Hoops Tonight - Are Kawhi, Paul George & Clippers finally ready for TITLE RUN with James Harden?

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specific responsible gambling resources, eligibility and deposit restrictions apply. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. Terms at sportsbook dot DraftKings dot com slash basketball terms. All right, welcome to Hoop Tonight. You're at the volume. Hapfy Thursday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week. We have a very special guest today.

After the Clippers dropped six consecutive games post James Harden trade, they have recently ripped off ten of their last thirteen, including a bunch of really impressive wins. And we're bringing on Law Murray, friend of mine who covers the Clippers for the Athletic and also shares the distinction of being the first guest on Hoops Tonight who I have played and won multiple basketball games with, which is very cool. Well, how's it going, man, It's good to see you.

last thirteen. I just want you to start by just telling us, you know, from thirty thousand feet, how you felt about the hard and trade in general and what it's done for this team.

there's some fire. You know. Eric Gordon was a player that the organization really liked from the front office standpoint, and Toron lu had a big role for Eric Gordon. He had him start when Paul George's knee buckled the wrong damn way against the Oklahoma City Thunder and March, and even before that, when Marcus Morris was out for a Northern California trip, it was Eric who got to be the starter in his place, and I thought that was I just thought that was interesting because Eric is

obviously not as big as Marcus Morris's. He's a stout player, but he's not you know, he doesn't have those forward dimensions, at least the big FOURD dimensions, because Eric was starting at the three when he was with Houston last year before the trade, and so I thought from a basketball standpoint, in a vacuum, it was going to be like, Okay, I can see how he fits. He's a big guard. The organization likes big guards, the one to two type

type of guards. And then you look at defensively. I know Damian Lillard's name was out there, but I was like I would if I'm the Clippers I've been preferring to get James because James is bigger and a guy who playing with Kawhi and Paul, you can do more defensively. And that might seem surprising the people who love to attach themselves to narratives about how well a player fits a defense, But like James Harden could fit the Clippers'

defense better than Damian Lillywood. In hindsight, looking at the Maulkey Bucks defense, you can see where I might be getting at with that. On the other hand, there's a reason James was available. There's a reason James has the narrative that follows him from place to place. And then you're wondering, Okay, so how is he going to handle

adversity because there will be adversity. There is already adversity with the Clippers because they're feeling the heat of wasting years of the era of Paul and Kawhi being on that team. Like when they got there, they were young ish and ready to descend, but now they're in the end of their second contracts respectively with the team. How does a guy who is angling to get out because of his contract situation fit into all that? What does

that do for Russell Westbrook because Russell Westbrook. The only reason he got to the Clippers is because the Clippers donated all their point guards at the trade deadline, and Paul George loudly and Kawhi Leonard less loudly but so prominently suggested that the team needed to get another damn point guard, and Russ showed that he was a much better fit with the Clippers than he was with the Lakers.

So you bring in a guy like James Harden and we all know there was going to be some conflict there. How old was that going to go? It took four months or this trade to complete. I thought the trade could have been done as early as late June. It took until the last day of October for terms to be finalized. And then because of all that, James is late. You know, he's a month behind everybody else. This team came out of trading camp trying to be a Russell

Westbrook offense. Toront Lu said we're gonna run, we're gonna cut, and we're going to defend at the top five level. And you could see how that was going to make sense, especially when your main fours of Robert Covington and Nicholas patom and so James coming there disrupted all that and they try to have it both ways. And that's when I was like, you're seeing the downsides of this trade immediately, but now you're seeing the upside now that they won

ten of the last thirteen. And yes, it does coincide with picking James Harden as the main point guard and deciding Russ had to be in the second unit.

through those issues during the season. And specifically the point you made about Russ, because like that's the thing is like Russ fit in super well with the Clippers versus the Lakers because they desperately needed what he brought to the table, as opposed to Russ being a redundancy with

the Lakers and so bringing that pace. But the gist of it foundationally though, is having a guy that can get Kawhi and Paul George in their spots, basically set the table for them so that they're operating more in an advantage situation. Like it's crazy watching the Clippers now with Russ and James Harden, just how often Paul George just working with an advantage versus as the guy who's initially breaking down the defense.

Russ is on the floor. So, now zooming in on Harden specifically as a basketball player, how have you liked his fit offensively alongside James Harden and excuse me, alongside Paul George and Kawhi Leonard.

not score and it's like, bro, that's not going to work. Man. And so Kawhi is another one where it's like Kawhi is a guy who he has his rhythm, he likes to get the ball, he likes to surve they and pick and choose how he's going to attack you. But those dudes had to go through hard lessons and adjust what they're doing. And obviously the team had to go through the hard lesson of James has to be the point and Russ has to be the second point guard.

And that has streamlined everything because Kawhi is on a heater right now. And a lot of it started in Sacramento when we were up there two weeks ago, and it was just Kawhi. We realized that you to get to your spot, take five seconds, understand what you want to do. How about you just go? You know. It was like when I was swooping with you, I was like, Yo, you gotta advantage you six to six. Bro, just just I can bring it up. But when I get into you,

just get get into your work. And that's been great for Kawhi because James understands where Kawhi is going to have the ball. One reason why Kawhi is holding up so well playing all these games something that we haven't seen since he was in San Antonio. He's not the point guard. He's not the guy who's gotta run every pick and roll, get everything, get double teamed and still

have to figure stuff out. Nah, Like you got James Harden who can take on It's like when you're a running back, instead of having a workhorse, you have a running back by a commedie kind of thing. It's the same thing here. You got different guys who can handle the pick and roll, but one of them is going to be tasked with getting the other guys set up. And that's what Paul Joy comes in. Because Paul, I

think has before Kawhi's recent heater. I think Paul was doing really well while the team was figuring things out. Like Paul has ran more ISOs. Haven't checked recently, but Paul is running more ISOs than anyone on the team and doing it at a pretty high level. And a lot of that is just he He's got a bag. He can be a scorer. He's one of the few guys on the team who can pull up from three and catch and shoot, a guy who can get to

his mid range, gets to the free throw line. I like it when he's aggressive going to the paint, and if you understand what Paul's been through physically, you can understand why that doesn't happen like it did when he was in Indiana. But when Paul George gets to the paint, the entire team is better and he understands that and that has really helped the team. Like everyone else just

has the roles. If it's a Zubos, you're setting screens, you're rolling, expect to get the ball like you have a point guard who will get you the ball off the screen of the roll. Not that Russell was bad at that, but mind you didn't have that many games with Russell begin with, and before it, the team basically acted like the point guard position didn't exist. They were like, who needs a point guard? Have Paul and Kwi do it? Yeah, that's cool, but that can wear them down and is

those guys are unavailable. You're not You don't have a damn point guard in your team all of a sudden, And they didn't like that. They were accepting of that when Tevu've got to be the head coach. But at this stage of what they're being asked to do, it's better to have guys like James Harden and Russell Westbrook who can take on the heavy ball handling role and

let Paul and Kawhi do what they do best. Just because you can do something doesn't mean we need to see it spammed over the course of a regular season. That wears you out. They're being sustained right now because of the ballhandlers that they have.

catching shoot three. And essentially it used to be that Kawhi and Paul George had all of the offensive initiation piece, like that initial breaking down of the defense, and now James Harden and Russell Westbrook are actually taking a lot of that duty away and putting Kawhi, Leonard In Paul George more in positions where they're still going to work, but they're going to work with an advantage, and they're going to work already at their spots instead of having

to work their way to their spots with a live grouble, which is just more challenging. And then, I honestly think that's reflected a lot defensively, as like I think Kawhi and Paul George are having insane defensive seasons this year,

and a big part of it. I love the way you broke it down the difference between James Harden and Dame, because one of the things the Clippers do is they basically switch everything that doesn't involve zubats right, And so as a result of that, like James's size is actually an advantage because when he comes off in a switch he's going to at least provide the physical resistance to stop a guy from just bowling his way all the way to the basket, which I think has really helped.

And then in general, I think having guys like Terrence Man in Russell Westbrook to take these high leverage point of attack assignments has put Kawhi and PG in help a lot. And those dudes are devastating in help because they're such good athletes. They read the actions so well. Like the defensive numbers are actually crazy. So they're fourth

in defense over their last thirteen games. They are now up to second and half court defense according to Cleaning the Glass for the whole season, so they've been the second best half court defense in basketball. They are with the Lakers, Nuggets, Thunder, and Celtics as the only teams that are top ten in both half court defense and offense. They've rebounded way better than I thought they were going

to in their last thirteen games. Are up to fourteenth and defensive rebounding percentage, which I think is a testament to those guys just playing really hard. They're eighth best in protecting the paint and they're pretty good at guarding the three point line too. Really, the only area of opportunity is their average transition defense. But other than that, they've been really good on the defensive end. What are you seeing specifically that is driving the success of the Clippers right now?

You mentioned the transition defense. You know it's a good way to stay out of transition defense. Take care of the dan basketball, what your offense does getting to the free throw line, because getting to the free throw line is a huge part of sustainable defense because you're getting guys rest and more than often than not, you're making those tree throws and you're setting up your half court defense. You're keeping teams out of transition that way, if you

don't turn them all over. And this team had massive turnover issues over the first ten games of the season, and a lot of that is play style of certain guys. A lot of it is too many ball handlers, and a lot of it is simply put, just coming into a season where guys are just not sure where they're

supposed to be. And that's something that I saw the previous year when they broke camp with Paul and Kawhi but John Wall and Reggie Jackson as a point guards, and it was like, this offense is brutal to watch because guys are spraying passes all over the place and not really organized. They're trying to go small and you're thinking small balls great offensively, Well, small ball is not so great when you have all of your fours or fives who are masquerading in those positions not knowing what

to do. You have no interior presence. It's the wrong kind of spacing. Great, you have five guys you can line up behind a three point line, and you have nobody who can screen and roll. You have nobody on the offensive class. So the team defense, I got to give a lot of credit to Dan Craig. Dan Craig

is a former Miami assistant. He came over with Torondolo in twenty twenty to be the associate head coach, and Dan Craig is just a mad scientist when it comes to scheming and helping t Lou adjust defensively to how they wanted to either take primary actions away or take primary scores away. They do an outstanding job there. And when Kawhi and Paul keep repeating in training camp, we're trying to be a top five defense, not good. We're not trying to be good. We're not trying to be

as good as we can be top five. Top five is a specific goal. Like teachers will tell you, guidance counselors especially, we'll tell you set some specific time oriented goals, and that is a way to make sure that you achieve them. And when you say top five, that means you are looking at what everyone else is doing and measuring it against yourself and holding yourself to a standard and being accountable for it. And that has had as

much to do with how they're executing defensively than anything else. James, for all of his lack of daisical tape over the course of his career, is a veteran in the NBA. For of fifteen NBA seasons. He is large, he is handsy, like he gets steals every year. And this defense. The difference between this defense this year and previous years is that they have been more active in passing lanes. They are up, they are denying more. They are not letting

teams just do what they want to do. They're more physical, which shows up when you see teams shoot poorly against the Clippers or portions of the game, it's because you're getting hit by them. Dudes. This is not a small team, even when you know, even when they don't have a visit subots on. These guys are bulky. They're old. They got allow old man strength like these He's have been in NBA weight rooms for several years. Turnings man is

the young guy in certain lineup. Dude just turned twenty seven. Like these dudes big. He's big, and that wears on teams over the course of a game. Now, over the course of the season, it's hard to sustain. That's what you gotta see. Great, you gotta damn near top five defense over the course of the quarter of the first

quarter season. What about the rest of the sixty games after we get through these road trips, after we've had some attrition with personnel, after teams understand what you're trying to do and they can exploit a little bit more. That's what I got to see over the course of the season.

this morning. It was one that I hadn't had a chance to watch yet, and so I went back and watched it this morning, and like, one of the big reasons why Jokic missed so many shots in that game is that you can just see as again their back pressure that they get on Jamal Murray is a freak athlete, which is then forcing him to go down further into the lane to try to get away from that pressure.

And then they got all of these athletes with Kawhi and Paul George shrinking the floor off the ball and it's just arms everywhere, and like you could literally see Jokic changing his shot. How often do you see Jokic change his shot? He usually has just taken that same muscle memory that he's always taken. They legit had him feeling uncomfortable. And I think, and I think I have to I know, a lot of Clippers fans get on him, and he kind of is the butt of a lot

of jokes on Twitter. But I think I think Zubots is awesome, and like specifically, he's very active in his drop coverages. Like he's one of the few bigs that's like actually good at stepping up and bothering that floater in that pull up jump shot in the mid range while also having the ability to get back. And he's such a unique weapon because he's actually big enough to bang with Jokic a little bit and to kind of

beat him off of some of his spots. And so like in a weird way because we're going to talk about the small ball line up here in a minute, and the small ball lineup is definitely an important part of this team's identity. But I actually really like the Zubats groups just because of how good he's been defensively in their drop coverages. Can you talk a little bit about Zuebac and what he's done for this team.

work as Luca downloaded that information and got better. Right. So, like, Zoo used to be the guy that you benched and was like, this is how we're gonna win the playoffs heres, We're gonna sit Zoo. But Zoo has become an asset for this team because his positional defense is very good, very reliable. His rim protection is it allows his team to be one of the better teams in the league

at defending just your easiest shots in basketball. If he's on the floor, you know that even though he's not an explosive athlete by any means, his size is verticality. His understanding of how guys want to score over and through him. You don't even see Zoo get dunked on. Really, he's there early. He understands where to be and how to be there, and that's just it's great coaching. But it's also a player who is coachable. It's a player

who has just understood his role. Like it's a player who's had to listen to Kawhi and Paul for five years straight. Now, like those dudes no good defense. Paul George was with the verticality goat Roy Ribbert. You know, Kauhi was playing with Tim Duncan, a guy who annually had more blocks than fouls. That's great when your teammates, your best teammates are guys who can teach you and and and get on you about defense. They hold each

other accountable. Like, I mean, Zoo foul dearon Fox. I think late in the third quarter, I want to say it was de Aaron Tuesday night. They're up like more than twenty damn near thirty, and Kawhi is still glaring at Zoo like Jeff steering. Dude. That's where this team is at. That's where Zoo is at when those guys Kawhi and Paul aren't there, that's Zoo. Zoo is empowered to basically tell his team that they're not doing what

they're supposed to do. I can't tell you how many times you just throws up his arms as if to say, where were you guys? What what was supposed to happen on this rotation? And yeah, like you know, you're basic fans who do nothing but tweek behind a burner account. They're probably just gonna, you know, be trolls about it. But the real ones know that Vincus Zoobots is not an easy player to replace, especially on the contract he's on, because the value that you get for twenty five minutes

a game is not all ever place. So I can't tell you how many Daniel Gafford mentions I've gotten this year. It's like, you guys are are playing way too much two K or something. Clearly, y'all, I ain't watching the Washington Wizards. And that's not even a sight to Gaff because Gaff is a decent player. He ain't the reason that team has won three games or whatever it's been this year. But it is to say what the Vince's

zoobots can do. I have more issues with his offense, but even his offense, he's playing with James Harden, and James is a great teacher. He is drilling Zoo on where to be on picking rolls. And let me tell you something, when you're good on offense, that allows you to be able to play more on defense. It works the other way around for a lot of guys. But it's like with Zoo, you don't need to worry about all. We need more spacing. We need to go smaller. You know,

we want to talk about small eyes. We're not seen as much as we used to see it because they've realized and you know what, getting smacked by the Nuggets in Denver was a turning point, Jason, I'll tell you

that much. This team might have leaned in the small ball a little bit more, but Daniel Tys is like, we need a legitimate backup center with Mason Plumlee rest recovering from injury, and we need to play Zoo not thirty five minutes because he can't handle that, but twenty five to thirty minutes is good for Zoo and because he's able to be competent on both ends of the floor, that is helping the team be more complete team.

I know that the small ball lineup's been successful. And again, they're two hundred and fifty two possessions without a center, plus eleven points per one hundred possessions.

lineups that they're gonna see. I want to talk about their offense for just a minute, because again this has been the one disappointing thing is in this thirteen game stretch,

they're still just sixteenth and offense over that span. So I think it's safe to say I think some of it is important to acknowledge that some of its personnel like Terrence Man is another guy that the league tends to close out short on, just like they do with Russ And obviously Zubots is not a perimeter scorer, so like there are opportunities for people to help, but there's still a ton of offensive skill on the floor with James Harden, Paul George, Kawhi, Leonard normOn Palace playing really

well as well. So like with all of that, it does feel like they're underachieving a little bit. You do you agree, And if so, what do you think they can do to improve on that end?

like that's that's just what happens. You can't worry about him too much because of what he does the rest of the damn week. But yeah, like every now and again, you'll look up and you'll be like, oh, Paul didn't make a basket this second quarter. You know, it happens, James, it took him a while to act like he had permission to shoot the damn ball. It's like, the kind of system are you, James, Like they're trying to tell you to be aggressive and score the basketball. What are

we doing here? And yeah, I mean Terrence Man is a guy who's been in the mid high thirties percent edge wise in his career, but he was shooting like the disrespect that he was getting from these defenses to start this season, you know, like sub twenty percent over the course of the first quarter of the year. And you could tell that he was still adjusting to a

new role. He was adjusting to his body. You know, he sprained his ankle really badly before the seasons the regular season started, and by the time he gets back, he's looking at James Arden, knowing his team like you can probably tell, like and plus that dude is again being asked to guard the premier scorer on the other team as his primary assignment, Like you don't know how your energy is going to hold up, especially when you're getting into the flow of the season. So guys just

need to make shots. This is a team that is a bit too gun shy about certain things. And it's not just threes, it's you know, for a while, the dudes was missing layups like Zoo was getting blocked by guards. Daniel Tice shows that he's a six to eight center on the other side of thirty a little bit too often, you know, like he'll miss bunnies and that's your backup center. PJ. Tucker has made one shot inside the three point line this entire time he's been with the Clippers. He's not

even in the rotation anymore. Kobe Brown, he had a dunk for the first time this season in Garbage Times Tuesday. I was like, more of that. You know, I'm always gonna celebrate dunk his health. Dunk means you can still do it, you know. James gottisers dunk do the night before. I was like, I was asking for it. You know,

I don't do what the troll dudes. It's like, nah, if you're dunking, something went very well either how it got there your body's feeling good, like you Yeah, like difference between laying it up and dunk, and it's like, always dunk, That's what I always say. And so I think that you're going to see some regression to a certain mean, And it's not a regression to the mean as far as how the league's playing or how this team's playing this season. It's a matter of these guys.

We've seen them play over the course of multiple NBA seasons. We know that, hey, Russell Wesbrok probably won't shoot the three as well as he did last year. We saw that. But we also know that Terrence man ain't gonna shoot twenty percent from three. He might not reach mid thirties this year because it's been so bad to start, but he's going to approach the level of shooter that made him the high floor player that he is, that made him the valuable player that he is. So you're already

seeing it. Those offensive numbers are looking better in December where they're undefeated than they were in the November portion of the year, where you know, yeah, you know, you can start it with James's four point play, but when they were in that five and seven stretch, they lost. You know, they lost three of those games, right, so you know they didn't look very good in those three games.

They've had some wins where they beat the Mavericks. They blew the Mavericks out, but that was a defensive win. Their offense looked like a second night of it back to back. They are getting better over the course of this month, so you will see those offensive numbers continue to improve.

I do think it's important to emphasize two that they are playing really hard on defense, and like that's just the way it goes when you're in Whenever you're playing really competitive defensive basketball, you're tired on offense, and that

will affect your shot result to a certain extent. I think if I had to point to one thing that is process oriented, because again, when they are maintaining athletes like Terrence Man and Russell Westbrook on the floor, you sacrifice your spacing a little bit, But I point to shot selection a little bit like one of the things that I was hoping for when James Harden came on board is this team was very much like the Suns and the Nets of old when James Harden and Kyrie

were there, where they almost it seems like they're hunting pull up jump shots almost every single possession. And one of the things I was hoping is like, oh, maybe James Harden will come in and get the defense into rotation more often so that they get more driving layups and catching shoot threes out of that essentially, And unfortunately that hasn't been the case. The Clippers still lead the league in pull up jump shot attempts per game according

to Synergy. So I do think there's a certain and like, there's one guy I'll point to here and I do this drives me crazy. Paul George has a bag unbelievable hooper. One of the guys that I personally watch all the time and try to emulate, just absolutely love Paul George. That dude takes so many impossible shots, like his shot diet is so difficult, more so than it needs to be. And I do think that little things like that could

go a long way. And I'll give you an example, like Joel Embiid is a guy who's like a famous playoff underachiever, right, And part of the reason for that is he doesn't actually score in the paint that much, like because he relies so much on grifting and he takes so many of these fifteen footers. And one of the things that I'm kind of encouraged about this year is and beat scoring in the paint a lot more.

And I think that'll be something that can lean on a little bit further when they get into the playoffs. And so I'd like to see the Clippers show a little bit more of an ability to generate quality shots that are not pull up jump shots, because I think that'll go a long way towards helping them get to Because I think six team's too low. This feels like an offense that should be in that seven to eight range. But if they were ever to get to that three to four range, I think they'd have to be a

little bit more deliberate about getting the right shots. But we are running out of time, so I want to ask you one more question before we get out of here. You and I are yet to talk big picture NBA at all, And I'm just curious what would you rank as your let's just say, your top five contenders out of the Western Conference right now?

that they've established. And you know, Minnesota's playing so well that you almost have to go and put them in just as a means of respect, being number one in the West through how many games. But just like that Pelicans team that I told you about from two years ago of being last, and you know, I mean you got a Minnesota team. New Orleans was number one in the West for a portion of December, and they fell into the play tournament ironically because they couldn't beat a

temporal team. Even though Rudy Goberro's punching his own teammates like I'm gonna you know, Minnesota, there's always something right around the corner. But when you know that it's tied to availability of players, that's what makes you go, well, look, they're really good. And yes, if something does happen to Cat, if something does happen to Ready, if something does happen to seventeen year NBA veteran Mike Confley, yes that team will be in trouble for however long Theose guys are.

I don't even care what Ant does because Ann is a constant. But Cat's health is Cat's health matters, Rudy's health matters. They don't have replaceable they're not deep. It hasn't mattered. Hell, they've had Jaden out for a portion of the season already due to injury. He's back, so you know that they can sustain without him. But the things that make Minnesota go, like those guys are older or guys who've been recently banged up, and they've been okay for right now, you got to give them, put

them on the list just out of means of respect. Okay, see they're young, but also Shay is amazing, and so you almost got to keep them. I'm not keeping Dallas. There's no way I'm trusting a team that relies so much on Luca and relies on any version of Kyrie Urshi Again, no disrespect. Just look at the track record you expect Dallas might slip some like they're just not that good. Luca is that good, and Kyrie is a

damn good number two when he's available. Kyrie's not available right now, So lucas about to do a lot and we're gonna see how long it takes Kyrie to get back. Denver's are defending champs, They're in the middle of the pack. They know how to win. They gotta be contenders. The Lakers they got themselves a banner that they're gonna raise, So let's just put them on there, just just for that, I guess, and that this spot is tough, man Like, I don't really you know, I don't really know who

had who had who had picked. To be honest with you, I know that the Clippers have a better record than the Suns. I cover the Clippers, but I'm not the bias type. I'm not the type to just say because I see them every time, like, I don't do any of that stuff. I'm you know, wholesome content over here. So I'm going to I'm going to give the Sons a trial run with the dudes that they brought together

and see if they can figure it out. The Sons are the worst fourth quarter team in basketball, not just offense, they are the worst fourth quarter team in offense. They had another unseerious fourth quarter against a NET team that had a bunch of dudes who used to wear that uniform in Phoenix. They showed out. And so I want to see if Bradley Beal can get himself to play decent basketball with those other two guys. Katie a point guard in Devin Booker, who you're seeing the good and

bad of having Devin Booker as your point guard. Yeah, he's amazing and we'll put up great numbers, but you also know that he's got the ball all the time and that's gonna wear him out, and he's missed some time, and you don't have any alternatives on your roster, not even a pretend alternative Jordan Goodwin and Saving Lee. Yeah, you basically pun at the point gard situation. I'm familiar

with that. I've covered a seam like that. I don't think it's as good as you think is gonna be, but I'm gonna put him on there because they have that top heavy talent and we have not really seen it come together. I saw a team that failed failed initially with their top heavy talent of James Russ, Kawhi and PG and turned it around as those guys got more time and more information. So it's early. It's December.

Those are the five teams that I would go with with complete reservations to change this in two months.

I'm excited to, you know, continue to learn more about the league that we're covering and and and that's it. Like I'm looking forward to, you know, getting through this month. And I'm sure the conversations will change in January since that's when the trade ones will really blow.