← The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - Reaction to Bleacher Report top 100 NBA players: MJ vs. LeBron, Kobe top 10 snub, Steph underrated
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- [00:00]
Sarah Spain
This is an iHeart podcast join iHeartradio and Sarah Spain in celebrating the one year anniversary of iHeart Women's Sports with powerful interviews and insider analysis. Our shows have connected fans with the heart of women's Sports. In just one year, the network has launched 15 shows and built a community united by passion podcasts that amplify the voices of women in sports. Thank you for supporting iHeart women's sports and our founding sponsors E L F Beauty, Capital One and Novartis. Just open the free iHeart app and search iHeart Women's Sports to listen now. My Uncle Chris was a real character, a garbage truck driver from South Carolina who is now buried in Panama City alongside the founding families of Panama. He also happens to be responsible for the craziest night of my life. Wild stories about adventure, romance, crime, history and war intertwine as I share the tall tales and hard truths that have helped me understand Uncle Chris. Listen now to Uncle Chris on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant for my heart. Podcasts and Rococo Punch this is the Turning River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to the Turning river road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance. It gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robaix and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club. The new podcast from hello Sunshine and I Heart Podcast where we dive into the stories that shape us on the PA and off each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:20]
Jason LT
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When you bet just five bucks only on DraftKings, the crown is yours. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER in New York, call 877-8-HOPE NY or text HOPENY to 467-369 in Connecticut. Help is available. For problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org Please play responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino and Resort in Kansas. 21 plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void. In Ontario, bonus bets expire seven days after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG Co Audio. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Thursday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great end to your week. I'm coming to you for the first time in what will be my new studio in Denver. I'm very, very excited to be here. I woke up this morning and it was 62 degrees outside. It was kind of a shock coming from Arizona, but obviously it's going to be a little bit of a work in progress behind me. But it's the summertime so we can live with it. For right now, I'm very, very excited to be here and I'm very, very excited for today's show. We got some really interesting stuff to get into. We're going to start with bleacher reports top 100 list. Couple things that I disagreed with in the top 20. I want to kind of revisit MJ versus LeBron a little bit. I want to talk about Kobe and how like preposterous, preposterously underrated he has become. And then Steph Curry as well, who I think for a guy who's given LeBron a run for his money. I feel like he's pretty low on that list as well, so we're gonna be hitting that for a little bit now. It's a tail end of the show. We got a little bit of expected NBA news yesterday as the Bradley the Bradley Beal buyout finally went through and he is signing with the Los Angeles Clippers. So I want to briefly revisit some of the stuff we talked about with Bradley and what went wrong in Phoenix and why. I think it'll work well in Los Angeles, but I also want to look a little bit deeper at the Clippers in general. We've been doing deep dives kind of periodically throughout the year on some of these Western Conference teams, so today we'll be talking a little bit about the Clippers. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on twitter@_jasonlt so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson's doing great work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us there. And last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments so that we can hit them in our weekly mailbags throughout the remainder of the off season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So let's dig into this bleacher report top 100. I want to focus on the top 20. I'm going to read out the names for you and then we'll go from there. So they had Michael Jordan at 1, LeBron James at 2, Kareem at 3, Magic Johnson at 4, Bill Russell at 5, Shaquille O' Neal at 6, Tim Duncan at 7, Larry Bird at 8, Wilt Chamberlain at 9, Steph Curry at 10, Kobe Bryant Way down at 11, Hakeem Olajuan at 12, Kevin Durant at 13, Oscar Robertson at 14, Jerry west at 15, Kevin Garnett at 16, Nicola Jokic at 17, Dirk Nowitzki at 18, David Robinson at 19 and Dr. J at 20. So before we go any further, these lists are borderline impossible for several reasons. So I'm very forgiving. I'm not going to get too upset about this. There's several reasons. First of all, the position groups. How do you rank a guy like Kareem Abdul Jabbar against Steph Curry. They might as well have been playing different sports with how wildly different their jobs were on both ends of the floor. I've done lists before where I've removed centers entirely, but even that I would argue is flawed because of guys like Kareem Abdul Jabbar and what he did offensively. Nikola Jokic and how, like, if you were ranking point guards, you could argue Nikola Yokic should be pretty high on a list of small point guards, right? So, like, it's just a really difficult thing to consider in a list like this. Secondly, how do you separate individual greatness from the success of a team? Right? Nikola Jokic has never played with an all star. He's never played with an all NBA player, and he's never played with an all defense player. So how do you rank his team accomplishments on equal footing with a guy like Magic Johnson or Larry Bird or Kareem Abdul Jabbar? Guys who played on historically great rosters, right? And then lastly, there are the differences in the eras. The game is so different. There are more teams. There's way more talent. This, this is crazy. When Bill Russell won his first championship, there were eight teams in the NBA. Eight of them. I mean, I mean, come on, how does that even remotely compare to what we have today? Michael Jordan, in his era, seven teams were added in a mass set of expansion. The talent was diluted. That was a big part of how those Bulls teams racked up massive win totals year after year. That doesn't mean that the Bulls were overrated or that MJ was overrated. It just means all of this shit is super subjective. So I totally understand if anyone disagrees. But on that note, let's get into some of these rankings in Bleacher Reports list. So I have LeBron and MJ flipped, but that's really about what you value. If you're asking who had the most dominant career, it's obviously mj, right? For a decade, nobody could fuck with him. He was far and away the best player in the NBA. He won six championships in eight years. That's the definition of unassailable dominance, right? My case for LeBron exists more in a vacuum. He was the best player in the NBA for about nine years, in my opinion, from 2012 to 2020. But the league was much more talented in his era. Just look at the list. Steph Curry and Kevin Durant are both very high on in. In this particular list. And they played alongside LeBron James, right? So there wasn't as large of A gap in terms of like, pure dominance. But I'd argue we'll never see that again. Like, look at Jokic. Nicole Jokic is discernibly better than his peers right now. But that gap isn't even close to how much better Michael Jordan was than Charles Barkley or Clyde Drexler or Hakeem Olajuan. Really good players, but not the same types of players that Nicole Jokic is competing against, that LeBron James competed against. I think some of that is just the influx of NBA talent. It's like a plateauing effect. Right? It's a big part of why I think Kobe's underrated, which we'll get to in a few minutes. The LeBron case is simple. Out of any player in NBA history, if you were starting a franchise from scratch and you had that player for the entirety of his career, which player would give you the best chance to win the most championships over the course of that player's career? And the answer is LeBron James. First of all, he's one of the top five offensive engines in the history of the game. I've talked a lot about this concept over the course of the last couple of years, even at lower levels with guys like James Harden or Tyrese Halliburton. Right. I even talked about at a very low level in discount in the form of d' Angelo Russell, a guy who can run action and make the reads that sets up role players with a player sprinting at them or with an opening rather than against a set defender. LeBron is a player that created advantages so consistently that he basically guaranteed you an elite offense irrespective of surrounding talent. Look at some of the worst rosters that LeBron played with in his prime. The 2018 Cavs top five offense. The 2009 and 2010 Cavs very defensive loaded rosters. Both top five offenses. That was with like Kevin Love and Mo Williams as his second best offensive players for 10 consecutive seasons from 2009 to 2018. The worst LeBron led offense was the 2012 Heat. That ranked sixth. Every single other offense he led in that stretch was top five and it translated to the playoffs extremely well because he had the size and the strength to hold up under the physicality and he was versatile. He could attack from so many different spots on the floor and impact winning on offense in so many different ways. He is one of the greats in terms of generating offense in the NBA. And then in the other end of the floor, LeBron was one of the most versatile defenders in the history of the sport. Whether he was protecting the rim on the back line like he did in the spurs series meeting Thiago Splitter at the rim or in the warriors series where he blocked nine shots over the final three games of that 2016 finals. He he guarded Derrick Rose down the stretch of the 2011 Finals as a perimeter or 2011 Eastern Conference Finals as a perimeter threat. Jamal Murray in the 2020 Western Conference Finals he could be deployed as a perimeter defender. You needed him to rebound. He had 17 playoff games to this point with at least 15 rebounds. He has six playoff games with at least 18 rebounds. He's functionally, functionally a big as a rebounder when you need him to be, or if you just need him to make a superhuman transition play like he did to save the 2016 finals, he's always able to fill whatever defensive role the team needs and to tie it all together. Outside of his decade where he was the best player in the world, there's an entire additional decade and change of him being a top 10 player. He was just in his 22nd season, sixth in MVP voting in second team All NBA. He's a safe bet to make an All NBA team next year in his 23rd year. That as a franchise that gives you an additional decade more of chances where if you built the right roster around him, you could win a championship in those years. So to put it simply, there is no player in the history of the NBA that would give you a better opportunity to win more championships than LeBron James. So yeah, I'd flip them and I'd have LeBron at number one. Kobe. Having him at number 11 is straight up insulting. This opinion is fueled by the inability of people to look beyond the box score. Kobe was inefficient by modern standards. He posted just four seasons in his career with an effective field goal percentage over 50%. He never went over 51%. People see that and they just think he was a shot chucker that didn't have any idea how to play within a team concept. The problem with this point of view is it discounts the fact that every perimeter jump shooter in the league was inefficient. In that era, everyone was. There was no space. Every team was playing with two bigs who couldn't shoot. Many of the teams were playing with three or four guys on the floor at all times that were either inconsistent to bad shooters. The paint was a show. Teams didn't understand the modern spacing principles that we have today. The dead giveaway there is, guess what? The most efficient scoring season of Kobe's career was the year right before he tore his Achilles in 2013. Why? Because it was closer to the modern era when people had a better understanding of how to score efficiently in the NBA. Was Kobe the best version of himself in 2013? Of course not. But it was just the combination of him still having most of his juice before the Achilles tear and the league was starting to figure out how to play. He was playing a lot more spread pick and roll in that year. The other perimeter stars, though, just take a look at them. They're all inefficient relative to today's standards. Alan Iverson never had a single season over 49% effective field goal percentage. Tracy McGrady had just one season. It was 50.5%. Vince Carter's numbers, 50, they're a little more tricky because he had a stretch there at the end where he was a role player. But he had just two seasons in his career where he averaged at least 20 points per game and was over 50% in effective field goal percentage. And he never went over 51%. Grant Hill just two seasons averaging over 20% or 20 points per game and over 50% in effective field goal percentage. So for how inefficient everybody thinks Kobe was, he was actually more efficient than his peers who were doing the same job. I do think that Michael Jordan was better than Kobe. He was a better athlete. He was better at getting separation. He was more versatile on that end of the floor. Right. But MJ also would have been an inefficient shot chucker if we dropped him in the middle of the 2000s. I think his reputation, Kobe's reputation is completely marred by that misunderstanding. So I have him as the third best player of all time, right behind LeBron James and Michael Jordan. Last thing for our list that I want to hit today is Steph Curry. I have Steph at 5 on my list behind LeBron, Michael Jordan, Kobe and Magic. Now, again, I have a really hard time figuring out where to put centers on this list. So I totally understand why people would disagree with that. But let me make the case. I think Steph Curry is the second best offensive engine in the history of the sport behind Nikola Jokic. And as we've talked about, I think that's the most valuable trait that a basketball player can have. His transcendent shooting combined with his ability to do it both on the ball and off the ball. A thing that, like the all the insane dribble combinations people have been able to generate, like, generate a reasonable facsimile of that, I feel like Damian Lillard did a reasonable job of. Of kind of like replicating what Steph did on the ball. Especially in the late 2010s and the early 2020s when he was just off the charts good as a pull up shooter. Right? But it was the off ball piece of it that made Steph another tier above all of those pull up shooting guards in the league. No one's been able to replicate it and it manifests in a bunch of different ways. First of all is the inverted spacing. Steph coming off of on and off ball screens from Draymond consistently forced Biggs to show up at the level. If you want to see what it looked like before teams figured this out, just go watch the 2013 series with the spurs and watch Steph just absolutely torch San Antonio with just high ball screens. Teams had to step up with their bigs or Steph would hit the shot. It was that simple. That removed rim protection from the equation because the rim protector was going so far out to the perimeter. So the warriors started picking teams apart with these four on three advantages. Things that were so confusing for people to understand that even though Steph won the 2015 finals by getting blitzed every single time down the floor, and everyone gave the Finals MVP to Andre Iguodala because it broke their brains, they couldn't understand the advantage creation that he was doing. The second piece of it was just the mistake making that we saw from defenses. The sheer panic that Steph induced in defenders led to constant botching of coverages. Two guys running with Steph when he comes off of an off ball screen, or like guys pointing at the next guy in the chain for them to switch out. And then that miscommunication leading to mistake. The third piece of it was math. Steph's efficiency dwarfs almost every NBA scoring season because of his high volume. Three point shooting. It's not really that complicated. Three is worth more than two. And so he routinely and consistently posted true shooting percentages. In the mid-60s. It fundamentally changed the entire landscape of the NBA. All of his peers at the guard position started heavily emphasizing three point shooting, especially off the dribble. Although somehow none of them, like we mentioned, were able to replicate the off ball elements of it. Damian Lillard's the guy that I look at there. For the most part, all of the pick and roll coverages in the NBA changed. Bigs coming up higher, guards chasing over the top of screens, the the low man position. The idea of a backside forward having to replace rim protection because A big is going up to the level. A big part of that changed during the Steph Curry era. I would say that the largest change in NBA basketball in my lifetime came as a direct result of what Steph accomplished. And to tie it all together. Steph did all of the things that the all time great players did in terms of a, as a competitor, becoming the most supremely conditioned player in the league so that he could outlast his opponents simply by running. Going from a negative defender to a legitimate positive defender. By putting on a bunch of muscle, becoming very good in terms of anticipating what defenses are doing and being in the right position, he became a good defender. The greatest compliment you can pay Steph is just ask people to take another look at that list. Every single other name in that top 20 is at least 6 foot 6. He's the only player in NBA history to have remotely close to the impact of the top players in NBA history at that size. Again, I mentioned this off the top of the show. Steph gave LeBron a run for his money. And I think LeBron is the greatest player to ever touch the basketball. So I think 10 is way too low. All right, let's dig into this Bradley Beal news. So I've been using my Ridge wallet now for about two months and I absolutely love it. I'd been using a leather wallet for a while before that. It was a small one. It just, it didn't hold very many cards. And then when I did try to put extra stuff in there, especially cash, it would like stretch the leather. And then when I would take some cash out or get rid of a hotel key that I was holding, all of a sudden it would like just be too stretched and cards would start slipping out of it and stuff. I have really, really enjoyed using this Ridge wallet over the last couple of months. It's super slim, goes in and out of your pocket super easily. It's got like a nice thick metal housing to it. It's got like a heft to it. Feels really high quality. It goes in and out of your pocket super easily because of the elastic bands that hold it together. It very seamlessly transitions between holding a lot of stuff versus holding not very much stuff. I've had trips where I go on vacation and I'm carrying more cards in there, but then I don't need them when I'm at home and I'll take stuff out of it and it works perfectly well. It's got RFID blocking in there, so you're protected from digital pickpocketers. It's got lots of colors. I love this like, like dark green color that I've got. It's got over 100,000 five star reviews. It's got an airtag attachment that you can get potentially where you can find exactly where it is if you lose your wallet. It's not just about wallets either. They create premium everyday essentials like key cases and suitcases and rings all built with that same sleek, durable design. No matter what you pick, Ridge has free shipping, a 99 day risk free trial and a lifetime warranty on all of their products. For a limited time, our listeners get 10% off ridge by using Code Hoopstonight. Again, that's H O o P S T O N I G H t at checkout. Just head to ridge.com and use code Hoops tonight and you're all set. After your purchase they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that our show sent you welcome to.
- [22:15]
Sarah Spain
Pretty Private with ebony, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebonae and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all. Childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles and more. And found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant. But he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but going.
- [23:22]
Jason LT
Through something like that is a traumatic experience.
- [23:26]
Sarah Spain
But it's also not the end of your life. That was my dad reminding me and so many others who need to hear it that our trauma is not our shame to carry and that we have big, bold and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. And I'm your host and co president of this organization, Dr. Lea Trittate. On my new podcast, the Unwanted Sorority, we wade through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like and sounds like in real time. Each week I sit down with people who've lived through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls mothering as resistance and the tools we use for healing. The Unwanted Sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's lock in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the Unwanted Sorority. New episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila and we're the hosts of the Good Mom's Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much and women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe with guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened and then everybody else want to get pissed off cuz the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade and I called to ask.
- [24:54]
Jason LT
How I was doing.
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Sarah Spain
She was like, oh dad, all they doing was talking with about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money I'm like oh my God, it's go time. You actually sent it. Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect podcast network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you go to find your podcast. Hello, this is Ruthie Rogers, host of Ruthie's Table 4.
- [25:26]
Jason LT
Ali called me the stray dog because I would turn up at my mate's house at meal times.
- [25:32]
Sarah Spain
This week I'm talking to Bono.
- [25:34]
Jason LT
All of my ideas about social justice.
- [25:36]
Sarah Spain
Or rather the lack of it, came.
- [25:37]
Jason LT
From my father too.
- [25:39]
Sarah Spain
People have to have health, housing and.
- [25:41]
Jason LT
Education drilled into me and his values.
- [25:44]
Sarah Spain
Listen to Ruthie's Table 4 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [25:54]
Jason LT
So Bradley Beal is bought out by the Phoenix Suns and he signs with the Los Angeles Clippers for two years and $11 million. I've been critical over the last few few years of Bradley Beal, but most of it had to do with the surrounding circumstances. I think there's a misconception about what went wrong in Phoenix. It's not that Bradley Beal wasn't good enough. It's that he wasn't good enough at what the Suns needed, not just from him, but from the entire roster. Bradley Beal is a very good offensive player. In a sun's jersey, he was a 75th percentile spot player. He shot the ball extremely well. He was solid on the ball. He ran about 502 actions, pick and rolls, ISOs and post ops, including passes, and he generated 501 points, which is a point per possession on on high volume. That's good. He was sloppy in the dirty work and that just was accentuated by the weaknesses in the roster. He wasn't very good on the ball defensively and he was flat out bad off the ball defensively. And on that particular team, when they needed guys that could protect the rim, rebound guard, both on and off the ball, it just kind of showed to a greater extent. This is the redundancy thing, right? Scoring guards are ceiling raisers, but they are not foundations. And when you basically have three of those dudes, their skill sets start to overlap and all of that strong foundation that you need to be a good basketball team is just non existent. The Clippers have a really strong basketball foundation. They have one of the best centers in the league, a guy that establishes a high defensive floor and a rebounding floor in Evita Zubots, right? And they've now anchored that with one, a guy in Brook Lopez, who I think will be one of the best backup centers in basketball this year. They added another power forward option in John Collins. Broken John. Give them some additional matchup resilience for teams like Denver, which we'll talk about in a little bit, and Oklahoma City, I'd argue as well. We'll talk more about that in a minute. I want to dig into that. Just like John's offensive rebounding, the kind of like too big look and how you're specifically supposed to guard a guy like Nicola Jokic. We'll dig into that later on. They have a deep core of perimeter defenders. This is the beauty of the Paul George pivot, right? It looks genius in retrospect, as Paul George just had to have his knee surgically repaired again from a shooting workout, which is like crazy. It looks, you know, again, like they just what. What a. The timing of getting out of the Paul George business and the way they pivoted, like it was a proof of concept for me. If you guys remember last summer, I applauded the move because of my belief, like my basketball beliefs, my beliefs in perimeter defense and overall team speed. If you guys remember, I said before the season that I thought the Clippers would be above the plane and that they'd be a very good regular season team. And they were. It was proof of concept. The concept being star power can come with redundancy and that a good role player who fills a team need can actually be more valuable than a star who doesn't fill a team need. The Clippers can guard the opposing team's best player for 48 minutes with an elite perimeter defender in Chris Dunn and Derrick Jones Jr. Quality perimeter defense with quality rim protection and quality defensive rebounding just represents a very strong foundation to build a basketball team on in the modern NBA. The Clippers actually had a bit of a deficit in ball handling. James Harden is an excellent advantage creator. I think he's one of the more valuable, kind of like offensive floor guys in the league. But Kawhi Leonard missed more than half the season last year. He missed like 45 games and the ball handling falls off a cliff after that. So Bradley's offensive upside will be substantially more valuable to the Clippers than it was to the Suns. And his weaknesses will be less apparent because they have such a strong foundation. He can fill that third ball handler role like he did in Phoenix, which again, I thought he was fine in that role. That wasn't the issue. But the team's stronger foundation will make that offensive value more apparent. And when Kawhi is out of the lineup, he can easily scale up that secondary shot creator role. He absolutely can be the number two behind James Harden in a regular season context to fill that role and allow Kawhi Leonard to ease his way through the season. I'm not the biggest Bradley Beal fan. We just need to adjust our expectations. He's not a $50 million star anymore that the Suns needed to be an impact athlete on the floor. On the margins, he's a Norman Powell replacement. And I certainly think he can be a better player than Norman Powell, even though I think Norman did an admirable job and at 2 years 11 million, that's just a solid upgrade. So I thought it was a nice little pivot from the, from the Clippers this summer. Again, investing in front court depth and upgrading Norman Powell. We don't need, it's, we don't need to overthink this. They're a better basketball team. So let's look at the Clippers at large now for a minute. Let's zoom out. I'm specifically fascinated with how they match up with the top teams in the Western Conference. I still view them as a Second tier team. I don't think they've done enough. Their star power is just too finicky to be up in that list with Denver, Oklahoma City and Houston. But they have a good case to be the top team in that second tier. If you look at that second tier, it's the Clippers, it's the Timberwolves, it's the warriors, it's the Lakers, right? Like Minnesota lost Nikhil Alexander Walker. We have a mailbag that we're going to record later today. Like I'll talk a little bit more about Minnesota. Like that doesn't necessarily mean they got worse, but they certainly didn't get dramatically better, right? Golden State has basically done nothing. We'll see what they end up pulling off if they even get Horford. What's going on with this Jonathan Kaminga stuff? We'll see. The Lakers got a high risk upgrade in Deandre Ayton and that could make them better if Ayton is focused and healthy. But they also lost Dorian Finney Smith for nothing after trading picks for it. Like guys, The Lakers were 17 points per 100 possessions better with Dorian Finney Smith on the floor than when he was off. He was one of their most valuable role players and they were like, nah, we'll, we'll save cap space for Giannis, right? And now they look like the least athletic playoff team in the entire NBA. The Clippers got way deeper in the front court without sacrificing any substantial asset and while actually upgrading their tertiary ball handler and that depth upgrade. The front court depth is specifically valuable in a Western Conference that has Oklahoma City and Denver in it, who I think arguably are the two best teams in the league. Now with Denver, it's about matching size. They can make Zubats's job easier by spelling him with a player in Brook Lopez that has the size and strength to make Nikola Jokic work hard for his buckets. And again, it's not. When you're getting to these guys like Jokic, it's not about stopping him, it's about making things as difficult as possible. Like Oklahoma City did a number on Jokic and he still pulverized him them down the stretch of that series because he's just, he's Nicole Jokic. There's only so much you can do, right? Zubots's work against Jokic was a big part of how they pushed him to seven last year. Adding John Collins to that, adding Brook Lopez to that will help them do an even better job of that. John Collins gives them a legitimate too big look, he shot the ball really well last year. And again, like this is the key. When I say too big look like, well, Jason Brook Lobez can shoot. Why can't you just play him and Zubat? Your foot speed just tanks way too low and it becomes impossible. You'd never be able to play Brook and Zoo together because teams would just run you off the floor in transition. But John Collins is like a big who's athletic enough to run the floor, can shoot the ball well enough, which we're going to talk about in a minute, but is big and strong enough to provide some more physical resistance at that power forward spot. He shot the ball really well last year. He was 42% overall on catch and shoot looks. That's 1.2 points per shot when you wait it for threes. 43% when he was unguarded, 1.25 points per shot. He's knocking down open jump shots. He actually was pretty good off the dribble last year. John Collins on 43 off the dribble jump shots last year made 20. It's almost 50% and that's not a one year sample, guys. He shot 38% on catch and shoot jump shots last year. 42% when he was unguarded. He's been like over the course of the last couple years, he's become a quality jump shooter in this league. It's a very, very like, kind of like subtle trajectory for a player that's been hiding in Utah for the last couple years. Right. That should make him. Because of his foot speed in combination with his jump shooting, he should be able to play alongside either Zubots or Lopez. Again, why does the two big look matter with Jokic? Do you guys remember in the Oklahoma City series how they gave Nicole Jokic the issues that they gave him? It stemmed from the ability to play his right hand with a big strong player like Hartenstein while also having rim protection behind him. Now, because Chet had foot speed and the ability to hit threes, they could run a two big look, but that's actually literally two centers. That's a unique thing. So they won't be able to put together a look as impressive physically as what Oklahoma City did. But if John Collins can take that shoulder to the chest and play Jokic his right hand and funnel him into a brook or funnel him into a Zubots, that's a look that can potentially work. So like it gives a scheme, versatility element to the way that the Clippers can guard Denver. That didn't exist there last year with Oklahoma City. It's about punishing their lack of perimeter size and not allowing them to go small. They have that too big look, right? But they also like to play chat at center and if they go ched at center, you have to punish them on the front line with that interior size and offensive rebounding, right? John Collins is an excellent offensive rebounder and he will be able to punish Oklahoma City when they go small. He's a career three offensive rebounds per 36 minutes, which is excellent. And he had a season in Atlanta obviously earlier in his career where he averaged 4.3 offensive rebounds per 36. He's a beast of an offensive rebounder. So that will give them the ability when OKC goes small to punish that lack of interior size. And then Kawhi Leonard, he is the type of big, strong, powerful perimeter score that can cause problems for an Oklahoma City team that doesn't have a lot of size on the perimeter. Now again, that doesn't mean I think they're going to beat Oklahoma City or beat Denver. They're not in that top tier in the west, but I do think they're the best of that second tier list of teams, at least as currently constructed. We'll see if more moves get made. And they have some specific advantages over Denver and Oklahoma City that give them a real chance to upset in those matchups. Again, like if you're going to upset somebody, you got to have an advantage. You're not going to upset somebody just by shooting the ball super well. You're not going to upset somebody by, you know, benefiting from variance or a whistle or something along those lines. You upset somebody even if they're a better team because there's one specific advantage or maybe a couple of specific advantages that you smartly exploit over and over again in the series and it adds pressure and changes the mental dynamic of the series and suddenly these guys start underachieving and you can pull off something like that, but you got to have an advantage in the pivots that they've made this summer. Give them some of those advantages that they would need in those particular matchups. All right, guys, that's all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We will be back tomorrow with a mailbag. I'm really excited. Lots of interesting stuff to get into. I will see you guys then.
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Sarah Spain
Join iHeartRadio and Sarah Spain in celebrating the one year anniversary of iHeart Women's Sports with powerful interviews and insider analysis. Our shows have connected fans with the heart of women's Sports. In just one year, the network has launched 15 shows and built a community united by Passion podcasts that amplify the voices of women in sports. Thank you for supporting iHeart Women's Sports and our founding sponsors ELF Beauty, Capital One and Novartis. Just open the free iHeart app and search iHeart Women's Sports to listen now. My Uncle Chris was a real character, a garbage truck driver from South Carolina who is now buried in Panama City alongside the founding families of Panama. He also happens to be responsible for the craziest night of my life. Wild stories about adventure, romance, crime, history and war intertwine as I share the tall tales and hard truths that have helped me understand Uncle Chris. Listen now to Uncle Chris on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant for my heart. Podcasts and Rococo Punch this is the Turning River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to the Turning river road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robaix and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from hello Sunshine and I Heart Podcast where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.