← The Herd with Colin Cowherd
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DraftKings 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 and faster by unlocking up to 150% improved output. Whatever challenges come next, let Microsoft help you keep pushing forward. For more details, visit Microsoft.com challengers this.
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Talkspace Representative
Podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. You know when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself? Talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need. With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner or just need a little extra one on one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a zero dollar copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code space80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com save $80 with code space80@talkspace.com prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies.
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Ed Helms
Jazz flappers, and, of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison. Listen and subscribe to snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:36]
DraftKings Representative
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That's H O O P S. That's code for new customers. Get $200 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, new customers only. Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG Co Audio. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Wednesday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week. Just a quick show for you guys today. We're going to be hitting two games from last night's slate as the Golden State Warriors. Without Steph Curry put on a defensive master class against Giannis Dame in the Milwaukee Bucks. We're gonna be breaking that game down. I want to talk about some specific concepts in modern NBA defense and how it's a little bit more about a team concept than people are willing to give these schemes credit for. We're gonna be talking about that and then a little bit of my concerns surrounding Milwaukee and the big picture tail end of the show. We had a showdown between a red hot Los Angeles Clippers team and the Cleveland Cavaliers and what was a shootout for most of the game until the Clippers were able to regain control with their defense late. Really fascinating game that taught us a bunch about both teams. 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 feed wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight 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 keep getting to them throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the warriors dropped a game a couple nights ago against the Nuggets at home without Jamal Murray and without Nicole Jokic playing for the Nuggets. And to be clear, my thoughts coming out of that game were this is March in the NBA. You're going to see this quite a bit in this time of year because it's like a funky phase where half the league already knows exactly what they are and are in some variation of cruise control where you don't know what you're getting any given night because they're either saving legs for the playoffs or they're just not feeling that level of intensity. And even for the teams that made big deals at the trade deadline, the newness is starting to fade. It's been over a month and this is just kind of like this a lull that you're going to see and you're going to see some weird results. Denver in particular has been a total shit show. Like they get smashed by the Thunder, but then they beat the Thunder, then they get smashed by the Wolves, then they nearly lose to the Lakers, missing four starters. Then they do actually lose to the Washington Wizards at home just to go into Golden State without Murray and Jokic and beat the warriors, who were red hot. It doesn't make any sense. That team is just bizarre. You're going to see a lot of general or a lot of weird results in general this time of year. Like the Pacers without four starters just went into Minnesota and beat the Wolves at full strength. The Wizards also went into Detroit and beat a Pistons team at full strength a few days before their win in Denver. Although it's worth mentioning the the Wizards have some real Stuff to start getting excited about with their young talent flashing some real two way potential. Guys like Alexar really shooting the ball well from three, defending really well. Balakula, Bali, Keyshawn, George, Bub Carrington. They've got a bunch of guys that are popping for them. But the point is, is that it's March and so there's a certain amount of weird result that you're going to see in there. And Steve Kerr informed us that Steph really just needs a night off and that he's been dealing with some back soreness. And so the warriors needed to beat the Bucks last night without Steph Curry. And so conventional wisdom would tell you, you go into that game thinking you're going to win with defense, right? Take Steph out of the equation, you're going to put a probably a better defender than Steph into that rotation spot. Obviously you lose the world on the offensive end of the, the floor, but if you just defend extremely well, you give yourself a chance. And that's exactly what the warriors did. They held the bucks to just 92 points. They had two separate 17 point quarters that they held them to. They responded to two separate Bucks runs with defensive runs. There was a late third quarter run where it was really the only phase of the game where the Milwaukee offense was in like, like really, really cooking. Dame had the pick and pop with Brook Lopez going and Brook was hitting threes. They had some two man game with Damon Giannis where they were passing well out of it. Giannis was drawing double teams in the post and passing well out of it. He made a nice pass to Brook Lopez who sealed the low man and got an easy layup. They were skipping the ball to Kyle Kuzma who hit three after three after three. It was just the one phase in the game where Milwaukee's offense just looked like it was getting easy stuff. And so they go on this run and they go up 76 to 70. And then promptly the warriors put the clamps on them and hold them scoreless for three straight minutes and they regain control. And then something similar happened in the fourth quarter. The Bucks go on another run. This time Giannis is on the bench. Dame is doing a lot of of cooking in ball screens. They cut the lead down to three, but the warriors hold them completely scoreless over the final four minutes of the game as they pull away and win by 11. And so it was their defense that was able to completely strangle the Bucks at these stretches that allowed them, in the limited offensive production they were getting under the circumstances, to have enough to win that game. I want to start by digging into the concept of being in two places at once on defense. This is really the superpower that Draymond Green has used to become one of the best defenders that the league has seen over the last decade. Right? We think of defense too reductively sometimes. A lot of times we'll think of it like, can I guard my man and can he guard his man? Do we have five guys that are all like elite defenders that can defend on an island and keep defenses out of rotation and keep their defense out of rotation and so on and so forth? And there's a certain amount of that where you do need guys that can hold up one on one. Draymond got a huge one on one stop against Giannis late in the game where he forced him into kind of a drifting, floating hook shot that he missed off the rim. But most of the best defenses that you'll see in the history of the league are centered around a concept that involves actually being aggressive on the ball. Meaning like putting two defenders on the ball or over helping putting guys into situation to make stars play in a crowd. But then those openings disappearing really quickly through excellent rotations and setting up the floor in a way where you have a plan for whatever it is that you're dealing with from the opposing star. And like, again, like this is, think about Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City is the best defense in the league. They're not just out there let letting all their guys play one on one on defense. That defense is predicated on aggressive coverages, leaving openings that quickly disappear as you rotate out of it with your speed. I thought the warriors executed this concept to perfection in this game. I thought it all started with Draymond, who did an incredible job on Giannis all game, but especially in ball screens where he was consistently able to get up to the level to defend the ball. But to get back in time to handle Giannis on the roll, we saw a play early in the game where he got a block on Giannis where he was like kind of trailing the play a little bit, and he jumped and squared up in midair to get a piece of the ball on the way down to force a miss. He had a huge one late in the game when the ball screens were getting pushed a little bit further out towards half court. Really good ball pressure from Gary Payton there. They were pushing the ball screens out further to half court, and those rotations were more in like the short roll area. And Draymond Green once again showing up to the level. He lets Giannis get past him, but he sprints back. And by the time Giannis actually caught it, Draymond had him squared up again. And then he was able to play one on one defense and force Draymond into a tough fade away. Quinton Post, who had some issues defensively in this game, had a big one late where he showed on a ball screen. Brook Lopez slipped out of it. He was slipping towards, like, the top of the key area, and Post just sprinted back. It got back in front of Brook, kept him out of rotation, forced him into a tough fadeaway jump shot that he missed. So again, that concept, the ability to be on the ball to force a star ball handler to get rid of it, but then also the ability to recover in rotation to where the opening is gone. That is the concept that makes an elite defense reach that level, is their ability to make you constantly feel like you're playing in a crowd while never actually conceding the openings that lead to the wide open shots that'll cook you in this sort of situation. And then in those one on ones with Giannis, Draymond is one of the few defenders in the entire NBA that has the strength and the quickness to force Giannis into actually taking over the top shots. We talked about this concept in the Thunder game, if you remember, with Isaiah Hartenstein. With Giannis, there's a. A specific amount of, like, you need to have the strength so that when Giannis sees those small openings, he can't just blow through your shoulder. But you also have to have the mobility to get to a spot so that Giannis actually has to make a move. Right. Once you have the ability to slide your feet and hold that strength on that shoulder, you can flatten drives out with Giannis. Once you start flattening drives out with Giannis, it turns into drifting, tougher, contested layups. It turns into the hooks and the floaters that, like, he can make. And he's gotten better at them. But over the years, even with that improvement, he's still getting less than a point per shot. He's still missing almost 60% of his hooks and his floaters and things like that. That big ISO stop he had late, big possession. Giannis against Draymond on the left, you know, elbow extended area. Giannis makes an aggressive move towards the right. Draymond slides his feet, absorbs the contact, flattens out the drive, forces him into that tough little hook in the lane that he leaves short off the front of the rim. And again, like we've talked about, how Isaiah Hartenstein held Giannis to his worst shooting game of the season. He held Giannis to 47% from the field. Well, I should say Hartenstein and the Thunder held Giannis to 47% from the field, which was his worst shooting night of the season. Well, Draymond Green in the warriors just held him to 31% from the field, 16% lower from the field than he has against anybody else in the NBA this season. Just a casual reminder that Draymond Green is still very much one of the very best defensive players in the NBA. And you know, the second place that you're going to see that be in two places at once type of concept come into play is with gapping and closing out. I talk about this concept a lot, but gapping, all it is is if you're one pass away, meaning, like you're in the driving lane. If there's a ball handler and there's a defender squared up with him, he's got a driving lane to the right and a driving lane to the left. If you're guarding one of the guys, that's one pass away. Almost every defense is going to have you gap into the lane a little bit, so that person's going to step over and exist in the driving lane so that even if he does beat his primary defender off the dribble, he's just running into help. But in those situations, it requires really sharp closeouts to prevent giving up those wide open threes that can. That can come from just a simple swing pass. Right. I thought a perfect example of this was the late three, the tying three that Gary Trent Jr. Missed. Again, that could have tied the games. 96, 93. It was a little over two minutes left. Damon Giannis are trying really hard to run a cleared side pick and roll on the right side. It was hilarious because Giannis is having a meltdown because Taurian Prince, like, would not get out of the corner and he's over there just like waving like, get out of there, get out of there. So Taurean finally clears out of the corner and they're set up to run their cleared side ball screen. Why? I've talked a lot about this. The Bucks, I think, are at their best sometimes with Giannis in his. Some of his limitations as a playmaker to keep the floor in front of him. And so if you clear the side, then when he rolls into that space in the short corner, he's got the entire floor in front of him and he can just barrel downhill to the rim and have really easy passing rates available. That's why he's wanting that cleared side. He wants to roll into space, right? So the warriors decide to defend it by icing. What that means is Gary Payton the second is going to completely close off the drive towards the middle, enforce Dame towards the sideline, where Draymond is going to be sitting in basically a deep drop coverage, kind of right around the elbow, extended, so that if Dame drives, he's basically driving into a bracket. He drives into a bracket where Giannis and Gary Payton are there, kind of trapping him on both sides. And then Giannis has to roll not towards the cleared side. Giannis would have to roll towards the middle, which is where all the traffic is. That's why teams try to ice those side ball screens, right? So Giannis flips the screening angle and tries to screen Gary Payton so that Dame can at least get towards the sideline with a little bit more of an advantage. So Draymond identifies it immediately and goes, oh. Giannis flips the screen. I don't want Dame just get screaming downhill. So John or Draymond rushes up to the level like he's going to blitz Dame coming off the ball screen. This causes Dame to panic, and Dame dribbles back out to half court. But Gary Payton loses contain on him, and all of a sudden Dame comes screaming downhill from the top of. From out by half court. As he comes screaming downhill, though, where's the next defender in the chain? It's Brandon Pajemski, who's gapping off of Gary Trent right there at the top of the key to help contain on the Dame drive. So Dame obviously sees the read and goes, I'm going to swing it over to Gary Payton or, excuse me, to Gary Trent Jr. On the left wing, right? But if you watch Pods, Pods identifies it in real time, and he sees Dame picking up his dribble to make that swing pass, starts his rotation early and ends up getting a great contest on Gary Trent's three. And again, that three would have tied the game, but because of the great contest from. From Pajemski, he rushes it. You can see Gary Trent rush the shot, and he leaves it way short and ends up grazing the side of the rim and had no chance of going in. And again, that entire play got blown up because you had a. An ice coverage that caused the Bucks to do something they didn't want to do. So then when Giannis flipped his screening angle, Draymond through a blitz which forced Dame to audible into dribbling the other way. But even when Gary Payton lost control There was another defender there in the gap to make it feel like he was playing in a crowd, make it feel like there's an opening, but there's actually not an opening. Pods is on top of it. He gets a great closeout. And so essentially there's no paint touch, there's no compromising of the interior of the defense. There's nothing at the rim. It's a smothered catch and shoot three that gets rushed and badly missed by Gary, by Gary Trent. And again, like the Bucks shot extremely well on open threes. On unguarded catch and shoot threes, they were seven for nine, but they only generated nine of them. When Golden State got a good contest on a catch and shoot Milwaukee jumper, they were just 5 for 17 on those catch and shoots, the contested catch and shoots again like that. Those gapping closeouts are one of the big ways that Golden State can make those perceived openings disappear in a heartbeat. Again, it was just a defensive master class from the Warriors. On offense it was just about timely contributions. Like when Milwaukee took their six point lead in the late third. Jimmy started going to work and did some nice grift work to get to the line a few times. I thought he was brilliant over the last like 15 minutes or so on offense he just kept getting to the line. He hit a few pull up jump shots, including a four point play like an and one three point shot on the left wing. He made some nice driving kick plays, like a really nice bounce pass to Quinton post in the right corner where as he was driving along the baseline the defender was there in the passing lane. And so he had to change his pass angle to like bounce right next to the defender so that it can sneak through to Quinton post. The Bucks were also doing a lot of aggressive helping late in the game off of Gary Payton and Brandon Pajemski. They put Lopez on Gary Payton and just sitting him under the basket. Gary Payton had a really nice relocation to the top of the key where Jimmy just shoveled it to him and Gary Payton knocked down the three. Gary Payton keeps hitting these uncontested threes and it's been part of the way that he's maintained his value on offense. And then late in the game they ended up in rotation in a ball screen and Pajemski ended up rotating up to the right wing. Jimmy sprays it out the pods and he ends up hitting the big uncontested three. But Jimmy just kept making smart plays as that primary handler in those situations. And credit to those guys, they Knocked down the shots. I thought Buddy healed the two transition pull up threes he hit after Milwaukee took that six point lead. I thought both of those were huge shots. He had one on the right wing, one in the left wing. Those were just really important shots in the flow of the game. It's just a really impressive bounce back win for the warriors after the disappointment of that loss to Denver. And then on the Milwaukee front again, Giannis's three worst shooting games of the season have all taken place in the last week. You know, the Lakers one is whatever. The Lakers have been one of the best defenses in the league for the last several months, but they were down a bunch of guys and they were just doubling him constantly. And the Bucks did burn the Lakers by just skipping the ball across the court and hitting threes. But the Thunder, the Warriors and the Lakers are three of the best defenses in the NBA. And Giannis has really struggled to get easy stuff at the rim against them. Again, Thunder and Warriors being his two worst shooting. Literally the Lakers, Thunders and Warriors games, all three of those are his three worst shooting games of the season. I just hope he's not dealing with any sort of like nagging lower body injury because I would really like to see Giannis healthy in the playoffs again after what happened the last couple of years. And it just seems like he's trending downward right now. And I just hope everything's all right with him physically. The, the concerning thing for me with Milwaukee is they just haven't been able to put things together on offense, which is concerning because they, that was a strength of theirs for most of the season last year. And again, like with their defense, even though it's performed well statistically, they have a tendency to break down relatively easily despite those defensive rating numbers. You look at the numbers and it's like their 10th in defensive rating on the season. They've been the best clutch defense in the NBA this year. Statistically, it all looks great. But time and time again in these spots, especially against the best teams in the league, it's the same issue. It's Brook Lopez in space. Like he's either sitting at the rim and leaving his shooter open or he's going out on the perimeter and guys are running right around him. Every time they end up in rotation. You see these sequences like the, the Pajemski three late in the game. Watch Damon Gary Trent on that play. They just look lost in rotation on the backside. And it's like when you really get down to it, it's like their best lineup is probably what you saw there, right? Like with Gary Trent and with Kyle Kuzma. And it's like when you have that group out there, there's just too many players on the floor that are prone to defensive mistakes. That's separate from any sort of big picture, large sample size metric they might put together, make their defense a little rickety when they need to get stops in these situations. And it's just, it's, it's hard to overcome that unless you're a world beater on offense. And the Bucks just haven't been that good on that end of the floor this year. They look to me like a team that's like destined for a disappointing finish at this point.
- [23:06]
Microsoft Representative
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- [24:05]
Talkspace Representative
Podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. You know when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself? Talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need. With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner or just need a little extra one on one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a $0 copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code SPACE80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com save $80 with code SPACE80 at Geico's motorcycle expertise gives me the coverage I need like 24.
- [25:09]
DraftKings Representative
7 claims, I'm on cloud nine.
- [25:12]
Geico Representative
Clouds are wholly unable to support the weight of an adult human.
- [25:15]
DraftKings Representative
What's happening?
- [25:15]
Geico Representative
Furthermore, clouds are not numbered. Even if you procured a jetpack and searched, you'd find no cloud numbered 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 Prohibition it's.
- [25:37]
Ed Helms
No secret that banning alcohol didn't stop people from living it up in the 1920s.
- [25:42]
Microsoft Representative
When we're five years into prohibition, the government is starting to go, okay, this isn't working.
- [25:48]
Ed Helms
In fact, you might even say it backfired spectacularly. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast SNAFU, we're taking you back to the 1920s and the tale of Formula Six. Because what you probably don't know about Prohibition is that American citizens were dying in massive numbers due to poisoned liquor, and all along an unlikely duo was trying desperately to stop the corruption behind it.
- [26:14]
DraftKings Representative
They were like superhero crusaders turning the page on a system that didn't work, wasn't fair, and was corrupt.
- [26:22]
Ed Helms
So how did Prohibition's war on alcohol go so off the rails that the government wound up poisoning its own people? To find out, listen and subscribe to snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [26:51]
DraftKings Representative
All right, let's move on to Cavs footprint Clippers so the Clippers big test for them last night, an opportunity to legitimize some of their recent success. The Clippers had won six out of seven, including a three game winning streak against Detroit, New York and Sacramento. Playing some really good ball. They're top five in both offense and defense in that span. Kawhi Leonard has started to look stronger. They're just coming together, right? But the Cavs present a real challenge, particularly on the offensive end because they can just be so difficult to keep up with. And the Cavs made it abundantly clear right out the gates of this game that they were going to make it very difficult to keep up with it. They came out and laced three straight threes. Max Drew said two in a row. Darius Garland laces a three off the dribble. They hit 45 points in the first quarter, so pretty quickly the game took on the feel of a shootout. I talk a lot about the concept of winning games in different ways. Why? Because in the playoffs you got to beat four different teams in a seven game series, usually for very different types of opponents. In one round you might face like a big physical defense that drags you down into the mud, Everybody's legs are tired, jumpers stop falling and it turns into like winning a rock fight, right? But then in the next round you might find fight against a thinner, faster team that plays really fast and scores a lot of points and it becomes more about your offensive firepower and your ability to keep up with your perimeter speed. Even just stars can present different challenges. Oh, this team has, you know, Nicole Jokic or if you could, Zoobas. Right? A big strong center that we have to match up. Or maybe it's a super quick guard like Darius Garland. Like how are we going to keep Darius Garland from getting out of his spots? Every team presents different types of challenges. That's why it's so important to be able to win different types of whips. I thought this particular game was a test of the Clippers offensive firepower. Cleveland is the best offense in the league. And while the Clippers did have some success against their offense late in the game by getting some stops for two and a half quarters, the Cavs were just red hot. They were in the zone sometimes. That's just how it is. It's not like Chris Dunn and Kawhi Leonard weren't guarding at the start of the game. It's just good offense beats good defense every time. So sometimes you're kind of just hanging on for dear life and you just have to find a way to score at a similar pace just to weather the storm until they cool off and start missing shots or until your defense settles in and you start making them uncomfortable. That's what I mean when I say the game took on a feel of a shootout. Like the Clippers were just trying to keep up for the first two and a half quarters of that game. Now, in order for you to be able to consistently score against a good defense, and again, we've talked a lot about the Cavs offense. They're seventh in defense. It's not an exceptional defensive team, but they're a very good defensive team. And if you're going to generate consistent offense against a top 10 defense like that, you need to have a bunch of different guys that can generate quality shots from a bunch of different types of actions or sequences. And the Clippers proved that they were more than capable last night. Kawhi looked absolutely amazing. It's crazy because like a few weeks ago, he just didn't look good physically. It looked like he wasn't getting lift. It looks like his base was getting disrupted by, by basically every team that he ran into last night. The Clippers, play by play guy said on the broadcast quote, this is the Kawhi Leonard we know and remember, and this is the Kawhi Leonard we need. And he was absolutely right. Kawhi had 33, 7 and 4 with four steals. He was 12 for 19 from the field, 5 for 6 from 3. Several specific types of plays that I thought were great signs of the improving strength of his base. And again, that's always been where Kawhi beats people. He's got such a strong base that he's dislodging you from your base. And he's getting such great lift that he can knock down consistently, pull up jump shots from everywhere on the floor and get to the rim. He's just that pure three level score that you can't keep from his spots. You can see the base strength coming together with some of these types of plays. He had a tap in offensive rebound, put back on a shot that he missed where he beat everyone else back up off the floor on his second jump. That's always a sign of athletic dominance when you can win on the second jump. That was a big sign. He hit a right shoulder fade over Dean Wade, big shot late in the game. Dean Wade defends him super well, gets a great contest. Kawhi has to fade dramatically over his right shoulder, but he just gets excellent lift. And if you watch the shot, he gets such great lift that even though he's drifting away from the basket, his body is perfectly still imbalanced while he's rising up and knocking down that shot. He had another right shoulder fade over Evan Mobley late. It was a different kind of fade. It was like a quick spinning fade out of a drive. And like once again, look at his balance. And that's a great sign because those quick spins, those quick moves, those are the hardest moves to stop your body and get balance as you're coming up off the ground. All night long, he just looked like Kawhi. We know that at his best he has this like scissor dribble combination that he'll go to for pull up threes where he'll just pound the ball between his legs and just go straight up into a three out of it. He does it out of a couple different footworks and a couple of different dribble combinations, but it's basically he's. It's like a live dribble jab step where he'll like use that between the legs dribble to essentially jab and get the defender to, to take a step back so that he can just rise up and knock it down. He was hitting that all night long. He just looked great. James Harden was really smart with his attacks all night. He was using guard screens to get favorable matchups before getting into ball screens. And then he was attacking guards in ISO as well. He didn't shoot the ball super well, but he got to the line 11 times. So he finished with 22 points and nine assists with zero turnovers. That's a pretty damn good James Harden game. But it wasn't just those two guys. Bogdan McDonovich had one of his best games as a clipper. Some nice secondary shot creation with the bench group. He also closed the game with James Harden and Kawhi and did some really nice connective playmaking. He was being guarded by Garland, so Kawhi was trying to attack Garland by bringing Bogdanovic into the action as a screener. At first they try to hedge and recover, which is the most common coverage that you'll see teams use when you've got a small quick guard that a team's trying to attack. Because quickness is the ability to rotate, right? He can throw a hedge and he can get out of there as quick as possible. Garland hedges, Bogdanovic slips, Kawhi throws the pass to him. He makes a nice read out to James Harden in the corner. James Harden gets a closeout, drives the closeout and makes the floater. That is that like excellent breaking down that incremental breaking down of the defense, right? Kawhi draws to Bogdanovich, extends the advantage with a nice kick out read. Harden gets a closeout that he scores against with a driving floater. Getting three high level offensive players in those sequences makes him more resilient against better defense. Right? Then after the hedge didn't work, they just straight up blitz. Kawhi with Darius Garland floated out to Bogdanovich. He beats Donovan Mitchell who rotates to the top. He gets into the lane and hits that tough floater that he knocked down in the lane. He was 8 for 8 in this game for 20 points. That's how you're going to keep up in a, in a Shootout, all of those offensive initiation points that you have, all those connective playmaking pieces, all the play finishing coming together, right? And then there was Zubach. Zubac has been sneaky kicking the shit out of some of the best centers in the league all year. I saw a tweet last night that he's hung 20 and 20 on a bunch of the all star centers. And that's not exactly true, but it's close enough to true. He had 21 and 22 against Wemby. He had 20 and 19 against Jaren Jackson. He had 21 and 19 against Anthony Davis, 23 and 18 against Draymond. And then last night he puts up 28 and 20 against Jared Allen. And it was just as bad for Jared as it looked on the box. On the box score. Zubot whooped his ass straight up. Scored on him in the post a bunch of times, one on one. Just absolutely butchered him on the offensive glass. Shot goes up. He was just leaning on him and just shoved him out of his spot, getting whatever he wanted. Eight offensive rebounds in the game. There's a huge play late. Cleveland cuts the lead to seven and gets two stops in a row against the Clippers offense. But on both plays, Zubots just wrecking balls into the lane and taps the ball out and they keep the ball alive. Two times in a row he was hitting shots in the roll off of Harden. He was ducking in on cuts. He was just an absolute monster. He kicked Jared Allen's ass. There's no way around it. So the question is, why does Zubac keep kicking ass against some, some of the best bigs in basketball? It's an interesting part of the way the modern game has changed at the center position as things have changed with pace and the way teams run up and down the floor and attack and ball screens with rim runners and vertical spacers. We've seen a massive increase in these like thinner rim running types of bigs. Jared Allen and Mobley are great examples. Victor Weminyama, Chet Holmgren, Anthony Davis kind of fits this mole. Rudy Gobert, Derek Lively, that's. That type of guy has become way more common in the league as the league has become faster. More of a transition game, more of a pick and roll, rolling hard to the rim. You need vertical spacing type of league. Back in the day, there were two or three huge bruising centers on every team. Now half the teams in the league don't even have a guy like that. I actually think it plays a role in how dominate a guy like Nikola Jokic is in this era. And by the way, I don't mean that as a shot at Jokic. It actually reminds me a lot of the dynamic with Michael Jordan in the 90s. Back then, teams were so loaded up on size and strength, that overwhelming quickness was a game breaker in a lot of ways that Michael Jordan took advantage of. These days, the league is so loaded up on quickness that size and strength can be a game breaker. And that is how guys like Zubac and Jokic to a much greater extent have had a lot of success. If you're really, really big and strong and you have the footwork to actually use that physical leverage and the touch in the IQ to make teams pay by winning ground battles, you're going to win a lot of battles in this league. It's a matchup problem for a lot of these teams. Zubac is just too big and strong for these guys. I heard Fran Faschilla who's doing the color commentary last night, he was saying after the game that or early in the game on Zeus first post up. He's like, he literally said he's just too much for him. He can't hold his ground. And it really was that simple. So you get great offensive games from Kawhi Zoo and Bogdanovich. You get a good game from Harden. Even Norman Powell in his limited minutes. I mean he played 18 minutes and dropped 11 points in a 36 minute game. That's 22 points. I mean that's, that's a high offensive output for a limited role. That allowed them to keep up with that red hot scoring effort from the Cavs there. In the late third quarter, their defense finally started to settle in. I thought Derek Jones Jr. Was instrumental in this stretch. Had some great reps on both Garland and Mitchell. Kawhi I thought was great all night on Donovan Mitchell. The Clippers really started to force some more difficult shot angles from the guards. That forced some misses. That was what triggered their run when they started to pull away. We talked a lot about their offense earlier, but the Clippers held the CAVS to just 19 points over the final 15 minutes and change of this game. It was just a really impressive win for the Clippers. And here's the thing, we can't completely write off this upside that they're showing this team build. Always had this capability of putting everything together and suddenly Kawhi gets his leg strength and just stays healthy. And like what if Kawhi just stays healthy to mid June? Well then they're absolutely a threat it's just going to be really difficult to shake the pessimism that surrounds Kawhi and his health. This time last year, he was kicking ass, too, and so were the Clippers. March 29th of last season in Orlando. Kawhi drops 29, 11 and five with four steals and two blocks, goes 12 for 21 from the field and three for six from three. Looks incredible. He played one more game that season and we didn't see him again. So it is what it is. There's a version of this story where Kawhi holds up and the Clippers are a real threat, but that. That question mark is just always going to be there with him on the Cleveland front. I had a bunch of Cavs fans pissed off at us the other day for talking about some of their struggles with sizing in Orlando. Most of it was people just getting hung up on a title. But I want to be clear. Like, I wasn't saying the Cavs as a team got exposed and that they're fraudulent or anything like that. I just think that there's value in looking at why a team is struggling because it helps us learn about them. It's so rare for a team like Boston last year or Denver the year before to kind of run through the playoffs without facing much, much in the way of adversity. The vast majority of the time, you're going to find yourself trailing in a playoff series, even if you win the title. That's what happened to the 2022 Warriors. That's what happened to the 2021 Bucks. That's what happened to the 2020 Lakers. That's what happened to the 2019 Raptors. Even the 2018 warriors trailed in a playoff series. The 2016 Cavs trailed. The 2015 warriors trailed. Like usually, adversity is a part of the grind all the way through to the finish line. There's no perfect basketball team in the NBA that just beats the shit out of anybody and everybody. And so with that being the case, again, that does happen occasionally. It's ex. It's rare, though. And again, like, even with a team like Boston, like, part of it was they caught some favorable matchups along the way. There's a version of that where they win the title, but it looks tougher if they have to face Denver and Milwaukee, right? So, like, it's. It's one of those things where when we're talking about these flaws with these teams, it's just about learning so that we can try to figure out what makes them struggle so we can at least identify that sort of thing when it pops up down the line. Once again last night they struggled with size. Zubots kicked Allen's ass, but similar to the Orlando game, I was talking about how their perimeter size caused issues for the Cavs guards. The length of Kawhi, the length of Derrick Jones Jr. The overall size of the Clippers on the floor, Darius Garland, Donna Mitchell went just 11 for 32. Kawhi on the offensive end showed a relatively easy willingness to target Cleveland's perimeter players and get pretty easy over the top shots. They chewed Cleveland up and spit them out on the glass. It's just worth keeping an eye on. When we see Cleveland struggle in the playoffs, this is probably what it will look like. Bigger physical teams, especially on the perimeter, making life tough for them, making them feel like they're playing in a crowd and leading to some inefficiency from their guards. All right, guys, that's all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We are back tonight after the final buzzer of Nuggets Lakers. We have our course correction segment that we're also doing there. Plan on hitting at least another team or two in that show as well. So make sure you guys come out, come hang out later Tonight Live on YouTube. I'll 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. 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 and faster by unlocking up to 150% improved output. Whatever challenges come next, let Microsoft help you keep pushing forward. For more details, visit Microsoft.com challengers this.
- [42:40]
Nikki Glaser
Is Nikki Glaser from the Nikki Glaser Podcast. Have you guys seen this new commercial? From Stand up to All Hate, it's basically Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady going back and forth with reasons that they hate each other. But then when you really listen to them, the reasons for the hate are just so stupid. I don't know. This this commercial really got me. It's a strong reminder that hate in our country continues to be out of control. So join us at iHeart in standing up to it. If you see hate, speak up. Call it out. Your voice is a powerful tool in this fight. You can learn more by following OT's UpWithHate.
- [43:11]
Talkspace Representative
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- [44:13]
Ed Helms
Speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and, of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison. Listen and subscribe to Snaft foo on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.