Transcript
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Steph Curry (1:10)
Make some noise for the Greatest Shooter of All Time Steph Curry we went live from All Star Weekend for a new podcast called Goat Greatest of Their Era and we ranked our top five shooters from the 2000s.
Podcast Co-Host (1:23)
Paja 5 Dirk 4 Asia is alone.
Steph Curry (1:26)
You won't believe who Steph left off his list.
Podcast Co-Host (1:28)
That's so tough. That's why we have these conversations.
Steph Curry (1:31)
Yes, absolutely.
Podcast Co-Host (1:32)
Love it.
Steph Curry (1:32)
Listen to Go G O T e Greatest of Their era on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Minnie Driver (1:40)
What if you asked two different people the same set of questions? Even if the questions are the same, our experiences can lead us to drastically different answers. I'm Mini Driver and I set out to explore this idea in my podcast and now Mini Questions is returning for another season. We've an entirely new set of guests our seven questions, including Jane Lynch, Delaney Rowe and Cord Jefferson. Listen to Mini questions on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. 7 Questions Limitless answers.
Mark Seal (2:16)
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That's code hoops for new customers to get 150 in bonus bets. 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-HOPENY 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 Ontari. Expire 168 hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG CO B Ball. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Thursday everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week. We're going to be hitting two games from tonight's slate as the Lakers survive a physical athletic onslaught from the Minnesota Timberwolves. Then the Golden State warriors after getting shot out of the gym in the first half against the Orlando Magic. Get some a return back to normalcy from Orlando. Orlando's jump shooting in the first explosive scoring game of Steph Curry's season. A lot of really encouraging stuff on the warriors front. And then at the tail end of the show, a brief shout out that I have for Russell Westbrook. 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. Follow me on Twitter at underscore jasonlt so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. We also have brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. We're releasing content throughout the year. We're doing some more film stuff on those platforms as well, so make sure you guys follow us there. And the last but not least Keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments. We can get to them on Fridays throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So I talked a little bit about after the game, right before the All Star break with the Timberwolves, about how they're one of those teams. I'm always looking at teams in the regular season and trying to find out what I think translates to the postseason. And there's always like a certain amount of like sometimes the young athletic teams, there's a little bit of a ceiling that they run into when they get into the postseason, when all the vets kind of up their level of intensity and the game planning gets a little bit more intense and young players tend to have more weaknesses and they can run into some issues. Right? There are some young teams. Near the top of the stain is classic example. This year's teams like the Houston Rockets, right? That like, I don't think they're as good as their record is in terms of the type of threat that they represent in the postseason. But then there is a layer to that, especially on teams that do have more talent, more actual veteran, experienced talent. Teams like the Minnesota Timberwolves, where their size and physicality can manifest in the postseason in a way that it doesn't manifest in the regular season because they're allowed to get away with more, because their size and physicality wearing on a team over the course of a seven game series. The Timberwolves last year, what they did to the Phoenix Suns, what they did to the Denver Nuggets was a perfect example of that. And if you guys remember, I talked about it in the, in that stretch right during the All Star break, like with Minnesota, I take them more seriously than their record because they just have a bunch of big strong athletes with veteran president presences with enough shot creation talent to where they can just drag you down into the mud. And when you're down in the mud with them, they can make a lot of your players play beneath their capability. You can start to experience some injuries as you get banged up in that environment and it can go south for you pretty quickly. And even without Anthony Edwards in that second half, I thought the Wolves presented an excellent challenge for the Lakers in terms of that physical imposition that they presented. Terence Shannon in particular was just ripping through the Lakers transition defense. Lakers have been really good on defense, including in transition for a while. That was not their best transition defense effort. Terence Shannon made them pay consistently by just ripping through them. One of the things that I want to talk about Is like the Lakers have a flaw that's been consistent throughout this season, which is that teams are going to ball pressure the hell out of LeBron and ball pressure the hell out of Austin. And they ball pressured the hell out of DLO when he was there. And as games progressed, those guys would wear down and get fatigued, and they'd start to get sloppy with their passes. They'd start to miss a lot of jump shots. Look at how many badly missed jump shots you saw from the Lakers in that second half. And one of the big things that I was really excited about in the Luka Doncic trade is he's like literally the antidote to that problem. He is a guy that can eat up an enormous amount of that usage in terms of bringing the ball up the floor with standing ball pressure, making that easier. The difference is, is that Luka, when he's at his best, brings a level of shot making that he can use to defeat that type of pressure. He can get guys on his side and work his way downhill, get into that 10, 15 foot zone and make a bunch of shots. You actually saw a taste of that in that first quarter stretch, which was the stretch where Luka looked his best offensively. And so on the one hand, I thought the Wolves exposed the reality of the Lakers weaknesses in terms of wearing down under ball pressure. But the reality is, is that when Luka gets into form, he should be able to handle that better. Luka is still having a hell of a time making jump shots at this point. He came into tonight 11 for 51 on jump shots in a Lakers jersey. He ended up making the most ridiculous shot he took tonight. The interesting kind of a late clock sequence where LeBron was kind of caught the ball in the post against Nas Reed and then he was like, you know what? Like, I don't see the point me posting up Nas Reed. So he pulled him out to the perimeter, but his jumper was kind of out of rhythm. He had missed a few early in the fourth, so he tries to drive on him and Nas does a really nice job shutting off the driving lane kind of traps him along the baseline. LeBron throws basically just an escape pass to Luka on the left wing. Nikhil Alexander Walker is smothering it the whole way, and Luka just bumps him a little bit with that shoulder and leans back and shoots a one leg fade away from like 27ft. Nothing but the bottom of the net. It's funny, I had a Mavs fan tweet at me after that that basically said all Mavs fans knew that shot was going in. And it's just an example of the. The Luca magic that Mavs fans grew accustomed to during the beginning stretch of his career that Laker fans are going to see a lot. To me, Luke is not close to where he needs to be as a shot maker. To me, it's obvious because so many of his misses are outside the rim. An easy way to think of it is the basketball rim can actually fit two basketballs on the inside, right? So like there's kind of like a dialing in process. When you're out of rhythm. You're. You're, you're getting a little bit closer on your misses. You're making more shots, right? And like right now I don't think Luca, like, I don't think Lucas Luka might have a good game here or there as a jump shooter, but I think he's a ways away from actually like regularly just notching really good shot making games because his jumper's way off right now. He's missing most of them well outside the rim. He's missing a lot of his short range shot making like short in front of the rim. Like he's not even like getting it over the front of the rim. So it's going to be a while, I think. I think we're probably still at least a few weeks out from Luca really looking like Luka as a shot maker. But he should help solve that problem for the Lakers in terms of wearing down under that type of ball pressure. Because even with Luca as he can wear down, as we saw like in the Celtics series, for instance, LeBron James should be able to help anchor him on that end by giving him a release valve. Austin Reeves as well, I think Luca is going to be an antidote for that problem in the big picture. But you did see that get exposed quite a bit in this game as a weakness for the Lakers on the defensive end. Dealing with Anthony Edwards, there's another completely different type of offensive matchup that the Lakers personnel had to deal with that JJ and his coaching staff had to come up with a game plan for. The game plan that they had for Ant was pretty simple. They just had whoever was guarding him on the ball basically force him towards the sideline. So play entirely on his inside shoulder and force him to drive towards the sideline. And then they use what's called a strong side zone. Basically taking a. Think of it like this, normally if a defender were to sit in the paint and he's not guarding anybody, he would get a defensive 3 second violation, right? We saw a couple of those tonight, one on each team. But in that event, one of the counters for that is like guys will sometimes be all the way on the opposite side of the paint and they'll step in and they'll step out and they'll step in and they'll step out. But a way to avoid that entirely is what if you just have that guy go all the way to the opposite side of the paint and literally just. That's why they call it a strong side zone, because that defender is not actually guarding a man anymore. He's actually effectively a one man zone who's in help right outside the block on the strong side of the floor where the ball handler is, right. So essentially it's like a soft double team event. You're playing his strong side shoulder or his, his middle side shoulder so that he can't just like easily take pull up threes and you're trying to force him to drive right into the teeth of the defense. I actually thought Ant handled it really well. I mean the game plan more or less worked the way it was supposed to. They, the Lakers did get a lot of stops in this game, but I thought handled it pretty well. He got into paint quite a bit. He was using his slowdown step to deal with help defenders. He was using screening actions to try to get his defender caught on the screen by like, like screening and then re screening to get the dude caught on the underside so he could get a decent look at a pull up three. He got guys off of him with pump fakes, you know, ants. Just freakishly talented. That's what he's going to do. He made some really nice skip passes to beat the strong side zone. But then it got worked up and there was a sequence that was kind of like a bang bang play where he drove at Gabe Vincent and like clearly shoved him off with his right arm. And like, yeah, when Gabe was falling, his left foot came up a little bit and kicked Ant in the back of the leg. But like the ref didn't call it. You want to know why the ref didn't call it? Because he saw Ant push him off and, and it was just kind of like a bang bang play where he didn't think it was worthy of a whistle and fell down and loses his mind, gets into it with the ref, gets himself ejected. Now he's suspended for tomorrow as well. So like that's really unfortunate and like one of those things where like I get, I could see watching that game how you could be frustrated As a Wolves fan or as a Wolves player, the Lakers were getting some ticky tack calls in that game is one of those ones where like, like Austin was getting hit on the forearm. It's like really light, but at the same time, like you guys know if you've ever played basketball, if you shoot a jump shot and a guy taps you on the forearm when you're shooting, it can cause the shot to go off by feet because it just affects your follow through. That's all the power that you're transferring into the basketball. Right. But like, I can understand that it's a frustrating officiating game for the Wolves. My thing is like you're on the road in the arena with a group of players, specifically Austin and Luca, who are like famous foul grifters. You know you're going to be on the wrong end of some calls. You got to show some mental toughness to get through that so that you can stay available for your team. And, and got him, got himself ejected from there. The Wolves were just like, hey, we got one chance here. Let's muck this up, let's get super physical, let's make a mess of this game. Let's get out and transition. And they did, they made it a game. But the Lakers, just like they did in the Dallas game, they were able to lock, lock in down the stretch, get enough stops, get enough good looks and they ended up pulling away and winning relatively comfortably. I thought LeBron was absolutely magnificent all around in this game, but especially on defense. It was ironic after JJ Redick touted his all defense level of play over the course of the last six weeks after the Dallas game, I thought this was his best defensive game of this entire stretch. His rotations all over the floor were amazing. His closeouts to the three point line going flying into a row of chairs, his back line rotations around the rim. There were like a half dozen deep catches for the Wolves in the paint in this game where LeBron just like appeared out of nowhere to disrupt the player on the catch and force a miss. Clean up the defensive glass after that miss. He was incredible on the defensive glass all night. I think he had what like 16, 17 rebounds. So many contested rebounds that he came away with. There was even that one, I think it was with Terrence Shannon where both guys had a grip on the ball and they ended up in a wrestling match over it. And LeBron somehow got away with that one as well. He was in groups of three bodies and tapping it out to other Lakers for rebounds. He was just amazing. All over the floor, on the defensive end of the, of the ball, getting stops and finishing possessions with the defensive rebound. And then again on a night where Luka couldn't buy a shot, Luke LeBron brought the scoring. All night long. He was downhill to the rim all night long. He was dominating in the paint. It was just another game where LeBron was playing at an MVP level in a nearly two month stretch where he's consistently been playing at that level. The one last note I have on the Lakers front here, there are some realities to this team with their depth. This is something I talked about in the, if you guys remember, in the, in the after, in the immediate aftermath of the trade, there are some realities just in the number of like reliable rotation players they have. There's like eight if you include Jackson, Hayes, right, it's LeBron, Austin, Luca, it's Rui and Jackson. And then it's Dorian Finney Smith, it's Jared Vanderbilt, it's Gabe Vincent. After that it gets shaky. Right? Like you get into that Dalton connect phase. Like I've been kind of lower on Dalton connect than most Laker fans all year. He just, I think he's going to be a good player in the big picture, but right now he's a shooter that can't make shots and is a really bad defensive player. Like I, I don't think he's even really capable of being a consistent rotation player for a good NBA team right now. Right? Like Jordan Goodwin, absolute scrapper. He's such a good piece to have for a regular season, but he's not a guy that you're going to be able to like rely on for significant minutes in a postseason setting. So you got eight guys. And here's the thing, like eight guys is enough. That's what you want in a playoff rotation. You want seven and a half, eight guys that you trust to do their job on both ends of the floor. But there's no margin for error there. As soon as, like just tomorrow night, for example, you take Rui out of the picture. Rui went down with a knee sprain in this game. Dorian Finney Smith slots into the starting lineup in all likelihood if everyone else plays. But it's very possible the Lakers hit a bunch of guys tomorrow. We'll see. But like, let's just say Ruiz out long term. Like, let's say Ruiz out three, four weeks. Dorian Finney Smith is starting. You got one forward coming off the bench, Jared Vanderbilt. Like now it's going to be, are we going big? Is it's going to is it going to be a lot of Alex Len? You know, that's, that's a huge drop off from a player of Rui Hachimura's caliber. And so again, like, I want to be clear about this Laker team. I think they absolutely have a championship ceiling. They are proving once again, another night where they held a team that, that Wolves offense was top 10 in offense in offensive rating over the previous 15 games. The Lakers held him down just like they held Dallas down, just like they held Denver down, just like they've been holding everybody down since the middle of January. The defense is real. Luca getting back to being Luca will anchor this offense at a higher floor. I still think they're shooting well below their shot quality right now. A big part of that is just every game has been super physical and I think also Luka getting back to form will start to generate better shot quality. But, like, I think they're gonna be fine on the offensive end. They have absolutely a championship level unit on both ends of the floor. They're rebounding really well with this group. Everything's great there. However, the margin for error as it pertains to their injury luck is extremely low. It's extremely small. Rui sprains his knee in this game. Jackson Hayes hurt his hip in this game. Luka grabbed at his knee after going knee to knee with somebody. LeBron looked like he was a little banged up at the end of the game. There's definitely a very small window here in terms of they need to get through a really brutal stretch of basketball here with their, with their roster intact. And so again, like, I think it's important. Every time you see a team struggle, like I talk about, it's always important to at least acknowledge what's making them struggle. It's like, oh, ball pressure and physicality. Well, yeah, Luca should help with that. But like, oh, also down the stretch you ended up having to play. You could go to your closing group with Rui because Rui's hurt. Okay, so the reality is this team has eight men that can, that they can trust, but after that it gets a little sketchy and it's just something that's a reality of something that they're going to have to deal with as the season progresses.
