Reflecting on 25 Years of NBA Evolution With Ben Taylor

Summary

The Ringer NBA Show — "Reflecting on 25 Years of NBA Evolution With Ben Taylor"

Date: September 5, 2025
Host: J. Kyle Mann
Guest: Ben Taylor (Thinking Basketball)

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Overview

In this rich, hour-plus episode, J. Kyle Mann joins Ben Taylor of Thinking Basketball to take stock of the past 25 years of NBA basketball in honor of the 25th anniversary of the 21st century. Their winding, detailed conversation explores player evaluation, shifts in offensive and defensive strategy, and the league’s constant adaptation and innovation—framing the evolution through both statistical rigor and creative theorizing. It’s a broad, big-picture meditation on what basketball has become, what we sometimes miss in evaluating greatness, and how the NBA’s future might be shaped.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Making of a 25-Year Retrospective

• Series Motivation: Ben and his Thinking Basketball team created a 25-year retrospective to celebrate the NBA’s evolution and to challenge themselves to discuss concepts as much as players ([05:00-06:00]).
  • Quote: “The real conceit, once we start doing a project like this, Kyle, is to use the players as a vehicle to discuss concepts, to discuss changes in the game and value relative to your era... that go beyond just the classic box score or some narrative about rings…” — Ben Taylor [05:09]

2. Challenges in Player Evaluation Across Eras

• Volume of Talent: Ben describes being overwhelmed by the sheer number of great players deserving discussion—even after initially envisioning the series as a way to surface the underappreciated (e.g., Kyle Lowry, Al Horford) ([06:00]).
  • “I think I texted Cody... We have 38 players to discuss. What.” — Ben Taylor [06:45]
• Shifting Metrics: Ben emphasizes the inadequacy of box score stats alone and the need to assess impact—like how a player’s presence affects team shot profiles, turnovers, and true team offense ([07:26-09:35]).
  • “We're stuck in the classic box score. And I'm trying to get us beyond the classic box score at all times.” — Ben Taylor [07:33]

3. Player Superpowers: Simple or Synergistic?

• On Jason Kidd and Multi-Skill Impact: The conversation uses Jason Kidd as a lens to rethink “superpowers”—not as single skills, but intersections of abilities like court mapping, speed, hand-eye coordination ([11:49–14:10]).
  • “With these great players... it’s often the intersection... balance, speed, size, power, skill, vision, shooting, movement, whatever it is that unlocks something. And this honestly is like, to me, the most interesting part about basketball…” — Ben Taylor [12:15]

4. Historical Player Types, Archetypes, and Modern NBA Comparisons

• Kidd Comparisons: Where would a young Jason Kidd fit now? Ben and Kyle weigh whether he'd be more like Draymond Green or a “supercharged Alex Caruso,” noting how certain archetypes (defensive, unselfish non-shooting point guards) are nearly extinct in today’s league ([15:48-19:51]).
  • Quote: “Kid came into the league as a offensive first guy who had these incredible defensive skills... What does it mean for like being a guard in today's game?... Cody on the episode said he's gone by the way of the dinosaur, this archetype...” — Ben Taylor [18:16]

5. The Limits of Statistical Argument: James Harden, Tracy McGrady & the Playoffs

• Why Fans Fixate on Box Scores and Regular Season Stats: Ben dissects ongoing fan pushback to their Harden takes and clarifies the thinking: regular season efficiency doesn’t always translate, and context, especially playoff adjustments, matters ([21:01-29:26]).
  • “In the case of Harden, the biggest single thing is the difference between the regular season and the playoffs. And I don't know why at this point there's resistance to that...” — Ben Taylor [23:20]
• On McGrady: Many fans are baffled by TMAC’s inclusion in the top-25, but Ben stresses his underrated team impact, even if his individual efficiency dipped. He expands on how old rules/spacing limited rim finishing compared to today’s game ([29:34-33:53]).
  • “I was kind of stunned that there are people who think Tracy McGrady is very good. I think he's been subsumed by some of... this efficiency mindset where you focus heavily on the player's individual true shooting percentage.” — Ben Taylor [29:45]
  • “One of the most fun things about rewatching games... is sort of the very gray, ambiguous bridging of the gather step and how big of a deal that actually is for on ball finishing skills.” — Ben Taylor [31:58]

6. Evolutionary Leaps: Analytics, Defense, and the Arms Race

• Coaching Interventions: Ben highlights the 08 Celtics (Thibodeau's influence) as an example where defense briefly got ahead in the tactical war: overloading the strong side, pushing ball to the sideline ([34:52-37:25]).
  • “They just did it all the time... and they had it totally dialed in. And then they paired that with coverages that became commonplace for defending the screen.” — Ben Taylor [36:03]
• Shooting and Spacing: They reminisce about resistance to shooting’s value and how old head skepticism feels anachronistic now ([38:03-40:26]).
  • “Back in the day, it was so hard for me to sell people on how valuable shooting was... and now, I mean... the 93 Suns team made over a thousand threes. They might have been the first team in NBA history to make over a thousand threes.” — Ben Taylor [38:05]

7. Modern Offensive Innovations: Memphis, Cleveland, and Indiana’s Movement Revolution

• Memphis’s Spacing and Movement: Diving into novel player development, Memphis’s radical spacing and off-ball movement (pioneered by Noah LaRoche) is described as a possible “shell of something bigger” ([43:38-49:17]).
  • “They're creating a ton of space to essentially allow players to isolate more... Memphis kind of zigged when everyone was zagging...” — Ben Taylor [44:09]
• Applicability and Sustainability: Ben believes such approaches, especially off-ball movement and dynamic help manipulation, will become a staple, but all-in philosophies are rarely sustainable ([49:17–52:22]).
  • “Going all the way in the other direction all the time, the way Memphis essentially did, might not be viable because... you become predictable... But if you use it a little bit here and there, that's when I think we're going to see something that will stick going forward.” — Ben Taylor [49:44]

8. The Pacers’ “Point-Five” Offense and the Future of Primaries

• Indiana’s Randomness and Pace: Their offense is lauded as ahead of its time for its randomness, high tempo, and 0.5-second-decision mentality with Halliburton at the core. The way their movement stretches defenses horizontally—creating micro-advantages—gets highlighted as a frontier ([52:22–57:45]).
  • “It's like air traffic control. They're just running guys back and forth across there and playing horizontally.” — Ben Taylor [55:25]
• Comparing OKC and the Pacers’ Approaches: Ben points out that an offense adapts to personnel; not every “star” (e.g., SGA, Paolo, Tatum) can be a 0.5 mover, but teams with the right mix could unlock higher levels of efficiency ([59:58–63:07]).
  • “Offenses are built around the ingredients that you have... You can't cook a fish stew if someone brings home beef.” — Ben Taylor [60:21]

9. The League’s Cultural and Tactical Direction

• Kobe’s Lingering Impact: They discuss how the meta-narrative and cultural impact, especially of Kobe Bryant, still shapes play and player archetypes, even if the roadmap for NBA success now favors quicker offense and higher efficiency ([64:36-66:41]).
  • “But the thing with Kobe specifically is, I mean, he left the game right at the precipice of the most radical change we've seen since at least the shot clock...” — Ben Taylor [65:54]

10. Projecting the Next 20 Years in NBA Defense

• Hybrid Defenses and Psychological Trickery: Looking forward, Ben predicts the rise of hybrid defenses (man/zone) and disguised coverages, akin to football's evolution, as the next tactical leap ([68:42-71:55]).
  • “My guess is we're going to see more hybrid zone-man kind of stuff... And I also think the other thing that's coming... is what I’ll describe as disguised coverages. So in football... you want to disguise what you're doing... That element of psychological confusion... has not been tapped into with defenses...” — Ben Taylor [69:52–71:55]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On New Ways to Be Great:
  “...to be a good outside player, you have to be like Michael Jordan or David Thompson. No, you could do it. There's just so many different ways to be great.” — Ben Taylor [13:03]

• On Harden’s Playoff Gap:
  “If we were talking regular season only, I think he is one of the great regular season offensive players of the century.” — Ben Taylor [24:33]

• On the 0.5 Offense Ideal:
  “When you're connected to the whole system like that, having a guy at the centralized... [who can create] the start of a smaller advantage that could cascade into a bigger advantage... at incredible pace...” — Ben Taylor [55:41]

• On Defensive Innovation:
  “The other thing that's coming 20 years in the future is what I’ll just describe as disguised coverages... That element of psychological confusion... I would expect to see that in a cutting edge defense in 15 or 20 years.” — Ben Taylor [70:36]

• On Superpowers as Synergy:
  “So the classic example is when people say Steph Curry is the greatest shooter ever. And it’s like you’re missing everything if you think that summarizes Steph Curry...” — Ben Taylor [12:05]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Introduction and Purpose of Series: [00:53–06:45]
• Evaluating Greatness: Beyond Box Score: [06:45–09:43]
• Jason Kidd in Modern Terms; Player “Superpowers”: [09:43–14:52]
• Hand Tracking, Film Study, Data Evolution: [14:52–15:48]
• Kidd, Caruso, Draymond Archetypes: [15:48–19:51]
• Harden’s Place, Playoff Gaps, Stat Traps: [21:01–29:26]
• McGrady’s (Re)valuation, Finishing & the Gather Step: [29:26–33:53]
• Coaching Edge—08 Celtics, Overloads, Defense-Arms Race: [34:52–40:26]
• Present-Future Offense: Memphis, Movement, Space: [43:38–52:22]
• Pacers’ 0.5 Offense, Halliburton, and Off-Ball Theories: [52:22–59:58]
• OKC, Magic, Tatum: Primaries and Team Style Fit: [59:58–64:45]
• Kobe’s Cultural Legacy, Styles Across Eras: [64:36–66:41]
• NBA’s Defensive Future: Hybrids, Trickery, and Tech: [68:42–71:55]

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Tone and Style

Ben Taylor and J. Kyle Mann keep the conversation lively but always grounded in curiosity and humility, frequently poking fun at their own “nerdiness,” and openly noting the subjectivity and contextuality of player evaluation. There’s a recurring willingness to question conventional wisdom, to admit uncertainty, and to balance reverence for past greatness with a call for deeper, broader thinking—anchored by memorable lines, inside jokes, and concrete, vivid basketball examples.

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For More:

• Check out Ben Taylor’s “21st Century Peaks” playlist and podcast series for deep dives on individual players and themes
• Watch for the upcoming watch-along with Steve Nash on the Thinking Basketball channel

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Transcript

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[Kyle Mann]

How y' all doing? What's crackalackin? My name is J. Kyle Mann and this is the Ringer NBA show. We're coming to you with another off season season episode. As the sand in the off season hourglass slowly trickles down and disappears, basketball's no longer in the rear view. It's on the horizon, but it's blurry. It's not quite here yet. So that means that we have some time to do one of my favorite things, which is to ponder the higher mysteries, to put on the maester robe here. Not that I'm qualified to do it, but this guy is the guy who's on the other end of the line, one of my favorite people to talk about the higher mysteries and just not whatever it is, doesn't matter. He's the author of the book Thinking Basketball. He's the founder of the YouTube channel Thinking Basketball. He's the host of the very successful, very fun podcast called Thinking Basketball. It's been Taylor. Good to see you, Ben.

[Ben Taylor]

Kyle, did you write that or did you just come up with that off the top of the dome?

[Kyle Mann]

Improvised it, man. I'm just. You bring out the passion for the art, the craft in me, Ben. And I just got excited and that was amazing.

[Ben Taylor]

Also probably the most formal exchange we've ever had in the six or seven years we've been podcasting together. That was. I'm like, man, should I just get really like, like clean with my presentation today? I don't know. Maybe you've set the tone.

[Kyle Mann]

I wanted to give you your proper respect. I did have your credits written out here, so I kind of, I teed myself up on that. But like, I even needed to write your credits down now. I was thinking about it's funny that it's funny for me to go from. I remember when you made your first video because I noticed it. I was so face close to the canvas on YouTube that I knew what everybody was doing at every moment, you know, when you're locked in. And I was like, what is going on here? And I saw it, I was like, oh, this is.

[Ben Taylor]

Wow, who is this?

[Kyle Mann]

And we've gone from there to the other day. I called Ben and it went straight to voicemail. It did one of those, like, you know, the person did it. I was like, what the hell is this? And then Ben calls me back and goes, sorry, I was talking to Steve Nash.

[Ben Taylor]

Come on. That just is a thing that happens sometimes.

[Kyle Mann]

And I love it.

[Ben Taylor]

Like, let's talk basketball. You're making, you're. You're embarrassing me.

[Kyle Mann]

Well, I just love that in this, I like, you know, you get to like meet people and you get to be in proximity to people and players. At times you're like, oh, okay, Steve Nash still elicits that response for me. I got really excited, so very excited about what you have coming with him. Don't want to spoil it. I brought Ben on because I want to talk, like, big picture, where the league is going, where we've come from. These are always the kind of things that we gravitate towards. But I want to start here with. You've been working on a series series with your co host, Cody. Great team of people over there at thinking basketball. Mike de la Rosa, apparently a ball himself, but you've been doing a really cool. Mike's apparently really good.

[Ben Taylor]

Have you heard Mike has Instagram highlight reels where he cooks people? If you haven't seen them, they exist. Yes.

[Kyle Mann]

I don't want to be a part of that, so. But anyway, I'll pass to him.

[Ben Taylor]

I am unequivocally the worst player at this point in time on the thinking basketball team. There's any debate about that.

[Kyle Mann]

Yeah, we'll have to get you guys a drew league team just to see how that goes. But explain what you guys have been doing over there on your. On the series that you've been doing.

[Ben Taylor]

Well, we noticed at some point that it was the, you know, 25th year of the century and you know, people like to celebrate random round number years where they do historical retrospectives and create arbitrary content around it. So instead of the, you know, we've done the greatest careers and the greatest peaks and post merger stuff and going back in time and honestly, when we came up with the idea, I don't Think we realized how much basketball has been played this century in the 25 years. I think both Cody and I thought, well, this will be our chance to talk about the lesser discussed players, the Kyle Lowry's of the world, Al Horford, the players that didn't quite get the shine at the MVP level discussion. And we just started doing the project and we were like, no, no, no, no, this is, this is all wrong. There are so many good players this century that people are going to be mad when we list the first player. And they're going to be like, what do you mean he's 25th? What do you mean there's 25 players better than this guy in the century. So the, the real conceit, once we start doing a project like this, Kyle, is to use the players as a vehicle to discuss concepts, to discuss changes in the game and value relative to your era and the things that are happening in a conceptual sense that go beyond just the classic box score or some narrative about rings or, you know, this guy never get out of the first round or something like that. So honestly, at this point, I don't like ranking players at all. But the vehicle to get into the discussion is where the value is and where the meat is.

[Kyle Mann]

Yeah, you said, I mean, I'm kind of amused that you, you saw that there was 25 years of basketball, but you still didn't seem to you, you still were unable to wrap your mind around about how much was it just that. How did. Just talk me through how that happened? I mean, where was the point where you were like, I went in looking for this thing and then this other thing presented itself to me. I mean, is it just you, you just felt like you'd overlooked a lot of players?

[Ben Taylor]

No, no, no. Cody wanted to do it. And I said, okay. You know, I was in full off season mode and I said, okay, I'll start doing something and watching historical games or whatever. And then I said, that's a fun idea. We actually have some other ideas for sort of celebrating the 25th anniversary of the century. And we're just not going to get to too many of them because we just became completely entrenched in this series. And that moment you're asking for is like when I went to start sketching out, just not even any deep dive, just like on my phone, like, okay, I know these 10 guys off the top. Oh, don't forget about those five guys. Wait. Oh, no. He. He was in the 21st century too. Then I was like, oh, my God, I think I texted Cody And I was like, we have 38 players to discuss.

[Kyle Mann]

Yeah.

[Ben Taylor]

What.

[Kyle Mann]

I mean, aside from the obvious, I think the, the, the place that people go, I mean, maybe the biggest. And then this will sort of bridge into some of the other conversations that we're going to have about where the NBA has come and where, where it's going. I mean, what. Was there any kind of phenomenon that. Or trend that you feel like maybe you didn't index correctly for going into it and you have like recalibrated or reappreciated because you're going all the way back to 2000. It was a very, very different landscape. What, what kind of lessons are. How, how have you sort of felt yourself get remolded in the way that you're looking at those, those concepts that were going on now as they apply to winning?

[Ben Taylor]

Well, one of the themes of the series that we keep coming back to is sort of the different ways players impact offense when they're on the court. And so kind of like the effect you might have on your team's turnovers. As an example, if you have the ball a lot, you make a ton of decisions, you kind of offload a lot of those responsibilities in many cases. And so what you'll see is, you'll see in the classic box score, which we're stuck, Kyle. We're stuck in the classic box score. And I'm trying to get us beyond the classic box score at all times. You'll go check the box score and you'll be like, you mentioned Steve Nash. You'll be like, that's Steve Nash. He committed a lot of turnovers. But then when you look at what happens when his. When Steve Nash goes to the bench, his teammates commit more turnovers because he's not out there to take up all of those hard decisions and pressure the defense in a much more effective way, where at like the end of the play, you're not committing a turnover, you're getting a good shot. Right. So we've done that with so many different things, but I think the big ones for me are not just turnovers, but looking at pressure at the rim and what happens to a team's shot profile at the basket when a player is on versus off the floor. And then even the three point line or outside shots, these are kind of like the big, big areas. And I think what has helped me in terms of ERA stuff or something that's a little new or clearer, I got a little more clarity, is going, all right. I know the game changed a lot between 2005 and 2015 and 2025. But if you're a player and you go out on the court and you're constantly having this signal where you're like, team shot quality is spiking. That's timeless. That's literally the thing we're after when we talk about how good a basketball player is. And so traditionally we're wired to be like, ah, he scored 30 on, you know, 60% true shooting and he had five. The one we used in one of the episodes is like DeMar DeRozan. He's like 26.6 rebounds, 6 assists. But that's so different than Steph Curry's 26.6 rebound, 6 assists. And the only way you can really understand how different it is is to look at the whole team when they're on the court, look at the whole team when they're off the court and look at these sub factors of how an offense attacks the defense.

[Kyle Mann]

I was really struck by your. Your episode where you were talking about Jason Kidd, because Jason Kidd, I feel like is time comes for us all, obviously, and I feel like time has come for his. The rhetoric around his career in an interesting way where I think, you know, as the league pass accessibility sort of skyrocketed, was distinct, distinctly in his, like, he's. He was a micro fracture guy, right? I mean, I feel like that was sort of the. That was sort of the Mason Dixon line in his career, if I'm not mistaken, where he just kind of became a different player. Granted, he started to shoot the ball a little better there at the end. Like, but you all talking about him, his willingness to take shots and just what he played like and what his superpowers were. That one thing I wanted to add on was every episode you all do a thing where you say, like, what's this guy's superpower? I kind of come at it where I almost feel like the convergence of two things is. Is a player superpower at times. Like, I mean, you all will talk about like a player is like Shay, you all were talking about, that was his balance, was his superpower. Whatever it is, like for Jason Kidd, I feel like, you know, we talk about court mapping. Just overall you all, you all brought up that. I think it was like a Nike. It was like that Nike Zoom commercial. Whatever it was, where he is the eyes in the back of his head and whatever it is, I feel like kid's combination of court mapping and the accuracy of his hands, like his not even with the shooting for a lot of guys, when you Talk about hand eye coordination. I feel like you end up talking about tough shot making or movement shooting or things like that. Skills that are put to the test by speed and things like that. But I feel like Kidd in particular, we were joking about his assist. His. He has this kind of. I told you, I thought he was gonna. He would be like a supercharged Alex Caruso if he played today. I'll throw that to you in a second for your comment. But I feel like that convergence to me is his superpower. I don't always necessarily put it on one trait rather than just an interesting convergence of two things.

[Ben Taylor]

I'm glad you brought this up because I think we realized each episode as we kept trying to think of superpowers, that we started to almost change our idea of what had to be a superpower. And at a certain point I was like, the key thing that makes these players so great. And when we say they have an outlying skill, it's really what you're talking about. It's the convergence of things. So the classic example is when people say Steph Curry is the greatest shooter ever. And it's like you're missing everything if you think that summarizes Steph Curry, because it's the combination of that with his movement and his ball handling and et cetera, et cetera. And that applies in so many ways, right? So kid can have eyes in the back of his head, but you have to combine that with something else. And in his case, it's probably speed at his size. And, you know, so it's usually when we get to superpowers, it's usually multiple traits with these great players when we get to this level. And to your point, it's often the intersection. It's often the combination of balance, speed, size, power, skill, vision, shooting, movement, whatever it is that unlocks something. And this honestly is like, to me, the most interesting part about basketball, maybe full stop, is all the different ways that you can do it. There's an expression, all the different ways to skin the cat, but Cody has banned me from saying that.

[Kyle Mann]

Is he a cat guy? Is that why he.

[Ben Taylor]

No, he's just become a feline advocate or something. And I don't blame him. It's a very old violent expression. But there's. There's so many different ways to do it. To the point where if you were to ask me, like, about the future of basketball, I mean, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, some of the shooting stuff was in this sense, lower hanging fruit. It was right there to be taken. And I wrote about it in Thinking Basketball, the book a very long time ago. But we, you and I couldn't necessarily predict the next new way to be awesome because there is really no constraint on that. It could be something that we've just never thought of. And I feel like this is part of what pushes basketball forward. Like, this guy's a great post player, okay? So therefore the next great post player in the 60s or 70s has to do it the same way. No, he doesn't even have to be a post player. Okay? So to be a good outside player, you have to be like Michael Jordan or David Thompson. No, you could do it. There's just so many different ways to be great. And this is where that the kid, you know, starting with kid, he's one of the players that I was higher on through this pass. Getting a better lens, getting more data. We have more data than ever, Kyle. More technology than ever. I've been doing this for years. I have more tools than ever. More video tools, more access to coaches, more access to players. And you go through something like this and you're like, man, yeah, Jason Kidd couldn't shoot very well. So he may have been one of the least efficient shooters on his team, but, man, when he's on the floor, everyone else shoots really well. And that's the dynamic we want to get after ultimately, when we talk about, like what's driving offense, and that's a totally different way to drive offense than Shaq or Steph Curry or LeBron James.

[Kyle Mann]

Are you hand tracking anything when you're going back? I know you're a big hand tracking guy with analytics and, you know, obviously they're not available to us past a certain. I guess 2014 is sort of the advent of tracking data or this second spectrum tracking data. Synergy has some back all the way to 2005, I think.

[Ben Taylor]

2005, yep.

[Kyle Mann]

And then. But it's spotty. I mean, a lot of times you'll. It's because it hadn't been fully embraced yet. How much hand tracking are you going on doing when you're. When you're watching some of these old games?

[Ben Taylor]

I used to always hand. I used to always hand track. So I still have my old notebook of hand tracking that I sometimes cross reference. But for this particular series we're doing, it's no hand tracking. It's taking all the technology we have. And like you said, synergy goes back almost to the beginning of the century. We have play by play data that goes back back into the 90s. We've got cameras back to 2014. So it's just taking a lot of new information and synthesizing it.

[Kyle Mann]

Yeah. One of my favorite things I was teasing Ben about this was you guys get into these nerdy laughing lathers sometimes about certain things, and they'd be like, they just get really wound up. And I found myself laughing as I was walking my dog, listening. But one thing that you all talked, I think I mentioned how I thought that, like, supercharged Caruso. I, I, I just think in the finals in particular, I mean, there was one stretch of. I forget which game it was. It might have been game five at. Was it game five in Indy? I'm, I'm blanking on it. But there was a game where Caruso basically shut down the middle third of the floor like a, like he was like Ed Reed basically. They, they couldn't do anything. He was obviously playing like, highly, highly physically, I kind of feel like Kidd in particular. I'm not trying to make this specifically exclusively about Kidd, but for the young people who listen to this show, I think you should probably go and educate yourself on younger Jason Kidd because he was such an interesting player. But I felt like he would land somewhere between a Caruso type, probably a better scorer, three point efficiency and effectiveness might change who he is in today's game and on a spectrum in between that and a guy that, when you all alluded to it on the show, I said as I was walking my dog, maybe somebod overheard me randomly say Draymond Green really loud to myself in headphones, but I knew you were going to say that because that's kind of, that's kind of where, where my mind is. Do you think that's insane, that spectrum I laid out there or what do you think?

[Ben Taylor]

No, I think we, we have to be careful not to minimize Kidd's offense for, for younger viewers that aren't sort of familiar with him relative to someone like Caruso and the way Caruso plays today. Kidd came into the league as a offensive first guy who had these incredible defensive skills that were just kind of there that I don't know how much they were talked about in the 90s when he was coming up and was really, really big in Cal, but left early. And I think when you play on the west coast, sometimes you don't get the, you don't get the East Coast Media.

[Kyle Mann]

3, 3.8 steals his freshman year, 3.1 his second year. Imagine I was talking about convergences, though. I mean, like, that's why I think when I looked at Caruso's college stats, they have an interesting sort of parallel. He had really high assist numbers and really high steel numbers. And it's just, you know, producing stewarding offense and also stewarding it away from the, from the, from the, the, you know, on the defensive end.

[Ben Taylor]

Well, I think the interesting thing what makes, what makes Draymond so unique is that he is so great defensively. So when you kind of use him as a de facto point guard or a playmaker, or you run sets where he's initiating not to score necessarily, but to feed the offense and make a decision, you come back on the other end, you just get like one of the best defenders ever. Kid's a great defender, but you can't do that with a quote unquote center. You can't play Kid at quote unquote center in your lineup. Probably. I think. So what does that mean for like being a guard in today's game? How many guards can come into today's game and not be primary scoring threats, not have good pull up shooting, not have. I mean, we talked about it. He was actually a slightly better outside shooter than I think people realize because of his nickname. But what does it mean? I mean, just what does it mean if you have a prospect coming in now and you, you think about this throughout the year and you can go under his high, high ball screen and there isn't a real threat. The defense is going to be happy if you start launching pull up threes because he doesn't shoot them at 34 to 37%. I think this is a, this is. Cody on the episode said he's gone by the way of the dinosaur, this archetype, probably because of this kind of stuff. So that's probably the big question. And when you try to connect that to Caruso. Caruso is a pretty good connective tissue passer and that kind of player. But I mean, just as you said, he's on one end of the spectrum because he doesn't, he doesn't provide a lot of pressure on the ball offensively when he has it initiating offense.

[Kyle Mann]

Well, yeah, Draymond, same kind of thing. Unless Draymond's doing the Magic Johnson thing, he can do some live ball kind of manipulation, but so much of it is like, you know, going take, taking this energy here and rerouting it here at a high level. Right. And Kid did have a lot of that transition stuff. I mean, you think about somebody like a Josh Giddy, granted. Josh Giddy, I'm trying to think about it, but he's not the defender that Kid was. Lonzo has had. Lonzo has had.

[Ben Taylor]

He's the closest. Yeah.

[Kyle Mann]

Yeah. I mean, I think Lonzo's the. And a lot of that was said around the draft, around the time. I've always really liked Lonzo's game for that reason. And, you know, I. I guess just in today's game, those guys shift a little bit more from the. There is room and tolerance for them to be the. To be the. As Cody was saying, like the arch. The archetypical. Archetypical in the way that they. They would be a primary today. That. That archetype is. It's still out there. It's just repurposed a little bit, is who's. Who has gotten the most, who's incited the most rage. I know we all. You always. You're always at war with the real Hooper crowd, and I'm always just sit. Either laughing or just patting you on the back and saying it's okay. Or who have you been warring the most with?

[Ben Taylor]

I think there's a group of people that have lost their mind about our assessment of James Harden.

[Kyle Mann]

How. How in 2025 could that be true? The data is.

[Ben Taylor]

I don't know. I don't know. Yeah.

[Kyle Mann]

What do you think? What do you think in particular gets misunderstood about him while we're on this peak thing?

[Ben Taylor]

Yeah, I shouldn't say I don't know. I mean, it's clearly because he puts up a lot of points and assists and it's. It used to be we used to have sort of a telescoping, I think, as a community on the slash line in the box score. So that 255 thing. Right. Like, that's how we would describe players and reduce everything they did down on the court to their individual, quote, unquote production line. I think the next stage of evolution for that, which has sort of become a trap to get stuck in if you're a quote unquote, stats driven kind of analytical fan or analyst is. Okay, well, let me look at something a little more polished like his scoring rates and his efficiency, his true shooting percentage. I'll take into account his threes and his twos, and James Harden gets to the free throw line a lot. Then the other thing that's paired commonly with this is the team's offensive ratings. So, okay, so I look at the Rockets and they have good offensive ratings. And it's like James Harden's doing everything because he has like 30 points and 10 assists and good offensive ratings. Ergo, how can James Harden be behind players that have lesser stats. Now, I'm simplifying, but I think that's where the impulse comes from. And for me, as. As we talked about, I thought extensively in his episode, but I guess not. I guess. I guess our mics were muted and that didn't come out.

[Kyle Mann]

You mean to the public, or I would say I was rhetorically asking you, ben, I want you. I wanted you to present it again. But saying people should go, well, go on.

[Ben Taylor]

Ye.

[Kyle Mann]

I'm just saying I thought you were taking a shot at me. I was like, you didn't say, Kyle.

[Ben Taylor]

No, no, I'm saying. I'm saying I. Here's the thing, Kyle. I don't like being negative about the great players. So part of our show is we talk about weaknesses and contexts a ton, to the point where for just about every fan base, we're a wet blanket. I mean, I don't know if you know this, but there was a period in time where Steph Curry's fan base hated me.

[Kyle Mann]

Unthinkable. Yeah.

[Ben Taylor]

I just want to point out that we have been a wet blanket for every single fan base probably at one point in time. And it's because we spend a good amount of time either contextualizing or trying to balance strengths and weaknesses or trying to balance good situations and bad situations, and that people can be very sensitive to that. And I understand that it's not as fun as purely championing or purely cheerleading or things like that. And I think that's why it feels really fun when we get under discussed, underrated players who we get to spend a lot more time explaining why they're better than you think they are. The inverse of that is when you have players like Adrian Dantley, historically who have the unbelievable stat lines, and you kind of have to be the wet blanket and be like, well, I'll tell you why I don't value that stat line, because I'm not focusing on that stat line. I'm focusing on all these other things. And here's what we see with all those other things. So in the case of Harden, the biggest single thing is the difference between the regular season and the playoffs. And I don't know why at this point there's resistance to that, given that we have a lot of years of data of things being different between the regular season and the playoffs. But as I said many times on the episode, if we were talking regular season only, I think he is one of the great regular season offensive players of the century.

[Kyle Mann]

Yeah. I mean, it's funny. We've talked. We've joked about what ifsports.com I think before where it's like Dantley was one of those guys that just be like, that's my starting three. And you just get the raw box number and be like, yeah, I blew you out. 170 to 72. Now Harden, Harden is the big thing for Harden is you. You talk about noisiness and statistics. Obviously that's a, you know, a phrase that is used on all fronts, not just basketball. But it's interesting that the noise of the, the there is noise in the preparation. I think that doesn't necessarily read in. The only way it really reads is when you compare playoffs to regular season. Right where we talked about how leaned into this, you know, back in 2013, 2014, we have all these things converging like the analytics movements, the style of play of like, okay, the game's becoming a lot more three point footwork. A lot of these things are sort of coming together to produce this style that he naturally was really good at, that he had these abilities, this ability to draw fouls in the paint that he, that he had these tendencies that you know, on a night to night basis in terms of the turnaround of your preparation, let's say you're playing San Antonio on, you know, Sunday night and then you're going to, you're like, oh, I got to start looking at film for, you know, and it's, it's in February and you're like, we're seeing the Rockets on, on Tuesday night. I got to start focusing on James Harden or whatever it is. And it's like when you're in that kind of turnaround, the types of things that he did were just. And a lot of the Helio guys are like this. Whenever you're not looking at them in like a compact sequential situation of like, okay, he got me Tuesday, now I got to play him again Thursday. That sort of flow of data is where you just start to like the, you can. The constraints just sort of come in on Harden. That's also, you know, super well documented at this point. So I'm not going to begrudge you for where you had. I thought you gave him a bunch of praise. And I think on the, on the wet blanket thing, I think whenever you're like pursuing a hierarchical, hierarchical hierarchy, whatever. Can you say that word? A hierarchy of all the best things in one place. Naturally you're going to have to. Through comparison it's going to happen. I mean some of the things that I wanted to talk to you about. Well, go ahead Comment on that?

[Ben Taylor]

Well, I was going to say this is the part of rankings at this point that I just loathe because especially in basketball culture, there's so much sort of religiosity attached to each player or each team that even if something's like, some of these players that we get more complex about are really interesting players, and I don't think either Cody or myself really care where they rank, at the end of the day, we're more interested in like, actually, did you know this guy that averages 50 points a game isn't like twice as good as a guy that averages 25 points a game? That's the thing that's interesting. But what's not fun is that while we're having that conversation about the two people that happen to average 50 points a game, someone in the audience is going, this guy hates Wilt Chamberlain. I gotta get him. Like, it's not about Wilt Chamberlain. It's about the fact that Wilt Chamberlain happened to play this way at a certain point in time. Or James Harden is the one that went to the Rockets and ended up giving us this like, hey, what if you just did everything on all the possessions and then you would get all the points. But I think if there's a single stat to summarize sort of everything we've talked about for the last half an hour, and the sort of apex of this conversation, it's something along the lines of Harden's teams at his peak when he was in Houston, his teammates true shooting percentage when he was on the court always went up about 2 to 3 percentage points, which is good, which is good. But the best players ever will get you over 5%. And so as, as an example, when we compare that to like what happens in 2002 and 2003 with Tracy McGrady when he's on the court versus off the court for Orlando, his teammates true shooting percentage goes up like five and a half points. And so when you take into account the fact that Harden is generally a little bit more efficient himself and McGrady can be a little less efficient. The overall team change is similar. But I want to understand, Kyle, like, okay, how much of that is from you taking all the shots? What effect are you having on the system? How much easier are you making it for not only just your teammates, but different types of teammates, Teammates who cut to the rim, who get to the basket, who fit spot up shooters, how much easier are you making it for them? And when we stack that up, it's those kinds of numbers that I'M interested at the end of the day because as I said, regardless of your ERA and regardless of your box score stats, some guys can improve their teammates shooting percentages by 4 percentage points by doing it one way and some guys can do it the other way and they'll have totally different stats. And that's what I'm after. Like, what is the overall lift?

[Kyle Mann]

Yeah, you said something in particular, but I mean, I'm not trying to make it specifically about the McGrady thing, but you all talked about him. He.

[Ben Taylor]

He gets. People are shocked by the way that he was in the top 25, which I thought was really weird because I thought.

[Kyle Mann]

Yeah, I thought would have been the opposite because people lionize him in a really interesting way.

[Ben Taylor]

Yes. I thought we were too low on him. And Cody reads more comments than I do. I try to. I try to not read too many comments, but, you know, he's like this idea that people are mad at me. I'm like, well, which way are they? Are they mad because we're too high or too low? And that's the other thing about rankings that's so weird. You're just trying to go through and talk about the process, really, and analyze what you're seeing and share not only the extra film time that we get to put in because we now do this all the time, but the extra data that we have. And I was. I was kind of stunned that there are people who think Tracy. There are people who just don't think Tracy McGrady is very good. I think he's. I think he's been subsumed by some of the. This efficiency mindset that I was talking about where you focus heavily on the player's individual true shooting percentage. And that's sort of that. Here. Here's another way to look at it. There are some players, and we'll get to them later in. In our series, but there are a lot of players who. You go into the playoffs and their true shooting percentage goes down like 3 percentage points. And fans go, ah, you see, he played much worse. And you're like, but that's just his shots. What about his screens and his cuts and his passes and his decisions and his defense, which is half the game. And then we also have the context of those shots in a very small sample in the playoffs. And then we have the opponent, which is different than the regular season. So these are the things we're trying to figure out. But if you reduce the game to just how many shots someone took, you're going to fall into that trap of just. It's almost like turning it into baseball where you think people are just taking at bats in an isolated manner and that's what determines how well someone played basketball.

[Kyle Mann]

Yeah. You brought up something interesting about his footwork in particular, before we move on that I thought was about. He had an odd finishing repertoire when he would get around the basket. And you were over trying to account for what is up with this distance between the gracefulness of him as an athlete and the explosive dunks. Big Runway athlete. That was a big term in the spring with the draft stuff that was going on. And then the odd. It wasn't quite where you all thought it would be in terms of the rim finishing. And you all were talking about that the footwork was playing a role in that.

[Ben Taylor]

I also think it's just the era, the spacing or the rules. The rules of the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We didn't have the gather stuff. One of the most fun things about rewatching games in the 21st century is sort of the very gray, ambiguous bridging of the gather step and how big of a deal that actually is for on ball finishing skills. Because at this point it seems that young players, they're already native, they've been trained to come in and, you know, like I think of someone like Brandon Pajemski a couple years ago, like, you're going to have the Euro step, the Pinoy step, you're going to the pause step where you're decelerating and Kyle Anderson pausing his steps and going to absolute zero speed with the last foot hanging in the air. And so what that means is, you know in advance you're going to be able to play a game without dribbling a basketball. Whereas the spirit of the rules 30 or 40 years ago were almost everything is about dribbling the basketball except the very end of the movement. And there's a bridging in this century where some plays are two and a half steps, some plays are three steps, some plays, in some years, broadcasters are like, that's a travel. Sometimes it's called a travel. Sometimes the players argue, sometimes the players don't argue. And then you get to the 2010s and the 2012s and you start to see the gather. And then one day James Harden's forcing the league to codify the gather by being like, no, no, no, the dribble doesn't start until you put two hands on it. And now, because when I put two hands on it, then I get two steps of any. Like, I Could jump to Mars if I had the ability.

[Kyle Mann]

Any direction I want to go also.

[Ben Taylor]

Yeah, that's. That's a really fun thing. And it jumps out. It jumps off the screen when you watch McGrady because he's doing it this old way, despite being like 6, 9, with these huge long steps and this crazy vertical pop. And I honestly. That might be one of the reasons why it's so many reverse layups, because you combine that with the traffic and he's just got to get in there.

[Kyle Mann]

And literally just has to leave his feet. Yeah, he just gets. Gets to a chasm and exactly. Has to jump. I wanted to. I wanted to kind of talk to you a little bit about obviously the. Where we came from is going to be an interesting place to start going into this now, which is where we're going. You know, finding an edge is something, you know, where. Where are the edges? Because in the flow of data, I feel like, you know, there have been these little milestones where people have found low hanging fruit to them or just found new ways to exploit. And you'll see people have. Can you think, can you think of like an obvious edge that somebody thought of in terms of data and. Or scheme that like really disrupted the league back then? Because I feel like the, I feel like the analytics one gets talked about so much that we don't hear as much about during that first 25 years. Was there an edge there that really stood out to you defensively or offensively in your recent.

[Ben Taylor]

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think the 08 Celtics were the team that represented sort of a tactical counter, a tactical jump forward where it's like there was a period of time where the defense was ahead of the offense in terms of shot selection, skill, who's on the court. We understand how to clog up the paint. You don't have shooters. We understand how to rotate and take powerful or valuable stuff away. The offense started to get going a little bit in the 2000s, but Tom. Tom Thibodeau and just this idea of like, hey, there's no more zone defense anymore, so we're just going to constantly shrink the court, overload the side, push the ball to the sideline. All these things that became commonplace in the following years, that was a huge one that, you know, you can argue how much analytics is driving that because you have to give up something defensively. But when they put, when the Celtics put that, I mean, other teams did it, but when the Celtics really codified it and made it the base of their defense in 2008, they had an advantage, I think, over offenses at the time.

[Kyle Mann]

You talking about pushing the ball towards the sideline? What are you. What specifically are you talking about? Just to be really clear and simple about it.

[Ben Taylor]

Yeah, well, the two. I think the two biggest things they did conceptually on defense were to bring extra defenders over to the ball side. So if we have a pick and roll with two guys and we try to artificially go create space by sending the other three guys to the other side of the court, now we have a lot of room to work with. The Celtics are like, you can't do that. We're just going to bring a third defender over and park them right in the lane, and then we're going to zone up the weak side with our other two guys and then will recover. And like I said, that's. That was not a novel tactic. They weren't the first team to implement. It's not like you were watching the game and you're like, what are you doing? They just did it all the time. They just did it all the time, and they had it totally dialed in. And then they paired that with coverages that again became commonplace for defending the screen. They didn't invent it. It existed before, but if you're on one side of the court and you're setting this ball screen, they're going to push the ball handler to the sideline and force him to stay on the sideline. And those were probably the two biggest things. Again, just an X's and O's jump. Defensively, that's probably not really. Like you said, we talk about the analytics side of it, but there was stuff happening defensively as well, I think, during this period that drove the game forward. It's an arms race that just keeps. Keeps escalating. It's incredible.

[Kyle Mann]

Do you, you know, fast forwarding to now. I think I know the answer to this, but do you still think. Who do you think is ahead right now, offense or defense?

[Ben Taylor]

I think the offense is still ahead. I think the offense is still ahead. A lot of the work we talked about this year, especially with, like, looking at what the Thunder are doing, is how can the defense combat some of the offensive advantages that they've created by putting more skill on the court, understanding the value of shooting, stuff like that. As an aside, it's always cracked me up. Back in the day, it was so hard for me to sell people at how valuable shooting was, and I'm just like, put the point.

[Kyle Mann]

Back in the day. When are we talking, oh, I'm talking.

[Ben Taylor]

Like 15 years ago.

[Kyle Mann]

Okay.

[Ben Taylor]

Yeah, 10, 10 to 15 years ago before it really took hold. You would, you would talk about like, yes, shooting is a really important and skill. And people would be like, yeah, I don't know about that. It just, it's, it's amazing how deep.

[Kyle Mann]

Into it now I'm so. I mean, yeah, I mean that you. The, the NBA on, you know, the TNT crew, you know the jump shooting team that was a major. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you know, cartoon shaking their head moment and back. I mean it's hard to imagine it before, but yeah, that's, that's, that's funny.

[Ben Taylor]

The TNT guys, a lot of them from the 80s and 90s, right? I mean, yes, one of the biggest things that The Bulls won six championships in the 90s and they kind of took this stranglehold on the culture to the point where there's still some of it in the air today about like back in my day and blah, blah, blah. Well, one, the triangle and Phil Jackson emphasized spacing and trying to create space for players and the right advantages based on space. It just wasn't driven by the three pointer. But two, a key development in Michael Jordan's sort of, you know, golden arc. The, the hero's journey story from a X's and O standpoint is they got better players that could shoot off of his on ball gravity and his ability to collapse the defense. So it's like you go back and you watch the really early Bulls and you know, no, no shade on these people. But you're like, man, Brad Sellers, he's just. They're going to leave him open every time, right? And then you change that into oh, Horace Grant can make the jumper from 18ft. That's kind of like his money shot. John Paxton, Craig Hodges, BJ Armstrong.

[Kyle Mann]

That Steve Kerr, that Steve Kerr guy.

[Ben Taylor]

Yeah, he's out there like this. This was a huge theme of putting shooters around these players. So these ideas and that's honestly part and parcel with most of the basketball history. There's some shell or germ of something that would become evolutionarily more dominant that just wasn't fully actualized or realized. So it's always funny to me when the old heads get like crank, they're like, dude, like Barkley. You're like, you want shooters? You, you played in Phoenix. Your mvp, you in particular do. Yeah, well, your MVP year in Phoenix was literally, let's take more threes. Let's unlock Dan Marley so I can have more space in the post and kick the ball out. So it's been there. It's been there forever. In a sense.

[Kyle Mann]

I think Marley texted him during that time. He's like, hey, man, if I, if I were. If I were Marley, I would have just. I would have just sent him an audio note, like, like an. An audio message and just said, hey, man, and just left that hanging. Let him figure it out.

[Ben Taylor]

No, I mean, what do you mean when you send me those messages?

[Kyle Mann]

Just, hey, man, I love sending an audio note. That's one of my favorites. You know, you're really my friend. When I get, like an impassioned when you get an impassioned audio note from.

[Ben Taylor]

Me, usually Angels on that team, man.

[Kyle Mann]

I mean, come on. Come on.

[Ben Taylor]

That team was full of shooters. That 93 Suns team. That 93 Suns team made over a thousand threes. They might have been the first team in NBA history to make over a thousand threes. I'm not someone can look that up. Fact check. We have an Internet. You can look stuff up now.

[Kyle Mann]

We have an Internet.

[Ben Taylor]

We do.

[Kyle Mann]

We have several Internets.

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[Kyle Mann]

Tron, Ares has arrived.

[Ben Taylor]

I would like you to meet Aries, the only ultimate AI soldier.

[Kyle Mann]

He is biblically strong and supremely Intelligent. You think you're in control of this? You're not. On October 10th. What are you? My world is coming to destroy yours.

[Ben Taylor]

But I can help you.

[Kyle Mann]

The war for our world begins in IMAX. Tron Ares. Rated PG13. May be inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters October 10th. Get tickets now. It's, it's fun though. I mean talking about the modern thing. I mean you go and you look about, you talked about the inkling of something that would. The shell of something that would evolve and expand into something else, something small. And it's interesting to me that it's like sometimes it's a full blown philosophy that didn't quite expand to the extent that it could have. Like, you know, the Suns get brought up a lot as like a touch point or the concepts with the Celtics, one of the more interesting ones that got talked about this year in particular. Let's bring it to the present, hardcore to the present here. Memphis, this past year hires now that.

[Ben Taylor]

We'Ve lost all the, all the young viewers of the 93 Suns. Yes.

[Kyle Mann]

Well, you know, the, the Grizzlies, it was, it was documented in the basketball sense that you know, Memphis hires Noah LaRoche, this really innovative player development guy who comes in and wants to incorporate this new. You know, you made a great video about this. Coach Daniel made a really good video about this about their. Well, just why don't you, why don't you go ahead and explain the basic premise of what Memphis was doing and then we can kind of jump off from there.

[Ben Taylor]

Well, they're creating a ton of space to essentially allow players to isolate more where the game has become. You know, if I'm in trouble, someone come and set a ball screen. If I have the ball, someone bring up a second player and we're going to play the pick and roll game. We're going to try to create advantage with that screen. Teams have use pick and roll for a long time, but they realize, you know, over the last decade or something that man, what an advantage to always just be able to bring up a second player to the screen and try to create these two on ones or four versus threes downhill or things like that. Memphis kind of zigged when everyone zagged when everyone was zigging in the sense that they will push players away from the ball to create more space. And I think that's the biggest hallmark of, of what they did that makes it unique. There's some stuff about re spacing and rotations.

[Kyle Mann]

Well, that's the most interesting part. The entire the, the entire off ball setting sort of. I'm, you know, it, it rotates like a wheel. Yeah. I mean like the. If, if your guy. Well, just as an example, if your guy drives towards the right slot, like drives towards the right elbow, the guy in the right corner would. Is he in the short corner or in the corner? I think if he's.

[Ben Taylor]

If he's in the corner usually and he's going to then cut to the baseline.

[Kyle Mann]

Yes.

[Ben Taylor]

And then the guy on, the guy on the wing is going to cut to the corner and fill that space and that allows space for the ball. And the other thing that's doing is it's trying to mess with the help defense. So all that movement behind the play. Yeah, it's a huge part of it. It's trying to take advantage of the fact that defenses have tried to catch up by saying, okay, we know you're pick and roll tricks, Luca. We understand, like you're going to come off. We got to worry about the pull up shot, we got to worry about you getting downhill. We got to worry about the roll pass. We got to worry about you spraying to the shooters systematically one pass away or skipping it to the corner. And when that is the sort of stationary position in the offense, the defense then can go, okay, we might be at a disadvantage, but at least we know where everyone is. Exactly.

[Kyle Mann]

We're going to take that away from you.

[Ben Taylor]

Basically. I mentioned zoning up the weak side with two players. That's a heck of a lot harder to do when the three players behind you are moving, cutting and screening. And so that is the other big part of the Memphis component. I'll add one more thing that's a little less like drawing X's and O's on the radio kind of stuff. The game of basketball is an invasion sport. You're trying to get as close to the hoop as possible in most cases. Right. So creating that space and asking the defense like, all right, are you going to let John morant just play one on one 40ft away or the guy they. The guy who I thought had helped a ton was Jaren Jackson Jr. Because he would come down court and he's a big handling against other bigs and he's starting to get that giannis Runway like 40, 50ft away. And the amount of space, unless you're going to build a wall, the amount of space that you then put your defensive big man in to try to guard like 35 or 40. How's that? Kyle, you grow up one day, you want to play in the NBA. You get to 6, 10, 7ft, you want to go to the gym, you put on some muscle, you're 250 pounds, you make it to the NBA, you work on your shot, and then they go, go guard this guy by yourself 40ft away as he comes downhill.

[Kyle Mann]

Well, I heard some NBA development coach talk about one time that there is a pretty clear line of delineation where that separates some guys. The great, the Evan Mobleys and the Kevin Garnett types, the Anthony Davises, who can't put together more. I think he said two lateral steps. They can't fire their hip laterally more than twice in a row. So you're asking somebody and you're. You're positioning against like Jereny gets in the paint and gets those little push shots, those little. Yeah, that's one of his bread and butter shots. But yeah, I mean, I think you're. You're just kind of. You're putting. I think putting bigs in this has been a big thing. I'm. People talk a lot about, you know, scheme versatility with, like, what a big is able to do out there at the level of the screen. But I think in that sense, having players that can stress, you know, stress them. I mean, that's why Chet, I think, is going to be. Chet is so effective with that stuff, is that he's able to beat so many other bigs. You were talking about them stylistically, screen assist. This played out. We'll kind of jump to the ending of how this experiment went and then go forward even more. But yeah, screen assist here, like, Indiana was at stuff, 6.9 screen assists per game and Memphis was at 5.1. So pretty big gap down there at the bottom. They weren't depending on screens. But my question for you, is that, like, is that applicable? Is that a full blown philosophy? If there's any coaches out there, they're probably like hitting the steering wheel right now. Jesus. Now, is it. Is this a full blown philosophy or is this an inkling of a shell of something that could expand and be, you know, added to a Luke and roll pick, a Luca pick and roll philosophy? You're grinning really big. We'll find out why. But it's just something that you can apply to a star player. And if we have time, I want to talk a little bit about star player philosophy and how to use them and things like that. Or is this something that could be applied in that sense if it's not a full blown philosophy?

[Ben Taylor]

I love that you. I love at the 50 minute mark that you think the coaches are the first people banging their steering wheel in this podcast based on some of the things they were in before that they.

[Kyle Mann]

Were in all the way.

[Ben Taylor]

Yeah, Y. The coaches were the last group we had to alienate. Sorry, what was. Is this a full blown philosophy look at Cleveland. Cleveland added a lot of movement to their offense and in fact, one of the things Cleveland did specifically in the pick and roll game, we did a really fun video in collaboration with the NBA on the NBA channel with their associate head coach Johnny Bryant talking about this. If you run the pick and roll and the ball is moving toward that side that we talked about earlier with a guy on the wing and a guy in the corner, Cleveland right out of the gate this year was like, we're going to cut the guy in the corner baseline and we're going to slide that guy in the wing down to the corner and we're going to do that. To mess with those stationary principles, those help principles on defense. And we talked about it became a subplot on our pod, like, how effective is this going to be in the playoffs when you get to see it a lot? And you know the jury is still out on that to some degree in terms of like how effective is it for the 2025 or 2026 version of the Cavs offense? But what we did see was other teams adopting this tactic. So to answer your question, going all the way in the other direction all the time, the way Memphis essentially did, might not be viable because you're leaning, you become predictable, you lean too much into one thing and then you can find a counter to plug it up. And what you really want, which I think is what made the Golden State dynasty so effective, is you want built in counters, you want reads, read and react options on the play that say, well, if the defense takes this away, we go in this direction. And that's what's interesting about just this Memphis concept in general. If you use it a little bit here and here and there, hey, we're not going to screen. We're going to play in space or we're going to move or we're going to cut. We're going to cut multiple players when they used to stand still, that's when I think we're going to see something that will stick going forward. The only reason why these things don't stick for a long time, Kyle, is because if the defense gets to a place where they just learn how to really take it away and defend it super well, then you just see offenses run less and less and less because they start searching for better ways to create an advantage. But I do think that's where we're going to see it. I do think we're going to see more movement that we've continued to see away from the ball. And these kinds of cuts to mess with tags help defense. And then I really like having some possessions where, hey, instead of just every time we set a ball screen, like we're going to space or play off ball differently. And that's what the Pacers did. And we. It's a shame we've made it 54 minutes and haven't talked about the Pacers because they were one of the great offensive teams in league history. They were one of the great stories in league history. They had one of the great runs in league history. And they embody a lot of these principles offensively for countering these kinds of things. And maybe to me, the finals were a possible sneak peek of a sneak preview of what basketball might look more like in three to five years.

[Kyle Mann]

Oh, okay. Well, yeah, I'm glad you said that. I mean, that's. What you talking about? I mean, what. What are you. Well, you said, I'm gonna think I'm gonna tee you up for. For where you're going with this.

[Ben Taylor]

What do you mean, what am I talking about?

[Kyle Mann]

Oh, it's all.

[Ben Taylor]

It's just.

[Kyle Mann]

I'm trying to set the table for the master here. I'm trying to let Mozart play here. You said something to me in the finals.

[Ben Taylor]

Diao is not here. I don't see him anywhere.

[Kyle Mann]

You said something to me in the finals when we were talking about Halliburton and you said he's trying to be a 0.5 guard, not a 0.5. And this is well documented. His style of play, his eagerness to. Willingness and eagerness both to get off the ball quickly, to sort of feed into. I always think it of. As, you know, you're. You're obviously looking to create an advantage, and Tyrese is like, I'm going to create an advantage at the beginning of this rope. There's a. There's a. There's a slack and I'm going to pass it to you. And, you know, it just kind of goes on down the line. I was. I thought about this when I was writing down. I was sitting outside this. This coffee shop one day and lightning struck a light pole near where I was sitting. It was loud as fuck.

[Ben Taylor]

Seriously?

[Kyle Mann]

Yes. And I watched. I was in position to watch this string of light poles down the street on Breckenridge street in Louisville for. There's a reference to. Local reference for the. For the Louisville people. And it just went down the street and I just watched the energy start there and kind of go down. And I was kind of like, the most fun offenses are the ones that go that way where they. They're like, okay, we got this offense and it goes this direction. Is there something about. Is there something about the Pacers play in that sense in the, in the. In the fact that they have a 0.5 primary? Is that what it is? Or is there something else unique about them other than. I mean, they also just play hard? I think that was pretty funny how Carlisle was talking about. That's a separate thing we'll get to that is. Does it have something to do with them having a 0.5 primary or is it something else?

[Ben Taylor]

There's a great podcast with Caitlin Cooper and Carlisle talking about random offense. And so I'll start with that plug in the sense that I think the jury is probably out with a sample size of 1. I don't think we can give a strong answer with just the Pacers team because there's a couple different things going on there. One of them is the personnel that they have, their system and this ability to, quote, unquote, play randomly where it's not a set. They're getting down and they're saying, okay, here's some principles we want to follow. And those principles are like a lot of ghost screens or blur screens coming up to the ball and acting like you're going to set a screen and then streaking across the middle of the court. The thing that we talked about in the big video we did on their offense in the playoffs was how much they use the space between like the foul line and say, the logo at half court. You know, we've heard about the logo three where Trey Young's feet are on the edge of the logo. That 15 foot band of space. It's there. It's like air traffic control. They're just running guys back and forth across there and playing horizontally.

[Kyle Mann]

It's like a. It seriously is like a half pipe that they jump onto. Like a skateboarder and they're like, here we. You know, it's. It's. But no, I mean, it's every. But everything's live too. That's another thing. If everything's live and you're utilizing that space on the court, then you become is. I mean, that. But that's something.

[Ben Taylor]

Yeah, but that's where the 0.5 part comes in. Because when you're connected to the whole system like that, having a guy at the centralized, you know, the guy bringing it up more often than not being able to say, okay, here's. Here's the start of a smaller advantage that could cascade into a bigger advantage. And just constantly playing like that at incredible pace. You know, Knicks fans were tortured by TJ McConnell coming down the wing and running these like, quick little hurry up two man and three man and go.

[Kyle Mann]

Run the baseline, come back across the lake.

[Ben Taylor]

And then how does. How does TJ McConnell score 12 points in a row in three minutes when he does this? And it's like, because this is. This is the offense. This is what happens. And if you don't react.

[Kyle Mann]

John Mulaney, Everybody's live. Yeah. Yeah.

[Ben Taylor]

So. So, you know, I think it was the Knicks game. There was this one of the Knicks games in the playoffs in Madison Square Garden, maybe game one or game two, where he comes down, they run the same set as they like to do, really hurry up, get getting the ball out of the basket or off a. Make off a miss. I mean, and like, Andrew Neesmith just sprints right in front of him, and it's like, what the hell is he doing? Is he going to set a screen? Is he cutting to the corner? And what that does is it creates a moment of indecision for the defense. And if the defenders miscommunicate, boom, there's your micro advantage that you've created. And now if you have enough space, if no one comes and helps, TJ Is going to get a layup or he's going to get into the paint. If someone comes and helps, then you kick it to the next guy. And if he's got the three, he takes it. If not, he's attacking a bigger and now a more scrambled defense. And to your point, there's been some. Some great offenses like this. You know, the beautiful game spurs of 2014, they didn't create the biggest advantage ever off the first screen, but all they needed to do off the first screen was create a small advantage and then start moving the ball around the court, spacing everyone. Similar concept in terms of getting that. That. That bolt of lightning hitting that tower outside your coffee shop and just, oh, let's see how many you got to.

[Kyle Mann]

Have the right polls to keep it. Yeah, I mean, if.

[Ben Taylor]

Yeah, exactly.

[Kyle Mann]

And I was just kind of fascinated, though, when you. You were talking about this. This is something that I kind of look at the frontier of where basketball could go, and I think it kind of touches on, you know, criticizing things that are already good and just in, in the, in the sense of could they become greater, even historically great, because I think OKC is an interesting example of this where if they start with Shay, so Shea's the MVP of the league, obviously. Another thing that Carlisle said on that pod that got me thinking about this is about how many like catch and hold players there are in the league now. And he mentioned how Kobe was still such a huge influence. That's another pod. Maybe I'll have to do another away game on your pod so we can do another one of our future players things that we love to do. But I think in terms of style, you look at him and you all mentioned how he plays so much like Embiid and it's like Shay has such a down, an implied downhill game that you can forgive him holding the ball and staying in the middle. Because even though he's not spraying the ball at the first advantage and getting off it quickly and seeing the energy build momentum as it goes around okc's offense, he's so incredible at staying in that spot, getting off it when he needs to or, you know, great finisher, obviously great with his mid range game, but also the foul, you know, generating the fouls. He and Embiid kind of have these things in common where I'm like, you're smiling already. But I mean, for OKC in particular, during that finals, I got thinking about this and I was talking to Rob Mahoney about this when it happened, I was like, the fact that they have a player like Jalen Williams who could mature into a full blown first action guy who could create an advantage on his own, you can see a world where they could repurpose their fucking MVP in a way that is going to level him up because they had the luxury of this other guy that could create a huge advantage and go in a more 0.5 direction. But I'm just kind of wondering how much of the league is going to adopt that. Ben, when you have these guys that have such implied downhill pressure, like your Giannis's, your Zions, your Lucas, is this something that you see becoming ubiquitous or what did you mean by that when you were talking about the league going this direction?

[Ben Taylor]

Did I say the league's going in that direction? I don't know.

[Kyle Mann]

That was a lot. Well, you said you could see it go. You did say that. Check the tape. Jesse said that. All right, I said it.

[Ben Taylor]

I'll.

[Kyle Mann]

I believe you comment, I guess just kind of weigh in on what you're what you're thinking about. Yeah. In terms of how primaries are used. Because I think that's a fascinating thing.

[Ben Taylor]

Well, I mean, coming off the Pacers offense and going to the Thunder offense is totally different. Offense.

[Kyle Mann]

Yeah.

[Ben Taylor]

And of course sometimes I think fans forget that offenses are built around the ingredients that you have.

[Kyle Mann]

You can't.

[Ben Taylor]

You can't cook a fish stew if someone brings home beef. It's just not going to happen no matter what you do to the recipe. I guess maybe now you can do.

[Kyle Mann]

Some Tyrese and Tyrese can't choose to play like Shay. He plays like that because. Yeah, he plays more like Curry, honestly. Yeah.

[Ben Taylor]

Just. Just not even close. So the. The lineups that they usually construct and the talent that they have and Shay's talent, I think it makes sense that they've structured the offense the way they have. That's important to say as a starter because I think the answer to your question. Kyle's probably something like it depends on the other skills that the players have. And this is why Cody and I spend so much time talking about diversity of skill and on ball and off ball. And ironically, like you mentioned Kobe and some people talking about his influence. I think people do the same thing with Curry. They think, well, I should shoot from 40ft. And it's like, well, if you really were to imitate him, you should become like an endurance athlete and just learn how to run. And you study Jerry Rice. Right. Like that would be the way to. To mimic him. And similarly with Kobe, Kobe gets known. I mean, certainly out here in la like for decades, when you throw a little thing in the trash can, people yell Kobe. Which I was really funny because they always miss. I was like when I moved here, I didn't quite get it because it's very hard for people in offices to make little rolled up pieces of paper shot. But my point is they mimic Kobe shooting a lot. And it's like the thing to mimic with Kobe is like how active he was off ball and the geometry of his game and the fact that he actually had a lot of gravity. He just didn't stand around. So that's the answer to your Shay question. You can only do that if the player A, is willing to do that and B has those skills. I don't. It's certainly not a knock to say that the floor has been set up to activate Shays best assets as an offensive player. But I do think we have to be. And this is where we're the wet blanket. Like we have to be sober and realize you can't just assume that that means then you could run shay off 20 baseline actions a game and cripple the defense that way. Or that he can, you know, run into movement threes constantly and he's a, a, he's a catch and shoot weapon 28ft away or something like that. The player has to have skills that allow you to then say, okay, Jalen Williams can't run around and do all these things, but Jalen Williams is actually really good with the ball as well. So maybe we can start to push the offense forward and get something even more. If Shay's off ball more and J Dub is running more pick and roll. I mean, I'm just being hypothetical at this point, but. But that's the direction you'd have to go in.

[Kyle Mann]

I postulated to you though, that the Magic were another one that came to mind for me where I was like, is there a world where, you know, if he has to do, you're sorry, checking your head, but I mean, if Franz moves into it more of a credible on ball role, I could see a world, a world where the Magic, the highest version of the Magic's offense. Would you think about them? You're just like, all right, let's get shooting and spacing around Paolo. But there's so much riding on whether or not Franz can make that leap. Because if you think about if he's an advantage drawing player, granted, it hinges on Paolo being able to like shoot catch and shoot threes and things like that and playing off the ball, which he hasn't really done a ton. But if he's able to do that and then you bring in this incredible downhill force of Paolo, maybe instead of at like the 18 second mark on the shot clock, you bring it in at the 11 second. Everything happens so quickly in the NBA. It sounds like no time at all. But in these skilled players, that's another thing that gets underrated. You watch college and you watch the NBA, it's wild what they do at the time. But I mean, you made me watch.

[Ben Taylor]

College and that was the first. I was like, what are they doing? What's, what's going on?

[Kyle Mann]

There's a lot of kicking it. It's like the difference between a movie in the 70s and a movie now. You're just like, there's. Why is this movie three hours? Don't do this. We don't need to do this. So, no, but I just think that's an interesting example. But you're, you're absolutely right because, I mean, Tatum's another guy Though, I mean, there's a lot of players that I think could be optimized in this way if. But you got to have the luxury of having the right personnel. Like you were saying, we.

[Ben Taylor]

We have to go. So I don't want to get in too much trouble, but if you're suggesting that the Magic centralize and run more stuff through Fonz, Franz, Wagner, I. I 100% endorse this. Yes.

[Kyle Mann]

Okay. I didn't know that was one of your stances. All right, man. Well, other than that, I mean, yet with the edges, though. I mean, that's. That was the other thing that I was thinking. Let's see. The other thing was the homogeny in the NBA. We were kind of hitting on that. We hit with the. With the styles and things like that. The emulative ripple I have written down here, the Kobe thing just fascinated me. The fact that he said that I was. I was doing the math, because the average age in the league right now is 26 and a half. And I was asking a friend of mine that coaches, I was like, when can you realistically implement and emulate an NBA player? And I felt like it was in that, like, 13 to 16, 17 age range where you look big enough and strong enough. And I was like, okay, Kobe was in the league for. Last time he was in the league was 2016. Like, everyone, you know, I'm just doing the. And. But he's had such, like, an interesting lasting impact even after he retired. Right. In a way that players don't normally. I just felt like the bell resonated for a little longer than it normally does.

[Ben Taylor]

Well, maybe culturally, but I feel like.

[Kyle Mann]

I feel like that's what drives it, man. It's not basketball. It's always culturally. Because if they're emulating. If they're emulating the best basketball thing, people will be just watching Jokic all.

[Ben Taylor]

The time or watch.

[Kyle Mann]

Or just emulating stuff. Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Taylor]

But the thing with Kobe specifically is, I mean, he left the game right at the precipice of the most radical change we've seen since. At least the shot clock, if not earlier. So that's the. That's the counteracting force where even with someone like Jason Tatum, I mean, I remember Kobe did the detail video on him, and then he just started taking a bunch of long twos for, like, the next two weeks. Right. And so it's like that style is. There's so many other forces influencing skill and style and things like that that you're not necessarily going to get players aren't even really given the, you know, the green light. Only a select number of stars are given the green light to say, go give us that third level in the mid range. Go take hard shots. Go explore the studio space, if you will.

[Kyle Mann]

So I always. Well, I always have to be careful because I know I'll get some kind of like DM or something saying I hate Kobe. It's totally not that. It's more. What you're talking about is that like that mindset, the way that it. And the way that you're. That you're saying that about him leaving the game. I don't know if I'd really thought a ton about that. Is that there is a sort of lionization of him that is juxtaposed with the way the league change where people can like see that line of like, man, I like that better than I like what we're doing now. Or just this, you know, mono a mano at the slot. That's more basketball than what we're seeing now. Yeah. Any. Any other kind of broad thoughts about the. About the. The edges or anything like that.

[Ben Taylor]

That's it.

[Kyle Mann]

I've.

[Ben Taylor]

I've gotten myself in enough trouble for one day.

[Kyle Mann]

The coaches are hitting.

[Ben Taylor]

Coaches were hitting the steering wheel earlier in this episode that you got the Magic fans. There's a lot.

[Kyle Mann]

I don't think if the Magic got in this position where they had two superstars and they were both kind of setting each other up. I mean, I don't. I don't think they're going to be mad about that. I don't if their path to success, if they get to success and it. And it. And you know, Paolo is in a different role. I think they just want to get to success. You know, I don't know that the Magic are just like. It has to be Palo. I think they just want to win. Yeah. Oh, last thing I want to ask you about defense and then we'll go. You mentioned how the 20, 24, 25 thunder. This is more of a future looking forward thing kind of thing too. They were next door neighbors with the 04 pistons in terms of relative defensive rating per 100. As you said, right next door to them was the 64 Celtics. Those teams relative to their. Huh?

[Ben Taylor]

That's a good company. Yeah.

[Kyle Mann]

Well, relative to their era, you know, those teams were dominant in similar ways, but they were. You mentioned how they were radically different in their process. 20 years from now. You know that that pistons team was 21 years ago. 21 years from now. How do you Envision if I forced you to make a prediction, Ben, how do you see the team, the next dominant defensive team 21 years from now being radically different from the one we have now?

[Ben Taylor]

Ooh, radically different.

[Kyle Mann]

Because this one's radically different than the Pistons. I mean, rule. Rules are going to drive it, most likely, right? I mean, that'd be to start if they change to that extent.

[Ben Taylor]

Yep. Well, rules are definitely going to be one of the factors. The other big factor is going to be the offensive strategies that continue to move forward in the arms race we mentioned. So with that said, I think you're going to see Oklahoma City's horizontal components and the speed components. But I would imagine that you also probably need length and size, and maybe it's too hard to do with really smaller players, or maybe the. Maybe the players get smaller. I don't know. One of the secrets to Oklahoma City's success, it was the first video all year. We did on them back in November, October, whatever, at the beginning of the year was these guys are listed at 626364, but they all have seven foot wingspans. It's ridiculous. So you get the best of both worlds because you get a combination of incredible speed in these smaller, agile bodies. Horizontal length, which is what you want.

[Kyle Mann]

Gap closing.

[Ben Taylor]

Yeah, yep, gap closing, exactly. And then you get enough verticality from. I mean, from all of them, in a sense. Jalen Williams is a really good rib protector for his size and his position. Lou Dort has a little bit of it. Alex Caruso has a little bit of it. Shea has some of it. And if you can put the lineups where they put an actual rim protector on the backstop, Chad Holmgren or Isaiah Hartenstein, those were the lineups that had started to put up the cartoonish defensive numbers. So, yeah, it's hard. It's hard to really look 20 years in the future and say, will it be some big tactical change? My guess is we're going to see more hybrid zone man kind of stuff where they're bleeding together. So it's not a pure zone, but it's not a pure man. And I also think the other thing that's coming 20 years in the future is what I guess I'll just describe as disguised coverages. So in football over the years, you know, you. You come out of the huddle, so it's a different sport, but you want to disguise what you're doing. You want to make it look like a blitz when it's a zone or vice versa. And I think basketball hasn't Tapped into.

[Kyle Mann]

That where defensively dummy action on offense is very much a thing.

[Ben Taylor]

But, but, but here's what happens defensively. There's a free throw and the coach on the sideline yells, you know, zone. And then everyone goes in zone. And if the offensive players aren't paying attention, they come down the court and they go, ah, they're in zone. And there's like five seconds where they're like, ah, we're gonna, we gotta zone. We gotta set up our zone offense. And then the second time down, they just saw the zone. So they know it's a zone and they know it's a zone every time from then on out until they destroy the zone. And then the coach is like, we've had enough zone for those four, six or eight possessions. But if you can have different zones, different rules, 1, 2, 2 traps, all kinds of different stuff, and you just are disguising these and you have signals or you start in a possession in a way, it looks like a zone and it's a man. That element of psychological confusion, I think has not been tapped into with defenses. And I would expect to see that in a cutting edge defense in 15 or 20 years.

[Kyle Mann]

Well, I told you, I think there's going to be a rebound back the other direction where I think we're going to have playmaking screeners. That's what like, I think we're going to have guys who are so intuitive off ball that are going to be able to process those things at a high level. Granted, on like a Draymond level or. I mean, I don't know. I mean, we already have kind of the, like the one first pass, whatever it is, this triggers us to go back to this. I guess that's sort of disguising it. You see some of that stuff at the college level, but yeah, it's all. Yeah. All right, well, Ben, I've taken up enough of your time. Go over and check out the 20. It's 21st century peaks, right? Is that what you are calling 21st century peaks? Yes, yes. In addition to all the other great video work that Ben is doing on his channel and on the NBA's official channel, are you allowed to speak of the project that I alluded to when I mentioned Steve Nash, or do you want to keep that a secret? It's not a secret anymore.

[Ben Taylor]

Well, you, without my signage, have just let the cat out of the bag. We will have a watch along as part of our historical watch along series with Steve commenting on the game we're watching on. It'll be. Yes, it'll be fun.

[Kyle Mann]

And he said some things that blew your mind that you blew my mind about, so that's all very exciting, Steve Nash.

[Ben Taylor]

My mind has been blown. That's why any complaints about this podcast.

[Kyle Mann]

Appearance you can blame on that bonafide genius Steve Nash on the court. Ben, thank you for. Thanks for coming, man.

[Ben Taylor]

Appreciate it. Thanks, Kyle. It's always fun.