, a 1:46 offensive rating in the second half against that Oklahoma City defense. That's nothing to shake a stick at. It was one of their best offensive performances of the season, if not the best. So as I mentioned at the top, my two main areas of concern with the Celtics against top teams were offensive process and defensive versatility. Last night was also a really strong sign on that second front. On the defensive versatility front, first of all, we did see their base drop look have some real success, especially in that second half when Cato was out there against the Thunder starters especially they were running a really deep drop coverage with him on Hartenstein and they were basically daring Shea to beat them with pull ups. They weren't helping as much off the ball in those deep drop looks with Hartenstein on the floor and he did hit a few, hit a big pull up three to start the second half, for example. But in that third quarter, the Celtics got a lot of stops with that drop look because Jalen was able to get over the top of the screens. Kada was able to shut off the rim and the role, he did a really good job pushing Hartenstein's floaters just a little bit further out and getting good contests. Those are money when he's a little closer and open, but you push him a couple feet further back and you get a good contest, he'll smoke them. Smoked a couple of floaters on pocket passes because Jalen was pursuing over the top, they were able to get Shay to pick up his dribble in the middle of the floor a few times. They got some stops with their deep drop coverage look, their base look, but they also flashed several different looks. And this is the key, this is the versatility element that's going to be absolutely necessary for them to win four playoff rounds. We saw a look when Hardenstein was off the floor where OKC went smaller, where they put Tatum on Chet Holmgren and put K on Caruso. That's the look that Boston used in the title run back in 2024. It gives them the ability to shut down the normal screening actions that they run with Chet, and it forces OKC to do something that's kind of uncomfortable for them. In this case, mediocre Alex Caruso pick and pop threes that he was missing hit a couple of them, but the offense was not getting into their flow and he missed several. And then on Shay's isos in particular, when he was trying to ISO guards, they were aggressively gapping aggressively, helping especially off the likes of Lou Dort, Alex Crusoe and Kayson Wallace. And that helped drive down Shay's shot attempts and forced a lot of mediocre catch and shoot threes for Oklahoma City's lesser shooters. They were able to get a lot of stops in a lot of different ways, and that's a really strong sign. I know that Celtics fans have been very confident in this group and believed in their chances throughout the season, and I get that. I totally understand. But given the massive roster turnover and the difference in the Tatum Brown dynamic from last year, I personally wanted to see some of these things come to fruition against this type of team for me to really get on board. I'm on board now. I think the Celtics team is clearly better than Detroit, Cleveland and New York. I think they're going to win the Eastern Conference, and I think they have a good shot against anybody coming out of the West. Last night was the proof of concept for me.

Verizon Advertiser (26:44)

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Ryan Seacrest (27:33)

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NBA Analyst (29:29)

All right, before we get out of here today, let's talk a little bit about Houston and Minnesota. This is one of the strangest games that I can ever remember watching. I actually was watching this game live with my wife. I had to get up really early this morning, so I was like, I'm going to watch this game. It'll just kind of help me with my process tomorrow morning. A lot of times I watch film in the morning, but last night I was watching the game. I turned this game off twice. The Timberwolves controlled it throughout. Kevin Durant, Reed shepherd both had disaster jump shooting games. Minnesota had this like balanced two way attack that was working. Jaden McDaniels was fantastic. His offensive improvement has been so much fun to watch this year. Julius Randle kind of had a rough shooting night, but he got going late in the game. The Wolves went up by 11 with three minutes left. And I turned the game off and I was like, all right, I've seen enough to get through this particular game. Let's relax. We put on How I met your mother. We've been rewatching. We usually watch some sort of brainless TV right before bed to help us calm our brains down and go to sleep. And so we put on How I met your mother. And then a few minutes later, I peek at the score and Kevin Durant's heading to the foul line on an away from the play foul with a chance to tie the game and get the ball back. And I'm like, what the hell happened, right? So I immediately go back and I rewind to where the run started and try to diagnose what happened. And the Rockets just reached this insane level defensively in large part because Shangoon was an absolute wrecking ball flying around up at the level, at the level of screens, like hard switching onto the perimeter with physicality. He was helping at the rim. I've talked a lot about how Sengun is a bad defender, but he's not like other bad defenders that are physically limited. It's mostly a process thing for him and like a technique thing. He's athletic, he should be a good defensive player. And he flashed that ceiling at the end of regulation there, flying around the perimeter. He made two insane help side blocks. This one where he recovered at the rim and blocked with two hands, had another one that saved the game after KD had yet another sloppy turnover against a double team on the final player regulation. It's crazy to watch because like Shane Goon single handedly wrecked the Minnesota offense down the stretch of regulation and got his team back into the game. And again, you got to try to bottle that up. If you're Shang Goon because that's the difference between like a flawed player that probably can't win a championship and the version of Shangun that can lead Houston to a championship. One day Kevin Durant started hitting shots that unlocked the Shangoon in the pocket stuff. Both him and KD had ridiculous poster dunks in that run and we ended up in overtime. Special shout out to Rudy Gobert by the way, who had an insane ISO stop against Kevin Durant. Kind of got crossed up but his recovery athleticism is amazing and he actually blocked Katie at a pull up which is something you just don't see very often. And that saved the Wolves from a potential disaster in that final sequence. The Rockets then immediately blitz the Wolves to start overtime. It was a 26 to 2 run, turning an 11 point deficit into a 13 point lead in less than six minutes of game clock. Reed shepherd kind of takes a bad three but to get an offensive rebound and he finally hits one, a wide open one on the left wing. KD gets another transition dunk off their defense. Then KD hits a pull up three in Julius Randall's face. Reed shepherd jumps a dho, kind of a sloppy DHO from Kyle Anderson where he didn't make enough contact and he left a gap. Reed shepherd shot it, went down the other end, dropped it off to Amend Thompson for a dunk. And then Houston caps off the run with yet another KD Shangun two man game where he hit Shangun in the pocket for yet another dunk. They're up 13am I turn off the game again. We go back over to how I met your mother. So like a half hour later I'm literally getting ready for bed and I get a text from Yovon Buha. We have a pod that we do twice a week. It's with Trevor Lane and it's called Lakers Collective. And we just talk Lakers and our producer texts us and he just asks for like a rundown. He in the format of the show, they have like a little segment rundown on the left side. So he'll text us usually the night before the show. And I'll just be like, hey, what are the topics for tomorrow? And whoever, whichever one of us three is available, we'll just send over what we think the topics are. And so Yovon ends up sending a list of four topics. And one of them is like after Houston loses tonight, they're very likely to get the six seed. And that means that they're most likely going to match up with the lakers in the first round. What does that matchup look like etc. So I read that and I'm immediately like, oh, Yovon must not have seen the comeback. So I, I go to text him back and tell him to fix it, but then I'm like, let me just go to the ESPN app just in case. And Houston blew it again. I couldn't believe it when I saw the app, the score in the app. So of course I get my laptop out and I pull up the film and it was an absolute catastrophe. Starts with like this sloppy defensive possession. They double Julius Randall on the right side and then they both rotate to the left wing. They send two defenders over to the left wing in rotation. So kind of a sloppy rotation leaves Mike Conley wide open in the corner. He knocks down a three, Jabari Smith misses a wide open three. And then Shangun gets lazy and misses a box out on a Julius Randall missed right handed layup. Kyle Anderson gets an easy put back plus the foul. Suddenly it's a seven point game. And that's usually how these kinds of comebacks start. It's. It usually is like a couple of lazy possessions that turn an insurmountable lead into something achievable. And that's what it was. A quick two play, three play sequence where like you have a sloppy double, a guy misses an open shot which ain't your fault, and then you have a missed box out. And like Banks 13 point game turns into a 7 point game. Suddenly Minnesota believes they can win. Right then Julius Randle throws some token ball pressure against Shangun. I don't know why Sengun is bringing the ball up the floor, but Shangun's bringing the ball before Julius Randall ball pressures him. Does a great job holding his ground. Julius was fantastic down the stretch of this game. Beats Shangun to the spot several times and forces Shangun into an eight second violation. So the Wolves get the ball back. Reed Shepherd's playing some denial at the top of the key. Dante Divincenzo back, cuts him, gets the layup on the right side of the rim, reverse around Changun, all of a sudden it's a five point game more good Randall defense. Shangun ends up another kind of sloppy double team sequence where for some reason Amend Thompson was in the left corner. And this is another thing that drives me crazy with the Ime Udoka situation. They've struggled so much with capitalizing on these four on threes just because of simple spacing stuff. Kind of tag that and hold it for later because I want to talk about how like dumb Houston can be sometimes and just in terms of their collective basketball iq, but amen. Thompson ends up catching in the corner, wide open, doesn't want to shoot it for obvious reasons. He dumps it to Shangun. Shangun has to throw like a kind of a late non advantage post up against Randall. Randall just stonewalls him again, forces him into a tough kind of hook underneath the basket. He smokes it. So Minnesota gets the ball back and then Changun, who again was great on defense to start, missed box outright, had it took a bad angle on the Dante DiVincenzo back cut, gets beat on the right side of the rim. Then Julius Randle smokes him with another left hand to drive to the basket because he takes a bad angle. So for all the good defense at the end of regulation, the Shangun bad defense comes back in overtime. Randle gets that lefty layup, now we're back within three. Then Kevin Durant turns it over on a double team again, just loses the basketball and throws it right to the other team. Dante DiVincenzo comes off a dribble handoff coming from underneath the basket, hits a three, this game is tied. Then Sengun tries to ISO Randle again. Randle defends him really well again, really strong technique on defense, beating him to spots, disrupting his base, being very physical again. When you're playing post players, you can't really bother them up top because they usually have a size advantage. You want to get up underneath them, you want to bother their base, force them into tougher hooks that are further from the basket that are off balance. Forces him into a really tough long hook. He misses it. Then Randle games him with a pull up jumper over Jayshawn Tate in the middle of the lane. He actually tied off the game with a great vertical contest of Durant at the rim that I did not think was a foul, but he got called a foul and Kevin Durant went over there and missed the free throws and the Wolves end up winning. Absolute insanity. Games like that are actually the hardest to analyze because there's no real narrative flavor flow to it. It looked like the Wolves were the better team throughout. So I suppose you could say the Wolves should have won and they did. But Houston looked like the best team in the world there for like six minutes and then they just completely implode right back. It was one of the crazier games I've ever seen. We even got Go Bear fouling out on kind of iffy call where him and Shane Goon just got tangled up. I didn't really like falling Gobert on, out, out on a play like that. And then we had a terrible Scott Foster rejection of Nas Reed because he got his feelings hurt. I don't know, just classic Scott Foster. But that ejection was ridiculous. It was just an insane game. My takeaways are pretty simple from this one on the Wolves front, I continue to really like this team. I just think that when they ratchet things up defensively, they're one of the best two or three defenses in the league. Even Randall, who's been so bad at times, was fantastic down the stretch defensively and can be really good when he wants to be. You have Go Bear switchability, which is a huge part of their versatility. That huge block on KD at the end of regulation. They're just as high a defensive ceiling team as we have in the NBA. And they have all that aggregate offensive talent, all that ball handling and shooting and athleticism that makes them so hard to guard on the other end of the floor. But the Rockets, it is a doomed combination of stars that can't really handle the ball in an incredibly low amount of aggregate skill and IQ off of them. Doris Burke was calling this out through the game. It was amazing how often you would just have bad decision making off of their stars. Jayshawn Tate takes a horrible right corner three towards the end of regulation where you're like, what are you doing? There's all this time on the shot clock. It's just a bad shot. Amend Thompson had a short roll read in the middle of the floor where he missed Jabari Smith wide open in the right wing. Amen Thompson spotting up in the left corner off of a KD double team, a spot where he cannot be a threat. That's why when I look at like the playoff matchups, like, I think the Lakers are a lot better than they were last year and I do think that they would be more competitive against the Timberwolves than they were last year. I think even Timberwolves fans would agree with that. But like, I think the I the Wolves absolutely scare me more as a playoff team because I know what their ceiling looks like and I know they have the combination of what you need on both ends of the floor to be a real problem in a playoff series. I don't think the Lakers are guaranteed to beat the Rockets. I just won't make that mistake anymore, especially with how big and physical they are, because we've just seen so many examples in NBA history of just how different the playoffs are when the whistle changes. So I'm not going to sit here and be like, oh, the Lakers are guaranteed to beat Houston. I would favor them, but I would not write the Rockets off in that series. But they are unquestionably the worst team in that tier simply because of the fact that they are not smart enough or skilled enough as a basketball team to solve the puzzles that you have to solve in the NBA playoffs and as a Laker fan again. And they're not guaranteed to get the three seed either. Denver has a super easy schedule. Down the stretch. Denver could win out and the Lakers could drop two games against Oklahoma City and all of a sudden one more loss and they're in the four seed. So it's not guaranteed by any means. But if the Lakers can hold on to that three seed, Houston is absolutely the best possible matchup for them because they are just not smart enough to solve those puzzles that you run into in the NBA playoffs. 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 have a mailbag coming out tomorrow and then obviously we have a tournament weekend. I'm excited to watch Arizona tonight in their matchup with Arkansas. Let's just pray that we don't get killed by Darius Acuff, but I hope everyone has a fun weekend watching hoops. Enjoy the mailbag tomorrow and I will see you guys on Monday.

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