Hoops Tonight - Best Of: Bad News Bucks, LeBron vs Stephen A. Smith, Thunder/Celtics Finals Matchup?

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Welcome to the Best of Hoops Tonight, featuring my top takes from recent shows. Damian Lillard is out indefinitely due to a blood clot in his calf muscle. First of all, this is just a huge bummer, and let's all just hope that he can be back in time for the playoffs, because, regardless of how we all feel about the Bucks, I would certainly like to see them get their chance to show what they can do in the postseason at full strength.

But this situation has me thinking because things look more than bleak for Milwaukee right now, even healthy, I have the Bucks firmly outside of my top tier of championship contenders. I don't think they're close to good enough on either end of the floor to actually win for playoff series. And now you add this wrinkle with Dame's condition, which is going to have at the best case scenario, him just barely stepping on the floor before they start playing

real playoff games. So to me, it's just becoming increasingly likely that the Bucks have a disappointing playoff performance, and that Giannis in the trade buzz surrounding him starts to get really loud this summer because again, I don't think the Bucks are close. I like, there's to me if I look at the top tier of contenders, and it's going to be you know, five, six, seven teams when

it's all said and done, we'll see. But you know, I look at Boston and Okasee as kind of like clearly above the rest of the teams in that tier, and the team's below there, the teams like Cleveland, Denver, the Lakers, whether it ends up being the Knicks or the Warriors teams like that, I view those teams as substantially less likely than Boston and Oksee to win the title. And so when you get to the following tier after that, I mean we're talking it's pipe dream territory for most

of these guys. And like that's with Gianni's playing as well as he's been he's been playing this year, it just doesn't feel like they're close. Jannis will have two guaranteed years left as well as a player option. Obviously I would view that player option as something that he would end up opting out of or extending out of. And and so realistically, you've got these two guaranteed years left this summer, and so if you wait an additional summer, now you have the whole like, well, what if he

doesn't resign problem that's affecting his trade value. And so I think it's possible that we end up seeing a Jannis and TenneT compo trade this summer. And so we've talked about a lot of different teams in a different places that he could potentially go. But I've talked a lot about the thunder going out after a guy like a Kevin Durant or a Lori Marknen or something. What if Yannis is the guy that the Thunder end up going after. They obviously can afford him. He's thirty years old.

He is a perfect compliment to Chet Holmgren. As a matter of fact, you could argue that the Hartenstein salary is the best vehicle with which to facilitate that sort of trade. Hartenstein and then throwing in some of the younger talent, maybe someone like a case On Wallace and maybe one other player with a bunch of draft compensation.

You can visualize a scenario where the team is built around a core of Shay and j Dubb and Chet with Giannis, and like Giannis would immediately make them a good rebounding team when they've been a terrible rebounding team In the Shake Gibs Alexander Era, I think he's just

a shoe in basketball fit. In general, with all of those guys, he immediately changes the physical profiles of the team and makes them that much more bruising on the frontline, especially if the Thunder end up struggling this year in the postseason and they end up like loose in the second round. Despite someone like Shae having a great series.

I think it could end up putting more pressure on OKC to make a more aggressive type of deal, and you could see a trade partnership kind of forming there, and like, like it's like the Wemby problem we talked

about with San Antonio. If your star is ready to go and like ready to win the title, but your guys, like your young players around them that are progressing at the same time but maybe not at the same rate, and it looks like they're not ready, then you end up in a situation where it's like, we can't just wait around while you know, Victor wemin Yama becomes one of the best players in the league and we can't

support him properly. And that's the thing, Like you don't want to run into a situation with Shae where he feels like the Thunder are just processing a bunch of

young talent and they're not really going for it. And so if that ends up being the case, you could see that pressure start to build and you could see a trade partnership start to form, and if they end up making a deal for some like Giannis, they would immediately solve all of their weaknesses and I think that would make them the most talented team since the twenty eighteen Warriors. So that's a dynamic that I see kind of sort of taking some shape, and man, that would

be a crazy, league altering type of deal. Lebron goes on Pat McAfee show and he starts pontificating about Jannis and what he would average in the seventies, and he says Yiannis would average two hundred and fifty points if he played back in that era. And like, Frankly, I just don't see the point in this. For the same reason why it's lame when the older players start disrespecting this era, I think it's lame for today's players to do the same thing with the past. Now, for the record,

there's a reason why they're doing this. There's a reason why JJ Reddick said those guys played against plumbers. There's a reason why Lebron James is talking this shit, and it's because they're sick and tired of the old guys talking shit. I just think it's pointless to stoop down to that level. Frankly, it's just not productive. It doesn't

actually solve anything. And here's the thing. Would Yannis score two hundred and fifty points a game if you played in the seventies, No, but yeah, he kill those guys. He'd averaged forty probably maybe even closer to fifty. But who cares. Comparing eras is completely pointless. Jalen Green basically has the same career true shooting percentage as Kobe Bryant. Does that mean Jalen Green was just as efficient putting

the ball in the basket as Kobe Bryant. Yeah, in a literal sense, but not in a realistic sense, because the game of basketball is very, very different now. Dudes in the seventies had bad shoes, they had shitty flights that they took to their road games, They played brutal schedules. They had nowhere near the knowledge and understanding we have today to make our professional athletes the best they can be.

Schematics have involved over the years as just more smart minds have gotten involved in the game and made their imprint strategically. I think it makes absolutely no sense to compare basketball from fifty years ago to today, And again, even if you justify it with the way that those guys have been treated by the older generations, I just think stooping to that level, all it does is further

detegrate the game. And now we're in this weird war where like the younger players are shit talking the old days, and the older dudes are shit talking the young guys, and everyone's just being disrespectful to the game of basketball. And so I hope that that stops you. And I disagreed with Lebron's approach there. Last night, Brodny hits five more threes, finished with seventeen points, nine rebounds, and six

assists in a win. This is on the heels of him dropping a career high thirty nine points in a previous G League game a couple days prior, and that was on the heels of him dropping seventeen points in a real deal NBA game against the Bucks, where he made a lot of moves that looked very much like a well rounded professional basketball player. I thought this was a great time for us to just remind everybody that Bronnie James was the twentieth ranked prospect in the nation

in his high school class. He was a McDonald's All American. He was absolutely, unquestionably on an NBA trajectory before he experienced cardiac arrest at USC But then he got his NBA opportunity despite struggling for a while after the cardiac arrest incident, and as a result, he became one of the biggest stories in all of media, not just in sports media, but the whole thing got picked up by political media because Lebron has ventured into that arena a

few times and obviously has made enemies in there. That is one hell of a cesspool in political media, and it is as contentious as it can be, and there's an entire side there that will jump on every little thing that Lebron does, and so it became absolutely nasty. Can you imagine being Bronni And again I want you to disconnect from Lebron for a second. Funny James is an entirely different human being than Lebron, an entirely different person.

Anything that he gets as an association from Lebron. Imagine being in his shoes and dealing with that. Can you imagine getting on his phone and scrolling Instagram and seeing content creators making highlight reels of his mistakes in summer League or in garbage time in an NBA game, or in the early G league days, And can you imagine the comments underneath those videos and the direct messages that

he receives. And again, as we've talked about, like when you venture into this world, there are perks that greatly outweigh the negativity you face online. That doesn't make the negativity like just go away, or that it's just super

easy to handle or anything like that. It sucks. I on a much much smaller level, just as a content creator in the NBA media, face a certain amunt of negation activity, Like you don't wake up one day and like read the comment that's talking shit about the way you look or the way you sound, and then suddenly just be like, oh that's fine, No, no wherries will

go about our day. It still sucks. And this kid was getting it at a preposterous volume every single day because he suffered an injury and a condition that dramatically affected his basketball development. I was thinking about I was actually talking about this with my buddy Richmond Weaver on the radio a little bit earlier this morning. I remember when I broke my foot in between my first two

seasons playing in college. I had a really rough first semester in non conference play because I was struggling with like confidence in my foot, like my ability to plant that foot I play at about back in college, I was playing at two hundred and twenty five pounds, Like, it's just a lot of weight to be planting really heavy on a foot that I was nervous was gonna give way, and it affected my play for months. Can you imagine cardiac arrest. Can you imagine like playing hard

after cardiac arrest? Can you imagine pushing yourself and like feeling your body like start to like really get into high heart rates and how that could potentially scare you, How that could affect your willingness or ability to compete to a certain extent. Like, I just have so much sympathy for what Bronni has been through over the course of this last year, in the sense that he's been put through hell because of his dad in his persona, and look, has Lebron done some things that has accentuated

the amount of attention on his son. Yes, he's made some comments, He's done some things. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that that hasn't happened. But he's Lebron James, So we're not also going to pretend that if Lebron

shut up that Bronni wouldn't be a public figure. He still would lebron could have said nothing, and Bronni would have faced ninety nine percent of the exact same circumstance is that he's faced over the last year, and the fact that his entire basketball pedigree and everything he accomplished up until the cardiac arrest was just crumpled up and thrown in the trash as part of the way that

whole thing was discussed. It just was nasty, and I just feel really bad for him, and I'm just excited for him that he's starting to break through on the other side of this and show some of that pedigree that he demonstrated when he was in high school. Now, for the record, this won't be linear. The development of young players is not something that just goes up and up and up. He'll have stretches where he has bad games in the NBA, He'll have bad stretches of games

in the G League. He'll make mistakes. There will be more content creators that have more opportunities to slander him for whatever reason. But what you're starting to see is the upside. You're starting to see that he can shoot. JJ Reddick talked the other day about how he expects Brownie in the big picture to be a great shooter. You've seen some of the upside with him as a defensive playmate, or you've seen some of the upside with him as a downhill threat towards the rim as a

playmaking talent. He's got ability in there now. I still maintain that I think it'll be at least a year or two before he can be a guy that plays real rotational minutes at the NBA level as a guard off the bench for somebody in the NBA. I still think he needs quite a bit of time to get there.

But the potential has always been there. It was missing in terms of the production for a little while as a result of what happened to him at USC, and I'm happy that we're all starting to see some of that potential start to come to fruition right now because it's just a reminder and quite frankly, a resounding statement that most of the stuff that was set about Bronnie and set about lebron over the course of the year with Bronnie in his journey to where he has in

the NBA was just complete and utter bullshit. And Bronnie's just rubbing that in everybody's face right now, and I'm happy for him. Kind of a fun question. What with Boston and OKC looking like the clear two best teams, it's very likely they could end up facing each other in the finals. I'm curious to hear your take on how they match up. I would imagine Porzingis would defend Sheet, Tatum would defend Hartenstein, Brown would defend she Holiday would

defend Dort, Derek White would defend Jalen Williams. Is this close to what you'd expect or do you disagree with me? Also, if possible, could you maybe list what you think would be the key factors for each team to win a seven game series. Love the show, keep up the great work. I hope your skiing trip was tons of fun. Thank you for the kind words and for the support. I agree with you that Boston and OKAC are looking to

me like the clear two best teams. I don't think they're separated enough to be on completely different tier than the teams that I have below them, being right now Cleveland, Denver and the Lakers, but teams like the Knicks or the Warriors could potentially join that tier for me as well. Before the end of the season, But I do think that there's a slight gap between those two teams and the other teams. I think it's more likely that Okay gets upset in the Western Conference then Boston gets upset

in the Eastern Conference. That said, if I had to pick what I would expect to see in the finals at this point, I do believe it will be Boston versus Oklahoma City. Now, with the matchups that you talked about, there's an interesting dynamic that you're referencing that I think gets a little bit more complicated because of the way that Oklahoma City can play their two bigs together. So we've seen the Celtics put Jason Tatum on centers before with the intention of being able to switch ball screens

right and shut down the team's primary ball screen attack. Now, so much of this depends on what direction the thunder go with their starters, Like is this gonna be a situation where they play Chet and Isaiah Hartenstein together with the starters, or is this gonna be a situation where they choose to start and Alex Caruso instead and go with Chet at center. Like those are the different dynamics

that could change this. But I think it's actually far more likely that they put Tatum on Chet then on Hartenstein. The main reason why is because Hartenstein is not a pick and pop threat, and he's not really much of

a vertical spacing threat. So it's not like the Dallas Mavericks problem where you could open up a bunch of easy lob dunks, because while Hartenstein does have some finishing ability on the role and some really good short role finishing ability with this floater, he's not the vertical spacing threat that you see from some of the other vertical centers in the league, right, and so Chet's ability to pick and pop on Porzingis would be a problem because

you're not gonna want to switch with Porzingis as much. And if you put Porzingis on Chet, they're just gonna spam, pick and pop and get Chet into space at the top of the key with an opportunity to shoot a three or drive a close out. So if you put Tatum on Chet, then you can switch the Shay Chet ball screen or the j dub Chet ball screen, and with Porzingis you can at least force Hartenstein to make his little floater that he has to make as he

he attacks porzingis helping in those ball screen situations. I think that's more likely. How they'd match up the j Dub and Shay thing gets really tricky because conventional wisdom would tell you putting Jalen Brown on Shae, he's your best perimeter defender. When he's locked in and engaged, he's your best opportunity to slow Shade down, so to speak. But I would argue that that creates a complicated matchup with a guy like a Jalen Williams like I don't.

I wouldn't put Derek White on Jalen Williams because I think you're giving up a little bit too much strength there. Derek White is such a good off ball defender, such a good rim protector as a guard, I would slide Drew Holliday onto Jalen Williams and put Derek White on Lou Dort and have him as the roamer, the guy who's helping but still offering contests in those situations. I think you could go either way with Drew on Jalen or excuse me, with yeah, with Drew on Jalen and

Jalen on Shay. Or you could go with Drew on Shay or jayal on Jalen. But either way, I think it's most important to keep Porzingis out of the pick and pop and to keep Derek White out of a situation where he's guarding somebody that's too strong for him, and I think that gives them their best chance. On the other end of the floor, I think it's pretty straightforward. You're gonna get dort On Tatum. I think you're gonna

get j dub On. You're gonna get Jay dub On on Jalen Brown, right, I think you're gonna end up getting Hartenstein on Porzingis because he's more of a post up threat. And again with Boston, it also depends like are they you know, how often are you gonna see two big looks? How are you gonna match up when they do go to two big looks. There's gonna be

situations where that gets complicated. But I look at the Thunder as more of a switch and contained type of team with trying to guard Boston, and so I think we will see some small ball looks, we will see some chat at center, a lot of switching everything and trying to contain the ball, And to me, the biggest swing factor of the series is gonna be decision making

for both teams. To me, the Thunder actually remind me a lot of the Celtics back in twenty twenty two, where they just have this sky high potential based on what they do on the defensive end of the floor, and they have all this offensive talent, but they just make some sketchy decisions a lot in big spots. And Boston has outgrown a lot of that over the last couple of years in their growth into becoming a champion.

And that's my number one concern with Oklahoma City is when they get into high leverage situations, they're decision making. That said, as we saw, we can see Oklahoma City do similar things to Boston that Boston struggled with in the past in terms of decision making, handling perimeter defenders that contain the ball and force them into tough, contested pull up jump shots instead of the wide open catch and shoot jump shots that make their offense so unguardable.

And so I think decision making on offense is going to be the biggest key for both teams in that series. Again, I'll go much deeper into that. If we get to that point, we're gonna do season. We're gonna do series previews for every single playoff series like we do every single year, and so no matter who ends up playing in the finals, we will do deep breakdowns before the series when the time comes. Hey Jason commenting from all the way across the Pond and not so sunny England.

Love the show and I've been watching for years. How much of a realistic shot do you think Draymond has a defensive Player of the Year this year? With Wemby unfortunately getting hurt, it opened up for someone else to sneak in and grabble this year. The Warriors went say ten and three in their last games this year, and dray plays excellent defense as he did against Milwaukee. Is he in with a real shot? Again? Love the show

and hope all as well. Thanks again for support, and hopefully you get some better weather over there here in a Tucson. It's going to be like yesterday it was ninety six degrees, so we're already heading into the summertime. I think Draymond would be my pick for defensive player of the year if the season ended today. I think Evan Mobley's had a great defensive season. I just think

Draymond Green's a better and more disruptive defensive player. I think Draymond suffers a little bit from the reputation in the sense that, like, he's just been such a good defender for so long that people just don't think about it as often and mobile even though he's been a defensive prospect his whole life. This season has just been a lot of narrative weight behind him and what the

Cavs have accomplished this year. But like, I don't think you have to do much more than just watch some some of these two teams play and just watch how important Draymond is to what they do defensively and his ability to show up at the level but get back and he's one of the best defenders in the league at being two places at once, having a foot in the paint disrupting things, but being able to close out and get excellent contests on three point shots on the

weak side. He's such a great defensive playmaker. To me, he's the best defensive player that I've watched this season. On DraftKings, Draymond right now is the favorite at minus one p thirty, Evan Mobley at plus one ten, and then Dyson Daniels at plus thirteen hundred in third place. I like that value for Draymond simply because Golden State has a lot more to play for over the course

of this final stretch of the season. Cleveland has nothing to play for but get to mid April healthy, and so you're just gonna see a higher level of intensity out of the Warriors over the course of these final few weeks of the season, and I think that just bodes well for Draymond's capability to lock up that award. Is an interesting one. Who's a bigger liability on defense?

Between Jokic and Luca, This one's tough. I think they're close, but I would give a slight edge in terms of who's that bigger liability to Luca, And ultimately it just comes down to size. They both really struggle. Neither of them can guard one on one on the perimeter very well in space. They're both elite defensive rebounders, which I think is an asset on the defensive end of the

floor that is under discussed. Like Luca has helped make the Lakers a service rebounding team despite a lack of size at the center position because he's an excellent defensive rebounder, not as an athlete, but he just has a nose for the ball, meaning he's just good at anticipating where the ball is going to come off the rim, and he's got a good pursuit of the ball that allows

him to get a lot of defensive rebounders rebounds. That said, two things, Jokic is a little bit better defensive rebounder than Luca, and two Jokic is big, which allows you to set up potential defensive schemes that keep him around the rim or put him in situations where he can be successful. It's harder to do with Luca. Point being, if you're building an elite defense from scratch, I think it's a little bit easier to build one around Jokic than it is to build one around Luca. That said,

they're both defensive liabilities. Jokic has been a substantial defensive liability since he won the title. I don't know what's going on there. He just hasn't really committed to that end of the floor as well as he used to. They're both bad on that end, but I would give Yokic a slight edge as a better defender than Luca. Do you think that, but this is Lebron's last chance to win a title. Next year, even they improve the team, he will be on the same level and get the

Lakers to come back into contention. I don't think this is Lebron's last chance. I think the next year will certainly be his last chance in terms of like at a star level, there's an offseason here where the Lakers immediately become a buyout destination or not a biot gestation,

a veteran minimum destination. The Lakers are going to get some discounted talent this summer because you want to go play in La for Luka Doncic and Lebron James and have an opportunity to contend for a title Like that's going to be really appealing to people, especially players that are play finishers that would benefit from what Luka Doncic does. The next year. Next year's Lakers I expect to be a top tier contender right out the gates. I think they're going to be a really, really good team with

a summer to rebuild around Luca and Lebron. That said, right before Lebron tour or not tour, but strained his groin against the Celtics, he was playing at a top five level. You combine that with Luka Doncic, who has been playing at a top five level since then, the two of them together with Austin Reeves, with Ruby Hotchi Murau, with Jackson Hayes as the vertical spacer, with Dorian Finney,

Smith gave Vincent, Jared Vanderbilt. This is as this is certainly the best chance he's had since twenty twenty one, and I certainly consider this to be a real chance. I just think he'll probably have a slightly better chance next year. Now to your point, Lebron will be forty one next year when they get to the postseason, He'll be older, probably won't be as good. There will be some small amount of decline barring a severe injury. If

that's the case. Though, with better supporting talent, and now that Luca's in the picture, they don't need Lebron's top end as much anymore. They need a consistent floor with him, which I still think will be there next year, and I think that that's something that they will be able to leverage into competing again for a title one more time next season. What's up, guys, As always, I appreciate

you for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight. They would actually be really helpful for us US if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting US, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.