Episode 25: Lakers/Nuggets, League Landscape, And The Evolution Of Basketball

Even if you don't have time to write something up, it doesn't take any time at all just to run in there and give it a quick rating. Um. But as usually, I appreciate you guys support. UM. I was planning on waiting to to talk to Tommy, which we were gonna do on either Tuesday or Wednesday this week, but I just had a lot of stuff on my mind this morning, so I figured why not just do

three pods this week? So um uh, playing on Tommy sometime in the next couple of days, and then at the end of the week, I'm hoping to have Rage on you guys know unwritten rules. I'm gonna try to have him on to talk some Lakers stuff later in the week, but today, I want to talk about last night's Laker Nugget game to talk a little bit about my takeaway is a little bit about the A D situation and a little bit about what the next few

months are gonna look like for that team. Uh, And then I want to talk about what the league landscape looks like in terms of the contenders. I think it's really really interesting how things have shaken out over the last couple of weeks in terms of the teams that have a realistic chance to win the championship and kind of how that what we need to keep an eye on in the coming months, especially as far as those

matchups concerned. And then lastly, I had some thoughts on you know, one of the big themes from last night was discussion about, you know, just the way that basketball has changed over the last few decades, and uh, you know what it means for the league moving forward, especially as it especially as as it pertains to the palatability of the sport, like how much fun it is to actually watch the game. Um. So we'll get to all

of those things at some point. As far as the Lakers Nuggets go, last night is a classic throwaway game.

I talked about this all the time. You know, as far as the regular season goes, you know, even on a good day, when both teams are healthy and both teams are trying hard, there are only so many things you can take away because there's so much random stuff that can happen in a regular season, whether it's a road trip affecting a team, or you know, one guy is in a particular slump or whatever it may be.

You know, a playoff series has the length that allows that stuff to kind of flush out, whereas in a random regular season matchup there can be all sorts of noise. A great example of that is the Bucks last year in Milwaukee beating the Lakers, especially like just jumping on them in the first half, Yannice making like five threes. That's not something you can really depend on in a playoff series. But in the regular season you also have

these like complete throwaway games. You know, one team just brings a trash effort, so it's clear that they're just not in it the way the other team is. You know, there's injuries that can play a role. There's so many different things that can happen in a random regular season game that kind of make the result pointless. And last night's game was a great example of that. You know, the Lakers come out early, the uh, they're playing really really well. There, it looks like it's gonna be some

sort of meaningful game. A D gets hurt, you know, when a D gets hurt, there down five, and the wind just gets taken out of the sales and for the rest of the game, they don't even look like the Lakers. They're not flying around in the rotations, they're not playing hard anymore. It just kind of looked like they let go of the rope. And I don't think

that that's super uncommon. I mean, at that point they didn't know what was going on with a D. You have to understand, like at that point, a D is limping off, you know, after he takes the free throws, the Nuggets in bound the ball and go the other way, and literally they have to take a foul because a D is not moving from the free throw line. Like it's a little freaky, you know. And you know, now we we find out after the fact that a D is probably okay. I mean, we're gonna see the results

later today. Um. The reason why I didn't wait for the results to record this is. I kind of don't think it makes much of a difference if it's if it's really a strain, meaning like the tendon got stretched, it's gonna be a couple of months off. Right. If it's not a strain and it's just the normal tendonosis stuff, he's still gonna have to take a couple of months off. Like, no matter what comes out of this mr I results short of a partial tear, which hopefully that's not the case.

But whatever comes out of this m r I, they're gonna have to rest him for a while. So more or less, it's gonna be the same issue for the Lakers regardless of what happens. But I think it's important to look at a d as a whole coming into this injury and realize what's kind of going on with him. It kind of reminds me a little bit of Lebron in the two thousand fifteen season. If you remember, he goes on this weird Pesketerian diet over the summer. He's

dropped a bunch of weight. He's down to like two forty or something, and in the interviews he's like, Oh, I'm I'm quicker, you know. The league's in trouble. I'm quicker, this is gonna be great. And then he comes into the season and it's very clear that even though he's lost some weight, he's nowhere near his athletic as he used to be. He's not able to bully people anymore. Then he's got this back spasm stuff and he's barely getting off the ground when he jumps. It just looks

like something's wrong. And he was twenty nine years old, like it was. It was ridiculous for him to look that way. And uh So then one ends up happening is he takes a couple of weeks off and uh just kind of focuses on rebuilding his strength, and then he comes back and looks more or less like the old Lebron and and that at that at some point you just got to acknowledge that it's not you're not

playing very well and it's time to get healthy. And I think that's kind of where we're at with a D because if you look at it, you know, Tim Crantis was talking about this this morning and his little, uh film breakdown he was doing on Twitter, But you know, I noticed the same thing last night, Like a D is just not very good right now. Like it's forget

about like him going down with injury. Before the injury, and and in the several games leading up to this, like he'll have some games where he's putting up big numbers just by getting some offensive rebound put backs and finishing a bunch of stuff around the rim. But this is not the same guy that we saw in the bubble. He can't shoot anymore, or at least nowhere near as well as he used to, nowhere near as confidently as he used to. He's not very quick, he's not beating

people off the dribble. He's just having a bad year. And I don't think it's his fault. I think it is health related. But let's acknowledge what it is. A d went from being you know, the second or third best player in basketball, you know, coming out of the bubble last year too. Now he looks like the fifteen

best player in basketball. And it's health related. So sit his ass down, let him get healthy, don't even don't even mess around with this at this point, because you're gonna absolutely need him at some point um in order to have any chance of winning the title. And I

talked about this that this morning. But you know, of all of the teams, we're gonna talk about this in a minute too, with the contenders, of all of the teams that are in contention for a championship, none of them are capable of withstanding and injury to one of their core star players. That's just the reality of the situation. You just can't. The league is too talented. I mean I I used the two thousand nineteen Warriors as an example.

That's the most talent that has ever been put together on a roster, that two thousand seventeen too, thousand nineteen Warriors, Kevin Durant goes down. They can't win. You know, they get they get fortunate to catch an inferior team in the Western Conference finals. They get through, and then they steal a game late in the finals, but they that they very very easily could have lost in five. That team wasn't the same when they lost their stars. And and that's just a harsh reality of the way the

league works. Health is ultimately the most important thing, and at this point all that matters is getting a d healthy, even more so than the seating and and the Lakers kind of have a luxury here because of their home court advantage situation. I talked about this last night. You know, I don't think people are fully aware of how quickly the whole you know, optics surrounding coronavirus are about to change because the way that this vaccination plan goes down.

You know, you might think, uh, it's gonna take forever for the world to get vaccinated. That's true, it's gonna take like a year for the entire world to get vaccinated. But they're gonna vaccinate all of the elderly people, all of the people with chronic health conditions first. So realistically, within the next like month or two, you're gonna see death rates fall to almost zero. They're gonna plummet way way, way, way way down. We're only seeing a handful of deaths

out of each state every couple of weeks. That's that's my prediction based on just common sense having to do with vaccinating all of the people that COVID has been killing over the last few months. So as a result of that, when the case numbers dip way down, case numbers already down like six for whatever from what they were a month ago, deaths are gonna start falling down. You know, who's gonna be the first to jump on that.

Rich guys. Rich guys are gonna jump on that. So all of these dudes who own these NBA teams, they're gonna put fans and stadiums, So you're gonna see I would bet that all twenty playoff teams are gonna have some form of crowd. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more conservative conservative states attempts to really pack the stadiums. It's gonna be like a home crowd type of environment all the way around the country come playoff time.

The Lakers have the best ability to capitalize on that because they have fans in every road or you know, and you know, even when they get into a potential matchup with the Clippers, they're gonna have seven home games.

So as much as seeding matters for other teams, and don't get me wrong, seeding does matter even just within who you play in your matchups, it matters a little less to the Lakers than it does to the other teams because of their ability to capitalize on their massive fan base and the in home court advantage that they'll be able to play with throughout h throughout their playoff runs. So it just get a d healthy. You can't win

without him anyway. Uh, Lebron might be able to make this happen, and we're gonna talk about that in a second. But at the end of the day, as long as you stay in those top four seeds in the West, you know, you're gonna be going into Phoenix and there's gonna be a lot of Laker fans there. You're gonna be going into you know, Utah, there's gonna be some Laker fans there. So it's not it's not the end of the world as it pertains to UM, as it

pertains to the home court advantage situation. So let's talk about Lebron because you know, for starters. You know, if you look back historically, this is something Lebron has done like a half dozen times in his career if you look back. Okay, so you think you know, two thousand twelve, he has to carry the team for an extensive stretch in a playoff run because Chris Bosh goes down with

an abdominal strain. You know, two thousand thirteen and two thousand fourteen, you have issues with uh uh two two thousand fourteen, you have issues with Dayne Wade and his knee in two thousand fourteen, In particular, Dwyane Wade missed a significant chunk of the regular season. I think you missed like thirty games. So and then you fast forward, it's like, Uh, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love go down

in two thousand fifteen. Kyrie Irving misses like a whole chunk of the season in two thousand sixteen at the start of the year because he's still recovering from the knee situation. Two thousand eighteen, Kevin Love misses I think twenty something games as a result of uh. I think he was having I can't even remember what his problem was, but I think it was I think it was lower bodies, some leg injury. But Kevin Love missed a bunch of games in two thousand eighteen, and Lebron had to carry

the team for extensive stretches. So point being, Lebron has a lot of experience dealing with this kind of thing. And if there's one silver lining, his team is right now as currently constructed without a D is better than some of those teams. They've got a lot of youth, they've got a lot of athleticism, They're still very good defensively. As I keep saying, everyone wants to pretend the defense is all about Anthony Davis, and he's important to that,

but that's not the only reason they defend. They defend extremely well with their guards, they defend extremely well with their rotations and their focus and everything. It's it's a very good defensive team with or without a D and the numbers show that for the record. But essentially, Lebron is going to have to carry this team for a little while, for a couple of months. You know, there's gonna be roughly thirty games here where he's going to have to uh, kind of float them in the standings.

That's worst case scenario of ads out for a couple of months. I mean, maybe it maybe it'll be better than that, but assuming the error on the side of caution and he misses a couple of months, Lebron is gonna have a big workload. And uh, the good news is, and I tweeted this last night, the silver lining Lebron didn't play particularly well last night. He was another guy who is kind of defensive effort slipped quite quite a bit after the the d injury. Just like everyone else's

did Lebron looks amazing physically? Um? You know, in two thousand eighteen, he was having one of his most ridiculous athletic seasons that we can remember, if you guys, if you guys think back to that point, Like he had that crazy dunk on Nurkicch that literally looked like he was back in his old Cleveland days. You know. In the playoff run, he was like throwing lobs off the glass to himself, cutting back door and doing like double pump reverse dunks and crazy stuff like that. Lebron is

a ridiculous athlete. In two thousand eighteen, he goes to the Lakers and he's still athletic. He's had he had some athletic plays, but there was a discernible gap, you know, in his athleticism in two thousand nineteen and two thousand twenty compared to two thousand eighteen, he still was incredible. I mean, the man one of finals MVP and was second in in m VP voting, but he didn't quite

physically look the same. He was relying on a little bit more of his old main game, passing the ball extremely well, analyzing the game with his brain, you know, low post stuff. All of this like uh, you know, below the rim type of stuff, you're still getting dunks. I'm not saying he completely fell off a cliff, but there was a discernible gap. Well. The last two games in particular, he's had several plays where he looks like two thou eighteen Lebron again, which is deeply confusing, but

it is what it is. There's the backdoor cut against Memphis, Marcus Alt throws in the ball, he's got a tomahawk dunk that looks like the one he had in the two thousand seventeen playoffs against the Raptors, you know last year. Last night, he had that play right before halftime where he's basically taken two dribbles from half court, taking off

just inside the free throw line. Not only did he finish the dunk when he finished it kind of aggressively, like he probably could have gone another foot or two before he had to finish, and stretched for it like that. That's he physically looks better than he has in the last several years. And so the question becomes, can this version of Lebron this you know, eight year eighteen, thirty six year old Lebron who is somehow peaking again athletically, can he carry the load that he needs to carry

over the next few weeks. And a big part of that is his jump shot, which is kind of faded again over the last couple of weeks after he shot so well to start the season. Um. But as long as he stays healthy, you know, it doesn't get banged up a little bit and lose a little bit of that that burst that he has, Lebron looks primed to be able to handle this elevated workload over the next couple of weeks or or potentially next couple of months,

and so that's something to be optimistic about. Um. But at the end of the day, it's gonna come down to Lebron playing like that, uh, really really good shooting because they haven't shot the ball particularly well as of late, and then getting their defensive mojo back, which for the record, they've had back at stretches second half against Memphis, they looked really good a couple of weeks ago. They looked really really good against Denver in Boston in Atlanta, so

it's still there. But as long as they can kind of replicate that over the next few weeks and as long as Lebron plays pretty well and as long as they make shots, they should still hang around near the top of the standings. The Utah Jazz are still coming into a stretch here with a bunch of really tough games. The Jazz and Clippers play each other twice here in the next week. If they split, that that helps in

the standings. So chances are, you know, uh, and then Paul George is having some health issues too, so chances are the Clippers and Jazz are gonna be dealing with some similar issues to what the Lakers are dealing with over the next few weeks. And nothing particularly to worry about. All right, We're gonna talk about the contenders in the league. Hmm. So the interesting thing about this season is, like, you know, with everything that we learned about the Lakers offseason acquisitions.

You know, Dennis Shooter who who Who's struggling a little bit but has been an obvious upgrade over Rondo, Montrese Harald who struggled defensively to start the season but has been playing a lot better recently defensively. And it's still one of the biggest mismatch, uh, you know, abusers that

we have in the league. And with how well Lebron was playing, it was very it was very uh possible that the Lakers could have come into this season and been kind of a juggernaut just started running people over. That was always an option here, And ironically a d s struggles and his injuries have kind of leveled the

playing field. And it's been interesting because we kind of came into this season thinking the Lakers would run away with it, and now by my calculations, there are six teams that are very much in this and with as poorly as a d has been playing, unless he can somehow replicate his Bubble performance by getting healthy in the next few months, it looks like the Lakers are kind

of just another team in the pack right now. Um. But the other teams that have in that list are the Clippers, the Nets, the Jazz, the Suns, and the Sixers. Really quickly. Clippers, I think are more or less the same team from last year. But I think the team from last year was really good. They just had a catastrophic collapse as a result of some flaws in the way that they're constructed. Um, I personally still think those flaws are there. If you ask Clipper fans they'll disagree

with you. They'll tell you that ty Lou has fixed things. They'll tell you that they're moving the ball around more. They'll tell you that they're running the triangle. They'll tell you that Nick Batoum has solved all of their basketball i Q issues as well as sergebaka Uh. To me, it's more or less the same issue at the end of these playoff games when things really bogged down. You know, um, you need to create high quality shots not just for

yourself but for your teammates over a large sample. If it's four minutes to go in a game and the game is tied, it's not can I hit one turnaround jumper? It's can I create eight quality shots over the next four minutes? Can I create ten quality shots over the next four minutes? Like, you have to create a lot of quality offense, and in those situations it helps to have a good mix of guys who can create easy shots for their teammates in addition to creating isolation shots

for themselves. And I just think that there are better teams than them in the league in that regard. That said, they still have all of the boxes checked outside of that, which automatically makes them a tough potential um a team that could potentially go on a run and win it all, especially considering all of the teams are flawed. The Lakers, a team that appeared flawless now having gaping flaw, which is Anthony Davis is either a shell of himself or

potentially could not be available in the playoff runs. So those are that's that's the that's the flaw that levels the playing field. Moving on to Brooklyn, Uh, I've talked at length about these guys, but I don't want to wait too and I don't want to dive into it too much. But I'm more or less feel the same way. They're never gonna have a problem with scoring. That's not the issue. However, over the course of a playoff series, you know, everyone was talking about this against the Warriors.

You know, how do you guard this team? How do you guard this team? You can't? Like do you can't guard any of the really, really good teams. They're gonna find a way to score. The teams that are at the top of the league. The question becomes what kind of shots are you getting? When things really bogged down and people start to wear down, that's the key difference. So, you know, it's one thing to try to stop Kyrie Irving, James Harden and Kevin durandt on a random Tuesday night

when they come to town. You know, in a regular season where they're playing less minutes, where they're not playing as much defense, and their legs are feeling really really good. Okay, But it changes completely in a playoff series. This is what I was talking about in terms of the potential matchup against the Lakers. Right, So, if you're playing against the Lakers and you're the Brooklyn Nets, it's Kyrie Irving and James Harden attacking really good perimeter defensive players for

an entire series. Okay, So James Harden dealing with Alex Caruso and extensive health defense all series long. It's Kyrie Irving dealing with Dennis shrewder Ball pressuring him all series long. Yes they might go off in Game one, Yes they

might go off in Game two. But at a certain point, if you exclusively rely on contested pull up jump shots off the dribble, it's going to become potentially an issue over the course of a series, especially against a team like the Lakers that's not gonna give you, you know, like a bunch of trips down Broadway, especially with Anthony

Davis on the floor. And so from that standpoint, and then on the other end, is you're guarding, you know, you're not dealing with a team that has a bunch of guys outside of Steph Curry that are uncomfortable creating their own shot. It's like, no, no, You're gonna be dealing with you know, Dennis shrit Or attacking uh like attacking people off switches. You're gonna be dealing with Lebron

trying to bully you under the basket. You're gonna be dealing with Anthony Davis trying to bully you under the basket. They're a team that you can wear down physically, so that in Game five when the series is three to two and you know they're down by you know, five or six in the third quarter and they need to go on a run, except for Kyrie's exhausted and James Harden is exhausted, and you know, Kevin Durant's been playing

center against all of these Laker bigs. It just gets a lot more complicated at that point, um and it gets a lot harder to make shots and We've all seen it so many times, guys missing contested pull up jump shots at the end of playoff games when they're really, really tired. That's just that's that's how works. And the Lakers are gonna get shots at the front of the rim consistently because they have two of the most powerful

offensive interior players in the league. Um But again that the thing with the Nets is as long as Kevin Durant can resemble anything close to Anthony Davis defensively, if he can be sev of Anthony Davis defensively, they should be able to get enough stops to beat most of the teams in the league. It's more a Laker matchup that I think could be a problem with them. Philly

is another team that's wired that way. A ton of ball pressure defensive players, a ton of length size under the basket to really wear them down defensively, and then a lot of physical mismatches on the other end like Ben Simmons, Tobias Harris, Joel em beat offensive attack against the lack of size that Brooklyn has could become a serious problem. U The Jazz I think are the weakest

of all of the contenders. The six that I listed. Uh. The thing with the Jazz is, you know, I always talk about three things that you need in order to contend for a championship. You need to be an elite defensive team, which I believe the Jazz are. You need to have offensive versatility, and then you need to have alpha's that can step to the biggest stars in the league. Those last two for me with the Jazz are a

little iffy. You know. Donovan Mitchell certainly can, and we have seen him step up to Jamal Murray in a playoff series. We've seen him step up to Russell Westbrooke in a playoff series. The question becomes, can he step up to the elite tiers of stars in the entire league? Can he be in a close game, in a late playoff game against a guy like Lebron, against a guy like Kawhile Leonard, you know, against a guy like Chris

Paul who has been there so many times? Can he be in those situations and can he be the better player on the floor. Yes, he can, That's why he's in the contender list with the rest of his team. But I feel less confident about him in that regard than some of the other guys. He's gonna be going against.

As far as offensive versatility, I actually worry about them a little bit more in that respect, you know, because their entire offense is kind of predicated on this driving kick attack with Mitchell and with UH and Mike Conley.

You know this idea that you put extensive pressure on the basket with UH pick and rolls with Rudy Gobert where he's bringing some above the him gravity and you're driving um, you know, with these really aggressive dribble drive guards with con Lee and Mitchell, and then you basically get the defense and rotation and you have three really really good close out guys, you know, Like I always talking about, the best close out guys are guys who can shoot and guys who can make really quick decisions

with one or two dribbles. That's why I love k Cps so much on the Lakers. You know, he's if you leave him open, he's gonna make shots. And if you close out too hard on him, he's just gonna rip through to his right hand. If the help doesn't come, he's gonna take off his left leg and he's gonna finish around the basket. And if he doesn't, if he gets cut off, he can make the next pass. Well. They do that with guys like Royce O'Neil, guys like uh Bogdanovich, guys like Joe Ingles, guys who can make

really simple reads out of closeouts. So that all sounds great in theory, but it lacks some versatility. They don't have a guy that they can consistently go to in the low block to get a basket. They don't have a guy who can score from all three levels consistently. Most of it is just dribble drive from the perimeter and pick and roll or an isolation from two guards who like to get all the way to the basket

or take pull up three. So there's a little bit of lacking versatility there, which makes me a little bit less confident in them as compared to some of the other teams. The Sons are a team that I'm actually feel is way more dangerous than U Ties. And to be clear, the Jazz look great in terms of the way they've been playing and Uh, the way their record is shaken out to this point in the season. I just think it's a little bit more kind of like

a Milwaukee Bucks from last year. Thing They've got like a chipper shredder. Set up this this machine, this system, and they're playing so hard that teams are running into it their first time and getting their butts kicked. But it's a little bit easier to deal with when you can game plan for him several times in a row. That's what I think will be interesting to see in

a playoff series. As far as the Suns go in those boxes, I just said that they need to check their top five defense in the league, okay, and recently

they've been better than that. Uh. They have two alphas that can step up to most of the players in the league, like Devin Booker I think is as someone I'm a little more confident, and then Donovan Mitchell in the playoff series, and now he doesn't actually have the reps yet, but I test would tell you given how gifted he is as a three level score in his history of making big shots against big teams in the league, you know, hitting game winners against Golden State, in game

winners against the Clippers. He's an extremely uh gifted alpha in that regard. And then you've got Chris Paul who can absolutely step up to the biggest stars in the league. So I've got two guys that will not be scared in these big moments. And then uh, last but not least, they have a lot of offensive versatility. They can run extensive pick and roll with Booker and extensive pick and roll with Chris Paul. They can get DeAndre and involved, Devin.

Booker can play in uh in the low post against seis mispatches against cards, and he can score from there. You know, Chris Paul can just run basic action to get switched onto a big, and he can attack a big in isolation. There's a bunch of different wrinkles to their offense that don't exist for a team like uh, the Jazz in my opinion, So they could they check all those boxes. They're the ones that have you know, they scare me more than some of these other teams

in the league. And then last but at least is the Sixers. So everything with the Sixers is predicated on Joe l emb He's an alpha that can step up to anybody in the league, even more so than Booker. And at the and Chris Paul like that guy has an extensive history of going toe to toe with really really good players at the end of games in addition to that, I think they even though the numbers don't necessarily say Philly is that good of a defensive team,

I believe they are. I think that I think a lot of their defensive metrics have come from playing in the Eastern Conference against some bad teams and giving up some shots, Joel Embiad missing some games. But the reality is is that they have on paper, which should be a really difficult defense to score on, you've got this elite rim protector and Joel Embiid he's not fantastic on the perimeter, but he's okay. Ben Simmons might be the best defensive player in the league. Tobias Harris is more

than okay. Matisse Thyble is like a legitimate problem. They have a lot of defensive talent on the wing that can really really be kind of oppressive in a in a playoff series. So you've got that Ben Simmons is a playmaker who can create easy shots for his teammates. But also because he's next to Embiid, you don't need him to be the most amazing isolation scoring league kind of masks that flaw for you. So on paper, they make a ton of sense, and in terms of the

Eastern Conference teams. They are the team that I think has a really good chance of beating the Brooklyn Nets unless they can get a really good buyout guy in the center market, which I'm not sure is going to be available. But the bottom line is, if you look at all those teams, you know, it's interesting chook out. Like I said, Lakers look like they were gonna be this runaway team. Anthony Davis's injury just completely opens everything up.

And the emergence of the Suns and the Jazz as bona fide contenders has made this whole thing very interesting. I talked a lot about how seeding matters in the Western Conference because you want that one seed so you can avoid the Jazz and the Clippers in the second round. Well, it may not matter if you get the one seed and you get Phoenix, And I think Phoenix is every bit as good as Utah and UH and potentially has the the the ability to upset any of those teams

that we mentioned. But the bottom line is, you uh, they all need to be healthy. Paul George needs to be healthy, like Chris, Paul needs to stay healthy. He's got a history of that kind of stuff. Anthony Davis needs to get healthy. Health is going to be the big determining fact. Even Mike Connolly for the Jazz, has been hurt a lot as of late. So you know, health is gonna end up being the biggest thing that

these guys got to prioritize. All right. The last thing I wanted to touch on today was the evolution of basketball. So you know, a pole went out last night. I said, on a scale of one to ten, how much are you enjoying watching basketball this year? And I said ten because for me personally, I just love watching basketball so much that regardless of any of the surrounding circumstances, I'm I'm still having the time of my life watching it.

I was extremely excited all day to watch that Nuggets Lakers game last night, even though there were no fans, you know, even though it's in a regular season, even though it didn't really you know, matter in terms of the grand scheme of things, I was extremely excited to watch that game. Now, the some of the interesting points that people brought up were, you know, the lack of fans and how it's making it so that the games

are lacking energy. That the fact that the players just kind of seem like they're showing up to work rather than doing anything, uh that they really truly care about, which I also think is related to fans. And then one of the biggest things that was brought up with it was the idea that the quality of basketball has has changed as a result of of the the game kind of evolving into this you know, three pointers and

layups kind of thing. And you know, I think I understand that from the standpoint of like it lacks some of the you know, the dynamic nature of older forms of basketball, where each offensive possession looks different, right, Like sometimes you're running plays to get guys coming off of curls alla like Rip Hamilton's kind of thing. Sometimes you're dumping it down in the low low block to Al

Jefferson and he's working on the post. You know. Sometimes there's pick and roll, you know, sometimes there's guards isolated isolating people. There's all sorts of uh, there's all sorts of like variety in the offense, and some of that variety has gone. It's true, especially with particular teams, and I think that that's fair criticism of the league. However, I do think one of the important things that is getting glossed over there is the overall skill level has

improved as well. So even though there was a variety in the type of offense that you would see ten years ago, I think the overall skill level the things that basketball players are able to do with the basketball now has improved and that's kind of canceled out some of that stuff. And then, most importantly, as it pertains to what will happen with the game of basketball, everything to me, in my opinion, is about some sort of innovation and then a reaction to that innovation. Right, so

this three point shooting thing is an innovation. This was you know, analytics guys watching the game and telling us like, hey, if we shoot percent from three, you know, it's actually going to come out to you know, over in effective field goal percentage. So why don't we just take a bunch of threes and it's going to eventually lead to more points per possession than we had been scoring. And

that has happened. And for the record, it has worked because offensive ratings are peaking, you know, especially in the last few years. You know, offensive ratings have always hovered you know, between the low one hundreds up to like one oh eight. You know it was one of weight in the eighties, was one oh wait a few years ago, but then just suddenly recently it's gone up over one oh one ten points per one hundred possessions on average for a team, as evidence of the three point shot

really starting to finally impact offense. But the flip side of that is as has happened every single time the league adjusts. Okay, So one of the big reasons why post up offense doesn't work as well as it used to is because teams have figured out how to guard post up offense. Why because ten fifteen years ago that was half of offense in the league, dumping the ball down to the low block, to your best low post player and letting him go to work, and teams just

kind of figured out how to guard it. And there are still a handful of post up players in the league right now that could have success doing that. But there's a lot of like, the post up player was not eliminated by efficiency concerns having to do with the three. The post a player was eliminated by defenses evolving and learning how to guard post up players. What kind of

physicality did the rests allow underneath the basket? How to best position your health defenders that you can prevent the guy from doing a basic little drop step move, but at the same time rotate out to shooters. All of that has led to the to the regression of post up play in the league. Well, the same thing happens with this three point shot thing. What you're gonna see is defense over the next couple of years is going to highly prioritize guarding the three point line. You're already

seeing a couple of teams doing this. The Lakers are one of the best three point defense teams in the league, and they have a healthy lead in defensive rating over the rest of the league right now. It's because they are already starting to evolve. The Lakers are telling you we are going to take away the three point line, and as a result of that, it's actually leading to teams not scoring as much against them as they do against other teams in the league, And so that that's

kind of the evolution. What you're gonna see is all of the teams in the league are eventually going to prioritize taking away the three point line, and then suddenly you're gonna see this massive increase in and guys driving to the basket. But the way these defenses are structured is they're taking away the paint and the three point line.

So all of a sudden, there's gonna be this big, gaping hole in the middle of the floor for guys to get high quality shots between five and twenty feet, and you're gonna see a resurgence of mid range basketball. Mark my words, it's going to happen. This is the natural order of things. You never have to worry about it getting too far off the rails in one direction because the market will naturally correct itself back towards the middle,

and so and so. Like I said, there's no reason to be too upset about it, because there's such a high skill level in the league that it's still entertaining to watch, and inevitably things are gonna progress back towards you know, uh, an offense that has more balance, because the teams that are too one dimensional in the way they attack are going to become the teams that are easiest to guard, and they're gonna become the teams that start losing, and then they're gonna have to start adjusting

and and so I don't think it's a coincidence that the Lakers won last year, kind of on that type of identity, you know, going against the grain. So I'm not particularly worried about it. And most importantly, like I said, like given the circumstances with the pandemic and stuff, we're lucky to have basketball right now. So I'm just I'm not going to complain about what I'm watching. But anyway, that's all I have for today. Like I said, I just wanted to quickly hop on and cover some of

those topics that were on my mind. Um. I just got a text from Tommy. We're gonna be going on Wednesday, So playing on Tommy on Wednesday, and as long as I can get approval from Rods, will probably go on Friday. Um, but thank you guys so much for your support. Like I said, if you haven't done so yet, just dropped me a review, drop me a rating on the podcast. It means the world to me. It helps get this

ball rolling, So I really appreciate you guys. Enjoy the rest of your week, good luck, and I'll talk to you later.