← The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - Steph Curry & Warriors DEMOLISH Clippers, Giannis looks like an MVP in Bucks-Knicks | Hoops Tonight
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Jason
This is an iHeart podcast.
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- [01:39]
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- [02:13]
Jason
See paypal.com promoterms Subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com payinfor PayPal Inc. NMLS 910457 Ever go to make nachos.
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- [03:10]
Jason
All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the volume. Happy Wednesday everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week so far. I got a quick show for you guys today. We're going to be hitting the two NBC games from last night as the Golden State warriors dominated the Los Angeles Clippers pretty much from start to finish, aside from a little second quarter run from the Clippers. And then in the tail end of the show, the Milwaukee Bucks begin or continue, I should say, their impressive start to the season with a win versus the New York Knicks. Giannis with an incredible second half, an impressive showing from their guards. Again, lots to get into. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at_jason lt so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feeds wherever you wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight. It's always super helpful if you guys leave a rating and a review on that front as well. Jackson's doing incredible work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us there for more content throughout the season. And last but not least, we'll be recording another mailbag on Friday. Make sure you guys get your questions into the YouTube comments so that we can get to them in our Friday mailbags throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the warriors jumped right on the Clippers to start this game. They went up 27 to 12. Jonathan Kamingo was special in this first run of the game. He was punishing mismatches for layups on drives and in the post. He hits a pull up three in an action with Quinton Post. He hit Steph on a back cut for a layup. Had multiple great defensive sequences. He had a nice help and recover contest on Bogdan Bogdanovich on the left wing where he got into the lane to force a pass but then also got out and got a great contest. He he was battling Zubots on peel switches on the glass. Just a monster during that run. Looking like a cog, a special cog in the Golden State system. Which is something that was rare in the past but appears to be the norm more often than not to start this season as Kaminga has really turned around the narrative that has surrounded him since he first came into this league. I also want to shout out Quinton Post who hit two big threes in that run. He had a pick and pop three in an action with Zubots with Steph and then he had another transition trailer transition trailing three off of Steph. And I want to focus on that action for just a minute, just a minute. Because that pick and pop Steph steady throughout this game was attacking Zubots in pick and roll and like these. That was like the action that Golden State was primarily using to break the Clippers defense. Just anything was Steph running off of like a dribble handoff or a ball screen with the bigger slower footed center in space was just breaking the Clipper defense and then the warriors were quickly moving the ball through that to get great shots. And it's something that I've noticed in the early going against several matchups. Like we saw a similar issue with Jokic guarding the warriors, even like a faster more athletic center like Ayton who was in a drop coverage often was having some issues. And so it's one of the things that I've noticed like these, these bigger slow footed centers especially are utterly hopeless guarding Steph. But most of the traditional drop coverage running teams in the NBA are going to have issues with Steph now that they have more aggregate offensive talent off of him. And like I'll be curious. So like teams like the Nuggets, the Clippers again I'd include the Lakers in here. I'll be curious to see how they look versus Houston. But Houston plays a lot of slow footed bigs and slow footed players in general as well, so I'll be interested to see that matchup. The only teams that really have the speed through all their position groups to keep out of Golden State's blender are Minnesota and Oklahoma City. And as we've seen with Minnesota over the years, they have several guys who struggle with off ball attentiveness. So even if they do better against Steph on the ball, they end up succumbing to Golden State's offense in different ways. Like losing Steph in off ball situations. It's one of the big things that has me kind of eyeing Golden State as more of a dangerous championship threat than I originally thought they were. They match up really well with many of the teams in the west specifically because of Steph Curry's ability to break those traditional drop coverages. And and again, when I say drop coverage, it's not the old fashioned. We're sitting back and letting Steph pull, I mean like high drop coverage. Like he's either beating the big because he happens to be too far back by hitting shots or the big is coming up and then he's easily getting the defense in rotation by starting 4 on threes by hitting the pocket. The point is, is teams that are not switching pick and roll with athletes or teams that don't have really athletic centers like a Gobert or a Chet that are going to consistently get up to the level and be able to rotate out of it quickly, those are the teams that are giving them problems, right? And the main thing that they needed is they just needed an infusion of talent to actually capitalize on this problem that Steph presents to most of the teams in the West. And if Jimmy Butler is going to continue to look this good, Jonathan Kaminga is going to continue to look this good, Moses Moody and Brandon Pajemski are 20 for 43 from 3 point range here in the early going. If all of these things continue to break Golden State's way over the course of the season and if they stay healthy, you can actually see a tactical pathway versus all of these teams against basically everybody but Oklahoma City. The Oklahoma City matchup is fundamentally different. I look at it more as like a challenge for Golden State's team defense to break Oklahoma City's offense. But we're not going to talk about that today. We're going to get some film on that matchup in a little less than two weeks. It was two weeks from last night. They're going to be playing in Oklahoma City in early November. I think it's November 11th and we'll obviously cover that game when it happens and it'll give us a better look at this Golden State offense versus a faster defense. Something that I'm looking at as like kind of the next checkpoint. But it's impossible to not look at what we've seen in the early going here and see how some of these tougher Western Conference teams that play a lot of bigger, slower players just get picked apart by Steph Curry running action on them. And now they have the requisite talent off of Steph to be able to quickly capitalize on those sequences and score the basketball. Clippers go on a second quarter run. So as we mentioned, the warriors jump up 27 to 12. Clippers kind of take control in the second quarter. Combination factors like the Clipper Stars got going. Kawhi finally hit a few shots. He got a little left shoulder hook over Jimmy Butler on a deep post catch. They ran a little cross screen with Brook Lopez. It's kind of a fun possession to watch in terms of, like, the future of the warriors defense over time because, like, Draymond's guarding the corner and Al Horford's guarding Brook, and Brook sets a cross screen for Jimmy, and you can literally see, like, Jimmy and Draymond and Al all just kind of communicating through the switches. And Draymond's guarding the corner and basically bringing that third defender over into the action. Now Kawhi ends up getting a deep post catch and hitting a tough little shot over Jimmy, but it was just kind of fun to watch Jimmy and Draymond and Al just kind of communicate and switch with physicality along that back line. It's a big part of why I'm really bullish on their defense here. Early part early on in the season, but we're going to talk more about that in a minute. But Kawhi gets going, hits a little hook shot, gets a driving and one. He's a pull up three. The role players finally start making shots like this has been an issue with the Clippers and the early going that we'll talk about in a little bit, but Zubots did some damage around the rim on horford. Derrick Jones Jr. Hits a corner three. Those are some sequences that the Clippers weren't paying off early in the game. And then James Harden kind of just had a classic James Harden run to end the quarter, getting to the rim for layups and free throws. He hits a transition pull up three. That was a big shot in that sequence. And then on the other end of the floor, I thought the warriors just got a little stagnant. They took some early clock threes. Will Richard took one with like 21 on the shot clock. Buddy Heel took an early one. Even Stephen took an early one before they really got into their movement. Kaminga missed a couple driving layups, some of the shots that he was making earlier in the game. It just was like a brief stretch where the warriors look like they got out of, out of whack with their offensive process. And suddenly we were going into halftime with the Clippers up 49 to 46. It was kind of a wild turnaround to that point in the game. But the third quarter just was classic. Third quarter warriors, they really got back into their defense to transition sequences. A lot of big defensive plays during that stretch. Steph got a couple of one on one stops again against Harden. One where he smothered him on a drive and forced him to airball a layup. Another one where he picked him clean off top with a little bit of ball pressure. Draymond got a big stop against Kawhi where he got a great contest. Quinn Post did a nice job blitzing James Harden and then rotating to the pass on the wing where he ended up getting a steal and they were just running the other way. Dunk for Jimmy Butler. Nasty feed from Steph to Jonathan Kaminga for a left handed layup in transition. Steph gets a pick six on a Zubotz short roll pass where he sinks down and gets the short roll. He tries to drop it off to Chris Dunn. Steph gets it, goes the other way for a driving layup. Moses Moody digs down on Chris Dunn and gets a steal. Jimmy Butler hits a three on the other end of the floor. Al Horford gets a Horford did a number on Chris Paul. Just switching ball screens in this stretch and like Chris just had no interest in attacking Al. Al was defending him well and so Horford gets a great contest switching on to CB3 and pick and roll pods. Ends up getting a transition drive the other way for a layup. Drives the other way, drives a bunch of defenders. Then Moses Moody hits a trailing three on the left wing. The warriors had five buckets in transition just in the third quarter. They got into the fourth quarter up by 15 and then they closed it out from there with a bunch of contributions from a bunch of guys in the fourth. But I've been pleasantly surprised by Golden State's like when I'm looking at the two units for Golden State, we're like we know what to expect with their defense. The question was what we were going to see from their offense. And I've been pleasantly surprised with their offense. They've been getting some contributions at higher levels than I expected. But in terms of like their championship punch, the thing that they just do better than most teams, the thing that's got me really excited about them is their defense. And I know it's not super impressive statistically, like they're only 11th and defensive rating here in the early going, but that's a little misleading. Like they had one single game against the Blazers on the tail end of a back to back where they gave up 139 points and it wasn't nothing. Like they showed some issues containing the ball in the perimeter against bigger athletes in that game. I'm not going to like completely write that off but in the context of their other performances, it was a little bit of an outlier and they played three of the best offenses in the Western Conference. Defensive rating over a massive sample is going to be a better read of what this defense is capable of. But like in a five game or four game sample size, whatever, I think it's five games. In the five game sample size when you have to play Denver, who I think is the best offense in the league. The Lakers, who have literally been frying everybody until Luka and Austin leave the floor where they've fallen apart because they don't have ball handling. But Luka and Austin led units have just been frying everybody. The Clippers obviously have a ton of talent. These are like really difficult offenses that Golden State has run into and in each one of those games their defense has kind of been the thing that has broken the opponent. Like aside from guarding Luca personally in the Lakers game, they largely held, largely held the Lakers offense in check. They swarmed DeAndre Ayton on his catches in the middle of the floor and forced a bunch of turnovers and missed shots. They chased the Lakers shooters off the three point line and made them feel uncomfortable. There was not any offense coming from anybody but Luca in that game, if you guys remember. And then aside from the beginning of the Denver game, from the late second quarter through to the end of the game, they were awesome against Denver. As a matter of fact, in the second half of that game, including overtime, they had a 104 defensive rating which is awesome versus that elite Denver offense. And then they straight up broke the Clippers like they just destroyed that offense. They annihilated their bench groups. Chris Paul looked like he had no interest in looking to shoot or score against Al Horford and switches. So those teams just didn't have the ball handling to score after Chris kind of was neutralized. And then James Harden and Kawhi, they held him to 38 points on 32 shots and just two assists with four turnovers. And it was a team effort too. Like so many different guys defended well either on ball or an off ball situations. And like, like above and beyond the on ball stuff. I've always thought of the warriors as one of the best closeout teams in the league. And what I mean by that is just like they're really good at shrinking the floor and making things feel congested but then still getting out to shooters and rushing them. But it's on overdrive this season. Like they are so damn scrappy, digging down into help and like constantly Getting deflections and constantly getting strips. They're top 10 enforcing turnovers here early on in the season and, and they're holding opponents below a point per shot on catch and shoot jump shots at just 0.99 points per opponent. Catch and shoot. That ranks eighth in the NBA so far by the way. And I know there are a lot of analytic minded folks who cover the league that just view that as shooting luck, but I've never seen the game that way. I think there are several factors that come into play before we get to pure variance and I think the warriors are excellent in those. Controllables, ball pressure, intensity in their closeouts, overall physicality, breaking rhythm, gearing shots towards the right types of shooters. I think the warriors are a very smart defense that's very good at that. And again I mentioned a specific example on that little Kawhi left shoulder hook earlier, but it's been incredibly fun for me to watch Jimmy Butler, Draymond Green and Al Horford work that backline in concert with each other, with each other, just communicating, switching with physicality, shrinking the floor because Jimmy and Draymond are so good at throwing closeouts. I thought Steph was really good defensively in this Clippers game. Jonathan Kaminga is doing a good job guarding opposing stars every night, just eating up a lot of innings that way. And again, it's not just a 4 in 1 start for the warriors, it's a 4 in 1 start with wins versus the Lakers, the Nuggets and the Clippers, all teams that are either first or second tier contenders in the Western Conference. I'm just super impressed by them and this is the last thing I'll say. I've been really fascinated for a long time about the idea of all time greats and what happens when they see an opportunity to win the title. I've been talking about this all summer with Steph and why I expected him to get up to such a hot start this year. Like just give me a group of guys that's won it before, that knows what it takes and then give them a real opportunity and watch the level of professionalism that they will go about that process with. And like I've just been so impressed by the warriors from the top down with how locked in they look to start the season. And like it started, you know, I, it was, I was intrigued when I heard Steve Kerr talk about how he just like felt really good about this group, especially with the way that he talked about previous iterations of the team. And I was like, if Steve Kerr is looking at the situation too and going like, we got the guys. Like this year we got the guys. Like it just goes to show you again, from the top down, they are locked in organizationally. And this is kind of. There's, it's, it's against the grain in a lot of ways. Cause there's this new age idea we've seen in the NBA. This like it's a marathon, not a sprint idea. And I just think it's incredibly lame. Like this idea though. Oh, we need to ease our way through this thing. Literally nobody has won a championship doing that. The only exceptions have been super talented repeat champions like the KD Steph warriors in 2018, kind of chilled through the season. Or like the 2002 Lakers with Kobe and Shaq. Literally every single other champion, other than those like super talented repeat champions, every single other champion has attacked the season from start to finish. They come into camp super locked in. They approach their regular season with a level of seriousness and intensity. And it's just been super cool to see this from this group in Golden State. To have some older players and older coaches, four dudes who are over 37. It's just a testament to the organizational greatness from the top down. Again, like you don't have. I. I was listening to the Bob Costas intro for the NBC broadcast, which obviously is amazing. And he's talking about how like the warriors have won the most titles in the NBA after the Celtics and Lakers. And it's like you don't get there with just a top tier superstar like Stephen or a top 10 player in NBA history like Steph, like I was talking about over the summer. You don't get there with just an elite coach. You don't get there with just a smart front office. You don't get there with just an all time great defensive player like Draymond Green. You get there with all of those things. You need it all. And there is a top down organizational greatness that just has persisted for the warriors from the early 2010s, now here pushing into the late 2020s. And it's just not an accident that they've had the success that they've had. And it's just been frustrating for me as someone who roots for the Lakers to see them juxtaposed with this. And like, like the Lakers have had half the roster out already to start the season. And like over bumps and bruises, not like, oh, Anthony Edwards strained his hamstring, he's got to be out for a couple of weeks. Like bumps and bruises. Guys are missing time already here in the first week of the season. The Lakers want the regular season to be easy. They want to coast to April and go win the title by just getting their group together right for the before the home stretch. And like, good luck with that. No one's ever managed to pull it off. Winning a championship is an eight, eight month grind there. There's never been shortcuts there and it's just been interesting to see the juxtaposition of those two things. And it's a big part of why I'm so concerned about the Lakers in the long term after LeBron is gone. Because, you know, LeBron was always like a let's play through bumps and bruises, let's try to, you know, build this thing over the course of the season type of guy. And just like I think I, I just really worried about their ability to sustain any success after he's gone. But that's a conversation for another day. Today's show is brought to you by our new presenting sponsor, Hard Rock Bet. 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- [22:31]
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- [23:59]
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- [24:33]
Jason
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Jason
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- [26:25]
Jason
On the Clippers front, I've been super underwhelmed with them to start the season. Now they're going to get better. This is not a doom and gloom thing. It just more kind of falls in line with what I was just talking about in terms of just that level of expectation I have for true champions that that like start to finish excellence. Like they're going to get better as a team. They have not shot jump shots very well and that will normalize. They have a good jump shooting team. So I don't mean by variance by the way, I just mean like they have several guys, including their stars who have come into camp that are not exactly in the best shape of their lives. And those guys will steadily get into shape and as they get into the shape that they need to be in, their legs will be underneath them on their jump shots and then they'll start shooting the ball better. A perfect stat to demonstrate this is their pull up shooting. They're getting just 0.77 points per pull up jumper to start the season. That's about 18 points fewer per 100 jump shots than they were last year in the regular season. And that's largely because of Kawhi and their bench cards. Kawhi hasn't been good on his pull ups. Chris Paul hasn't been good on his pull ups. Bogdan Magdanovich hasn't been good on his pull ups. Chris Paul in particular has been awful. To start the year, the units with Chris Paul on the floor and with Kawhi and James Harden off have been outscored at a rate of 29 points per 100% possessions. Small sample, I know, but just brutal so far. They just need Chris to be better. Their defensive rebounding has been terrible. They're giving up an offensive rebound on 34% of their opponent's misses. They gave up 10 more offensive rebounds last night and again, that's against a team that's considerably smaller than them. They've been turning the ball over a ton. They have 19 turnovers per game. That's the third most in the entire NBA. Big part of that is Zubots and Harden. Those two just by themselves are averaging almost six and a half turnovers per game. They're giving up 22 points per game in transition directly off of those turnovers. And for all the talk about transition defense and training camp, They're a bottom 10 transition defense by efficiency team according to synergy, giving up 1.18 points per transition push. They're also allowing opponents to get out in transition on 18.4% of their possessions, which ranks 20th in the NBA. So they've been a bad transition defense after preaching it all through camp, which is obviously not a good sign. So if you're wondering why the Clippers have gotten crushed twice, it basically comes down to their stars have not been very good, their bench leader and Chris Paul has been legit awful and they're getting smashed on some key margins like the offensive glass as well as turnovers to transition and just their overall transition defense. So something to keep an eye on. One other thought I had on the Clippers after watching that warriors game in that third quarter run, Zubots had several turnovers versus blitzes of the hard and short roll. He had that one where he threw to the left wing and Quinton Post jumped it. And then he one where he tried to drop it off to Chris Dunn and Steph Curry stole it. And this was something that stood out to me in the Nugget series. It's kind of a vulnerability that the Clippers have on offense. Teams can get away with aggressive coverages versus the Clippers. Like they can double Kawhi and they can blitz James Harden with a good amount of effect relative to some other teams in the league because as a team collectively they're always just a step slow at processing those advantages. And so Instead of getting wide open threes and wide open layups, things tend to be a little bit more contested and then a lot of those sequences end up in turnovers. Again. Zubots and Harden are combining for 6.3 turnovers per game here in the early going and even better versions of these Clippers teams have had that issue in the past. And so I say better version not by talent, but better in terms of the quality of play because this Clippers team right now is just not close to firing on all cylinders yet. So they're going to get better. The aggressive coverages thing is more of a big picture issue, but I expect them to shoot the ball better, I expect them to defensive rebound better, I expect them to take care of the ball better. The Clippers will play better basketball at some point this season. All right Knicks Bucks it looked like the Knicks were in complete control at halftime of this one. They had this beautiful stretch of basketball in the mid second quarter bench group led by Tyler Kolik and I've really enjoyed these Tyler Colic led bench groups for the Knicks this year. Like the they have been the groups that have most embodied the ball movement that Mike Brown has been trying to instill in this team. Just Kolek early in the possession just makes a really quick decision out of an action and then they just play, read and react basketball out of it and they tend to get really great shots out of it. And the Knicks ended up going up by 14 in that second quarter stretch. But then the Bucks defense just completely dominated the second half. The Bucks logged in 85 defensive rating in the second half as they held the Knicks to two 20 point quarters and they went on to win by double digits. And there are several guys that I want to shout out here. First of all in the second half bench unit stretch when Jalen Brunson was off the floor and the Knicks started playing through Cat more, I thought Kyle Kuzma defended Karl Anthony Towns incredibly well in that stretch. Just met his physicality, kept him in front, didn't foul, kept his arms up and forced him to shoot over the top. And I want to shout out the whole team here too because I thought they did a good job shrinking the floor on Cat and kind of swiping at the basketball and disrupting his rhythm. I thought Ryan Rollins did an unbelievable job on Jalen Brunson in the fourth quarter. He smothered him on a pull up three where he forced an airball. He stripped him from behind while back pressuring on a drive. Once again I also want to Shout out the whole team here with all the swarming and switching they did on Brunson in that group. Like Giannis had a rep where he got switched on Brunson that was reminiscent. Do you guys remember the preseason rep where Giannis was guarding Shea on the left block and he just kind of like attacked him with ball pressure and Shay just kind of fell over and lost the basketball? Very similar play to that against Jalen Brunson off the left wing late in the game where like he just got up on Brunson and instead of like being passive and offering a contest, he like kind of got up and pressured him. And he's just so damn big and so athletic that Brunson kind of like soiled himself and just fell over and lost the basketball. And then next thing you know, Giannis is going the other way and dunking it. And then to stay on Giannis, I just thought he was unbelievable in the second half of that game. 23 points, six rebounds and six assists with a steal and two blocks and just 17 minutes of action in the second quarter. He's just become so incredibly versatile on offense. All the usual wrecking ball stuff that we know of Giannis always being as a driver, like transition dunks, offensive rebound, put backs. He had this play against Ariel Huckporty on the right wing that looks like MVP Giannis from the old days. Like Ariel's giving him a little bit of space. There's two nicks digging down into the driving lanes on both sides. You look at it and you're just like, how in the world is he going to get a layup here? But he just takes a really hard left handed dribble at area hook porty, and then spins out of it. And when he spins out of it, he just rips through the dig down from Brunson and gets an and one layup. It looked like again, like Giannis from the old MVP days. And the jumper was a bit off last night, but he ended up hitting a big one late in crunch time. He hit like a one legged fade away around the foul line. That was a big shot in the game. Shot a knockout. Nice shot. Soft ball that hit the front rim, enrolled in. And then he just. He's shown some brilliant shot creation as a passer to start the season. Out of every conceivable action. Like he created a wide open three in the right corner out of the short roll where he just caught the ball in the pocket. Quick process, boom. Out to the right corner. He created a three for AJ Green out of a ghost screen, which was their first time connecting on that play this season. That was a big one for them last year. If you guys remember, just AJ Runs over top of the key screens for Giannis, slips out, Giannis pitches it over the top Easy wide open 3 for AJ he did a ton of posting up on the left block in this game. That was a big play type for Milwaukee in this game. And he created a bunch of easy threes out of double teams out of the post. The Bucks have done a really nice job spacing the floor for Giannis off of those post ops. Even had a lob feed to Turner, just kind of a grown up feed. He was on the left block. It was in crunch time late. And the man who was guarding in the corner, I can't remember who it was that was in the corner, it might have been A.J. green, but one of their shooters was in the opposite corner and Miles Turner was in the dunker spot. And when Giannis drew the double team, the guy who was guarding the guy in the corner came in and kind of sunk in and got up underneath Miles and Giannis could have kicked it to the corner and the corner was open, and that would have been a decent look for three. But Miles had such a big size advantage against the guard that he had pinned underneath the basket, that what Giannis was looking at there is like, no, no, no, this is late game. I actually want single possession efficiency over large sample efficiency. And he ended up dumping it into Miles. And Miles drew a foul. And it's like, yeah, if the three goes in, it's worth more points. But on that singular possession, in a late game situation, any points are more valuable. I thought it was just like an example of that, like higher level playmaking. You could see Giannis see the corner read and go, no, you know what, I'm just going to throw it up in the air and let Miles grab this. He's going to get a layup or a foul, and that's exactly what he got. And Giannis has just become a super high level processor and a really gifted passer in this league. And when you combine that with his rim pressure, it's just a problem for defenses. He's averaging A career high 7 assists per game here in the early going. And overall, Giannis has just clearly ramped up his intensity to start the season. He's averaging 36, 14 and 7. That's fucking crazy. All four of those, or all three of those, excuse me, would be career highs for him, albeit in a small sample size. His Most blocks per game since 2022. He had two massive blocks in the second half, a classic drop coverage rep where he was kind of a little too high. And then he recovered and swatted Mikhail Bridges off the glass after he beat AJ Green off the dribble. Ran the floor the other way and got a dunk. Had a big one on an OGN and OG an OBI post up where he came over and help side and blocked it. He's shooting 70% from the field to start the season, 57% from three. I was talking about this on Twitter last night. It's kind of insane because all summer long I dealt with lots of debate surrounding player rankings, right? Like, I put Luke at number two. A lot of people disagreed with me. Lots of people felt like Shay had passed Jokic. I didn't agree, but that was a take I saw a lot. Lots of Bucks fans think Giannis is the best player in the league and no lower than number two, right? And then Jokic to most people is still the best player in the world. And so there's a lot of debate surrounding those four guys. And literally all four of those dudes have been insane to start the year. We just talked about giannis. How about 36, 14 and 7 with defensive player of the year level contributions on the other end of the floor, Shea is averaging 35, 6 and 5 while straight up carrying the offense for his team. While a bunch of their key guys, their key ball handlers, have missed time at various points. J Dub's been out, case on. Wallace has missed a game like they've been down some guys and Shea has just leveraged his offense and they're undefeated. Luka only played two games, but in his two games averaged 46, 12 and 9 on 73% true shooting against the warriors and the Wolves to elite defenses. And he looks completely unguardable in both of the games. And I'd argue Jokic is off to the worst start in that group. And yet he just damn near had a 20, 2010 against Minnesota, and it is averaging 20, 15 and 12 to start the year. And again, all this, those numbers are, are normalized because of Jokic, but those are insane numbers. It's abundantly clear that all four of these dudes want the crown. They all feel as though they're the best players in the world and they're all going for it. And as a result, we're getting some truly special basketball as a result from that group. And I'm, I'm like leaving Wemby out here, which I probably shouldn't. Like, Wemby's averaging 31 and 14 on 68%. True shooting was 6.3 stocks per game. And by the way, Tyrese Maxey and Austin Reaves and Lauri Markkanen, all three of those dudes are averaging 35 or more per game on insane efficiency. It's just, it's an amazing era in NBA history that we're all witnessing. Some really special basketball is being played. And what's crazy is I actually give the early edge to Giannis here in the early going, like Luke is already out with an injury. Although there's some debate as to whether or not that's him or the team that's guiding that. Either. I still, to me it's the, the player ultimately has got to look at the team and go like, hey, I'm, I want to play in these games. Like, put me out on the floor. So I, I, I gotta cut a lot of, from Lakers fans and Luca fans for saying that the other day in the show. But like I just, it's, it's how I feel like I, if, if I'm Luka, I'm looking at the team and saying the team needs me to play, so I'm gonna go out there and play. The other guys just haven't been quite as good. Like Jokic hasn't been quite as good. Shai hasn't been quite as good. Wemby is the one guy that's like playing at a level near that Giannis is at right now. But even then I give the slight edge to Giannis. And the thing that has amazed me the most with Giannis is his ability to establish such a high floor on both ends of the floor for this team. We talked about this a little bit in the show on Monday, but like Giannis, he checks so many boxes. Like he's such, such a gifted rim pressure, such a gifted offensive rebounder, he's averaging like four offensive rebounds a game to start the season. Such a gifted passer that on offense he's like single handedly anchoring a quality offense because all of the roles off of him because he pressures the rim so well, because he creates so many advantages, because he can also be a screen and roll threat, because he's such a good offensive rebounder. He's making it so that all of the other offensive players on his team have these small achievable roles. And the same thing goes on defense, especially anchored by a guy like Miles Turner. You get those two guys down there, all of a sudden the defensive job is just a lot more manageable for the athletes that they have out out on the floor. And because they've replaced Dame with more minutes for guys like Ryan Rollins and Cole Anthony, better athletes because of that, they're more athletic on the perimeter and Giannis is establishing such a high floor on defense that even with a roster that on paper looks extremely limited, all of those limited players are being asked to do this much as opposed to this much, right? They're being asked to do less. And because they're being asked to do less, they're excelling in those roles rather than failing. If Giannis wasn't performing the way that he's performing on each end of the floor, all of a sudden each one of those dudes gets a little bit more responsibility put on their plate, and all of a sudden their limitations would come to the surface. It's just a casual reminder that when you have one of these truly special stars, one of those top four guys, five guys, you just always have a chance to win when they're playing at this special level. And it takes an enormous amount of exertion from him. He hasn't played this hard to start the season in years and I really do hope his body can handle it. And that's the downside of being so limited. On paper, you need Giannis to be absolutely insane, but he has been and it's led to them winning and beating some quality opponents. I've just been really impressed. Some other Bucs notes. I continue to be super impressed by Ryan Rollins and Cole Anthony. Cole didn't shoot the ball well last night, but he continues to just consistently get into the teeth of the defense and spray out to the open man. He had nine more assists last night. This is a crazy stat. Remember, I always evaluate bench players on a per 36 minute basis to capture what their like output would be if their role increase. Obviously it's harder to do it in an increased role, more just what their production looks like on a per minute basis. Right? So Cole Anthony is averaging 12 assists per 36 minutes at just 1.7 turnovers per 36 minutes. How about a 6 to 1 over a 6 to 1 assist to turnover ratio? Just ridiculous. Driving and kicking over and over and over again. And then Ryan Rollins, I talked about him a little bit earlier this week. He's been the guy that I've been most impressed with and that was his best game of the season last night. He's been pressuring the rim like crazy all season, but then he finally started hitting his three last night. Just a monster game from him. 25 points on just 11 shots. He's averaging 15, 4 and 4 on 63% true shooting here in the early going. I think he's got to be the starting point guard. He's just played too well to not be. For the time being he's been their second most reliable shot creator off of Giannis. He's run 53 pick and rolls this year so far and he's generated 60 points on those pick and rolls including passes. That's 1.13 points per possession. There are 19 players in the NBA that have run at least 50 pick and rolls. His 113 offensive rating on those possessions ranks fifth on that list out of 19 players. And it's just because he attacks the rim at such an insane level and he's been hitting his pull up three so like he's three for six on pull up threes and pick and roll and then he's just consistently getting to the paint. He's shooting 75% at the rim to start the year. He has six driving layups just in pick and roll to start this year. And he can make all the kick out reads too. And that's what you need. If you can hit the pull up three against an under or when the guy gets hit on the screen. If you can get all the way to the basket and score from two point range and you can make the kick out reads, you're going to run a successful pick and roll. And that's what Ryan Rollins has done to start the year. My only gripe with him has been that he struggled missing catch and shoot jump shots. But then last night two big ones in the left corner off of Giannis doubles in the second half. That's the one piece that he needed to kind of be contributing both on and off the ball. Now he's doing that as well. And again I mentioned this earlier, but I thought his defense on Jalen Brunson to start to end that game in the fourth quarter was super, super important. Last two guys I want to shout out here before we end the show today are A.J. green and Miles Turner. I thought A.J. was a little bit underutilized by Doc Rivers last year, but Doc has rectified that he's now starting and he's getting 27 minutes per game and he's just playing some really solid three and D. Basketball is shooting 59% from three on six attempts per game. And it's not just spot ups, it's in action too. Like when he slips out of a Giannis screen or when he comes off of a dribble handoff on the move. He's 4 for 5 from 3 so far this year in those types of actions. So it's not just shooting, it's dynamic movement shooting. And with Miles, I'd be thrilled if I was a Bucks fan because he's not making shit right now. He's 5 for 22 from 3, he's 2 for 7 on layups. And yet his ability to anchor the defense as a much more mobile rim protector than Brook Lopez was in concert with Giannis, while also on the other end of the floor. Despite missing shots like consistently making high IQ plays in the middle of the floor, it's made him indispensable to the team already. As a matter of fact, according to Cleaning the glass, they're 21 points better per 100 possessions with miles on the floor versus off to start the season. And he will eventually start making shots too. This Bucks team is really fun to watch. I put them, if you guys remember, in my contender rankings, I put them as the best team in the third tier because of my faith in Giannis and what he can do on both ends of the floor when he's surrounded by shooting and anchored by a mobile rim protector. And I thought I was following my head over my heart or my heart over my head with that when I made that list and I got a lot of flack for it because a lot of teams are like, oh no, it should be Orlando, it should be this other team instead. And. And it's because the Bucks didn't look very good on paper, but Giannis has been so damn good and the roster looks so complimentary and Doc Rivers has played all the right notes so far and they actually look more like a second tier contender to me than a third tier contender. So as much as I thought I might have overrated him to start the season, it looks like I might have even underrated him at this point. Very briefly on the Knicks this new Knicks offense has been awful to start the year and I just want to take take a second to tell everybody, let's relax, let's give them a lot of grace over these first 20 games. They're trying something very new and when you do that, it's going to take some time to find some rhythm. Here's some basic stats to kind of demonstrate what I'm talking about. Last year The Knicks ranked 18th in the NBA and total passes made per game, they are fifth in the NBA. This year in total passes made per game. They're passing the ball 314 times per game, so it's a lot more ball movement and they're pushing the ball in transition. Where they were 23rd in transition frequency last year, they're 16th this year according to Cleaning the Glass. They're also not shooting the three very well at all to start the year and they're turning the ball over a lot, which is typical when you're moving the ball more, especially in a new system. So in the big picture, these are the kinds of things that have the potential to make them a far more dynamic offense than they were last year. Year it's just going to be about patience in this phase of the season. There's a lot of reps where other guys are bringing the ball up the floor. A lot of guys making mistakes. Give them a chance to kind of work through these kinks. It's a very different looking offense than it was last year. 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 will be back tomorrow with a breakdown of the Wednesday night slate. I will see you guys then. Foreign.
- [47:11]
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Jason
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Jason
This is an iHeart podcast.