← The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - LIVE: Game 5 Reactions: Nuggets/Clippers, Knicks/Pistons, Pacers/Bucks
00:54:18
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- [00:00]
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Ben
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Chris
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Ben
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The volume.
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Derek
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All sorts of crazy drama, all sorts of crazy results. We had a game winner and we have a bunch of stuff we're going to be getting into today. 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@_jasonlt so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast for you wherever. Get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave your rating and a review on that front. We also have social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook where Jackson's doing great work. Make sure you guys follow us there. And last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in those YouTube comments so we can get to them in our mail bags moving forward. At the tail end of the show tonight we're going to take more questions from the chat, so make sure you guys drop your questions there in the chat. All right, let's talk some basketball quickly before I get to Clippers Nuggets. The Celtics game is the game I didn't get to watch tonight, so we're not going to get around to that one. But I saw Jason Tatum 35, 8 and 10 on just 16 shots to close out the Magic, his third consecutive 35 point game in the entire playoff run. Last year he had two 35 point games total and that is the biggest difference between this year's Celtics and last year's Celtics. Last year's Celtics did not have, in my opinion, a player that can reach that top tier superstar level. Jay Jayson Tatum was incredibly versatile in that playoff run. He did a ton to make that team championship caliber. But now he's bringing that, that extra level of shot making and half court surgery that makes him one of the very best players in the entire NBA. And it just makes that Celtics team that much more difficult to deal with in this sort of setting. Again, no more thoughts on that game cause I didn't get to watch it. But when I saw that number again, he already has more 35 point games in the first round than he did in the entire playoff run last year. Great sign for Celtics fans. We're going to start with Clippers, Nuggets. And for two games in a row now, it has felt like the Nuggets have had the Clippers solved. They are bringing late help on Kawhi when he gets into the mid range and preventing him from really getting into a good scoring rhythm as a shot maker there in that short to mid range where he loves to work. Although Kawhi did have one of his better passing playoff games that I've ever seen from him tonight. But Kawhi has managed to score over 25 points just once in this entire series. They're putting a ton of pressure on Harden. Christian Brown is applying a lot of full court ball pressure, like just attacking the basketball and making him uncomfortable. They're bringing Jokic aggressively out to the level on him. And as the intensity of the series has picked up, James Harden has looked completely caught off guard by it. I was joking with my buddy Jason Maples on Twitter earlier. Like, it's still shocking to me, even with James Harden's playoff history. When you're watching it happen, it's still jarring to see because like the game has this level of intensity and you can see it in all these different ways, right? It's two, two, game five of the series. Basically a must win for both teams for obvious reasons. Just very difficult to put yourself in a situation where you have to win two games in a row just to survive, right? And you're seeing like the, the yelling and screaming of Russell Westbrook, the yelling and screaming of Christian Brown, even the intensity from like Nicole Jokic, just like barking at his teammates, barking at officials, getting super excited every time one of his teammates makes a play. There's like this emotional momentum with the team as they're bringing the requisite intensity to meet the moment the, the transition pushes from Jokic. Just his eyes light up every time he sees an opportunity to make the defense pay for something. There's a level of like mental and physical intensity that is present in all of these series. But you can see in the game tonight and then you're watching James Harden and it looks like he'd much rather be playing in like kind of a chill pickup game. Like he's operating at a level of intensity that is just several levels below what the team needs from him in that moment. And it always again, this has happened a lot over the course of his career, and it often comes in this phase of the series. Towards the end of the series when the team has been scouted out really well and the defender guarding James Harden has started to pick up on some of his cues and some of his little tips that he uses to to tip off the moves that he's going to use. And the physical intensity and the overall urgency of the moment picks up and as it gets crazier and crazier, he struggles back to back. Very important games for the Clippers. James Harden at 26 points total in the two games. I do want to credit the Nuggets defense, though. With exception of the fourth quarter in Game four when they kind of lost control of things in transition. And then you could tell just in general the Nuggets got out of their defensive groove. The Nuggets have looked like the more intense team. They look like they want to win the series more. They have pretty quickly recaptured a level of defensive intensity much closer to what they had in the playoffs in 2023. It all starts with the bracket in the ball, screens the ball pressure that Christian Brown is applying on James Harden and Jokic getting out and making sure that Harden is not having an easy time getting the pass out from those situations. And you could see James Harden get flummoxed as he's like trying to force a pass to the roll man when the Skip passes open. But the guy guarding the skip pass is like on the roll man, and it's a turnover because he's getting sped up and he's struggling to deal with the physicality and he's not making the same reads that James Harden can make when things are just a little less intense or when he is more intense and ready and engaged in the moment. But it all starts with those two at the level. Christian Brown and Nicole Jokic. The two of them are the guys that have stabilized this defense with what they've done in pick and roll and then the backside rotations. That's the third piece of it that they have managed to recapture. Again, the goal of your defense in the playoffs is to make opposing stars uncomfortable. Have they done that with Kawhi? Yes, They've kept him from volume scoring. Have they done that With James Harden, yes, they've kept him from picking them apart and pick and roll. And for as much as we've talked about the Nuggets defense down the stretch of the season, which was a major storyline, it was the main reason so many people, including most of the Nuggets fans that I follow picked the Clippers to win the series was because their offense, their defense was in such a bad place. But they've been operating at an insanely high level on offense for months. I thought Jokic was so much better than his box score looked tonight like he's 4 for 13 from the field. But I thought he had complete command of the pace and flow of the game. He generated countless advantages. His transition pushes kept everybody out of position throughout the game. The team was playing out of those. A lot of the looks that Jamal Murray got were out of those transition pushes, out of those Jokic post ups and yic high post kind of fulcrum situations where he's just setting these guys up with great advantages. It kept everyone in rhythm. As I mentioned earlier, I thought Jokic was fantastic defensively tonight. A way better game than the box score would leave you to lead you to believe. And then Jamal Murray, the sixth 40 point playoff game of his career. That's kind of a crazy stat dating back to his awesome shootout that he had with Donovan Mitchell back in the bubble. Jamal Murray looked fantastic tonight out of everything we saw and we saw a ton of three point shot making. His three point shot was just dead eyed tonight. He was getting separation on his moves, he was getting great lift all over the floor. But I thought the most exciting play for Denver's playoff chances was the transition Dunkey had at the end of the game. He got up and he yammed that thing and you could tell he knew it too. And he was like he was pumped and you could tell he was feeling great physically and that bodes extremely well for the big picture with this Nuggets team. That really was the story of the series to this point in my opinion. The Nuggets had some other big contributions tonight. Russell Westbrook was amazing in the first half, vintage like not just knocking down spot up threes and scoring as a cutter. He was like getting buckets and causing actual problems for the Clippers on the ball. Michael Porter and Aaron Gordon were both excellent tonight. Christian Brown was great on both ends at that huge 3 at the end of the third quarter that built that extra bit of margin going into the fourth. But at the end of the day Jamal Murray and Nicole Jokic have badly outplayed James Harden and Kawhi Leonard. That's the series. Everything else flows down from there. That's what dictates the types of advantages the role players are getting. James Harden is the guy on the Clippers that can consistently set people up with advantages. He hasn't done a very good job of that. Nicole Jokic, even in a poor shooting night, set up his team with countless advantages throughout the game. And again, when I keep talking about creating advantages, it's a very basic concept. Every basketball player, even the best basketball players in the world, are going to be more successful when they have a defender sprinting at them versus when they have a defender set on them, when the help defense is out of position and sprinting into help versus when the help is already preloaded up. That's, that's why advantage creation is so important. That's why I tend to be very predisposed, so to speak, as a fan, as a basketball fan, towards players that naturally create a ton of advantages in games. So I've always liked the big forwards, the LeBron's, the Lucas, the Nicola Jokic's. I've liked the, the, the deadly high pick and roll playmakers, the guys like Tyrese Halliburton, for instance. I've always liked the guys that just. I mean, Steph is kind of a unicorn in this regard, but he can just create a ton of advantages just by running around the floor and everybody reacting to him. Giannis, just by being this battering ram that you have to account for by packing up the paint. Those guys that can consistently set their teammates up with advantages, they're going to have a really high offensive floor. Everything flows down from those guys. And again, the intensity. Like, I don't think it's a coincidence that Nicola Jokic has looked like psychopathically competitive in these two games and his team has met the moment and been a buzzsaw versus a Clippers team that's had a lethargic James Harden and a generally quiet. And like, like Kawhi Leonard is not the type of personality that is going to galvanize a group with energy. He's. He gets called a robot for a reason. Now, Kawhi, I thought was pretty good tonight, and Kawhi in general is going to have a certain floor because he is going to bring the requisite intensity. But Kawhi is not the kind of guy that's going to like, legitimately galvanize a group emotionally and be like, hey, like, wake the fuck up. It's time to go what are we doing? You know what I mean? Like, when are you going to see Kawhi do what Nicola Jokic did in the huddle after Game two where he's screaming at his guys? This is unacceptable what we're doing right here. The Clippers just got punched in the face twice. Like, like badly. You don't see that too often in a playoff series one this competitive where you, regardless of arena, regardless of where you're at, one team just looks like they're genuinely playing harder. It usually goes back and forth based on who won the previous game. Any chance for the Clippers to reverse the trend of this series is going to come down to those two flipping the script. Same thing I said about the Lakers versus The Wolves. Can the Lakers beat the Wolves? Yes. It starts with Luka Doncic and LeBron James not getting completely outclassed by Anthony Edwards and Nas Reed and Julius Randle at the end of games. Until they flip that dynamic that nothing's going to change. Same thing goes here. Until James Harden can bring the requisite intensity and create the advantages necessary to get this offense to hum, and until Kawhi Leonard can bring that volume scoring that he brought in Game two, they're going to struggle to flip this dynamic. Now I picked the the Clippers to win this series. As I mentioned, like, like most people did given what we'd seen from the the Nuggets in the time leading up to the series. But one of the things I said after Game 2, and it's something that I feel very strongly at this point, is as a fan, I would like to see Denver advance because I think they have a much better chance to deal with Oklahoma City. The Denver Nuggets hung 140 points on the Thunder the last time that they played them. They have the ability to break down the Thunder defense with their aggregate playmaking. One of the specific reasons that I've not been as high on this Clippers team is their lack of playmaking once you get past James Harden and James Harden can have some issues as the intensity gets leveraged. Right? I, I am worried that the Clippers would go into the Thunder series and just really fall apart offensively. And so I'm personally hoping that the Nuggets can close this deal because I think that they present a very interesting type of challenge for okc, even on defense. Their ability to load up against an Oklahoma City Thunder offense is something that I think is a favorable matchup for them too. I think that would be a really fun series. A Thunder Nugget series, a series that obviously the Thunder would be rightfully favored, but I think it would be a really fun example of two very different styles. A very experienced team versus an inexperienced team. That's what I'll be rooting for moving forward in the series. It's not over. The Clippers absolutely can win Game six, and they absolutely have the talent to come back to Denver and win Game seven. But they've put themselves in a bind and it's really hard for me to imagine something different happening when their leaders haven't seemed to bring the requisite intensity and to be able to meet the ch them, to meet the competition that Jamal Murray and Nicole Jokic are bringing straight to them.
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Eli
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Derek
Before we move on to Pistons Nicks, I'm going to do a very short version of the announcement we made last night. We did just start a New partnership with Playback. It's a app that I feel very passionate about. It's a, a, an opportunity for you guys to be more interacted, interactive with us on the show. And so starting tomorrow, tomorrow after the final buzzer of the Lakers Wolves game, right after we do our YouTube show, we're going to do our normal YouTube show here. When we're done, we're going to go immediately after to what we're calling the Hoops Tonight after show. And at the Hoops Tonight after show over on Playback, we're going to take questions from you guys. We're going to be able to actually bring you up on the stage. We're going to be able to actually go through film live. So we'll be able to do a lot of like the actual visual examples of the stuff that we talked about on the show. It's going to be super interactive, a little bit more informal. Something I'm really excited about. It's going to be with the after show in this playoff run and then we have some big picture goals for next year to start doing some live watch alongs where like we can watch big NBA league pass games together and actually go through the games as they're happening live together. Something I'm really excited about. But for this season we're just doing these after shows after our live YouTube shows. So when you guys have an an opportunity, hit the link in the description, head over to the Hoops Tonight playback feed, get set up so that you guys are ready to go tomorrow night again after the final or after we finish the live show tomorrow night on YouTube, we're all going to head over to Playback to start that new venture. I'm super excited about. Hope to see you guys over there. All right, let's talk Pistons, Knicks. So the Knicks had a chance to close out the Pistons in the same fashion that they took a 31 lead with. Keep things close until you can out execute them down the stretch. But instead it ended up being Kate Cunningham and the Pistons that played better down the stretch and sent the series back to Detroit for Game 6 by quickly capitalizing on a late injury to Jalen Brunson. So it was a crazy sequence. Pistons are up 95, 92. Jalen Brunson tweaks his ankle on a closeout along the left wing. Cat literally goes down in a four on five and drops a bomb like a 40 foot three from almost the logo. That ties the game at 105. Just a huge shot but cade very smartly while Brunson is still on the floor limping around immediately looks to attack him. Now, Cade had been attacking Brunson throughout the series, and in that fourth quarter stretch already, he had just hit a three against a hedge gap on like two or three possessions earlier. And again, a hedge gap is like when Cade's coming off the screen and Jalen Brunson tries to hedge or throw his body out to force Cade to retweet retreat. OG Anunoby is going underneath the screen to try to meet him on the other side. And so there's a gap when. Right when Brunson's pulling back and OG is coming up. It's very similar to his switch interchange gap, which we've talked about a lot on this show. And Cade, it was able to hit a three in that situation against the hedge. But after, after Jalen Brunson sprained his ankle, he didn't want to hedge anymore because he didn't want to, like, have to throw his body into a lateral quickness situation. So instead he just hugged up on the screener. That put Kate in a situation where he had no hedge. And what happens if you set a good screen and there's no hedge? You're going to get downhill. He goes flying downhill, challenges the rim protector and misses a layup, but in the process occupies the rim protector, which allows Jalen Duran to fill the gap from behind and get the dunk right under the basket. There's a lot of that down the stretch. Jalen Brunson had a very similar play that led to a Mitchell Robinson and one where he like, when you get to the basket, even if you miss a layup, if you engage the rim protector, if you force the rim protector to leave his feet and get out of position, you're going to have your center rolling down the lane with nobody who's even remotely physical capable, physically capable of hanging with him on the offensive glass. That's what, that's the challenge with the drop coverage big. And that's why you'll see drop coverage bigs do so much stunting at the ball because they don't want to leave their feet, because if they do, they're out of position to box out and deal with the big man rolling down the lane or to even deal with a lob right. And we saw a bunch of that. Jalen Brunson got Mitchell Robinson open that way. Cade on the first possession after Jalen Brunson's injury, takes advantage of the lack of a hedge, gets downhill, ends up getting the miss that Jalen Duran cleans up on the other end of the floor, Tobias Harris gets a massive stop against Carl Anthony Town. So after Jalen Brunson gets hurt, they have to sub In Deuce McBride, right, and Josh Hart ended up getting hurt as well. And so we saw, we saw a campaign end up coming in the game as well at one point. But it, it was, it was definitely an unfortunate set of circumstances for the Knicks. But Cat, as we saw at many points in this series, has been able to create his own offense when needed. He's hit a couple of big left shoulder fades in crunch time. He had that crazy step back three against Jaylen Duran in game four. So in theory, well, we just go to Cat here. He can create offense. Tobias Harris, excellent individual defense against Cat. Forces him into a tough fade away. Nearly blocks it and actually forces him into a really tough, like a really bad miss. Like a bad, bad miss. Cade goes down the other end. The Knicks are all scrambled in transition defense. Jalen Duran ends up setting like a little brush screen for Cade at the top of the key. Same exact thing. Cade goes flying downhill, misses, but occupies all the help defenders. And there's Jalen Duran just standing under the basket ready for another finish. So more value in the form of rim pressure from Cade. And his rim pressure was fantastic down the stretch of this game. You got a transition push for a scoop shot. He was downhill nonstop down the stretch. None of this tough mid range fade away shit that he was settling for in game four. Cade was going to the bucket down the stretch in this game and had a lot of success that way. So Cade goes down the hill, gets the the miss that leads to the Jalen Durham put back. Now the pistons are up four, Tim Hardaway Jr. S turn to get a big stop. This time they go to Mikhail Bridges. Tim Hardaway forces him into like a tough leaning fadeaway along the right lane line. Ends up missing. And then Cade closes the deal with a textbook drop coverage attack where he gets Deuce McBride trapped on his side, puts him in jail, hits a little floater, and then on the very next possession, a post fade where he turns over the double team and a Sar Thompson just slips along the baseline right behind Karl Anthony Towns. And Cade rifles a perfect pass right to him underneath the basket for the easy layup. Cade was brilliant down the stretch of this game. And by the way, during that whole run, Tom Thibodeau was never able to get Jalen Brunson back into the game. Now I understood the idea from Tibbs. He had one time out left and the ability to advance the ball is. It could make a huge difference in a comeback. Right? So like, first of all, you gotta remember Brunson was stepped out because he was having an ankle injury. Injury. He needed a minute. Right. Cade scores or generates a bucket on three straight possessions. So it gets to six quickly. All right, so it's already in a situation where the Knicks basically need to go like, like perfect basketball down the stretch. Right? And in that scenario, it's very possible that you do hit a shot that forces you to call a timeout after fouling to advance the ball so that you can get another shot up with like 2 seconds left on the game clock if you run into that scenario. So I think what Tibbs was thinking is someone's going to get fouled, something's going to go out of bounds, worst case scenario. This is why we have Cat. This is why we have Mikhail Bridges so that they can run offense if we need to need them to in a situation. In theory, we have a better defensive lineup out there. Maybe we can buy Jalen Brunson a few possessions. So like I understood, but then it just. By the time you got a chance to use the timeout, it was too late. But like at the end of the day, the damage was done in those first couple of possessions after Jalen Brunson got hurt. And so I don't want to hyper focus on that decision there from Tibbs, I could see what he was thinking. He just wanted to save that time out for a final possession should they need it. But the story of the game, and easily the most interesting storyline for the rest of the series was a Saar Thompson's individual defense on Jalen Brunson. Pistons fans had been clamoring for this adjustment for the entire series there. There was some pretty strong lineup data that the Pistons were about the same on offense and considerably better on defense. When Assar Thompson was on the floor, I was a little bit more on the fence down the stretch. In game four, Asar made a couple of classic young guy mistakes on offense. So I thought at least it was at least defensible to at least in crunch time for, excuse me, for the Pistons to go with like a more experienced and more polished offensive player. But down 3:1, JB Bickerstaff finally leans fully into Asar. He plays a series high 29 minutes. He was plus nine in those minutes. Jalen Brunson finishes the game four for 16 from the field. Now, as a team effort, several guys got big stops on Brunson on an island. Cade got stops Dennis Schroeder got stops. Guy guys did. It was a team effort on Brunson, but Asar applied constant ball pressure, was closing off driving angles by beating him to spots, was bumping him off his base on his fadeaway, got great contests on his mid range, was pursuing him over the top of ball screens and getting contests from behind those rearview contests. And I thought his ball pressure in particular caused Brunson to play faster than usual. It sped him up throughout the entire game. He missed a couple of shots that he usually makes, like easy shots right at the rim. He took some unusual shots. Like there was one where he had a catch in the left corner. And as our Thompson closed out on him, textbook closeout. Closes out on the high side shoulder to funnel him towards the baseline. Brunson rips baseline and ends up taking kind of like a Euro step floater. But Tobias Harris was like right there, like right there. And Brunson just shot the floater directly into Tobias's hands. Like it barely got out of his hands before he got. Before he got blocked. And like, Brunson usually sees that sort of thing. But I thought he was just a little bit rushed, just a little bit uncomfortable compared to what he looked like at other points in the series. And so, I mean, especially with where the situation has gone to this point in the series, I think it was a worthwhile gamble from JB Bickerstaff to lean into a SAR more, and it paid off. And that will be the biggest key in Game six back in Detroit. Can Brunson solve the Asar Thompson problem and get more comfortable throughout the game? I think the Knicks are going to go into Detroit in Game 6 and play like a veteran team that knows they need to win. They had a similar game last year where they went into Philly, I think, and beat them in Game six where they kind of like looked a little sketchy, but then they were able to rise up on the road and get the job done. My guess is it'll look a little bit like that, but it'll probably still be a close game because this Pistons team has had a lot of success with them again against them, with their physicality. So I think it'll be a close game and it'll come down to late game execution. And if the Knicks can be what the Knicks are capable of beating and Jalen Brunson can stay on the floor, they should be able to close out the deal there. But really impressive moment of growth there from Cade Cunningham and the Detroit Pistons. All right, we'll talk Quickly on Pacers Bucks and then we'll do a mailbag and then we'll get out of here. Milwaukee threw a hell of a punch tonight. Giannis played another amazing game in that like kind of point center role where he's next to Bobby Portis and he just kind of determines everything as the half court shot creator. 30 points, 20 rebounds and 13 assists with two steals and two blocks. An absolutely insane stat line. I tweeted this earlier like, I was obviously wrong to pick the Bucks to beat the Pacers for a myriad of reasons. And obviously the Dame injury was a psychological punch to the gut for the Bucks in the middle of the series. But I don't have any regrets for believing in Giannis and his ability to potentially win this series. Like, he is just, he is amazing and he's going to go play somewhere else this summer and some team is going to become frightening when they add Giannis to the mix. And there are a couple teams out there that have the assets to make a move for him that are already really fucking good. And it could get incredibly scary, but Giannis played amazing. Gary Trent Jr. And AJ Green go nuclear from three. They hit 14 of them, including Gary Trent hitting five of his eight threes in crunch time. But Tyrese Halliburton was even better. Think about how good you thought Gary Trent Jr. Was down the stretch. Like did it feel like when you were watching the game that Gary Trent was scoring every single time? He had 15 points in crunch time. Tyrese Halliburton had 14 of his own in crunch time to go with two assists. The Pacers overcame a seven point deficit. No T. With a little over a half minute left. Andrew Nemhardt hits a ball, a bomb coming off a ball screen like a deep like 30 foot 3 off the dribble at the top. And then Tyrese Halliburton beats his man off the dribble twice. Once against AJ Green on the right wing, once against Giannis, Antenna Kumpo on the left wing for the win. And on both of them, like AJ Green, physicality bumping up on Halliburton, he still turns the corner, he bumps him at the rim and he still gets enough lift to power through the contact for a soft left handed finish. Off the glass. And one. And then attacking Giannis in a switch, the nasty left to right crossover turns the corner. And for the second time in crunch time, he elevates and actually gets an up and under to avoid rim protection and cleanly lay it down off the glass like that is the most Athletic. Tyrese has looked on his dribble drive and rim finishing attacks, especially at a 1 and 1, 1 on ones, since the beginning of last year when he was kicking everybody's ass before he pulled his hamstring. Like, there has been a consistent theme with Tyrese Halliburton in like his range of potential outcomes and it pretty much comes down to he can make all the reads, but in order to beat switches, he's got to be able to beat people off the dribble and hit stuff at the rim, through traffic, in traffic. And in order to dictate the type of coverage necessary to generate all the kinds of openings that he can kill teams with, he's got to be able to hit his three. If he can hit his three off the dribble, that's the other ceiling raising piece that unlocks everything that he does. Because if he can score effectively enough in drop coverage and he can score effectively enough in switches, that unlocks his, his peak trait, which is that he sees every, he sees every read as it's happening and he makes those, those reads on time, on target, the pass is always in the right place. That's the ceiling raising piece. But it depends on his ability to be explosive in one on one situations and to knock down shots and drop coverage. And so like, honestly, we're recording a Pacers Cavs preview tomorrow morning, so keep an eye on the feeds early ish in the day tomorrow for that. But the main thing that I want to focus on is that they're going to need Tyrese Halliburton to be amazing, to be able to win that series. And this is the best that he's looked since the time that he came onto the scene early last year. And everyone was like, oh my God, what are we watching? Like evolutionary Steve Nash here. Like, he's showing that upside again. The first step on the move on Giannis was crazy. Everyone's slaying Giannis and I mean the dude had to do everything for his team. So like, I, I, I, I'm just not going to be super critical of him in that situation. This is not like the Luka Doncic situation where he's being anchored by LeBron James and Austin Reeves and, and somehow still running out of gas at the end of games. Like Giannis is the engine for everything this team does. Like, who's the second best player on Giannis's team tonight? Scary Trent Jr. Kevin Porter Jr. You know, like, like he took a bunch of league like a replacement level players in the NBA and went Into Indiana. Very good. Indiana Pacers team in an in. Nearly got the job done. But, like, in that last ISO, Tyrese, he toasted him on that move. He looked explosive on that move, and it wasn't like a high hesitation, just shoot the gap. He changed direction with a sweeping left to right crossover and then hit the jet moving forward. They're going to need him to be incredible to beat the Cavs, and I thought that that was a really good sign, how explosive he looked down the stretch. The we had a really weird altercation at the end of the game with Tyrese Halberton's dad, like, walking onto the court to just shit Takianis on the floor. That was super bizarre. But I thought both Tyrese and Giannis handled it really well in their post game pressers, and that kind of took some of the, the weirdness away because you could see, like, I'm so glad that we've seen this from Tyrese. Like, shit talk can get nasty sometimes, but there is something to be said about high level competition and the ability to separate what is high level competition from what things are like off the court. And there are a lot of people out there that, like, I mean, we were talking about this last night. Like, I, I, I, I like to think I'm a reasonably nice guy. I have been awful to people on the basketball court before. Like, awful to the point where, like, I think about it all week until I see that person and I can apologize to them. Like, there is a, when you get out there and the competitive juices start flowing, like, there is. It is important to separate the competition from what things are like off the court. And like, Giannis had a chance to go into that press conference and just rip Tyrese and talk all sorts of shit about who he thinks he is as a person. Nope. Tyrese is a competitor. Wish him all the best. But then calling attention to the obvious behavior from his dad. And same thing with Tyrese Halliburton. He could have gone into the presser and been like, those boys talk shit the entire series and we busted their ass. Nope. He went up there and he was like, look, we're outside of the lines now. Time to be a grown up. You know, I respect the hell out of Giannis. I respect the hell out of Dame. This is just what we do when we compete. And, and I just, I just want to applaud those, those guys for handling that really sticky situation with, with class.
- [36:22]
Ben
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- [36:32]
Chris
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- [36:49]
Ben
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- [36:59]
Chris
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- [37:12]
Ben
Head to your local Walmart or Target to try the OG Degree Cool Rush for yourself.
- [37:17]
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- [37:47]
Derek
All right, let's, let's hit a couple, let's do about 10 minutes of mailbag questions and then we'll get out of here for the night.
- [37:52]
Frank
Let's do it. First question. You alluded to this a little bit in the Nuggets Clippers portion of the show, but Jokic seems to have really stepped up on the defensive end. Still not great by any means, but it does feel like a massive improvement from the regular season. Is that what you're seeing?
- [38:07]
Derek
Yes. Part of it is like the juxtaposition and what I mean by that is like they were so bad on defense this season. They were so, so bad. Like everybody was bad. And so like there's a certain amount of like they're just kind of like competing now and that's making the world of difference and they just weren't competing earlier. But I mean like everything comes down to because of the way that Denver guards, everything comes down to just the three parts of their pick and Roll coverage, the ball pressure of Christian Brown, Nicole Jokic at the level in their backside rotations, and they're just substantially sharper on all three fronts than they were in the regular season.
- [38:47]
Frank
Yeah, I mean, I feel like they're a lot sharper in the regular season. That feels obvious. It feels like he's been sharper just since game one and two. I mean, the, The. At the. The intensity, and I was about to say foot speed, and that felt like the wrong word to use for Jokic. But in the. The intensity and sort of purpose with which at least he's guarding out there feels notable. It certainly feels a lot more like their championship run than it did for last season.
- [39:13]
Derek
You know, by comparison, he's big and he's smart. So, like, if he does, like, think of it like this. He. His speed is more useful because he's usually early, but he's got to be bringing the requisite intensity. But, like, dude, I thought Jokic, his intensity was like, palpable. Palpable. On the screen tonight, like, you could tell he was like, I'm winning this fucking game. Like, like, I'm winning this fucking game. And it just was like the exact opposite of the energy we were seeing from James Harden. It was crazy.
- [39:40]
Frank
Yeah. It is funny when people like to do the whole does Yokoji even care about basketball thing. Like, when you watch the dude in the playoffs, I mean, he is as intense of a competitor as anybody.
- [39:50]
Derek
Dude, it's such bullshit. When I was like, when I was like, when I heard, it was like, oh, Jokic, like, did this, like, you know, four hour coaching class back when he was in Europe this summer. I'm literally sitting there thinking. I'm like, this dude's a basketball nut job. This dude loves basketball. Let's. Yeah.
- [40:06]
Frank
On the Harden question, are Harden's late series struggles more about a lack of intensity or being overly scouted by that point, sort of familiarity with the opponent at that point?
- [40:17]
Derek
You know, I've been thinking a lot about this tonight over the course of the game. Like, what. What is it that's causing him to do this? And I think there's a couple of different things. I think there's some obvious skill things. Like, James Harden has always had a little bit. A little bit of a. Like a. His bag has several very reliable moves, but he doesn't necessarily have, like, a gigantic variety of shot making. It's a lot of, like, the same three or four types of moves. And so I think there's a certain amount of, like, guys pick up on his cues. But also, like, I genuinely think that part of the NBA playoff process is like, overcoming the adversity of a defense, kind of figuring you out. Throughout NBA history, even the greatest basketball players that I've watched, because in the playoffs, you have to beat four teams over the course of two months, generally at progressively more difficult levels, right? And once you get into, like, second, third round, you're consistently running into great defenses. I think what ends up happening is, like, over the course of a series, you get tons of tape, and teams are pretty good at taking away what you like to do. And, like, you will find yourself in a basketball game where you're like, shit, the thing I like to do is not working. What am I going to do now? And, like, there's like a intensity, like, confronting the problem with intensity, which is like, well, if I just play really hard, I can make these things happen that are positives for me and my team, and I can build momentum in the form of confidence that comes from that. And. And I can try to turn this thing around. And then there's the. It's just not my night. You know, it, like, it, it. I, I, you know, does it almost like feels like that kind of energy from him where he almost, like, succumbs to it, and it's like, dude, James, this happens to everybody. This happens to literally everybody in these games. It gets really fucking hard. Like, you just have to find a way to contribute, just find a way, you know? And like, for him, it could have literally just been creating advantages in ball screens by, like, getting downhill with the same verve that he brought in the fourth quarter of Game four.
- [42:39]
Frank
Yeah, it's. This is probably a bit of an unfair comparison because it's, you know, one of the best players of all time, but you think Steph Curry likes being top locked? You think he likes being fucking face guarded? Like, he hates it. He hates it. But he at least puts in the requisite effort required to try to beat it other ways and create advantages for his team when defenses are playing gimmicky defenses or trying to do everything they can to take away your best option. Right? Like, that's part of the equation that you're describing.
- [43:08]
Derek
No, you're absolutely right. To put it simply, like, Stephen had a poor shooting night relative to what he's capable of in Game 4, but his impact came in the form of his intensity throughout the game.
- [43:21]
Frank
Right? And you can say the exact same for Jokic tonight. And on that Jokic point, James Harden was tasked with the at least point of attack defense on Jokic a lot of the second half. It did seem to have some success. At least, you know, he wasn't yogic, wasn't as much of a scorer certainly tonight. Is that something that you think the Clippers can use next game? Is this a reasonable thing that could affect Jokic and change the series or is it sort of like a gimmicky thing they tried to do tonight?
- [43:50]
Derek
It's gimmicky in the sense that like Jokic was doing a lot of work at the top of the key and it gave them some flexibility in terms of the ability to switch. And there's also the reality that like this is teams have been trying this forever, which is basically let's put our bigger forward that's not very good on the perimeter, let's put him on Jokic and then let's put our center on the backline. And it's just really, as you look through the Clippers roster, they don't really have like Kawhi effectively is that big forward, but he's better deployed on the perimeter. So basically James Harden is playing the same role that you see so many teams use against Denver, which is he's basically their defensive four. I mean, who was this primary matchup earlier in the series? It was literally Aaron Gordon or Michael Porter Jr. For the most part. So like the, the idea there though is like what, what James Harden is doing getting super aggressive up underneath. Jokic is one part of the team defensive scheme of handling him, which really involves packing things on the back line and like making difficult passing reads as you have some non shooters on the floor.
- [44:53]
Frank
For sure, I agree. All right, let's move away from this series to a couple other questions. Given the Knicks Pistons series has been dead even or close to dead even, are you. Does that make you lower on the New York Knicks ceiling or higher on Detroit's present slash future given the fact they're doing all this also without Isaiah Stewart and Jaden Ivey, I think that.
- [45:13]
Derek
There'S, I mean, you texted me during the game, Jackson, you're like, I think this is going to be a series that the Knicks will win, but that we will look back on one day and be like, hey, this is one of the series where Cade kind of like showed some of what he's capable of, like an important part of his story, so to speak. It's like the old LeBron wizard series, for instance, you know, and, and like it's one of those things where, you know, Kate has learned some valuable lessons over the course of this series. Cade early in the series was like not being as deliberate with hunting, screening actions and crunch time. It was attacking too much. One on one in the middle of the series. Made some bad reads where he's like trying to like split double teams and stuff and turning the basketball over Tonight very decisive in the actions that he was attacking and was relentlessly getting downhill. Wasn't settling for some of the mid range jump shots that he was settling earlier in the series for like, like. Cade has shown growth over the course of this series. He's been really good defensively for stretches in this series. Like you're seeing a lot of stuff come to the surface. Asar Thompson and what he's shown you is like kind of the, literally the Amen Thompson role. Just guard the other team's best guard and then operate as a baseline vertical spacer. Like the, there's, there's obviously a lot of exciting stuff there. I personally was never very high on the Knicks at any point this season. Like there was not a single day from, from the day they got the shit kicked out of them by the Celtics. There was never a single day that I really took the Celtics or the Knicks that seriously as a championship contender. We'll see. We'll see if they can flip that script. Going against the Knicks but like. Or going against the Celtics but like. It also is a little tricky to me with this Jalen Brunson ankle thing. Like if he's not super explosive in game six and he deals with another game of Azar Thompson all over him, I could see things going south. Like I, I think the Knicks are going to win and I think they'll probably win in six, but there's like a hefty like 20% chance that the Pistons get this done. Like they, they are, they are a real problem for the Knicks on a bunch of different levels.
- [47:10]
Frank
Yeah, 100%. I mean it's crazy watching these playoffs with this sort of extra level of scrutiny that we're watching it with. And it, it's crazy how much the Thompson twins jump off the screen still as rookies to have to be the best athletes on the floor every time they're on the floor to be. It's rare to see a defender have the, this kind of size. Also. They're kind of huge and have the lateral quickness to constantly be beating people to the spots they want to be getting to all the time.
- [47:39]
Derek
I've been thinking about this a lot within the context of like, okay, so like, why there was a reason why I was disagreeing With a lot of people talking about the Luka Doncic, like, roster structure with the Lakers. And like, there's the obvious thing where it's like you, you of course want to have Luca with a rim, like a, like a vertical spacer, like obviously. And, and the Lakers will get one this summer, I'm sure. But outside of that, like, I like the idea of Luca being surrounded with guys that don't just finish plays, but that can extend advantages and play out of like, like kind of complex closeout attacking and connective playmaking and all that kind of stuff. I, you know, I've had this like, vision for what the Lakers can be that has never really come to fruition yet, which involves basically Luca creating advantage and then LeBron and Austin and everyone else just playing off of that advantage and having a ton of success. But here we are, The Lakers are down 3:1, and last year a team of Luca surrounded with play finishing was more successful. So then I look at why, why were they more successful? And I keep coming back to Derek Jones Jr. And Derek Lively and Daniel Gafford and the specific dynamic of having a legitimate guy, like what Jaden's doing to Luca, which is having a legitimate on ball guy that can be a pest that you're. That will switch if needed. But that is really hard to get to switch because he's so nifty getting around screens that can make a guy uncomfortable all game and that can be bracketed by rim protection on the backside. I think that's how they beat the Thunder. That's how they beat Minnesota. They press up like Derrick Jones was able to press up on ants. Pull up jump shot enough that he wasn't very comfortable with it. And Ant was dealing with a ton of rim protection when he would get past that first layer. And I want to be clear, Ants, Ant deserves more credit. He's not just beating the Lakers because of a lack of rim protection. He has beat them with his passing and his three point shooting, which is just a testament to his development. But I think there's something to be said about these types of guys. You're watching Amend Thompson have some success defensively. You're watching A Sar Thompson have a lot of success defensively. You're like these, like. I think it's actually better to surround your supremely gifted offensive player with defense than offense. And one of the big reasons why I'm thinking that way, Jackson, is these, these shooters that don't make shots. There's all these shooters that don't make shots out there. And it's like, so it's like, what good is the shooter that doesn't make shots compared to the athlete that's athletic every single night? And so like at a certain point I almost look at it and I go, like, how much different is the average, like non athletic skill guard shooting on wide open catch and shoots in this series than some of the better athletes who maybe aren't as good as shooters, but they feel fresher, they get more lift on their jump shot and they can impact the game in all these other ways.
- [50:52]
Frank
It's really interesting about shooters not making shots because that's what I have been thinking many of the games watching the Pistons where I'm like, can their shooters just hit shots? What the hell is going on? And not that these two are the same caliber of player, because I think we can all agree that overall Jaden McDaniels is a, you know, a tier or two above someone like Malik Beasley. But from a just a conceptual standpoint, Jaden's going to have some games where he hits threes like Malik Beasley. Yeah, he's not going to do it every game, maybe one out of every five or two out of every five or whatever, but he is going to do that on occasion. And he's every single night going to bring the athleticism and size and speed and strength that someone like, you know, just by the example Malik Beasley is not providing.
- [51:33]
Derek
And when they do make shots, it makes them like kind of unbeatable, kind of like they looked in game one and then they can have a game like Jaden. Jaden didn't shoot particularly well in Game 4, but was like super, super impactful defensively. It's just, you know, every single year I cover the league, I feel like I learned a little bit more. And you always are. Everything's also about the context. Like you, you also, we've seen teams like Denver pull it off to where they can win without a ton of supreme athleticism on the floor just by overwhelming skill and size. Or Golden State, where it's like Golden State has continued to win without much physical size on the floor repeatedly over the course of the last decade. And so like there I, I, there is no hard or fast rule, to be clear. But as I'm looking specifically, like as a fan of the Lakers, for instance, as I look at that team, I've been, all I can think about for this summer is getting more athletic. Yeah, that's all I can think about.
- [52:36]
Frank
And just thinking about it more, really, just in real time, as in the playoffs specifically, when defenses are so, you know, focused on the guys who are the best players, obviously, but then they're also very focused on the elite. The elite level play finishers. Like, I'm a league Beasley, they are on that dude's hip, right? Malik Beasley is not getting many half court remotely open three pointers, while Jaden McDaniels, someone of that sort of ilk, is getting open three pointers because defenses are like, we will live with that. We will live with him shooting threes. And so then the equation changes even further where it's like, what would you prefer, a contested Malik Beasley 3 or a wide open Jaden McDaniels 3? And the numbers probably. I don't even know what the numbers say. They would probably still land in Malik Beasley, but it's a lot closer. You're not actually comparing contested three for contested three. You're comparing for much of the game, you're comparing contested three from shooter versus open three from quote unquote non shooter.
- [53:33]
Derek
It's a little more complicated than that because I think there's value in being guarded a certain type of way. But I think like, I think Malik Beasley is a class of shooter that get. That gets guarded, that type of. I'll give you an example, like Bogdan Bogdanovich, you know, or like when you're looking at like, like Tim Hardaway Jr. Is a great example. Tim Hardaway Jr. At stretches in this series, has not been able to make shots. Like, to me, it's that. That tier below Malik Beasley where it's like the, where the other team just puts a decent lock and trail defender on them that takes away the easy ones. And then like all of a sudden he becomes a useless player. Like, but there's. It's just, it's just the volatility because, like, I feel like Buddy Healed was this guy and Buddy Heels had a couple of good games in a row. So like, my, my point is though, is like, like Buddy Heald, when he's got the shot going the way he did in the last two games, looks like a good player. But like, Buddy's looked really bad in the games when he hasn't been hitting shots. And so that, that, that's where it just gets tricky. And I, I think that there's something to be said about the dependability of athleticism. And like, ideally that guy can hit a catch and shoot three, but like, it. To me it'd be like a guy like Chris Dunn, like, how much value is there in A guy like Chris Dunn versus a guy like a Tim Hardaway Jr. You know, and it's a complicated discussion. And like, I, you know, there are other times, there are other times I watch a game and I'm like, oh my God, shot making is the only thing that matters. Like, I, it's, it's all. I feel like it all depends on like having the perfect mixture of things. It's just, I tend to think of it like, like having Luka Doncic as like this supremely gifted offensive player that can create advantages. I just want to put him in a situation where his athletic job is really easy so that over the course of games he can just focus on creating shots. There's something to be said about it being problematic how, how much they switch with him. And this is why his conditioning is so important, because it would be good for him to be able to add a hedge and recover look to what he can do. But he just needs to get faster and he needs to be able to cover ground more over the course of games. But yeah, I've just been, I've been very keyed in on the athletes and we've just seen a lot of examples of the athletes kind of having big impact at this point for sure.
- [55:43]
Frank
Let's do one more question. In a Cavs vs Celtics match, potential Eastern Conference matchup, assuming that that does happen, does Donovan Mitchell need to reach the level of a top five player and do you think he's capable of reaching that type of ceiling?
- [55:57]
Derek
I think where Donovan Mitchell is going to become incredibly important for the Cavs Celtics matchup is crunch time, when it turns into the matchup hunting, slow down type of thing. Because the Cavs, I think, are going to have a lot of success in that series just with their blender. And what I mean by that is just the incessant transition pushes, the quick, decisive attacks, the diversity in the way that they attack. But at the end of games, the Celtics will be able to strangle the pace and it's going to become about picking on matchups. And there's no doubt that Donovan Mitchell is going to have to go toe to toe with those guys. The key there is though is like, can the Cavs get. So for instance, one of the reasons why I view in that series as more of a coin flip is like the home court advantage piece. Like what if, if the CAVS win game one or game two by, you know, 15, 18 points and it doesn't come down to crunch time, they could put theirselves themselves in a situation where like if they win two games like that in a series, then Donovan Mitchell might only need to out execute the Celtics in crunch time, you know, twice. You know, like he it that, that's really the key to me is like I think if the, I think if the Cavs are going to beat the Celtics, they need like a couple of those games to be like run like between game one, two and five. They would need to win two of those games by like 10, 15 points because I think it'd be, I think it'd be really difficult to ask Mitchell to out execute Tatum four times in a series in a crunch time, you know, slow down type of game.
- [57:17]
Frank
Yeah, yeah, I'm with you.
- [57:19]
Derek
All right guys, that's all we have for tonight. As always, we sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. As mentioned, tomorrow we are going to be doing our series preview on Pacers Cavs with Carter Rodriguez tomorrow night live after the final buzzer of Lakers, Lakers, Timberwolves. Don't forget we're also doing our first hoops tonight after show on playback. So make sure you guys get down there on the to the link in the description and head over to playback and get signed up and get subscribed to our channel. Jam packed day for the show tomorrow. We'll see you guys in the morning. 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 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.
- [58:02]
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