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The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - Reaction to Luka Doncic extension w/ Lakers, how it impacts LeBron James + Men's Health cover story
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Podcast Host
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Jason
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Podcast Host
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Jason
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Ryan
Still using yesterday's tech Upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultra Light Ultra powerful and built for serious productivity with Intel Core Ultra processors, blazing speed and AI powered performance. It keeps up with your business, not the other way around.
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Jason
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Ryan
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Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. Now through August 26th, it's back to deals time where you can enjoy storewide deals and earn four times points. Look for in store tags to earn on eligible items from Dave's Killer Bread, Pilgrim's Best Foods, Hidden Valley, Progresso and General Mills. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Shop in store or online for easy drive up and go pick up or delivery subject to availability restrictions. Apply. Visit Albertsons or Safeway.com for more details.
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Podcast Host
The Volume.
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Jason
All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. I hope all of you guys are having a great week so far. We want to dig a little bit into the Luka Doncic extension today. It's being widely reported that Luka is about to sign a extension. I want to dig into that, some of the specifics of him kind of taking a bet on the Lakers and why I think he's making that bet. And then after that there was a Men's Health article that released earlier where Luka was shown in pictures looking very, very good. Look, he was in great shape, like he had trimmed a considerable amount of body fat that he had put on a good amount of muscle. A lot of interesting details about the specific ways that he went about fixing or or kind of curating a better body for the NBA season. We're going to talk about that and some of the things that I expect from Luka Doncic this season. 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 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. We're doing a lot of mailbags geared around the player rankings list. If you have anything that you disagree with on the player rankings list, drop those questions in the comments and we'll get to them in our mailbags throughout the remainder of the summer. All right, let's talk some basketball. So again, it's being widely reported that Luka is about to sign a four year, $229 million extension with the Lakers. We also saw the release of a piece in Men's Health magazine about Luka's off season regimen, just how in shape he has become in the early part of the NBA offseason. So we're going to take some time to hit both of those. Let's start with the new deal. This was a remarkable vote of confidence that Luka Doncic has placed in the Los Angeles Lakers. To put it nicely, the Lakers front office and ownership group have failed to demonstrate any sort of coherent basketball philosophy since Jerry Buss passed away. To put it less nicely, they have grossly underachieved in LeBron and Anthony Davis era and that's saying something considering they literally won a championship. But outside of that one championship season, it's been a shit show of self sabotage, a gross undervaluing of role player talent, a mismanaging of assets, both picks and players, and allowed a team that had two clear cut top 10 players to go four of the following five seasons after the championship without a single playoff series victory four of the five seasons after they won the title. The Lakers have not done anything to deserve this type of vote of confidence from Luka Doncic. So the question is, why did Luka choose to lock in with Los Angeles anyway? I think it's a combination of three factors. First of all, Luka seems like many of the European players out there to be fiercely loyal to those who are loyal to him. I'm not sure that he'll ever demand a trade in his career or ever even leave Los Angeles unless they were literally unwilling to keep him. Like if they wanted to trade him or or if they refuse to give him another deal, I think those would be the only scenarios where he would leave Los Angeles. Secondly, the Lakers brand is frankly just so strong that it can overcome a good amount of the weaknesses in the Lakers leadership core. And thirdly, the new ownership group will likely dramatically increase the financial capabilities of the franchise and will hopefully over the coming years get rid of much of that parochial, foolish family style business practice that the Lakers have engaged in and that has plagued the team in previous years. In other words, I think Luca is a fiercely loyal guy who is making a bet that the new Lakers under new ownership will be better than the Lakers of old. And I do think he's making the right bet there. I was just surprised he decided to commit so soon. But the upside for him is obviously he gets financial security and the upside for the Lakers is that they can firmly build a plan based on a long term commitment from Luca. Which brings me to the Men's Health article. There were a lot of interesting elements that I want to get into regarding that article. Nothing says summer like long days, clutch plays, and firing off a few bets on the game. All with DraftKings sportsbooks. As the season heats up, so do the bats, and DraftKings sportsbook has you covered with live betting, home run props, odds boosts and more. Whether you're chasing dingers or jumping in mid game, there's always action to be had. Never bet on baseball before. It's easy. Pick a guy to go yard, hammer some live odds mid game, or just ride your squad and hope for the best. No spreadsheets, just vibes and dingers. My favorite guys to watch are always Aaron Judge and Shohei oh Time. Especially if you're betting on home run props. Here's something special for first timers. 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- [09:38]
Podcast Host
Gatorade Zero the number one proven electrolyte blend made with zero sugar, designed to hydrate better than water so you can lose more sweat and push more limits. Gatorade 0 is it in you?
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Ryan
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- [10:23]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and SAFEWAY now through August 26th, it's back to Deals time where you can enjoy storewide deals and earn four times points. Look for in store tax to earn on eligible items from Dave's Killer Bread, Pilgrims, Best Foods, Hidden Valley, Progreso and General Mills. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Shop in store or online for easy drive up and go. Pickup or delivery subject to availability restrictions apply. Visit Albertsons or Safeway.com for more details.
- [10:55]
Jason
First of all, it just made me very excited. I'm not treading any exclusive ground here. I'm not the only guy who's been saying this, but I've been preaching about Lucas conditioning for years specifically because I knew he was leaving legitimate meat on the bone and who he was as a basketball player. And I just wanted to see him reach his individual ceiling. I wanted to see what it looked like. And I think there's a good chance that in this coming season we see far and away the best version of Luca that we've ever seen. Secondly, some of the specifics that I wanted to get into from the article Getting right in the Kitchen Luca's basically doing intermittent fasting. He doesn't eat after 8:30pm and he doesn't have his first meal the following day until he's finished his morning workout. So he's going like 12 hour chunks every day where he's not eating and then he's massively protein loading in the windows of time when he is eating, he's having over 250 grams of protein per day. According to the article that we all got to read, this area, the kitchen is where the damage is done for every human, let alone professional athletes that are struggling to keep the weight off. It is so easy to pile extra calories in your diet, whether it be from snacking or from drinking alcohol or anything along those lines. Like, I recently was having some issues with my weight. I when I was playing basketball in college I was typically between 220 and 225. And then in my post college time playing I've been able to kind of keep it around 225 to 230. But I had a stretch recently where like I was consistently between 235 and 240. I was too heavy. And like I there was a play in a men's league game a few weeks back where someone threw me a lob on a backdoor cut. A play that I used to dunk every single time, sometimes dunk, reverse, two hands over my head and I like couldn't get it over the rim. And I was like, God damn it. I'm legitimately, like, just playing with a big weight jacket on, right? And I had no one to blame but myself because I had some really bad snacking habits during that phase. I was just like, I would consume an extra, like, 6 or 7,000 calories a week in. Just doing a ton of snacking before bed is just stupid. It was like I was putting myself in a position where it didn't matter how many times I was working out. I was going F45 four or five times a week. I was playing pickup four or five times a week. I was doing shooting workouts. Didn't matter because I was just consuming all these completely unnecessary calories. I moved up to Denver with my wife last week, and as part of the move, we cut out our nighttime snacking, and I dropped all of that weight immediately and came back at, like, when I got back to Tucson the other day, I was like, 229 after being consistently 237, 238 for a long time. The point is, the kitchen is where the damage is done. I've seen people go like, I've seen people with F45 where they're like, oh, I've done F45, and I don't feel like I'm seeing any change in my body. And it's like, well, what are you doing in the kitchen? Like that. That's really where the damage is done when it comes to your ability to maintain your weight. I just thought it. It was just really fascinating for me to read that in that article. And it just makes a ton of sense to me that Luka's journey to better conditioning and better fitness started in the kitchen. And then thirdly, how will Luca look differently as a basketball player this year if the story is true, and he is in the far, in far and away the best shape that he's ever been in in his life? The biggest thing will be his overall durability. The on court stuff will be like a mixed bag. I want to get into that in a minute. There's going to be certain things that I think will look different, certain things that I think will look the same, and a lot of it depends on his strength training, which we'll get into in a minute. But I think by far the biggest thing we'll see with Luca is just him being more durable. I talked about this with Jamal Murray. When you come into the season out of shape and you play your way into shape, you pick up all these, like, Little nagging injuries and bits of inflammation that become a problem down the line even when you do drop the weight. And in each of the last two postseason runs, Luka went in kind of limping with a bulky knee. But a big part of that is he's playing with all of this extra weight, which means extra wear and tear, and that accumulates over the course of the season. I think we're going to see Luka, if he comes into camp in great shape, just simply be able to avoid more of the nagging injuries. There are certain things that are out of his control. If he has an ankle sprain, you know, it doesn't matter how good a shape you're in. An ankle sprain is an ankle sprain, right? Like, if he, you know, has some sort of injury that's related to contact, that's. That sort of thing is out of his control. But I think we're going to see fewer of the soft tissue, kind of like limpy, gimpy type of stuff that we saw with Luke over the last couple of years, just simply because he's in better shape and is better equipped to handle the grind of the NBA season now on court. Like I said, it's going to be a little bit of a mixed bag, in my opinion. I think Luka's immense size was a tool for him sometimes, specifically against thinner defenders. So if he drops too much weight, I could see him struggling more against some of, like, the Jaden McDaniels types of defenders out there, the really lanky defenders. So that. I'm not saying that's going to happen. I'm just saying a big thing that I'll be looking for with him is how much of his weight is he replacing with functional muscle mass. Because if he's only like 10 pounds lighter, but he's in incredibly good physical shape and he's carrying a bunch of extra muscle mass, he'll be bullying people more, not less. But if he comes in super skinny, he'll be quicker, obviously, but then he'll have some issues with certain types of physical defenders. Either way, though, he should be quicker. A quicker Luka Doncic should lead to several immediate positive impacts. The big one I was thinking about was his ability to dance on the perimeter with slower players like centers. Isoing centers and switches is a huge part of the way Luka plays offense. He should be profoundly more effective attacking bigs and switches than what he was like when he was a bigger. Like a bigger tubbier guy. That should make him a better offensive player. He should Be able to turn drives and gaps that he hits into more attempts right at the rim, more dunks, more layups on defense. He should be far more capable of sliding his feet laterally, keeping drivers in front. He's coming off of two consecutive playoff series where that was a massive problem for him. So hopefully he can turn that improved quickness into. Into being a more staunch perimeter defender again. I am going to keep my eye on his strength. I want to see how strong he is when he comes in. I would imagine he'll come in strong, not just smaller. And that. And again, turning useless weight into functional weight serves no purpose other than to make him a much better basketball player. That is. That is the goal of all of this. If he drops weight without replacing it with functional muscle mass, then he's just made himself smaller. Right. That's. That's one of the things that I'm going to be curious to see. The bottom line is this. This whole endeavor could be the difference between Luka being just another superstar in this league and maybe the only guy in the NBA who's capable of giving Nicole Jokic a run for his money. I think he's the only guy who has the ability to do that this season. I don't think Shay Gil just Alexander has that ability. I don't think Giannis Antenna Kumpo has that ability. I think we're a year or two away from Wemby or Anthony Edwards making any real headway on the top tier. Luca is genuinely capable of unseating Jokic. That doesn't mean he will, but he's definitely capable. But in order to get to that point, he has to be in peak physical condition. And it looks as though he's finally taking the necessary steps to get into that direction. I'm very excited about it and we'll definitely be covering Euro Basket later this summer just as an opportunity to see how Luca looks. That's in late August. I'm very excited about that specifically, and I should be in town for that. But. But again, I. When I saw that article this morning, I was like, man, like, Luke is ahead of schedule and he's got months still to get ready for the season. I'm super excited to see what Apex Luca looks like. 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 later in the next couple days with more player rankings. I will see you guys then.
- [19:27]
Podcast Host
Gatorade zero. The number one proven electrolyte blend made with zero sugar designed to hydrate better than water so you can lose more sweat and push more limits. Gatorade 0 is it in you?
- [19:42]
Jason
Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.
- [19:47]
Ryan
Still using yesterday's tech Upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultra Light Ultra powerful and built for serious productivity with Intel Core Ultra processors, blazing speed and AI powered performance that keeps up with your business, not the other way around.
- [20:01]
Jason
Whoa, this thing moves.
- [20:02]
Ryan
Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search@linux lenovo.com Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create and boost productivity all on one device.
- [20:21]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [20:25]
Ryan
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- [20:31]
Ryan Seacrest
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Jason
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Ryan Seacrest
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- [21:21]
Podcast Host
This is an iHeart podcast.