← The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - LIVE: THUNDER-PACERS FINALS GAME 2 REACTION: SGA & Chet Holmgren lead DOMINANT win vs. Tyrese Haliburton
00:42:24
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Ryan Seacrest
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Lester Holt
NBC Nightly News legacy isn't handed down or NBC News.
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Tom Brokaw
I'm Tom Brokaw. We hope to see you back here. I'm Lester Holt. It's carried forward. Tom Yamas is there for us.
- [00:14]
Unknown
Firefighters are still working around the clock.
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Tom Brokaw
As the world changes, we look for what endures.
- [00:19]
Lester Holt
We are coming on the air with.
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Tom Yamas
Breaking news right now.
- [00:21]
Tom Brokaw
We look for a constant and from one era to the next.
- [00:25]
Lester Holt
Trust is the anchor for NBC Nightly News.
- [00:28]
Tom Yamas
I'm Tom Yamas.
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Tom Brokaw
A new chapter begins NBC Nightly News with Tom yamas evenings on NBC.
- [00:34]
Unknown
Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide and every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn more@discover.com credit card based on the February 2024 Nielsen report hey, it's Ryan.
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Ryan Seacrest
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Lester Holt
So.
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Unknown
So try it and see what the fuss is about. Head to your local Walmart Target and try to OG Cool Rush for yourself.
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Ryan Seacrest
The volume.
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Lester Holt
The NBA Finals are here. This is your last chance to bet on the NBA until next season and DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NBA, is pulling out all the stops to make this a finals to remember. One team will be crowned champ and the other will be lost to history. Who you got Winning it all Put your hoops expertise to the test. All season long, DraftKings has been the go to spot for NBA player props, and that doesn't stop now. Who's going to carry their team to the chip? Try placing a bet on your personal MVP to drop 30, 40, or maybe even over 50. Ready to place your own bet? Download the DraftKings sportsbook app, lock in your bets and finish the season as a winner. Here's something special for first timers. New DraftKings customers bet $5 to get three $300 in bonus bets. If your bet wins, don't miss your last chance to bet on the NBA this season. 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 $300 in bonus bets. If your bet wins when you bet five bucks only on DraftKings, the crown is yours. Gambling Problem Call 1-800-Gambler in New York, call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY to 467-369 in Connecticut. Help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org Please play responsibly on behalf of Boot Hill Casino and Resort in Kansas. 21 plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario. Bet must win to receive reward. Minimum minus 500 odds. Required 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 Sunday, everybody. Hope all of you guys have had a great weekend. Well, the Oklahoma City Thunder, the team's the league's best team all season long, was in their second must win game of this postseason, a game that was different than the Denver Nuggets game, too, in that this is a Pacers team that has no let up in their basketball character. And you know, I've had a lot of people ask me what I thought would happen in tonight's game, and I said the same thing every time. I know what we're getting from the Pacers. This is going to be about whether or not the Thunder can raise their level, and they absolutely did in just about every facet of the game. I thought that was one of Shay's best games of his career in terms of his floor game, which we're going to be diving a little bit further into that concept off the top. Got a bunch of guys into rhythm. The dead giveaway as a team in the last game, they had just 13 assists. Nearly doubled that total tonight up to 25. A lot more flow in that Thunder offense. Lots of interesting stuff to get into on both sides of the series. And then when we finish up with my breakdown off the top, we're going to take some questions from the chat. So if you're watching, all you got to do is subscribe to the channel, drop your questions in the chat, and then Jackson's going to hop on. We'll take some questions at the tail end of the show. When we wrap up here on YouTube tonight, we're heading over to Playback. That's Playback TV Hoops tonight. There we will watch some film, we'll take some callers. It's more of like an informal basketball hour. We all just kind of hang out and talk hoops and conversation goes all over the place. It's been a lot of fun. I've really enjoyed beginning that partnership with Playback in this year's postseason run. So when we finish today, just follow us over there for another hour of interactive basketball talk before we get outta here for the night. 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 fee. Wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson's doing great work on our social media feeds, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us there. Last but not least, like we mentioned, off the top, keep, keep getting those questions in the chat so we can hit, hit them at the mailbag segment at the tail end of the show. All right, let's talk some basketball. So, you know, Floor Game is the latest in a long line of basketball buzzwords that you guys will hear all around the NBA media and on the show as well. And I wanted to dive into that concept a little bit because we talked about it a lot after Game one. I talked about how it kind of felt in the moment, like Shay was just trying to, like, force his way into rhythm in game one. The NBA Finals are a really uncomfortable setting for most basketball players, and there are so many examples in NBA history of, like, really, really, really good players struggling when they get to the final stage just because of how weird it is, how much media there is, how intense it is. And just all the Pressure and expectation that centers around that moment. Right. Well, if. When I went back and watched the film, it really looked like Shay kind of bogged down the entire offense hunting his own shot. And I thought he just did a much, much better job in this game. Now, when I say floor game, what that means to me is when you're the lead guard or the lead ball handler or just consider yourself the offensive engine, the person who is singularly responsible for at least the majority of what your team does on offense. In that case. A lot of times we see box scores and we go, oh, like, you know, you know, LeBron went 12 for 20 tonight, you know, or Nicola Jokic 13 for 17 from the field tonight. That's 17 shots. That's 20 shots. Go look at how many shots a team takes in a game. Both teams tonight took 82 field goal attempts. When you really start to zoom out from, like, from the singular possession and look at an entire basketball game, when you're the offensive engine, you have to create a lot of shots. Now, does that mean that Shea has to create all 82 of those shots? No, but, like, he's going to be either directly or indirectly responsible for about 60% of that offense. And so then you start to zoom out and you go, wait. It's not just about whether or not I can get my shot going. I have to build a rhythm in this offense that doesn't disclude me either. It's got to include me in my scoring as well. But it's also got to include everyone else on the floor feeling comfortable. That was something that I thought Shea didn't do a good job of in game one. I thought he immediately came out tonight with a clear intentional effort to get the ball out to the easy kick out reads and cut reads that were available to him. When we went back and we watched crunch time, I actually thought Shea started to figure this out. It just was so late in the game and too many guys were out of rhythm. I'm looking at. Looking at crunch time of game one, he was facing sometimes two, sometimes three helpers on his drives, and he just started taking the kickout reads that were there. And J Dub misses a clean look. Case on Wallace misses a clean look. Lou Dort misses a clean look. But that investment was made earlier in the game tonight. And all of a sudden, Shetz looking comfortable. All of a sudden, everyone is just more. It's contagious. It's contagious how it just gets everyone involved with moving the basketball around. That's how you double Your assist total compared to what they had in game one. There were a couple of specific actions that Shea was hunting all night tonight and getting great stuff out of. I thought he made a very intentional effort to start working off of the left block in post ups. He liked his matchup against Andrew Nemhard in particular a little bit of Ben against Ben Mather and as well him and Ben Mather and were having a fun little kind of like showdown in terms of just young athletic guards. Obviously Shea got the better of him tonight in a real way. Just took advantage of that aggressiveness and got him into some foul trouble. But from that left block he was always clearing the side and you could see him like waving people through and then back and down along that left block. And then as soon as the double team came, he got rid of it. And if the double team didn't come, he'd go to one of those fadeaways over either shoulder. He also drew a foul on Andrew Nemhardt on a step through move. But he was able to consistently use that left block post up as a vehicle with which to survey the floor and take the easy kickouts that were available. Similarly, guard guard screens at the top of the key. We talked a lot after game one in our film session. If you guys remember the idea of him quickly attacking against the switch, like when the switch comes, just hitting the jets immediately and beating that dude off the dribble, or against hedges attacking quickly and splitting that action. He was getting a lot of dribble penetration straight through on those guard guard screens. He actually got a good amount of that at the end of game one too. But the whole point is, is Shea took what he learned from game one, added to it in the form of the post op stuff. But he took those two pet actions, the high ball screens and the, and the left block post ups, and he treated them as a vehicle with which to get his teammates advantages rather than a vehicle with which for him to get his own shot attempts up. The interesting thing too there is like even he was in a better rhythm than he was in game one. And like I, I guarantee you that Shay, in the middle of game one could feel it. I'm sure he could feel that he wasn't playing a great game. You can't like in the game, he could probably feel that he was taking some iffy shots. Then it gets even more frustrating when you miss the next kind of iffy shot. But it's a shot that he practices all the time, right? And so it can turn into this like you're trying to ram your head through a brick wall kind of thing, right? In this game, it felt like even the tougher buckets that he was going after kind of felt more in rhythm for him because he knew he was playing a great game. He knew the whole time. I am in full control of the flow of this game for my team on offense. And all of those trickle down effects started to show. Chad getting into a rhythm. Andrew or Aaron Wiggins had his best off the dribble game. It's contagious, right? Everyone starts to feel more comfortable. Everyone starts to feel like they're in a rhythm. And I just thought, I just thought it was one of the better games that I've seen Shea play in terms of just feeling out the flow of the game, identifying that his job is not to create, you know, 25 shots for himself and a handful of kickouts, but rather to be responsible for the offense. To be, to be responsible for the entirety of the five man offense for the, the entire, you know, 40 minutes or whatever that you're out on the floor. That's the job. That's what floor game means. Floor game means how do you run the offense? Not how many points you had and how many assists you had. And I thought Shay just had an absolutely amazing game running the offense. My second big takeaway from tonight was just how frightening Oklahoma City's athletic ceiling is. I talked about at the open of this show about how Indiana didn't lower their level tonight. I didn't feel like, like Indy came out flat the way that Denver did in game two of the second round series or that we, the way that we see so many veteran teams like Indy came out and had a lot of those patented indie runs where they continue to get, you know, seven, eight points in a short span. That shrinks a lead down to something more manageable. And like that's what they do, right? They wait for you to slow down. They. We had a classic example of that in the second half of this game where. Or in the late first half of this game where OKC goes on a big run and then all of a sudden OKC misses a few jump shots in a row and, you know, Nismis hitting a corner 3. Siakam's getting an and one and all of a sudden the lead's back down to 13. That's what they do. They just, they never stopped coming at you. But there's a reason why those deficits just looked bigger tonight. The reason. There's a reason why they were able to Push it north of 20 multiple times. And it's because even though Indy didn't lower their level, Oklahoma City substantially raised theirs. One of the things that I talk about all this, all the time on this show is the idea of like shooting variants being pretty far down the list. For me, it's a thing. There's basically statistical proof that shooting variance does exist to a certain extent. But I tend to think that basketball dynamics play a larger role in that shooting variance than the shooting variance is than we're led to believe by the way the game is discussed. Right. Everyone wants to pretend that there's just this algorithm that spits out a shot result. That's not what happens. And what happens before the shot is going to have a huge impact on whether or not the shot goes in or not. You can't just sit there and put a hand up and hope that a guy misses shots. If you bring a requisite level of intensity on your closeouts to where you get up in underneath the shooter in the shooting pocket, disrupting the gather, all of a sudden that contest is going to do a lot more to force that guy to miss than I'm standing there with a hand up. Obi Toppin early in the game, hit another contested three over. I think it was over a Hartenstein, if I remember correctly, in the left corner might've been over Chad, but it was a shot where like the hand was up but there wasn't that other layer, that other layer of trying to make the guy uncomfortable, swiping at the basketball, being more intense with that closeout that was absolutely there over the course of the rest of tonight's game. Like blocked shots on three pointers, multiple of those. Just a level of hellaciousness to the way they were closing out the rebounds. They started to do a bunch of damage on the offensive glass again in the second half. They're on ball defense. Cause Indiana to lose their composure at multiple points in the game. A long stretch to start the second quarter and then again in the third quarter. That comes from the fact that, that when Oklahoma City really has their back against the wall, they lose that game, they're probably losing the series. Right? Like you're down two zero going back to Indy. Like Indy's getting at least one of those. And now you're down three one. And it's just really difficult to come back from down three one against a team that never stops playing their best version of basketball. Right? Like this was a must win game. And in this must win game, a bunch of these young athletes that are, you know, other than Caruso, 26 or younger. Just turned up that athleticism to a level that Indiana really couldn't match, or that there's going to be a lot of talk about Tyrese Halliburton and, you know, how he didn't really do too much to score the ball until late in the game. I think a big part of it has to do with the fact that Tyrese doesn't get a ton of separation from these guys when they're really, really locked in. That goes for everyone. These, these, these dudes are really, really difficult to move or get around when they, when they tighten the screws the way they did tonight. And I, I thought that was the big thing that stood out to me in the sense that if this series goes seven, like let's say for instance, that Indiana goes home and gets two, like they, they just, they, they just go home and ride that indie home crowd and they get two. And then all of a sudden Oklahoma City wins game five and wins game six two or just somehow gets this to a seven if this series goes seven. Keep in mind that if they're in Oklahoma City and they could ratchet up their athleticism like that, I don't know that Indy can win if they end up in that type of game. And so it kind of feels to me like Indy's pathway is to end this thing in six to go home, win three and four. Obviously you're going to lose in game five against the same type of leverage athleticism that we saw tonight and then their chance to close it out in six. I left tonight's game feeling like I don't think Indiana could win a closeout game in Oklahoma City. There's just a level they can get to athletically that Indy can't touch. We talked about a bunch of adjustments for Oklahoma City. I wanted to quickly kind of go through those. We talked about Shakel, just Alexander making a more intentional effort to invest in rhythm with his teammates throughout the game. I thought he clearly made that change. We talked about J Dub staying away from these early clock contested mid range jump shots. Really did a much better job of that tonight. Didn't take one until the late second quarter and only took two in the entire game. Was just much more of an attacker and facilitator in this game. Got to the foul line a bunch as well. We talked about loosening up the defense. I talked about how they gave up a bunch of open threes. Just kind of over swarming and interestingly enough, it kind of did feel like, that was the game plan early on. That was why we saw so many of those, like nem hard and Halliburton isos kind of right around the middle of the floor in the first quarter. Oklahoma City wasn't overreacting to dribble penetration at that point in the game, but it felt like in that third quarter run that they really leaned back into their swarming. And honestly, I thought it was the right call in the moment. Like they caused Indy to lose their composure again. They started to get out in transition. It was like a momentous kind of thing. And honestly, it might have just literally been the basketball instincts of this team and the way they kind of smell blood in the water and they start going for those turnovers. Oklahoma City really started gambling a lot on the, on their over, like on their help and recover decisions in that second half. And I thought most of it paid off. And then again, in general, the intensity of the closeouts, you got to make people miss you. You can't sit there and cross your fingers and hope that people miss. That's not how basketball works. You gotta. You gotta make people miss. And tonight I thought Oklahoma City brought the requisite level of intensity to force Indiana into missing some of those threes. Some other Oklahoma City shout outs before we head over to the Indiana front. Aaron Wiggins is scoring it 17 tonight. I believe he had 17 tonight. He had five threes in this game. The. He actually got up to 18 points. He had a free throw late in the game, but he had 18 points tonight. He had five threes. His first three buckets were pretty tough. Like Aaron, Aaron Wiggins is an underrated, put the ball on the floor type of like bench scorer. I think he has a reputation around the league as being kind of a three and D guy. He's got. Got a lot more off the dribble pop than you think. Like, I think he's closer to like a Naji Marshall type of, of role player wing than like a, you know, a Lou Dort like, type of 3 and D type of wing. And he did some really nice work off the dribble to start this game. Hit a tough bank shot and some traffic over Siakam, if I remember correctly. And then his first two threes are like pretty tough off the dribble threes. Those are a big part of how they built as much margin early in the game when Indiana was playing as well as they were playing Alex Caruso, his combination of just knocking down catch and shoot threes and finding openings as a cutter, it Continues to make him a very reliable offensive player. He had 20 more points tonight. That's the 10th time in this postseason he's gotten into double figures as a scorer in his second time in this postseason where he's gotten over 20 points or gotten up to 20 points in a single game. And then Isaiah Hartenstein, I just thought he was awesome tonight. He only had three points but did a bunch of damage on the glass. And as a screener and as a connective passer, to me, he just greases the wheels for this team. I, I would love to look up and I'll. I'll dig into this. Maybe I can try to find this information tomorrow. I'm not even sure if you can do it for an individual, but I would love to find out what Oklahoma City's assist percentage is, meaning the percentage of their made baskets that come off of assists. I would be really interested to see what the assist percentage is when he's on the floor versus off because it feels like he's the guy that gets them running action side to side. Just with his willingness to shift like DHOs and, and like get. When he creates an outlet for himself, he just immediately dribbles into the next triple handoff. He just kind of gets the things greased on offense and then obviously such a great connective passer in the middle of the floor as well. We did see some of the too big look finally from the Thunder tonight. I'm going to be honest with you guys. I thought some of the discussion surrounding the two big lineup or one big lineup or no big lineup was a bit overblown. There are pros and cons to all three looks and I think the Thunder are capable of beating the Pacers with all three looks. And I feel like a lot of the times we just play the results with this stuff. Like Oklahoma City was up 15 in the middle of the fourth quarter despite going small, despite not playing their too big look. Like if Oklahoma City just holds onto their lead, we're probably talking about how Dagnalt's a dean, a genius because he identified that the Hartenstein minutes were really bad in the regular season and he gave his team a better chance to go up 1 0. I thought a lot of that was overblown. Like to me the bigger thing is like if you're going to go to a group, that group has to perform. And we saw some of the upside of the two big looks, right? We saw Chet with some more opportunities to attack from the perimeter. We saw some of the high, low passing as Hartenstein caught a short roll pass and threw a lob to Chet that he dunked. That lineup can be successful again, I think. I didn't think that was like the reason they lost in game one or anything like that, but we did see that tonight. We saw how it can be impactful. Isaiah Hartenstein on the floor in 22 minutes. The thunder were plus 17. And again, like, I think, I think it all just depends. Like, there's so many different looks that they can go to. Like the, the reality is, is that with Case and Wallace, they absolutely have the type of perimeter defense talent and athleticism to still compete on the glass and to still stay in front of the ball and to still swarm in and out of double teams in the post. And they still can do everything with those groups. It's just guys missed open looks at the end of game one. And so now all of a sudden it's like Dagnault made some catastrophic decision that ruined the series or whatever it is that was flying around after those couple of games.
- [23:19]
Unknown
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- [23:35]
Lester Holt
But moving on to the Indiana front. You know, I was thinking a lot about this thing with Tyrese Halliburton and the, the fact that he kind of has these games where he just disappears, for lack of a better word. And as is always the case, we become familiar with stars, right, like over years and years and years. You, you, you. It's like with Nicole Jokic, having covered him very closely over the last three to four years, I've become so, you know, fascinated with the different ups and downs and what it looks like for him when it's, when he struggles, what it looks like for him when he's playing really well. Like a big giveaway for me with Nicole Jokic is his three point shooting. Like when he has his three point shooting going, I know that all of a sudden this, it opens up this whole pick and pop and like attacking closeouts part of his game that can be downright deadly, right? And then we also know that when Jokic gets tired, he can kind of lose control of things on the defensive end in terms of just how active he is at the level of the ball screen with his hands and how much resistance he offers at the rim when he's in deeper drop coverages or when he's in help. Similarly, you know, we've been Learning about Shay and how like Shay in certain types of games. Like, to me, the bad game for Shay is like what game one was, where he comes out and just shoots every damn shot and keeps his team out of rhythm, right? Like, that's what a bad game looks like for Shea. And a bad game for a guy like Tyrese Halliburton is going to look very different than it does compared to some of these other guards. Right. Each time we get a new star that plays in these super intense, heavily game planned, high stakes, you know, tons of talent on the floor, types of environments, we learn more. And, you know, one of the things that I've learned with Tyrese Halliburton is it seems to me that Tyrese confronts adversity by again, against these like really athletic teams by passing the ball. Like I was talking about with Jackson before the show, what would it have looked like tonight if Tyrese Halliburton went out and just took like 25 shots? Like, he. He's not the kind of guy that gets elite separation off the dribble from awesome defenders over and over and over and over again over the course of a game. That's. That's not really what he does. He can, like, when he's at his best, he. He will beat switches and hit tough shots. It's not like he can't do it. But that's not like his game. His game is he comes off of action and he takes coverage. Beating passes and coverage, beating shots. Sinking off the low man, he's going to skip it. You know, like if you stay home in that weak side corner, he's going to throw a lob to the guy or hit a bounce pass to the guy in the pocket. You sink down off the nail or into the nail. Help. He's going to take the swing pass. You die on the screen. He'll take the pull up 3. You apply a little bit of back pressure, he's going to attack and wait till somebody reacts to him. If you leave a little bit of a gap in there, he'll take the floater, he'll take the mid range jump shot, right? Like, he is not this high volume scorer. And it seems to me that Tyrese Halliburton looks at a game like that and goes, I'm not going to shoot my team out of this mess. It's not my game. But what I can do is keep flying like hell off of these actions and keep throwing these pitch backs and skips and all this kind of stuff and just, let's see if we can get this engine running, and then when the engine gets running, maybe I can find my spots to be aggressive in there. Like, I saw he got going at the end of the game, right? Hits a bunch of shots, and all of a sudden the talk was like, well, why wasn't he being more aggressive earlier? And I mean, they just looked like open drop coverage. Looks to me like you got a floater in drop coverage. Cause he was open. The dunk, you remember the dunk that he got? It was a stack, pick and roll, where they back screen for the roll, man. And literally OKC did a terrible job defending it and he got a wide open dunk. He had another drop coverage play where he hit like a little elbow jumper. Like the, the. The toughest one he hit was also a drop coverage shot. It was like a side view contest from J Dub where he hit a three off. Off the right wing when it was after he made a bunch of shots in a row and he was in a good rhythm and he had another wide open three out of the right corner. Like, he got going as Oklahoma City lightened up their defensive intensity and he started getting easy, clean looks in the offense. Like, it's not like he was dribbling off of ball screens in the first three quarters and like, looking right at good drop coverage looks and was like, nope, I'm going to pull at James Harden and disappear from the game. Like, no, that's not what he was doing. It's just. It's become clear to me that Tyrese has certain limitations. Like when teams really ratchet up athletically from like, start to finish in a game. Like, he's not a guy that's going to demonstrate athletic superiority, get separation over and over again from elite defenders and knock down shots. He's the Steve Nash of our era. He's going to keep dribbling in and out of the paint and trying to make something happen like that, that, that. That's. That's the way he plays. And so I think, like, that's not to say that that's not still one of his bad games. Of course it is. He wasn't able to get the offensive engine running the way that it needed to run. But like, all in all, like, I, I tend to look at, that's what a bad game looks like for Tyrese Halliburton relative to his peers. It's a, A few more turnovers, some misses on some shots he's capable of making. And like, yeah, like, he's not going to assert him. He doesn't Ha. Like his weakness is he can't assert himself as a dominant scorer the way that a Shay Gilders Alexander can. But the flip side is Tyrese played a much better floor game in game one and his team won game one of the finals while Shea shot his team out of the game, like quite literally. So again, like, this is just what that give and take looks like with Halliburton. He is a guy that when he runs into adversity against a super athletic defense, his method for solving that problem is to pass the basketball and hope his teammates can get into a rhythm. He is not Michael Jordan. He is not a freaky athletic six six dude who's going to shoot step back jump shots over and over again and turn around fadeaways and beaten elite athletes off the dribble over and over again. This is why Tyrese is probably never going to be a top five player in the league and why he's more like a somewhere in the 6 to 10 range or 6 to 15 range. Because this is a limitation. This is a realistic limitation to what he has in his tool bag as an athlete, if that makes sense. Overall, I thought the story of this game from Indiana is just their composure. And I don't mean like them playing hard. They obviously play hard constantly. But there have been multiple stretches in this series. Third quarter tonight, first half of game one, where it just felt like they would force a early post entry before swinging the ball around so you get a better angle or they would like Ben Ma is on the left wing and Pascal Siakam has Kayson Wallace posted up and instead of making the post entry, he tries to drive into the teeth of the defense and actually makes a decent kick out. But like instead of taking what was there, I thought in general, the Pacers just weren't as intentional hosting hunting post up mismatches tonight as they were in game one. And like, it just there is a reality to this Thunder defense being a team that doesn't break down on the first action and a lot of times not on the second action. This is a defense you have to break down incrementally. It's gotta be Tyrese running an action at the top of the key that generates just the slightest bit of a closeout for like, you know, Nemhard or somebody else off the left wing with someone sprinting at them. Then he's got to rack away from the ball from the closeout and he's got to get an even bigger help rotation from a different player and then he's going to swing and that guy's going to get closed out on. He's got to drive. And it's like there's going to be, you know, four, five, six, seven pass possessions just for the Pacers to get decent looks against this Thunder off Thunder defense. But to be clear, I have pretty consistently seen them in the series when they need to generate quality shots, when they can move the ball around, when they're deliberate, when they don't turn it over, they can get good looks. And so again, for this Indiana team, it's about not losing their composure against Oklahoma City's ball pressure. It's the Oklahoma City has done a good job of getting the Pacers to not look like the Pacers for some of these stretches, just with their poor decision making and the sloppy turnovers. And it's a credit to their defense, but it's a reality for Indiana in terms of hanging onto the rope in the series. They've got to hang on for dear life. And the way they can hang on for dear life is by that incremental breaking down of the defense. Get the ball at the floor quickly, you know, early in the shot clock. If they get a clean look at three, sure, take it. But like, keep it moving side to side. Eventually something, somebody will sink in too far to the paint, somebody will make a mistake. Oklahoma City makes fewer mistakes than their peers around the league by pretty wide margin on the defensive end of the floor, but they still make mistakes. And so to put it simply, if you run more action in each possession, you're going to have more opportunities for them to make mistakes, and they inevitably will. And in this series, through two games, when the Pacers get the ball into the half court and they get it moving side to side and they don't turn it over, they generally have been able to generate an okay shot. It's just Oklahoma City has shaken them off that foundation a lot with their defense. Again, that is what Oklahoma City does. This is just what the tug of war looks like. All right, let's bring Jackson up here and let's take some questions.
- [33:15]
Unknown
Let's do it. First one, there's a few about Halliburton. The first is how can the Pacers kind of unlock Tyrese Halliburton a little bit? He's obviously gotten stuck in the mud a little bit. Is it. Is it involved as a screener? What can they do to get him more involved than he has been so far?
- [33:34]
Lester Holt
So again, like, I think there's a reality to the fact that when Oklahoma City really tightens the Screws, he's not going to be super impactful as a scorer in this type of series. To your point though, that, to the questions point, like these actions, these using him as a screener, these are ways to hopefully find more advantages for him. And in general, like, I thought he did a good job of attacking closeouts tonight when he would get catches on the perimeter, when he would like find himself open. But like, ultimately, I don't think this is going to be a series where Tyrese Halliburton is going to be a super high volume score. I mean, guys, go back to game one. It wasn't like he was having some crazy offensive game. He had some shots late. But like it, like ultimately in this series, he's the advantage creator. He's the guy that is going to find that first little crack in Oklahoma City's defense and then the ball is going to continue to be worked around and it's going to be a team effort for them to break this down. Like, I, if people are expecting Tyrese to, to just flex his scoring muscles in the series, I just don't think it's something he's going to be able to do.
- [34:36]
Unknown
I agree with that. But my sort of follow up is to your point about the tougher shot he made in the fourth quarter was when he was in a little bit more of a rhythm. What's the balance there? He should strike between, you know, getting slightly, maybe not putting up 10 shots in a quarter in the first quarter, but maybe attempting a few that are just slightly more to his way as opposed to the flow of the offense to get himself in a rhythm a little bit earlier. Not that he needs to be 30 points a game, but so he can get in a little bit of a rhythm as a score earlier in the game.
- [35:05]
Lester Holt
Game. This is a really good take and I totally, I think you're, I think you're making a fantastic point, which is that, you know, it's not all or nothing with either of these guys. Like, not every game from Shay that's bad needs to look like game one. Not every game that, that Shay has that's good needs to look exactly like tonight. There's an in between ground. Right? And like the. To your point, like we've talked about this concept a lot on the show over the course of the last couple of months. But like the scoring archetype, their demons in their head try to get them to shoot when they probably should pass. And for the playmaking archetype, the demons in their head are like, pass the ball when they probably should shoot. And so, yeah, like, this was a bad game from Tyrese. I want to be clear. I'm just saying, like, I'm starting to. I understand more of what Tyrese's bad games look like in the sense that he know, like, you think he's looking at Lou Dort, like, let me just go to work. Like, no, that's not what he's thinking when he's looking at that matchup. He's. If he'd had to play one on one against Lou Dort, there's a chance that he'd really struggle to get shots off. Like, like, I mean, like, literally, if they played like Lance Stevenson and. And who's it of Mike Beasley the other day. So, like, if you, if you play that kind of game, that's not. That's not his game. But like, to your point, maybe taking a couple more of those, like one or two more of those, like, questionable looks in the first few quarters could go a long way towards giving him a little bit more rhythm when he needs to score later.
- [36:35]
Unknown
Next question. When will J Dub show up? He felt like he had a better game today, but he's still shooting under 35% this series. What can he do to. To help himself on the offensive end?
- [36:46]
Lester Holt
He's just not hitting his jump shots. I thought he got some pretty damn good looks from three in this game that he just missed, which is how it goes. But overall, like, I mean, he had points on 14 shots. Almost everything from him was downhill towards the rim. He was. That was how he kept continuing to get to the foul line. And like, honestly, I feel like J Dub has been pretty good since the first half of game one. Like, I thought he was pretty good with his attacks in the second half of game one. He just hasn't been able to find his three point shot yet. But, like, a lot of this is comfort and rhythm and like, like, it really doesn't matter as long as he hits him when he needs to. So, like, here you are, one, one. There's going to probably be a chance. Maybe it's game three, maybe it's game four where he's going to need to hit some catch and shoot threes. And if he hits those ones, like, yeah, there are going to be people who hunt the box score and be like, oh, he didn't have a very good statistical series, but ultimately to win this series, he's just going to have to hit some more jump shots. And I think he's certainly capable of it, but I thought he played Pretty well tonight, to be honest.
- [37:42]
Unknown
Yeah, I, I, I agree with you, I agree with you. One more Halliburton question, then we got a few more on the OKC side. These Halliburton struggles and him as a scorer, is there something he can add to his game to avoid these kind of disappearing acts in the future? Or do you think because of sort of just his style of play that this limitations are who he is and sort of what he needs to just sort of live with throughout, you know, his career at this point.
- [38:04]
Lester Holt
So step one is like, acknowledging the reality of, like, who he is as an athlete, which is, like, he's a very good, like, he's a very good athlete, but he is not an elite athlete. Like, he is not. He doesn't have, like that first step quickness that Shay Gildous Alexander has that gives him the ability. Like what, Shay's the sh. Shea's one of the top two or three scorers in the league. I think we can all agree on that. Right, so what makes Shay such an elite scorer? It's one, he's got this unbelievable first step, but two, he also, like, has the ability to, out of any footwork, from any spot on the floor, rise up into a jump shot. He can turn over his right shoulder, he can turn over his left shoulder, he can step back going right, he can step back going left. He can do all of the different jump shooting angles and finishes and things along those lines. And so as a result of that, like, he is not short of ways to get a shot off against an elite defender. Now, Tyrese Halliburton doesn't elevate super high on his jump shot, doesn't really have the ability to shoot fadeaways over both shoulders, like turning and spinning out of the post or anything like that. But what he does have is he's a very good three point shooter. And so I imagine it being more of like, if he can get to the point where, like, he does a lot of stuff out of a high hesitation on his right hand. Like he kind of is constantly like feathering together, high hesitations, everything chains together from there. A lot of times you'll like chain three or four of them together while he's waiting for a play to develop, right? And he's just kind of eyes on the rim, hand in that high hesitation, like maybe a dame step back, like just a really, a really hard in and out dribble to get just that little tiny bit of separation and rise and fire and then just a little bit of work quickening the release. And then again, like, it's all levels. Right? Like, everyone wants to know the difference between Steph and all the other great guards of his era. You want to know what it is. A chasm of the ability to make three point shots. Like, ultimately, it's about becoming a guy that doesn't hit 37, 38% of them, but becoming a guy that hits 42, 43% of them at high volume. And so I think, I think the. The best pathway for Tyrese to have him. Reliable is the wrong word because there'll still be some. Some variants involving shooting. But like, to me, the pathway for Tyrese to become a guy who can, like, average 25 points a game in a playoff run is to just become one of the best shooters in the league. I think that's the move for him. And then again, like, just little quick moves that capitalize on his speed and his passing ability to, like, sneak three point shots off against a contest.
- [40:25]
Unknown
Couple more questions, then we'll go over to playback. Next question. What was the in season tournament loss good for OKC in retrospect? Feels like they finally learned from that loss and last year's playoff loss. And I've sort of taken some of those lessons to be able to get over the hump a little bit.
- [40:42]
Lester Holt
Absolutely. I mean, I'm a huge fan of the in season tournament, but like, like, you know, you don't think that was a. Another. I talk about this all the time like scar tissue. You get scar tissue from losing. Any real competitor, any competitor worth his salt is still thinking about losses that he's had in his past or that she's had in her past. Like, we've all been there. You lose a game, it should eat at you. And what typically happens is you think about a moment like Jackson, I'm sure you've lost a game in like, a men's league where, like, you think about a single rebound you missed or a single turnover you had in a big spot, or like a play where you, you know, maybe settled for a shot when there was a driving lane or something like that. Like, like those things haunt you. They haunt you. And you need high leverage basketball to build that part of your game out. That attention to detail, that fear of losing, that, that like just unwillingness to let it happen again. Right. And so I absolutely think the in season tournament loss helped this team.
- [41:42]
Unknown
Last question before playback. What do you think the ceiling is for Matheran Shay? Got the better of him at points, but he was. It's great seeing him fight over screens and stay attached. And he's great at getting downhill.
- [41:52]
Lester Holt
How old has been Matheran now pulling it up? Hang on one second. 22 so and he's about to turn 23 on June 19th, I think, I think Ben's been super impressive for a young guard. Like think about how many young guards now again like this is, this is how it's all relative because like, like ants 23 and just let his team to back to backpack Western Conference finals. So like this is part of why I tell everyone to back the hell off when it comes to Anthony Edwards. But with Ben there is like you saw it like he committed a couple fouls but like he can slide those feet and stay in front of a pretty quick athlete in Shay. Like he's got a ton of potential as a defensive player. His downhill athleticism is a legitimate problem. He's able to draw fouls against this Oklahoma City team. He's got to continue to polish up the jump shot and his decision making and there's certainly a long way to go. But like Ben strikes me as a guy who by age 26, age 27 is going to be a guy who could be in that like 25 to 35 range in this league. Like I absolutely think he can be like, you know, a guy who makes an all star team or two and is like a rock solid high level starter in this league. And so like I, I, I'm pretty high on Ben. And to me, you know, I had, we had a mailbag question the other day where someone asked like hey like what about the, you know, like what about the two in the three spot for the Pacers? Should they look to upgrade that this summer? And like to me, Ben, Ben's that guy. Ben's the guy that can age into being the upgrade at the 2 or the 3. He's the guy that can bring that real athletic pop and scoring pop. So like I'm a big believer in Ben and like the fact that you're getting anything useful out of him at this point as a 22 year old in this rotation is, is to me found money. All right guys, that's all we have for tonight on YouTube. Again we're heading over to Playback. That's Playback TV slash hoops. Tonight we'll be taking some callers hanging out for a little while. I appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. For those of you guys who are not following us over to Playback tomorrow morning I am recording with Kevin o' Connor is coming on the show. First time guest I'VE been on his show a couple times, but he's coming on our show and we're going to be breaking down the first two games of the NBA Finals. That'll probably be up sometime right around like, you know, 11 or or noon Pacific time. Again, I appreciate you guys. We'll see you over on playback and then for the YouTube audience, we'll see you guys tomorrow. 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.
- [44:22]
Ryan Seacrest
The volume hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway now through June 24th. Score hot summer savings and earn four times the points. Look for in store tags on items like Starbucks ground coffee, Red Bull energy drinks, Spam Classic Planet Oat Milk, Charmin bath tissue, Totino's pizza rolls and Frito Lay chips. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Shop in store or online for easy drive up and go pickup or subject to availability restrictions. Apply. Visit Albertsons or Safeway.com for more details.
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Unknown
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Ryan Seacrest
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