Hoops Tonight - 76ers Doc Rivers dilemma, Luka Doncic explodes, Mavs escape Durant, Kyrie & Nets

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in West Virginia. YEA, all right, Welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by Fan Duel here at the Volume live on AMP Happy Thursday. Everybody. If you are listening on the podcast feed or on YouTube, remember that you can catch these shows first live on AMP immediately after the early slated games. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter as well.

That's where you can find the scheduling information for that stuff we're going to be talking about tonight, Dallas in Brooklyn and that epic overtime game that we just witnessed with the one hell of a flurry from Luca as a facilitator in overtime. And then I've got a lot of thoughts on the Philadelphia seventy six ers, who are off to a horrendous start this season, and I think

it's time for a coaching change. So we're gonna get into some of the details there and why I think it might be the only pathway forward for the Sixers to improve. Um this is an unforgiving leak. Brooklyn yesterday puts together a solid half of effort against Milwaukee and then they just finally relent under the physical onslaught of

the Bucks and they lose. And your reward for fighting and losing and improving in one night is that Luka don Chich comes to town, and you play hard, and you and you you compete on the glass and you make up some of the three point because the advantage for Dallas in this game was a three point line. But you get a lot of that back by running and transition and getting easy fast breakpoints to bolster your offense.

You're up one ten to one oh six, and it's crunch time and now it's Luka don Chitch versus Katie and Kyrie, and they subbed out Spencer Dinwoody and went with Tim Hardaway Junior down the stretch. Now important important detail for both teams. Lineups for both teams are in a completely different place right now. The Mavericks know who they're best grouping is. You know, during the playoffs last year was Jalen Brunson in that spot, But for the

most part it will be Spencer Dinwoody. They went with Tim Hardaway Jr. Because Tim Hardaway was shooting really well in a spot of role and he ended up hitting a massive shot in O T the first one that kind of the first picking pop that he hit. But it's all the same grouping. It's going to be Dorrian Phinney Smith, it's gonna be Reggie Bullock, it's gonna be Maxi Kleiba, It's gonna be Luca. They know what they are and they know what they're gonna do at the

end of the game. The Nets are trying all sorts of stuff. They David Duke got there for a while. They had you know, they went with you to Watnab for a while. Out there. Therese are guys that probably aren't going to be playing when this team is fully healthy, so I will throw them that. But at the end

of the day. It was too distinct archetypes of NBA star competing against each other in a crunch time environment, and it was my favorite type of star, the big point forward, the facilitating big wing that can punish his way to the rim and have some shot making, but his specialty is deciphering a defense and dissecting the defense versus two classic three level scores. And the Nets had

a classic conundrum for how to handle Luca. They could either leave him on an island and make him a score, or they could send multiple bodies at him and they can test his ability to pass the basketball, and they did a little bit of both. Down the stretch at one ten, one oh six, Luca Luca immediately isolates. All night long, he was targeting the small Brooklyn guards. He went after Patty Mills a lot when when he was

in the game, a ton of attacking Kyrie Irving. And there at the end when it was one ten, one oh six, he got back to back a driving layup and then a driving foul that he went to the free throw line to tie the game at one ten. Living at the rim, easy layups, high percentage shots, and then after that they started double teaming him and he picked them apart with the pass on the other end

of the floor. You know, Kyrie, there was a play where drove to the left and Pump faked and Luca flew by him and he got a pretty solid look on the left wing. It was like a contested pull up you know, um jump shot on that short corner on the left, and Kyrie is gonna make that a lot of the time. But there's a lot more variants in the scoring archetype. If shots not falling, your shots not falling. You know, Kad had a pretty damn good look at three. They're a wide open three late fourth

quarter that he missed. You know, there's some when you're when you're a pull up jump shooting score, you're gonna deal with some variants. But then when you look at Luca, it's like he's trying to get a wide open catch and shoot three for one of his best shooters and he's got a bunch of them, or he's taking one of your little guards and he's dog walking them down to the rim. And that's why I've always preferred that

specific archetype. It's just, uh, this is a little bit safer, it's a little bit more reliable, your shot quality is going to be better, and in this particular game, it drove them from one ten one oh six to winning

the game convincingly in overtime. So in ot you guys learned one of the difficulties of guarding pick and pop actions in the n b A. So when you're um, when you're dealing with a typical screen and dive like pick and roll type of offense, you put your big in a situation where he can at least have an

opportunity to guard both players. Right, Like Luca comes over the top of the screen and he's coming downhill at you, you can back up and you can kind of have some hope of contesting Luca at the rim while also contesting the roller. But as soon as you throw a popping big or a popping guard or a popping wing in that screen action and he pops to the three point line, it is now impossible to run a traditional drop coverage. You basically have a small handful of options.

You can either switch it, in which case you're giving Luca don Chech another opportunity to guard or to attack a smaller defensive player, or you can double team him or hedge right, and what they did there in overtime just time and time again. They did it once with Reggie Bullock, they did it once with Maxi Cliba, they did it once with Tim Hardaway Jr. Is On that pick and pop. They two bodies ran with Luca easy

behind the back pass. All three looks top of the key completely wide open for good shooters and they're gonna go in and so that that's kind of the way that that dynamic, that's the that's kind of the way that that specific dynamic is incredibly difficult to guard. Luca is not a traditional like I'm just gonna go down and shoot every time type of score. He's a make the right play guy. If you guard him in single coverage,

he's going to take you to the rim. If you're a smaller defender, he's going to hit you with dribble combinations for jump shots if you're a if you're a bigger def under, that's giving him too much space. And then as soon as you throw multiple bodies at him, he's going to pick you apart by making the right play every single time. That specifically, you know, we did that.

We did a whole video on this over the summer when we broke down the different archetypes of scores, and I have ranked the big point forward at number one on my list for that specific reason. I just genuinely believe you're gonna get higher level shot quality as a result. The Luca match up was a problem for for Brooklyn all night long. Like I said, early in the game, he started up by posting up the small guards, Kyrie

Iriving and Patty Mills, getting it whatever he want. Um. Then there was that phase there in the second quarter where he's attacking you to want Nabby every single time down the floor, and he really struggled with Luca's ball

fakes and he was committing a lot of fouls. Um. Then there was a stretch there in the third quarter where I don't know if he was just doing this for fun to try to prove a point, or if David Duke was legitimately giving him some issues, which David Duke I thought, actually did a pretty solid job on him, although he ended up bowling out in this game him.

But he started attacking Ben Simmons like every trip down the floor, calling for Ben Simmons's man to come up and set his screen, get Ben on the switch and then he was walking him down to the rim every single time. I like and Luca, We've talked about this before. Luca just has a tendency to attack the other team's best, best defender or or things like that to get them out of help. But I also think he does it

as a psychological type of deal. When he's scoring on Ben Simmons, and I think he got another bucket on him in ot if I remember correctly. When he's scoring on Ben Simmons, he's talking more ship, he's being more demonstrative about it. He's trying to take the life out

of your team. You know. Lebron used to do this for ages in the in the Eastern Conference playoffs where he would want to he would go for the sweep and and try to humiliate you for this specific purpose of ending the series quickly, because he knows as soon as you mentally lose confident, it's and you lose your belief in your ability to win the game, it's over for you. A lot of you Toronto Raptors fans probably

have a lot of PTSD from that. The one thing I watched out for with Luca this year that's a little concerning, and he had another monster night tonight, but I'd watch out for fatigue. His usage rate right now is up over forty coming into this game, and it probably was every bit as high tonight. Obviously a big part of that is Spencer Dinwoody's slotting up into that um uh, into that second role, and I'm not really

having a third creator. My guess is that ends up being the thing that they target with the most aggression during the during the trade deadline or a time of the season or during the buy out market. You guys remember me, I I wanted them to get Dennis Schroeder at one point, um but with him not really having that third creator, his usage is through the roof this first time in his career. It's up over There's a little bit of a a ceiling with that as it

pertains to fatigue. In the playoffs, We've just seen this time and time again. You run into a good team that has tons of perimeter defenders that can switch on and off of you and keep different looks, or you get a specific defender like you know. So for instance, in this game, Brooklyn was way too quick to give the switch. Basically, anytime Luca wanted a specific defender, he

got it. Whereas, like you saw a, Golden State had a lot of success keeping Andrew Wiggins on Luca by Steve Kerr using, you know, kind of gimmicky things like putting Steph on a shooter that wasn't a good movement shooter. So instead of putting him on on Reggie Bullock it was a good movement shooter, he put him on Dorian Phinney Smith, who was more of a stand still shooter.

So now when they run picking pops with Dorian Phinney Smith, you're not in as much danger, and Steph can hedge and recover and not have to give up the switch. They Golden State worked really hard and smart to keep Luca from attacking it's weaker defenders, right, and so then over the course of a series, Lucas now talking attacking Andrew Wiggins every time down and it just really wears

on him. That's gonna be a thing that he's gonna have to deal with in at least one playoff series this year, if not multiple, So they're gonna have to find a way to try to ease up his usage at some point. Now. One thing that's helping is Spencer Dinwood. He has been really good to start the season. Um, not a fantastic game from him, but he made some

plays in the fourth quarter. I did think it was interesting that they went away from him in crunch time, but I thought that was mainly I thought that mainly had to do with Tim Hardaway Jr. In a spot up role and Luca just had it going so well. But Dinwi this year, coming into tonight, was averaging eighteen points per game, which is the second highest mark of his career, on sixty percent true shooting, which is the highest mark of his career. Specifically, where he's been so

much better is at the rim. He's making three shots in the restricted area per game on sixty two two percent shooting uh compared to last year in the playoffs. That was the biggest thing that I was critical of Spencer Dinwoody with was his ability to finish at the rim. He was only making one layup in the restricted area per game last year in the playoffs and only making

them at fifty. I think a big part of that, too, is just the spacing that's so much better now that they're only playing JaVale McGee for a couple of shifts a game, and there's just a lot of Christian Wood and Mexically about there and just real true five out lineups that give him lots of space. But din what he's looking good slotted up as that second creator their defense.

Dallas's defense is not quite where it was last year yet. Um. They really struggled to contain Kyrie Irving off the dribble tonight. But all in all, you've gotta be feeling pretty good about where you're at with Dallas right now, and you like I mean, I think Janice, especially after last night, is still the best player in the world. But if I had to pick a guy who and again I'm

I'm not. I'm not gonna go away from my list from this summer, but the player that's been most impressive early outside, to be honest to me, has been Luca. And obviously it's only been a handful of games, so I'm not moving my list around, but lucas off to a damn good start for the Nets. A couple of things I wanted to quickly hit on Kyrie. He had a rough opening night, but he's been awesome ever since. He's uhum averaging I think over thirty three thirty four

points a game in the four games since. Really hit the gas there in that fourth quarter, attacking the basket, made some big shots. That's gotta that's gotta make you feel good if you're the Nets, especially since you have a lot of reinforcements on the way. Ben Simmons, you know, he's one of the big narratives surrounding the team this year, but I actually think he's been pretty good. This is not Russell Westbrook where he's killing you on offense and

then not giving you much on defense. Tonight was a little bit of a rough night, but he you could tell he tweaked his back in last night's game and he just wasn't quite moving as well. Textbook signs of the dock issue, like you're too upright, you're not squatting down in a defensive stance, and you just look stiff and you're not moving well. Ben Ben looked like he was struggling with that tonight. But throughout this season he's been really, really good defensively, and he doesn't need to

score more than ten points per game. He just needs to be a Draymond type of threat. When you're rolling to the rim, you've got to be able to score. You've got to be able to occasionally make yourself appear like a threat when you're wide open. That's literally all you need to do, especially when you're playing again playing with great perimeter shooting. What makes Draymond work is Steph

and Clay and Jordan Poole are all operating from the perimeter. Similarly, for Ben, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant specialized in hitting jump shots over the top of the defense, so spacing is just less of a concern. I think a lot of the talk, Look, I'm disappointed in where he's at offensively in his career. I think we all are. I think that goes without saying. It's it's completely inexcusable after this many years to be becoming worse and worse on

the offensive end of the floor. I'm a hundred percent it with you guys there. But the Nets knew that coming into the season. That's not what they need him to do. They just need him to be an impact player Defensively, He's rebounding pretty close to his career average about seven rebounds per thirty six minutes about his career averages eight and a half. So with him not being quite where he was athletically as he's coming back from his back thing. I think that's fine. I think I

think Ben Simmons is gonna be fine. I'm just not worried about it because Kyrie Irving last night had a postgame quote where he basically said, like, hey, we're just he hasn't played in two years. We're giving him a lot of positive affirmation. He's gonna figure it out. Agree if you're if you're, if you're the Nets, your issues are team wide as it pertains to commitment to defense, details, physicality, those sorts of things. It's not a Ben Simmons issue.

Um One last bright spot for Brooklyn. You got off to a bad start this year. You lost back to back games. Their next five games are against the Pacers, the Pacers, the Bulls, the Wizards, and the Hornets. They're gonna probably go four in one or better in those games. So you're like, the the Eastern Conference has a lot of easier night tonight matchups at the bottom of the conference compared to the West. You've got plenty of talent. Brooklyn's got lots of time to figure this out, all right.

So let's talk about Philly for a minute. So they lost in Toronto last night, more of the same issues that I've been talking about all year. They were actually better in the half court last night than Toronto was. They had a one hundred nine offensive rating in the half court compared to Toronto at one hundred and three. They just got destroyed in transition again. They gave up twenty nine fast breakpoints. They gave up twenty one points

off of turnovers. They have right now the second best half court offense in the league according to Cleaning the Glass. So their offense is in great shape right now. It's everything else that's killing them there twenty six and defensive rating. They're dead last in transition defense according to Cleaning the Glass. They're giving up a most one point six points per transition possession. Think about that, two points would be a layup, so they're almost averaging giving up a layup on every

single transition possession. They're the only team in the NBA giving up over twenty fast break points per one possessions. And a lot of it is on Joel Embiad and his antics around the rim, just trying to flop and draw fouls, not running the floor. Well, you know this this specifically big big guys that aren't willing to run are are the biggest culprit of destroying a team in

transition defense. I did a whole video on this because of Anthony Davis last night getting destroyed by Nicola Yokis just by sprinting up and down the floor in transition. You find it on my Twitter feed at Underscore. Jason lt I put together a about a three and a half minute clip just showing all of the different ways that Anthony Davis jogging down the floor and transition killed the Lakers in a winnable game. And you're getting a lot of the same stuff out of Joel Embiad right now.

That's a huge part of how Nicola Yokich is separating himself from the field. He's separating himself just by confronting one of the biggest weaknesses that comes with being what he is, a big, slow big. He's making a concerted effort on every single rebound on both ends of the floor of sprinting the other way. And by doing that, not only is he taking advantage of the other slow footed bigs around the league, but he's avoiding his own

weakness when he plays against faster teams. The guards are also not doing like specifically James Harden and Tyrese Maxie in these in these transition situations are just kind of swatting down at the ball. No one's really willing to put their body on the line to cut off a ball handler. But it's not just transition. They're also twenty one and half court defense according to cleaning the glass

there and rebounding percentage, so they're not rebounding well. They're allowing the second most three pointers made per game in the league, despite opponents shooting just thirty five from three, so it's not like teams are lighting them on fire with shooting percentage. And then opponents are shooting sevent in the restricted area against this Joe lmbiid lad Philadelphia defense, which is the second highest in the league. Now, a lot of that is being, you know, affected by transition layups.

But the point is they're not guarding the room well either. They're basically not doing anything well outside is scoring the basketball, and you can see it on tape. You can see guys not running back, you can see guys not stopping the ball and transition, you can see guys not rotating well. You can see guys aren't competing on the glass. I have a friend espahar Any that covers the Toronto Raptors.

You can find him on Twitter. He did a video breakdown last night that talked about all of the uh we all of the sloppy defensive rotations that you're seeing

from Philly. Like. There was a play where uh Niang was guarding the guy in the week side corner and Daniel House was guarding the guy in the weak side wing and Nieing had to go over to help on a drive and so Daniel House like signals to Kneeang like points at him to go help, and he drops to the corner and the Kneeang just stays in the corner. So now both of them are guarding the corner shooter and then they kick it to the wing for a

wide open three. That's just sloppiness. That's just not communicating, that's just not paying attention to the details. So when I'm looking at all of that, it's gonna push me towards doc rivers. The Sixers don't have a roster issue. Joel Embiid mostly looks like Joel Embiid, although he's working his way back into shape, but he's not as bad as he was in the first two games. James Harden might not be back yet, but he looks certainly looks a hell of a lot better than he did last year.

Tyrese Maxie is averaging a career high twenty points per game on fifty seven pcent true shooting. Tobias Harris is shooting over from three for the first time since he joined the Philadelphia has seventy sixers. A lot of stuff is looking good in terms of talent for the Sixers, it's they're not sharp in the details, which is always going to point me towards the coach. Now. I've never been high on Doc Rivers. I think he's been riding on a lot of reputation from the two thousand eight

Celtics title. He's I find him to be stubborn um Last year in the playoffs, I insisted that when they went down to Miami without Joel Embiid, that they needed to not play DeAndre Jordan's He's one of the worst rotation players, if not the worst rotation player in the entire NBA. And then they went down and played DeAndre Jordan for thirty one minutes against the Heat in Game one and two, and they were minus thirty one in those minutes, which literally cost them those two games because

they were positive without him. And then you went home and you won two games with Joel Embiid. If you just didn't play the worst NBA player in the league, maybe you steal one of those games and now you have an opportunity to win that series. He did a similar thing with Montrez Harrold in the bubble against the Denver Nuggets, even though everyone watching the games knew that that specific matchup, Yokis was having his way with the doctor Doc Rivers. Is just he's he's he's stubborn, he's

very he's very much a player's coach. When he gets a guy that he likes, he'll ignore evidence in favor of playing him. And then the truth is the Sixers just aren't sharp in the details. Like we said. If you're not if you're not a good transition defense, that means you're not running back and communicating. If you're not rotating well, it means you're not communicating and putting in extra efforts. If you're not rebounding well, it means you're

not boxing out and you're not crashing the glass. If you're not doing those things. It's because you're not being coached to do them, or you're coaching them and the players just simply aren't listening to you. Either way, there's one way out of that, and that's a coaching change. And this is not just this year. They weren't sharpen the in those details last year. So you gotta look at you gotta look at the situation here. You can't trade James Harden. That would make you worse. You can't

trade Joel Embiid that would make you worse. There's no real significant personnel weakness. You've got good amitter defenders on the roster. You've got a forward in James Harden that can create from the perimeter. You've got the ultimate mismatch and Joel Embiid. You've got tons of guys that can hit shots. You have one of the most exciting young guards in the league, and Tyrese Maxie. It's not like, oh,

there's if we just got this player, everything would be fine. No, you need the guys in the locker room to start doing the damn things you need to do to win basketball games. And so the only way to do that is a change of leadership. And then you know, We've talked a lot about this, but guys get burnt out, and you know, I saw the Lakers tune out Frank Vogel last year and then this year. I mean, Anthony Davison Lebron have been a nightmare in transition, but they've

both been very good in half court defense. So just a change of scenery, just a different guy in the locker room. Frank Vogel was a great defensive coach, but just a different guy in the locker room. A different voice is resonating with Lebron, James and Anthony Davis, and they're actually competing on the d its event, at least in the half court. That's kind of what you hope for. Get a different voice in that locker room, and all it takes is just getting your very good basketball players

to buy in on that end of the floor. Are they ever gonna be a top five defense? I don't think so, because you have James Harden entire reas Maxie on the floor at the same time, and the two of them just aren't very good defensive players, the two of the worst defensive guards in the league. But when you have Joel and b Devias Harrison, P J. Tucker, you sure as hell can be a hell of a

lot better than you are now. And at this point, like I had, the I had, the six was at fifth in my power rankings, and that's because I see them as just as talented as the top teams in the top teams in the league. I have specifically said that I think their top four is arguably the most talented top four in the league. So there is urgency here that they need to take advantage of. And the only way that I think they can get out of it at this point is to consider a coaching change.

It's it's been a long time coming. They probably should have done it this last or and if they wait much longer, they might dig themselves in a hole that's really difficult to dig out of. All right, guys, that is all I have for tonight. A couple of details. Tomorrow morning, we're gonna be covering the Golden State Warriors game against the Miami Heat. Tonight. I also want to hit on a couple of teams that we haven't hit

on yet. So those are you guys who are listening, Get into YouTube comments and tell me about some specific teams that you guys are interested in hearing about and if I get a bunch of repeats, I'll put them on my list for tomorrow. And then after that we have the weekend off and we'll be back on Monday. As always, I sincerely appreciate your guys support and I'll see you guys then. The volume