← The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - TIMBERWOLVES-NUGGETS REACTION: Anthony Edwards & Julius Randle SMOKE Nikola Jokic & Jamal Murray
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Greg Rosenthal
What's up everyone? It's Greg Rosenthal and I'm teaming up with the King of Spring, Daniel Jeremiah. He requires me to say that we're going to be bringing you 40s and free agents, the only podcast you'll need this NFL draft season. From DJs mock drafts to my top 101 free agents will have it covered for you, with all new episodes every Thursday keeping you up to date as we head to the NFL Draft. Listen to 40s and free agents starting on March 6th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your.
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Podcast Host
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That's code hoops for new customers to get 150 in bonus bets. When you bet just five bucks only on DraftKings, the crown is yours. Gambling Problem Call 1-800- gambler in New York, call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY to 467-369 in Connecticut. Help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org Please play responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino and Resort in Kansas. 21 plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void. In Ontario, bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. For additional gaming resources, see DKNG Co B Ball. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Wednesday everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week. Got a jam pack show for you tonight. We're hitting both of the ESPN games as the Minnesota Timberwolves continue their dominance over the Denver Nuggets, winning their fifth consecutive game in this matchup, including their second consecutive game in Denver. In this matchup, we're going to talk a little bit about the surging Wolves and the success that they're beginning to have on the offensive end of the floor. I want to talk about Anthony Edwards growth as a processor in the half court, the Julius Randle upside, which, as we've talked about the Wolves throughout this year, has probably gone a little bit under the radar in the sense that there's a lot of downsides with that deal. But there is an upside and I want to talk a little bit about that and talk a little bit about Denver and how they can overcome the issues they're having in this matchup. After that, we're going to move on to the the earlier game in the slate as the Oklahoma City Thunder go on the road in Boston without Jalen Williams and get a huge win against the Boston Celtics. A lot of their young talent had to step up with J. Dove out and they all did. Chet Holmgren goes for 23 and 15. A monster night from him. We're going to break both of those games down from the perspective of both teams. And then at the tail end of the show, like we always do every week for Microsoft, we have our course correction segment. This week we're going to be covering Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors. All right, let's talk some basketball. Actually, before we get started, subscribe to the YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on twitter@_jasonlt so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. We also have brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. We're releasing content throughout the year. Make sure you guys follow us there. And last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments so that we can hit them throughout the rest of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Timberwolves have been playing a little bit of a light schedule, but they had won five games in a row coming into tonight. They had a 1:25 offensive rating over that five game stretch. Anthony Edwards continuing to score at the level that he's been scoring all year long, doing a nice job taking care of the basketball. Julius Randle was doing some really nice playmaking work in that stretch, averaging over 7 minutes, 7 assists per game, getting lots of production out of Nas Reed, getting lots of production out of Jaden McDaniels has really come alive as a jump shooter. They'd been coming alive offensively as they had hung a 125 offensive rating over those previous five games. Denver has been playing bad defense all year and they've been horrific on defense without Aaron Gordon. So tonight had the potential to get ugly. Then you add in the fact that this matchup has historically given the Nuggets a lot of issues. Like I mentioned off the top, the Timberwolves have now beaten the Nuggets five consecutive times, including twice consecutively in Denver. And the reason why is they have the ability to attack one of Denver's biggest advantages and the ability to attack Denver's, I should say they have the ability to mitigate one of Denver's biggest advantages and they have the ability to attack one of Denver's biggest weaknesses. One of Denver's biggest advantages is that they're bigger than most teams. Now obviously it's a little different without Aaron Gordon, but this issue has persisted in this matchup even when Aaron Gordon is healthy. Typically it's like 6, 10 Michael Porter Jr. 6, 9 Aaron Gordon, 7 foot Nicole Jokic big and strong with Gordon and Jokic and they just kind of overwhelmed teams with just a lot of size. Right. And Jokic is also just the primary driving force behind that. Right. But it's obviously going to be exacerbated with Aaron Gordon out. But that problem has consistently been an issue with Minnesota. Minnesota because of Nas Reed, Julius Randall or Carl Anthony Towns last year, Rudy Gobert, who Jokic has fried at times in the past. We saw last year was a game 5, I believe that he had like that unbelievable night where he just was frying Rudy Gobert every time down the floor. But Go Bear makes him work and he's got some length and he can occasionally bother him around the rim and give him some issues. And so they have the ability to match up with Denver's size. And then the second piece of it is this is a team that is weak in rim protection. This is a concept I've talked a ton about this year with Nicole Jokic. It stems from a couple of different issues. Aaron Gordon, when he's out, he's a lot of the backup rim protection behind Jokic. And then all of these guys that can come hard off of screens that have the pull up shooting ability to draw Jokic out into space, but the driving ability to get past him and get to the rim can cause some issues for the Denver Nuggets. And when you add in the growth of Anthony Edwards and some of the skip passes he was unleashing tonight against a Nuggets team that constantly has to load up on ball screens. They can really struggle to guard in this matchup as well. And so that's the issue when your offense is specifically struggling against Minnesota's defense and your defense is specifically struggling against Minnesota's offense. As a matchup, it can lead to extended dominance like we've seen here. This is one of the big reasons why I refer to the playoffs as an entirely different animal to the regular season. We've been talking about this concept a lot over the course of this last week. The reality that like, it doesn't really matter how good your advanced metrics are, doesn't really matter what win pace you're on in the regular season, doesn't matter what you accomplish from the middle of October to the middle of April. What matters is when you end up in a two week stretch against a particular team. How well do you guard that particular team, and how well can that particular team guard you for two weeks? And if you can't solve that problem, it doesn't matter. I talked a lot last year about how I would have picked Denver against Boston. They didn't get a chance to play Boston. I think they would have beat Dallas. They didn't get a chance to play Dallas. Why? Because part of the Western Conference puzzle is you have to beat three teams to get out of that conference. And if you catch a team that's a bad matchup, like Minnesota was for Denver, you can get knocked out early. It's a super fascinating dynamic about the way the game of basketball is more complicated than any scientific ability. We have to capture it. Right. One of the big things that stood out to me tonight was the growth of Anthony Edwards as a processor. And this is. I've been watching a lot over the course of this season, and I think he's been dissuaded from a lot of growth in this area over the years because of the supporting cast. I talk a lot about believing in what you're doing, and I talk about it in a macro sense for guys like Stephen Lebron who have been reinvigorated by trades. But it even works in the smaller and more refined sense when you're talking about passing. If I pass to you in the corner a bunch of times and you miss, and you miss, and you miss and you miss and you make one and then you miss, and then you miss, and then you miss and you make one, then you miss four more, I might get to the point where I no longer believe that that pass is worth it for me. And as Jaden McDaniels has started to make more shots, Ant is started to trust him on that skip pass more and more. I thought it was fascinating when we got into the second half of this game and Denver just comes out guns blazing. They quickly go on a run. They cut it down to, what was it, five or seven at some point a few minutes into the third quarter. And then Anthony Edwards three consecutive times and ball screens, pulls y up to the level. The low man comes over off of Jaden McDaniels in the corner. He skipped it to McDonald, to McDaniels. Three skips it to McDaniels again. Three skips it to Mike Conley, drives a closeout, gets a layup in the lane. Bam. Whatever momentum Denver had coming out of the half was completely gone. And it's like you want Ant to grow as a playmaker. It's stuff like that working as especially for a young player. And again, what do I always talk about with young players? They can struggle sometimes to replicate what is successful and to minimize their mistakes. Right? And like a lot of times that development curve can be influenced by things working and then believing in what they're doing. And I, I think it's been really cool to watch that. He did a lot of damage to. He missed a lot of threes especially early in the game. But I thought his shot making coming on, coming off of those ball screens, even when Jokic was there hitting those contested pull up threes in his face, those are big time shots, big time momentum killing shots. You could even see some of the discouragement in Denver's defense because there's not really anything you can do when ant the athlete that he is comes flying off of a screen and just elevates over the top. It knocks down that shot. It was big time night from Anthony Edwards. He goes for 29 points and six assists in this one. And then Julius Randall, who I thought was brilliant, especially in the early portions of the game, just attacking matchups and getting to that short little fadeaway jump shot that he likes right in the middle of the lane. You know, Julius Randle to me is one of the better like matchup attacking forwards in the league when he's healthy and in rhythm. And this has been the issue with Julius Randle throughout his career is like half the time he's either playing through a nagging injury or coming back from an injury where he's kind of out of rhythm and struggling to kind of get his just get back into a groove. And when you watch Julius Randall on those games, it can be so ugly because when he's out of shape he can cut corners on defense. When he's missing his jump shot, it can look really ugly at times. He is a bully ball player who can start initiating a bunch of contact in the middle of the floor and sometimes those possessions can get really ugly. But again, this is a player who's made the all NBA team. This is a player that when he's healthy, when he's in rhythm is a very gifted matchup attacker in the half court. And like again, I'm going to be 100% honest with you guys. I wish that Minnesota would have just run it back with Carl Anthony Towns. I thought they were a lot closer than they looked last year. Just based on the development trajectory of Anthony Edwards and the fact that he's just going to keep getting demonstrably better year after year after year. And you punted on that and I, I understand there were some other implications involving the cap and flexibility for the team moving forward and again I, I wish they would have run it back. That said, if you guys remember what I said back when the trade was made, I talked about an upside, an upside that existed within this mold involving the shot creation piece of Julius Randall. Carl Anthony Towns has been a better basketball player than Julius Randall this season. Aside from when Julius is at his absolute ceiling, which has been too rare for us to consider it consistent. Cat is an all around better basketball player than Julius Randall and has shown that throughout his career. But there is a specific thing, one specific thing that Julius Randall is much better at in my opinion than Karl Anthony Towns and that's one on one basketball in the mid post which is such a valuable tool. When we get into these slow down playoff environments where things grind to screeching halt and role players struggle to knock down threes and it becomes about what stars are better at creating shots. Julius is not only good at bullying players there, he is able to shoot over the top so he can solve spacing related problems like oh Go Bear's sitting under the basket and they're not guarding him. His man is sitting under the rim so he can't go all the way to the rim. That's fine. He can shoot a little 10 to 12 foot fade away over his left shoulder in the middle of the floor. You send an extra defender. Julius is actually a pretty solid playmaker passing out of the double teams that he gets in those situations. And so there's always been a big picture upside with Minnesota as this big physical, bruising team that can grind teams down in the playoffs. I've been talking a lot about this in the middle portion of the season as Minnesota has started to come on strong and win some high profile matchups. Never underestimate the playoff whistle in the way that these big ass kicking physical teams can be a real problem in that setting. And so if you, you can imagine the ingredients, right, it's that big physical defense that causes a bunch of problems for teams. It's Anthony Edwards growth as a playmaker and as a shot maker. Again this was a guy who was what, 28 points per game or 27 points per game on 60% true shooting in the playoffs last year. Feels pretty good that he's going to be, be able to stay at that level. He's been at that level all three of his playoff runs as a shot maker. Anthony Edwards shot making. And then the third piece of it is Julius Randall as this like surgical half court matchup attacker. The pathway for Minnesota is to make things ugly. Julius plays ugly sometimes, and obviously as he's developing as a playmaker, can play ugly sometimes. But you get the they thrive in that ugliness with their size and strength. Look at the damage they did just with waves of athleticism at the rim in this game. And so again, I would have preferred for them to run it back with Cat just to see, because it's a bummer when a team is in their growth trajectory and you throw a giant curveball like that and who the hell knows what's going to happen as far as the the future with Julius and his contract and whether or not they can maintain the use of that asset or not. But in the short term, there is an upside here, and it's a brutally physical Minnesota Timberwolves defense that can get in your jersey and rush you into making mistakes. Like guys Michael Porter Jr. And Jamal Murray didn't look comfortable at all tonight. Seven for 25 from the field, one for eight from three. This is not the only time we've seen this. Michael Porter Jr completely fell apart in the Timberwolf series last year. Jamal Murray was brutal in the losses in that series, even in game seven when he had 35 or whatever it was that he had. He had those 35 before the run and then for the entirety of the run from the time the nuggets were up 20 or whatever to well into the Timberwolves having the lead, Jamal Murray scored a big fat zero points. And so when these things have gone south for Denver in this matchup, it's usually not Jokic. Jokic has some issues in this matchup surrounding turnovers. He had a couple sloppy ones in the open court tonight. He had seven turnovers in a game earlier this regular season. He had some sloppy turnover games in that playoff series. But overall, like Jokic went out there tonight was like, I'm not losing to these guys. I'm gonna find a way to kick their ass. And he did all night. He was great. He had 34 points. He was getting whatever he wanted. But the rest of the roster seems to just kind of like shrivel up under the physical pressure of what Minnesota brings to the table. And they're not the only team that Minnesota is capable of doing that, too. And so again, when you get past the top tier of contenders, right, like we've talked about that top tier, when you get into the second tier, it's that if things go right kind of contender tier. And in that tier, it's a lot of flawed teams with a lot of issues. Teams like Milwaukee, teams like New York, teams like Minnesota, for instance. All of these teams, it's like they, Minnesota could easily catch matchups where they fall apart, especially against teams that can really protect the rim like we've talked about. Right? But this is that matchup tier and it's all about catching favorable matchups and maybe things can go your way. You can see that pathway for Minnesota centering around defense and the shot creation of Anthony Edwards and Julius Randall. I thought Dante DiVincenzo brought incredible energy from, from the beginning in this game. A lot of extra efforts defensively getting up in the jersey of the guard he's defending. Did a. I had a couple of like really nice deflections around the rim. He brought a verve to the offensive end of the floor, stepped into some big above the break threes that were big momentum shots in this game. I just. Really impressive night from Minnesota Timberwolves on the Nuggets front. Again, this is a mental advantage. This is a domination that extends beyond what you're seeing on the court. Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. In particular, and a lot of the guys on this roster don't look confident in this particular matchup. And by the way, I can relate. I remember seeing this firsthand with the LeBron James, Anthony Davis Lakers against the Nuggets over the course of the last couple of years where it's like, we can hang with you guys, we're right there. But then whether it's a big third quarter run or a big fourth quarter run, it just inevitably slips away and then the team becomes dejected and it just, it like a, like a very tangible confidence dynamic starts to shift towards Denver and it just feels like the exact same game just on repeat every single time. I'd watch that matchup and this is starting to feel the same way. Sloppy turnovers. Denver's offense falls apart. Their role players don't look comfortable. Minnesota's just living at the rim all night long. It's one of those things where in order to overcome that, there's a certain amount of like you almost need to win a game just to prove that you can win that game. And then from there things can loosen up a little bit. But it looks bleak in this particular matchup right now. And again, Aaron Gordon will help. But that's not the only, that's not the only game that we've seen between these two teams. Aaron Gordon's been available and they've still had issues in this matchup. I do think it's worth bringing up. And again, I know Minnesota has been playing really good defense this year, but it continues to be a problem that they're consistently existing in rotation. Like even just like simple pocket passes to Rudy Gobert rumbling down the rim, these skip passes that are always open against their pick and roll coverage. There's a consistent issue with Denver where they're in rotation and when you're in rotation and you're also slow, that's where you're going to have some problems. Jamal Murray slow. Michael Porter Jr. Slow. Nicole Jokic is slow. And so when they end up in rotation and they have to cover all this ground, that roster weakness can rise to the surface. And it has been an extended stretch here where Denver has really, really struggled to get stops. And I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm at least a little worried about that. In the big picture.
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Podcast Host
All right, let's move on to the earlier game tonight. Showdown between between two of our top tier contenders in the NBA between Thunder and the Celtics. You know when Jalen Williams went down with his hipster going into this game against Boston, what were the Thunder going to need in order to actually compete in this game without Jalen Williams, they were going to need all of their supporting players to step up as shot makers. And that's exactly what they did. 6 Non Shea Thunder players got into double figures tonight. Chet Holmgren was brilliant. He had 23 and 15. He had three threes. I really liked just the overall aggression he bringing off the catch. Like when defenders were closing out at him. He wasn't getting hesitant, he was just confidently rising up into that shot. I thought Kayson Wallace was amazing in this game. Never forced anything but he took the opportunities that were in front of him. He's really good at attacking bigs in space and around the rim, like finishing through rim protection. He had a big drive by layup against Al Horford off the right wing on a switch. He just is like a groundbound player that has a unique ability to get angles oversize. It actually reminds me a lot of Drew Holiday watching Case on Wallace play Lou Dort put in 13. One of the things that I've really enjoyed watching with Lou Dort is his closeout attacking ability. And everybody's got their kind of unique trait that you see attacking closeouts. You see so many of those weak side scoring forwards that I talk about rely on 1 dribble pull ups, but they're almost always 1 dribble pull ups in the mid range. Like you see DeAndre Hunter rely on this shot a lot. You see Mikhail Bridges rely on the shot a lot. You see OG and Anobi rely on the shot a lot. You see Rui Hachimura rely on the shot a lot. It's like pump fake rip through 16 footer off the bounce Right. And like one of the things that Lou Dort does is he'll pump fake and he'll sidestep so that he can keep it as a three point shot. It requires a lot of lift. It's tougher on the legs. But Lou's a great athlete. He's got a really strong base. And his like pump fake, like radical sidestep where he covers like 7, 8ft of space before he rises up into that shot. It allows him to be a very dangerous closeout attacker. There was plenty of offensive support. I've talked a lot about my concerns about OKC centering around youth and inconsistency. That's not the same thing as talent. There's plenty of talent on this team, but young players, you know how it goes. Like, it's a different vibe when you get into the postseason. This is as close as you're going to get in the regular season. A major nationally televised game on the road against a defending champion that you know, obviously is looking for some big wins after they've taken some bad losses at home this year. That's as close as you're going to get. But it's not the same as real playoff basketball. And my concerns don't center around whether or not chet can score 20 plus points in a big game, whether or not Lou Dort can make shots. J Dub can be a reliable secondary shot creator. My concern is whether or not they will because we just have seen so many examples in NBA history of young players struggling in that sort of situation. I was talking with this about this with Ethan Strauss yesterday, but like, there's a reason why every NBA superstar seems to suck the first time they get to the NBA Finals. Jason Tatum's first NBA Finals with the Boston Celtics. He was horrible. Jason or Steph Curry's first NBA Finals in 2015 came on strong at the tail end of the series, and it was more of a playmaking type of series from him. But he was brutally bad at the beginning of that series as he was adjusting to that environment. LeBron was terrible in two straight NBA Finals to start his career. It's as you get to higher leverage situations, it just becomes super intense. You're always going against great veteran teams that are comfortable in that sort of situation. And you can see young players start to struggle. But make no mistake, it's mostly the youth and inexperience that concerns me, not the town. Let's just put it very simply. If these guys step into the conference finals and into the NBA Finals and they look this confident they look this comfortable and they make shots like this, they're going to win the whole thing because their defense is better than all these teams. Defense much better than Cleveland, better than Boston's. If they shoot like this, if they score like this, they're going to win the whole thing and again like this. I thought this was a great test for them as far as regular season basketball goes, and they passed it with flying colors. I thought Shea was amazing. He had swarmed in the middle of the floor and had some ugly turnovers, but I thought he was surgical outside of that. In the half court he had 34 points and seven assists. He was the primary scoring force behind the two big second half runs for OKC. In that third quarter run he hits back to back threes to push the lead up to 12. In the fourth quarter run he had like a strip on Tatum and ISO. He had a couple of mid range jump shots that he hit in a row. He got to the foul line a couple of times all during the run as they were growing the lead. I thought he was really good on defense all night as well. He looked like the best player on the floor in this game. I, I think like this three game stretch here. The two Denver games in this game, they were a resoundingly strong, probably a case closing, put the final nail in the Coffin Type of MVP case from Shay Gilders Alexander. He drops 40 in a win on the Nuggets. Even in the game that the Nuggets got back like they had 73 in the first half as a team and in the second half they literally in a really janky defensive construct just doubled Shay the second he crossed half court the rest of the game and they just lost because the, the rest of the guys were just struggling to capitalize on those advantages. And then tonight I thought he was the best player on the floor. In a showdown with the defending champs in Boston. The OKC defense was excellent. Their pressure was great, they were hellacious in their rotations and I thought they were really rushing the Celtics into a lot of bad decisions. We're going to talk about this with Boston in a minute. I thought Boston's overall execution in the second half was terrible. And most of it I got to give credit to Oklahoma City because when you pressure, when you rotate with that sort of hellacious energy, it has a habit of rushing players. And when they rush, they don't get into their process. When they don't get into the process, they don't execute. When they don't execute, they don't get Good shots. And so I just thought it was a nice statement win for Oklahoma City. Another test along the way in their journey. Now, again, like, the playoffs are a different animal. I was talking about this earlier with Denver as it pertains to their matchup with Minnesota. But you got to just do what you can to check the boxes along the way and that challenge will come and they're going to have their opportunity to either prove me wrong or to, or to learn a lesson at least about how important that shift to playoff basketball is. Boston had some good stretches, I thought, in the second portion of the first quarter after OKC took their early lead. They went up what, like 10, 0 or whatever. There was that timeout, they come out, they started to get the defense in rotation and the ball was popping around. They got great shots. They actually generated 17 catch and shoot jumpers in that first quarter. That's always like the strong indicator for me of where, where Boston is in their offense is how many catch and shoot jumpers they actually generate. Cause that to me is the strength of their offense. When they're actually getting the wide open catch and shoots, that to me is a better look for them than Tatum and Brown existing in ISO. If Tatum and Brown are existing in ISO, that's a strong indicator that the defense doesn't feel obligated to send a second defender over. And when they're pressuring the defense enough and they're getting higher quality shots, that's when the secondary defender comes over. That's when they can get the defense in rotation and start to pop the ball around. Even in the second half, there were some really good sequences and they got some great shots where you just see the ball popping around. You can, you can like see the play develop. I was talking about this in a mailbag that I recorded earlier today that's going to be coming out tomorrow. As it pertains to like the difference between playing with play finishing versus playing with real dribble shoot pass talent, real dribble shoot pass talent off the ball. When you've got four or five guys that can all knock down a catch and shoot three at a high rate, read the floor driving closeouts, and then finish plays either at the rim or in catch and shoot situations, you start to get these really pretty driving kick sequences. And even in this game in the second half, Boston had several like, beautiful driving kick sequences, but I thought they took way too many rushed, contested, off the dribble, off the move shots when there were better opportunities available. There were a bunch of them in that second half, Jalen Brown a really tough drop coverage pull up three over Isaiah Hartenstein. Derek White and Drew Holiday both took smothered corner threes. And like Derek White also made another smothered corner three that tied the game at 88. And it's like sometimes those shot go in, go in and like, your talent can be your worst enemy sometimes. I run into this issue when I play, when I play pickup, where it's like I'm six six and I can get to a pull up three whenever I want. So it's like if I get lazy, I can just jack up, pull up threes. That doesn't mean it's the best shot that I can get. And that like that for Boston. They have all these dudes who are like really gifted offensive players. And you have two options from there. You can either be less than the sum of your parts or more than the sum of your parts. And that's all going to come down to process. This is something I've hammered on relentlessly with Boston over the last few years. And the only reason I'm really bringing it up tonight is because specifically with this matchup, specifically with Oklahoma City, if they're going to thrive against these guys, they're going to have to be more deliberate. One thing we can agree, the margin for error isn't the same that it was last year. There are better teams that they're going to be playing against in both conferences. That Thunder team is way better than last year's Thunder team. I think that lakers team with LeBron and Luca is probably better than any of the other Western Conference teams that we've seen over the last couple of years. I think that that Cavs team is better than anybody Boston has faced in in last year's playoff field. Right. You still have the wild card of which one of the Knicks or the Bucks are going to come to the surface. It's a deeper field. And there's another kind of like, trend that's been going on all season that I've had my eye on that's a little concerning. Jalen Brown and Drew Holiday were 1 for 12 from 3 tonight. They're shooting 32% and 34% from 3, respectively. There is an outcome on the table here where Drew and Jalen just don't hit, catch and shoot threes in the postseason. That could also further shrink their margin for error. And by the way, before you tell me they're going to be fine when they get in that situation, I said all season last year, Jokic isn't shooting the ball as well. Jokic isn't shooting the ball as well. This is an issue. Jokic isn't shooting the ball as well. What if he gets in the postseason, he doesn't make shots. He shot like 45% from three in the championship run. What if he doesn't shoot the ball as well and he got into the postseason and he didn't shoot the ball as well and he went what, like 2 for 8 or 2 for 10 from 3 in Game 7 against Minnesota and it became a problem. That was part of why they lost the series. So like there's a large trend here, which is Drew and Jalen are not shooting the ball well. And all that means the only reason I'm bringing that up is their margin for Erish is smaller. They have to be exceptionally deliberate with their offensive process. By the way, I thought Tatum was mostly great in this game. I say Shay was the best player on the floor one by much. Tatum was right there with him. I thought he was the one guy who didn't look like he was getting overly rushed by OKC's pressure. I even liked the work he did at the end of the game with those like inverted or regular ball screens where he was getting switches and getting seals and doing some work there at the top of the key. I thought that he had several big scoring bursts at key portions of the game to keep Boston close. They ended up winning his minutes by four. Tatum was mostly great, but again outside of that, especially in those Jalen Brown led groups and even in stretches with Tatum on the floor, there was just too much of that rushed forced shot selection. There was one in the fourth quarter baseline out of bounds. Seven seconds on the shot clock. They run a double screen action for Derek White coming off of the right block. Seven seconds on the shot clock. He sprinted into a Impossible Movement 3 and airballed it. And it's like I I perfectly fine with that shot. If there's three seconds on the shot clock or two seconds on the shot clock, there's seven seconds on the shot clock. You've got time to driving kick once to try to make something happen. But again, it's good to great. If you're in the pursuit of good shots, you're going to have a lot of streaky nights where sometimes they go in and sometimes they know they don't. If you're in the pursuit of great shots, that's where you can have consistent nights where you shoot the ball well. I'll even go a step further if you want Jrue Holiday and Jaylen Brown to get their rhythm back and to start shooting threes better. You need to generate for them better quality threes and the only way you're going to do that is through a team wide pursuit of turning good shots into great shots. Again, I think they can beat this team. I would pick them to beat this team if they were to face in a series. They just can't be as sloppy as they were tonight. They were right there. They went shot for shot with them in that fourth quarter. They tied it multiple times and then they took a bunch of bad shots and got picked apart by Shea and it was over. I also thought like a lot of like the defensive basic principles surrounding switching was more sloppy for Boston than it was for okc. OKC was sharp with their switches, they were staying attached, they were rotating well. The opportunities for driving kick situations were closing up quickly. Boston, a lot of like basic ghost screens with like guard, guard, Drew Holiday, Derek White. Why is Isaiah Joe slipping out of it wide open? That's Derek White, Drew Holiday, switch that screen. Chet slipping out of ball screens at the top of the key. Like Chad is too big of a target for you to let him slip down the lane completely unimpeded. That needs to be a switch. There are like basic things there that they can clean up. I'm just saying that against the Thunder, they're not going to be able to operate with that same kind of loose execution that they were in some of the moments in their previous playoff run.
- [38:32]
Microsoft Representative
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- [39:32]
AT&T Representative
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- [40:22]
Podcast Host
Foreign get out of here tonight. Welcome to Course Correction, brought to you by Microsoft. Just like star players and teams navigating performance hurdles, business decision makers today are under immense pressure to get things right. They must rise. They must rise to the occasion. Turning challenges into opportunities. Microsoft empowers these visionaries with AI solutions, simplified cloud and data management, and trustworthy, responsible AI. When you're in the NBA, you have your own hurdles to face. In this segment, we explore the challenges faced by teams or star players and how they can turn things around. Whatever challenge you're facing, Microsoft empowers you with the expertise to say bring it on. This week we're discussing Steph Curry and the resurgence of the Golden State Warriors. Steph played on some really talented teams in the heart of his prime with the Golden State warriors, but it's been brutal over the last five years. In the 2022 title run, the warriors had a championship level roster, but there wasn't much margin for error. Those of you guys who listened to the show at the time will remember none of their young players were in the rotation. Even I was advocating for Joe Lakob and Bob Myers to cash them in to trade them to create more margin for error in that particular playoff run. In the short term, Joe Lacombe and Bob Myers were proven right because that team was good enough to win the championship. But the story in the long run is more complicated. It's become precarious because none of that young talent ended up being a foundational, cornerstone type of talent. James Wiseman was a complete bust. Jonathan Kaminga proved to be super raw. And guess what? Now Jonathan Kaminga's do a massive payday. And as soon as you start talking about Jonathan Kaminga as a 30 plus million dollar player, it becomes a more complicated discussion for any basketball team. And I like Moses Moody. I think he's a useful young player, but he's a role player. And then things got compounded as Andrew Wiggins failed to ever get back to the level he was at in 2022. So the result was a limited warriors roster that didn't really accomplish much over the next two and a half years. It honestly got pretty sad as you looked around the rest of the league at the other sets of stars. I used to, earlier in the year, I'd do this in the show. I would just list out the shot creators on every other team in the west. And it was crazy. Like, you know, okc, it's Shea and J Dub and Chat. If you go to Denver, it's Jokic and Murray, it's John Morant and Jaren Jackson, it's LeBron James and Anthony Davis, it's Anthony Edwards and Julius Randall, it's Kevin Durant and Devin Booker, it's De'Aaron Fox and DeMar DeRozan, it's Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic. Even James Harden had Norm Powell, who was great while Kawhi was out. Fred Van Vliet with the Houston Rockets had Jalen Green and Alper in Shangoon, and Steph Curry had Andrew Wiggins and Buddy healed. And like, look, I. Andrew Wiggins got to a really high level in the 2022 season. I thought he was, you know, he's never been back at that level, but I thought he was really, really good in that. In that playoff run. But, like, that's a lot to ask Steph Curry to overcome. And like, to make matters even worse, the roster limitations made them look bad. As they looked bad, everyone decided they were bad. As everyone decided they were bad, a lot of people just decided a trade wasn't worth it. So they passed on Og Anunoby and they passed on Pascal Siaka. And, I mean, they may not have been able to afford Mikhail Bridges with how expensive it was, but they just started passing on guys. Even in the early part of the year when Jimmy Butler and Zach Levine were available. I had been hearing that the warriors were not interested in those two, that they were holding out for Kevin Durant or LeBron James in a trade. They didn't want to have a flawed star. Why? Because they thought they were bad. All because of a roster imbalance. And part of the issue at that point is they had waited so long that their young players had lost some value relative to what it was in 2022. Jonathan Kaminga in 2022. Three years left on a rookie deal. Young raw prospect has a lot of intrigue. Trade for Jonathan Kamingo and you got to pay him. It's a completely different story. It really looked bleak, and you could see it in Steph's body language at times. He's one of the great competitors in this league and he was losing belief that he'd ever get a chance to truly compete for a championship again. There was even a press conference where Steph sounded so dejected and made comments surrounding the trade deadline that were so, like bizarrely defeated sounding that he had to come out for his next press conference and remind everybody that he's a competitor that wants to win a title. But then opportunity knocked. I don't know if it was the LUCA trade that kicked them into gear or something else or just the urgency of the moment, but shortly after the LUCA trade, it was announced that there was a lot of like, intentionality behind Golden State's pursuit of a star to bring next to Steph. They end up pulling the trigger on Jimmy Butler, who had done his part by acting so crazy and playing so poorly that he had tanked his value down to where he became a very achievable target for Golden State without having to give up much more than some salary filler and a pick. One of the main reasons why I was such a big believer in a Jimmy Butler trade was that the warriors were really good in a lot of areas. I talked a lot in the early part of the year about how they had a ton of team speed, which is how they are so excellent defensively. Another great rotation team. They were top 10 defense all year. Steph had shown signs of his superstar upside in some high profile games. As a matter of fact, the warriors all year, even before the trade, were one of the best teams in the league against the best teams in the league. Some signature wins, a win in Boston against the Celtics, two wins against Oklahoma City Thunder. They'd shown some real upside. They also had way more role player talent than they actually needed. They had 15 guys who can play. They just needed someone to take on the responsibilities of a secondary star. And Jimmy Butler did that immediately. He fit the offense both with Steph and without Steph. They got even better defensively and it shortened the rotation. It cut down on the number of options Steve Kerr had. It gave guys more consistent roles. Crystallized roles for guys like Moses Moody and Brandon Pajemski have been great with the starters, but most importantly, it awakened a sleeping giant. Steph had been clearly holding something in reserve as the team was floundering in mediocrity. And the belief that his team could actually reach the mountaintop unlocked his ceiling. Since the Jimmy Butler trade, in 14 games, averaging 30 points per game, 50, 42, 92 splits, 69% true shooting, again, 30 points on 69% true shooting since Jimmy joined the team. His MVP season was 30 points on 67% true shooting. Like it's insane. They're 12 and two in those games. They look like a bona fide championship contender. He was one of the game's greatest players, hiding in plain sight, completely like, written off due to one roster weakness, an imbalance between role player talent and shot creation talent, one that frankly was obvious to everyone in the world watching this team over the last couple of years. But they took care of it and now we're going to get to see what I wanted to see so badly out of a Jimmy Butler trade. And that's Steph Curry playing in meaningful basketball games, which I'm very excited for. That's it for this week's course correction. Remember, Microsoft's AI Solutions empower you to take bold steps to make informed decisions, sparking new ideas to help drive your business forward. With Microsoft as your trusted partner, you can navigate your journey with confidence, finding innovative solutions and reaching new possibilities. Visit Microsoft.com challengers to learn more. All right guys, that's all I have for tonight. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We have our mailbags that's coming out tomorrow and then I'm reacting to the Thursday night slate on Friday morning. That's our schedule for the remainder of the week. I will see you guys then. The volume what's up guys? As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting HOOPS tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.
- [48:45]
Microsoft Representative
AI is redefining what's possible for your business. With more unique challenges to solve and higher stakes than ever, Microsoft helps you stay ahead. Our trustworthy AI tools and guidance can empower leaders like you to drive greater impact. And with Azure's simplified platform management, we're helping businesses go further, faster, unlocking up to 150% improved output. Whatever challenge comes next, let Microsoft help you keep pushing forward. For more details, visit Microsoft.com challengers this.
- [49:15]
T-Mobile Representative
Is Nikki Glazer from the Nikki Glazer Podcast.
- [49:17]
Microsoft Representative
On a more serious note, I'm still.
- [49:19]
T-Mobile Representative
Thinking about that commercial with Tom Brady and Snoop Dogg hating on each other.
- [49:23]
Podcast Host
Because when you listen to the reasons.
- [49:24]
T-Mobile Representative
For hating someone or something, you realize just how stupid they really are. There is too much hate in this country and it's gotta stop. So join us at iHeart in standing up to it. If you see hate, speak up. Call it out and you can learn more by following oupwithhate Geico's motorcycle expertise.
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Podcast Host
Gives me the coverage I need like 247 claims, I'm on cloud nine.
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T-Mobile Representative
Clouds are wholly unable to support the weight of an adult human.
- [49:51]
Podcast Host
What's happening?
- [49:51]
T-Mobile Representative
Furthermore, clouds are not numbered. Even if you procured a jetpack and searched, you'd find no cloud number nine. However, at that altitude, you'd likely befriend a flock of migrating snow geese. Geese who'd encourage you to leave your 24.7geico motorcycle claims insurance behind, as they would take you in and even share their dinner of crickets and clovers with you. GEICO assumes no liability for any indigestion that may occur from a clover cricket dinner. GEICO expertise for your motorcycle what's up, everyone?
- [50:12]
Greg Rosenthal
It's Greg Rosenthal, and I'm teaming up with the King of Spring, Daniel Jeremiah. He requires me to say that we're going to be bringing you 40s and free agents, the only podcast you'll need this NFL draft season. From DJs mock drafts to my top 101 free agents, we'll have it covered for you with all new episodes every Thursday, keeping you up to date as we head to the NFL Draft. Listen to 40s and free agents starting on March 6th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.