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Greg Rosenthal
25 greatest football players to grace the gridiron since the year 2000? Introducing N NFL Daily's top 25 players of the last 25 years join me, Greg Rosenthal and an all star cast of media personalities including Mina Kimes, Steve Wych, Kevin Harlan and more. For a look at football's best since the turn of the century. Listen to NFL Daily's top 25 players of the last 25 years starting on June 30th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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The Volume.
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All right, folks, this is insane. For the first time ever, we've got a full blown all women's boxing mega event going down in New York City. Two title fights on the same night. Let's go. And if you're like me and you love the action, DraftKings sportsbook is where it's at. We're talking Katie Taylor versus Amanda Serrano three the trilogy fight absolute legends. Katie's putting her super lightweight belt on the line and you know Serrano's bringing the heat. But don't sleep on the co main. Alicia the Bomb Baumgartner explosive power is taking on the undefeated WBA interim champ Jennifer Miranda. That one's going to be fireworks. If you've never bet with Draftkings it's super simple. Just pick who you think is going to win. That's it. Easy. And check this out. If you're new to DraftKings, throw down five bucks and boom, you get $150 in bonus bets instantly. It's wild. Download the DraftKings sportsbook app right now and use promo code HOOPS. That's H O O P S. That's code hoops for new customers to get $150 in bonus bets instantly. When you bet just five bucks only on DraftKings, the crown is yours. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER in New York, call 877-8-HOPE NY or text HOPENY to 467-369 in Connecticut. Help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org Please play responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino and Resort in Kansas. 21 plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void. In Ontario, bonus bets expire seven days after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG co. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Tuesday everybody. Hope all you guys having a great start to your week. Got a jam packed show for you guys today. We're gonna start with some mailbag questions. I got about five of them from your guys's comments over the course of the last week. We're gonna hit those questions off the top. And then every year since I've started doing this, we've done an episode shortly after the playoffs that I call my five Biggest takeaways from that Postseason. This is gonna be more of like a basketball tactics and roster construction type of conversation, sending around, centering around the specific things that we saw in this playoff run that led to success and what I think teams should be targeting and building around as we move forward into next season. You guys know the joke before we get started, subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at_jason lt so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson's doing great work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us there for more content throughout the year. And last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments. Again, we're Shifting away. I know we did our mailbag questions from the chat during our live shows during the postseason, but we're going back to our normal format now where I'm going to be taking mailbag questions straight out of the YouTube comments. So under our full episodes put mailbag and then colon and then write your question. And once a week throughout the entire off season we will be doing a mailbag episode where we'll get to all of your guys questions at that point. All right, let's talk some basketball. First question hey Jason, love the work you do with the questions on defense with Ayton. Is there a defensive big that the Lakers could pick up that'll offset Ayton's inability to defend consistently? So first of all, the free agent market for centers is very limited. I talked yesterday about the Mark Stein report that came out regarding Al Horford and him potentially, or as he said, destined to go to the Golden State Warriors. And it was actually in the context in his report, in the context of the Jonas Valanciuna situation, this situation where Jonas has apparently already engaged in conversations with a team over in Greece and he would like to be bought out or be relieved from his contract with the Denver Nuggets so that he can go overseas and play. And Denver does not want to let him do that. Denver wants to force him to honor his contract. The main reason being that they need a backup center to play off of Jokic. And you know, obviously Daron Holmes is a is a interesting option, but he's young and coming off of an Achilles tear, so you don't want to be like super dependent on that. And as Mark Stein pointed out in that report, there's not another great option to pivot to. Horford is really the only other guy out there. And as I mentioned and as Mark Stein mentioned, it appears that he's headed to Golden State in all likelihood. So the point is is there's not a lot of really quality options out there in the free agent market. Now the Lakers did end up resigning Jackson Hayes. I think he'll do fine as a backup. I wouldn't be surprised if they keep someone like Christian Coloco around on a two way contract to help, you know, with certain defensive looks. But Maxi Kleba I think is gonna end up being a guy. I wouldn't be surprised if Maxi ends up basically winning the backup center spot from Jackson Hayes. The main reason why is let's look at the situation. The Lakers under J.J. redick have done a lot more switching. This is a, a big in Maxi Cleaver that I think that's his specific strength compared to most backup centers around the league. Maxi is a pretty small, pretty solid switch defender. He moves his feet pretty well, he's got good instincts, he takes good angles. He's just generally better at that than most of the backup center level players that are out there. And so I you know he already has chemistry with Luca as like a stretch five. I, I, I could see Maxi just beating Jackson out for that secondary spot but again there's not a lot of great options out there in the free agent market and I think going from Ayton to having three different kind of like backup options for different looks like Jackson A's being your traditional rim runner for certain looks where you need his vertical spacing. You know a Christian Coloco on a two way contract as more of like a defensive minded motor big for certain situations and then Maxi Kleba as the veteran stretch five that can defend in a switching scheme. I, I think that that's perfectly fine considering the Lakers were able to achieve that center rotation without having to give up really anything in the way of assets which maintains their asset flexibility if they want to make a move for a wing someone like an Andrew Wiggins or a Herb Jones, something along those lines. Next question. Love the show. My question to you is who are your top five players going into next season? Hate to break it to you guys but I cannot reveal this yet because one of my favorite things that we do every summer is we do a detailed top 25 players in the NBA list with extensive breakdown for every single player on the list we set up criteria. It's something that I take very seriously as one of my major off season projects and so I'm not going to jump into it at this point in time but my guess is shortly after summer league we'll get started with that and we're going to have all sorts of fun stuff along those lines throughout the off season. So hang tight and we will get to that later on this summer. Next question. Another Lakers related question. Jake Laravia or Dalton Connect Long term better player. I look at these two guys as very very different types of players like Jake Laravia can shoot, but I look at Dalton Connect is an entirely different tier of shooting prospect. To me Dalton Connect is a guy that I could see being one of the high volume successful three point shooters in the NBA for a long time. He's just got the ability to hit from all these different spots on the floor. He's a little bit more of a heat Check guy can get into a better rhythm and Dalton is this like very big and strong like kind of vertical, a very impressive vertical athlete that brings like a transition element, a cutting element, a driving element. Dalton to me is just a different type of player. Jake Laravia is more of a traditional like role player, NBA wing in that like he can do a little bit of everything. He's a, a guy who can shoot the ball, he can drive closeouts, has some higher level off the dribble, moves in the short to mid range. He's a good athlete but not like an elite athlete. He's, he can do a lot of things reasonably well on defense but he's not great at anything. Like to me Dalton Connect has a couple more of those like apex traits. Jake Laravia is more useful in the short term. Dalton Connect will probably be a better player in the long run. And you know I, I think Jake Laravia becomes valuable in the context of a potential Dalton Connect trade. If the Lakers were to include him in a deal at some point this summer or in the middle of next season, Jake Laravia can come off the bench and not bring the same apex shooting trait that Dalton Connect brings but bring a more versatile kind of useful NBA role player attack to that position. I know the trend and emphasis for NBA bigs in recent years has been threes and stretching the floor but hearing about talented guys like Ayton having more potential than actual post game, why does a guy like that not really go after developing a serious post game? You watch McHale in his torture chamber and Olajuwon in the dreamshake. If a guy like Ayton really went after some of those guys and even had a poor man's level, he would be better than most in the league or have or, or could handle. I guess it's just not having the drive going by his inattentive mediocre overall defense. I guess it's that. So this is a complicated issue and I actually think this is a very interesting topic that you're bringing up here with this question. So why is it that we don't see more post up players dominating in the NBA? If you go look at Synergy for example the high volume guys, the yokiches, the Embiid's, those types of guys, they are in like an entirely different tier of volume of post ups and then there's just like a giant drop off and there's just not that many guys who do it outside of of those two. Now even Jokic compared to Embiid brings another level to just the sheer amount of posting up that he does. And so what I my theory with this actually has more to do with the way the game has changed defensively and how difficult it is to generate offense out of the post if you can't pass the ball. So with the way that teams space the floor defensively now, and with the type of athleticism and speed that's on the floor, it's very easy to load up on a post player and make one pass available and over the over the top pass that goes across the court to the opposite corner or to the opposite wing that usually has to go through a bunch of traffic or has to fly looping over the top in order to get there. And it's just a lot easier than it used to be to double team or shade or heavily send help towards a post player and take away that option without really conceding anything super damaging. I've watched this for years as a guy who covers Anthony Davis, and Anthony Davis made progress and got better at it. But there was a reason why they never went to Anthony Davis the same volume that they went to Nicole Jokic in Denver. And it was because inevitably if he had some success down there, teams would start loading up and AD just couldn't make the reads. When I was evaluating Ayton as part of the Lakers signing him and I went back and watched all of this tape, Ayton's post ups often went awry because he didn't trust his ability to go to power because of the help defense. And so he'd either turn it over against the help defense or, or he would settle for some difficult over the top shot. And that really is the final piece of it if you want to put everything together to be an elite high volume post player in the NBA, you have to have the combination of really physically imposing size with high, high level playmaking to be able to break apart the defense when they load up on you. And then the third piece of it is the touch. Like we talk about this all the time with layups. You watch these guys around the league, you know, when it comes to layups, sometimes they're shooting 50, 55%. You know, the really good layup shooters are 60, 65%. It's because anything that is a two point shot that is contested, that isn't a wide open layup or a dunk, the percentages in the efficiency tank from there, 55% on a layup is like 1.1 points per shot. That's not great for a layup, right? You're expecting more efficiency. There's and it craters even further when you go out further away. Like let's say you've got a decent hook shot. Like you've got a. You're 45% on hook shots. That seems like a good percentage, right? That's only 0.9 points per attempt. And so there's a level of short range shot making that you need in order to be a reliable post up threat as well to command the defense a certain way to unlock that playmaking town. That's why you look at Yoke. It just kind of feels like Jokic and then the rest of the league when it comes to posting up. It's because of that difficult dynamic. There's a, you know, Ayton has actually a decent hook shot but he really struggles to handle all the help side defense. And so defenders press up on him, they pack the paint. He turns the ball over. He settles for these turnaround fade away jump shots that he can't make. Even with Jokic when he has to go to further away shot making, like some of those turnarounds, like some of those deeper hook shots, he can still make those at 55, 60% and that's what makes him such a dynamic post player. But I think that the league has just become so fast and so sophisticated defensively that teams have just found a way to greatly diminish the impact of post players if they do not have those talents. And you know, when we see other guys like you look at a Shangoon for instance, who's had some impact as opposed player, it's power mix of short range shot making and he's got some playmaking talent. Although it's not where it needs to be to be at the level of the best post players in the league. But that's why it's not as simple as just yo, you got to go into the gym and rep out footwork and hook shots. No, that's that that's not the pathway to success in the post in the NBA. It is a combination of that with reliable short range shot making and the ability to interpret what the defense is doing and to make the reads. And there just aren't that many guys who can do that. All right, last question then we're going to get into our top five takeaways. Do you like Cam Whitmore more or less than Andrew Wiggins? This is a question that we had in our YouTube comments that I want to evaluate more. Just as an example of just differing archetypes. We had a similar question earlier Regarding Jake Laravia and Dalton, connect. Right. By the way, Cam Whitmore has been traded to the Washington Wizards and I think his trade to the Washington Wizards is actually an interesting example of the difference in the archetypes you trade for Andrew Wiggins, for instance, by the way, they're, they're totally different phases of their career. Andrew Wiggins is 30. He makes over $30 million. Like it's just, it's just not even remotely the same. But I want to get into why. Why is it that Andrew Wiggins is worth more and would go for more in a trade and teams would be hunting for a key rotation spot in a playoff run? Like, why would I as a Lakers fan be much more interested in Andrew Wiggins even at a massive number to come in and play the three for the Lakers than I would Cam Whitmore? And it comes down to the same thing we talked about earlier with Dalton Connect. It's the same thing we talked about earlier yesterday when we were having the conversation surrounding Jonathan Kaminga. There are things that Andrew Wiggins does right now at a very, very high level that impact winning in the context of a core five, like of a starting lineup or a closing five for an NBA team. Andrew Wiggins is somewhere between a second tier and first tier perimeter defender in the NBA. Like if your job as Andrew Wiggins is to guard the other team's best player every single night, he's one of the best options still in this league to use in that way. He can guard multiple groups, he can guard guards, he can guard forwards, he can guard. He moves his feet well. He has the length to contest from behind and the length to contest, pull up jump shooters, he can apply full court ball pressure. He's done it in high leverage playoff situations. He did an unbelievable job on Jason tatum in the 2022 finals. He did an unbelievable job on luka doncic in 2022 Western Conference finals. Andrew Wiggins brings an apex trait to the table which is that he is one of the best perimeter defenders in the NBA and that has enormous utility in the modern NBA. Then on the other end of the floor, he's a guy that can hit in the high 30s and catch and shoot threes, can do a little driving closeout stuff and can do some stuff in transition, get you in that 15 to 18 points per game, is a useful offensive player. That makes him a very, very high quality starting small forward in the NBA as a role player that brings real value in the short term. Cam Whitmore has all sorts of potential. He's an apex athlete himself, but that athleticism hasn't translated to some reliable apex trait right now, right? He has shown some ability over the years to shoot the ball. He has shown some ability over the years to put the ball on the floor. He has shown some ability over the years to play some defense, but none of it has amounted to a reliable day in, day out. This guy can do this for me right now, starting day one of camp, and I can count on him to do this until the end of the line. That's why it makes so much sense to send Cam to a place like Washington. Houston signs Dorian Finney Smith gets Kevin Durant. Houston is on a different timeline. Houston's trying to win right now. Cam's not going to get a lot of minutes, not a lot of opportunity because he's not good at those things like we talked about with Andrew Wiggins. So why not go to Washington, a place where he has a spot in the rotation and he can continue to build out his game and find what those apex traits are. If he becomes a apex perimeter defender that can knock down threes and drive closeouts, he'll be the guy that everyone's trading for as a starting level wing in the NBA. But he's not there yet. And I think that's an important distinction when we're talking about these players. These guys that can do a specific role player thing super well right now are more valuable in the short term than than a young player and his potential. Because with young players, as we always talk about, they struggle to identify what's working and repeat it and to identify what's not working and to trim that fat. That is why young players struggle to play important roles on championship level teams.
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Greg Rosenthal
25 years, 25 players before training camp kickstarts a new NFL season, NFL Daily is going to look back. It is a special six episode series where myself, Greg Rosenthal and some of the top NFL minds like Kevin Harlan, Mina Kimes and Bill Barnwell make the case. For each player, we're taking a look back, giving you NFL Daily's top 25 players of the last 25 years. So who made the list? You know Tom Brady's on it. Where's Patrick Mahomes?
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Touchdown Counts on City.
Greg Rosenthal
He's on it. How about Lamar Jackson?
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Jackson takes it himself. Look at him.
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Dirt back and forth oh, he broke his ankles and he's got a touchdown. He is Houdini.
Greg Rosenthal
You are going to have to listen. To find out, listen to NFL Daily's top 25 players of the last 25 years, starting on June 30 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Host
All right, let's get into our biggest takeaways from the 2025 postseason. First generating margin I've referenced this ideas this idea in many ways over the years. I've referred to it a lot in the playoff run as low hanging fruit or winning battles. Like winning battles on the glass. Winning battles in transition I believe that in order to be a championship team you need to be able to generate margin for error. Something that covers some ground so that your half court offense and defense has a little bit more slush to work with. Examples Offensive Glass if you can control the offensive glass and generate second chance opportunities that can buy you margin for error. Literally. Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein in Game four of the NBA Finals on the road when the Thunder offense was sputtering yet again. The offensive glass work that Shet and Isaiah did bought them margin for error so that Shea could just make a couple of plays at the end of the game. Forcing turnovers. This was big for both Indiana and for Oklahoma City. It was big for Cleveland in the regular season. If you can force turnovers, it leads to more transition opportunities. Transition opportunities are way more efficient. Transition pushes in general. We're going to talk about that a little bit more when we get into our second piece, so let's move there. You have to be able to control the transition game on both ends. More and more of the game is getting played in transition than ever before. There's a very specific reason for that. Teams are way more efficient in transition. To give you a basic stat to demonstrate this on Synergy, there were 10 teams this year that logged an offensive rating over 115 in transition. Only one team in the entire NBA logged a half court offensive rating over 105. Only one team. NBA teams are substantially more efficient scoring the basketball in transition. Not hard to figure out why the defense isn't set. They don't have their shell drill. The help defense isn't there. There's often often man advantages. It's difficult to generate advantages in the half court. Transition often comes with baked in advantages. Whether it's through a guy being left open because a guy's lagging back in the backcourt or if it's a transition cross match There are so many different ways that you can get easier offense in transition. So what do I mean when I say both ends of the floor? What that means is on offense, every opportunity you have to throw a kick ahead, pass the preaching from day one for guys to run their lanes on, every miss, every make, whatever it is, you sprint that left wing, you sprint that right wing, you sprint the middle of the lane as a big man to try to get dunks, you sprint as the trailer in transition, you throw kick ahead passes when you can. You look to push every single opportunity you can because very simply put, your offensive efficiency skyrockets when you are in transition. So every possession that you don't get out in transition, you are operating at a lower efficiency. So every chance you get, you have to hunt those opportunities. Every team, I don't care what your personnel is, every team from day one in training camp needs to be accentuating and emphasizing running your lanes, getting out in transition, throwing those kick ahead passes and playing up the floor as much as possible. Then with defense, because this can go both ways. We saw New York in the conference finals completely lose control of a series because of poor transition defense, because of floor balance, Constantly having four to five players below the foul line, literally not being in a position to get back. Basic principles like floor balance, making sure that you always have two players above the break. Those two players stopping ball and getting to the rim. The other three guys sprinting back, communicating and getting matched up. The more you can keep your opponent out of transition, slots them down out of transition efficiency into half court efficiency. This is the market inefficiency in the NBA right now. If you're not hunting every transition opportunity you can while also building your defense and your spacing around being able to get back in transition, you are missing out on a huge chunk of points that you can take advantage of on both ends of the floor. Third biggest takeaway, you still need an apex shot creator. When things got ugly for Oklahoma City, it was Shay Gilders Alexander who put games away. Big moments against Denver in game four and in game five, particularly down the stretch in game four. He was huge versus Indiana. Amazing down the stretch in game four, but also for entire games in game two and in game five and in game seven. Look at other teams in this playoff run. What Tyrese Halliburton did, the game winners that he hit in each series, Nicole Jokic and what he did with Denver, almost pushing Oklahoma City to the brink. What Jalen Brunson was able to do for the New York Knicks, to me as you look back, the exception is actually Boston. Boston was the team that didn't have your traditional apex star, that one. But they were a unique Circumstance. They had five players that would command over $30 million a year in the open market. They had this brilliant spacing. It was like kind of like a cumulative star power that Boston brought to the table. And there aren't many teams in the league that can ever find themselves in a situation where they can field five really expensive players like that. They are the exception. If you go back though, it's Jake, Eldris, Alexander this year, it's Jokic. The year before Boston, it's Steph. The year before Jokic, it's Giannis. The year before Steph, it's LeBron. The year before Giannis, it's Kawhi the year before LeBron. We can go back and we can go back and we can go back for all of the talk about depth, and again, depth does matter, we're about to talk about it. You still need an apex star. Boston is the exception to that rule because of their aggregate talent. You need a guy that's like, I can create great shots for my team in shitty, physical, ugly half court playoff environments. Number four, depth. More transition means more running. More drive and kick means more covering ground and rotation. NBA players are running and moving around the floor more than ever before. I think this is a big part of the Achilles tear issue that the NBA has been having for a little while. Think about the landslide runs that Oklahoma City and Indiana went on at various points during the postseason just simply because their opponents eventually wore down under the ball pressure, under the physicality. The playoffs are a war of attrition. And if you have eight or nine guys that you can reliably trust in a postseason setting, you can keep your starters minutes down in the mid to low 30s, which gives you a better chance, or mid to high 30s. For some guys, keeping the minutes down in the 30s gives you a better chance of holding up over four playoff rounds. If you have a six or six and a half seven man rotation, suddenly all your starters are pushing up into the 40, 45 minute range. That's where you end up having problems with wear and tear over the course of the postseason. And again, it's not the end all be all. We've seen teams that don't have an enormous amount of depth win before, but I do believe it is a legitimate advantage in the modern NBA because of the amount of running there is. All of the transition, all of the drive and kick has put more miles per minute on the NBA body than ever before and depth is a great counter for that specific issue. Lastly, dribble, shoot pass and defend role players. This is a concept I've talked about ad nauseum over the course of the last few months. We talked about it a lot with Samcini in our pre draft podcast. Like we talked about with Creating Advantages. There are all these different guys in the league that specialize in creating advantages. Giannis and his downhill force causes teams to build a wall. He's spraying the ball out to wide open shooters all day long, right? Tyrese Halliburton just through his remarkable quick decision making with kick ahead passes and his ability to make reads out of ball screens. He's constantly setting up players with a catch on the perimeter with the dude sprinting out at him at the three point line. Shay Gilders Alexander like legitimately drawing lots of double teams from Indiana down the stretch of that series. Nicola Jokic constantly drawing double teams out of the post, dumping it off to players. I don't care who it is or how they do it. Steph Curry sprinting off of off ball screens and constantly drawing multiple defenders. These guys create situations where either a player is standing at the three point line wide open with a guy sprinting out at them or inverted spacing catching the ball around the middle of the floor in a man up advantage. Meaning like a 4 on 3 or a 3 on 2 where that guy has to either quickly score or make a quick decision. That is the type of advantage, those are the types of advantages that these stars are creating. You need to have players that can knock down, catch and shoot threes, drive closeouts, make decisions when they drive closeouts or make decisions in short roll situations. That's the dribble shoot pass element of it. But at the same time if you can't defend, it becomes a problem on the other end of the floor. So a role player that has versatility on that front, it doesn't matter if you're the best shooter in that group, but you can't dribble, you can't pass and you can't defend. Having a stability in those four categories, being a somewhat useful defender that can pass the ball, that can knock down a shot, that can drive a closeout. That type of versatility becomes immensely valuable in a modern NBA where there's lots of advantage creation that's creating those advantages for you and that you're constantly operating in transition. Where you need to guard a random player in a transition cross match or because a good screen Gets set and now you're switched onto a bigger player or onto a smaller player. Versatility out of the role players is how you maximize star talent in the modern NBA. These are things, these five things are the things that I think front offices need to be targeting with their roster construction that coaches need to be emphasizing with their coaching. From day one in camp you got to generate margins somewhere. You have to be able to control the transition game both in on defense, keeping your opponent out of transition and then hunting transition opportunities as much as possible. You have to find an apex advantage creator. You cannot win a championship without one. You need to have depth to be able to survive all the mileage that you're putting on bodies throughout the season. And your role players need to be versatile with the ability to shoot, drive closeouts, play out of the short role and to defend multiple players on the other end of the floor. Those to me are the market inefficiencies around the NBA that teams need to be hunting. All right guys, that's all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We're going to take the next day off. Wednesday off in summer league. What we have planned is on Thursday night we'll have an instant reaction to the Cooper Flag, Dylan Harper, Bronny James games from Thursday night. We'll have that on the feed that evening. On Friday morning, Jovan Buha, who runs a great Lakers YouTube channel, you guys might remember me, used to cover the Lakers for the Athletic as well. He'll be coming on the show to talk some Lakers stuff on Friday night. We have another instant reaction to some summer league games from that day. We also have Adam Mares coming on the show to talk some Denver Nuggets and then we will also have an episode on Saturday night as well breaking down the second round of games for the top picks, Cooper Flag and Dylan Harper. We'll be recording on Friday night and Saturday night at the Wynn studio in Vegas. So I'm super excited about that. We'll be around. We'll be at the games so make sure you come say hi. I'll kind of tweet out and let you guys know where we're at if you guys want to come say hi. But again, jam packed week scheduled for you guys in summer league that we're very excited for. All right, we will see you guys later this weekend. What's up guys? As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting Hoops tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a random rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.
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Podcast Summary: The Herd with Colin Cowherd - "Hoops Tonight - Lakers Offseason Reaction: Are Deandre Ayton & LaRavia enough for LeBron & Luka? + Knecht trade?"
Release Date: July 9, 2025
Host: iHeartPodcasts and The Volume
The episode kicks off with the host welcoming listeners to "Hoops Tonight," emphasizing a packed show centered around the Lakers' offseason moves and broader NBA strategies. He outlines the episode's structure, starting with fan mailbag questions before delving into his five biggest takeaways from the postseason.
The host addresses audience questions submitted via YouTube comments, indicating a shift from previous live show formats to a more streamlined mailbag approach. This segment aims to engage listeners by directly addressing their curiosities and concerns about team dynamics and player performance.
At [06:45], the host tackles the critical question of whether Deandre Ayton and Jake LaRavia are sufficient to support LeBron James and Luka Doncic on the Lakers' roster. He notes the limited options in the free-agent market for quality centers:
“The free agent market for centers is very limited,” [06:47] the host explains, referencing Mark Stein’s report about Al Horford potentially joining the Golden State Warriors.
Deandre Ayton's defensive inconsistencies are highlighted, with the host suggesting that even with Jackson Hayes' re-signing and potential additions like Christian Coloco on a two-way contract, the Lakers might still lack a robust defensive big man.
At [10:15], the host compares Jake LaRavia and Dalton Connect, emphasizing their differing skill sets and long-term potential:
“Dalton Connect is a guy that I could see being one of the high volume successful three-point shooters in the NBA for a long time,” [10:18] he states, highlighting Connect's shooting prowess and athleticism.
Conversely, Jake LaRavia is described as a versatile role player with immediate utility but less long-term upside:
“Jake LaRavia is more of a traditional NBA wing… he can do a little bit of everything,” [11:05] the host elaborates, suggesting that while LaRavia is valuable now, Connect holds more promise for the future.
At [15:30], the discussion shifts to broader roster construction strategies, emphasizing the importance of maintaining asset flexibility. The host advocates for a balanced rotation that accommodates both defensive needs and offensive versatility, ensuring the Lakers remain competitive without overcommitting resources.
Addressing the evolution of the NBA, the host examines why traditional post players like Deandre Ayton don’t dominate as they once did. At [17:50], he posits that modern defensive strategies and the emphasis on floor spacing have diminished the effectiveness of traditional post play without complementary skills like playmaking.
“It’s a combination of physically imposing size with high-level playmaking to break apart the defense,” [18:10] he explains, using Nikola Jokic as an exemplar of a modern post player who transcends traditional roles.
At [20:00], the host underscores the increasing significance of the transition game in the NBA, citing statistical evidence from Synergy:
“NBA teams are substantially more efficient scoring the basketball in transition,” [20:05] he asserts, highlighting that 10 teams logged an offensive rating over 115 in transition compared to only one team in half-court plays.
He emphasizes the necessity for teams to excel in transition both offensively and defensively to maximize scoring opportunities and minimize opponent advantages.
Discussing player depth at [25:00], the host connects it to the physical demands of the modern NBA, noting:
“Having eight or nine guys that you can reliably trust in a postseason setting… gives you a better chance of holding up over four playoff rounds,” [25:10] he states, linking depth to sustained performance and injury prevention.
At [28:45], the conversation turns to the importance of versatile role players who can contribute across multiple facets of the game:
“Having a stability in shooting, driving, passing, and defending… versatility becomes immensely valuable in a modern NBA,” [28:50] the host explains, advocating for role players who can adapt to various in-game situations to support star players effectively.
The host presents his five biggest takeaways from the 2025 postseason, focusing on strategic elements that contribute to championship success:
Each takeaway is supported with examples from the postseason, illustrating how these factors played out in key games and series.
Closing the episode, the host previews upcoming content and special episodes:
Listeners are encouraged to engage on social media and participate in upcoming events at the Wynn studio in Las Vegas.
The episode wraps up with the host thanking listeners for their support and urging them to leave ratings and reviews to help the show grow. He reiterates the importance of audience interaction through mailbag submissions and social media engagement.
Notable Quotes:
On Center Options:
“The free agent market for centers is very limited.” ([06:47])
On Player Comparisons:
“Dalton Connect is a guy that I could see being one of the high volume successful three-point shooters in the NBA for a long time.” ([10:18])
On Transition Game:
“NBA teams are substantially more efficient scoring the basketball in transition.” ([20:05])
On Depth:
“Having eight or nine guys that you can reliably trust in a postseason setting… gives you a better chance of holding up over four playoff rounds.” ([25:10])
On Versatile Role Players:
“Having a stability in shooting, driving, passing, and defending… versatility becomes immensely valuable in a modern NBA.” ([28:50])
This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from the episode, providing a coherent and engaging overview for both regular listeners and newcomers alike.