← The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - LIVE: Pacers Go Up 2-0 On the Cavaliers + Warriors Steal Game 1 After Steph’s Injury
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Jason
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Make it a playoff run to remember with DraftKings. Download the DraftKings sportsbook app and use code HOOPS. That's H O O P S. That's code hoops for new customers to get $200 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-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 Boot Hill Casino and Resort in Kansas. 21 plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario, new customers only. Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG Co Audio all right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Tuesday everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great, great start to your week. Got a jam pack show for you guys tonight. We're hitting both of the Round two games from tonight. Warriors Timberwolves Game one as well as Pacers Cavs Game two. Both games marred by substantial injuries to very important players which has been a huge bummer. I'm a little bummed out in general after the way tonight went, just because you always want to see these teams compete against each other at full strength and it just is always a little bit of a bummer when you work through an 82 game season and then somebody gets banged up in a big spot. We'll be talking about the injuries a little bit later. We're going to talk about some of the different basketball dynamics at play. And then at the tail end of the show we're gonna take about 10 minutes of questions from the chat. So make sure you're subscribed to our YouTube channel. And then in our chat, Jackson's going to be pitching some question to questions to us at the tail end of the show. When we're done with our mailbag here, we're all gonna up and go over to Playback to watch some film, take some callers and just hang out and talk hoops for an extra 45 minutes at the tail of the show. So make sure you guys hit hit that link in the description and follow us over to Playback when the show is over tonight. 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_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 in the review on that front. Our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, make sure you guys follow us there. And last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the chat so we can get to them at the tail end of the show. All right, let's talk some basketball. So obviously, the staff injury is just a huge bummer. Any of you guys who have ever had a hamstring strain, I've had one playing basketball. Ironically, it was like a kind of a. An interesting trajectory thing for my basketball career because I played juco my first year, but I actually tried out for the same juco the year prior and pulled my hamstring in a. In the training camp there. And I re injured it like three or four times before I finally gave it the appropriate amount of rest. It's just such a finicky injury. And the specific thing that you'll notice when you have a hamstring injury as a basketball player, when you're trying to make explosive moves forward, there's a lot of that hamstring pulling your body. After that first step. And like, that was where I constantly re injured. I'd be like, oh, I feel fine. I'm ready to go. And then I'd, like, try to do an aggressive dribble, move to the right and immediately be like, oh, nope, not even close to ready. I need to take some more time. And so it's just such a huge bummer because it's hard for me to envision a scenario where Steph is close to 100% in the series, which is obviously a huge swing towards Minnesota's favor. And I thought this was a series that Golden State could win for a lot of the same reasons that you guys saw tonight. But we'll talk about it in a minute. I do think that there is a. A pathway here, a very slim pathway for Steph to return in this series and to be somewhat impactful. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But as far as this particular game goes, one of the big things I talked about in the series preview was just the simple fact that this is a very, very, very different matchup than the Los Angeles Lakers team. I was impressed by a lot of what Minnesota did in the first round, but it looked, you know, pretty similar to what they did to Phoenix last year. And I left that series primarily extremely disappointed with the Los Angeles Lakers and a lot of stuff they did on both ends of the floor. They're competitiveness defensively. Even at the tail end of the series, LeBron was doing a bad job on the glass. And defensively, Luca, I thought, got soundly outplayed and looked super out of shape at the end of games. Their. Their defense was horrible. It just. I was really disappointed in them. And as I looked at the Warriors, I looked at them as on offense, a very different type of offense, and then just a substantially better defense. You know, I was, I was texting with Jackson during the game. Like, I, I always have to be careful saying this kind of stuff because there's a segment of Steph Curry fans that are so just irrational that they take it as some sort of criticism of Steph or some sort of minimize. Attempt to minimize Steph. But Steve Kerr is a top two coach in this league, and Draymond Green is the greatest defensive player of this era. And this team has an extremely high floor even without Steph because of those two guys and what they do to set the floor on both ends of the floor, what Draymond does defensively, and then Steve Kerr in that front office. And I want to connect the front office to this. This has been consistent through multiple general managers. But they just know how to find smart basketball players that can play within what Steve Kerr asks them to do. And that's what allows you to see guys like Quinton Post step in and be impactful. Pat Spencer step in and be impactful. For a guy like Buddy Heald, who literally struggled at every other destination of his career, to suddenly come into Golden State and be a useful player on both ends of the floor like that is a credit to Steve Kerr and that's a credit to this organization. And like I thought tonight was just a giant advertisement for what makes the warriors one of the great organizations in the NBA from the top down. And then Steph is just the top tier superstar that can lift them to championship level success. But these guys, that there is, this is, this is one of the great coaches in NBA history and one of the great defensive players in NBA history. And those dudes got the job done in extremely unfortunate circumstances with their star going down early in the game the way they did. But let's talk about the specific differences. So the defense. Golden State was the number one defense in the league after the Jimmy Butler trade. I talked about this a lot coming into the playoff run, but this is, in my opinion, an entirely different tier of defensive team than the Lakers team that Minnesota faced in the first round. Specifically, the two things that I mentioned was their ability on the perimeter to actually get up into the ball because they actually have some quick guards that can guard the ball. Guys like Gary Payton, guys like Moses Moody, guy like Buddy Healed has been defending at a really high level this year. They got A bunch of guys that can actually use their quickness up on the ball. The Lakers were a team that could not pressure the ball. They could not pressure the ball because they're all 6, 8, 6, 9 and pretty slow footed by comparison. They have to play more of a passive contained type of defense. They're sitting back off the ball. They're trying to funnel Ant because they know they can't stop him. They're trying to funnel him into a certain type of help side situation. They, they were just facing all these like foot speed mismatches all over the floor. Right? With Golden State I thought the biggest thing that stood out, stood out right away was just how uncomfortable Minnesota was on the perimeter against Golden State's ball pressure. All of that ball pressure caused them to rush the issue, force the issue into the paint. And then again, Draymond Green, you're not going to find a better player in NBA history at occupying the paint and disrupting everything there while also being able to get out and get a great closeout on a NAS read or get out and get a great closeout on another shooter on the weak side. And so Golden State just put Minnesota into a completely different type of offensive situation. Instead of getting to walk the ball up the court and just pick a Mitch a mismatch that they liked and set a screen to get the switch and then space the floor and then Ant gets to casually dribble wherever he wants and Julius gets to casually dribble wherever he wants. Instead it's pressure forcing them to make decisions quicker. Any sort of ball pressure typically is going to lead to an offensive player just looking to attack it off the dribble. And there were just a lot of really poor decisions in the middle of floor by Ant and Julius in the first half. They did get better in the second half. There was also a little bit of a let up from Golden State as they took multiple 20 point leads. But there they did have some success in the second half. Anthony Edwards in particular started to figure out how to get to the rim and finish. This is one of the big things I, I picked up from the series preview if you guys remember. I, I just think this particular matchup is really rough for Julius Randle. He on defense is asked to track shooters and be paying attention off ball constantly and then on the offensive end of the floor it's just Draymond's one of the best guys at once again stunting at him and making him uncomfortable and putting him in positions or he can make bad decisions or take bad shots. But overall, I thought the gap in the defense was abundantly clear right away. They allowed just 31 points in the first half. Even in the second half. When Minnesota made their run, if, if ever, Golden State needed to kind of reassert control of the situation. They were able to get the stops that they needed to get. They had some issues with Rudy Gobert on the offensive glass, but they were able to kind of keep it relatively within a manageable type of margin. Just their defense cleanly won the first round of this matchup, the first game in this series. Minnesota will have adjustments. There's going to be a lot of things that they'll look to do better and look to do differently. But I thought the initial idea of what Golden State's defense does and how it's different than what the Lakers do had a substantial impact on Minnesota on the other end of the floor. I thought Golden State generally looked very comfortable early in the game. They had a couple of guys that went cold, like Buddy Healed was really struggling to hit shots earlier in the game. Jimmy Butler was struggling to get going early in the game. But you could see Steph got several clean looks early. You could see that the dynamic of the way that Golden State was attacking on offense was giving Minnesota fits. And I thought we especially saw that in the middle portion of the game because I want to take Steph Curry and I want to remove him from the equation for a second because Steph is a obviously this like top five player in the world who is one of the greatest players in NBA history, greatest shooter of all time, all that stuff. But there's also a basketball schematic concept inside what Golden State does that is very different than what Minnesota does. And that is they have incessant action ball and player movement. The ball's popping from side to side, shooters are constantly running off of actions. There's all sorts of little things they do to try to con confuse you, where they'll run an action one way and then guys will slip out of screens the next time. There's relentless pace in motion in the half court. They push the ball off of misses extremely well. Just very different than that Lakers team that was giving the ball to Luka, walking the ball up the court and doing the same thing Minnesota was doing on the other end, which is just finding a matchup that they wanted and then spacing the floor and playing one on one basketball. It's just a very different type of matchup. I talked about this in the, in the series preview, but to me this was a matchup where Minnesota was going to have to defend with their brain, not with their legs. And that's where it's. That's where it's very different than what they did against the Lakers. The third quarter is a classic example. You give up 36 points and you lose a lesser version of Steph Curry and Buddy Heald constantly in that quarter because you're not tracking all of the ball and player movement because you're not as attentive as you need to be. The offensive rebounds are a big part of it. Golden State at 18 offensive rebounds despite being an undersized team. Why is that? It's because Minnesota's in rotation dealing with this blender of players. And in those sorts of situations when you're tracking shooters off of screens and stuff like that, a lot of times the screeners will free up going towards the basket. Jimmy Butler got seven offensive rebounds in this game. Buddy healed. He's running around in circles. He's not just getting open as a shooter, he's getting open as a crasher because he's getting. He's getting separated from his defender. And so Minnesota will defend better over the course of this series. That. That's the thing with Golden State in general is they tend to catch you really off guard early in a series with their ball and player movement, and you do get somewhat better, but it's just a very different type of matchup. And one of the things you saw with Steph, too, Steph was able to break off some of these taller, skinnier defenders from Minnesota that are more like length athletes instead of like foot speed type of athletes that he can get leaning one way or another and get out of position so he can rise up and knock down a shot. I thought the dramatic difference in the matchup showed in a big way for Minnesota today, and they got a lot of work in front of them in order to clean some of that stuff up. Now I want to. Let's go to the warriors shout outs first and I'll circle back to Steph's injury because Steph's injury is kind of like a big picture thing for me. So Jimmy Butler in the second half again. The. The entire job changed as soon as Steph Curry went out of the game. It was going to become a defensive slug fest at that point, and you were going to need other guys to step up and be really aggressive. Suddenly it's going to be a lot more of like you need Jimmy to operate as a score, not just as a kind of a fulcrum in the middle. Of the floor. You're going to need Buddy heel to kind of like up the. The range of what he considers to be a good shot into a range that's a little bit further towards bad shot because you're going to need him to be aggressive. You needed guys to step up and get buckets. Jonathan Kaminga coming, coming in and generating seven points the way he did. I know it doesn't seem like much, but those buckets felt important in the moment. Like Pat Spencer coming in and hitting that spin move on Nikhil Alexander Walker along the baseline and banking that in. Did you could. It was so funny. You could see Nikhil Alexander Walker was so frustrated that he gave up a bucket, that he gave up a bucket to Pat, but. And then he hits that big sweeping, driving hook down the lane line against Rudy Gobert. Just those two self created buckets in a situation like that, those are like found money in a game like this, when your star goes down. Gary Payton hitting a couple of threes that he hit, there were just so many guys that stepped up. Like Draymond Green went cold late in the game. Him hitting those four threes early in the game and building that initial advantage, like, if Steph Curry goes out of the game and it's tied, you're not winning this game. The psychology of it is fundamentally different when you have that lead. When Steph leaves the game, it suddenly turns into a situation where you can look at Buddy and it's like, hey, dude, 7 for 19 is okay. Like, we just need you to try to score as much as you can, but just make sure you're focused on defense. You can go to Jimmy and be like, it's okay if you take some of these tougher shots. You can go to these guys and be like, it's not a big deal. Pat, if you miss that sweeping hook down the lane line, it removes the pressure from the situation. I was literally thinking about it in the fourth quarter when Minnesota was making their run. I'm like, they literally just need a couple of buckets and this game is over. Buddy hits a three on the left wing. Jimmy Butler hits a little leaning jump shot around the elbow. Boom, game is over. And it's because they were able to build that initial margin, which in large part came down to the quality of their defense. And Draymond Green knocking down those threes early in the game, but, like, just a bunch of contributions down the line on both ends of the floor. Just really, really impressive effort. An organizational win for Golden State. A demonstration of the fact that you don't win. You know, I think. I think part of this is just basketball culture and the way we talk about the game. And this is not just a Steph thing. This is a LeBron thing. I've seen LeBron fans do this all the time. Like, oh, he carried his team to a championship. He did this, he did that. And it's like, I think LeBron's the greatest basketball player of all time. I'm not trying to say he didn't do those things, but if I look back through his championships, it's like he won in 2020 because he had one of the greatest defenses that was ever assembled. And Anthony Davis was playing at, like, a top five level, and he was surrounded by, like, Alex Caruso and Cantavius, Caldwell Pope and Frank Vogel was one of the best defensive coaches in the league at the time. I go to 2016, it's the JR Smith hitting massive shots in the third quarter. It's Kyrie Irving hitting a game winner. It's Kevin Love getting big stops down the stretch. I go to, you know, you can go down the line through all of these big moments in playoff history. And yeah, there are stars at the tip of the spear, but basketball is a team sport. It's an organizational sport. It takes great coaching. It takes a front office that is connected to the coaching staff that understands the type of players that the coaching staff needs. It requires personnel that complements your star on both ends of the floor. Like, it is an intricate thing to put together a championship basketball team. And the warriors have done it four times, and it's because of down the organization. They have excellence at so many key positions, and I just thought tonight was just a big statement in that regard. So what does this look like on the step front? The beautiful thing about winning this particular game is you now have your goal completed for going on the road to Minnesota. You stole home court advantage. I don't know that Golden State can, you know, win the series without Steph. I would find that extremely unlikely. Even with their defensive advantages, even with the type of play that they got out of Buddy Heald and Jimmy Butler tonight. It's just Minnesota's a really good team, and Steph Curry, for me, like I mentioned, is the superstar that can solve the unsolvable problems that a series presents. Think of it in a real basic level. There's only so much you can do with a good coach. There's only so much you can do with a great defensive player. Ultimately, there are so many situations that present themselves in a playoff Series where only the superhero can conquer the problem. And so I have a hard time believing they can win this series without Steph. So if we talk about it, if we talk it through, what is the pathway for Steph to return in this series in a way where Golden State has a legitimate chance to win? Well, game two is on Thursday, and game three is on Saturday, and game four is on Monday, and game five is on Wednesday. They're going every other day. So it's going to be really tough to bring Steph back at some point during that stretch of games. But if you can somehow steal one game in Golden State on the strength of your home crowd and Jimmy Butler having a massive night and Buddy Hield having a massive night in a few role players stepping up in a big way, and you can take it two, two, back to Minnesota. Even if Minnesota wins that game, you literally have three full days off before game six on the 18th, which is a Sunday. So there's a version of this where you could go 3, 2 back to Golden State, leave Steph at home rehabbing. All he does is round the clock, do what he needs to do to get healthy. You could give him a solid 12 days to rest that hamstring, and that might still not be enough. But I see that as like a relatively reasonable possibility that in almost two weeks Steph could rehab the injury, come back on Sunday in a game six in Golden State. Then you go on the road in Game 7 to Minnesota. Obviously you have the advantage of Minnesota not having had to guard Steph to that point in the series. So there's a little bit of an advantage of them being caught off guard in that respect. But again, it's. It's a thin path for me. Just hamstrings are so finicky. It's weird. Like, I left this, I left, I left game one feeling very strongly that I was on the right side of things in terms of my series prediction. But then now I leave the game feeling like Golden State has a very slim chance to win the series because that's just the unfortunate part of that Steph Curry injury. On the Wolves front, several specific things. I thought that they were a bit more attentive in their off ball defense in the fourth quarter in particular, the shots that Golden State hit at that point in the game were much more geared towards their lesser shooters. And even the shot that, like the shots that Buddy was hitting, there was a couple open ones that he got, but the ones that Buddy was hitting were rushed and contested in a lot of situations. And so there the pathway is, you need to polish up your off ball defense from game to game. It's not going to happen overnight. There's a lot of habits that you got to pick up. Again, like we talked about, it's more of a mental challenge. It'll take time for them to polish those things up. But if you get more attentive on off ball defense over the course of the series and then the big thing is going to be on the offensive end. Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle and their decision making in the middle of the floor. Like, even though Ant got going in the second half, it still was a steady diet of him forcing the issue into the paint and trying to make everything happen by himself as a scorer. Once again, only two assists tonight. If you look back to the the job he did against la, there was a pretty strong correlation between his playmaking and the team being able to score. And so it's going to be big on those guys solving the mental challenge in the half court, making the right decisions in the middle of the floor to try to get those quality catch and shoot opportunities. Like there was a, there was a lot of talk about the Wolves shooting in this particular game. I did not see it as an example of just guys missing shots. That's not what it looked like to me. To me, it had much more of a, a vibe where you got to give the warriors credit for rushing them off the line. The Lakers, the Lakers game in game five, there was a whole lot of just wide open shots that they were hitting or missing that were on these kickouts and offensive rebounds where like literally no one's even in the frame. I thought Golden State did a great job in this game of rushing Minnesota off the line and actually playing them into those misses. There's a huge difference between guys are just missing shots and you're actually causing them to miss shots. And so in order to generate better three point shooting, you have to generate better quality three point shots. In order to generate better quality three point shots, you need your decision makers to make better decisions in the middle of the floor. I just checked Synergy to try to get some information on the percentage of their shots that were guarded or unguarded. Synergy still hasn't updated, so when we get over to playback later tonight, I'll start to pull some of the specific data that came out of game one to see if there's anything to learn there. But the other piece of it too is if you get better playing defense and you get more stops by managing the off ball Action more or better. You can get yourself in a situation where you're playing in transition more, which could be a big way to get them going. All right, let's move on to Indiana. Cleveland, the other injury bummer game from tonight as DeAndre Hunter, Evan Mobley and Darius Garland were all out of uniform for the Cleveland Cavaliers. I talked about Tyrese Haliburton after game one and him being relentless was the word I used with his advantage. Hunting essentially like every single time that you leave somebody open on a slip on like nail, help, low man, help, foot in the paint, this, that, whatever it is, he's going to make the pass every single time. And I think relentless is basically the theme word for this entire basketball team. They literally never stop coming at you. No matter how well Cleveland played, no matter how big of a lead they took, no matter how many times they took a lead, Cleveland took two separate 20 point leads, not including the big one they had late in the game. But no matter what you score to go up 20, you score to go up seven. Late. They're taking the ball out of the net, they're quickly inbounding it and they're running it down your throat every single time. No matter what, if they get stopped in transition, they're going to back it out and they're going to run a bunch of whirlwind action in the half court hunt those advantages, try to get a good look. If they miss, they're going to crash the offensive glass. Look at Aaron Neesmith at the end of this game, just over and over and over again crashing the offensive glass. If you once they get a bucket, they're just going to immediately start picking you up full court and making everything a pain in the ass in the backcourt. Try to rush you into a mistake so they can run down the floor again. And no matter how many times you have a positive sequence where you make three, four plays in a row, they're waiting on you to relax. They're counting on you to relax. It's, it's all, it doesn't matter how well you execute, you can be up seven in the final minute. They've won that game twice this year. More ball pressure forcing multiple turnovers in the final minute. One on Streuss on an inbounds. One on Donovan Mitchell stepping through and elbowing knee Smith in the face. Another niece Smith wild crash on an offensive rebound off of a missed free throw where he dunks it over Donovan Mitchell and throws him into the ground. Another blur of a Halliburton drive. Right to the basket for a layup, quickly scoring on an out of bounds sequence. Out of a timeout. Another offensive rebound tap out on a free throw from Miles Turner. Another Tyrese Halliburton. Step back three at the top of the key to win the game. They literally never stop coming at you in every facet of the game. They weaponize their speed in every facet of the game. It really is remarkable. That's how they keep coming back. That's why they're the comeback kings. They just count on you eventually letting go of the rope. They know you'll only do a good job for a portion of the game and that they'll be able to capitalize. The Cavs did a good job of defending Indiana in the first quarter. Brought a lot more pressure, a lot more attentiveness to those advantages. I was talking about first shift. Before the first time out, they were a little sloppy as I think Indiana went up 9 to 2 and they gave up some easy ones. But for the rest of the first quarter, they were really, really sharp. And then Indiana scored three straight quarters of at least 34 points. Tyrese Halliburton in the first half, he looked like a ghost of Halliburton's past in a lot of ways. Kind of like in last year in the playoffs where he would have these bizarrely passive games. But I thought he woke up and was great after that first quarter. He had 11, 6 and 3 just in the second half. Made two massive plays in the final minute that stole the game. As a scorer, I. Cleveland asked for it, too. They started taking a victory lap early in the game, which, again, it's like you think somebody would have learned after what Indiana's done all season. But they start chanting, overrated at Halliburton. Donovan Mitchell's like, everybody chill out. Like, this is a terrible idea and he burned him for it. This was a stat from my friend Carson Brevver from Nerd Sesh. He tweeted it out during the game. Tyrese Halliburton is now 10 for 11 on shots to tie or take the lead in the final two minutes of games this year. Unbelievable clutch player, Tyrese Halliburton. It's been so much fun seeing him healthy again because it just looks like a different guy than the guy we saw at the tail end of last season. Aaron Neesmith. Unbelievable game. A lot of quality defensive possessions on Ty Jerome, who was just in jail all night. We'll talk about that in a minute. He had two massive threes in the third quarter. Cavs went up 20, had a great defensive possession and he just hits like a bailout bomb out of the left corner over a great contest. Hits a transition three right before the end of the third quarter that cut the lead down to 14. Completely changed the feel of the game. The relentless crashing of the offensive glass. You guys saw the dunk on the free throw. He had another one on Donovan Mitchell where he just kind of did a swim move on him. Coming off of the left wing, got an easy little bank shot put back. You know, one of the things that teams will do against the Pacers is they'll be like, all right, you know, N. Smith is our best option to hide an offensive player that we need to give rest, right? So you hide Donovan Mitchell there in hopes that he'll get to take it easy. Well, one of the ways you can make sure he doesn't get to take it easy is relentlessly crashing the offensive glass. And he wore Donovan Mitchell out there. He made it so that Donovan could not rest. Ben Mah, unbelievable second half in this game. Straight up rim pressure getting downhill and ball screens against Jared Allen. Drawing fouls and finishing off him at finishing against him at the rim. Crashing the offensive glass himself. Running in transition. He had a couple of big transition leak out buckets. Ben Matheran was a huge scoring pop for him in this game. Miles Turner spacing not just at the three point line, but also hit a bunch of those little short roll kind of like I, it's like mid range, short range spacing type of shots. You know how like we see a bunch of different versions of this around the league. Like guys like Hartenstein and Jared Allen do it with like little short floaters. But Miles Turner can like easily rise up into a little 12, 13 foot jump shot and knock it down at a high clip. He was spacing the floor in that way. He was beating switches out of ball screens in the fourth quarter. Twice in the fourth quarter. The Cavs switched to ball screen. He posted up Max Streuss and got an easy bucket. He posted up Isaac Coro and got an easy bucket on this like kind of like nifty little really short range ball screen where he just sealed a coral right underneath the basket. And then his drop coverage defense on Ty Jerome. I like, Ty Jerome's having a nightmare series and we're going to talk about it in a second. But like a big part of that is Miles Turner. He is putting on a drop coverage clinic in the sense that he's mixing up at the level and a little bit further back types of coverages. He's catching Ty Jerome off guard constantly. One of the things that I think Jared Allen has figured out is that Ty Jerome prefers to take the floater. And this is just this is the NBA playoffs in a nutshell, right? Like Ty Jerome was the best floater shooter in the entire league this season, shot 62% on him in the regular season. He was 6 for 11 in the first round against Miami. But he's not the guy that's going to go to the rim every single time. And Miles Turner has clearly through the coaching staff or through his own tape, whatever it is that he's watching. He's just been on top of that floater the entire series, just stunting at Ty Jerome, attacking the pocket, preventing him from comfortably rising into that floater. He's bumped him on his high on his high drop possessions and kept him from turning the corner. Turner's just done a great job defensively on Ty Jerome and it's a huge part of how they've held Cleveland's offense under control. Every time that they've needed to get stops again, they got a bunch of stops when they needed to. In the fourth quarter of this game held the Cavs 21 points after getting lit up for the first three quarters. Miles was fantastic. Ty Jerome again, I want to credit Turner and his drop coverage defense, but he's 5 for 16 on floaters now in this series. He's leaving his three point shot way short off the front of the rim every single time. Seems like he's got the full blown yips now and that's really tough because the Cavs desperately need him with Darius Garland out and he just hasn't been good enough. I feel terrible for Cavs fans. They had such an awesome season. I was actually really starting to believe in them in that first round series with the level they were reaching offensively. And then you lose three of your top six players before game two of the second round. Indiana's great. I picked them to win multiple games in this series. Even if the Cavs were at full strength, I assumed Darius Garland and everyone would be ready to go. But the Cavs just have no chance to win this series as undermanned as they are. And the big disappointment has been their defense. Some of it is the injuries. They've defended better with Mobley on the floor in the series. Mobley is the defensive player of the year. But Indiana has looked entirely too comfortable through the first two games. They've logged an offensive rating over 120 and so I just think the Cavs need to be operating at full tilt in order to win for the next five games, and it just seems extremely unlikely that they're going to be able to pull that off. So, in other words, Tyrese Haliburton in many ways, put this series into serious danger of being over with that shot that he hit tonight. All right, let's take about 10 minutes of questions before we head over to playback. We're going to have Jackson come on stage.
- [33:33]
Jason
Let's do it. Let's do some mailbag questions. First up, we're going to start with some questions about the Warrior series, and we'll do something about the Pacers first. I put a poll in the chat, asking the chat, when should Steph come back? Game four earlier? Game five or later? 73% of the chat said game four earlier, which is interesting. I mean, I think that's both optimistic as well as, you know, hopeful. But I think it's. It's going to be tough. I would say, as someone who has also had a hamstring injury before, to come back in six days.
- [34:05]
Unnamed Host
Did you re injure yours?
- [34:07]
Jason
I just. It's just impossible to. I. I was like you, and I think, like most people, it just didn't give it the requisite rest. So it's not like I re injured it so bad, but it just didn't heal. But quickly. It just didn't heal quickly.
- [34:18]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, dude. It's brutal. It's. It's such a complicated process, and I think that's where I feel like it's overly optimistic, because, like, you got to think big picture. There's no point in beating Minnesota if Steph's not going to be good for the rest of the playoff run.
- [34:30]
Jason
That's true.
- [34:31]
Unnamed Host
So your. Your chance is one, that Steph's hamstring tear is extremely mild. Now, I am somewhat encouraged by the idea that it's going to be mild simply because he gave out a couple of. He gave out a bucket after he died, he gave out a bucket. He got that little floater that he put in off the front of the rim, and he was coming off of ball screens and pitching it to Draymond and still generating advantages. And he wasn't moving good, but he was moving. And so that leaves me somewhat encouraged that it was probably a somewhat mild strain. So the question is, can Steph recover from a mild strain in 12 days? I do think he can. I don't think he can cover from a mild strain in nine days, which is what you would need to Bring him back in Game 5. Also, it's like, think of it. Think of it this way. Let's say Golden State steals one of those games, the ones in golden state. So it's 2:2 going back to Minnesota. That's a really big, really important, really physical game that would be really tough to just toss a Steph Curry in that, in that sort of situation. Whereas game six, I feel like you could play Steph shorter bursts, play him like 30 minutes and probably get that job done because of how, how, how much they can defend in front of their home crowd and stuff like that. So, I mean, a lot of it's going to be by ear, right, guys? Like, if, if Golden State loses each of the next three games, they probably don't bring Steph back because there's just no point in having him tear his hamstring trying to come back from a 3:1 deficit and be put in a situation where he's out for two months in the summer or God forbid, he needs some kind of surgery. So I think it's going to be a lot of, like, reading the room and seeing how it goes. Like if they. What if they go 3:1? Like, what if they win both games in Golden State without Steph? They may decide to literally see if they can win the series without him. So there's a lot of different angles this can go and it's got to be day to day. How's Steph feeling? You know, a lot of it's going to be kind of read and react on the information day to day, and.
- [36:31]
Jason
That is as of 10pm Pacific Time. The latest reporting is that he's going to get an MRI tomorrow. Steve Kerr said they're planning on him being day to day, quote unquote, and that they are not expecting him for game two, which is, you know, in line with everything we're expecting.
- [36:46]
Unnamed Host
It would be really dumb to play him in game.
- [36:47]
Jason
Oh, they're not just.
- [36:48]
Unnamed Host
No way. Yeah.
- [36:49]
Jason
They're not playing game two. Question about, you know, the warriors going forward without Steph Curry and the games that they will be without him. Who first? Who would be your starting five for the warriors and games without Steph Curry?
- [37:00]
Unnamed Host
Man, that's interesting. I think that. So we think of Buddy as the obvious replacement for Steph in the starting lineup. Even though he was already in the starting lineup, he slots into that two guard spot. He's there next to pods. I guess he's the point next to pods. I actually thought that the warriors did a good job of contending with Minnesota with their speed rather than with their size. So I think that I would probably consider, I'd consider Kaminga and here's why. Hear me out. Let me just pitch this hairbrained idea. House money, game two, right? What if you can find a way to get coming into some kind of rhythm in game two and that ends up being something that you can ride in game three and game four? So like, what if you started him and gave him more opportunity? Basically, with the idea being if we can build some sort of rhythm with Kaminga in this game, it could be the difference between us being able to win our games back in Golden State or not. There's other directions they could go. I mean, Moses Moody was a nightmare offensively tonight. I didn't hate their big looks tonight. That's another thing too. Like, I thought Kevon Looney battled pretty well. So, like, there's a version of this where they could go big too. But I, I, I think I would go with Kaminga. What about you?
- [38:16]
Jason
I had not even considered Jonathan Kaminga starting because I'm so down on, on him, even though he had, he had a pretty good stretch tonight, actually. But that is an interesting one. I do think that trying to see if you can get him in a rhythm in a game that is, you're playing with house money is a good idea. I also think, as we've talked about many, many, many, many times, Jonathan Kaminga operates way, way better when he has physical athletic mismatches. And so trying to align him in Mike Conley minutes is not the worst idea. Not that you're like going to spend your whole offensive philosophy around getting Kuminga, you know, possessions on with Conley guarding him. But it is a place where it's, you know, definitely the, the most obvious physical mismatch that he would have against any Timberwolves player. So I think it's an interesting, an interesting idea.
- [39:00]
Unnamed Host
He kind of figured out some off ball utility tonight. He hit that three, which I was actually a really important.
- [39:06]
Jason
Both of his back to back buckets. Draymond, baseline drive.
- [39:10]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, the baseline drive. Yeah, well, and that's the other thing too. Dr. Dre. Draymond and Jimmy both will throw those baseline drives and they're constantly looking for cutters flashing in front of the rim. And like there's, there's like some legitimate kind of like spacing value with him as like a cutter in those sorts of situations. And he can find those runways because Minnesota, Minnesota is just so bad and they're off terrible and it, and, and you're right, like that, that him in the starting lineup could be a way to try to tie him to Mike Conley's minutes.
- [39:38]
Jason
That's interesting. Another sort of rotation question. Why do you think Quentin Post got zero run today? And do you think he's also an option to get maybe not start, but maybe start gets, get some sort of minutes in the rest of the series without stuff?
- [39:52]
Unnamed Host
I think it's part of just like the momentum Kavon Looney had after a really nice Game seven. Also, just the idea that Minnesota presents a threat as an offensive rebounding team, as we saw in the, in the Lakers series. But like, I, I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be a lot of, like, Steve Kerr doing what he did tonight. Like, I, I, I thought that Stan Van Gundy did a really nice job of kind of like explaining how Steve Kerr has this unique trust for the players down his roster. We talked about this at the top of the show, but there is something to be said about the organizational approach to finding smart players. And the key there is they can count on these guys to come in and do a job within the defensive game plan. Like half the battle, that's half the issue with Kaminga. You want to know, you want to know why Kaminga doesn't play? It has way more to do with the fact that Kerr just doesn't trust him to execute the game plan. And he's kind of the odd man out in the sense that so many of these guys are undrafted G league type of dudes that the warriors scouting department has identified as high IQ players that they can fit into their system. Whereas Kaminga is a textbook lottery pick. It's like he was picked for upside, you know, not for him specifically fitting the culture. And so that that's where you see those issues taking place. But moving forward in the series, whether it's Quentin Post, whether it's G. Santos, whether it's Pat Spencer, who, regardless of who it is, Kaminga as well, I think falls into this group. Kerr's going to be doing a lot of like, here's your chance, show me what you got. And quick hooks with guys. And like, I think you're going to see pods play big minutes, you'll see Draymond play big minutes, you'll see Buddy play big minutes, you'll play Jimmy play big minutes, and I think you'll see Gary play big minutes. But the rest of those, you know that the rest of that, like, kind of 60, 70 minutes that are available, I think are going to be split kind of just between who's playing well in that given night. I think. I think we could see an astronomical amount of different lineups. I think this could be the series where you see the most different lineups played in the history of the NBA.
- [41:47]
Jason
I mean, they already did a lot tonight. I think instilling that trust, you know, organizationally down, definitely from Steve down, is really, really beneficial. When Jay Santos got run today before Kuminga super short shift, didn't get back in the game, and that's not a. Not issue for the roster and the team chemistry as a whole because of sort of that culture that they've. That they've instilled.
- [42:05]
Unnamed Host
That's a great point.
- [42:06]
Jason
Let's move take a couple questions about the other series, and then we can head over to playback. First one, why do you think people seem to not like Tyrese Halliburton's play? You know, he got voted the most overrated player, obviously, when the evidence seems to show that he's someone who is having playoff success, can lead a team to the conference finals, he's good in the clutch. He impact winning. What is sort of the issue around the perception of Tyrese Halliburton?
- [42:29]
Unnamed Host
So I. I think that most basketball junkies out there like Tyrese Halliburton. From what. At least from what I can tell and from my perspective, in the sense that they can see his value and what he does really well. I think among NBA players, he's just a shit talker. I don't think it's any more complicated than that. Like, he is good and he kicks your ass and he talks a bunch of shit, and I think it just rubs everybody the wrong way. And I. I think also, I do think that there's such a thing as. I think that there are a good chunk of NBA players who see the game through the lens of what they do. And I think this. I think you see a lot of manifestations of this around the league where, like, stars will like certain types of role players but dislike other types of players because they kind of, like, fit their own basketball worldview, right? Like. Like, how many times have we seen, you remember, with, like, Rajon Rondo on the Lakers, for instance, a great example. We're like. We're watching from the sidelines, and we're like, why the hell is Ray John getting all these minutes over Alex Caruso? But it's like, so the guys in that locker room, they're like, ray John's a genius. You know, we're gonna like, Gene he's gonna, he's gonna guide us. He's our point guard. LeBron was always obsessed with backup playmaking in that phase of his career, if you remember correctly. So, like, it just is one of those things where I think there are a lot of players in the league that struggle to see Tyrese's value because he's such a different kind of player than everybody. Like, I, I, by the way, there's some of this with Jokic. There's some of this with Jokic. Like, I, I feel like there are a lot of players. I think now everyone's kind of accepted Jokic as the obvious ass kicker that he is, but there was like a, like in that 20, 22, 23, 24. There were a lot of years there where it seemed like some of the players, players around the league didn't quite have the appreciation for what Jokic did just because he was so different. Tyrese, you combine it with him just being a. Just a talker, and I think it just rubs everybody the wrong way among his peers, and I think that's why he gets voted like that.
- [44:28]
Jason
Yeah. I also think there's not that anyone would be able to admit this or even be conscious of it necessarily. There's sort of a dork factor with him and with Jokic, they're just slightly. They're just a little bit dorky. They're not the classic Anthony Edwards bulldog pro athlete personality type. And I think to your point, it just, Even if it's not rubbing people the wrong way, it's that they're. It's not what they're sort of accustomed to, what they. These players envision the best versions of themselves or the best versions of an NBA basketball player, as an idea would. Would look and sound like. I think a little bit.
- [45:00]
Unnamed Host
You're right that that's such a great point because it's like, it, It. It extends to everything stylistically as well. Like, he has 19 points tonight, and I thought he was excellent like that there, there. It's not, it's not the kind of thing that's going to show up. And 30, 35 point games, it's not going to show up with him dunking on your head. Although he's a better athlete than I think he gets credit for. He's got kind of a funky set shot in, in terms of his jump shot, although he gets more. He gets more lift than you'd think on some of his movement off the dribble shots. But, like, Tyrese is just a very unorthodox player. And in almost every way on and off the court. And I think that's a big part of it.
- [45:33]
Jason
100. All right, let's do one more question here and then we'll go over to playback. Do you think this Pacers team is better than last year? Just, you know, largely the same roster. Do you think this Pacers team is better? And if so, do you think they can beat Boston next round? If it would be Boston, I think.
- [45:49]
Unnamed Host
They are substantially better than that last year. And I think that they have a legitimate chance to beat Boston in a way that they didn't last year. The first piece of it is Tyrese Halliburton. Tyrese is just playing at a substantially higher level level than he did last year. We talked about this with Steph Curry in the. In the earlier segments of the show, but playoff series present unsolvable problems. It's kind of like the beating switches thing. Like, at a certain point, you gotta have a guy that can go one on one against a good defender and create a great shot. And over and over again, whether it was him cooking Jared Allen in Game 1 and switches, or whether it's him cooking Giannis in game six or game five of the Buck series, like, he just has an upside as a switch beater in this playoff run that he did not have last year, I think that's the big difference and that is the ceiling razor. When Indiana got presented with the unsolvable problem that was Boston tightening the screws at the end of games last year, he wasn't able to overcome that. But this year I think he's in a better position to do so. Then there's just some kind of incremental improvement down the roster. Ben Matheran, I think, has been great, and he's. His athleticism has been a big upside in this, like, super physical playoff environment. I thought he was a huge part of their second half comeback tonight. Aaron Nesmith has just gotten like 10% better at everything, and that has made a big difference. Like, he's a more. Not more of a knockdown shooter. He's better attacking closeouts. There we can go down the roster. But like, I mean, there's just so many guys like Miles Turner. Like, there's been so much talk about whether or not the Pacers would re up with Miles Turner or whether or not he'd be a free agent. To me, he's such a core part of what makes the Pacers great on both ends of the floor. I don't see how they could move on from Miles Turner. Like, I Understand, you might have to make a really tough decision financially, and that may be the case, but like, if you can somehow retain him, you got to retain him. He's just so important. But as a team, they're just kind of incrementally better down the roster. And then Tyrese has a superstar upside, and that, to me, is all it takes to make them a legitimate championship threat in a way that they weren't in years past.
- [47:56]
Jason
Yeah. I also think that we probably underestimated as a collective, the, you know, it's relevant now, especially with Steph Curry. The hamstring injury that Tyrese Halliburton had last season. He. He, you know, by the time the playoffs came back, it felt like he was more or less back to pre injury self, but it's probably fair to say he was at 85%, maybe 90%, 70, 80%, maybe something in that sort of range. And that's going to make it specifically tough to beat switches. I would, I would argue it's. It's probably evidence as the fact that he's able to, you know, blow by Giannis in the clutch moment, get major separation for a game winner tonight. He looks very healthy and very, very good. And that's, you know, important to remember as we're thinking about Steph Curry's comeback. Tyrese Halliburton took six months. Not that, you know, it's different. Every situation is different. Every person's different. You took functionally six months to get back to a hundred percent.
- [48:45]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, his was a more severe hamstring injury, but yeah, the point still stands, which is like, it there. There's also a trust element. Like I. Dude, I had a. I had a foot injury in. In juco, where for an entire semester, all of non conference play, I was a shell of myself because I didn't trust my ability to plant that foot. And like, and it just, it causes you to play passively. It causes you to kind of hold like 15% of your intensity in reserve. And I think that there's an important element to where, like, if Steph doesn't feel comfortable really pushing off that leg, it's a problem. And there's no point in having Steph go out there if he's going to be a shell of himself and not be nearly as impactful as he needs to be. But hopefully we'll get some better news about the MRI tomorrow. That's all we have for tonight on YouTube. Guys, we're headed over to playback. We'll see you guys there in just a few minutes. Remember, link is in the description here. We're going to be taking callers, taking more questions, getting into some film. We'll see you guys over there in just a few minutes. 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.
- [49:56]
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- [50:00]
Jason
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