Microsoft Representative (24:39)
Let's move on to Zachary Rosace in the Hawks. So he drops a career high 36 in a dominant victory over the Bucks. It's the third game this year. He scored over 30 points. Zach's played 27 consecutive games. In those games, he's averaging 15.2 points per game. He's shooting 52% from the field, 43% from three on over five attempts per game. He's showcasing a little bit more of a quick release against the Bucks. Hit a couple of no dip jumpers. Those are where the ball is already is caught in the pocket and you flow immediately into the shot instead of having to catch somewhere else and then dip down into your release and like kind of restart your chain of energy from the floor up to the top of the shot. He's showing a lot of really high level scoring. I want to talk about this concept for a minute because I think it's a really important part of team building moving forward in the NBA. Scoring is the ultimate complement to playmaking. I've been thinking a lot about this concept this season. When you have elite playmaking on your team, guys like Trey young, guys like LeBron, Luca, Nikola Jokic, these really, really high level passers, you need elite play finishing to pay those sequences off. Whether it's a vertical spacer like Aaron Gordon alongside Jokic, or Derek Lively alongside Luca, or Jackson Hayes alongside Luca, or deadly spot up guys, someone like Kyle quarterback with LeBron when he was at the Cavs, or Malik Beasley playing with Cade Cunningham, guys that can pay off these sequences from your playmakers. But one of the manifestations of that type of player that I've been talking a lot about this year, I've been referring to it as the weak side scoring forward. This is why I went into detail about the strong side corner help thing that we talked about earlier. This same concept is built into pick and roll coverages too. There's a reason why they don't offer low man help out of the strong side corner. They offer low man help out of the weak side corner. Why do they do that? So that for the same reason on an ISO drive, if a guy's getting downhill in a ball screen, the opening for him as a playmaker is across the court and across his body. That's the goal. You want to make it across the court and across the body, across as many help defenders as possible to make that pass difficult. Right? But that is ultimately the opening. And all of the best playmakers in the league consistently capitalize on those openings. We've talked about this concept a ton. Making reads in pick and roll. What are my reads? Big man steps up. I'm making a read based on the roll man or the weak side corner based on what the low man does. If the low man steps over, I'm skipping it. If the low man stays home, excuse me, I'm throwing the lob. If the big man drops back and the guard is chasing, my read is to shoot in the mid range. My read is to get as close to the basket for as high percentage of a shot as possible. Those are the pick and roll reads. And so when these teams, the majority of teams are bringing their big up to the level and bringing the low man over, that skip pass is open. And those skip passes are going to be made especially by Trey Young. In these sorts of situations, there's a bunch of different ways that you can look to score, right? It's not just hitting spot up threes, it's running your lane in transition as an athlete, it's driving closeouts, it's oh, they switched a screen or we ran in transition and got a cross match and now there's a guard on this forward. You need that forward to do a lot more of this high level scoring. These are professional scores, but primarily in an off ball context. Examples are like Michael Porter Jr. OG Anunoby, Rui Hachimura, DeAndre Hunter. Laurie Markkanen is kind of a high end version of that for the Jazz. Denny Avdia, even though he's been doing more on ball stuff as of late. Kyle Kuzma, PJ Washington this is becoming an extremely important archetype in the NBA. Zachary Rizachet has been doing some of the best weak side scoring work you'll see out of a rookie forward starts in transition. I was watching the Rockets Hawks game from about a week ago. You can find them on my Twitter feed. I shared some clips, but Zachary Rich Ashe was amazing in transition in that game. Just literally outrunning everybody up the floor. Didn't matter if he the rebound was captured and he was on the baseline, he was sprinting and it was so visually jarring that I clipped these examples and I put them on my Twitter feed for you guys to see. Watch these three clips. Watch the way Zachary Ricochet runs. Watch when he gets his head of steam, how it literally looks like he's moving a different speed than everyone else on the floor. He's a gazelle. It's crazy. And he'll get two or three wide open attempts at the rim every game just by running the floor. And that pairs perfectly with Trey Young, who's one of the best hit ahead passers in the league. I had a coach my last year in college at Arizona Christian University shout out to Jeff Rutter. They just won their conference tournament on a buzzer beater, crazy buzzer beater and. And then they made it to the Final Four before losing in the NAI NAIA tournament. But he used to say to all of us that you can manufacture 12 points a game just by getting a transition layup, running the floor, crashing the offensive glass and getting to the foul line once per half. Such a simple way to produce in a basketball game. And even if you take the foul line part out because obviously there's some out of your control stuff there with the whistle, if you just crash the offensive glass and you just run your lane in transition and you get one bucket a half each, that's eight points right there. You're one bucket away from double figures. It is such a simple way to produce in a basketball game. Run every time, crash every, every time. And he presents such a massive passing target for Trey because he's so athletic, so rangy and long. He caught a behind the back lob from Trey in the Bucs game where he dunked it behind his head because it's just a massive passing target. Then in the half court, as we talked about, when they load up the strong side in those skips, it's just like king of the court. When you're playing with your buddies on short closeouts, you need to knock down threes. He's starting to do that at a really high level. In this 27 game span, he's at 43% on over five attempts per game. Now what's going to start happening if he can maintain that level of shooting for a substantial amount of time, he's going to start getting chased off the line. And that's where I think he has a ton of potential as a score. He has downhill burst, attacking closeouts. He had a dunk against Shangun in the Rockets game where he drove a closeout off the left wing and just hammered it with his left hand on Sengun's face. A wildly athletic play. He has good footwork on like spins and Euros. He had a bucket against the Nets, driving a closeout against Nick Claxton in the left corner. He jabbed, got back to it deep in the corner with a hesitation dribble, crossed back over, got into the lane, pump, faked, pivoted over his right shoulder on his step through for a left handed finish. That's a really high level scoring move. He had one on Harden off the left wing, jabbed left, drove right, snatched back to the left, drove high, gather through Zubac and finished at the basket. These are really high Level scoring moves, attacking with an advantage in those king of the court situations. He had a left to right Euro against Zubac a couple weeks ago where he drove out of the corner like left to right Euro is one of the most complex footwork pieces you'll see for a right handed player. Most guys don't know how to do it and he still has a ton of growth in front of him. Shooting hot for a couple of months is not the same as being an elite shooter. We've all seen it. This guy's shooting 43% from 3 over his last whatever games. You got to do it for a long stretch of time before teams game plan for you in that way that, that that will take a few years probably but that will be what truly unlocks is off the dribble game because I don't think like as good as he is in the open court as an athlete, he's. His start stop quickness isn't quite as impressive as his athleticism in the open court which is going to make it so it's a little harder for him to beat people off the dribble unless his jumper comes around which again will take some time. But that's part of his development. He still needs a lot of improvement on the defensive end too. His athleticism has not translated yet as like a really high level off ball defender. He's often a bit behind the play on his help rotations which prevents him from having an impact. That's about processing speed, that's about learning, like learning the actions so well that you know what's going to happen as it's developing so that you can be there a step earlier. And again as we talked about, his start stop quickness isn't as good. That's why that processing speed is going to be so important for him because he's going to need to be there sooner in terms of the way he's reading these plays. But the bottom line is he's a rookie that projects to be one of the best people at his particular job in the NBA, which is being that weak side scoring forward which is very exciting for Hawks fans. I think it might officially be over for the Suns. They got absolutely smacked by the Rockets last night. Shangoon was cooking all their bigs again. Jalen Green poured in another 33 points. Ime Udoka in the second quarter brought out that zone defense that they that he's been using a bunch for the last month or so and they immediately sparked a massive run in that second quarter and they never looked back it was a complete and total physical domination by Houston. They out rebounded them by six. They forced 19 turnovers. They scored 34 points off of those turnovers. They won the fast break points battle 32 to 8. Houston scored 40 points in transition in total in this game. But I want to focus on Phoenix here for a second because we're going to hit Houston in tonight's show as they play the Lakers again. We're going live on YouTube tonight after the TNT slate. What did I say about Phoenix a month ago? I said they struck me as the stereotypical older veteran team that knows deep down that they don't really have a chance to win anything this year. And the way that that's going to manifest is in these short week or two long bursts where they compete and they look deep, they look decent, they defend, they rebound, they do their jobs, but that they inevitably let go of the rope because they can't sustain it, because they don't believe. And that's exactly what just happened. They won five out of six some quality wins versus the Cavs and the Bucks. They were defending and rebounding top 10 in both. I think they might have been top five in both over that span, but the NBA schedule does not let up. Boston came to town without Tatum and kicked their ass. Then it was Minnesota, then it was Houston. A couple of these big, strong, athletic teams that were going to truly test Phoenix's commitment to the work. And instead of hanging onto the rope, they just completely let go of it. 137.4 defensive rating in the last three games, they gave up an offensive rebound on 35% of opponents misses. That's damagingly bad. And now KD has an ankle sprain, Anthony Davis is back and the Mavs are climbing in the standings. We talked before the year that there was going to be a team that had dead serious championship aspirations, but that would miss the playoffs entirely. And no matter who that would be, it would be a catastrophe. And it looks like it's going to be the Suns. I keep watching them and thinking that it's not a Kevin Durant and Devin Booker problem, but at the same time I do think it's worth mentioning that neither of those two guys can really leverage their physical gifts on the game. KD has length and he has mobility. That helps him on defense, but he carries a massive offensive load, so he can't devote too many resources to that end. And he's not very strong. He can be pushed around, which is very, very dangerous quality for a frontcourt player. Defensively, on the glass, duck ins things along those lines. It's tough to do that job outside of like rangy rotating and and rim contests there. There's just a limitation when you can't win the ground battle. And again, it's just one of those things where you watch these other teams. It's like watching Houston. Jalen Green can leverage his athleticism to get to spots. Sengun is bullying these dudes. When you watch these teams that have these players where it's like I can inflict myself physically on the game to assist my team in these key areas that they need help. Devin Booker and KD are not necessarily as capable. This is why, like, I still believe it's worth exploring the idea of keeping those two. They still give you such a high offensive floor in terms of shot quality. I would still just look to find every discount bruiser I can find at every position group and try to breed that culture around them. Because regardless of what direction you go this summer, even if you do choose to get rid of Kevin Durant or Devin Booker or both, you still need an organizational identity. I talked about this concept after the Celtics win against the Suns last week. I talked about it with Colin Coward last night on his show. You need an organizational identity that is separate from your stars. And so regardless of what direction you go, you need to begin the process of establishing that new owner, new coach. You need to start establishing a basketball culture. This season was a massive step back. And so that's the thing, like, unless you think there's some magical trade that's going to just solve all your problems, which I don't think there is, you need to begin the process of changing that culture anyway. And so from that standpoint, if you tweak things enough around those two, that's where Kevin Durant, Devin Booker's upside can actually start to lift you to where you want to go. But this is the team that is completely let go of the rope. And I think I, I would be stunned at this point if we got to see them play meaningful basketball here in a couple of weeks. All right, guys, that is all I have for today is, or I should say for this morning. We'll be back tonight live on TN or live on YouTube after the TNT games. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me supporting the show, and I will see you later tonight. 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.
