Hoops Tonight - Bucks-Warriors Reaction: Steph Curry shines, Golden State BLOWS OUT Giannis & Bucks

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terms and responsible gambling resources. All right, welcome to hoops tonight. You're at the volume. Happy Wednesday, everybody. If all of you guys are having a great week so far, just got to do an instant reaction to the Golden State Warriors bouncing back from a humiliating loss to the Boston Celtics by beating the shit out of the Milwaukee Bucks. What a great way to kind of cleanse the palate and kind of reset things as they get back on track.

I was really impressed in general, with just the Warriors' attitude coming out of that game to just kind of flush it and move on. That's what a team that's got good leadership will do. And they rode a really strong defensive effort to win over the Bucks. We're gonna break that game down from the perspective of both teams. You guys know the Joe four we get started. Subscribe to our brand of YouTube channel so you don't miss

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let's talk some basketball. So really interesting matchups. To start this game, they go with the Warriors go with Draymond Green on Giannison ten and Kumpo, and they did a lot of switching when they could when it made sense. I clipped a few examples. I cliped a bunch of examples from this game in the strong defensive effort from Golden State, and when I'm referencing some of these plays, go to my Twitter feed at underscore Jason LT you'll

get to see some examples. But the switching did a lot to stagnate some of the bucks off ball and on ball screening actions. They put Jonathan Minga on brook Lopez, and then whenever they said a ball screen with brook Lopez on Dame, they were blitzing him. And so since Andrew Wiggins was on Dame to start the game, you're getting like a blitz with two of the not just best athletes on the Warriors, but two of the best athletes in the league. And Andrew Wiggins and Jonathan Cominga

just a ton of length on the basketball. They were rotating extremely well. One of the most important parts of rotating out of a blitz is as soon as the guy picks up his dribble there you know there's not a whole lot you can gain at that point, and so rotating out of that quickly is the best way to turn that four on three on the weak side back into a four on four and so they would blitz and then as soon as he'd pick up his dribble, Andrew Wiggins would bail out of there and they'd be

able to get back into rotation. They force some turnovers out of that sort of thing. Just using their length on ball defense was the story of this particular game, though, both on Patrick Beverley and on and on Damian Lillard. Just chasing over the top of screens, applying that back pressure. You get done with Andrew Wiggins, here comes Gary Payton. Gary Payton just had some ridiculous defensive possessions on this in this game, just flying around screens, chasing Dame around.

I cliped a few examples of those. You can find on my Twitter feed as well. And just the big thing with Dame is you just have to stay attached because that guy doesn't need too much space. It's similar to Steph and and you know, in this particular game, Dame was doing a lot of moving without the basketball to try to break open and all that pressure, especially in the situation that they were trying to get the

basketball out of his hands. And I thought, really the theme of this game for Golden State was the matchup advantage they which is their overall speed. They are a young and athletic team relative to the talent that Milwaukee brings to the table, and they were able to weaponize

that in every phase of the game. We talked about on the ball, we talked about blitzing, rotating like Even still to this day at his age, Draymond Green is one of the very best players in the league at sinking down into the lane to help on a drive and then sprint back out to the perimeter and get a late contest. He had several great contests of three point shots when he started before the pass with his

foot in the paint. There was one that he actually blocked of Bobby Portis on the weak side, swarming on the glass, running down the floor in transition slipping out of ball screens. That was a big one in this particular game. Like the Milwaukee's preferred defensive setup and one of the main reasons why they've had a lot of success as of late. So they want to sit in a deep drop coverage right, so they want to keep

Brooke as far back towards the basket as possible. That allows them to chase over the top and defend these actions. Two on two and then stay home off the ball. But Golden State blows that up in two different ways. First of all, they pull you up to the level of the screen. With guys the likes of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, even Chris Paul Now is shooting the ball so much better than he did to start the season,

and that pulls him. It pulls his defender, the screen defender, up to the level of the screen as that big guy. This is like a simple push and pull that takes place in basketball games. It's kind there's these little battles that are taking place all over the floor, whether it's rebounding at the point of attack. One of the big ones in a basketball game is how far are you

pulling out the screen defender in your screening actions. If he's allowed to sit all the way back, then credibly your defender can chase over the top on the ball, and then as the rollman is coming towards you, you can credibly defend both right and as long as the on ball guy's not skilled enough to just torch you with pull up shots and floaters and stuff in the mid range, you can live with that type of coverage, right, But as soon as I have to come up to

the level of the screen, all of a sudden, the rollman is wide open. It's a simple can get. You can envision it. Imagine Steph dribbling the basketball. The on ball defender is chasing him over the top of the screen. Brook or whoever it is, is up at the level. Bobby Port has got torched a ton in this game from showing out on the perimeter on shooters. As soon as that guy comes out, there's effectively a one on

zero on the backside. As long as you can get that pass through, whether it's through a pocket pass or a looping pass over the top, or even sometimes you'll beat that with just a quick swing and then a pass to the role mans he's going towards the rim. The Warriors absolutely torched the Bucks on the role in this game, taking advantage of the Bucks screen defenders having to come up to the level. That's a great example of like how matchups play a role in basketball games

you play against the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Minnesota Timberolves has been a better basketball team than the Warriors all year long, but just strictly from the same point of matchups, Milwaukee can get away with running a deep drop coverage against them because they don't have the guards that can punish

them enough in those coverages. And then the second big piece of it is the off ball actions, right, So like staying glued up off the ball and defending actions one on one and two on two is a great way to force turnovers because as soon as that action starts to fail, that guy has to make a kickout pass. And as long as guys aren't helping, they're glued up and they're in passing lanes, you can force turnovers. One of the things that Golden State does is they're constantly

moving without the basketball. There are not a lot of spot up possessions for the Warriors. In fact, they get the fourth fewest spot up possessions in the league. That's not a shot. You know, a drive and kick to a wide open shooter or driving kick to a close out opportunity is not exactly a commonplace thing that you'll see in the Golden State offense. They are a blender. They are constantly all five players moving, screening, passing, driving,

it's a It is a blender. And so just because of having it, because of Milwaukee having to come up to the level of the screen, and because of Golden State's off ball action and player ball and player movement, it just caught Milwaukee into into a situation where they're speed just what I cloked a few examples that I think they're the last two plays on my on my thread that I made tonight of plays from this game, plays where you just saw Milwaukee literally look exhausted and slow.

There was a play where Steph Curry split a pick and roll against Brook Lopez right before halftime, where Brooke literally looked like he was running in a sandball a volleyball court. Like you could just tell he was wiped out. He was exhausted, He just not used to moving around that much. And so that Golden State matchup is just a really tough one for Milwaukee, and it turned into an ass kicking pretty quickly there at the end of

the first half. It was funny, I was I immediately sent out a tweet because I was blown away when I was watching the game live. And after the first quarter, Doc Rivers gets on the screen and goes like, Oh, they've had one hundred days off, and I'm like, they just came out of a pretty brutal stretch of their schedule and they just played on Sunday and had to fly all the way across the country to get back

from that game. I'm like, I don't think, you know, I don't necessarily think that fatigue is the reason why Golden State is playing harder than Milwaukee. In this game, I thought it was just a complete and total mis match. And by the way, this is going to be kind of like a theme around the league once you get off the top. Like the top teams in the league, teams like Boston and teams like Denver, they are so deep at various position groups that they hold up in

various different types of matchups. Right, Like the Nuggets have the perimeter defenders to throw at the likes of a big forward like KD Kawhi Lebron, And they have the perimeter defenders to throw at guys like guys like Steph Curry, guys like KCP that can guard on the perimeter. Right Like, They've got interior size, they have shooting, they have shot creation, they have guys who can beat mismatches in the post.

They have all these different types of players. Same thing goes for Boston, So they have like a lot of match up resiliency. So they play really fast team, they can handle it. They play a really big team, they can handle it. They play a power team, they can handle they play skill team, they can handle it. Once you get past that point, it's a lot of matchup related stuff right like a thunder or they're too small to guard the Lakers, right and they just continue to

get pulverized on the interior every time in that match. Phoenix, on the other hand, like really struggles with the scrappy perimeter defense and speed that OKC brings and all of their ball pressure. They're a team that struggles to handle double teams and struggles to beat aggressive defensive coverages, and so they can cause damage there. And you're literally seeing that in this particular game, right, Like Milwaukee runs into

a team like Minnesota, it's a bad matchup. They do like cause all sorts of problems and it ends up being an issue. At Golden State, for instance, like can thrive in matchups like this, But teams that have a lot of really good guard defenders that they can really fatigue Steph and challenge the shot creation and the rest of the roster, they can run into issues where their

offense stalls out and they have some problems. So like, this is kind of the reality of this middle tier of the league once you get past Boston and Denver, all of these teams are like they're good at some things, they're bad at some things, and these are the areas for improvement, and these are the things they have to get better at if they want to have a chance in the postseason. And that's gonna be a big one

for Milwaukee. It's like, are they going to be able to handle a team that can really spread them out and pull brook Lopez out onto the perimeter where his lack of foot speed and the overall lack of foot speed on the roster can become an issue. I had a couple other big guys I wanted to shout out for for Golden State when when Milwaukee went on their run there to start the third quarter, Tray Jackson Davis came in and just completely retook control of the game.

And he's such a great example to me of the advantage of a high motor athlete in the over the course of a regular season. Like when you have a guy who will just run the damn floor as hard as he possibly can on both ends, and that on the defensive end is going to make extra efforts and jump out of his shoes to try to make out of area defensive plays and things and Moses or excuse me, Trey Jackson. Davis can get himself into a little bit

of trouble there with overhelping. There was a play in the first half of this game where there was a baseline drive I want to say it was Pat Connaton driving along the right side and Brandon Pitzemski kind of had him on his hip and he just like hard helped and then a content made a drop off pass to Bobby Ports who it dunked it, and like, those are some of the downsides of that type of overwhelming athletic activity, right, but like for the most part, the

good will outweigh the bad many times over. And like he was blocking shots and then he'd run down the other end. A key element in that when the screener a screen defender is coming up to the level of screen, you gotta roll quickly. If you don't like, get out as soon as you see your screen defender start to show you've done your job. You've brought the second defender into play. Nothing else matters at that point. You need

to get behind the play as fast as possible. You need to turn have your head in your hands ready, and Trace just does a really good job of bailing out of those screens early and making himself available at the rim. He's got great hands, he finishes really well. He's already starting to build like some real chemistry with Chris Paul, and he just knows to keep his head on a swivel and be ready for those passes because sometimes he's beating him on a slip, some times he's

beating him on a roll. Sometimes he's getting in with the bounce pass, sometimes he's getting in with the over the top pass. And he's just starting to figure out where he's supposed to be in all those situations. And from there, Moses Moody and Jonathan Kaminga came in to start the fourth quarter or we're on the floor to start that fourth quarter and just did a ton of damage with their ball pressure on the perimeter, getting deflections,

getting out in transition. They like you could just see it in the in the in the big picture stats throughout the game of the Warriors outscored the Bucks nineteen to ten. In transition, they won the points in the and that's fast break points. By the way, they're just runouts of have to check Synergy tomorrow to see what the actual transition numbers points in the paint. Fifty four

to thirty six. That is a classic example of the type of damage that Golden State can do to teams in the paint when they struggle to guard on the perimeter, because like that's the thing. You can sag back all you want, but you're just gonna get absolutely you know, Flambay by the likes of Klay Thompson and Steph Curry and Chris Paul, those guys are professional drop cover destroyers, right,

and so like that's the game you play. And they just they pulled Milwaukee's slower foot speed guys out to the perimeter, torched him on the back line, torched him in transition, and then again that just scrappy, energetic defensive effort on the other end of the floor at all three levels of the defense to put the game away.

One last note on the Warriors side of things. Chris Paul is a floor general, but now adding the reliable three point shot right, Like Chris Paul was already doing such a good job of running bench unit's to start the season, just because he's so good at organizing players and he's just going to find the low hanging fruit that exists in games now when you get into a tight game at the end and it's all the starters

on the floor. Now, with Chris's age limitations, he might not be as effective as he was in the prime of his career right, but at this phase in his career he can still be super effective just as a game manager in the middle portions of games. But that was without him having the ability to make teams pay consistently by hitting the three point and he's come out guns blazing since he's come back from his injury. Hit a couple of massive threes in the first half of

this game to help build out the lead. A lot of encouraging stuff on that front. I said after the Celtics game, like, you gotta the Celtics and the Nuggets are a problem for another day. If you're gonna beat the Celtics and the Nuggets, you have to get so much better at so many little things, and you have

some time to do that. You've got a month and change potentially depending on how the matchups break out before you have to do that right now, I think Golden State is good enough to beat anybody else in the league as long as they you know, as long as they get a bunch of as long as they get reliable play from the guys that are currently in their rotation, and Steph plays up to the level that we all know he's capable of playing, and with their experience, with

their athleticism, as long as they don't you know, like self combust, they've got a chance to be anybody else in the league. So those the Denver and Boston problem is a problem for another day. You just got to focus on getting through each game, one game at a time. You got your ass kicked by Boston. Boston, by the way, like there's such a high power three point shooting team

or just jump shooting team in general. It's crazy. Like I can't tell you how many times as of late, I'll like scout a Celtics game and as I'm looking through the tape, you know, I do both, Like I pore over the tape, then I go into the numbers and I'll look in the numbers and I'll be like, holy shit, they took fifty something jump shots and got like one point four eight points per jump shot. Like, that's the thing. Boston is capable of going super cold.

We just saw them do it against Cleveland during that collapse from nine minutes left when they were up twenty two, they missed every single jump shot they took the rest of the game, every single one of them. So, like we all know that that's something that can happen to Boston, but they also are capable of just making everything and whipping your ass. And Golden State's not the first team

to run into that particular problem. And when you combine that with like the issue with Steph just kind of getting off two cold start, things just got off the rails quickly. But a really nice job from the leaders in that locker room of flushing that down and just going home against another really good opponent that's riding a high streak and getting a dominant win at home on the Bucks front. I want to give them some credit for their huge win against the Clippers. I actually watched

this one. I was having dinner. My wife was out of town this last week for work, and went to dinner with my father in law. Caught the Clippers Bucks game on what would have that been Monday night, and I was really really impressed by their fight in that particular game. Clippers brought it. They were up the majority of the night, and then in that second half big run.

Damian Lillard was incredible in that game. And one of the things I talked about a lot in the early part of the season is like Dame's role fundamentally on this team is different than what it was in Portland, and there's a lot of guys that look to shoot on this team, Like Brooke has a little bit of a green light, you know, Chris Milton obviously is a guy who looks to get his touches and his opportunities.

You know. Jannis obviously is you know, the second or third best player in the league, and he's got a lot of you know, offensive usage coming his way. And so I think that combined with just the different floor setup, just playing with two giant players that teams have a tendency to help off of versus what it was like when he was in Portland, Like there's just been a

lot of adjustment. And I really do think that that game against the Clippers, like Yannis off the floor, no pressure, You're expected to lose this game, Like just go out and play and see what happens. I think that went a long way to helping Dame kind of get his rhythm. And he followed that up tonight with a game where he went five for ten from three and hit a bunch of his like difficult like off the dribble, step back type of shots, those Dame shots that were accustomed

to seeing him make. And I thought that that last two games in general is a good step forward for Dame. Again on the defensive end, I really just think is a bad matchup from Milwaukee Brook in particular, Like he's like Brook is one of those guys where like they're gonna have to be really careful about what matchups look like when they get to the postseason. Now, thankfully in the Eastern Conference, there isn't really a team that brings

maybe Miami, but their shooters aren't as good. But like Miami's the one team you think of that might put them in that type of blender where Brook could become a problem. But yeah, it's just like that's one of those things, like certain teams that can bring Broke out to the perimeter at this phase of his career is

just a little too slow to hang out there. But overall, I mean this kind of like if you're a Bucks fan, like you didn't expect to beat the Clippers and you did, and then you ran into a challenge on the road. And Golden State is always a tough team because they play so different from everybody else in the league, and so they really are a buzzsaw if you're not prepared for them, especially when you factor in the bad matchup element of it. So really big win for Golden State.

Lots of challenges on the horizon in the next week or two for the Bucks. We're going to be covering some of those. I think they playing the Lakers on Friday night, and we'll be covering that game at some point. I'm not sure we're covering it that night, but we'll be covering it either over the weekend or on Monday. All right, guys, that is all I have for tonight. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting this show.

I am back tomorrow night actually for NBA Finals preview potentially between the Denver Nuggets and the Boston Celtics, both teams coming off of a disappointing loss, so it should be a really fun one. I think both teams are really going to go for it. That's going to be an all timer. I will be there on YouTube after the final buzzer. I hope I'll see you guys there too. The volume