170. Lakers get embarrassed (again)

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eight hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia. You know, I wish I could sit up here with you guys and say, hey, this is why they lost from the standpoint of x xs and ohs, Like, here's this coverage that wasn't working, here's this specific matchup that wasn't working. But I can't. I can't do that because they weren't even thinkers were disinterested and even the fundamental actions that have to take place on a basketball court in order

for your team to win. So how can I talk about schemes or matchups or personnel or anything like that when they don't care. There was a play in the in the first quarter shot goes up, Malik Monk and Russell Westbrook are both standing kind of right around the block, and both Houston Rockets players dive in and crash and they get an offensive rebound putback, just going right around Malik and Russ. They were just kind of watching there, waiting, just kind of hoping the ball would fall in your lap.

Now again, if you're a championship caliber team with championship caliber talent, you know the kind of team that if you push the gas down on a team like the Rockets, you're gonna win by forty. That kind of team. They can give up an extra ten offensive rebounds that they normally wouldn't give up. They can fail to make out of out of area plays, they can fail to make extra efforts and get away with it. They can shoot poorly and get away with it. But when you don't

have that amount of talent, you can't. But what's disappointing is that even with that talent gap, there was still enough with what the Lakers put on the floor tonight to go out there and win that game by ten or fifteen points. But instead it was close. And what happens when the game is close, When the game is close. It can go either way. The Lakers should have won that game. Still, they had some great looks at the end. You know, there's played Lebron's coming off that left wing,

there's a screen. Defender gets caught on the screen, the big sitting way low. Lebron's wide open from the left wing. You love that shot, right, but it's not a hundred percent shot. It might miss, and he did. Last possession of the game, Lebron does what all of us have been begging for him to do. Don't settle for a jump shot, put your head down and go to the rim. He does. He puts his head down, he goes to

the rim. The Rockets did an amazing job at the end of that game, end in overtime of sending multiple bodies at Lebron and making his teammates beat them, which they weren't able to do. But Lebron does what you ask him to do. He drives into the paint, He draws multiple defenders, he hits Carmelo Anthony, Carmelo Anthony pump fakes. It's a wide open two fter on the right wing, and he misses it. Because that's what happens in games like this. And you know, I don't know if you

believe in the basketball gods are not. I tend to just in general, it's a general philosophy of life. Call it karma, call it whatever you want to call it. But I tend to believe that when you are being a brand of basketball that doesn't deserve to win, those kinds of shots don't go in. And then meanwhile, on the other end, you might see Jalen Green makes some crazy step back three as the basketball god's reward him

for playing hard on a night like tonight. But you know, if this was a team with championship character, they come into this game, even if they're down a bunch of players, and they play with the requisite effort, and they're up by ten at the end of the game, and it doesn't come down to one or two shots. Nooke not going in. That's the that's the game that they played. And then in overtime it was like a tidal wave.

You know, we've talked a lot this season. I've been talking about it since the summer about the idea of Russell Westbrooken, what he the problem that he presents in clutch situations because of the fact that teams are inevitably going to leave him open. He doesn't necessarily want to shoot open three. So it presents this weird conundrum. If he's not cutting and being really active off the ball, he can really hurt you in late game situations. And

it really really hurt the acres tonight. Russ was getting consistently ignored. He was the first man that his defender was offering help on all of these Lebron possessions. Now, again, I can't blame just that for a game like this where the Lakers barely played you know, coherent basketball. But that's an issue that's been rearing its ugly head all season,

and it reared its ugly head again tonight. When you play a guy in the fourth quarter that's not a scoring threat got and he's not, he better be just an unbelievable defensive weapon that's giving you a ton on the other end of the floor, or chances are he's actually gonna be a net negative in those situations. Russ is playing pretty decent basketball as of late, but those are the kinds of problems that you're going to run into. You know. The overall tone of this game I think

derives from Lebron and Russ. This is something that has been a consistent theme since the All Star Break. Lebron and Russ, their effort on both ends of the floor has not represented has not been representative of a team that cares, and as a result, that percolates down the roster. You know, I talked a lot about the young guys over the All Star Break and how important they are to this team's success. The young guys are starting to

experience some dip in effort. I was seeing Malik Monk and Stanley Johnson start to let up in some of the effort areas of the game. And I don't blame them. Why wouldn't they Their leaders are doing the same thing and that and that's the confusing part in all this. That's why I kept saying, like the Lakers got to decide what they want here. They got to decide what they want to do, because I've seen Lebron try hard for one half since the All Star Break, and that

was the second half against Golden State. On both ends of the floor, He's been trying on offense, he's getting his points, he's going after Kareem, but he's put together one good defensive half, and god knows how many tries since the All Star break. Of course, that's gonna percolate down the roster. That's why when you roll up into Houston in a game that your team sperainly needs to win, you can't get stops. You give up a hundred and forty points, and over time it looked like a pickup

game with the Rockets shooting wide open shots. And so, I mean, I don't We've all just kind of understood that Lebron's gonna keep doing this. He wants to chase Corene, but this is the product. So we all as Laker fans, have to understand that's going to be the rest of the journey. The rest of this season is gonna be Lebron mailing in the defensive end of the ball, but

trying like crazy on offense to put up numbers. He's not gonna care what happens in the wind lost column, and I would venture to guess that a lot of you aren't gonna be very happy about that, which is what I said was the risk all along. The risk here is you have to maintain some basketball integrity to build on for next season, and instead it looks like it's just going to continue to get uglier and uglier.

For those of you who are just joining us, this is Lakers Tonight, presented by f go Here at the volume, I was just talking about the poor Laker effort throughout the season. I wanted to talk about a little bit about when you and Gabriel and his appearance tonight. Vandel sports Book is an official sports betting partner of the NBA, and with FanDuel same game parlays, you can turn little

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gambler dot net. In West Virginia. I've been begging for Gabriel to get minutes because of the obvious fact that the Lakers lack NBA athleticism all over the floor and a group that has been utterly destroyed since the All Star break. This group is basically the four bench guards and Carmelo Anthony at center. That group has been getting completely run over by everybody. They've played since the All Star break. I think they've only had one or two

shifts where they've even held their own. And the reason why is they lack the requisite amount of NBA athleticism to hang in an NBA game. Even that Houston Rockets team that limited injured Houston Rockets team has significantly more size and athleticism all over the floor. Yeah, can Lebron bully Alpern Seguin, Yeah, absolutely, But the rest of the roster there's a lot of a gap there in size and athleticism. Just seeing when you in Gabriel down there,

flying up and down the floor. He's not getting caught in the foot race, He's not having trouble keeping up with the pace of the game. He's crashing divorce. He got two foul calls underneath the basket, just battling for

offensive rebounds. And the biggest and mo important part of those minutes and the reason why, I think when you has to keep playing moving forward, look at Russ, Go back and watch Russ at the end of the third quarter, when when you Gabriel was on the floor, when you Gabriel is the only player on the Lakers roster right now not named Anthony Davis, who is a legitimate vertical threat and a guy who can knock down threes. There were handful of possessions where he went to the corner.

They were handful of possessions where he hung out on the wing. There were handful possessions that he hung out in the dunker spot. And every time he was in those spots, because he's a real athlete with real vertical pop and because he can knock down threes, there was just that little bit of extra space for us to get going. And Russ was putting his head down and he was getting to the rim NonStop at the end of the third quarter, because that's what happens when you

run a functional NBA lineup. That lineup was plus four in those minutes to end the third quarter. So that same lineup that was getting utterly destroyed and all these other games was plus four tonight. And that's a huge part, a huge lard of that is just what when you and Gabriel brings to the table as a functional vertical, you know, skilled forward, which is something that we haven't

had this entire season. So I'm hopeful that when Frank watches the tape tomorrow that he sees that, and he sees particularly the way that Russ was playing in those lineups, and understands that that's something he's gonna have to lean into moving forward. He can play mellow with them too.

As a matter of fact, I think that's really interesting to have Melo and when youan together together because uh, Carmelo is actually a really good rebounder, and with the two of them together on the interior, I think they can run a semi competent NBA defense. So I hope that they'll continue to lean into that moving forward. So

I wanted to really quickly before we move on. I wanted to expand a little bit on the comments that I made about Russell Westbrook in the video that I shared yesterday in the evening, because there have been, as is typically the case with Twitter, there are a lot of people who kind of tried to twist it into something that it wasn't. You know, the Twitter has a limit and and how long you're allowed to talk when

you record those videos two minutes and twenty seconds. So as you can see as you watch the video, I'm hustling through a bunch of stuff. I'm trying to make some points, trying to get some stuff across, and people want to try to jump to conclusions and make it about something that it's not, and I wanted to clarify that. You know, I can't believe this has to be said. But of course death threats are a huge problem. There an ugly, ugly side of this experience that we have

on the internet. In so many ways, Twitter has been so much fun for me as a place for me to talk about basketball when my wife and my friends are not really into basketball, and it's like an outlet for me. I've made friends on Twitter. I've made friends with so many of you Laker fans. I'm thankful for all those interactions and all of the good that comes from that. I can thank Twitter for this opportunity that I've received at the volume. It's how I built my

platform to the point where I had this opportunity. Twitter

has been so good. But one of the war things about it is the negativity in the way that we as as as with with the anonymity, with the ability of people to say things without their identity attached to it gives them this weird courage to say things that no normal human being would ever say, and that's awful, and I don't know what the fixes and and I feel terrible that Russ's family has had to deal with that, and I am thankful that they have the resources to

at least attempt to handle it better than a lot of people out there do not have access to. That doesn't mean I don't sympathize with the way he's feeling. That doesn't mean I don't feel terrible. I literally received a death threat responding to the video that I've released. Like I and again, I'm not experiencing anything like what Russell Westbrook is experiencing, But I'm just saying this is a part of what that experience is like. It's an awful place the internet, and I'm not sure that it

can be fixed. It's a part of the deal, and we all need to sympathize with each other and be for it would be there for each other in these situations. I was just trying to with the video, and I hope that this is clear now. I was trying to differentiate between fans who are frustrated with Russ's play and his attitude and the crazy ass people on any on the Internet that are hiding behind fake avatars and that are saying awful, awful things that deserve to have them

thrown in prison. Those are two different things, you know. Literally, Russ came into this season and had a meeting with Lebron and Anthony Davis and said, I'm gonna change, I'm going to fit alongside you guys, and I'm gonna do whatever it takes to win the title. When he said that, Laker fans had a certain expectation that was attached to that. As we went into the season. Even me, I was I have watched lots of Russell westbrook In previously, so

I was very pessimistic about the fit. But when he came into the Lakers, even I tried to talk myself into how it might work. I said things like, hey, he's a third option now, maybe that will lead him to be more willing to embrace the little details of the game. I thought about matchups and the fact that when he's playing against teams like Brooklyn or Golden State, he might be able to present some physical advantages that

the Lakers can capitalize on. I thought, I thought, you know, hey, in the past, before he was with these bad teams, he actually had some success on the defensive end. I talked myself into it too. But just like all you Laker fans, I watched the games this year and as immediately from the start, it looked like the old Russ

from the start. It was stubbornness from the start. It was an unwillingness to embrace the Drew Holli a type of role, that defensive minded power guard type of role, the obvious role that the Lakers desperately needed him to fill. He immediately wasn't interested in doing that. And throughout the entire season it was just this cascade of the next story and the next thing that he did. It was here he got benched in the fourth quarter, and he walks off the floor before the final buzzer sounds. Here

he gets benched again. Now he's in the postgame presser saying that his resume is why he should be in the closing group. How did you think that was gonna land with Laker fans? Laker fans don't care about Lebron's resume. What makes you think they're gonna compare? They're gonna care about yours. All they care about. These are hardworking people that are just as passionate about this team as you players.

These are people that grew up with this team. These are people that live and breathe for these games, and they work hard all day and they sit on their couch and they see a crap product, especially one that's associated to self sabotage, an unwillingness to do the work, uh, prideful nature, acting like you're too good for what the team is asking you to do. Those are natural, Those are those things are naturally going to turn a fan

base against you. I have no doubt in my mind that had Russell Westbrook came into the Lakers and truly embraced that culture that the Lakers built in the previous two seasons, that none of these conversations would have happened. Every single one of us would have vehemently defended him

to the end. I can't tell you how many times over the course of the last year I came to Kyle Kuzma's defense when people were saying he was a bad basketball player, and I had to remind people that he had turned himself into a very good role player

in the NBA. I can't tell you how many times people said Alex Crusoe is only famous because he's a Laker, and I had to go out of my way to explain, like, no, he's a very very good basketball player because of X, Y and Z. We all would have done the same thing with Russ had he embraced that when he came into the team. And it's the problem I have with the way Russ approached that postgame presser and the way his wife was acting on Twitter was it was very

directed at Laker fans. You guys did this to my family, and I don't think that's fair. The crazy people, they deserve to be thrown in prison, the people who throw the death threats out. I hope one day we find a way to solve that problem. That's separate the Laker fans who booed the product on the floor, the Laker fans who tweeted you know, I can't believe this dude's not boxing out, or here's this guy not running back and transition, or stop complaining at the refs and get back,

or stop taking that stupid ass jump. That is just fans being fans because they love their team and they're not satisfied with the product on the floor. And you know, I think I think Russ's wife said something along the lines of like, hey, I hope this doesn't happen to the next player that comes in here. I hope so too, as it pertains to the death threats and the horrible things that some of those people do. But as it

pertains to the fan base itself. They have seventeen championships, They have expectations, and almost every player that has come through this team has been held to that same standard. I literally have been so critical of Lebron for his effort. This is not about russ. This is just about standards. If you put on the Purple and gold a seventeen championship organization, you should be expected to play hard. You

should be expected to embrace your role. When the coach looks to you at a film session and says, here's the defensive responsibility you missed, you should be like, my bad, I'll do better next time. Not defensive, not not obstinate, not stubborn. I don't have any problem with the way that Laker fans have handled this season within the realm of what's reasonable, not counting the crazies. I have no

problem with Laker fans being upset. They should be. This was an incredibly disappointing season from the Lakers, and so much of it was self inflicted. They have every right to be upset. That's all I have to say on that. I just I needed to clarify that last part because I hate I hate how everything gets conflated into two completely different things. I'm trying to say one thing and someone turns it into something else. We should all do a better job of when we see stuff, just trying

to assume the best rather than assuming the worst. Just a glass half full rather than glass half empty type attitude. All right, Before we get out of here, I wanted to talk about the top ten players in the NBA SO player rankings. Again. I understand some of you guys don't like this stuff, but a lot of NBA fans do, and I love this stuff. This is this is the

fun stuff. This is what gets us through slow, boring nights like tonight when the Lakers are playing a horrible Rockets team and the Miami Heat are are are playing against the Phoenix Suns with the COVID ridden Devin Booker and no Chris Paul. This is what we do to get through the dog days of March. I wanted to, uh, just quick give my two cents on the top ten

players in the NBA. Now, A couple of rules here, because what facilitated this idea was Nicolayokich in his rise and so many people saying that they thought he deserved to be considered the best player in the league. A couple of things. I do factor in regular season basketball with the way that I evaluate basketball players. But I always this is just the way I do it. If you do it differently, that's fine. I always am deferential to the established, playoff proven stars that we have in

our league. I am always going to give guys like Lebron and Steph and Kevin Durant a little extra juice in situations like this because they are stamped, they have resumes. Those guys have won seven championships between the three of them. We have to wait, I think I got that wrong. They've won nine championships between between the three of them.

So at the end of the day, we have to we have to acknowledge that and not have so much recency bias and to be so reactionary to what happens right in front of us that we don't pay the necessary respect to these guys. So at number ten my surprise appearance here, and this is a hard decision, but I went with DeMar de Rosen. So DeMar de Rosen this season is plus thirteen point four net rating in the clutch. That's how good the Bowls have been with

DeMar de Rosen on the floor. If you it takes just his clutch minutes and you look at his scoring on a per thirty six minute basis, He's scoring at a rate of thirty nine point five points per thirty six minutes on sixty four point two percent true shooting.

That is unfreaking believable. And what's so interesting to me about the DeMar de Rosen thing is he has had so many fall down Like he has fallen flat on his face so many times in his career in the postseason that you would think he'd be the kind of player that that's just kind of what he is. It's kind of like the James Harden effect. It's like year after year, same thing, same thing. DeMar is doing. The exact opposite is it's almost like he's playing like he

has nothing to lose. He's playing so free. It's like a confidence that has come with age for him. And when it comes down to it. When I'm ranking the best players in the league. One of the important skills, I'm gonna look at his isolation, scoring and playmaking, and to bart Rosen is really really good at both of those things. His playmaking kind of started developed towards the end in Toronto, really took a leap when he was

in San Antonio. Now he's a problem. He's going to be able to score if you leave him in isolation, and he's going to be able to create shots for his teammates. That automatically is gonna put you in a short list of the best players in the league. The reason why he's so low is this is a guy who can't really impact the game much defensively relative to some of his peers. Number nine I have John Moran. So I did a little thing on John morand last week.

A lot of people compare him to Derrick Rose, A lot of people compare him to Russell Westbrook, a lot of people compare him to John wall I don't see that at all. Those guys all had escaping weaknesses at some point in the early parts of their careers, and John doesn't seem to have that. I remember there was a little bit of a conversation about the fact that Jaw can't shoot well. Guess what Jah's last six games,

he's from three on six attempts per game. So I I've long been preaching that Jaw has a good jump shot, that there's good form there, that he will inevitably become a good jump shooter. He is a great perimeter guard who can get into the lane, who has stuff in the mid range floaters and pull up jump shots and things along those lines, and as an acrobatic finisher around

the basket, and is a great passer. He is way better than Wall or Rose or Russ ever were, and he is going to be a legitimate, bona fide top tier superstar sometime in the next couple of years. I'm a huge believer in John Moran. He plays so much more under control than Rusted too, so I think he's better at impacting winning. He is a freaking stud and I have him at number nine right now. Number eight I have Jayson Tatum. I talked about this a little

bit earlier today on Twitter. I don't think he's good enough to be considered in that like should he be considered for m v P territory. I have some rules for m VP. The gist of it says, hey, if you're not in conversation for being the best player in the world, he can't be considered there. Tatum is not quite at that level yet, but he's trending in that direction. He's twenty eight eight and five since January eight and

during that span he's shooting true shooting. He's turned into a legitimate bona fide two ways superstar wing and the biggest improvement and one of the biggest reasons why the Celtics are playing so much better lately. We have a special video about this coming out later this weekend. But

Jason Tatum is becoming a much better playmaker. He's handling double teams a lot better, he's reading the floor better, he's playing a lot more under control, and that's giving him the ability to handle the difficult defensive coverages that come with being a superstar. And so that's a credit to Jayson Tatum, and it's a big part of why the Boston Celtics are a bona fide championship contender in my opinion. Like I said, later this weekend, I'll have

a video coming out specifically about that number seven. I have Steph Curry, and this makes me sad because he's my second favorite player in the league. Lebron is my favorite. Steps my second favorite player. I love the way he leads his team. I love the way that he contributes to winning in so many ways other than just his shooting. And I so so often that gets swept under the rug, and it really bothers me because this dude is just

a flat out winner. But again, even if I just take his last seven games, he's thirty three percent from three. This is like a slump that never ends. There is I at a certain point, if it's been like forty games and you're shooting ten percent worse than you used to, I can't just be like shots aren't going in anymore. This is a decline. Steph is falling off a little bit.

I still think he's one of the top four or five guys that I would want in a playoff series if I had to just have a player for seven games, But because of his physical limitations and because of his decline in shooting, I don't think you can realistically call him a top tier superstar anymore, which sucks. Like I said, it makes me sad. It's just the reality, and I think we have to acknowledge it at this point. Number six, I have Luca. Luca is starting to hold up a

lot better defensively at his position. He is probably the most devastating, slow down, half court, switch everything offensive player that we have in the league because of his combination of size and skill, and because he can score from literally any spot on the floor. He's just incredibly difficult to guard when he can just hunt and look for switches and attack guys. But also he's that type of gifted playmaker that you can't send multiple bodies at him or will make you pay every time I I I am.

He's him in the Mavericks are one of my favorite dark horse picks to win the title this year. I'm a huge believer in his style of play. Way too many people want to characterize him as Oh he lost in the first round twice, even though he was the best player in both of those series is by a country mile. I'm I'm really high on on Luca. I have at number six, Number five Joel Embiid. He's arguably

the biggest matchup problem in the league. If you're an NBA coach and your game planning for the next night, and Beat's probably at the very top of the list of guys that I would not want to see. I can't even imagine from a game planning perspective how you could hope to keep him in single coverage. There are probably only two or three players in the entire league that you could put on and beat in single coverage. Maybe honest, you know, maybe maybe Anthony Davis. Maybe, But

I've seen and be give Anthony Davis major problems. So the point is is like, from that standpoint, you can bank on having to send multiple bodies that embied for the entire series. That instantly makes him a top tier superstar. The flip side of that, though, is he's still not great at handling those double teams and handling those jankie

coverages and handling those zone defenses. He's still hasn't quite figured out the chess match part yet, and we should all hope that he doesn't because if he does, it's gonna be a problem. And then, lastly, he relies way too much on the whistle, still too much at this point in his career. That will always be an issue in the postseason when the refs just simply don't fall for foul bal bating is often That's why I have him down at number five, number four. I've Nikola Yokichi's

my m v P this year. Yeah, a couple of things with Yokas and this is the reason why I have him down below at four when so many people have him so high. I understand that he's been the best regular season player in basketball this year. I think he's actually been that guy by a comfortable margin. I understand that all the advanced metrics say that he's having one of the best seasons of all time. But we have to differentiate between playoff basketball and regular season basketball,

especially with big guys who play the center position. For instance, Rudy Gobert. Rudy Gobert is the best defensive player that we've all seen and in the in this era in terms of like your rim protecting traditional big, tall center guy, right, But we've seen when you play against the five out team, it's really easy for teams to scheme around. That doesn't mean that Rudy becomes unplayable, that's an inaccurate characterization, but

it's easier to game playing around him. The same thing goes for Nikola yoke A huge part of why Nikola Yokich has taken a leap as a player. A huge part of why his teams are winning is he's become a very good drop coverage big. He's very good with his hands. He's deceptively like good at positioning himself around the basket to bother guys, even though he's not a great vertical athlete. But again, in a postseason series, they're

gonna find a way. There's he's gonna end up in matchups that put put him in five out scenarios where he has to cover a lot of ground, and he's going to struggle in those scenarios. I truly believe he will, which is why it's part of why we have to differentiate between again playoff basketball in regular season basketball. Same thing goes from a game planning perspective, and we saw this last year when they play Phoenix in the second round.

It is just harder to handle those double teams and to handle all the defensive coverage sent at you when they have extra time to game plan, when they can read, oh, this is the way he likes to pick us apart. So these are the other places we're gonna go to counter that when he has Jamal Murray. It's a much less it's much less of a problem. And maybe he will have Jamal Murray and that will be okay. But for me, with Nick will Yogi, I can't vault him above the next guys on this list until he wins

a championship. That's just my rule. I understand you guys operating on a different rules. If you want to say that Yoki is better than Janice, be my guests. If you want to say he's better than k D, be my guest. But for me, I'm gonna wait until he hoists that trophy, which is why I'm getting to number three now and getting to Lebron, a guy who's hoisted the trophy four times. Okay, Lebron, he's a bad GM.

We've seen that proven this season once again, as his priorities and what he envisioned for the roster ended up not being what the team needed. It's not all his fault, a lot of it's rob a lot of its genie, but Lebron is partially responsible for the roster being the way that it is. But even though he's been a bad GM this year, he has been a very good player. I tweeted this out the other day. The top four scorers in the league are all averaging over twenty nine

points per game. It's indeed, Janice, Kevin Durant, Lebron. They're all averaging over twenty nine points per game and over six shooting. How insane is it that Lebron, in his nineteen season, with all the mileage on his body, is still doing this. I was looking it up before the game when he's he got hurt in the Brooklyn Nets game. In every game since the Brooklyn Nets game, he's averaging over thirty points and shooting on a bum knee. How insane is that that at his age, with all the mileage,

with the injury, he's still able to do this. I would have to see a significant decline from Lebron in order for me to drop him below that top tier because of his postseason resume and because of the fact that he's still doing what he's doing in his age. Now, why do I have him at three? Because he's pretty much completely let go of the defensive rope at this point in the season. That has to be factored in here.

I can't in good faith put him ahead of guys right now that are just simply playing better basketball, which brings me the honest at number two. This guy crosses every box for being the guy who should be considered the best player in the world. Right just won the title, just scored fifty points in Game six, unbelievable defensive play, crosses all the boxes that we look for in terms of a guy that would be considered a best player

in the league. But there's one reason I haven't met number two, and it's because the last time I saw him in a playoff series against Kevin Durant, they played seven games, and I thought Kevin Duright was better. I thought Kevin Duright was clearly better, and I thought if he wasn't completely injury decimated from his role players, I think he would have won that series, and I think he would have won the trophy at the end of the day, which brings me my number one, Kevin Durant.

I think this guy very much clearly deserves to this this recognition. At this point, I thought he deserved to win m VP before he sprained his knee. He was playing the best defensive basketball I've seen him play since two thousand seventeen. To look at those early NETS games, they were winning with defense. Joe Harris was out, James Harden was barely playing, Kyrie Irving was clear completely out. They were winning playing defense, and with Kevin Durant playing

m VP level offensive basketball. He deserves a ton of credit for that. He's one of the few guys in the league that's completely unschemable. You saw that in that Boston game. They threw a couple of random doubles at him on Sunday, a couple of random stunts and doubles. He just he splits everything because he's so comfortable with the basketball. He's a much better passer at this point in his career than he's ever been. He's the best

player in the league in my opinion. I don't think that the Nets have enough juice or enough time to get their things together to to win the trophy this year. But I think he deserves to be considered the best player in the world at this point. And as is always the case, we'll revisit this after some playoff basketball, when guys have a chance to move around a little bit. All Right, that's all I have for tonight. Thank you

guys so much for coming to hang out. As always, we will be back Friday night for a home game against the Washington Wizards, a little Kyle Kusma revenge game. It should be fun. Who knows if the Lakers will try hard. They haven't for the most part, so it'll probably be another ugly one, but we'll be here covering it anyway. I appreciate your support as always, and we'll see you guys in a couple of days. The volume