← The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - LIVE: WARRIORS-ROCKETS REACTION: Steph Curry and Warriors DEFEAT Houston Rockets in Game 7 Showdown
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The NBA 82 game grind is done and now the real fun begins. The NBA playoffs are here and it's time for all the high stakes drama, clutch moments and jaw dropping plays. I can't wait. If you're looking to make the playoffs Even more exciting, DraftKings sportsbook has you covered as an official sports betting partner of the NBA. From the play in games all the way through to the finals, now's the time to back your favorite players and teams as they chase glory. All season long, DraftKings has been the go to spot for NBA player props and that does not stop now. Want to make your playoff experience even more intense? Try placing a bet on your favorite player's performance. Will they drop 30 points? 40 or more? It's your call. Ready to place your first bet? Download the DraftKings sportsbook app now. Lock in your bets. Let's make this playoff run unforgettable. Here's something special for first timers. New DraftKings customers bet $5 to get $200 in bonus bets instantly. 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 467369 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 Sunday everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great night. Very excited to break down Game seven of the warriors and the Rockets as the warriors advance. We also got Game 1 of Cavs Pacers, a very interesting game where the Pacers threw a great punch. Sorry for the delay getting over here tonight. I had to work with Mr. Colin Cowherd tonight. He's the boss man so you never say no. But I broke down a bunch of stuff with him about the first round on his show that you guys will see on the Volumes feed later. But I really wanted to take some time to get into the nitty gritty of what happened tonight. So we're going to do that on today's show. After we hit the two games at the tail end, I'm going to go through each of the eight first round series and talk about the biggest thing that I learned through those series when we finish up here tonight. After we get through those three segments, we're going to head over to playback. Over on playback we're going to start talking about Minnesota versus Golden State first round. We're going to go through some film. We're going to take questions from you guys. You're going to get to come up on the stage so if you're not already set up on playback, make sure you guys get set up over there on the Hoops Tonight channel. As soon as we wrap up here live on YouTube, we're heading over. Hope you guys will come hang out for another 45 minutes as we do some more stuff to talk some hoops and watch some film so 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 a podcast feed wherever you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Don't forget about our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, where we're making content throughout the remainder of the season. Follow us there now. Last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments. So after game six, I talked about two things that would need to go right in order for the warriors to win Game seven. One, they would need to get Alpern Shangoon and Fred Van Vliet under control. Those guys went for an efficient 50 points in Game 6. And two, they would need to get Steph going as a scorer because even though he can create advantages, because Houston can tighten the screws the way they do, he's really the only guy who can save them when Houston's really in that type of groove defensively. We talked about this a lot after Game six. You can't point to Moses Moody to save you. You can't point to Brandon Pajemski to save you. Even like with Buddy Heel's hot shooting in the first half. In that third quarter, it ultimately came down to Stephen in his ability to generate offense against an elite momentous attack from Houston. They took the first piece. They took care of that first piece right away, right? Draymond had his best defensive game of the series, in my opinion. He had Shangun in jail. His attempts close to the rim looked super disrupted. He had some bad misses there. He was beating Shangun to spot so cleanly in the second half that he kept settling for that stupid one leg fade away that he was either shooting way over the back of the rim or way short of the front of the rim. Draymond had him completely flustered defensively in that game. I want to give Kevon Looney some credit there too. Kevon Looney's been great, but Draymond, again, this has been a tough offensive series form if you look at the way that the floor is set up because they put Fran Van Vliet on Draymond so that they can switch the Steph Draymond pick and roll. That took away Draymond's best piece of offensive utility for this team, which is connective playmaking, leading those four on threes out of Steph Curry traps. But because they're just switching any screen with Draymond, it put him into a position where he was more of a spot up shooter, which, by the way, he did hit a couple of big threes early in this game. But Draymond was in a tough position offensively in the series, and so it wasn't going to be a big box score series. I saw a lot of warriors fans saying, like, oh, we're going to, you know, take a look at Draymond after this series because he's not producing. It's like this was never going to be the series where he produced offensively because of the way Houston matched up. They kept their three switchiest defenders on Draymond, Jimmy and Steph to try to neutralize any two man game with those two so that you'd have to play two man, two man game with whoever else was on the floor. But Draymond did an amazing job defensively in the series and gained control over one of the biggest problems they were having, which was Shangoon. Over the course of the series, all of their guards did a fantastic job on Fred Van Vliet. Those guys held. They held Fred and shangun together to 38 points on 36 shots. So very inefficient, lower volume. And most of the damage that those two did was in the fourth quarter after Golden State had already taken control of the game. And that really, ultimately was why I never flipped my pick away from Golden State in this series. I just felt like Golden State could strangle this offense if they ever needed to. I just figured they would have done it on Friday. I, I'm sure, I'm sure the warriors locker room, they're like, we should have done this on Friday. You know, give themselves a little bit of extra time. But they brought the requisite intensity and energy defensively tonight and they strangled Houston. And that bought them quite a bit of margin for error on Steph scoring. Steph goes scoreless for almost the entire first half. But it didn't matter because Buddy Heald was incredible. Now, those of you guys who were on playback with me after game six, we talked about this specific thing. Steve Kerr leaned heavily into Gary Payton in game six. And I, I think it might have had something to do with foul trouble for Buddy Healed, but he just went away from Buddy Healed. His minutes were super low and they really, really struggled offensively in that game. Right? But in this particular game, and maybe it was Gary Payton being sick, maybe it was an adjustment from Steve Kerr, but we talked in the playback after Game 6, the numbers clearly showed in this series that the warriors were substantially better with But Healed on the floor as a complimentary offensive piece than Gary Payton as a complimentary defensive pace. I'm a huge Gary Payton fan. I just think this was a tough matchup for him. I was texting with Jackson earlier today. Jackson made a very interesting point. He was talking about how, like, in this matchup, because you're not as worried about Houston's guards doing a ton of damage, just with like unbelievable star level talent. He doesn't have as much upside defensively in the series. And then the offensive limitations are still there because Jerry Payton had moments in this series. He won a game in this series slipping out of ball screens. Right as we talked about, I think that was game four, if I remember it was either game three or game four. I can't remember one of the two in Golden State. But overall in this series the team fared better with Buddy healed on the floor. They leaned more into him tonight. It's that complimentary scoring. Like if Steph's going to get face guarded and double teamed off of ball screens, there's a lot of space to operate. But he got a lot of clean looks and he was able to benefit off that. He had 33 points on 15 shots. But Houston made a run. They made a run that started in the late second half, extended into the, or excuse me, late first half and extended into the early second half. Houston cut the lead down to three and they tightened the screws and Buddy wasn't getting open and Jimmy wasn't getting open and Steph was really the only guy who was going to be able to save them in that spot. And right when they needed him to, he got going. He had 22 points, but that's underselling it because almost all, well, all of that came over the final two quarters and change. You had a little pull up three, a deep pull up three in the late first half, but all of those 22 points came basically over the last, you know, roughly 25, 26 minutes of the game. He started working primarily on the ball instead of running through off ball action. It was a lot of high pick and roll, a lot of high ISO. And those of us who have been following the warriors over the last decade, we know that's the break glass in case of emergency approach for the warriors when things get really tough on offense. And it's just the advantage with Steph. Steph can default into high ball screen attack when he needs to and he did an amazing job of it. Down the stretch, attacked Jabari Smith in an ISO and was able to shake him and get downhill all the way to the basket for a layup. Take that little piece and file it away from the Minnesota matchup because Steph is definitely more comfortable against taller athletes than he is against the low to the ground athletes, which is something to keep in mind. But he was, the shot making was there. He was getting to the rim Consistently, Steph just completely took over the game, and Houston was never able to recover from it. Like, guys, this is why I hold stars to that standard, especially when it's their role on that team. I knew Steph was capable of this. This is what he does better than just about anybody in the world. And it wasn't going to be Moses Moody saving them. It wasn't going to be Brandon Pajemski saving them. It was going to be Steph. It had to be Steph. And Steph took that responsibility seriously and came through for his team. Especially when that's your role. Like, you know, it's like, I. You want to know why I was really critical of LeBron after Game 7, or, excuse me, Game 5 of their first round series? Because he wasn't rebounding. I wasn't as critical of him in the Game four loss because he only took two shots in the fourth quarter. His job wasn't to score on that team. It was Luca's job. Luka wasn't doing his job in Game five. The Wolves kick the shit out of the Lakers on the glass. LeBron's the one guy who was capable of anchoring them on the defensive glass. And it was him that I was seeing that was letting go of the rope and not doing his job. He's the star. He has the superpower. He. He's the one guy who could save them in that spot and he couldn't do it. That Luka in that Game four, he's the one guy who can create the offense against that elite defense and save the day. This is why I always look at stars before coaches, stars before role players. This is a unique sport in that. In this sport, your superpower is. Your superpower is. Your superstars. They are the one being an entity on the court that can circumvent the surrounding circumstances. And when all hell broke loose tonight and Houston was making their run, and Amen, Thompson's getting downhill with a rim every single time. Steph Curry took over the game, and when he took over the game, everyone else was helpless. And the warriors immediately pulled away. They immediately pulled away. And so those two dynamics that needed to flip, the defense on Fred and Alperin and then the scoring for Steph Curry, they flip. Warriors are able to flip the dynamic that took place over the other two games. I thought Jimmy was great again tonight. He hit a lot of stabilizing shots. He went on a little solo run in the fourth quarter that helped stiff arm the Rockets. I want to shout out Steve Kerr. I thought he Coached a great series, and I thought he played every right card in game seven, increasing Buddy heals minutes like we talked about. Although that might had something to do with Gary Payton being sick. You played Kevon Looney instead of Quentin Post, which I thought was a really smart move. After how they just got Bull bludgeoned on the glass in game six. You needed to lean more towards rebounding. That was a really smart decision. Looney also had some really good defensive possessions on Shangun. He had some adjustments for the zone. We talked about that after game six. Like, they really struggled against the zone in the fourth quarter. They just had some innovative stuff. You know, there was a possession. Did you guys see the possession where Jimmy got the layup? Because him and Steph both broke open on a back cut at the same time. They kind of almost ran into each other, but Jimmy got the layup. What they were doing in that sequence, which I thought was really smart, is they were triggering switches and then back cutting. Steph has got Shangun on him. He's running out like he's going to go to the wing. Shangun passes him off to the next guy. Steph's watching Alperin. As soon as he passes him off, he back cuts. Because as soon as he passes him off, he relaxes. Steph was able to get back cut right to the rim. He was actually wide open. Jimmy ended up getting the ball. Same sort of thing from Jimmy Trigger to switch back cut out of it. They got a wide open three for Buddy. Healed on a really smart play design where they had Steph flash to the high post to occupy a defender right as Jimmy was racking to the right off of his man, which occupied the two top guys in the zone. And Buddy relocated across the top of the key, wide open for three. The cur, the current. His staff took the time to look through some specific details for ways they could get openings against that zone defense. I thought the warriors championship pedigree showed in a big way tonight as they got the win in game in game seven. Looking forward to Minnesota? I was. Colin asked me tonight. He was like, you know, after what we saw from Houston, you know, Minnesota in theory is just a better version of Houston. You know, is Golden State just going to get crushed? And one of the things I told Colin, I don't know who I'm going to pick yet. I'm going to. I want to watch more film. I want to get more into it. But I am way more on the coin flip side of things then a lot of. I think there's going to be a lot of warriors pessimism you guys are going to see on in sports media over the next couple of days. I think you're going to see a lot of they're going to go get crushed by Minnesota and here's the thing, maybe they do. Maybe they go get crushed by Minnesota. I look at it as a fundamentally different matchup than Houston in some good ways and some bad ways. There's no doubt they're going to be harder to guard. Julius Randle and Anthony Edwards and Nas Reed, they're an entirely different animal offensively than what Houston does. That said, the other end of the floor, I do think Golden State's going to have actually more success scoring against Minnesota than they did against Houston. There's a big difference between like the speed that Houston has on the ground in the form of Fred Van Vliet and Amen Thompson, which were the two defenders who did the best job on Steph and bigger athletes. Steph looked pretty comfortable tonight against Jabari Smith Jr. He looked pretty comfortable tonight against Jabari in the entire series. He looked comfortable against Dylan Brooks on an island in isolation. In those situations, those bigger, taller wings, they have more weight. They struggle to move side to side as quickly as some smaller players do. Like in a weird way, like, I am very concerned about Golden State's ability should they win the next round to compete with a team like Oklahoma City. Because Oklahoma City has a ton of speed on the ground. They literally are a much better version of Houston who's really fast on the ground, excellent in rotation. They also have rim protection and also have super high level offensive talent. That's a tougher matchup for Golden State. Now in my opinion, after what we saw from Houston. But Minnesota, it's a lot of like Julius Randall is kind of a big upright athlete that you can move side to side on and have success against. Even Jaden McDaniels is a guy that Steph can break free of because he's a little bit stilty and upright and Steph can move side to side against him. Working against Nas Reed, I think he's going to have a good amount of success like that series. It's also a fundamentally different defensive type of job than what Minnesota just had against LA la. Two big giant forwards that are just trying to play ISO ball that plays directly into what Minnesota does. Well, those are matchups that Nas Reed and Julius Randle can succeed in that they're not going to succeed in against Steph. Even just the concept of isolation, Minnesota is going to have to deal with all of the ball in the player movement as guys are running around. And by the way, if you guys want to see some examples, we'll go over them in playback after the show. Come hang out with us on playback and I'll show you guys some film. The last two wins that Golden State had against Minnesota this year, Steph beat them down the stretch with off ball movement as guys like Ant and Nas and Julius Randle or not as attentive as they need to be. The job against the Lakers was a physical job. We can hold up on an island against LeBron and Luca and one on one, the job against the warriors is a mental job. It's about tracking shooters, getting through action, communicating through tons of switches. Totally different job. So it's going to be a, it's going to be an interesting series. I think. I haven't seen the, the, the odds yet. I'll look them up here in a minute. But I do think that Golden State has the ability through Steph to have a more successful offensive series against Minnesota than they did against Houston, which I think could make it a closer series Again. Not going to make a pick tonight, but I'm leaning much closer towards that being a coin flip series than it being some sort of giant advantage towards Minnesota on the Houston front. I think the answer after tonight is you got to go after Giannis. I think he's the obvious decision. I think he fits the identity of the team. I think that you put everything on the table but Amend Thompson. If you can combine Giannis as a legitimate shot creator with everything that you have in the size and physicality of this team, you'll basically be a superstar led version of this Houston Rockets team, which I think could be super exciting. But we will talk more about the Rockets on another day. All right, so we're going to hit Pacers Cavs for a little bit and then I'm going to go over my takeaways from each of the eight first round series and then after that we will head over to playback for the rest of the night. So I thought the Pacers just completely caught the Cavs off guard today. The Pacers offense is built around the ability of all five players on the floor to be able to both score and playmate out of every spot. Right. So like knock down, catch and shoot threes but also to hit off the dribble threes out of combinations. You'll see Siakam and Turner even hit the occasional off the dribble three. Right. All five guys can score in the mid range, all all five guys can score at the rim. All five guys can pass and play, make a playmake out of any of those spots. Right? None of the guys are super high level offensive players, but they all can be super effective if they have an advantage. Meaning a defender running at them versus sitting stationary in front of them. And Tyrese Halliburton is the most relentless advantage Hunter I have ever seen. You turn your head and a guy relocates or cuts behind you, Tyrese is going to hit him every single time you sink too far into nail help off the top of the off of the wing. Like he's going to throw that swing pass and burn you every single time you get caught with a foot in the paint on the weak side. He's going to burn you with that skip pass every single time. And I thought the Cavs came out the gates today super undisciplined and unfocused in their off ball defense. Early in the game was a lot of Max Truce and Jared Allen. Those are the two guys that were consistently getting burned, just getting caught, sinking into the lane and help or just not paying attention as their man is relocating or cutting around them. DeAndre Hunter, when he was in the game he was brutal. I counted about a half dozen different mistakes that he made that directly led to good opportunities for the Pacers. Really? The Pacers offense operated at peak efficiency all night. Here's some crazy stats for you. They generated 17 unguarded catch and shoot threes compared to just 10 for Cleveland. They got better looks. They had a 117 offensive rating in the half court. That's insane. 97 for Cleveland in this game. 27 spot up opportunities for Indiana that they converted at a rate of 1.56 points per possession. They got over 1.3 points per jump shot. Overall they shot extremely well. All their play types worked. They had a 1:17 offensive rating on post ops including passes, a 1:36 offensive rating and picking rolls including passes, a 1:11 offensive rating on isolations including passes. They just picked the Cavs apart tonight. And then in crunch time like Donovan Mitchell goes on a run in that third quarter, gets downhill a bunch. It turns into a back and forth game in the fourth quarter and in crunch time Indiana was able to take control again and it came down to Tyrese Halliburton beating Jared Allen in switches. We talked a lot about this in the series preview. Inevitably as things grind down, especially late in games, Cleveland is in. Cleveland does a lot of switching with their bigs in general, but they did run a good amount of, you know, traditional kind of pick and like, like, like high drop type of looks where they tried not to switch Mobley and Allen onto guards earlier in the game if they could avoid it. But Jared Allen throughout the game at various points, few times in the first half, and then a bunch of times down the stretch, was switching on to Tyrese Halliburton in screening action. And that's where the difference is between Tyrese when he's at a near MVP level versus the guy that we saw for most of the end of last year when he wasn't very explosive. He's such a smart player that if you run drop coverage or traditional at the level coverage or any sort of traditional pick and roll coverage, he just passes the ball too well. You'll get picked apart as a passer, but if you can shut down those openings by switching, you could put the onus on Tyrese Halliburton to beat you as an isolation player. And when he had his hamstring injury, he just wasn't quick enough with that first step to, like, consistently beat people off the dribble and make some good stuff happen there. He beat Jared Allen on a switch six times in this game for either a bucket or a kick out to somebody else for a bucket. Three times in crunch time. The sequence in crunch time hits a step back three at the top of the key, gets down into the painted area and takes a dramatic step back up to the top. Knocks it down on the second one. On the switch, Donovan Mitchell follows Miles Turner down the lane as Miles Turner is rolling. So Halliburton sitting against Allen up top on the switch. On the other side of the floor, DeAndre Hunter comes over to try to scam, to try to scram Donovan Mitchell out of the switch, meaning he's going over to Donovan and being like, you get out to my man over here on the wing. I think it was Nemahard and. And I will take Myles Turner so that I can battle with him on the glass, meaning an interchange, Right? So Mitchell's on Turner. DeAndre Hunter's coming over to scram him out of the switch. There's a little miscommunication. Donovan Mitchell's not paying attention. Donovan Mitchell had a really bad game on both ends of the floor, in my opinion. We'll talk about that in a minute. But especially on defense, Donovan's not paying attention. So Nemhard's wide open just for a second. Nemhard's wide open, and Halliburton just throws the easy Swing pass like he does every single time you make that kind of mistake. And Nemhard knocks down the three and then he beats him to the basketball, takes a series of moves towards the right elbow against Jared Allen and then beats him with a step through moves and banks it in. And so like even when Cleveland took a lead and the game slowed down and they got into half court, Indy was able to reassert control just by being a better half court team than Cleveland was. And I thought Tyrese Haliburton was the best player in the in game one, I thought he pretty significantly outplayed Donovan Mitchell really on both ends of the floor. And like Indy just came in and threw a great punch. I thought as a team they were great defensively making everything hard on Donovan Mitchell. I think it's going to be a pretty significant wake up call for the Cavs on a bunch of levels. Like, if you're not familiar with what the Indiana Pacers do, what a great game one just as a crash course in what makes them such a scary team. And like Tyrese Halliburton, sneaky, playing pretty close to that superstar level over the course of the last few games. And he's like cooking everybody in every which way. And he's got that offense humming at about as high a level as you'll see an offense operate in the NBA playoffs. Really impressive. Game one from Indiana on the Cavs front. The attentiveness off ball is the big one. There are so many situations, especially in the early parts of the game where Cleveland would like, you know, their guy would give up the ball and they would go relocate to somewhere else on the floor and you would see Cavs defenders off ball just relax. And when they relax, they just would get burned every single time with the pass. Simple example, there's a play where I think it was nice, Smith. Nismith's on the right wing and I think he was being guarded by Max Truce was the guy guarding him, but I'm pretty sure it was nice. Smith on the right wing and Halliburton gets Jared Allen on a switch and he's dancing with the ball and Max Schruce just relaxes and he kind of like sits back down towards the left elbow like 10ft off of nith. Not even helping on the drive. Jared Allen's not even compromised. Just easy swing pass over to the right wing. There's a wide open catch and shoot three for niece Smith that he knocks down and it's like, I know Max Truce can be a better, more attentive defender. He lost Andrew Aaron Nesmith on the first possession of the game. Same sort of thing sinking into nail help. Staring over at the ball at Tyrese Halliburton, swing pass. Neesmith beats him off the dribble, attacking a closeout and gets a little banking him. DeAndre Hunter, Jared Allen lost Pascal Siakam a bunch of times early in the game. Like they're just as a team, they need to really be more mentally engaged defensively off the ball against this Indiana Pacers team. You cannot make those types of mistakes. You will get burned. And then Donovan Mitchell, I thought he just did a really poor job of managing that game. He tried to solve all of his problems by scoring. I was watched, I rewatched the entire game during the warriors game. I rewatched every single Cavs offensive possession and there are just a lot of situations where Donovan's getting into the middle of the floor and there are kickout opportunities there and he's not taking them. He's taking contested floaters and step throughs and Euros and things along those lines. And he ends up taking 30 shots to get to, you know, the 30, whatever points that he had in the game. Super inefficient. He burned out all of his energy so that he had nothing for the defensive end of the floor and was getting cooked in a bunch of different ways on that end. Like, I just thought he tried to solve all of his problems by scoring and I thought it was a mistake. Remember, Cleveland is at their best when the ball is popping around. They are a team that can generate a lot more in the way of catch and shoot threes than they demonstrated today. They, they, they played a, an old fashioned Cavs game from years past as a shot creation, as a shot creation team. And I thought that came down to Donovan Mitchell. I thought he got outplayed by Tyrese Haliburton tonight pretty substantially. And like, here's the thing, the Garland news is pretty sketchy. We're hearing that his foot is a lot more serious than we thought. Obviously I thought he was going to play today. He didn't play today. That that's going to be a factor in this series. But even if Darius Garland isn't at a hundred percent, he should be able to help the flow of this offense. He should be able to at least like get the ball moving from side to side a little bit more. So even if he's not ready to go like at the level he was earlier in the season, I think getting him out there will be super helpful. And my Guess is that we end up seeing him in game two. But you know, if they have to go without game two, it's about the management of the flow of the game for Donovan. And what's that? What that means is, is like he's going to have to shoot more than he typically does. Like you probably want him around 22, 24 shot attempts in a situation like this with Garland out. But he needs to make a lot more swing passes, a lot more kick out passes on the drive. Understanding that even if he has an opportunity to take a semi contested shot in the lane, it's. It's about taking it easy on his legs, it's about getting the rhythm of his teammates going. It's about the engine of the offense. Again, Tyrese Halliburton didn't have a massive scoring night tonight, but the Pacers scored a million points and it was based on his advantage creation. That's the game flow piece of it. It's about understanding these little bits and pieces of time. Like here's a little three minute stretch where like I really need to be looking to score the ball. Here's a stretch of the game. We got a lot of offensive talent on the feet, on the court. I would actually be be better served making these sort of kick out passes. Like there was a stretch where Isaac Coro was on the floor with him for a while and it's like I can kind of see why on some of those he's not kicking to Isaac. He's looking to be aggressive, but like there are a lot of situations where Sam Merrill or Dean Wade are like standing in catch and shoot situations and the ball's just not getting sprayed around cause Donovan's trying to smash his head through a brick wall instead of taking the easy stuff that's available for him. So in, in short, Indiana threw their best punch tonight and the Cavs threw a really shitty one. I think the Cavs can play a hell of a lot better. But I also as I mentioned in the series preview, I predicted Cavs in six in large part because I do think the Pacers will have extended stretch of the series where they look really good. And they definitely showed that in game one. And here's the thing. If Darius Garland isn't going to be ready or if he's going to be far from 100%, this instantly becomes much more of a coin flip type of series that the Pacers absolutely can win. All right, before we head over to playback, I wanted to take. We finished our first round right I out of the Eight series only got five of them right. So not a great prediction first round for me, but what I wanted to do is go through the specific series one by one and talk a little bit about what I learned in each of those series. So Cleveland, Miami, really simple just how high of a level Cleveland's offense is operating at in the half court. In that series they were at like a 118 offensive rating. They in their overall offensive rating, it was like astronomical. Off the charts. The destructive blowouts, the Ty Jerome incredible shot making, the Donovan Mitchell incredible shot making. Max Drew and DeAndre Hunter hitting all those contested threes. Like the Cavs offense was just operating at such an insanely high level in round one, which was a big thing that stood out to me from that series. Obviously not a great round two opener, but that was my big takeaway from that specific series. Magic Celtics I talked a lot last year after the Celtics won the title about how one of the things that I was most excited about for Celtics fans was the simple idea that Tatum in that entire playoff run operated like a second tier superstar. A very versatile player who is intricately valuable to the way that they won the title. That he wasn't bringing the scoring necessary to be a true top tier superstar type of talent. In that first round series against Orlando, I thought Tatum showed clearly that he's just playing at a much higher level than he did last year. There's some other issues for the Celtics, some other guys not playing as well. Kristaps Porzingis isn't playing super well. A couple guys aren't shooting the ball from three as well as they typically are. But Tatum's playing a lot better and that makes up a lot of the ground in that specific spot. Pistons, Knicks. The Pistons are closer than we thought, right? Cade Cunningham, I think even though he showed a lot of warts over the tail end of each of those games. I thought we saw pretty clearly the type of consistent type of playoff weapon that Cade can be in the big picture. We also just saw that experience matters time and time again down the stretch. The more experienced veteran team was able to make the necessary plays to win the game. The Pacers buck series. Just that Tyrese Haliburton is back to the form that he was at before he got hurt last year, which fundamentally alters the ceiling of this Pacers team. The way he was attacking Giannis and switches, the way he was going blow for blow with Gary Trent Jr. Down the stretch of game five. That was just a really, really impressive series from Tyrese that I Think showed a different level of upside for Indiana than we originally thought. Oklahoma City, Memphis, really. Oklahoma City's passing is what stood out to me, that series. I really liked the way that they moved the ball through the middle of the floor to high quality closeout opportunities, high quality cutting opportunities along the baseline. That was something they struggled with last year against Dallas. And Memphis is not a very good team. But Memphis does play a style of defense that tests your ability to make the extra pass. And I thought we saw some of OKC's better passing games of the season in that series, which I think bodes well for them for future matchups. Not just Denver, but should they face a Minnesota or a Golden State in the conference finals, should they face a Boston in the NBA Finals, that processing speed is going to have to be really, like, locked in for them. And I thought it looked good in the Warriors Rocket series. Series went exactly as I expected, except for that we got that extra game and it was just one of multiple examples. And I'm going to wrap in the Lakers and the. The Timberwolves here for a second. Physicality matters. Like, one of the biggest takeaways I had from the first round is, like, if you're just a bunch of big, strong athletes, it just makes everything so much easier. And so I think there are certain teams, like the Lakers, for instance, like, if I saw this exact same Lakers roster more or less going to the playoffs next year, I would discount them as a substantial threat because I thought Minnesota exposed them as a team that is just nowhere near physical enough to be able to thrive in the postseason. The Lakers are going to have to make substantial changes to their roster to be able to hang in this setting. Like, I. I thought it looked a lot. I. Like, I thought it looked a lot closer to what happened to Phoenix, you know, than some of the tougher series that we saw over the course of Minnesota's playoff run last year. And so like, that, that piece. And then looking at the Golden State series similarly, all those different things panned out. Like, Steph was able to find a way to score against them. You know, their defense was able to strangle Houston. But the big thing that stood, that stood out there was like, Houston size and athleticism was a problem, and Golden State didn't really conquer that problem until about, you know, halfway through that third quarter there in Game seven. So just a lot of takeaways for me in that first round about how important that physicality and athleticism piece is. Last note on the Lakers piece. Just the importance of. Of conditioning for your top tier players like Ant and Julius just consistently outperforming Luka, LeBron and Austin down the clutch stretches of those games. Nas Reed doing a ton of damage in those situations. Lots of lessons to be learned there. And then for Denver. The Clip. Denver versus the Clippers. You know, I've heard a lot of talk about how depth is so important these days and again, as I have always said, depth is absolutely important. But I still think superstars decide outcomes and Nikola Jokic was far and away better than Harden and Kawhi in that first round series. Don't read the box score. It was a much tougher series for him in terms of efficiency and volume because he was dealing with a bigger center in Zubots. But the offense for Denver hummed at an extremely high level when Jokic was on the floor down the tail end of the series. And I thought he was the difference in all those different ways and you can even apply that same concept to all these other series. Brunson badly outplayed Cade down the stretch of games. That's why they won. Ant badly outplayed Luka down the stretch of games. That's why they won. Like Halliburton even in the Pacer series. Jason Tatum outplaying Paolo and Franz. It's the superstars. Steph Curry out playing Fred Van Vliet in a Game seven when it mattered. Like ultimately, superstars still determine the outcomes of these games. But happy to have the first round of the book. That's all we have for our YouTube live show tonight. We are headed over to playback right now. So again, click the link that's in the description of this video. Head over to playback. We'll get started there in just a couple of minutes and we'll take some questions from you guys. We'll let you guys come on stage, we'll watch some film. Lots of interesting stuff to get into. I will 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.
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