Cooper Flagg vs. Dylan Harper Reaction: Two future STARS for Mavericks & Spurs showcase strengths

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Reed Shepherd's Summer League debut. And we've done some deep evals of the contenders at the top of the Western Conference over the course of the last week, involving Denver and the Los Angeles Lakers. Obviously, we've covered Oklahoma City extensively on their path to the NBA title, but there's another team at the top of the West that many people view in that tier, and that is the Houston Rocket. So I want to talk a little bit about what their pathway looks like, how they stack up with the

teams at the top of the Western Conference. You guys know the joke for we get started. Subscribed to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLT so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about a podcast feed wherever each your podcast owner Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and review on that front. Jackson's doing great work on our social

media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us over there. In last, but not least, if you want to get mailbag questions in on the show, remember just underneath our full episodes, put mail bag with colon. Write your question in. We'll get to our mail bags once a week throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball, so really fun. First impression of Dylan Harper. The first thing that flashed to me was

his defensive potential. You're not really expecting that this is guy's famous for the dribble drive. He's a guy that's drawn a lot of comparisons to Shae Gildas Alexander as a bigger guard that can dribble through contact and can consistently get paint touches. But right out the gates, he was applying aggressive ball pressure, getting physical on the ball, getting deflections. He had a crazy block on Ryan Emharten transition where he elevated and swatted it away, just showing

a lot of that defensive upside. I've always been a big believer that forward, aggressive, turnover forcing defenders fit well with rim protection. And so guys like Darren Fox, guys like Dylan Harper, I think they make a lot of sense in the context of a partnership with Victor wemen Yama, because forward aggression ball pressure that tends to give up dribble penetration. And if you're giving up dribble penetration, you need guys on the back line that can clean it up.

And there may not be a better player in NBA history then Victor webmin Yama, who actually graced us with his presence in the arena today.

it was just consistently getting into the paint. And this is that Shay Gildes Alexander esque chaining together of dribble combinations. Right like when you get into traffic, you make a move, the defender beats you to the spot, maybe he's plying some physicalities putting his hands on you. You got to be able to dribble through that contact and change direction and attack again, and then potentially even change direction and attack

a third time. And that's one of the things that's made Shay such a gifted dribble penetrator in the NBA. There's a chasm between the amount of drives per game that Shae Gills Alexander puts together compared to other guards around the league. And that just comes from that downhill, that relentless downhill force, constantly changing direction and being able to control the basketball through that. And you saw that with Dylan. The protected dribbles right like that between the legs.

Dribble is how you can protect the ball as you're dribbling in traffic so the ball doesn't get swiped away, and he showed.

tag the roller. He had a ball screen coming off of the right wing where he got into the lane the shooter in the right corner. His man tagged the roller, and Dylan patiently pulled the ball out and pitched it back to the right corner. One of the things you

notice a lot with NBA Summer League is poor decision making. Right, it's a lot of young basketball players, it's a lot of guys that are trying to make their imprint, the guys that are trying to get a spot in the league, and so that can come with the pressure of being aggressive and a lot of times it's the guys that can slow down and read the floor and not force

the issue to have the most success. And Dylan, I thought, just similar to Cooper in the first game, just was patient, took what the defense gave him, made the kickouts that were there, didn't get into the middle of the floor without a plan, without an idea of what he was trying to accomplish. There's a pretty high floor for a basketball player who can guard the ball, but that can also get past the guy guarding the ball. It's such

a simple concept. But if you apply ball pressure and make the opposing guard feel uncomfortable while also on the other end of the floor handling ball pressure and consistently getting into the paint, it's just such a strong foundation. And then from there there's all the ceiling raising stuff, the shot making. We saw him hitting off the dribble three It got wiped or wiped out by a legal screen call if I remember correctly, but showed some of that more high level upside.

a jump shooter. And you know, one of the things with Dylan that's different than most on ball guards is he's a guy that typically on ball players, they struggle to shoot off the catch, but they're comfortable shooting off the dribble because throughout their entire youth basketball experience, they've been the guy who's had to dribble and get to their spots and they're not getting a ton of.

Bryant real quick. Carter was one of the guys that the Spurs put an absolute defensive clinic together in their first two Summer League games. Just absolutely strangled the life out of the Philadelphia seventy six ers. The other night,

did it again tonight to Dallas. Carter is a traditional small forward type of prospect in the sense that he's got great length and size for the position, but he's very, very quick laterally, which gives him the flexibility to guard a bunch of different types of players, and I think that's specifically exciting for San Antonio team. I didn't really have that type of player in their core rotation right now. They got a lot of guards, they got a lot

of forwards. You know, obviously when Harrison Barnes was there, he was a slower forward. Jeremy Sohan has that ability to guard out on the perimeter, but I view him as more of like a four than a three defensively. I think Harder is going to bring that relentless ball pursuit and quickness to be able to be out on the perimeter, getting over the tops of screens and doing

some of the tougher perimeter defense work. And I think that that's just a role that that team really needs, and that's going to be a really interesting thing to watch with San Antonio this year. Shout out to the Spurs Summer League team. They've put together a couple of

really nice defensive performances to start the tournament. Cooper for all of the quality work that he did on Thursday and again, I thought he was a lot better than his box score showed in terms of just all the winning plays he was making on both ends of the floor. It was not an efficient scoring game for him, right. I think he had ten points. Who's five for twenty one from the field. He drew a lot of fouls, but they weren't shooting fouls. They were ball pressure fouls

out in near half court. Really nice bounce back game from Cooper. From a scoring perspective. The Spurs, as we talked about, have done a defensive number to everyone they faced in this Summer League so far. That's not an easy team to put up thirty points on. That was a pretty legit scoring performance there. The Spurs were doing a lot more switching than the Lakers did on Thursday night. So like Maxwell Lewis was struggling a little bit, Jordan

Hall was struggling. Ryan Nemhart's a guy who capitalized on all the drop coverage looks that he was getting against La And again, when you're facing a drop coverage, all you got to do is go over the top of the screen, and there's kind of like this baked in dribble penetration that is actually being conceded as part of the coverage, and so there's room to operate in the middle of the floor for a guy who can show some mid to short range shot making.

able to drop fouts. I think he's drawn like fifteen fouls through the first two games, which I think is a testament to his ability to dribble through contact without turning the basketball over. And when you're facing a physical defender is putting his hands on you, if you allow that to make you retreat, you're not going to get the call. But if you power through it, you actually

force the official to make a call. You actually put the official in a position where there's too much contact and now he has to make a decision about whether or not he's going to let it go. And he just was attacking Carter over and over again in fighting through that contact, and he was drawing fouls. And I think that's a strong sign of his ball handling, but

also his overall athleticism. In order to draw valves, you have to get defenders out of position, and that's something that he's done consistently through the first couple of games. And again a Carter Brian, a defender who's done a lot of damage to guys in the Summer League so far. I keep getting excited with Cooper about the potential with his jump shot. He hit a couple more. Three hit

three threes tonight, a couple more on the catch. She hit a three at the top of the key in the first half in a possession where Carter was They were in a deeper drop coverage and Carter got caught on the screen, so he had a clean look off the dribble at the top of the key. He knocked it down. But the thing that I'm excited about were they dunks or the miss dunk as well. In the second half, both of them came off of the catch

out of action with the defender sprinting at him. One of them, he was able to just kind of pump fake and then dip his right shoulder, And when he dipped his right shoulder, he's able to get just a tiny bit of an angle on the guy shot downhill, got a big dunk, and then on the miss dunk where he was up plenty high, he just missed it. But on the miss dunk very similarly, just caught its top of the key against the clothes out and just showed the ball just pump fake. Defender jumped out of

his shoes. All of a sudden, he had a lane to go downhill. Cooper is so good at the read and react stuff. He's so good at like the fundamentals in terms of footwork and using those bodies shoulder fakes to get that initial advantage that he if he can add the jump shot to where he's a real threat there to where those shoulder fakes and head fakes get the defender out of position consistently, that's where he has

real potential. Because again, as wealked about it, Summer League, everyone's playing super hard, everyone's playing for their NBA career.

a little bit out to the side. It's much more fluid now. He's able to get to it out of more dribble combinations quicker and in a way that just looks more smooth and easy for him. So if he can add the actual touch put it into the basket consistently, I think there's a ton of upside there. I'm just super excited to watch him play in a winning context right away. Not very often do we get to see a real super star type of prospect go into a situation where they're not carrying a bunch of, you know,

younger players in a rebuilding context. He's going to have a long an immediate instead of a long runway of bad basketball. He's going to step into a winning context right away, and that's really exciting for us as fans. Let's talk a little Houston Rockets lean to start with Reach Sheepherd. Really fun first game in Vegas. Twenty eight points, eight rebounds in, four assists, seven stocks, four steals in three blocks in a single summer league game for a

guard is frankly outrageous. He was super aggressive. He took twenty five shots, showed a variety of shot making hesitation threes, snatched back threes off of hard, a dribble like a dribble, drive off of some ball pressure. Hit a super tough left shoulder fade away in the lane in the first half where he drove left and then just hard pivoted over his left shoulder, knocked down the shot. He hit some tough scoop shots in the lane. He pushed his

three point shot further out. He end hit like a thirty footer when he got hot in the second half out above the break on the left side. Just really showing some of that shot making piece from a bunch of different angles and a bunch of different dribble combinations and a bunch of different spots on the floor. Again,

the seven stocks just getting into passing lanes. Really good at stripping drivers and cutters down low right around the basket, which is what you got to do when you obviously don't have that vertical size, but just a super feisty guard with good hands that can do a lot of damage. Raphaelstone has specifically come out and said this, but his development is super important to Houston's short term goals and

their long term goals. Stone came out and said and specifically said, Reid is going to have to be really good for us. We've penciled him in for a big role. Remember we talked about the ball handling shortage for Houston

right after the Kevin Durant trade. This was a team we talked about like, this was a team that would have made sense for a guy like Tyas Jones in the same way that Tis Jones made no sense for Phoenix because Phoenix had a glut of ball handling and a deficit in like physical defense and rebounding ties Jones you experience, it's diminishing returns there, right, But in a context like Houston or Orlando, who ended up signing Ties Jones.

There's an absence of ball handling and refined offensive skill. You get to experience more of the upside from having Tiest Jones on your team. But they didn't sign Ties Jones. They're allowing Read Shepherd the opportunity to fill this role. And I actually really like this approach from Raphaelstone of allowing Read that runway because like Houston has a large margin for air in the regular season, right like they're young,

they're athletic, they're super deep. We already saw that exact same combination last year get the second seed in the Western Conference. So even if Reed Shepherd comes in in that backup guard role and struggles, and you know, it becomes abundantly clear during that time that they need to upgrade that position. It's not like they're gonna slip way down in the standings and be in some predicament where the season is lost because they didn't sign a backup guard.

They're so good in terms of their their floor as a young athletic defense that they can afford to make some mistakes at that backup guard spot. And so what's perfect is you have the best of both worlds. The best case scenario is he fills that role admirably and all of a sudden, you got yourself a great basketball team and a young player that can fill that role for a long time, and you've got yourself a great

option there. But if he struggles, the worst case is he still gets lots of valuable reps that will help him become a better basketball player, and now you have a knowledge and understanding of what your team needs. Okay, we tried to read for forty games as our backup guard. It's not quite working, but I'm glad he got the reps. We have lots of draft compensation, We have salaries that we can package together to go find a veteran, experienced,

more steady, more consistent ball handler. They don't need that guy in October. They're not in that situation. They do need that guy for the players. Might as well see if Reed can do it, and if not, you can kind of pivot from there. But I want to zoom in on Houston for a minute, because they're rightfully being penciled in as one of the top three teams in the Western Conference. I think that's clear if you look

at the West. To me, it's you know, you have Denver, Houston, and Oklahoma City in that top tier in some order, and then I think there's a little drop off and then you run into that second tier in the West is where you're getting the Clippers, the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Los Angeles Lakers. We'll see if a team like San Antonio can get into that mix this year. We'll see if a team like Memphis can bounce back this year. There's a lot of different potential teams in that tier.

I think that's more or less that middle tier is going to be Clippers, Lakers, and Timberwolves, right and so when we look at that group in the West, we kind of know what most of these teams are. We know what the Clippers are going to be that got healthy to the postseason last year and ended up not being enough to beat Denver. We more or less know what the Lakers are going to be. We got a

good look at that last year. Denver obviously upgraded a starting position and added depth, but they're more or less the same. You know, a continuous group that's been playing for the last several years. Oklahoma City we've just covered in depth winning the title, so we know a lot about what those teams are. With Houston, they kind of have a wide range of potential outcomes because they're fundamentally different basketball team. With Kevin Durant, they're going to play

a different style on offense. This is a team that ran a lot of their down the stretch go to action when things got tough in the playoffs last year, was that inverted ballscreen with shangoon at the top of

the key. Fred Van Vliet would set the screen, he'd slip out of it, and they would just play that two man game at the top of the key, and it worked a little bit, but eventually they got to a point where Gary Payton and Draymond Green just refused to allow the switch and they stayed attached and Draymond was able to get the stops he needed to get

on Alburn Shangun and they ended up losing. Right, Kevin Durant's going to come in and just add a very different action that they're going to run in those situations and give them a lot more variety that they can go to in those spots on the defensive end. I'm

a huge believer in a men Thompson. I think he's one of the best defensive prospects to ever grace the league, but he doesn't have that like big frame that Dylan Brooks had, and Dylan Brooks gave them a great option for some of the bigger forwards in the Western Conference, guys like Lebron Luka, Doncic, Kawhi Leon or Jimmy Butler,

Julius Randall. There's a bunch of those types of dudes that Amen Thompson might be too small for right So they're a different team in that sense, But at the same time, they never really had a rim protecting presence before Kevin Durant, And like, if we look back the last time Kevin Durant played on, you know, a championship quality team going back to Golden State, he functioned a lot as a back end rim protector for them. We've

talked a lot about this concept with Shanggoon. When you have bigs like Shanggoon and you can't protect the rim, you run into these tough situations where you're either running like a deeper drop coverage with him and you're getting picked a part in the mid range, or the guy's

getting downhill and Shanguon's not protecting the rim. Or you bring shanguon out to the level and he's attacking the ball, but now you're giving up these four on threes and you don't have any rim protecting presence on the back line, and that can cause problems. Right, Kevin Durant gives you a solution to that problem, which is you can now bring shangu up to the level to be aggressive on the ball handler, knowing that you have a rangey long athlete on the backside that can cover ground both at

the rim and out to the perimeter. Kevin Durant also has switch ability to get out onto perimeter players.

just really smart. They're always in the right spots. They actually got more stops against Oklahoma City than everybody this last playoff run other than Indiana, and even then it would influenced a lot by that Game six where Indiana really strangled Oklahoma City. So, like we know what Denver is with Houston, I want to be clear, Kevin Durant doesn't come in and just turn them into an elite, well oiled machine on offense.

to figure out ways to use Kevin Durant. I think they're gonna have to lean into more what Kevin Durant was in Brooklyn, which was more of like a high pick and roll ball handler rather than like an off ball scorer playing off the catch more like he did in Phoenix. I'd like if you guys remember he was super high volume in pick and roll in Brooklyn and he had a year there. I think it was twenty

twenty one. He did a year there where Kevin Durant ball screen including passes was over a one to twenty offensive rating because he was just consistently drawing that second defender so tall you can see over the top and easily drop it over the top to the role man, and then they're playing four on three out of it with great spacing. And because James Harden was on that team, Kyrie Irving was on that team, they just had a

lot offensive skill off the ball. Now again, it will be a little more clunky with Houston, it's a lot of young raw athletes. But I think I like the idea of using a men Thompson in the short role playing off of Kevin Durant coming out of high ball screens. Shan Gun too is a guy that can score in the middle of the floor and play make out of

the middle of the floor. I like giving him more opportunities there off of Kevin Durant as a ball handler, their ceiling on offense is going to be a work in progress, and it may be something that they don't achieve until close to the playoffs. Are potentially even in the playoffs, or if they get beat. If someone asked me how to shoot, like Houston loses in the playoffs this year, how does it happen? I think it actually happens because their offense bogs down, right, But how can

they separate themselves from Denver? How can they separate themselves from Oklahoma City. It's the defensive end of the floor. If they can get to that point where kd has a throwback all defense type of season like he did in twenty seventeen with Golden State, where he's protecting the rim, he's doing defensive rebounding, he's doing all that stuff on the back line, and they have that depth of perimeter defense talent that they have. That's where they have some upside.

And so for me, I look at Houston as more the same kind of like defensive juggernaut that they were last year. Kevin Durant, if he can just provide a little more advantaged creation, rescue possessions like three four seconds on the shot clock. He's just a way better option than anybody Houston had last year. Clutch situations no more Fred van Vliet, Alpern shanggun two man game, a little bit more of Kevin Durant, Fred Van Vliet two man game,

Kevin Durant, Alpern shangun two man game. I think that's just a more reliable action there. It's like dragging teams down into the mud, getting into close games, and then in those close games just executing better because you have Kevin Durant on the team. And I would argue, out of all these teams in the West, they're the team that has the widest range of possible outcomes because they are fundamentally different on both ends of the four. With KD,

We're gonna be tracking it NonStop throughout the year. It's going to be a team we covered very closely this year. But I'm very, very excited to watch Kevin Durant and Houston Rockets play basketball. All right, guys, that is all we have for today is always as sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. Shout out again to the guys at Series XM for taking care of us here at the win.