← The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - NBA All-Star Reaction: Steph Curry leads Team Shaq, LeBron sits, Draymond criticism
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Mary Kay McBrayer
I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal, gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains, or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Martin Luther King III
Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin Luther King III and together with my wife, Andrea Waters King, and our dear friends Mark and Craig Kilburger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives.
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Join us for heartfelt conversations with remarkable guests like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Billy Porter.
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Listen to My legacy on the iHeartRadio.
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App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is my Legacy.
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Bobby Bones
Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday for our new podcast, Lots to say with Bobby Bones and Matt Castle. Between us, we have over 17,500 passing yards, multiple New York Times bestsellers, and one mirrorball trophy from Dancing With a Star. So where else are you going to find a show with that much athleticism and football insight? We talk sports, but we talk pop culture and music and a little bit of everything. Listen to Lots to Say With Bobby Bones and Matt Castle on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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That's code HOOPS for new customers to get 150 in bonus bets. When you bet just five bucks only on DraftKings, the crown is yours. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-Gambler in New York, call 877-8-Hopeny or text Hopeny to 467-369 in Connecticut. Help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org Please play responsibly on behalf of Boot Hill Casino and Resort in Kansas. 21 plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void. In Ontario, bonus bets expire 100 issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG Co B Ball. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Monday everybody. Hope all of you guys had a great weekend. We're gonna get into All Star Weekend today with our five major takeaways from this year's All Star Weekend. We're going to talk a little bit about the new format. I want to talk about what a one on one tournament would look like in the NBA. I actually put together like a sample tournament and like talked through it bracket style which will be a fun one for us. We're talking a little bit about LeBron showing up late. We're going to talk a little bit about the dunk contest and then Draymond Green just went on a rampage. Just on the NBA over the weekend. I want to talk a little bit about that at the tail end. 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 any show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed. Wherever you get, wherever you get your podcast on our Hoops tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. We also have brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. We're releasing content throughout the year. Make sure you guys follow us there. And last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments. We're going to be hitting mailbags on Fridays throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So first major takeaway out of five today. Thoughts on the new format. I actually really liked the tournament format with shorter Elam ending style games. I'm generally a huge fan of the Elam ending. I think that it turns it into a contest of basketball instead of some weird gamesmanship at the tail end of games. I also think shortening the games makes it so that there's less opportunity for cheap baskets. You know, you're out there for a shorter period of time. It just kind of like naturally breeds a tiny bit of urgency. And as far as the turn turnnament format goes, it advances the teams that are playing harder. So like I, I think that makes sense. Like if there's a couple of all stars out there that are, that don't give a shit, get them eliminated in the first game and then have the guys that want to play hard play in the second game, I, I think the format makes sense. I saw Sam Amico tweet a quote from an NBA GM that said quote Adam Silver is obsessed with tournaments playing in season now All Star. They've not proven to benefit our league and I just completely disagree with that line of thinking. I think the play in tournament is great because it just gives us more high leverage basketball. Those have been excellent games. When the play in tournament is on, we all want to watch and I think that that is just a case enough for it. It gives you just a little bit of, of interesting basketball to kind of bridge that gap between the regular season in the playoffs. The in season tournament is only two years old, but I already like it and I wish they'd expand it. I'd make it a 16 team tournament. Just add another round, same sort of thing. I think we get high leverage basketball in December. It's a great way to like scratch that itch, so to speak. Our desire to watch high leverage basketball in the middle of a regular season that can drag on like it goes October, November, December, January, February March, April, we're talking six months here solid if you count the cut off the half of April and the half of of October. Six straight months of basketball. And if you can bridge it so that two months in we have the in season tournament and two months in we have trade deadline, all star break type of stuff, it just kind of like provides some tent poles. You don't have as much slack there in the middle where we all get bored. Right? So like I'm a big believer that the inseason tournament is good for the NBA. And as for All Star, I mean here's the thing. Last night was by far the hardest that those guys have played in the last few years. There were two things that cheapened it a little bit for me. Like I, I agree with Draymond. Like I just don't see the point in letting non All Stars play with the all Stars. Like I was intrigued by it. Like I wanted to see what it would, what would look like. I just wanted to see the young kids come in there and play super hard and see if that would trigger something. And it did to a certain extent. But they're not All Stars. And I think there's a way to do the exact same format and instead of doing three eight man all star teams, just do four six man all star teams and let them run that same exact format. And you get to see all All Stars playing. And then also I just get rid of the gimmicks. Like I was watch Victor Wenyama and Jiren Jackson play super hard and try to change the dynamic of the All Star game. And I'm listening to Kevin Hart do standup in the background or like the inside the NBA crew just like shooting the. I was actually embarrassed for the league during some of that stuff, especially the Mr. Beast one where like Mr. Beast is out there like distracting the kid while he's trying to shoot. He's like making these weird comments about Dame missing a couple of jump shots like that. It was all just really weird. I saw someone on Twitter say the NBA has lost the plot because we just want to see the best players in the world play basketball. And I couldn't, I could not agree more. Get rid of the lower level players, get rid of the gimmicks, or at least move them to the periphery. If you want to do the musical performances and the jokes from the studio crew. And here's Kevin Hart giving a standup routine, put them before the event or after the event instead of in the middle. Actually have the event start on time, make it so your fans know if I turn on the TV at this time, within 10, 15 minutes, I'm going to get to watch my favorite players play basketball. Basketball. Streamline it. And the. And again, the beauty of the tournament style is it helps breed competition. The lazier teams will lose in the first round and we'll get the two more competitive teams of all stars playing in the, in the final. And again, the short, the shortened games, get rid of some of the cheaper baskets. You want to bring basketball back to the forefront and put the onus on the players to entertain us. Now, will it ever be a monumental basketball event again? Probably not. But then again, the All Star game is trash in pretty much every sports league and it's not really a fixable problem. I just am saying that I'd rather go down with basketball than go down with gimmicks. And I'd put the onus on the players in that regard. Second biggest takeaway, my thoughts on Mac McClung and the dunk contest. This is probably one of the biggest things that I disagree with the masses about. Like, the masses are obsessed with this idea. Like, we got to convince stars to participate in the dunk contest. And I think even if the NBA could convince John Morant and Anthony Edwards and Zion Williamson and someone like Donovan Mitchell or whoever it is to do the dunk contest, it would have some intrigue because of the stars. But the actual dunk contest itself would be lacking because game dunking and contest dunking are two entirely different sports, in my opinion. And like, there, there are certain, there are certain players in the NBA that are good at contest dunking, but they tend to not be superstars and there's just not enough of them. Professional dunking is like an entirely separate sport. It has a massive following. There are dozens of excellent professional dunkers all over the world. I've seen three of them come through Arizona over the years. Two of them, I've seen them do practice sessions before and like they just dunk over and over and over and over again. They're constantly trying new dunks they'll miss a hundred times before they actually master a dunk. It's like, and that's the thing too. It's like 25 vertical leap and like 75% of it is like intricacies of coordination and timing and creativity and all these different things. It's a, it's a different sport. And it's basically impossible to find four NBA all star level players that can reach that level of art in professional dunking. There are a Handful of players in the NBA that have that gift, right? Like, I thought Stefan Castle last night had a little bit of that flair. On Saturday night had a little bit of that flair when he had that East Bay where he put it through his legs off of the ball coming through the net. Like, that was a really, really impressive dunk. We even had a few years back, we had the Zach Levine and Aaron Gordon showdown, right? But that was kind of a flash in the pan kind of thing. It was just kind of a confluence of events where two of the very best contest style dunkers in the NBA happened to kind of meet in that situation. Like, that's not a thing that's going to organically happen very often, right? And even like, and even those guys were like, we don't want to do this anymore, right? Mac McClung is an NBA player. I saw a lot of people talking about how he's not an NBA player, he's a fringe NBA player, but he is an NBA player. He's played in five games for four different teams. I'm of the opinion that once you put the jersey on and you step on the floor, you're an NBA player. That's sacred to me. If you've accomplished that, no one can ever take that away from you. I think that that matters. But his main, his main talent, the thing that he's best at compared to most people in the world is he is a professional contest dunker type of athlete. And he's one of the very best in the world at it. And he's kept the event afloat in recent years because people are amazed by his creativity in his athleticism. I would actually just lean into that concept instead of trying to get NBA superstars to participate. Going back to that comment I saw earlier, in the same way that the NBA All Star game should just be the best basketball players in the world playing basketball, let's make the NBA dunk contest the best contest dunkers in the world. Competing in a dunk contest. Get Mac McClung in there, get seven more of the greatest contest dunkers in the world and hold a contest absolutely loaded with the wildest and craziest dunks. With real NBA all stars standing all around the sidelines celebrating and celebrate that sport, which is a different sport that probably should be showcased as the. As a completely separate sport with these different athletes. I think it has way more potential to be like a must see event every year. If you have all the best contest hunkers in the world. Instead of four NBA superstars that don't really have the time to practice anything other than a windmill or a360 or a east Bay through the legs, wherever you want to call it. Like, I think, I think, like, that's the thing. You go back, go back and look at the stars old dunks. Like, at the time, we didn't even know what contest dunkers looked like. And, you know, Kobe go through his legs or Michael Jordan would jump from the free throw line, and it was this beautiful, iconic thing. But now we've just seen too much. We've seen too much of the top end of, of real dunking talent. And I think that that would be the direction I'd go if I was the NBA. I'd be like, hey, we're doing a. We're. We're having all the best contest dunkers in the world on Saturday night. Come play. Like, I think that, I think that makes the most sense. And I, I mean, Mac McClung and the success he's had there, to me, is a perfect example of that. Number 3 thoughts on LeBron showing up late and then not playing. Here's my take on what LeBron was thinking. The Lakers just got Luka Doncic, and they haven't had any opportunity to really practice and implement him into their system. They have a makeup game from the fires this Wednesday against the Charlotte Hornets. They're the only team that plays on Wednesday. Everyone else is waiting till Thursday. I bet they're practicing today, and if they're not, they're certainly practicing Tuesday. So LeBron, his only opportunity to take a break with his family was that stretch right before the All Star Game from Thursday through, like, Saturday night. Right. I don't blame him at all for, at 40 years old, trying to maximize that time, especially since we're probably going to see a more engaged version of LeBron than we've seen since 2020 once we get to the other side of this break. So I, it made sense to me that if he was going to try to take a rest, he would do it Thursday, Friday, Saturday there, right after the Jazz game. And that was going to imply that he would be traveling back into, into the Bay Area on Sunday before the game. Right. As for not playing in the game, I think he was kind of protesting the format. I think he looked at it and he thought, why the hell, when I'm so damn old, am I going to go out and play in an exhibition game against Zach, Edie and Dalton Connect? I, I don't blame him for that at all either. I, I personally didn't agree with that idea from the league. Now, here's the thing. If you want to criticize LeBron for getting stars to stop participating in the dunk contest over the years, I think that's fair criticism. He was kind of the first guy now, I mean, I, I think he's maybe started that trend, but you could argue it would have inevitably happened. Right? But as far as far as the game goes, this isn't even the first year he waited till Sunday to show up. It isn't even the first year he sat out part of the game. Like, there was a year recently where he barely played at all. So to me, this is like kind of a LeBron Rorschach test. Like, if you don't like LeBron, you're going to cling to this, you're going to make him the villain, and he's going to be the sole reason no one cares about the All Star Game. I'm sure we'll see a clip of Rob Parker or somebody like that later today just blaming LeBron for the death of the All Star Game. But, like, if you don't dislike LeBron for whatever reason, I bet you just don't care. And I'm right there with you guys. I just don't care that LeBron showed up late and didn't really want to play in that. That specific format.
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Bobby Bones
Oh, oh, oh.
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DraftKings Representative
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Allstate Representative
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A.J. Jacobs
Something about Mary Poppins. Exactly.
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A.J. Jacobs
I'm A.J. jacobs, and I am an author and a journalist, and I tend to get obsessed with stuff. And my current obsession is puzzles. And that has given birth to my podcast, the Puzzler. Dressing. Dressing.
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DraftKings Representative
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DraftKings Representative
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A.J. Jacobs
Our brand new season features special guests like Chuck Bryant, Mayim Bialik, Julie Bowen, Sam Sanders, Joseph Gordon Levitt, and lots more. Listen to the Puzzler every day on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [18:02]
Bobby Bones
That's awful and I should have seen it coming.
- [18:08]
Martin Luther King III
Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin Luther King III and together with my wife Andrea Waters King, and our dear friends Mark and Craig Kilburger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives.
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Podcast Host
Each week we'll sit down with inspiring figures like David Oyelo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Billy Porter and their plus one, their ride or die as they share stories never heard before about their remarkable journey.
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DraftKings Representative
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Mel Reid
Hey, this is Mel Reid, LPGA Tour winner and six time Ladies European Tour.
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Kyra K. Dixon
Winner and Kyra K. Dixon, NBC Sports reporter and host.
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Mel Reid
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Kyra K. Dixon
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Mel Reid
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Mel Reid
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Kyra K. Dixon
Please with Mel and Kira, an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.
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DraftKings Representative
Let's get to the fun stuff. The one on one tournament. I think this is such an interesting concept and one that I want to get a little deeper into today. First of all, I want to shout out Nafisa Collier, who won the WNBA or the unrivaled tournament, the one on one tournament against a bunch of WNBA players. I was so impressed by her in the WNBA finals. I thought she was clearly the best player in that series. And then she dropped a bar after she won the one on one tournament where she said NBA players need to be willing to put their name on the line in a tournament like that. So someone needs to just like photoshop a cigarette into Nafisa's mouth just so that she's just one of the coolest hoopers on the planet and and she just keeps, she just keeps showing that time and time again. But I wanted to try out this theoretical concept. So we're going to run a simulated tournament today. I chose eight players and I used a list randomizer for seating. First of all, some preliminary stuff. I went based on the top 10 players in the league because I think that's more interesting. But in all likelihood, a guy like Jokic would not participate in this tournament. LeBron probably would not participate. You're going to see a lot more of guys like lower level players in the NBA, like a Kyrie Irving, like a James Harden instead of like a jokic or a LeBron. But I want to just for the sake of like actually making it look closer to what the WNBA did, I wanted to do all the top players in the league. Okay, I went with make it take it. Meaning if you score, you get the ball back. That's generally the rule for one on one basketball around the world. And that's how the unrivaled tournament went. And I went with no dribble limit, mimicking what the WNBA or the unrival tournament did with a seven second shot clock, which on that front, like on lower levels, like even high major D1 and like lower level pro hoops, you'll work on a dribble limit, like a two dribble limit or a three dribble limit because you're practicing being efficient with movement. Why? Because there's only a few dozen players in the world who are good enough to just dribble the air out of the basketball without having it hurt their basketball team. Right. Like most players need to be able to score quickly and efficiently as part of a five man context. Right? But these guys, the guys who would be playing in this tournament are absolutely in the group of guys who would regularly use lots of dribbles to get to their spots. So no dribble limit, seven second shot clock, random list, top 10 players in the world. Make it, take it. You guys get the drill. Here's how the order came out after I use the randomizer. So our number one seed is Nicola Jokic. Two seed is Anthony Edwards. Three seed is Giannis Antenna Kumpo. The four seed is Luka Doncic. The five seed is Jason Tatum. The six seed is Kevin Durant. The seven seed is LeBron James. And the eighth seed is Shea Gilgis Alexander. So our one verse eight is Jokic versus SGA. I think Jokic takes this matchup relatively easily. I think he just plays back off of SGA and tries to bait him into jump shots. And as long as he doesn't literally make six mid range jump shots in a row, Jokic will get the ball. And Shea shoots 54% on jumpers inside of 17ft. But he's probably not going to go six for six. So Jokic is going to get the ball. Once Jokic gets the ball, Shea has like quite literally no way of stopping him from getting just a bunch of layups in a row. Like there's no variance, no chance for a miss there. So I think Jokic advances relatively easily against SGA. Our 4 versus 5 matchup. Luka Doncic versus Jason Tatum. This is a much closer matchup in my opinion. Like Luca would basically have to concede pull up jump shots to Tatum because if he plays up on him, he'll get blown by just constantly for layups. I mean we saw that a dozen times in the NBA finals, right? But we also saw Luca repeatedly cook Jason Tatum one on one in the finals. He's too strong for Tatum and once he gets an angle he can just work closer to the rim and give him issues. I'm going to go with Luca here slightly. I think Tatum's value is in his versatility, but I just think Luca is a more gifted one on one scorer who would be able to work Tatum closer to the rim for higher percentage shots. And Tatum, as far as his jump shooting goes off the dribble. He's actually a low field goal percentage guy. He's a high effective field goal percentage guy because he takes a lot of pull up threes, but he will miss pull up jump shots. And Luca, Luca is going to force him into some misses by playing more, playing the drive more and forcing him to shoot. I think it would be a very close game, but I think Luca is just a more gifted, craftier one on one scorer. A much more reliable shotmaker when he gets like into that short to mid range area. So I would go with Luca advancing in that 4, 5 matchup. Our 2 versus 7 Anthony Edwards versus LeBron James. I think Ant takes this one. With LeBron in his prime, he would have been able to match Ant athleticism in a way that would have allowed LeBron's size to carry the day. But there are two reasons why I'd take Ant at this point. With LeBron at age 41 and has put all defenders in the league into a bind because he's become one of the best three point shooters in the league, you basically have to choose between taking away the drive or conceding the jumper or taking away the drive and conceding the jumper or taking away the jumper and conceding the drive. Ant would get great looks every single possession and then two. Ant is a bad defender in a lot of ways. Like, he's really bad at navigating screens. He loses shooters and rebounders off ball constantly. But he's absolutely awesome at one thing on defense, and that's one on one defense. He's one of the most laterally quick players in the league. So you're not going to go around him, you're going to have to go through him. And he's an absolute fire hydrant. It's basically impossible to go through him unless you're absolutely massive. And for the record, LeBron's a big dude. He would try to bully Ant, he would win some of those battles, but I think Ant would also win some of those battles. And then on the other end, I think LeBron basically has to concede jump shots to him. And Ant's one of the best jump shooters in the league. So to be clear, I would take prime LeBron over ant. But in this format, in the year 2026, I'm going to take Ant to advance in a somewhat close game. 3 versus 6 Kevin Durant versus Giannis and Tanakounpa. This is a very interesting matchup. On the one hand, this is a terrible format for Giannis because he's the opposite of Ant in that, like, he is very little in the way of shot making. If guys actually take away the drive and make him make shots over the top, that's not a strength of his. And while Ant is great on the ball but terrible at everything else on defense, Giannis is great at everything else on defense, but he can struggle a little bit guarding in space. He's especially struggled guarding KD over the years because KD knows how to get him up out of his stance with hesitation dribbles or get him leaning one way before crossing over and getting dribble penetration. It's a matchup that KD's had a lot of success against. But on the flip side, Giannis is probably the best power player in the league not named Jokic. And KD can struggle with power sometimes. We just talked the other day about how Jaren Jackson gave him some issues by ducking in in the post in that game that they lost to Memphis the other night. So I actually do think Giannis would give KD some issues when Giannis had the ball. But KD does have the length to bother Giannis around the rim a bit. We've even seen skinnier, longer players like Wemby give Giannis some issues. Now Wendy, obviously a different challenge than kd, but I do think KD would win some of those battles and I just think KD would do more damage to Giannis when KD has the ball than Giannis would do to KD in return. So I have KD advancing in a close game our second round, our 1 versus 4 matchup. Nicola Jokic versus Luka Doncic I actually view both of these guys as kind of similar in this format in that there are two players that would both need to concede jump shots to faster players so that they don't give up dribble penetration and just basically hope they miss. And then on the other end they both have massive strength advantages and short range shot making advantages that they could exploit to score time and time again close to the rim. But Jokic is just so much bigger than Luka. I think he'd be able to force Luka into tougher shots further from the rim. I think Luka would be more susceptible to variants in this matchup and I still think Jokic can bully Luka really close to the rim. So I have Jokic advancing cleanly here to the championship. Our two versus six matchup Anthony Edwards versus Kevin Durant. This would be an epic matchup. I talked earlier about Ant's ability to be a top tier downhill threat while also a top tier shooting threat and how that makes players make a decision. But Kevin Durant has top tier length that gives him the best ability out of any player on this list to give space to contain the drive while also having the length to contest pull up jump shots. This is a big part of why Kevin Durant is consistently one of the very best ISO defenders in the league this year. Players are shooting just 31% field goal percentage against KD and ISO last year, 32% for two years in a row. Now players are missing more than 2/3 of their shots against KD in one on one and the volume is super low because players know better and don't really try kd. I think Ant would be able to stonewall KD a little bit when he's on defense and force KD into some mid range jump shots. But KD is arguably the best mid range jump shooter ever. We're going to talk about that in a minute. Even though I think Ant is excellent in this format, I think KD is kind of his kryptonite in this matchup. So I have KD advancing to the championship and Then our championship would be Nicole Jokic versus Kevin Durant. I think this is a super interesting one because I don't think either player has much of a chance at all to guard the other. Katie is shooting A league best 58% on jump shots inside of 17ft, 4% better than anyone in the league, including Shea. Jokic shoots 61% on hooks, so Katie's mid range jump shot is nearly as efficient as a Jokic hook. I also think KD would actually be able to get past Jokic a few times by using that hesitation dribble and some of those crossovers where Jokic would bite on trying to contest one of those short range jump shots. Then on defense now again, Jokic would bury KD a lot, but KD would have the length to get some good contests on. Joke it's around the rim. The trouble would be for KD Jokic just completely bullying him right under the rim for layups. But that's where Kevin Durant's length could potentially force a miss. And again, I just think Katie's game is just built for this format. He's always been one of the best defensive players in the league when he's engaged, and I think he's the best one on one offensive player in the history of the league. I think he barely beats Jokic, but I think KD beats Jokic with a combination of short jump shots, nasty counter moves while just forcing Jokic into one or two misses closer to the rim that he would need to survive. And as I kind of zoom back out from this tournament, it makes sense. KD is the greatest one on one player of all time in my opinion. So it would make sense that he would win this type of tournament. I'd have KD winning and man, I really hope we get to see it next year. All right, before we get out of here for today, I want to talk a little bit about Draymond's comments. So Draymond went like really aggressive on the NBA last night. He was very critical of the rising stars playing with the All Stars, which by the way, that part I agreed with as we talked about earlier. But then he just randomly decided to start on the state of the NBA by like just parroting all the same talking points that we constantly hear from the old heads. He said, quote, it just. It's just who can run faster, who can hit more threes. It's no substance. I think it's very boring. Here's the thing, the NBA regular season does get boring sometimes. We can all admit that there's some ugly basketball. There's a lack of urgency sometimes. It is far from perfect, but I promise you it used to be way worse. It is crazy to me the rose colored glasses Some folks choose to look back at the old NBA with if you think pace and space and spread pick and roll and modern transition basketball is ugly. Go back and watch games from the early 2000s. Go back and watch games from the 90s in the regular season. Watch guys standing around in the paint. Watch a million of these horrifically ugly post ups between these big bulky forwards and centers as guys are just throwing bullshit up at the rim. Watch Drew Gooden and David west take a million 17 footers. In my opinion, the game of basketball is different now, but it's absolutely better. The thing is is it's far more sophisticated on both ends of the floor. The sets teams run are way more sophisticated than ever. The little off ball actions and tricks that teams use to create space, like using the roll man as a lead blocker or like using non shooters as screeners, adding a third man to ball screens to make them harder to guard on defense, the gapping, the passing lane closeouts, the crispness of rotations, even the strategic quirks like how Boston used Tatum and Brown to shut down opponent ball screen attacks by putting Tatum on opponent centers and putting their center on weak above the break shooters like the game is far more sophisticated now and far more entertaining as a as a result, in my opinion, even though it can get ugly sometimes, it's just bullshit. The way we look back at the old NBA, I don't get it. And the thing is is like I personally think Draymond knows this. I think he knows it. The whole thing on this weekend like kind of came off as like deliberately confrontational to me and I don't, I don't really understand why. The, the problem I have with it from Draymond's perspective is I think he's one of the biggest ambassadors of our game. I think he has a responsibility to be an advocate of our game. He should be one of the guys going around and like actively fighting these false narratives and explaining to the younger generation how sophisticated our game has become. And I think he's kind of fumbling that responsibility right now and I hope he changes his tone soon. All right guys, that's all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. I am working the rest of today on a our updated contender rankings. We'll have content surrounding the contender rankings coming out on Tuesday and Wednesday and then we're back to Basketball on Thursday morning with a breakdown of Hornets, Lakers. I will see you guys then. It the volume. 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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Kyra K. Dixon
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Martin Luther King III
Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin Luther King III and together with my wife, Andrea Waters King, and our dear friends Mark and Craig Kilburger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives.
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Podcast Host
Join us for heartfelt conversations with remarkable guests like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter.
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T-Mobile Representative
Listen to My legacy on the iHeartRadio.
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DraftKings Representative
App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is my Legacy.
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Mary Kay McBrayer
I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, host of the podcast the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. This season explores women from the 19th century to now. Women who were murderers and scammers, but also women who were photojournalists, lawyers, writers, and more. This podcast tells more than just the brutal, gory details of horrific acts. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find because these are the stories that we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Join me every week as I tell some of the most enthralling true crime stories about women who are not just victims, but heroes or villains, or often somewhere in between. Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.