← The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - Thunder-Spurs Prediction: TIGHT SERIES, Victor Wembanyama SLIGHT edge vs. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
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Jason (Basketball Analyst)
The Volume. All right. Welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Saturday everybody. Hope all of you guys are having an incredible weekend. Well, we are doing the season series preview for Spurs Thunder today and this is probably the series that I've been most excited for, certainly in my time covering the league as a fan, probably since the 2016 Western Conference Finals or NBA Finals. Just two of the clear best two players in the world going off against each other with two extremely talented teams. Both teams with legitimate weaknesses that they can exploit what I think is really a coin flip that could go either way. I don't think either team has some sort of clear, distinct, obvious advantage in this series. I just think this is going to be incredible. I cannot wait to break it all down with you guys. You guys know the joke before we get started, subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. We are on the pathway to 150,000 subs so it mean a lot to me if you guys would take a second to scroll down and hit that subscribe button if you're already subscribed like this video. Sign up for post notifications. That helps us a lot. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the season series went dramatically towards San Antonio. They won four to one. Now throw one of those games out because the Thunder ended up sitting all of their dudes in the final game of the season. So call it 3. 1. Here's a quick breakdown of the four games we had the in season Tournament Semifinal this was the Thunder's first real look at Victor Wembanyama and they were completely overmatched. This is the game where every time Wemby was off the floor this the Thunder went on big runs and then as soon as we stepped back out there they just immediately dominated and OKC really struggled to get shots at the paint in the half court or at the rim. Excuse me, in the half court. In this game The spurs were plus 21 with Victor Wembanyama on the floor in a two point win. It was actually pretty close late. I I rewatched the most of all of these games, give or take a few pieces here or there. But I rewatched the crunch time stretch of this game and the Thunder actually did a really good job swarming Victor Wenyama. Alex Crusoe had a play where he stripped Victor on a pull up and Victor just somehow got it back and ended up making a shot. But Dort had this crazy help side block on on one of Victor's drives and they were able to kind of keep things close and they had a shot. Alex Caruso on a transition play had a point blank layup that you know at least would have given OKC a lead. Now San Antonio would have had more opportunities but could have potentially swung the outcome. He missed it. They went out the other end. I think one of the spurs guards drew a foul and they were able to pull away from there and keen. It kind of put a pin in that because those transition pushes where wemby's lagging behind the play are really the best chance that Oklahoma City has to score when he's on the floor. But clutch game in season tournament semis. The the spurs pull it out at the end. Second game in San Antonio actually it looks like a blowout on the surface, but it was a lot closer than you think. It was close for about two thirds of the game and they actually took a four point lead in the third quarter. San Antonio from that point forward just absolutely blitzed them through the end of the third quarter into the fourth quarter, including, you know, the cornet groups got really badly outplayed over the large sample in the series. But in the first chunk of the fourth quarter of their second matchup this year, a cornet group had a good shift that helped kind of spark the run. And then San Antonio ended up pulling away and blowing out the Thunder in their second game. The third game was the Christmas Day disaster. This was like, okay, you win the close game, you beat us at your place. That's great. Tonight we're going to show everybody what it is on Christmas national tv. And it was a disaster. Like Wemby was coming off the bench on a minutes restriction. The Thunder started well against the cornet group and took a little lead. And then Wemby checked in and the spurs just beat the brakes off of them the rest of the way. Now this was the game where Alex Crusoe missed all of those wide open threes and on rewatch they were even more open than I remember. These were like dare you to shoot types of threes in their small ball group when the Thunder went with no center on the floor. So put a pin in that. We're going to talk more about that later. Fourth game after Christmas Day, the Spurs kind of fell apart a little BIT. They were 4 and 6 in their next 10 games. And the last game in that 10 game stretch was a game on the road at OKC. And that was where the Thunder got their only win of the season. It was competitive once again until like kind of middle third quarter, it was four point game with about six minutes left. And there was this group. Wemby was off the floor because he banged knees with Shay Gil Alexander in a cornet group two just got ran in the middle of the third quarter, went from four to like a dozen. And then when Wemby came back, they continued the run and they ended up blowing that game open. And they won by like I think 19 or 20 right around in that range. So they get. It did end up Winning convincingly in that fourth matchup. A bunch of statistics from the matchup. The spurs had a plus or the spurs had a plus 5.9 net rating, a 1.15.1 offensive rating. The Thunder had a 109. The spurs won the rebounding battle. They got 31% of their own misses back compared to just 27% for the Thunder. OKC did not turn the spurs over much. They averaged forcing 16.7 turnovers per game in the regular season against the entirety of the league, but just 13.4 against the Spurs. Put a pin in that cause we're going to talk a little bit about some of the things they can do there. The Thunder scored just 14.6 points off of turnovers per game in this matchup. In the regular season that number was 22 against the whole league for the whole season. So a massive drop off in their ability to score and transition off of turnovers. And San Antonio actually dominated the margins. They had 17.2 points off of turnovers per game in the matchup. So they were plus 2.6 in points off of turnovers per game, plus 2.6 in second chance points per game and plus 3 in fast break points per game. A lot of these like transition situations where you're seeing a guy like J Dub go up in traffic and you're like, oh, like he's just not more athletic than these guys, it's not really as much of an advantage and he'd miss a layup or get blocked or someone else would do something along those lines. The spurs can hang with this team athletically and that really, really showed on the margins in shooting. 3 point shooting. The spurs were 36% on 37 attempts per game in the regular season matchups. The Thunder were 33% on 38 attempts per game. So obviously a little advantage towards San Antonio in the shooting variants. But there's two bits of context here. One, the spurs were the better three point percentage team, or excuse me, the Thunder were the better percentage 3 point team overall in the regular season. But the spurs have been red hot for a long time now post All Star break. They've been the third best three point percentage team in the league at 38% and they've been the third best three point Percentage team so far in the postseason. So they've just been shooting the ball really well for a long time. And so even though the Thunder from like October to now have been the better three point shooting team over the last three months, the spurs have been the better three point shooting team. So Something to kind of keep in mind when we talk about shooting variants. The spurs also controlled the battle in the paint. They were plus 5.6 points per possession or points per game in paint points. In the clutch. They played two clutch games totaling five clutch minutes and the spurs kicked their ass. They had a 1:36 offensive rating compared to 108 for the Thunder and they had a plus 28 net rating. Even rebounding battle there. Both teams grabbed almost 45% of their own misses in crunch time. Before we dig into some of the X's and O's, all of our lines are provided by our partner, Hard Rock Bet. I wanted to talk about the betting lines. OkC, -260 is a favorite to win the series. San Antonio is plus 210. On the one hand, I understand why the line looks that way. OKC is the defending champion. They have arguably the best player in the world. They have the experience advantage. I do think that's a great betting opportunity for the Spurs. The spurs are plus 210 as the underdog. Why? Because I view this as a coin flip series. So if I view this as a coin flip series, in one team you're getting 2 to 1 odds and the other team you're getting almost 1 to 3 odds. Like, I just, I like the line better on the San Antonio side. So even if you think OKC is going to win, I like San Antonio at +210 because I think they have a great, great chance to win. And Getting them at 2 to over 2 to 1 odds is a great betting value. As all of you guys know, I play a ton of basketball. I used to play just an obnoxious amount. I used to go up to the University of Arizona Rec center and I'd play pickup for like four consecutive hours. Then when I turned 32, I noticed a difference in my recovery. My ability to play at the same level of intensity day in and day out. I've always wondered about what supplements could benefit me as I try to keep my basketball playing days going for as long as possible. You guys know I have no interest in giving up anytime soon. If that sounds familiar to you, check out Mars Men. It's a potent natural testosterone supplement that optimizes your body's ability to absorb it. It gives you the same benefits of trt, but without the synthetics, needles or dependency. Mars Men. Testosterone only has real natural ingredients that support healthy T levels, stamina and recovery. Something that can give you the benefits of increased testosterone but without the scary long term issues. Plus, it's made in the US it's third party tested. 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Jason (Basketball Analyst)
All right, let's dig into a bunch of different angles that I want to get into. And we're going to start with just a very simple question. How does Oklahoma City solve the Victor Wembanyama problem? They had a 99.6 offensive rating versus Victor Weminyama led groups in the regular season. And it's a very simple problem, right? It's the same problem that everybody has with Victor women. Yama. Holy shit. That dude just shuts down the basket when he's there. And this is a team in OKC that thrives off of dribble penetration. And dribble penetration comes with this added benefit of like, okay, if I get to the basket, even if they send help, I'm going to be able to send these kickouts. And a lot of teams, namely Phoenix and the Los Angeles Lakers, had to address that problem with multiple bodies. So they were sending the kitchen sink at drives. Why? Because they didn't have legitimate rim protection. Right. So the only way that they could keep Shea and A.J. mitchell from just having easy layups at the basket was just by sending lots of bodies. And a lot of times even when their centers did come over to help in just typical, just two on one situations, the drop off pass would be relatively easy. And that vertical spacing window was really easy for them to capitalize on. That's different with Victor Wemanyama. When he's out there, he shuts a lot of that down even when he's sending help. I made this reference in the Timberwolf series, like imagine you have like a string that's 15ft long and you anchor it right underneath the rim and you draw a circle all the way around. That whole area when Victor's there is pretty much shut down. And so it's one of those things where OKC's offense, which is predicated on dribble penetration, they can handle it without having to send as many bodies. Now what that results in is kick outs for threes and a lot of mid range pull up jump shots. But those kickouts for threes are not as open because San Antonio doesn't have to send as many bodies towards the rim in those mid range pull ups are tougher because you're pressing up on them knowing that you have help behind. And this is where I wanted to talk about Shay in the mid range because in the large sample Shay shot really well in the mid range in this matchup. He shot 57% on mid range jump shots against the spurs this year. But on the film I watched a ton of the film this morning. The Steph Castle on the ball reps with Victor Wembanyama behind him. He's not getting good looks. Why? Because Steph is this big physical defender that has a length advantage over Shay and he is allowed to press and be physical knowing that even if he gets beat off the dribble, there's Victor just waiting for him on the other side. It's a luxury for Steph Castle that he really only has to guard one part of Shai's game. I clipped some examples of these. You can find them on my Twitter feed at_jason lt the types of mid range attempts that Shay got against Steph Castle with with Victor Weminyama and the help were not good looks. They were not like, oh these are money for Shay, make or miss. It was like these are even for the best mid range jump shooter in the world. These are really, really tough shots. Now other players J Dub didn't like his mid range attempts in this matchup at all. AJ Mitchell groups actually fared pretty well against the spurs in the regular season matchups, but they missed several of the he missed several of the key matchups. I think he's primarily going to be playing in the Luke Cornett group, so we'll see if that ends up going different in terms of Mark Dagault leaning more on AJ in the primary groups to try to like get more dribble penetration. We'll see how it goes over the course of the series, but with J Dub returning, I expect AJ to play more against the bench groups and one of the things we saw was AJ when he was able to turn the corner and engage the big even if it's Cornet, he's going to be able to make a lot of drop off passes to guys like Hartenstein. I think Hartenstein is going to play a lot in the bench groups as well because of the Victor Weyama problem. So like Hartenstein groups got thrashed when Wemby was on the floor. So I think we're gonna see a lot of Mitchell Hartenstein two man game in the groups when Luke Cornett's on the floor when Wemby's off the floor. So AJ providing a lot of scoring there is key. I would argue in general that's one of the keys of the series like the cornet groups were minus 31 in 107 minutes versus OKC in the regular season. This the, the Thunder have to dominate those stretches of the game when Luke Cornett's on the floor. But in terms of the mid range scoring when Wemby's on the floor, the only guy whose shots I'm really liking there is is Shea. And I think it's worthwhile for him to try to get Steph Castle switched off of him maybe through double drag action. You know, anything that is going to be like Steph can make himself very difficult to screen, as we know, but a lot of times in double drag action they'll do things like throw champagne out in like a hedge or something like that and maybe he can force a switch there. But to be clear, like I'm going to be honest with you guys, some of these champagne contests against Shea when Wemby was behind him were pretty solid. So like this is just a very long and athletic perimeter team in, in San Antonio. They're like. I would argue strictly speaking the physical tale of the tape that the spurs have an advantage here and that's going to make it a tougher battle. But over the total sample, all types of plays, all types of lineups, all types of matchups considered, Shea did shoot 57% on mid range jump shot, so that's something to keep in mind. He shot really well when he was able to find advantage and able to get good separation. Couple other keys, Hartenstein and Gore tot screens. Now again, I don't think we're going to see a lot of Isaiah Hartenstein when Wemby's on the floor. I think he'll start the series, but we'll see. I think we'll see them go away from that eventually. But they did have some success on occasion with those classic Gortad screens where Hartenstein just seals the shit out of Wemby while you know, Shay's driving down the lane in a ball screen. That's something that I think if Hartenstein is able to have some success with that, more success with that, it could allow him to play more which then allows them to have a bigger, more physical lineup to match some of the spurs size. Chet Holmgren has to score the basketball like we talked about. The Hartenstein groups got thrashed so I wouldn't be surprised if they go to a lot of chet at the five when, when Wemby's on the floor. Chet was ten and a half points per game on 39% from the field. And 20% from three in their regular season matchups. That's gotta be substantially better, especially considering he's their best vehicle with which to truly space out Wemby when they're in their core lineups. We are going to see a lot of small ball. We did see that on Christmas Day and that ended up with Victor women Yama on Alex Caruso and Alex Crusoe actually did get a lot of clean looks from three as Shea would drive and do a good job of engaging Wemby at the rim and making great corner kicks. And I'm talking wide open, dare you threes from Crusoe that he just couldn't hit. He did have a nice driving closeout against Wemby where he got to his right hand and finished a layup. So if, if Caruso can make enough threes, I actually think he brings like a three point shooting and slashing element that could force when Minyama to try to guard someone else. And those small ball groups could end up being a key to Oklahoma City finding ways to score against Victor Weminyama when he's on the floor. Especially if they go with like a Dort j dub Caruso 3, 4, 5 kind of look where they are pretty big and pretty strong at those three positions and have some switchability. Obviously defense to transition is going to be key. Every single time Wemby was at the rim and there was a long rebound that went towards the nail and the Thunder were able to secure it and run. They were able to get pretty good looks before Wemby was ever even able to get to the rim. That's going to be a key for them in juicing their offensive numbers. And then Shea experiment like San Antonio experimented with using Victor women Yama to double team Shay, particularly on cleared side ISOs and post ops where they just had Shay Wemby go over there and just completely envelop him with his long arms and there was some success. There was a play where Shea was able to make a nice kick out for a clean look at three. I think for Case and Wallace there was another one where he ended up throwing the ball to Crusoe on a cut and Caruso turned around and turned it over. So like there's a little bit of like some success, some failure against those double teams. I do think we'll see a good amount of traps on Shea over the course of the series. Probably without Wemby though. Don't be surprised if we see a dynamic like what we saw them use against ant double team ant 25ft from the basket with Wemby at the basket. I wonder if we'll see some similar dynamic against Shay the traps with Wemby at the basket. There was quite a bit of nail help on Shay's isos when Wemby was at the basket. Easy kickouts to like Case and Wallace or J Dub on the opposite wing. And J Dub actually did manage to make some of those open catch and shoots against nail help, so that's obviously going to be a key as well. Moving to the spurs on offense, guarding Wemby with a wing. This being J Dub or Alex Caruso, they do okay. They're obviously plays where they're physically overwhelmed. I clipped one and showed it on my Twitter feed. You guys can see where he just had an inside seal on J Dub and went downhill, attacked Chet, got his own offensive rebound and dunked it on everyone's face. He. He'll do one of the things that the spurs will do too, is when the J Dub tries to front the post or Caruso tries to front the post at the high post, the guy at the top of the key will just rifle it to the corner and then Shay or then Wemby will just roll hard and then it'll open up a lob pass right to the front of the rim. They got a couple of those in this matchup, so they're a little too small and so Wemby will win battles there. But they also do a good job physically bumping him off of his base and stripping him from time to time. So they do okay. I think that's like a a look that will have some success, but it does create another problem. It forces Chat to guard one of San Antonio's perimeter guys, and all those guys are shooting it really well right now. Champagne's 45% from three in the playoffs, Castle's 44% from three in the playoffs, and we just saw him torch that coverage with Rudy Gobert in Game 6. Fox is 35%, but you're not going to put him on Fox. And V is struggling, but he's like a dude who I think is due to get hot. He shot 39% on catch and shoot threes in the regular season and 46% when he was unguarded. So that that look comes with a downside of if Chad is glued up to a shooter off the ball, he's going to. If Chad is glued up to shoot her off the ball, he's going to leave the rim vacated and Wemby's just going to feast. If he's helping off to try to help Caruso or or Dort or J Dub on those post ups. Then okc is going to give up some clean looks at 3 from some guys that have been hitting and so that can create some other problems moving Chet onto one of their perimeter guys. I wonder if we'll see that look more when the bench is mixed in, like when Keldon Johnson's on the floor for example, and there's someone that they feel more comfortable with. Chet helping off of Today's show is brought to you by presenting sponsor Hard Rock Bet, Florida's Sportsbook. The second round of the NBA Playoffs is here where the lights are brighter, the pressure is higher and every possession can change a series. In a Hard Rock Bet, every night is your shot to score a major bucket with win or go home energy on the hardwood. I love building same game parlays. 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Jason (Basketball Analyst)
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Jason (Basketball Analyst)
swarming of Wemby I saw all sorts of openings for kickouts and offensive rebounds on plays where the Thunder were trying to swarm Wemby out of an undersized matchup around the elbows, you know, obviously the kick out threes that we've seen. I wanted to give a different example though. Like there was a play where Steph Castle. I can't even remember which game cause I watched all these games this morning and so they all kind of run together into one. But there was a game where Steph Steph Castle was in the opposite corner and Wemby's trying to catch at the high post and the entire team is loaded up. So on the weak side, there's a two on one. And so Wemby ends up catching and like just turning and shooting a pretty bad fade away that he misses. But Steph Castle, because he's in the opposite corner and no one's guarding him because OKC is throwing the kitchen sink at Wemby, Steph Castle just ends up cutting on the baseline and getting an easy offensive rebound put back. And that might be like a kind of spacing geometry thing for San Antonio to mess with, which is basically, hey, if Castle's off the ball, let's put him weak side corner so that he can feast on the offensive glass, on anything that San Antonio gets up on the glass, not to mention some of those open threes that he can hit. So that swarming Wemby thing, it'll work. And I think for okc, they have to do it a certain amount to try to force turnovers, but it's going to create other problems for them elsewhere on the floor, upping their ball pressure. I sent a tweet out with an example of this again at_Jason LT where you. Where you guys can see what this kind of looks like, but basically the pickup point for OKC against San Antonio's guards, pretty far off of them. They're basically allowing them to comfortably dribble on the perimeter. Where they're forcing turnovers is more on help on drives, specifically with guys like Steph Castle. Like, you know, he gets down the lane and then the swarm comes and then Steph tries to throw some pass out and he gets deflected and turns it over. But they're allowing the ball handling out on the perimeter to just kind of comfortably operate. Even if it's Kason Wallace, even if it's Alex Crusoe, even if it's Lou Dort that I, I find interesting because they really didn't force many turnovers in this matchup and they lost the points off of turnovers Battle. Now, there's a reason for that good ball handling speed. Guards, if you pressure them, they tend to go right around you. Right? So I think what Mark Dagnault is thinking there is like, we can't afford to give up that kind of dribble penetration early in possessions. But I do wonder if over the course of the series if we'll see a, a switch up there in Mark seeing like, okay, we're going to give up Dribble penetration. But if I pressure, I might be able to speed them up a little bit. If I speed them up a little bit, they might turn the basketball over a little bit. Again, might cause other problems because these are all excellent skip passers. And the spurs have been shooting the shit out of the basketball from three for three months. But I wonder if it's something Mark will experiment with. Increasing their ball pressure just to try to speed them up and try to force more turnovers. I think. I think it's something that we'll see. At various points throughout the series. Castle and Fox in particular both looked extremely comfortable. They both shot well over 50% from the field. Castle had some turnovers, which we just talked about. When he gets swarmed on drives, Dylan Harper's just a better player than he was when these games took place. Both of these teams are just much better. We'll talk about that in a second. Keldon Johnson has physical advantages again. He was going up against a lot of like Julius and Nas, guys that were bigger than him. He's going to be going against guys that are smaller than him again. And that was, you know, we talked about that in the Detroit matchup, like the difference between playing Orlando versus playing Cleveland. I think we're going to see a similar thing with Keldon. And he had a lot of success against the Thunder in the regular season. He averaged 14 points per game on 53% from the field and 46% from three. So don't be surprised if we see Kelden with a lot more success going towards the rim in this matchup. They have had more defense to transition success as well even than OKC has. And that's the thing we have to keep in mind when we talk about that. That could easily flip the other way in. The spurs can win that advantage. It's something to keep in mind. Again, I do think both teams are considerably better than they were on the spurs front. I think both of the spurs young guards are a lot better. The spurs aren't using Harrison Barnes in their core lineups anymore. There's a lot of Harrison Barnes footage in the film I was watching today. They just are going with lineups that have more athleticism and more shooting. Wemby's playing a really special brand of two way basketball. I actually think he's had the best postseason so far in terms of overall two way impact as a team. They're just kind of further along than they were in their development early in the year. They've lost three total games with Victor Weyama on the floor since the beginning of February, but the Thunder are also better. They've only lost one game since the beginning of February with Shay Gil Just Alexander on the floor. AJ Mitchell has blossomed into one of the best young guards in the league. They have a lot more shooting with the addition of Jared McCain as well as Jalen Williams really developing as a stretch five. And I would argue when it comes to any sort of slow down half court environment at the end of the game, Shea is by far the best player on the floor and arguably just the best player in the world. So the Thunder a lot better. The spurs are a lot better. Take all that regular season stuff with a grain of salt. Keys to the series, shooting from key role players. Something simple like that. And that goes to the for every series. But I'd argue in this series something simple like if Alex Crusoe shoots 45% from 3 and Steph Castle shoots 25% I think that determines the winner. If Steph Castle shoots 45% and Alex Crusoe shoots 25% I think that determines the winner. Those two guys are going to get left open a lot and if there's some sort of dramatic differential in how well they shoot that could swing the series turnovers. Specifically Steph Castle and Victor Weminyama as a team they defended, they took care of the basketball pretty well, but Victor and Steph both struggled at times. Those two guys are going to get swarmed. Steph on his drives, Victor on his posts and his drives and his Seals. If those guys have trouble scoring the or taking care of the basketball, that can spark some of those OKC defense to transition sequences, which is where they can score easily. When Wemby's out of the picture in crunch time. Dear and Fox vs. Shay Gil just Alexander right. Like there's a it's not as a static situation. Victor Wyama will be on the floor and what he does defensively makes life harder. But if there's some gigantic chasm between how Deer and Fox does and as a primary handler at the end of games compared to Shea, that skews heavily towards okc. It's one of the biggest reasons why I still think OKC has a great chance to win the series despite some of the advantages that San Antonio has. If they keep games close, I think they have an advantage. Even though the crunch time numbers in the regular season skewed towards San Antonio. I just would bet on Shay in any sort of big playoff game with three minutes left if the game is tied and then last Chad Holmgren scoring again with the primary looks. When he's at the 5 especially the only way he's going to be able to create any space is by successfully scoring the basketball off of Victor women Yama and it's just something that I think could be a big swing for the series. I'm picking San Antonio to win the series in six games. But to be clear, I think this is going to be incredibly close, incredibly competitive and I think OKC has a great shot to win. I think San Antonio is going to steal game one. I think there's going to be a little bit of a shock going from the dramatic increase in talent on both ends of the floor, but especially the victor. When the victor Wenyama problem, I think they'll steal game one. I think OKC will get game two and I think San Antonio will hold home court from there and win games three, four and six. But again, I I put this at like 55:45 in favor of San Antonio and that's how I felt about the Denver Minnesota series. I had Denver 5545 over Minnesota and Minnesota 1. So that's how much I feel like OKC absolutely can win this series as a as a result of that kind of being more or less a coin flip. That's why I view San Antonio as a betting value if you're getting them at 2 to 1 odds for a team that I think is slightly better than a coin flip chance to win. I just really like that opportunity for betters. Again, this is as excited as I've been about a playoff series in a long time. I cannot wait to watch it with you guys. We'll be live on YouTube after the final buzzer of game one on Monday night. Should be legendary. I hope to see you guys there again. As always, I appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. I will see you guys tomorrow night after game seven of Cavs Pistons live on YouTube.
- [36:52]
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