← The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - Nuggets best team in NBA, Thunder title defense, Timberwolves leap | Northwest Division Predictions
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- [00:00]
Nicole Garcia
This is an Iheart podcast.
- [00:05]
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- [00:39]
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- [01:25]
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Jason LT
Or the chips?
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- [01:57]
Colin Coward
Hi, it's Colin from the Colin Coward podcast. I've been around long enough to know quality when I see it. Or in this case, when I taste it. Tito's handmade vodka. Good stuff. No flash, no gimmick. Smooth, clean tasting. Made the right way. Tito's made in Austin, Texas. Real attention to detail. I like to keep it simple. Tito's soda, one lime, lot of ice. Refreshing, easy. Summer, winter, spring. Totally versatile. Always works. Listen, baseball season's here. The perfect time to kick back with some Tito's. It's what I pour. You should, too. Distilled and bottled by 5th Generation Inc. Austin, Texas. 40% alcohol by volume saver.
- [02:36]
Jason LT
Responsibly, the volume.
- [02:53]
Colin Coward
All right.
- [02:53]
Jason LT
Welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Friday, everybody. Hope all you guys are having a great end of your week. We are continuing our season preview series today with the Northwest Division. So that's the Denver Nuggets, the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Portland Trailblazers, and the Utah Jazz. We're going to be touching on all five of those teams today. 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 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. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson's doing incredible work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Tik Tok. Make sure you guys follow us over there. And last but not least, if you guys want to get mailbag questions into our mailbags, drop them in the full episodes on YouTube in the comments and we'll get to them regularly throughout the season. Our next mailbag will be the week after we finish this season preview series. All right, let's talk some basketball. So we're starting with the Denver Nuggets today. A little quick recap of their off season. They lost Vlado Khan, they lost Deandre Jordan, Michael Porter Jr. Dario Sarich and Russell Westbrook. They added Cam Johnson, Tim Hardaway, Jr. Bruce Brown, Jonas Valanchunis, and essentially adding Duron Holmes, who's coming back from an Achilles tear. A guy who was drafted in the first round last year but got hurt in training camp I believe, or either right before training camp, but he's going to be coming back this season. Then another guy they added this summer that I'm going to have my eye on is Kessler Edwards. I have to compete for a roster spot, but his per 36 numbers were pretty impressive last season. In addition to being a big physical perimeter athlete, he averaged 10 points and 7 rebounds per 36 minutes with a 2.5 to 1 assist to turnover ratio. Shot 50% from the field, 41% from 3, 92% from the line. So 50, 40, 90. A good playmaker relative to most role players in that type of slot. 2.3 stocks per 36 minutes. Another guy that I think has a decent chance to impress in Nuggets training camp. So no way to look at this as anything other than a massive influx of talent. I have issues with a guy like Jonas Valentunas in a starting role, but he's unquestionably a substantial upgrade from DeAndre Jordan as a backup center. Cam Johnson is a better player than mpj, but I also think he's a better fit than MPJ in this phase of the Nuggets contention window, which we'll dive deeper into here in a minute. It won't be hard for Duron Holmes to be better than Dario Sarich was, and I think that the combination of Bruce Brown And Tim Hardaway Jr. Is a big step up from Russell Westbrook coming off the bench. So this is quite simply the best roster that Nicole Jokic has had to work with in his entire NBA career, and it's a big part of why I'm so high on the Nuggets coming into this particular season. Let's start with the Cam Johnson fit. We've talked about this plenty over the summer, but I'll go over it quickly again here. I think Cam represents an upgrade over MPJ in two clear areas that I think will help the Nuggets on both ends of the floor. First is the fact that he's just a much better ball handler than Michael Porter Jr. The lack of reliable ball handling outside of guys like Jamal Murray and a little bit of Aaron Gordon was a big part of why Denver had to take high risk options like Russell Westbrook or leaning a lot on a young Julian Strother. Now, Michael Porter Jr. Could scale up his offense a bit as we've talked about over the years, especially versus lower level competition, but mostly in handoffs. And again, they had some limitations as you went against the higher level teams in the league. I think Cam Johnson is just a much better ball handler than Michael Porter Jr. He should be able to actually run action both with Jokic and without Jokic on the floor. I also like this in the context of Tim Hardaway Jr. Who should be able to come in and run many of those same dribble handoff actions that Michael Porter Jr. Ran with Nicole Jokic. In short, the team has substantially more offensive firepower. Now if you as a Nuggets fan are worried about the catch and shoot side of the catch and shoot side of things, yes, Michael Porter Jr. Was taller. I'd argue at like pure standstill shooting because of his height and the slight increase in percentage. He's a little better than Cam Johnson there, but it doesn't really manifest much in the percentages. Cam was 40% on catch and shoot threes last year. So is Michael Porter Jr. Cam was 44% on unguarded catch and shoot threes. Michael Porter Jr. Was 45%, so not much of a statistical difference there. Even though we can admit that Michael Porter Jr. Is probably a little better just because of his size and that specific side of things. The second piece here is the defensive end of the floor. In last year's version of the team, Christian Brown was their primary point of attack defender. And then if they ran into a situation where they needed to guard another perimeter player that would handle the ball, or if it was a bigger forward that was handling the ball, they would have to deploy Aaron Gordon there. They had no choice because Michael Porter Jr. Is not a good perimeter defender. When Michael Porter Jr. Is locked in, he can be a solid weak side defender. He could protect the rim a little bit, he's a solid defensive rebounder, but he can't guard on the perimeter. I'm not saying that needing to deploy Aaron Gordon on the perimeter is the reason he got hurt, but at this phase in his career, with the mileage that Aaron has on his body, I'd prefer to not ask him to do that as much. Certain matchups like LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, some guys, that might be too strong for Cam, sure. But I think Cam is a perfectly fine option to be your secondary point of attack defender behind Christian Brown. That should allow you to keep Aaron Gordon in help side more, keep him rotating at the rim, keep him there for defensive rebounding. Aaron Gordon had a little bit of a drop off in his rebounding last year. It wasn't just injuries. A lot of it has to do with how often he had to be deployed on the perimeter. I just think that that's a better all around foundation for Denver's defense in general. I just think Cam's a better player than Michael Porter Jr. But he also is a better option on both sides of the floor for this phase of where Denver is in their title contention with Jonas Valanchunas. The big thing I'm looking for is scheme consistency. In years past, Denver would go small when Jokic was off the floor much of the time. They tried centers obviously with to no avail, but they would mostly go small and they do more switching on defense and Aaron Gordon and Jamal Murray would mostly go matchup hunting and frankly it just didn't work in the large sample. They didn't really have any other option though, and that's really the big difference here. They didn't have any options that they could go to other than that going small, switching, attempting to pick teams apart through matchup hunting with Gordon and with Murray, having Jonas will allow them to play a very similar style on both ends of the floor to the way they played with Nicola Jokic, right dribble handoffs, two man game with Jamal Murray. Jonas can pick and pop a little bit. Jonas can play out of the post, especially against favorable matchups. No, he can't do any of that stuff as well as Jokic can. That's not what I'm trying to say. But against inferior NBA talent that's coming off the bench for teams, he can be reasonably effective there. And it allows you to continue to run the same things that you're running. Even on defense. You can continue to run your higher drop coverage. Perhaps with a guy like Duron Holmes operating on the back line behind Jonas when he has to come up to the level. It's not necessarily about winning those minutes with Nicole Jokic off the floor. It's just about not hemorrhaging points the way they had been last year. Once Again, Denver lost 10 points per 100 possessions when Jokic was off the floor. That's just, that's going to make it really difficult to win basketball games in the playoffs. In 183 possessions with Jokic off, they lost by 31.1 points per 100 possessions. That is devastating to your champ, to your chances. Despite this, they pushed OKC to 7 and might have won if Aaron Gordon didn't get hurt. I to be clear, it's not just about Jonas either. I want to be clear here as you kind of look down the roster. To me it's about everything. It's about having Bruce Brown, it's about having Tim Hardaway Jr. It's about having Jonas Valentunas. It's about having options. I once had someone tell me, money doesn't give you happiness, but it gives you options. And I felt that personally last week when we were moving up here to to Denver, we were doing our last phase of our move. It was a three phase move and we got a trailer and we were driving it up through up Interstate 25 and we hit Albuquerque in rush hour traffic in the morning and literally I blew a tire on my truck and I was able to get a tow truck and I was able to get a couple of tires and get back on the road. I remember when I was much younger, my wife and I were moving from Charlotte to Tucson and we had all of our stuff loaded up in two cars and we had our dogs with us and it was a 28 hour drive and we were so broke we literally couldn't afford a hotel like literally because of the dogs. And knowing that if you wanted to get a place that would allow dogs or that would charge a dog fee. It was going to be like 3 or 400 bucks for us to spend the night. We couldn't afford it. And so we pushed through the night and it was terrifying and I probably shouldn't have done it. And we damn near got ourselves killed driving through West Texas in the middle of the night as I'm damn near falling asleep on the road. I didn't have options then, whereas something far worse happened driving up, pulling a trailer. But I had options. I was able to get a tow truck, I was able to get the tires. I was able to get us back on the road. In the past, for the Nuggets, when they would be watching the wheels come off, quite literally, David Adelman would look at the end of the bench and he wouldn't have those options, right? He wouldn't have this player that can go out there and patch the holes that could make things work in those units when Jokic was off the floor. This is what I mean when I say going beyond just Jonas. So for instance, like, one of the things that Mike Malone would also do over the years is he'd be like, well, I'm just going to stagger the starters more in with the bench unit and just have Jokic carrier inferior units. You have much more flexibility to do that now because I know that Bruce Brown and Tim Hardaway Jr. Can score with Nicola Jokic. I know that those guys, Bruce Brown can run regular pick and roll and inverted pick and roll, slipping out of it with jokic. Tim Hardaway Jr. Can run many of the same dribble handoff actions that Nicola Jokic ran with Michael Porter Jr. They have the options now to put more of their talent. They could run Cam Johnson, Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon with Jonas Valentunas or in a bench group with Gordon at center and have more talent on the floor during those units without having to wear everybody out. In the past, they'd have to push minutes to do that. In general, this depth, it gives them options. It gives them the ability to commit more to the defensive end throughout the entirety of the regular season because of the. Just the. The ability to keep everybody's minutes down and ask people to do more game to game. They have so much more in the way of options. He's looking at his hand of cards and he has like three or four different ways that he can try to attack the situation. That did not used to be the case. And again, it's not about winning necessarily those minutes, but maybe losing the Yokachov minutes by 1 or 2 points per 100 possessions instead of by 10 to 15 points. That could massively improve their chances both night to night in the regular season and when they get to the playoffs. As for the defensive end of the floor, I thought last year was a good example of them straight up switching, like flipping the switch, right? It's a concept that's very dangerous. It's a concept that has burned veteran teams over the years, but it has worked a few times in NBA history and it usually is teams that have won championships in the past. To be clear, the Nuggets did not lose because of their defense. They guarded Oklahoma City about as well as they possibly could have. The combination of having some high end defensive personnel like Aaron Gordon and Christian Brown, their weaker defenders, Nicole Jokic and Jamal Murray both have very high IQs, which allows them to scale up in those situations just by being in the right spots as part of the game plan. And credit to David Adelman, I thought he did an excellent job of keeping Oklahoma City off balance by constantly mixing up coverages and using a lot of zone. But they were a brutal regular season defense. This year I expect them to be closer to that 12 to 15 range. One because of depth, like we just mentioned, more good players means less of a necessity to conserve energy night to night throughout the season because you can keep people's minutes down, you know you got enough good players to do it. And then two belief. I think this team's going to go into training camp feeling like they have the opportunity of a lifetime to hoist the trophy again this year. That should lead to more buy in throughout the season. I think this is the best team in the league. I think Jokic is a substantially better player than Shay Gil just Alexander. I think this roster is tailor made to his strengths. I think if they can stay healthy, if they can get anything close to the Jamal Murray they had in 2023, I think they're going to win the trophy. They have their vulnerabilities, especially against the second tier teams in the west like Minnesota has given issues because of their center rotation, the Lakers because of Luka Doncic. Luka can cause some problems for their pick and roll defense, but I still think they're better than both of those teams and I think they match up really well with Oklahoma City. So they're my pick to win the title this year. We'll get into the actual contender rankings the week after we finish our season previews. Today's show is brought to you by our new Presenting sponsor Hard Rock Bet. 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- [18:48]
Colin Coward
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- [19:16]
Mario Lopez
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- [19:52]
Snax
What's up everybody? This is Snax from the Trap Nerds podcast and we're bringing you the Horror every week all October long.
- [19:59]
Jason LT
Kicking off this month I'll be bringing you all my greatest fear inducing horror games from Resident Evil to Silent Hill. Me and Tony bringing back Fireteam on Left 4 Dead 2 and we just gonna be going over some of the greats.
- [20:11]
Snax
Also in October we'll be talking about our favorite horror and Halloween movies and figuring out why black people always gotta die first.
- [20:18]
Jason LT
The Umbral Reliquary invites any and all fool brave enough to peruse its many curiosities. But take heed, all sales are final. Weekly horror side quests written and narrated by yours truly with a full episode read and a commentary special.
- [20:37]
Snax
And we will cap it off with Horror Movie Battle Royale. Jason versus Freddy, Michael Myers versus the AC Thing with the Little Tongue Monster. October. We're doing it Halloween style. Listen to the Traverse Podcast from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:54]
Nicole Garcia
It may look different, but Native culture is very alive. My name is Nicole Garcia and on Burn Sage Burn Bridges we aim to explore that culture.
- [21:02]
Jason LT
It was a huge honor to become a television writer because it does feel oddly like very traditional and and feels like Bob Dylan going electric that this is something we've been doing for like hundreds of years. You carry with you a sense of purpose and confidence.
- [21:17]
Nicole Garcia
That's Sierra Teller Ornelas, who with Rutherford Falls became the first Native showrunner in television history. On the podcast Burn Sage Burn Bridges we explore her story along with other Native stories such as the creation of the first Native Comic Con or the importance of Reservation basketball. Every day Native people are striving to keep traditions alive while navigating the modern world, influencing and bringing our culture into the mainstream. Listen to Burn Sage Burn bridges on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:55]
Jason LT
Moving on to the Oklahoma City Thunder. So to be clear, right off the top, I'm picking Denver to win the title. But this isn't like a Denver with Oklahoma City way down here. The gap is very small to me. If anything, I'd say they're on the same tier. I just would pick Denver to beat Oklahoma City in a series. Quick offseason recap, they're basically the same team. Plus, Nikola Topic is coming back from an injury that caused him to miss all of last year. I actually think Topic could end up having like a decent sized role on this team because as Indiana kind of exposed last year, they do have a little bit of a ball handling deficit and I think they could use someone to help them run their offense for stretches. Help with some advantage creation, especially when Shay's off the floor. So I think wouldn't be surprised if he plays quite a bit this year. The story of the Thunder is going to be internal improvement in this season. It's been an arms race in the Western Conference all summer. The Nuggets added a bunch of talent. We just covered that. The Lakers are getting a better version of Luca and a massive upgrade at center. The Rockets, obviously they lose Fred Van Vliet, but if they can pull off a trade for a guard, they'll be a top tier contender. The Clippers added a bunch of depth. We covered that the other day. The warriors, if they get Horford, will be better. We covered that the other day. The Mavs will be a pain in the ass after being out of the equation last year. The spurs will likely join the mix in the Thunder, rightfully for the record. They stood pat. So if they're going to keep up, they need internal improvements. Last year's Thunder would lose to this year's Nuggets in my opinion. I mean, hell, last year's Thunder damn near lost to last year's Nuggets, right? So what does that internal improvement look like for Oklahoma City to maintain the gap between them and the rest of the league as they get better around them? First and foremost, Shay's game management. Shea had a remarkable regular season statistically, but his efficiency plummeted in the postseason and I thought his inconsistent game management was a big part of how they had such an up and down postseason run. Some nights he'd come out and do a great job of setting up his teammates and looking for advantages, picking his spots as a scorer and keeping everybody in rhythm. And then other nights he'd come out gunning and he'd take the team out of rhythm. The stats here were insane. When the Thunder won in the postseason, they had a 120 offensive rating. When they lost in the postseason, they had a 103 offensive rating out of the 16 playoff teams. If you took all their offensive ratings just in losses, that ranked 11th out of the 16 teams. In short, their offense was awesome when they won and legitimately terrible when they lost. Now, to Shay's credit, every time the shit hit the fan and the Thunder found themselves in Like a must win situation. I thought he managed those games extremely well and he got the job done. That's the beauty of everything that happened with the Thunder last year. In many ways, they showed the warts of their youth and won anyway. And that's what's scary about the potential future outside of game four of the finals. Game four of the finals was the one time I thought Shea kind of had a bad floor game in a big spot. But even then, he came alive down the stretch in the final minutes, made the big plays, got the win that they needed. But this year, in all likelihood, the margin for error will be smaller. The top six teams in the west are just better than they were last year. So Shea becoming a more consistent game manager would go a long way to towards them, helping avoid an upset. J Dub's overall development. Jada was incredible in this playoff run, and for that reason, he ended up cracking my top 20 players in our player rankings this year. But he was inconsistent as well as many young players are. Like when J Dub scored at least 18 points, the Thunder went 14 and 2. When he failed to score 18 points, the Thunder went 2 and 5. The biggest piece was mostly his 3 point shooting. He was 5 for 34 from 3 in those 7 games where he failed to get to 18 points. He did. Really, it seemed like right towards the end of the Nugget series, it like clicked for him. You could tell he like realized that no one can stop him from getting to the rim. It felt like one of the big aha moments for him in his career. He's just starting to realize that he's one of the most gifted basket attackers in the NBA. We went over some of the stats in our player rankings video that showed he's already one of the most gifted drivers of the basketball in the entire league. But if you can balance that out with a reliable three point shot, that's where he's going to become a very dependable night tonight player. And again, when I'm talking about this, and I'm about to talk about Chet in a second, I'm not trying to be super critical of these guys. I'm pointing this stuff out as a, as a reason to get excited these guys. How many teams, you know, you know, how many fans around the league are looking at their team and they're like, we kind of are what we are. We just have to hope we have enough pieces like Oklahoma City can sit there and go, like, I don't know how much better we're going to get this year, but These guys are going to be better. It's very possible that even just over the course of the season, like sometimes guys take leaps in big spots. Like you could have Chet figure it out and it could all click in a big Western Conference finals series. That's a potential that this team has that many teams around the league don't have. With Chad, it's his offensive development. I thought Chet was phenomenal on defense in the entire playoff run. His combination of rim protection and his ability to switch out onto guards was a huge part of how Oklahoma City reached the level they reached defensively on their way to get the trophy. But obviously on offense it was an adventure, right? He had six 20 point games, but he had four single digit games. And similarly to J Dub, it was tied to the team's success. When Chad scored at least 13 points, the Thunder were 13 and 3. When he failed to score 13 points, they were 3 and 4. Obviously a big part of that offensive rating we talked about in losses. The issues for him showed up in a variety of areas. He was 46% on layups in the playoff run. Obviously a player of his size, he just needs to get better at finishing around the rim through contact. He took 26 off the dribble jump shots and only made six of them. So either needs to massively improve there or kind of trim that fat out of his game. We'll see. It'll probably be a little bit of both. He shot 32% on catch and shoot jumpers, including 32% when he was unguarded. So he's got to be able to knock down open shots. And again, these are not criticisms. You literally just won the title and Chad is 23 years old. He's going to get way better and when he does, he's going to be one of the best players in the league. Like I, I genuinely believe Chet has like Anthony Davis level two way potential. That's what he's capable of getting to. He's obviously years from that, but he has that capability. And how far he gets in that direction this season is going to be a big part of whether or not they can stiff arm the rest of the Western Conference. And again, like whether it's Chet or it's J Dub or it's Shea or it's guys like Kayson Wallace or whether or not Nikola Topic ends up succeeding in a decent sized role. That will be the difference in whether or not they can stiff arm these teams or not. The west is an absolute beast. The top six teams are insane. I found the stat the other day and I found it very interesting. The big reason Oklahoma city got to 68 wins wasn't that they outclassed the West. They only won three more games against the west than the Los Angeles Lakers did, led by old man LeBron James. They went 29 and one against the East. That game where Oklahoma City barely lost in Cleveland, that was their only loss against an Eastern Conference team all season. This is not an unbeatable team, as I said. I have them right there with Denver as the best team in the league and again, all of those teams below, whether it be Houston or the Lakers or Minnesota. Minnesota. Anthony Edwards got his ass kicked last year. You don't think he's coming back with a little bit more of an attitude and a little bit more of a effort to improve in the areas where Shay kicked his ass? We're going to talk about it in a second. The Clippers are a threat. Golden State's a threat. These are all upset threats, right? And then Denver's right there with them. This is not going to be easy for Oklahoma City to repeat. They're going to need that internal improvement. But to make it very clear, if they do get substantial leaps out of Shea, out of J Dub, out of Chet, they'll kick everyone's ass and they'll hoist the trophy again as the first Repeat champion since 2018. Moving on to the Minnesota Timberwolves relatively uneventful off season, they lost Nikhil Alexander Walker is really good player that I like, but it's a big loss for sure. Luca Garza and Josh Manat. They added Joan Behringer in the draft who's like a super raw French big and some end of the bench guys. I think it's more likely that we just see more of like Terence Shannon and Jalen Clark rather than a guy like Johnny Juzang for example. But we'll see the Timberwolves painfully. As a Lakers fan reminded me last year that they are one of the best playoff teams in the NBA, regardless of how they look on any given night in the regular season. They're just so damn big and so damn strong and so damn physical and athletic and so damn competitive that they can just physically overwhelm you over the course of a series. But in each of the last two years they've run into a combination of three things. An elite defense that can protect the rim and a superior superstar on the other team that could pick apart Minnesota's defense. And in both cases, their impressive playoff runs came to screeching halts. Now on the defensive end, there's only so much you can do with the supreme superstars of the NBA. But I do think it's worth talking about the game planning. Like I do think Chris Finch was foolish for having Jaden McDaniels pick up shake Elish Alexander that far away from the basket. That was foolish, but I don't necessarily think it changes the outcome of the series. It's just like one of the things it's worth mentioning for. As good as Minnesota's defense was, both Oklahoma City and Dallas lit them up. So game planning obviously is going to be part of it as well. Getting the most out of your defensive talent. But the biggest issue what's their offense? Minnesota logged a 104 offensive rating in the four losses versus Oklahoma City. That's just not going to get it done. It starts with Ant. He's got to become a more resilient, less variance dependent score. I talked a ton after the Western Conference finals about how Shea badly outclassed Ant as a mid to short range score and I thought it was literally the difference in the series. Shea outscored at 157 to 115 in that series. If your superstar gets outplayed to that extent, it's almost impossible to overcome. Now what I said at the time was that Ant needed to build out reliable short range scoring. The ability to use his size and strength to get closer to the rim against the elite perimeter defenders of the league, but also to have a shot that he can shoot over the rim protector so he doesn't have to contend with those guys at the rim. So I was relieved when Sham Charania reported last week that Ant had spent all summer working on his postgame and his mid to short range scoring. That means Ant is paying attention to what happened. It means he went back and watched the tape, he went back and looked at the numbers and he saw where the area of opportunity was. We shared these stats during our player ranking series, but I want to share them again. Ant posted up 27 times in the 2024 playoff run and got 1.19 points per possession. That's awesome. He posted up just seven times total in the 2025 playoff run. It was a thing that really worked for him and he like straight up abandoned it. There's a lot of talk about Ants playmaking and it's certainly something you want to see him to continue to incrementally improve on over the years. But he's averaging six assists per game on a 2 to 1 assist to turnover ratio over the last two playoff runs. Like he's getting better. He'll continue to get better there, but his supreme gift is scoring the basketball and right now he's struggling to do that against the absolute best defenses in the league. That's where he needs to become more reliable. That heavy shift towards three point shooting, it helped him in true shooting percentage in the regular season. It helped him hit higher scoring volume. I'm not saying he needs to stop taking threes, but he was 6 for 31 from three again in the four losses against Oklahoma City because that's something that can happen when you rely on heavy high volume three point shooting. Building out a reliable short range scoring game will help him go bucket for bucket with guys like Shay and the best greats in the NBA. I thought the Julius Randall experiment went about as well as it could have gone given the clunky fit. He shot better from three than you would think. Like he was 40% over his last 21 regular season games and then 39% in the playoffs. He also provided like a face up and low post shot creation element to kind of get the defense into rotation. I hated his Game 2 in Game 4 against Oklahoma City it felt like he was like openly pouting on the floor. But I'm trying to cut him at least a little bit of slack just simply because Oklahoma City embarrassed a lot of guys with their defense in that playoff run. In general, I think he fits the the identity of the team really well. He's a big physical ass kicking forward that can really leverage that physicality in the postseason. He had 27 offensive rebounds in the playoffs and he was a pretty efficient 24 points per game before the Minnesota series. I think that that trade and that experiment worked out about as well as it possibly could have given the way it looked at the time of the trade. Those two guys ultimately control this team's destiny. The defense is the defense. They definitely need more from Chris Finch and game planning like we talked about to prevent your defense from just completely falling apart against Luca and sga. So like more mixing up of coverages including some zone more willingness to adjust when things aren't working. I don't think the Nikhil Alexander Walker loss greatly affects their fortunes. Like he wasn't in their best five. He's very good. I liked I like Nikhil Alexander Walker. I wanted him on the Lakers this summer but like he's not in their best five. And I do think in the regular season guys like Terence Shannon and Jalen Clark can be productive enough to prevent Much of a drop off there. And one of those guys, one of those two dudes will end up popping just enough to be able to give you a shift or two per game when they get to the postseason. They also match up really well with Denver, which I think is a strong foundation for a case that Minnesota could win the conference. They just need to be able to score the ball when they face an elite defense that can protect the rim. So essentially what I'm saying is they've got to be able to handle Oklahoma City if they can get there. And that's going to depend on Julius Randle avoiding those disaster games and Anthony Edwards becoming a better and more reliable scorer. Hopefully built around the idea of short to mid range scoring as well as the incremental improvements as a playmaker. The pathways there for Minnesota, like it's easy to see. Minnesota gets on the opposite side of the bracket from Oklahoma City and Denver and Denver upsets Oklahoma City. You get Minnesota, Denver in the conference finals, repeat of what happened two years ago, all of a sudden you're in the finals and you're probably favored when you get there. But again, that's not guaranteed. There's a chance you're, there's a good chance you run into Oklahoma City somewhere along the way, especially if they end up with the 1 and 2 seed. So at that point you're going to have to solve that puzzle when you get there. All right, we're going to go more quickly through these last two Portland Trailblazers. Off season recap. They lost DeAndre and Anthony Simons. They added Drew Holiday and Damian Lillard who's going to miss all of the season. And Yang Hansen, who was their first round pick at number 16. Kind of an interesting pick. Most draft boards graded him as a second rounder. My guy, Sam Vicini, who is the person I trust the most with the draft, he had him at 4:48. The Blazers. The Blazers also had just drafted Donovan Clingan. So I guess they're looking at this as like a center by committee thing. I was looking at some quotes and apparently they're looking at is like Donovan Clingan is your big physical ass kicking center and then Yang Hansen is basically like your finesse, you know, offensive skill oriented center. The Blazers have some really interesting young talent. Shaden Sharp had a bunch of really big scoring games down the stretch of the season. Although that was a lot of like high usage chucking. Denny Abdia really popped at the end of the year in his final 13 games. This is crazy. Denny Abdia averaged 27 points, 11 rebounds and six assists and he won his minutes. And he did it on 52% from the field, 46% from 3 and 82% from the line. And the big thing is like again you see a lot of noise at the end of the year, especially with teams that don't really have anything to play for. They put the ball in the hands of a bunch of random dudes and sometimes they can put up numbers. Like I like Shaden Sharp, but I. I don't expect Shaden Sharp to be a guy that's going to average 26 points a game like he did down the stretch of the season. Right. Like to me like the, the major on ball stuff isn't really coming forward for me as something that I think he's ready for just yet. But like the Denny obvious stuff, I view that as real. You know, maybe not to the extent as of him like averaging 27 points per game for a whole season, but especially with the scoot Henderson injury apparently tore his hamstring the other day. I wouldn't be surprised if they start with Denny as like their primary shot creator to start the year. And I wouldn't be surprised if we're 20 games into the season and Denny's averaging like 25 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists on 60% true shooting. He's just, he's a really gifted offensive player. He shot pull up threes insanely well. He shot 41% on 70 pull up threes with Portland. He showed that in ball screens when guys would go under. He showed it in ISO out of dribble combinations on like step backs and things like that. He's got like real downhill bursts. You'll see it in ISOs where he'll just catch and he'll get a big on a switch and he'll just hit the gas going to the right and he'll dust somebody off the dribble. He'll in a ball screen if the big's not up at the level. He'll get downhill into the lane driving closeouts. He'll hit a really hard like left handed or like jab step to the left and then drive to the right where he gets really good first step quickness. He's got some bully ball to his game where he'll just power through guys. He'll drop that right shoulder and just go through guys all the way to the basketball. He's got like really nice change of pace on his drives. Like in ball screens he'll put the defender in jail and trap him on the backside and hit a little floater or like a step through something like that. He'll like burst downhill and then slow way down with slow down steps as bigs jump around him. And then he'll find a little angle. He'll euro or he'll slide through some weird gap or it'll look like he's driving towards the left and then somehow finish on the right as he slaloms through the lane. Like it's honestly a little Luca light sometimes. He's, he's got pump fakes and in like up and unders and step throughs where he'll get to little short floaters and short jump shots. Honestly, I think it's a really impressive move from this Portland front office to find an underappreciated talent in this league. And to be clear, I wasn't watching the Wizards a ton back then. I. I wasn't aware of this upside myself. But he has my attention now and I think he's really, really good. As I was digging into the Portland tape this morning, you know, you're going to see a lot of noise like we talked about, but in that noise you're going to see things that you think are real. And Denny Abdia being like potentially a legitimate like shot creator in this league is something that I think is real and I'm really, really excited to watch him this year. Tony Kamara and Drew Holiday will make a formidable pairing of defensive weapons and they have a strong defensive center rotation with Donovan Clingan and Rob Williams. They don't have their clear foundational superstar yet, and I'm not sure if Scoot Henderson will ever be that, but they do have some really strong foundational pieces. I think the main goals for the season are find out if Denny is good enough to be a championship number two, give him the ball a ton, and then see what the upside is trending towards with guys like Scoot Henderson, if he can be healthy and Shaden Sharp. Right, if they're not, then it's time for you to start planning how to get that foundational superstar again. The thought process is you need a number one, you need a number two, and you need complimentary role players. And you don't know what complimentary role players you need until you know what your number one and your number two are. And I think getting Denny and like seeing that upside, we'll see. It's got it. You know, it's one thing to do it for 20 games or whatever. At the end of the season, you gotta, you gotta figure out how to do it over the course of a season. There's gonna be attempts to figure him out in scouting and teams will figure out ways to guard him better than they did. There was a lot of like going under picks on Denny. There are certain teams that chased him over. Like I watched a game with the Knicks where they chased him over the entire game and that's where he showed a lot of that, like putting the defender in jail type of stuff. But then there are other games where dudes are dying on picks and it's like, yeah, if you're going to hit pull up threes at 40%, they're going to start chasing you over the top. Right. We're going to see the league try to figure Denny out and then we will find out if Denny is worth building around. Is that like secondary star on a real team with real chances. But Portland's going to be a really fun league pass team this year. I wouldn't be surprised if they got up around 30 to 35 wins, but we will see. Lastly today, the Utah Jazz. They lost Jordan Clarkson, John Collins, Colin Sexton, Johnny Juzang, Jaden Springer, and they added Mo Bamba. A bunch of vets that they'll probably trade or buy out at some point, like Kyle Anderson, Kevin Love, George's Niang and Yusuf Nurkic. A couple of really interesting draft picks like Ace Bailey out of Rutgers, who's the. He's like a tough shot maker that can't make tough shots yet and a lot of unrealized defensive upside. So in other words, like a big upside pick. So we'll see if he can reach that upside. And then Walter Clayton Jr. Is the guard out of Florida who made a name for himself in the NCAA Tournament in a deep run. I don't have a ton to say about the Jazz. They don't feel like they've made any progress towards their big picture plans. They clearly don't have their franchise superstar yet. I mean, Ace Bailey has that upside, I suppose, but that's a long shot. It's certainly like a half decade away. And I like Laurie Markkanen as a potential number two for the right superstar. We're going to talk about him in the context of the Detroit Pistons in the video coming up on Monday. But he's 28 years old now, so I'm not sure how he fits Utah's timeline unless you have a plan to bring in a superstar that's older. Right. I continue to see reports coming out of Utah that they have no intention of trading him, which makes no sense to me. Like, I get that he's a great guy and a great player and you like having him in the organization, but he's a great vehicle with which to give your team more opportunities to find the foundational superstar, which you don't have yet. There's no young player on this roster below the age of 25 that has real big picture upside other than a spy who you just brought in. And we've never seen play in the pros and in college was a mess, right? So, like, I guess this year there's some interesting stuff, right? Like we'll see if the Jazz trade Lori to contender. We'll see if Ace Bailey pops at all. But I'm kind of unfamiliar with where Utah is trying to get at this point in time. All right, guys, that's all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. We'll be back on Monday, going back out east, I believe, the Central division, if I remember correctly. So I will see you guys then. Foreign.
- [45:22]
Colin Coward
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- [46:26]
Colin Coward
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- [47:07]
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Jason LT
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- [47:39]
Nicole Garcia
This is an iHeart podcast.