← The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - NBA Reaction: Steph & Warriors SHINE with Butler, Edwards & Timberwolves dominate
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Peter Schrager
You can count on T Mobile to help keep you connected from big cities to small towns on America's largest 5G network. Switch the T Mobile keep your phone and they'll pay it off up to 800 bucks per line via prepaid card. Learn more@t mobile.com heap and switch up to four lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device credit service port in 90 plus days with device and eligible carrier and timely redemption. Acquired card has no cash access and expires in six months I'm Peter Schrager.
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Martin Luther King III
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Wilmer Valderrama
Don't miss Real life amigos Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez and their new podcast Dos Amigos where they have candid conversations with special guests about anything and everything. Join them in Wilmer's Speakeasy for genuine moments, laughter and a toast to good times.
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Freddy Rodriguez
Remember hearing this commercial? Are you between the 14 and 16 years old do you think you got to take to be a TV personality and commercials and you know, Saturday morning shows?
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Wilmer Valderrama
Listen to Those Amigos, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:06]
Jason
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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 $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 varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario. Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG CO B Ball. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Friday everybody. Hope all of you guys have had a great week. Got a jam pack show for you today. The Minnesota Timberwolves got a huge win over the Oklahoma City Thunder last week night. They've won nine out of 13. And Anthony Edwards is showing a very interesting side of his game that wasn't on display in the early part of the year. Thanks to some offensive production out of the front court. We're going to be talking about that. After that we're going to get into the Golden State warriors getting a huge win on the road against the Houston Rockets. Going to talk a little bit about Moses Moody and Brandon Pajemski in the way that their roles have become more defined and how that has helped them. And then after that, like we do always on Fridays, a mailbag going to be bouncing around the league. A bunch of Laker stuff, bunch of Knick stuff, a bunch of other stuff from other teams around the league. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at_jason lt so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight and it's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Don't forget about our brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. We're releasing content throughout the year. And last but not least, if you want to get questions in these mailbags, in the YouTube comments, the word mailbag with a colon, write your question. That's how I sift them out of all those comments. Drop the mailbag questions in those YouTube comments and we'll get to them on Fridays throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So Timberwolves get a huge win against the Thunder last night. They've won nine out of 13. They are eighth in offense over that span to go with also being fifth in defense, sixth and net rating. Several quality wins in that span too against Denver, Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix, Houston and then last night culminating with the win against Oklahoma City. That's a hell of a run and most of it is centered around they're scoring the ball at a much more efficient clip to allow their defense to push them over the top. And that's come down to the recent surge of Jaden McDaniels and Nas Reed. Jaden McDaniels in this span in this this 13 game stretch, 16 points per game to go with 7 rebounds, 37% from 3 on 4 attempts per game. He's finally starting to hit some shots. He's also doing more self creation. In the last four games Jaden McDaniels has scored 16 points as the ball handler in ball screen, so doing some stuff on the ball as well. Nas Reed since Julius Randall went down in his last seven games, 21 points, 10 rebounds, four assists, 60% true shooting, just frying teams and picking pop action. He's scoring out of the post. He's up to 1.23 points per post up including passes this year, only 53 reps. But he's been doing it a lot more obviously as of late as they've been leaning on him more. Just a a bunch of excellent footwork and finishing moves going both directions. You know I always talk about with big guys there being like a heavy emphasis on short range shot making like hook shots and floaters. NAS Reed is 50 for 94 this season on floaters and hooks. That's 53% he's been really, really effective in that range. And he's been one of the very best jump shooters in the entire NBA this year. A Nasrid jump shot of any kind has been worth 1.21 points per shot this year. Among the 82 players in the NBA to take at least 300 jump shots this season, Nasrid ranks third in overall efficiency. A little trivia for you guys. Who do you think is above him? Number two is Norman Powell. Number one, the guy who's been super hot as of late, Gary Trent Jr. The best jump shooter in the league at volume this year. But this is the important detail, obviously. Nas Reed's been incredible. It's been a revelation. He was the guy who's getting a lot of the big buckets. The two guys that really stood out to me at the end of the Thunder game were Nas Reed scoring the ball and then Luca Garza just kicking the Thunder's ass on the glass there underneath the basket, doing a bunch of damage during their late game run. But the extra production out of the front court offensively has opened things up for Ant to be more of a downhill score. And he's been playing his best ball of the season. Anthony Edwards, his last 10 games, 33 points per game, six rebounds and five assists. 60% true shooting. And here's the big difference. Here's the obvious difference between before and how things look now. He's getting to the basket more. In the previous 44 games before this 10 game stretch to start the season, he was getting to the restricted area for a shot just 4.1 times per game. In the last 10 games, he's at 6.1. So literally a 50% increase there. Get this. His free throw attempts per game in this 10 game span have doubled. He was at five free throws per game in the first 44 games of the season. He's at 10 free throws per game in the last 10 games. So a legit 50% increase in attempts at the rim in doubling his free throw attempts. An interesting case study and something I've been talking about for years now, which is like what would it look like if we just gave Anthony Edwards better spacing? By the way, that's with Rudy Gobert playing for the most part. But because Jaden McDaniels is scoring the basketball, knocking down spot up jump shots at a higher clip because Nas Reed is shooting better than anybody in the league except for a handful of guys this year, you're getting a lot of space for Ant to operate and he is getting downhill and getting to the free throw line more than he had by a substantial margin compared to the beginning of the season. And that's the exciting part and that's what I kind of envision is the big picture goal for this team as we get into like further iterations of it. I want to see Ant play with space. That's his superpower, his superpowers downhill. And I understand he could settle for tough shots sometimes. Like it was interesting. I saw a bunch of Wolves fans molenting the step back three that he took late in the game against the Bucks. And like I get it, under the circumstances you prefer a better shot. But like he was attacking. He got a like a really clean look at a mid range jump shot a couple possessions earlier where he pump faked and the dude ran by and he was like stand still 14ft from the basket. That's just a great look. He had a beautiful driving skip pass to Nas Reed in the corner for the shot that it would either tie the game or gave him the lead. I can't remember exactly. I think it put him up by 2 if I remember correctly. Like Ant is doing some attacking. He is doing getting closer, better shots in those situations. He just didn't love the shot that he got at the very end of the game. But at the same time like I kind of like respect Ant in that situation in the sense that like he's been working relentlessly on that shot. It's been one of the most efficient shots in all of basketball. This year is just Anthony Edwards taking a three of any kind. I think you had an opportunity there to go for the win again. Ideally you get something a little more reliable, but I, I have a feeling Ant's going to hit some big ones like that over the years. And he has, by the way, there was several examples this year where he's been able to go to that shot and knock it down when it matters. It's just he's, he's leaning a little much on variance there and that's where him working closer to the basket. He can compete or contend against his own variants and rely a little bit less on long distance shot making. But I mean he's one of the best three point shooters in the league this year. So I can't like just say it's a terrible shot. You know, you could just argue that he could have gotten something better. But again, we are getting some of the best basketball of Anthony Edwards career just by virtue of him getting real scoring pop out of the three and four spot. Again you're getting like damn near, what, 37 points a game out of those guys in the last month. Like, that's. That's going to. That's going to just make life so much easier compared to the early part of the season when there was just very little in the way of shot making in that front court. But I have one more note I wanted to hit on before we move on from the Wolves. I thought Minnesota really mauled Oklahoma City physically in that fourth quarter. They held him to just 14 points. They flipped the game into a blowout when it was tied in the third quarter. They chewed him up on the glass. They had 20 offensive rebounds. I talked earlier about how Luca Garza just absolutely destroyed them on the offensive glass there in this. In that run that they went on in the fourth quarter. And they guarded Shea better than anyone has all year. It was the first time this entire season that anyone has held Shea to below 25 points on less than 30% shooting. It's only the second time this year at all that any team held him below 30% shooting. They did a number on him. It reminded. It reminded me of what happened in the Denver Game seven last year. If you guys remember. Minnesota really ratcheted up the physical intensity and just basically ran him over the rest of the way on both ends of the floor. And it got me thinking as I was watching last night and I was recording with the Nerd Sesh guys earlier today. It was a fun one. You guys will get to see that if you go to the Nerd Sesh Channel. We, Carson and I vehemently disagreed about. I. I had the Lakers on the same tier with Denver, and he just views there as a gap, them there being a gap there. And we got into this, like, debate for, like, 25 minutes about it. You guys will enjoy that. But I got me thinking about the Contender tears. And then after I finished that recording, I went and watched Minnesota, Oklahoma City. And as I'm watching that, I'm just sitting there thinking, like, are we underrating Minnesota? Because we're forgetting that when we get to the postseason, their physicality is just a huge problem. Do you guys remember how the Suns just killed the Wolves last year in the regular season, including on, like, two days before the series started? Then what happened? They got absolutely annihilated in the playoffs. They beat the shit out of Phoenix in large part because they ratchet up that physicality, and that's the environment where that trait becomes the most valuable. There are tricky things here. Like, you got to figure out where Julius Randall fits into all of this. But to me, Minnesota has shown some real upside. They have 11 wins now against teams in the top 10 in point differential. That's the fourth most in the entire NBA top six in both offense and defensive rating in those matchups against top 10 point differential teams. Again, that top six offense is interesting to me and it just goes to show you like their athletes can get to spots and can score even when the intensity ratchets up. Wolves playing some great basketball. Moving on to the warriors versus the Rockets. Really good defensive effort from the warriors in this one. They were doubling Alper and Shangon and rotating out of it well without giving up any advantage. They were doing a lot of short closing out like baiting on the indecisive shooters from Houston that will shoot when they're wide open. But if you kind of stunt at them, they might pump, fake and try to drive. And they were just focusing more on containing the ball instead of chasing people off the three point line, keeping the ball in front, making Houston make jump shots. But I thought the story of the game was the role player contributions. They got 28 points, 11 rebounds and five assists with only one turnover from Moses Moody and Brandon Pajemski. And so I wanted to kind of zoom in on this concept of role player depth because this was something I was harping on a lot before the Jimmy Butler trade. I talked a lot leading into the Jimmy Butler trade about the idea that you can afford to lose some role player depth with this group. If all 15 of your guys can realistically play a role, but only one guy can play a lead role, you're going to get diminishing returns. It's obvious in the rotation Pods is averaging 33 minutes per game since the Jimmy Butler trade. As a result, he's in more of a rhythm. He's averaging 15 points, six rebounds and five assists with two steals per game in that span. That's an excellent set of production. Before the trade, his minutes were all over the place average 24 minutes. He had 10 games where he didn't even get to 20 minutes. Why? Because they had a million rotation players is always trying new things. Oh, this guy's not playing well. I'll try somebody else. And like there was a shorter leash on everybody. The rotation was bouncing around. It was, it was tricky. And that's what happens when you have so many guys that can play. Now he's averaging 33 minutes per game. He's getting starter minutes consistently. Big shock. He's playing his best basketball the season. Moses Moody was like a, like A redundancy with Andrew Wiggins before the Jimmy trade. His minutes were crazy sporadic before the trade. 18 minutes per game. He had four games where he didn't even reach 10 minutes. He was a garbage time guy some nights. He had 25 games this season where he failed to reach 20 minutes. You could argue that's a waste of Moses Moody. He's capable of doing more. The Jimmy Butler trade balanced the roster more, gave him a more clear cut role. He's averaging 30 minutes per game since the trade and he's struggling to shoot the ball a little bit. And by the way, that's part of what happens when your workload increases. You lose your legs a little bit. I think the shots will fall once he gets more used to his higher minute load. But I think he's been fantastic overall as like a defender, closeout attacker. He's contributing well. I think he's giving you a reasonable facsimile of what Andrew Wiggins did. Everyone was so concerned about gutting the team's depth last night. Gary Payton the second didn't play Trace Jackson. Davis is still completely out of the rotation. Cause Quentin Post is playing so much better than him. 10 man rotation last night and you had two guys that absolutely could play that were out, I guess. I mean, Gary Payton's hurt. But the point is, is like you still have depth, you still have guys that can play. Except for now you have Jimmy Butler on your team and you've won three out of four while on a really tough road trip including beating the Bucks in Milwaukee and beating the Rockets in Houston. It was just about balancing things out. There were a lot of guys in Golden State warriors jerseys that were capable of doing more role player stuff. But instead you were asking those role players to do more star stuff and then bitching that they were all inconsistent. Course they are. They're being asked to do stuff that's beyond their pay grade. Now you've balanced things out better and I think that we will continue to see the rewards being reaped by Golden State throughout the rest of the season. As a result of that, they ended up going up by 24 in this game. And the inevitable Houston ball pressure and physicality ran came right. Like they always bring that. That's part of beating Houston in Houston. That's just how it goes. They do it to everybody. Their bench guys come in, they just start playing super hard. They're big, they're athletic, they can make a mess of things in a good way. For Houston. I thought you could see Golden State's younger players get a little sped up and start making some mistakes. The one that was the dead giveaway to me was when G. Santos got that pretty open three in the left corner, but there was a pretty hard closeout and he like panicked and shot it off the corner of the backboard. That's kind of an example of what it looks like when players are rushing, right? But I've always found it fascinating how the best players in the world just somehow seem to slow down when things speed up like that. Steph just kept making plays by weaponizing their aggression against them. He had a huge 3 on the left wing off of a pump fake where he just pump faked, waited for the guy to go by and then just calmly settled into that three above the break on the left wing and knocked down was a huge shot in the game that put him back up seven. And then the action that ice the game a play I loved. They put Pods and Moody on the right wing in corners out of the way and Draymond Green's in the left corner, Steph's right under the basket. Jimmy Butler's got the ball in the left wing and all he does is just pitch it to Draymond and back cut off of Steph. And Jayshon Tate like hesitates because he's not sure if they're switching or not. Which, by the way, that's what happens when you're playing against Steph Curry. He's going to cause confusion with your switching because you don't want to leave. Steph Draymond throws a beautiful bounce pass to Jimmy Butler for a dunk. Every time I watch that group, it just seems like such a more dynamic trio to run three man action and, and just to have versatility on both ends of the floor. It just, it makes a lot of sense for me. It's impressive win on the road. They're three in one so far with Jimmy 15th and offense fourth and defense on the Rockets front. It's just a tough matchup for them without Fred Van Vliet. Draymond Green gave Shangun all sorts of issues, held him to 4 for 10, shooting only four assists and three turnovers. The warriors just swarmed every Jalen Green drive and of course Jalen Green just never wants to pass out of those drives. I thought Aaron Holiday did an admirable job of trying to fill the Fred Van Vliet role, but this team just really needs advantages to succeed and they didn't have anybody who could consistently generate advantages except through the strength of their defense and trying to run out in transition, which worked until Steph, Jimmy and Draymond just reasserted control because they're the grownups that can slow down and play patient discipline basketball. Little shout outs for Jock Landale and Nate Williams. I thought they did the majority of the damage during that run just by playing hard, grabbing rebounds, pressuring the rim. Jock Landale shooting was valuable in that run as well. Again, they're going to be fine. They're playing a lot of weird lineups right now. We saw Jeff Green last night. Reed shepherd, who's been bad, is still playing a lot like the Rockets are just in a little bit of a funk right now. That has to do with injuries to core guys in their rotation.
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- [20:46]
Peter Schrager
You can count on T Mobile to help keep you connected from big cities to small towns on America's largest 5G network. Switch the T mobile keep your phone and they'll pay it off up to 800 bucks per line via prepaid card. Learn more@t mobile.com Keep and switch up to four lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device credit service port in 90 plus days with device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months.
- [21:22]
Wilmer Valderrama
Don't miss real life amigos Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez in their new podcast Dos Amigos. Each episode is a party where the good friends get real with each other about life, careers and everything about everything. And you're right there with them.
- [21:36]
Martin Luther King III
When I discovered acting, I just found my calling. But a lot of that was just because I wasn't good at anything else, you know.
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Wilmer Valderrama
Join the two amigos straight from Wilmer Speakeasy for Toast to good times. Don't be surprised if some special guests and good friends drop in and always expect lively, candid discussions, plenty of genuine moments and lots of laughter.
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Freddy Rodriguez
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Jason
Oh man.
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Wilmer Valderrama
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- [22:22]
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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- [22:50]
Jason
Listen to My legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is my legacy. All right, let's get to our mailbag. First thing before we get into any questions, I always have to clarify this, guys. I don't make the thumbnails. I am in charge of content. The volume is in charge of distribution. They are the people that come up with the marketing strategy for the show. If you see a thumbnail that's not something that or, or a, a title or something like that, I had no t. I have no say in anything. I'm just here making the content. So like I just say, I just say that because I constantly see comments of people freaking out about the thumbnails and that's, that's just not something I have anything to do with. It seems more likely than not that Mitchell Robinson and OG Anunoby will return to the Knicks after the All Star break. Does it make sense for the Knicks to experiment with Mitch in the starting lineup alongside Kat, or should he continue to come off the bench? Considering how well the current starting lineup has been performing, I think you absolutely have to experiment with Carl Anthony Towns alongside Mitchell Robinson. There's several reasons for this. One, it's a matchup thing. I've always just been a big believer that you want to have different looks when you get into the postseason if you can afford it. It's one of the big reasons why I'm bummed out about the Lakers not getting a center. Like, I believe in their small ball looks. I think their small ball looks are going to be tough to contend with, but I think it's advantageous if a situation arises in the postseason and you need to go bigger that you're able to do so Right. Like, not. Not the least of which is for Nicola Jokic. Right. As far as New York goes, like, there's not necessarily a team in the. There are certain teams. Milwaukee is an example of a team, especially with Kyle Kuzma now that can. A very big front line to where you might want to try to match size for size. I think a big part of it is the defensive flexibility. A big part of what's caused problems for the Knicks defense over the course of the season is teams picking on Brunson and Cat, usually at the same time, getting Cat into the screening action after they bring Brunson in onto the primary ball handler as a defender by just setting an early screen with a guard or something along those lines. Right. But if you have a legitimate rim protector like Mitchell Robinson behind the play, or if you can bring Mitchell Robinson up into action and have Carl Anthony Towns operate as a low man, that's just a more achievable defensive role for Cat. If Kat knows I've got help on the back line or I don't have to be the guy that's coming up into these ball screens, that goes a long way towards. Towards giving you an easier job for Katt to do. Like for instance, right now, Cat is pretty much guarding the center as. As often as you can imagine to try to give him an achievable defensive role. You can tuck him away on a weak. If you have a center that can guard the opposing center. I think it's absolutely worth trying to build out that look, even though, yeah, you're obviously going to stagger them a lot throughout the game. It's only been two games, but have you seen any differences in how the Lakers are using Luca as opposed to Dallas? Here's the thing. Luke has been very unaggressive over the course of the first two games. That's been especially the first. Like the. The game on Wednesday was just the, like one of the worst Laker efforts of the season. I basically just crumple up that game and throw it away. The Monday game, though, like, LeBron and Austin were super aggressive, like right out The Gates and LeBron or Luca was kind of passive and just kind of watching things and not really getting very involved in the offense. I don't think either of those games represent what this is going to look like. My guess is that J.J. redick, over the course of this weekend and running into practice on Monday and Tuesday is going to heavily emphasize at least either specific lineups that will flow through Luca or even with the starting lineup asking LeBron and Austin to just play off of Luca more and let Luca get the ball. Because like again, Lucas best asset to this team is shot creation. You could argue the more you put on Luca offensively, the more you can rely on LeBron as a defender and as a rebounder, the more you can rely on Austin as like a closeout attacker. As like a. Guess what? Austin is a capable defender. This is one of the things Carson and I got into an argument with about earlier today. But like you, Austin, when he doesn't have to do everything on offense, he actually can be a dependable defensive player at the guard position. Not a great defender, but he can be a good defender. Shouldn't be guarding the other team's best player, but he can guard. And so like putting him in a situation where he doesn't have to do as much offensively is advantageous in this situation. Right? So like, I think we will see a lot more Luca heliocentric type of stuff coming out of the All Star break. But the flip side of that is what I talk about after the finals with Dallas. I talked about how there's certain limitations on heliocentric basketball. And there is an upside to Luca being more of a willing like cog in an offensive system rather than just the head of the snake because it'll give them more versatility against the best defenses. And here's the bottom line. Like when they play against the best defenses, like when they play against Oklahoma City, it's not going to be Luca picking them apart and just throwing out for catch and shoot threes. It's going to have to be against an elite defense like that. That skip pass, driving a closeout, really good driving kick possessions, deliberate offense to get great shots. And that is going to require all three of them. It might be Luca running the first ball screen, but it might be LeBron attacking on the skip or Austin cutting along the baseline after LeBron attacks off the skip. It might be three, four, five attacks on a possession before they actually get what they want out of it. And so again, like, I think it'll be a lot more heliocentric post All Star break. But I do think we're going to see a good amount of equal opportunity basketball from them against the best teams in the league. Hey Jason, long time listener, congrats on all your success. I noticed a few months ago you tweeted out a Stanley Johnson and how he should be on an NBA roster. Sure enough the Lakers get him on their G League team. Are you someone that ever watches the G League and if so, would you ever do a segment on G league guys or out of country guys we should watch or who you think are ready to play in the NBA? So I've just found that the NBA itself is so damn difficult to cover just because of the sheer amount of games, the sheer amount of teams that like I don't focus on scouting much at all. Like when we get into July or late August or excuse me, late June, I should say I will spend time learning as much as I can about draft prospects in that short period of time. But like there are people that devote a lot more time and energy to scouting outside of the NBA and those people are just going to do a much better job than ever I, than I could ever hope to do. So I'm a big believer in like I'd rather be great at this then try to be have my hands in like you know, six different pots, but that I'm not particularly good at any of them. Right. So like I really like to focus on NBA basketball. That said, Stanley Johnson I do think is a guy that could play at the NBA level. He's a career six rebounds and two stocks per 36 minutes in the NBA. Like he's a useful athlete. He does have switchability. He's a fire hydrant that's difficult to go through. And the biggest issue was he couldn't shoot. And over the course of the last two seasons in the G League, he's shooting 41% from three on five attempts per game. I don't think the Lakers are going to pick him up. I think if they converted a wing, it'll be Jordan Goodwin. But like if you told me Stanley Johnson was on this roster, I would be happy with it because I like Stanley. And I'm a little biased too because I'm from Tucson, Arizona. He came through Arizona. Stanley and I played against and with each other at times while he was here just playing pickup and stuff. So I'm a big fan of Stanley. But that said, I do think that he can help and, and I hope he gets another opportunity in the NBA at some point. With the growth as a shooter and with his impactfulness as an athlete, I think he should get that opportunity. With Mata Spezellas now hitting the double digit scoring mark eight games in a row and Zach Levine gone, what can slash should the Bulls do this season to ensure they are rebuilding the right way? Continue to give them the ball as much as possible. Everything about being bad with a purpose has big picture goals, right? Like if you're going to Be bad. You want to be bad while accumulating assets and you want to be bad while evaluating young talent. I've joked about how, like a lot of times when you're in rebuilding, you'll take on bad contracts with draft compensation being the reward for the bad contracts. Then what ends up happening is you have a bunch of guys on these rookie deals where they're making somewhere between, you know, 2 and 8 million a year that are on these like cost controlled contracts that you're actually playing. While you tank those guys, you need to turn to determine which ones of those guys can be extended. Should be extended. Are part of your big picture goals as a franchise and the team that you're trying to build. You need to find out what modest Bozeales is. Is he just like a Michael Porter Jr. Weak side wing defender, rebounder, guy who attacks with an advantage, or is he a guy that can run action and run a lot of it right? Like that's the kind of stuff that you got to figure out because which one of those two players he becomes plays, plays a big role. You might find out, oh, he'll never be good enough defensively for this to work. Okay, well, we need to find out. We need to play him large amounts of minutes, give him lots of repetition, right? And so the best thing you could do is put the ball in his hands and just find out what this kid is capable of in, in these moments where you can afford to give him that opportunity. As currently constructed, where do you believe that the expectations should be for the Lakers this postseason? I'm borderline wanting to consider them contenders because of the sheer fact that they have Luca and LeBron who are two of the most consistent guys in the league. But I want to be cautious. I'm going to say exactly what I said to the nerd sesh guys earlier today. I don't know what the Lakers are going to be. I haven't seen them play nearly enough basketball. I need to see a lot more. That said, there's somewhere between, in my opinion, a second tier contender and a third tier contender. To me right now, I kind of view as like Boston OKC at the top. I'm starting to slot Cleveland in that second tier these days. Denver to me is in that second tier. The Lakers are either going to be in that second tier with Denver and Cleveland or in the tier right below. But we need to watch them play a lot more basketball, I think. Here's the thing. If they're a second tier contender, let's say that we end up putting them in that second tier. I'm still worried about a Jokic matchup. I'm still really worried about a Celtics matchup because the same reasons that Dallas struggled last year trying to guard Boston at times, right? So like I think they have matchup weaknesses. But I also just put this like simple, I presented this Carson today. If it's LeBron, Luca, Austin, Dorian, Finney, Smith and Rui, how are you getting stops against the Lakers in a big spot? Like how, who, who are you helping off of Dorian, Finney Smith is a knockdown three point shooter. Rui can drive closeouts, Austin can drive closeouts, LeBron can drive closeouts, Luca can drive closeouts. You can't leave any of them open. Like they're going to have legitimate five out spacing with that group. Like LeBron and Luca should be able to get to the rim whenever they want. Okay, you have a big enough. Let's take Oklahoma City for example. They have Lou Dort. They're going to put Lou Dort on Luca and it's going to make life really difficult for Luca. Okay. Who's guarding LeBron? Jalen Williams. Like LeBron's going to do a lot of damage to Jalen Williams, you know what I mean? So like that's, that's not to say that I wouldn't, that I would pick the Lakers over the Thunder. I don't know, I, I honest to God, I'm not going to give you guys my like contender ranking for the Lakers until I watch them play a lot more basketball. They're a brand new theoretical team right now that's played the Utah Jazz twice. They tried in one game and kicked the shit out of them. They didn't try in the next game and got their kicked out of them. So like, I don't know exactly what they're going to be yet. We will find out. But like, I mean LeBron is 40 years old and he's a championship or bust kind of guy and I'm sure that he thinks, thinks that they can win and I would imagine they're going to view anything other than them winning as a failure. But like, I don't know what they're going to be and we just need to see a lot more basketball before we can make that kind of decision. So with the Mark Williams trade falling through, the Lakers are obviously aiming for free agency to grab that lob threat big. How would you feel about Jalen Durant to the lakers? He's only 21 years old, 610, 250 pounds and is a lob threat and is a free agent this summer. He's also averaging 70% from the field. And I know it's early, but any realistic free agents you see on the Lakers, I have a hard time believing Detroit's just going to give up on Jalen Duran. He's had some issues with like guarding on the perimeter against stretch fives, but I think he's been really good outside of that and is a really nice fit with Cade. Got good hands, finishes everything around the basket. So I mean when I look at this summer for the Lakers, I think they're going to be keying in on guys like, like Rob Williams, Nick Claxton, guys in that like less than 25 million a year range that they think they can piece together a couple of guys to just match salary and get. I incline to say Robert Williams because he's a little bit more affordable, but Nick Claxton would be a little bit more of a big picture option because he's younger and it doesn't have the injury history. Actually I think Nick Claxton might be a little older than Rob Williams. I'm actually not sure which one of those guys is younger, but his body's younger. He hasn't been as injured in his career as Robert Williams has been. But my guess is that they'll kind of key in on those two guys this summer. Nuggets in four. Just kidding. But not so much without AD I don't see how the Lakers stand a chance against Jokic. How do you feel about the Lakers vs Nuggets playoffs with the current rosters? Injuries aside, got into this with Carson today extensively, like I said. So you guys can find, find that on the nerd sesh feed. But like again, the way I look at it, like I don't think the Lakers are going to be able to guard Denver, but I also don't think Denver's going to be able to guard the Lakers. So if neither team can stop the other team from getting good shots, it's going to be a shot making series. So I think it'll be, it'll come down to like game planning. Like will Mike Malone be able to punish the Lakers for playing guys like Jackson Hayes, Jared Vanderbilt? Right. Will J.J. redick be able to punish Mike Malone for playing guys like Christian Brown or Russell Westbrook? Right. And both of those guys have been awesome this year. Right. And, and so like it's, it's, it's one of those things where like I don't think either team has an answer. Like he was the Carson was saying like there's nobody on this team that can stop Jokic from getting a great shot. You're absolutely right. But I'm going to present you the exact same thing I just said earlier. If Denver has to guard a lineup with LeBron, Luca, Austin, Dorian, Finney Smith and Rui Hachimura, how are they going to stop the Lakers from getting good shots? How? They're not going to be able to. So like I think it would be a very, very high scoring series relative to other playoff series. I think it would be a very interesting playoff series. I will admit freely that as as a Lakers fan, when I saw this trade go down in the aftermath, the two teams that I got legitimately concerned about were Denver and Boston. So like for the record, I would be scared in that kind of matchup, but I just think given how theoretical the Lakers are, I think it'd be foolish just to completely write them off. Four more hey Jason, with the spurs now falling to 23 and 29 and the refusal to replace Chris Paul in the starting lineup with Stefan Castle, do you think the spurs should semi tank the rest of the season to secure two lottery picks other via Atlanta to help complete their rebuild? I think that the entire purpose behind making Adir and Fox move is to advance the timeline, specifically to appease Victor Weyama and his competitive nature, but also to get these guys reps so you can start to learn you're now you have a core. Now your core is Fox, Vassell, Castle, Wemby, Sohan. Right? Like that's your core five guys that you're building around. You need to get those guys into a high leverage situation against an elite team in a playoff series so that you can learn about what they need to be supported with over the course of the next few years. So again they're in a tough spot. But you go for it. You absolutely go for it. You want to find as much high leverage basketball for these guys as early as possible. That was the entire purpose behind the De'Aaron Fox trademark. Do you think that LeBron and Jokic are the only players in NBA history to have seen every adjustment, every coverage, every double or blitz thrown and have always found new angles to dominate the game at the level they've dominated for so long and with such offensive consistency? I don't think it's only those two. I generally think that all basketball players have gotten better, even just in this era. I think Steph Curry's another guy where like he's competed against switching by just running around like Crazy. And forcing teams to make mistakes when they're switching. He's beat switching big looks by just attacking them off the bounce. Famously did a lot of picking on Horford and Robert Williams in the NBA Finals in 2022. He's a drop coverage killer. He annihilated the Celtics drop coverage for the most part over the course of that series, which was a big part of why they had to switch at times. Right? Like he's done a ton of blitz him. Yeah, yeah, be my guest. That was literally how they won the 2015 finals. Like that was how Andre Guadala got finals MVP. So like, I think he's countered all these different coverages as well. Again, like when I think about like peaks, I think Jokic has reached an offensive peak that no player ever has. I think LeBron has reached a two way peak that no player ever has. And I think at LeBron's peak, Steph was also about as good on the offensive end of the floor when he was at that point. So like again, they all have like these different kind of calling cards. But there are definitely a lot of players in NBA history that have overcome anything a coach can do. Like Michael Jordan wasn't a guy that in the 90s was struggling with any specific coverage, if that makes sense. Why aren't people, including you, talking about what the Thunder are doing at the All Star break? They have the best net rating of all time as well as the best relative defense ever. I just don't understand why they're not being talked about at all, much less like the all time great team they've been to this point. It's not a small sample size anymore. Couple things I did just talk about them yesterday. I think we, we just got into them in the defensive run that they went on at the tail end of the game against. Was it the M? Yeah, Miami Heat. And I talked about their defense and how it was so exceptionally great. The other thing too is like the dominant regular season team is always the least interesting NBA regular season story. It's unfair that it works that way, but it's just the reality. Like there's no debate about it. There is debate surrounding bad team or teams that have more significant flaws. Because then you can argue these are their flaws or these are their strengths. Right. Like it's kind of weird how it works in the NBA how the teams that dominate kind of disappear into the top and the teams that suck disappear into the bottom. And then we spend all this time debating the middle tier. Like that's kind of like how it works for whatever reason. So I understand that. I don't talk about the Thunder as much as I do some of the other teams in the league, but we do talk about them. We hit them a few times a month and we just hit them earlier this week. I again, I have a similar type of response to the all time great stuff that I do with Boston. Like I, I don't think all time great is something you accomplish in the regular season. I don't think it's something you accomplish with advanced metrics. I think it's something you con you accomplished with multiple deep playoff runs where you win multiple championships. That's how you achieve all time great. That is, it's just a different kind of like goalpost for me. I guess I view the Thunder as kind of like a combination of a legitimate championship contender while also being a little bit Houston Rocketsy in the sense that like they're young and freakishly athletic and they're playing harder than everybody every night. That's going to go a long way in the 82. So like on one hand, on the one hand I view them as a legitimate contender, but I don't think they're as good as their record or their net rating would lead you to believe. And they still have some big question marks to me. Like Minnesota kind of mauled them in the, in the fourth quarter yesterday, got a bunch of stops, ate them up on the offense. They had 20 offensive rebounds in that game. And like I, I do think about certain teams that have physical size mismatches that they can present. I do worry about the multiple times this year in big spots, whether it's against a good team on the road or whether it's in the in season tournament championship where their offense just falls apart and it becomes can Shea make shots? And he takes a lot of mid range shots that he just has to hit at a super high efficiency for them to be worth it. Right. And he does for the record. But like there's a certain amount of like frailty with them that I see with every team in the league except for basically Boston. And even then there's a, there's a little bit of frailty just in their defending championship Itis where they've been so sloppy with their shot selection at times this year last actually we already. That's my bad. I have the Mitchell Robinson one in here again so I already hit that one. So we're actually done for the day. 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 hope you guys enjoy the weekend. We'll be back on Monday. Well, enjoy the All Star break. We're gonna do we're gonna do some stuff that the games get started back up on Wednesday, but we're gonna do some stuff on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, like contender rankings, maybe a check in with the nerd sesh, guys. We'll see. We're gonna do some stuff early next week to kill time before we get into the rest of the season. But again, as always, I appreciate you guys and I'll see you next week. The Volume what's up guys? As always, I appreciate you for listening to and support 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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