← The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
Hoops Tonight - Why Nikola Jokic is BY FAR #1 player in NBA | Denver Nuggets
00:50:39
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- [00:00]
Jason
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Colin
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Jason
All right. Welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Friday, everybody. Hope all of you guys had a great week. We are finally bringing our player rankings list to an end today. Hitting number one, Nicola Jokic briefly off the top and then we're gonna get to your last batch of player rankings Mailbag questions. 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 Underscore jasonlt so you could so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson's doing amazing work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us there for more content throughout the year. And last but not least, we are going to continue to do mailbags throughout the remainder of the season, usually on Fridays. So keep dropping your questions again under our full episodes, go into the comments, write mailbag with a colon, write your question and we will get to them in our mailbags throughout the rest of the year. All right, let's talk some basketball. So as mentioned, our player rankings list finally comes to an end today. And with this one, there's no debate, no lengthy argument to make, no need to pit him up against someone else. For the third straight year, Nicole Jokic has a stranglehold on the number one spot in the NBA. His last season in review, he played in 70 games. He's missed just 75 games in his entire 10 season long NBA career, meaning he's averaged over 74 games played per season for a decade. Even when he missed time this year, this last, this most recent season, a good chunk of it centered around the birth of his child, not an injury. He has simply been one of the most reliable guys in the league for a decade. His average is 29.6 points per game. That was a career high. 12.7 rebounds per game, the second highest rebound average of his career. 10.2 assists per game. That was also a career high. So yes, that represented the first time in Jokic's career and just the third player in NBA history to average a triple double for an entire season. 2.4 stocks per game. That also tied a career high fueled by a career high 1.8 steals per game. It's interesting because I actually thought Jokic had a pretty brutal regular season on defense, but at the same time I thought he was pretty damn good on defense in the playoffs. Certainly better than he had been in the previous. In the previous season, we'll talk more about Jokic's defense later. 58% from the field, 42% from three. That was his best three point shooting season of his career. Right on the heels of a season where his three point shooting was kind of an issue. He rectified it and he became the best shooter he's ever been. 80% from the foul line, that amounted to 63% in effective field goal percentage and 66% in true shooting, which was the second highest mark of his career behind that crazy 2023 season. So to put it very simply, this was the best basketball Jokic had ever played. Now, OKC won too many games, too many more games than Denver in order for Jokic to have a real shot at mvp. But I thought Jokic was very clearly the best basketball player on the planet again last year. His fifth straight top two MVP finish, his second straight first team all NBA selection should be five straight there. He just got kicked off on a technicality basically in 2023 because of Joel Embiid. Just a flaw in how the system works. Play type data. We're just going to quickly go through this and then we'll get into some big picture stuff. 1.13 points per ball screen that he ran as the handler. So those inverted ball screens, that was in the 92nd percentile. 1.08 points per possession on ISOs, including passes, that was in the 83rd percentile. And then 1.16 points per possession on post ups, which is amazing. Preposterous. Volume 2. Jokic generated 867 points on post ups last year including passes that was 363 more than second place which was Giannis. So just by far the best post player in the entire game of basketball. All of his off ball metrics were insane. He converted spot ups at 1.33 points per possession. It's literally in the 96th percentile out of the 178 players to log at least 150 spot up opportunities last year. And again that includes a lot of guards and wings. He ranked fourth on that list in efficiency out of spot up situations. He converted roll man opportunities at 1.29 points per possession out of the 10 roll men to log at least 200 reps that ranked second. Jared Allen was the only guy above him. And as we all know, Jared Allen was consistently getting easier opportunities. Just a ridiculous regular season from Nicola Jokic and he capped it all off with what I thought was an impressive playoff run. Like the Nuggets looked dead in the water going into the postseason I even picked them against the Clippers, as many folks did, because the Clippers looked great and the Nuggets looked terrible over the final third of the season. Aaron Gordon was banged up all year. Jamal Murray was banged up. At the end of the year, the team was kind of splintering. They had just fired their coach and yogic galvanized them and got them to beat a very good Clippers team. And again, like I had actually picked against Denver in that series, I thought the Clippers were going to win and Jokic just got his team back in shape in time to win a big series. And then that was a very good Oklahoma City team that was a substantial favorite, and he pushed them to the brink. And if it wasn't for, especially down the stretch of Game four and in game five, if he just gets another couple of buckets from a couple of his teammates, they probably have a good, a very good chance to win that series. And so I just was really impressed by Jokic start to finish, including the postseason last year. And then again really quickly, I wanted to talk about defense. Like, I thought it was really impressive the way that he just kind of locked in using his IQ and active hands and stabilized the Denver defense. That looked awful all season. And they did as good a job against Oakley Oklahoma City as you could possibly do. They did better against Oklahoma City than Minnesota did. They did about as good against Oklahoma City as Indiana did, even though Indiana matched up better in terms of quickness on the perimeter. I thought that Jokic was far and away the best player in that Oklahoma City series in the second round. I just thought it was a really impressive campaign from the best basketball player alive. Now, the case for Jokic being the best player in the world is very simple. He may not be the highest volume scorer in the league statistically, although I believe he could be if you wanted to. It's just not really the way he's wired. Like, Jacob Alexander took 30 shots per 100 possessions last year. He was an extremely high volume shooter last year. If Jokic really approached the game in that way, he put up astronomical scoring totals too. But I think he's the most reliable small sample score in the league. Meaning, like, if you take away just, oh, full season points per game, total volume, and you just focus in on like, hey, we got five minutes of basketball here and we gotta win this game. And it's all gonna come down to these five, you know, this, these final 15 possessions or so. I don't think there's a better scorer in the league in terms of reliability in those situations. Strictly small sample brute force scoring his short range touch on floaters and hooks is literally unparalleled in the Sport. He was 64% on floaters last year, 61% on hooks. He made 180 of those floaters and hooks last year. That's insane volume and like he's making damn near 2/3 of them. It's variance proof short jump shots. Inside of 17ft he shot 55%. He's 47% on long twos, outside of 17ft, 42% on threes. And as we're going to talk about much better if you take out the heaves. He is the most variance proof and unstoppable single possession score in the entire sport while also being the best passer in the entire sport. So the result is you basically cannot stop him from getting a good shot for himself or a teammate. And that shows in a specific stat that I actually brought to the forefront last summer. But I want to go over what those numbers looked like this year to demonstrate so in synergy they have a stat called score percentage which simply just factors in. If we run this play, how likely are we to put points on the board? Essentially reliability of an action. If you ran a post up for Jokic last year, regardless of how you guarded it, if you shaded him, if you hard double teamed him, if you left him on an island, regardless of how you guarded it, it had a 54% chance in resulting in points. That's a pretty damn reliable play type. Throw the ball to Jokic, he's probably going to score or get someone a shot that they're going to make. If you ran an ISO for Jokic, it resulted in points 52% of the time regardless of how you guarded him. If you ran a ball screen for him where he's the handler and you're having a guard screen for him or Aaron Gordon screamed for him, it had a 52% chance of ending in points regardless of how you defended it off the ball. If you left him open, he shot 49% on pick and pop threes. He shot 49% on spot up threes. The only reason his percentages fell to the low 40s is because he missed like 30 heaves last year. Took a ton of them. Like late shot clock bombs or half court shots. He was incredibly reliable. If you let him get a good look from three he hit half of them. He is quite simply the best offensive player I've ever seen. A deadly variance proof on and off ball scorer while simultaneously being the best passer in basketball. He's even a monster on the MARGINS. He had 75 offensive rebound put backs last year. That was the seventh most in the entire NBA. He was a dominant defensive rebounder yet averaged the second most defensive rebounds per game in the entire NBA last year behind Giannis. We mentioned the career high and steals. Just defensive playmaking. He just impacts the game in an absolute mountain of ways. I mentioned two weaknesses last summer that I said had kind of brought him a little bit closer to the pack. I said his three point shooting and his defense were the two things that were hurting him. He literally shot in the high 40s on threes when you removed heaves from the equation. He was one of the best pick and pop bigs in the NBA. He was one of the best spot up players in the entire NBA if you even if you include guards and wings. So you can go ahead and scratch that shooting weakness off the list. And again, while he had a brutal defensive regular season which was a team wide issue, I thought he was really good in the playoffs. He still has some situational weaknesses and they're worth mentioning here. They sound silly in the grand scheme of things, especially compared to some of the weaknesses for players further down this list. But like if you put him up against a great pick and roll player, a guy that can really shoot and pull him out to the perimeter but can also pass out of it. So guys like Steph Curry, Luka Doncic, like those guys are going to give Jokic some issues on defense or yeah, like if they didn't blow up the Celtics and they stayed healthy and the Nuggets ran into that Celtics team in a series, they would have been able to space him out. It would have caused some problems. But Boston's not a threat anymore and for any problems that Luka and Steph can cause for Jokic, he's going to cause a mountain of problems for them on the other end of the floor. I would pick Denver to beat Golden State or LA if they were to meet in the playoffs this year. At least at this point. I actually think Jokic is a particularly solid defensive matchup for Oklahoma City. It's a matchup that allows him to use his size and iq, doesn't force him to cover as much ground out in space. It's a good matchup for him. Ironically like if you really get dig into like the basketball specifics, a team like Cleveland is a team that could potentially cause some issues for Jokic with their speed and pull up shooting and all of the ability to space the floor that they have. But like, I actually think Jokic matches up pretty well against Oklahoma City. And no, he's not a perfect defensive player, but in a playoff context, I feel like he can do plenty well enough to counterbalance what what is the best offensive player that I've ever seen on the other end of the floor? And coming into the season, I think this is the best roster that Jokic has ever had. They've anchored in with substantially more depth, substantially more athleticism. That should further allow Jokic to be more useful on defense. They have a legit backup center to anchor those units. And again, I think they match up well with Oklahoma City. Hell, they pushed them to seven just last year. Couple shots go different in Game five or in Game four. They win that series. So in addition to me picking Jokic as the best player in the world this season, I can tell you guys right now that Denver is my preseason pick to win the title. I think they're going to be the best playoff team this year. They may not get the one seed, but I think they're going to be up there. And I like they got the best player in the world with the best team he's ever had and I'm going to take those odds against all of the other flaws that are presented further down the list of contenders. Big shout out to Nikola Jokic three straight years at number one on this list. First player since LeBron James to have the league in a stranglehold like this. We are extremely excited to announce our new presenting sponsor, Hard Rock Bet. Everyone knows and loves the Hard Rock hotels and casinos and now you can use the top rated Hard Rock Bet sportsbook to place all of your bets all NFL season and beyond. 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- [18:23]
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Jason
All right, let's get into our mailbag before we get out of here today. You've been very forthcoming about your process going into this ranking, which I appreciate. It really helps to know that the list has gone through multiple drafts and that you spent multiple nights sleeping on it. That said, I was wondering what your general view on rankings is in more of a broad scope. Do you watch other people's rankings, and if so, how seriously do you take them? I tend to treat it all as a fun way to engage with the game, and it always baffles me to see people get so heated over the rankings. Thank you and love the show. Thank you so much for the kind words and for supporting the show. Honestly, like, I don't particularly care about, like, individually ranking players in the sense that, like, I don't get too worked up about the lists and where other people have people ranked. I think it's a fun thought exercise. So, for instance, like, I like doing this once a summer just to, like, zoom out and take a look at the league and when one of the things you guys will notice is, like, the vast majority of people who do lists will just share their lists and they might have, like, a little blurb that they put underneath their ranking. But, like, as you guys know, we went into incredible detail on all of these players. Like, my primary purpose of this list is to zoom out and take a look at where all these guys land, in just my opinion, so you guys can get a view of where I see things and where I see the game. That doesn't mean it has to be where you see the game, but most importantly, regardless of how you feel about the rankings with each guy, it's like kind of like a performance review, so to speak. Not that I'm these guys boss or anything, but the point is, is, like, it's my opportunity to, like, dig back into the numbers, dig back into the film, take a look at a basketball player and be like, where's this dude at right now? And that kind of helps me. If I do that every summer. It helps me just have a really firm grasp on the individual trajectories of each player. This guy's going up, this guy's going down, this guy stagnating. Here's why. Here's numbers that show that. Here are the cl. Things that I'm noticing on tape. Here's what Giannis is doing differently than he did in years past as a playmaker. You know, here's where LeBron is struggling compared to when he was in his prime. Like, those I. I learn a ton from these lists. Like, the ranking is the ranking. I throw the ranking together, like you mentioned, in the first week, right? Like, I sleep on it several times and I reorganize things and. But once I settle on a ranking, it effectively turns into a monthlong research. It's a research project where I spend an enormous amount of time researching these players. And even though I've watched them all season, it allows me to really just deep dive into one particular player, look at both ends of the floor, look at what he accomplished last season, where his areas of opportunity are, where for young players their development trajectory needs to go. It's. It's essentially a research project. And so yeah, like I'm not going to like when the ESPN player rankings come out. I don't really get all worked up about it. I do this for, for you guys and for me, I do it for you guys so that you guys can see kind of where I have each of these players ranked as just kind of like a big picture snapshot of the NBA. And then I do it for me as a research project to learn about where these players are in more detail. It's just an opportunity in the summertime to take advantage of all the time that we have there. Hi Jason, you say that Shay doesn't have best in the world potential. I got a lot of questions surrounding Shay. A lot of people who were comparing him to prime mj, people who were saying that he does have potential to be the best player in the world. A lot of Thunder fans that were unhappy with that particular conversation. And I am recording this mailbag before our Shay Luca video releases, which comes out next week on Wednesday or I should say two days ago. But I am recording this in advance, so I haven't seen those questions. And I'm sure there's going to be a ton of Thunder fans that are super pissed off that I have Luka ahead of him and that are super pissed off that I said he doesn't have best player in the world potential. So this question kind of falls into that lens and it allowed me to hit a bunch of those points. The rest of the question I don't understand what else he needs to do. He outplayed Ant and Jokic this year in the playoffs. He outplayed Luka last year. He carried the offense on a limited offensive team and took them to 68 wins in a championship. OKC's offensive system does not require him to have high assist numbers. Unlike Denver with Jokic and LA with Luka, he impacts the game in different ways. He averaged 33 points on 34 minutes per game with great efficiency. I understand Jokic above him, but with SGA already arguably the best player in the world. Love the show. So I couple I want to just start by disagreeing with a couple of specific things that you said. You said he outplayed Ant this last season. I agree. I thought that he badly outplayed Ant in that series, but Ant is not a top tier superstar. You said he outplayed Jokic this year in the playoffs. I thoroughly disagree. I thought Jokic was the best player in that series. You said he outplayed Luca last year. I also thoroughly disagree there. And I think this is where, before I get back into the Luka Shea piece, I want to look at the other comment you said. You said Oklahoma City's offensive system does not require him to have high assist numbers. Unlike Denver with Jokic and LA with Luka that I fundamentally disagree with. They're not putting up massive assist numbers while Shea's not because of the offensive system. They're doing it because Jokic and Luka are just better offensive players than Shay, who are much better at running a team offense and are much better at setting those dudes up with quality opportunities. I just think they're better. I think Shay and his kind of tendency to have games where he goes rogue and forces the issue a lot earlier actually hurts his team and hurts his rhythm, hurts the rhythm of his teammates. To be clear, we're splitting hairs here. I think Shea's the third best player in the world, so I'm not over here trying to say Shay's a bum. But if you're asking me why I have Luka in Jokic above the above Shay, I think both of those guys are like clearly and discernibly better offensive players than Shay. Even the scoring piece, like, oh, he averaged 33 points per game. He had this like prime MJ scoring type of season literally just one season prior when Luka was healthy, he had a better scoring season than Shay. He had crazier totals. He had like a 73 point game this season he or that season he averaged like 34 points per game while also being in my opinion the second best overall offensive engine in the game with his ability to create advantages for his teammates. Like, I just don't think Shay's as good offensively as just his simple points per game metric would you lead you to believe. And again, the shot totals are insane. He literally averaged 30 shot attempts per 100 possessions last year. It's like a, he just was shooting a ton and scoring a ton. And by the way, I think Shea is a transcendently great scorer. I just don't think he's a transcendently great offensive player overall the way that Luka is and the way that Jokic is even to a greater extent. The question is, can Shea become that type of offensive engine. And throughout NBA history, this is the unique thing and it's just kind of tricky. Like you kind of have to be born with that trait. I've seen players become better at it and they become more consistent making the reads. They become more consistent game managers. I think Damian Lillard is a good example of this kind of guy who like kind of maximized his individual potential as a playmaker. But to be very clear, there is still a gigantic chasm between that type of guy and the relentless advantage, creating deadly defense, beating passers that you run into at the top of the league, that it's like they've just been born with it. Like LeBron James in his prime. Chris Paul, you know, Trey Young, I think fits into this category. The Nicola Jokic, Luka Doncic types. And when you're looking at a guy like, to me, Jokic and Luka are both every bit as talented as scorers as Shay. They may not lean into it as much and they may not shoot as many shots and they may not hit as many totals, although Luka, we've literally seen him do it. But I think if Jokic was like, oh, I have, I have a $50 million incentive next year to average 35 points per game. I think Jokic could average 35 points per game like that. Like I, like, I think Shay is a score first player who's really fucking good at it. But I think Luka and Jokic are overall better offensive players. So the question is if Shea's not going to progress to become this like grease the wheels offensive engine, that's an unbelievable playmaker, where else can he make that improvement? And like, I do think that Shea is a good defensive player. I think it's absurd that he got defensive player of the year votes like that to me is crazy talk. I think that some of the talk about him being like an elite like top end defensive player is crazy talk. But I think he's a good defender, he's a good playmaker, defensive playmaker. Like he can jump passing lanes, play the ball well. He's a good, like help side guy at the rim. He's got good length, he can block shots. But Shay doesn't have either the bandwidth because of his offensive load or honestly the athletic traits to be the transcendently great defensive player he would need to become the best player in the world. So like, let's look at the guy. By the way, I have a question, I have a question later on where someone talks about how they're skeptical that Ant can ever become that elite defensive player too. I agree. Like, like. And we'll get to that more in a minute. As a matter of fact, let me go to that real quick and then we'll come back to. We'll come back to the shape piece. This question. I take the bet that Ant never becomes an all defensive guy. One, his offensive role is too big to compete with the defensive specialists around the and two, he struggles with more than just ball screens. Personally, he's not great off ball. I agree. And I think his size limits him next to guys like Dyson Daniels and Asar Thompson, Tamani Kamara, J Dub, etc. So for the record, I agree. Like, I would bet on Ant not becoming the all defense guy and I would bet on Ant not becoming the best player in the world. I am just saying he has that potential. The point you're making, the point about his offensive role is what I think. Like, that's why I think he won't get there. It's because his offensive role is too big and I just don't think he'll ever dedicate the necessary resources. That second piece I disagree with. Like, you're right, he's pretty bad off ball right now and he's pretty bad at navigating screens. But I think he can be great at all of those things. The thing with his size, and there's this kind of theory, and this is, this is not new, this is a theory that's existed in the world of basketball for a while, which is like, can guys be so big that they have a hard time navigating screens? And I do think that that's true for upright players, players that have high centers of gravity. But Ant, I think is a guy who could blow up screens. I think if Ant really put in the work and wanted to be, he could be a guy that was unscreenable because of how fast he is, because how good his footwork is and because of his strength in his shoulders. He can blow screens up as he's going through those actions and really become a guy that big guys don't even want to screen. So, like, I, I do think Ant has the potential to become a transcendently great defensive player and a transcendently great scorer. I just think it's more likely that he becomes a transcendently great scorer, but probably not as great on defense as he needs to be. Which means, I think, I think Shea's clearly better than Ant now. But I think the most likely scenario is Aunt and Shea are more or less neck and neck for the rest of their careers. And I don't think either of them ever actually end up threatening that best player in the world conversation. I think Ant has that potential, to be clear, because of his athletic traits. I don't think either of them has the potential to be a transcendently great playmaker. But Ant has the potential on defense. I just think it's more likely than not that he doesn't get there now. So the question is what about when Luka or what about when Jokic declines? Like if Jokic declines, can Shea become that guy? And I just, I think it's more likely that it's a Luca. I think it's more likely that it's a Victor Wembanyama because Luka transcendently great score. He's every bit as good a scorer as Shay, if not a little better. And he's a substantially better passer, playmaker, offensive engine. Like I think he's going to stay above Shay for the most part in his career to the the victor we piece. Like, I think he's going to be a guy who averages 28, 30 points per game on 60 plus percent true shooting while also being the defensive player of the year perennially year in and year out. That's a guy that's a better basketball player than Shake Gilgis Alexander. That's a guy that's a better basketball player than the most likely eventual version of Anthony Edwards. So like, again, like, to me, I think where people got confused is like I don't necessarily expect Ant to become better than Shea and to enter into that best player in the world conversation. It's just, I think Ant does have this like freaky athletic potential that could theoretically manifest in the most devastating two way player at the guard position in the league, which I don't think Shea has the ability to be the most devastating two way player at the guard position in the league. I don't think that's something that's in his potential. I don't, I don't think he has the athletic gifts or the size and strength to necessarily be that guy. But like again, like this is okay guys, like there are people like, do you understand, like Kevin Durant more or less was in that top tier but never became the best guy. Steph might have done it for one year in 2022. I think he did do it for one year in 2022. Like if Shea ends up being a guy who's the second, third, fourth best player in the league for seven, eight years, he's going to be remembered with the likes of Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. It's, it's just, it's a very, very different conversation when you get into like, this dude's the best basketball player on planet Earth. That's the conversation that Jokic has had in his stranglehold for three straight years. And like that requires you to be transcendently great. At least two things. You go back to 2022 when it was Steph. He is one of the great advantage creators in the NBA. Still to this day, you can put a bunch of random dudes with him and he's a 120 offensive rating in. Back in 2022, he was still the guy who could be the volume elite. Transcendently great scorer. If you think it's Giannis in 2021, like, transcendently great defensive player, transcendently great scorer. At that point in time he had figured some things out, especially at the foul line. LeBron, transcendently great playmaker, transcendently great score and one of the elite defensive players in the league. That's why he's in the goat conversation. Like you go back before that to Kobe Bryant. It's same thing. Transcendently great defensive player in his prime. Transcendently great score. Like there is a, there's a very like, when you get into that conversation, best player on the planet. It's an extremely high standard that you're looking to hit. And I get it. Like this all gets convoluted because he hoisted the trophy. And like I had comments that were like, Shay just had the best scoring season since mj. He won the scoring title. He won mvp. He won finals mvp. I'm not hating on the season. There's a remarkable accomplishment season. But Oklahoma City had the best roster. And in a lot of ways it was Shay's game management that became an issue at various points in the playoffs. Which is why they got pushed to seven games by inferior basketball teams this year. The reason Oklahoma City won the title is they have the best defense of this era. Their defense is so damn good, it literally forced Nicole Jokic into the first like stretch of mediocre basketball from him that we've literally ever seen. That defense caused players to piss down their leg. Jaren Jackson completely decomposed. Julius Randle completely decomposed. That was an all time great defense that the third best player in the world ended up being enough offense for them to win. That's the way I look at it. And again, like I, I, I just am talking, we are splitting hairs among the best players in the world. I ranked Shea above Giannis this year. You know how hard it is to be above Giannis. Antenna Campo. As a basketball player, I have a ton of respect for Shay. Like, I had another comment someone said, like, you just don't like Shay because of the aesthetics. I don't necessarily like Luca's aesthetics. The, the flopping, the grifting. He's not a vertical player. He's not a guy that has like a ton of fluidity in his jump shot. It's kind of like a set shot. Like, Luka is not. Not a player that I love aesthetically. I think he can pound the air out of the basketball sometimes. Something that I don't necessarily love watching on television. I. I will be forthright with you guys and tell you how I feel about a player. Yeah, Shai's not my favorite player. Joel Embiid wasn't my favorite player. But I can promise you that I will try like hell to rank them fairly in that context. To me, Luka is above Shay because he is every bit the score and, and a much better playmaker, offensive engine. Same goes for Nicole Jokic. That's why I have Shea in third place. The reason why I don't think he can become the best player in the world is because we have other guys in his age group. Luka, who's transcendently great at two things, scoring and playmaking. Wemby, who's going to be transcendently great at two things, scoring and defense. And Jokic, who still literally just had the best season of his career. So, like, I think it's more likely that Shea is a perennial first team, all NBA, top tier superstar guy that just never cracks that number one spot. And while Ant does have that potential, I agree with you Thunder fans. I think it's more likely than not that Ant doesn't become that. He just eventually catches up to Shay and those two dudes kind of battle for the best two guard in the league spot. Looking forward in the next era of the NBA.
- [38:10]
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- [38:39]
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- [39:09]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [39:39]
Charli Webster
Candice Rivera has it all. In just three years, she went from stay at home mom to traveling the world, saving lives and making millions. Anyone would think Candace's charm life is about as real as unicorns. But sometimes the truth is even harder to believe than the lies.
- [39:56]
Jason
Not true. There's so many things not true. You gotta believe me.
- [40:01]
Charli Webster
I'm Charli Webster and this is Unicorn Girl, an Apple original podcast produced by Seven Hills. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.
- [40:12]
Jason
Is there any argument that supports an optimistic warriors season? That would not also work for the Mavericks. Both have injury prone players leading the team's offense. Both have incredible depth and can put out 14 competent players during the season, and both have a defensive floor that is relatively high. I understand that the warriors offense is better, but Butler is an aging, injury prone player who does not value the regular season but is very necessary for their success, while the Mavericks have, excuse me, a young core of hungry players looking to get back into contention. I don't see how someone could have the warriors higher than the Mavs when both teams have injury history. But the Mavs are significantly younger. This is a regular season by the way, and not the playoffs. I won't argue against Steph in the playoffs. That's really I think honestly I just agree with you. Like I wouldn't be surprised if the Mavs ended up above Golden State in the regular season. If Anthony Davis comes back and hit like I talk about Luka having a revenge season. I think it's very possible that Anthony Davis has a revenge season. He's had a long time to rest and to get in shape. He's probably pissed off that he got traded. I wouldn't be surprised if we have an awesome season out of Anthony Davis. They have an incredible depth of defensive talent. It's just simple about simply about the offensive end of the floor. That's where that could become an issue. But in the regular season, I think defense matters more. When you get to the postseason, you got to have both. And. But in the regular season, as we've seen with teams like Houston, if you get enough stops, you can just exist in transition and score enough points to win games. And so I wouldn't be surprised if the Mavs ended up at a. At a higher seed at the end of the season. But the real thing is, is neither Kyrie nor Anthony Davis are like, really, truly great offensive players overall, running a team. Like, we saw what prime Kyrie looked like leading the Celtics like Steph Curry, even at age 37, you just put him out there with some dudes and you get a 120 offensive rating because of his ability to fly around and draw two to the ball consistently. So, like, to me, I would view the warriors as a more dangerous playoff team because they're probably still going to be great on defense with Draymond and Jimmy, and especially if Al Horford gets picked up and Steph Curry is still just a way better offensive player than anybody wearing a Dallas Mavericks jersey. Two more quick ones. Can you explain pistol action and how it works and what are the advantages and disadvantages? I love this question. We don't get a ton of this kind of stuff, but if you guys ever want to dive into these concepts, I always find these very fascinating. So I'd love to get into them. All you have to do is continue to drop them in the mailbag. Questions. Pistol is essentially a handoff that flows into a ball screen. I've seen variations of this action called a bunch of different things. You'll see it called Chicago in the NBA. You'll see it called Zoom in the NBA. Pistol. Right, Pistol. Generally, let's set up the floor first and go from there. Just imagine a big that's kind of hanging out around the top of the key. You've got two players spacing on the weak side. So corner wing on the weak side. But let's focus on the strong side. You got a big that's somewhere around the top of the key, and you got a guy in the corner, and that guy in the corner is the guy we're trying to get the ball to. I'm the point guard bringing the ball up the floor. And if in a pistol action, generally speaking, I'm just going to dribble into the Corner and hand off the ball to the guy coming out of the corner. And that is going to flow into the big man at the top of the key coming over to set a screen. So it's essentially a dribble handoff into a ball screen, right? That's usually called pistol, zoomer, Chicago. It's the same principle, it just looks a little different. Usually you'll dump the ball to the big, and instead of the guard going in dribble handoffing, the big will go in dribble handoff and the guard will just set a screen first. So in either case, regardless of how you set it up, the guard is going to come off of two screens. A guard screen first and a big screen second. And whether or not he gets the dribble handoff from the guard or the dribble handoff from the big, it still more or less creates the same basketball dynamic. And again, I never get too hung up on the names of actions because they tend to differ from team to team. Like even just when I was playing in college, we had the same defensive actions or defensive coverages or offensive actions that would just have different names depending on the team that I was playing for. And I've seen similar when I've been covering the NBA over the last several years. But that word, Chicago, zoom, pistol, all those actions more or less mean the same thing. The guard is coming out of the corner off of a dribble handoff, either from the big or the the guard. But it's a double stagger from the guard and from the big and from there it just creates, it's a three man action, right? You have three players involved in the action and it just forces the guys to make a bunch of decisions, right? So like let's say that the guy, because we know the target of the possession, the guy we're trying to get the ball to is in the corner. Let's say that the defense decides to lock and trail, meaning the guy guarding the man in the corner just prepares to chase him over the top of those screens. Well, if he chases him over the top of those screens, you've got two chances to screen him. If you hit him right, he's going to come off the other side of that screen and he's going to have an opening to potentially shoot. If he stays attached, he's still going to be in trail position. So he should be able to curl around the big and get downhill into the paint. Regardless of what the, regardless of what the guard does coming off of that action, the defensive big has to make a decision. He's either got to be up to contest the shot, or he's got to be back preparing to contain the ball if it comes at him. And so if it's defended, let's say that the guy chases over the top and the guy gets downhill and he attacks. In all likelihood, the big is going to have to step up to help on that drive. That leaves your big, the offensive big, open to either pop out or to roll into space off of that. But there's all sorts of reads that can be made out of it. Let's say that the guards decide to switch, so they go run that first dribble handoff and those two guards decide to switch. Well, the second guard who's taking the guy coming out of the corner is now highly susceptible to a screen because he was just guarding a ball handler going in the opposite direction. His shoulders are probably turned, his hips are probably turned. The big's going to have an easier chance to hit him. If he hits him, he can come off and shoot or force the big to step up and drop it off to the big. There's also overplays, right? So like when we pistol was actually our main, our main five out motion. When my first year coaching, when I was coaching high school in Tucson, this was like five years ago. And the way, the way we ran it, it was like you were encouraged if you were the ball handler and you're bringing the ball up to dribble handoff with the guy out of the corner. If your man wasn't paying attention and the dude was locking and trailing, you could fake the handoff and just try to turn the corner and get all the way to the basket. And it's a five out concept. So the help defense might be looser. You might have an opportunity for a layup. Let's say they top lock. So the guy in the corner is overplaying the defensive guy in the corner is overplaying the offensive guy in the corner and forcing him to back cut. Well, there are reads there, right? Like especially out of zoom or Chicago. You throw the ball to the big, you go to set it, he's top blocking, he back cuts. Guys like Draymond have been killing teams with like passes in back cuts, out of overplays out of that sort of thing throughout their entire careers, right? So like, it's essentially just a three man action that flows into a dribble handoff with the guard out of the corner coming off of the big at the top of the key. And that, that Screen usually gets set a little bit further towards the sideline. The biggest usually starts at the top of the key, but he'll set it closer to the elbow, extended. And then there's a lot of room in the middle of the floor for that guy to attack downhill and just force the defense to react. Like what if the big stays home but the two helpers on the weak side step over? Well, that's a pitch out for three or an opportunity to drive a closeout, right? Chicago Zoom Pistol. It's one of my favorite early offense actions because it has really good natural flow to it, especially pistol. So like say you're playing pickup with your buddies or in your men's league. Such an easy action to run to, just get an easy advantage. Have your big run the floor to the top of the key. Have your point guard just run up the floor and dribble handoff to the guy in the corner and have him come off a ball screen. It is super easy. It has this very natural flow to it and you just play basketball off of it. He gets into the paint and the guy helps and you kick it to the wing. Once you have an advantage, once you have any advantage, there's no reason to run plays anymore. There's no reason to run a set. You just play basketball. The entire purpose of running a set is to either get a layup or to get a guy an open catch at the three point line with the defender sprinting out at him. Once you've done that, you've done the job. He chases him too hard off the line, he's going to drive. Now it's a five on four. You can wait for the defense to react. The key there is the spacing, right? So like once you get into the middle of the four, you can kind of imagine it, right? So like, let's say that I, I come off of that dribble handoff and I get into the middle of the floor and I swing to the left wing because I didn't have an opportunity to score. It's very important that I cycle back through to that strong side corner and the guy that was in the corner cycles up. You want to make sure you maintain your spacing within the action, otherwise guys can get in each other's way. But like, essentially you run action to get an advantage. And once you have an advantage, as long as your spacing is set up properly, you just play basketball. And so those are the two keys to running successful offense. It's action that generates advantage in spacing. Once you have your Advantage. If you have those two things figured out, it's your talent will show through as guys get those advantages and capitalize on them. Again, love that stuff. Anything like that. You guys are welcome to drop in the questions and we'll get into it. Hi Jason, Love your show. More of an operating business question. How substantial of a drop off do you see in views when the NBA is on versus when it's off? And how much do you try to include Steph, LeBron, Jokic, Lakers or Warriors when you're picking mailbag questions and just content in general? So we obviously do see a drop off in the summer. That's natural. Like it actually the, our numbers, our numbers are up year over year consistently thanks to you guys. You guys have done an amazing job supporting the show, but that's in like the big picture. It's not a linear growth like it always kind of looks like this. And there are several peaks and valleys throughout the season, right. So let's start with the summer. There's usually a peak during free agency and then there's a lull after free agency when things really slow down. Then there's a peak at the start of the season. Our numbers are usually really good in October, but then you get into November and December and things kind of like slow down a little bit. The NFL becomes a bigger part of of the deal. We did have a peak, another peak in December two years ago because of the in season tournament. And the Lakers are a massive brand. So we hit some really big numbers during that time. Bucks, Thunder, not as big a brands. We covered that game. But it, you know, obviously didn't hit the same quite a number. We had a little bit of a lull there. You get into trade deadline, huge peak, right? You get a peak because you have new players changing teams. And then for a few weeks after that, everyone's really curious about how the new teams look, right? But then once you get into late March, it slows down again because it's like, okay, now we're in the stretch run. A lot of the good teams are resting players. You know, there's tanking teams that are barely even playing their guys. Like there can be a little lull there. Then you get into the postseason and it peaks again, right? But like even within this year's postseason, there's like the market thing. When we got to the Final Four, we had three of the final Four markets were small markets. And so our numbers took a little bit of a dip across the board. When you get into those final two playoff rounds, right? So like, there's natural peaks and valleys that exist throughout the season based on the natural peaks of the season. But to me, the natural peaks are the trade, the free agency period in early July, the first month of the season, in October, the trade deadline in the NBA playoffs. Those are like the four peaks that we ride throughout the season as far as, like the strategy of including our big markets. I have like a very simple kind of ideology about this kind of thing. I want to cover the whole league, but I want to do it within reason because this is a business. So I'm not going to spend like an entire week covering the Hornets and the Pistons and a bunch of teams that are. Pistons are actually a bad example now because the Pistons are good, but years ago when the Pistons were bad, I'm not going to just sit there and cover a bunch of bad teams because that would be bad for the performance of the show. It'd be bad for the future of, of everything I'm trying to build here. Right. So like, my general ideology is I try to in every episode have at least one of our larger fan bases represented. We have several larger fan bases. The Celtics are a big one for us. The Mavericks Nuggets are like teams that make long playoff runs. Because we cover them so intensively during the playoffs, we tend to build a fan base there. Denver is one of our bigger fan bases. The Knicks are one of our bigger ones. We hit a bunch of big numbers with the Indiana Pacers last year. You have like your seven or eight, like bigger market slash, more engaged fan bases. And I always try to get at least one of those in a full episode and we're usually going to lead with it. That's the business. Right. I'm going to market the full episode around that. But we're always going to have three or four segments and in those segments behind, that's where we get into the rest of the league. And so one of the big things that I fought for in earlier this year and one of the things that Jackson's done an amazing job of, is if we cover a team in any way, shape or form with a full segment on the show, it's getting its own breakout clip and we're also sorting them by team. So if you go into our playlists, under playlists, there's a playlist for every single team in the NBA manifested there. So like, if you're a Bulls fan, you know, obviously the Bulls are a lower tier team in the Eastern Conference, so we're not going to cover them as often. But I usually cover them a few times a year, and when we do, it'll drop in the Chicago Bulls folder. If you are a Nuggets fan, we're going to hit you more often. If you go to the playlist and you click on Denver Nuggets. Every time I cover the Nuggets, there will be a video that is represented there. It's very important to me that the channel is organized in a way that, yeah, we're going to have our full episodes be branded, usually around one of our bigger markets or our bigger fan bases. Not necessarily even a big market. Some of our smaller markets have very engaged fan bases that we lean into. Right. I expect Victor Wembanyama and the spurs to be kind of one of those markets in the next couple of years. No one views San Antonio as a massive market, but there are a lot of spurs fans that are ravenous for spurs content. And so we're going to. That's going to be a fan base that we continue to build out. But for me, the cutoff is like, unserious teams. Like, we're going to hit the top 20, 23 teams in the league, the teams that are actually trying to win. But I'm not going to waste a bunch of time watching a ton of footage in the middle of the season on one of the bottom six or seven teams in the league, except for occasionally evaluating rookies. Right. Like, oh, this guy got drafted. Let's check in on Brandon Miller and see how he's doing, like, that kind of thing. But our general, our general layout is we're going to lead shows with bigger markets, bigger things, because that's just smart business. But we are going to cover the rest of the league diligently in subsequent segments. And, and I have fought for the way we build our production plan around you guys, making sure that you get a full breakout clip for every single team that I cover. So my, the thing that got frustrating for me in the past was, like, I hated it when, like, I would cover the Chicago bulls for like 11 minutes or I would cover the New Orleans Pelicans for 15 minutes, but it would be tucked at the end of a show and it wouldn't get marketed at all. Like, wouldn't be in the thumbnail and it wouldn't be in the title and we wouldn't have a breakout clip. And I'd be like, I just put in all that work covering that team and it's not actually showing up on the channel. We got to make sure that everyone can actually see this stuff and so we've been doing that. Jackson is like completely transformed the production flow of the show for the better. I'm sure you guys have noticed ever since Jackson came in in February, he's done an amazing job of just, of just bringing us to a more well rounded production approach that you guys will see. But yeah, essentially it's a business. You got to hit big markets, you got to hit big names. But I try to do it within the context of covering the league at large. And we primarily focus on the serious teams right in that like top 20, top 23, 24 teams depending on how many teams are tanking in any given season. This season in the Eastern Conference, once you get off that top, you know, six or seven teams, there's a lot of bad teams in the Eastern Conference and so that's going to be tricky this year and we'll see how it goes. But, but again, that, that's just kind of more or less a little look behind the curtain as to how we structure our production. All right, guys, that's all I have for today. I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us. I'm stoked that we made it through the player rankings list again this year. Thank you guys so much for your comments and for your support. We will have list week next week. I will see you guys then.
- [57:15]
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- [57:45]
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- [58:17]
Colin
Hi, it's Colin from the Colin Coward podcast. I've been around long enough to know quality when I see it, or in this case, when I taste it. Tito's handmade vodka. Good stuff. No flash, no gimmicks. Smooth, clean tasting. Made the right way. Tito's made in Austin, Texas. Real attention to detail. I like to keep it simple. Tito's Soda, one lime, lot of ice, refreshing, easy. Summer, winter, spring. Totally versatile. Always works. Listen, baseball season's here. The perfect time to kick back with some Tito's. It's what I pour. You should too. Distilled and bottled by 5th Generation Inc. Austin, Texas 40% alcohol by volume. Savor responsibly.
- [58:58]
Jason
For years everyone thought Verizon had the best network because they did. But now the best mobile network in the US is T Mobile. T Mobile's network has the most advanced 5G with more towers and their signal reaches further than ever. So you can text an insta talk and say, you won't believe where I am.
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Rob Gronkowski
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Jason
2025 CT mobile.com network this is an iHeart podcast.