Hoops Tonight - Celtics Dominate 76ers, Lakers Get Back On Track, Plus A Mailbag

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On his minutes restriction. We really want to dive into Kyle Kuzma in the force multiplier that he can be for that group. Then in our third segment, we're going to talk some Lakers who got a big win against the Blazers to get back on track. Last night, Lebron James drops forty points. I want to zoom in on the concept of their defense, the number one defense in

the league since January fifteenth, a seventeen games sample. I want to just zoom into that and what it means for the Lakers and what it means specifically within the context of Luca. And then, lastly, like we always do on Fridays, our mail bag questions. Remember, if you guys want to get mailbag questions, drop them in our YouTube comments. Just put mail bag with the call in, write your question and we'll get to it on Fridays throughout the rest of the season. You guys have the Joe before

we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JCNLT. You guys, don't miss you announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcast on our Hoops tonight. It's also super helpful. We leave a rating and a review on that front. We also have brand new social media feeds, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Make sure you guys follow us there for

more content throughout the season. And last but not least, like I mentioned off the top, keep dropping mailback questions and those YouTube comments for our Friday mail bags throughout the rest of the year. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Celtics beat the shit out of the Sixers last night, really controlled that one from start to finish. And the Sixers with MBD, with Maxi, with Paul George all healthy in the lineup, who continue to look extremely mediocre.

We talked about that last week, so I'm not going to get into that today. But what fascinated me was the way that Boston dominated that game. This is a team that only averages thirty three ball screens per game. It's bottom ten in the league. Several reasons for that. Part of that is a lot of their perimeter players are similar size and style, so you'll see a lot

of switching against the Boston Celtics. They also have pick and pop bigs in one of the easiest ways to confront a pick and pop, which is always open in a traditional coverage, is to switch. And the Celtics also, just in terms of their talent level, they're a team that has a lot of guys that can punish mismatches, so they're more or less a mismatch hunting type of offense.

But last night they ran forty two ball screens against the Philadelphia seventy six ers, and I thought there was a very specific reason why Philly has a severe roster weakness, specifically at the center position in terms of footspeed, the ability to cover ground and change direction on the perimeter. Whether it's Embiid who's been brutally bad as of late on the perimeter, or Quashanyabuseli or Andre Drummond, whoever it is, they're just extremely slow.

barbecue chicken over and over and over again. Embiid would either be way too far back in his drop coverage. That's a weird thing with Embiid, Like I don't know if it's like a Nick Nurse mixing up coverages thing, or if he just decides possession by possession, whether or not he feels like getting up to the level. But sometimes he's way far back in a drop and guys

are hitting pull of jumpers over the top. Sometimes he's running up to the level, but they'll just pop Horford to poor Zingis out to the three point line, or they'll just attack Joel Embiid in space or a big one Inbiad's been really struggling with is rejected screens.

one round. Think about a team like Milwaukee. Milwaukee's gonna present a challenge We're going to talk about them later, where they got Giannis and Kyle Kuzma flying around in helpside and Brooks just sitting under the rim waiting for everybody. It's a specific type of challenge, right, But then you might face a team that does a lot more switching

in a different round. Think about a team like the Miami Heat, who with all of their big, rangy athletes, especially now that Wigans is in the picture, they can switch a lot of action. Dam Adebayo one of the best bigs in the league at switching ball screens right. Cleveland this year has done a lot of switching because Jared Allen can guard on the perimeter. Evan Mobley can

guard on the perimeter. It's a very different type of challenge going against the Cleveland Cavaliers right, and then on the other end of the floor, like the East has a lot of elite guards right, guys like Jalen Brunson, Damian Lillard, Donovan Mitchell, and Darius Garland with the Calves.

But then you'll also face these teams that have more dynamic like big wings right teams like the Pistons with Kay Cunningham or Jannison Tenakumpo, who was just bludgeoning the Clippers last night, or Pascal si Yakum, who's been one of the more efficient matchup attackers in the league this year. Pala Bancaro when he's healthy and in rhythm, Franz Wagner

when he's healthy in rhythm. Even looking at the center position, again, the Sixers aren't a threat this year, but on any given season, you could run into an issue where it's like, oh, what if you have to face some combination of one or two of Jokic, Anthony Davis or Joe el Embiid right, Alprin, Shanegon, the Victor wembin Yama types of the league I say types, he's the one and only of his kind.

is the Denver Nuggets in twenty twenty three. They had slight variations, right. They would have stretches of games or specific matchups where they'd bring Jokic up to the level, and then they'd have other matchups where they'd sit Jokic deeper in a drop and offer less low man help from Aaron Gordon. But for the most part, it was traditional coverages and on offense, they just run the same

thing just about every single time. There were some differences, like the Miami Heat series, it's like, oh, we're gonna spam Aaron Gordon post ups, right, Like, there are a handful of different things that they would do differently, but that team it was more like just we have this completely unsolvable problem that is Nikola Jokic, and good luck

solving it. But there are different types of champions over the year where it comes down more to versatility, the Bucks being able to play Giannis at center or at the four, the Lakers being able to play Anthony Davis at center or at the four. Teams playing through heavy ballscreen attack one night, switching towards more of a post up style attack a different night. There's a lot of versatility in the champions as we look back through NBA history,

and that's what I like about this Celtics team. There are a lot of teams out there that struggle against switching defenses, but that will thrive against traditional ball screen coverages.

can have some problems. Right, the Celtics are very well

equipped to handle both. They have a reputation for being one of the best switch attacking defenses in the offenses in the league, not just because Jason Tatum can attack smaller players, not just because Jalen Brown can attack smaller players, not just because they can pick on bigs in space, but also because of their spacing, also because of their ability to use seals like you'll see Jason Tatum screen for Derek White, but screen the backside of the defender

and create that little passing angle over the top and Derek White floats it to him. Suddenly you have a four on three. They do a lot of work attacking

switching successfully. But then, as we saw last night, you go up against a drop coverage team, a team that's running a lot more traditional coverage is either the big at the level or sitting back in a drop in that sort of situation, if you don't score the basketball in those ball screens, if you don't score the basketball with the big popping, then you allow Embiid to park his ass underneath the basket. And when Embiid has parked

underneath the basket, he can be a problem. And there are a lot of teams that struggle against those kinds of coverages.

and we're just gonna switch ball screens. And now all of a sudden, your pick and roll attack doesn't work. And oh, by the way, where's porzingis at. He's guarding your weakest above the break three point shooter and just waiting for everybody at the rim, just making a complete mess of things. That's the versatility that Boston has on the defensive end of the floor. Drew Holliday, you spent a bunch of time guarding Joel Embiid last night.

If you're serious basketball team. You need to be winning your games by a lot of points, and it needs to manifest in something like net rating, right, Like, if you're not dominating in those areas, then you're probably just not sharp enough in general to get where you want to go. But once you get into a playoff series, those metrics don't mean shit. It becomes can you score against this particular team? Can you get stops against this

particular team. I was watching Giannis last night. He was showcasing this like ridiculous spin move, we're going to talk about it here in a little bit, and like two to one, like fadeaways over the top. Was just bludgeoning the Clippers in the paint in that early fourth quarter stretch, which really sparked the run. And it doesn't really matter how good your defense is if you can't guard Giannis.

That's what I'm concerned about with the Lakers with the Nuggets, right it doesn't really matter if they're switching scheme, can bend but not break and get a lot of stops, if like Nikole Jokic can just get a layup every single time he wants. That's why we have to look at this deeper than just reading net ratings and reading the standings to tell us who the best playoff threats are. The Celtics have great metrics too, top five in both

offense and defense. Right now, they're sixth in defensive rebounding. But they also have the ability to shape shift from matchup to matchup, and that's what makes them such a difficult team to contend with. Thought, it's really interesting the way they just spam ball screens to beat the Sixers last night, when that's not really their play style on most nights.

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takes over the game. They try to get some stops by running a two three zone with Jericho Simms in the middle of the floor, and Clippers got a couple of buckets out it, but it didn't a nice job of just kind of stagnating and changing the flow of the game. And on the other end of the floor, Giannis was just torching Ben Simmons, torching Nicholas Patom just he was using his spin move over and over again

last night disguised it really well too. He had a fun one against Nick Patom where he catches the ball on the left kind of like elbow extended area there in the middle of the of that left side of the floor, and he's facing up in the Clippers are basically zoned up on him, so they're in both driving lanes. Kawhi Leonards kind of doing the little defensive three second dance where he's hopping in and out of the key

trying to make sure that he's ready to rotate. They're rotating on the high side and Giannis just kind of waits for as second to kind of read the floor, and then he does a beautiful job of disguising a post up, making it look like he was about to go kind of into a traditional slowdown post up where he turns his back into that high hesitation dribble and then just immediately spun off of it, like disguised it like he was.

Alexander Jannis, and Tennekumpo, Luka Doncic. I think Jason Tatum has kind of entered into this group where it's like there's really nothing you can do. There's no player that stops them, there's no scheme that stops them. They are world beaters, and when you have one of those guys, you present a problem to the opponent that becomes.

two playoff exits. Yiannis didn't play. When Yannis played, even on a limited Bucks roster in twenty twenty two because of the Chris Middleton injury, it was just Drew Holliday, a bunch of role players in Giannis, and he still pushed the Celtics to seven games because guess what, when you get into a playoff series, it's over and over and over and over again that he's coming downhill at you. And I remember early in that series it's like Horford would wall him up, you know, like you'd you'd have

guys sliding their feet and absorbing contact. Grant Williams played some good minutes on Giannis in that series, but then what happened after, like the tenth, fifteenth, twentieth, twenty fifth time that he comes at you, he starts to just get through you, and there's literally nothing you can do about it. And he pushed that series to seven games when it had no business going to seven games. And that's where the optimism comes.

And as I was watching that last night, it just goes to show you, like Giannis is kind of flying under the radar this year because of all the excitement around Shay, all the excitement around Jokic, He's still one of those guys, one of those guys that presents a

truly unsolvable problem for opponents. When Yanna sat out of the game, though something really interesting happened, he kind of goes out of the game in that mid fourth quarter stretch on a minute's restriction, obviously coming back from his injury, and the Bucks won the game with defense and everybody

was guarded. Dame had a really nice steal where they were running a ball screen with Zubach and Harden, and Harden threw a bounce pass to Zubatch on the roll and Dame dug down off of a mere coffee and got a steal that ended up leading to a runout and one for Kyle Kuzma. Brook Lopez blocked Kawhi at the rim because Kuzma flattened out the drive. I talk

a lot about flattening out drives. When you flatten out drives, it gives your helpers more time to rotate, and when Brook has time to kind of read things on the back line, he can be devastating there. He had another block on another sweeping drive across the middle of the florid.

looks like a Swiss army knife. I've seen him take charges. I've seen him battle embiad in the post, in front the posts. I've seen him guard guards. I've seen him guard wings. He's grabbing its on a defensive rebounds. He

is a force multiplier for this defense. And I was especially excited to see him in the context of playing alongside Giannis, because again, that's what makes this work when you're talking about when you're talking about traditional switching schemes, it becomes about how many good defenders do you have on the floor.

Kuzma's done some of that. He had a big one of the biggest clutch plays in this game.

early returns from the Kyle Kuzma trade. He made it immediately clear within the first few games that he was playing on playing winning basketball. Now, adding Gianis to this mix gives this team crazy potential and I have my eye on them as a team that could potentially jump considerably higher up my contender rankings after I see them with Giannis and Cuz together more. It's a physicality thing. It's a size thing. It's a protecting the rim and

rebounding thing. It's a maybe you just can't handle Jannis on Tanacumpo on the other end of the floor kind of thing that makes me so excited about them in the big picture. And then Dame, I mean like Dame, we Dame when he was in the first round last year with Chris Middleton had to carry such a massive offensive load within the context of this sort of build. When they get to the postseason, when Giannis is playing the way he's playing, when you have this type of defense,

Dame is a really dangerous second option. Has this remarkable ability to get to the foul line on three point shots. He drew two fouls on three point shots in the fourth quarter, hit another big step back three off the left wing, just manufacturing points. That is another force multiplier within the context of what this team is capable of on the offensive end of the floor. All Right, moving

on the Lakers Blazers. This game looks so similar to me to the set of games that we saw between when Ad got hurt in the Sixers game and when Luca joined the team, think about like that when they beat the Knicks, like in the Clippers, in that kind of phase of the of the season. The Lakers defense has just been so good lately. Again, they're number one in the entire NBA in defensive ratings since January fifteenth. That's a seventeen game sample, or roughly twenty one percent

of the season. Oh well, Anthony Davis was in there for some of those games. You're right, he was in there for seven of those games. In the ten games since they are second in defensive rating. Now, we'll get deeper into what that means later, because like, do I think they're a top tier defense in this league. No, But the point is they are guarding to the effect that they're guarding better than everyone in the NBA.

assists on sixty three percent true shooting. That is MVP level production from a forty year old in a winning context with massive games against good teams. Austin reeves in this thirteen and four stretch twenty one points, four rebounds,

seven assists, sixty three percent true shooting. That's insane. Forty eight points, twelve rebounds and sixteen assists on sixty three percent true shooting from Lebron and Austin over this seventeen game span, this game kind of had an interesting flow, and that's how it also kind of mimicked some of these other games recently when AD's been out but Luca's also been out, where like they start the game, there's a lot of ball pressure. That's like the book on

the Lakers. You want a ball pressure Austin and Lebron and try to wear them out. That's, by the way, one of the big reasons why I think Luca is so important to this team. He is impervious to that sort of thing. But in the early part of this game,

it's a lot of ball pressure. But the Blazers were running a lot of drop coverage with Donovan Klingon and Robert Williams, where they're either they're coming up but they're not that high up at the level, but they're sitting back waiting for the ball handler coming off of the screen, and Lebron and Austin just absolutely torched it getting all the.

Austin and Lebron were great with that. And then again, when you show a willingness to either attack downhill or to score and pick and roll, something happens with the screen defender.

has a game plan for the Lakers. Lots of ball pressure, you wear them down, and then usually over the course of the game there's more switching and then more aggressive ball coverages where the bigs coming up to the level. And what ends up happening is Lebron and Austin start to get tired, and when they get tired, they get sloppy, particularly as passers. Those two guys finished with seventeen turnovers. The team finished with a season twenty four turnovers, and

so many of them were like pick sixes. And this is the weird part about that game. Lebron and Austin were brilliant, but they both undercut a lot of their success with these really sloppy turnovers that literally led to run out layups and dunks. Again, they had thirty one

points off of turnovers in this game. The Blazers did Denny Avdia in particular, it was amazing in this game, did a ton of damage in those like kind of runout like six pick six type of types of sequences, but that allowed the Blazers to kind of slowly and

methodically work their way back into the game. But Lebron James, once again, just like he did against the Hornets the night before, goes absolutely bizarre in the early fourth quarter shift hitting threes against Jeremy Grant, who was going underneath picks, and Lebron's just shooting the ball too well these days

for you to go under picks. He made Jeremy Grant pay with two threes that way, hit another one of those drop covered shots against Donovan Klingen like god Jeremy Grant in jail, and then hit like a little like twelve along the left lane line. He hit this crazy driving floater onto Monty Camarrow was a really impressive defensive player all season, but was doing a lot of damage to the Lakers last night. Hit this driving floater on

to moniy Amara. All of a sudden, the Lakers are up by nine, But then the rest of the way the Blazers just double team Lebron and there were a couple more ugly turnovers, a couple more runouts and kept things kind of close. But when you double team Lebron, he's just gonna pick you apart. They got good looks down the stretch. Austin Reeves hit a big three on the right wing off of a Lebron double that more or less kind of like ice to the game, so

to speak. And then Austin Reeves a couple of big stops, got to stop on Scoot Henderson driving off of the left wing. Got another stop in the post against Jeremy Grant. I've been telling everybody forever, like Austin will have his bad games where he looks bad on defense, especially like random regular season games against mediocre teams. But when len when Austin needs to guard, he guards. Austin slides his feet,

he absorbs contact. He's excellent at attacking the basketball. Both of those stops against Scoot Henderson and Jeremy Grant just attacked the basketball. He got screw Henderson up high, he got Jeremy Grant down low. Austin can guard, and he got a couple of huge stops down the stretch of that game. Before we get into the Lakers defense, I just want to shout out a couple of Blazers. I

was really impressed with Smani Kamara. Again, he is just a really unique combination of like size and strength but also long arms in lots of mobility.

can be someone in consistent. He's better off the dribble than he is off the catch. That means he's kind of like a rhythm player. Makes me think like in the big picture, he's kind of more of a second side creator, a guy who should run more action. Robert Williams, his length and mobility was a problem all night. They had two blocks and two steals. The Blazers are fun. They have a nice group of useful role players. It's just Anthony Simons and Jeremy Grant leave a lot to

be desired as ball handlers. They would four for twenty five from the field and that's just really hard to overcome for anybody. But I want to focus on the Lakers defense for a bit again. They're number one in defensive ratings since January fifteenth, a large chunk of the season here where they've been playing great defense. They've really settled into a base scheme that works for them. They either switch everything or switch almost everything depending on the matchup.

So like last night, for instance, they're not worried about

getting picked apart in ball screens by Portland. Their ball handlers aren't good enough at scoring or playmaking to do that, so they had Dorianfhinney Smith some of their perimterive players gave Vincent chasing over the top of screens while clinging in Robert Williams role, and it allowed them to make stay attached to their pull up shooters in bait Shade and Sharp and bait Anfernie Simon's into these like tough rear view contested pull up threes coming off of screens,

and it worked. It baited them into a bunch of them. They took seventeen pull up jumpers last night, made six of them. But then you'll see in other matchups where they're more concerned about ball screens, they'll switch with their fives as well. And then they do they switch everything when they go to their small ball groups right when

there's no center on the floor. But their switching scheme has worked so so much better in the last couple of months because the Lakers are actually doing the things that they need to do to make that scheme work. To JJ's credit, even when those guys weren't executing it, he stuck with it. He believed in it, and now he's reaping the rewards. We've talked about this on the show before, but there are several key things that you

need to do in order for a switching scheme to work. First, you need your off ball defenders to be prepared to jump out immediately when there is a screen to avoid that interchange gap. We talked about that yesterday with Miles Bridges. You got to switch right away. You can have a gap between the switch because that's when a decent player can rise up and knock down a jump shot. There's an example early in the game where you can see there's a couple of Portland screeners up at the top

of the key. The Lakers players are glued up on the backside ready to jump out whenever that screen comes, so that that interchange gap isn't there. Secondly, you need your weaker defenders to battle. If you're switching, they're gonna go, Hey, let's attack Austin Reeves. Hey, let's attack Luka doncich Austin. You got to compete in those situations. Austin last night

huge stops down the stretch against Scoot Henderson against Jeremy Grant. Third, you need to shrink the floor around them by gapping driving lanes. You'll see possessions where the Lakers have two guys on either side of the ball arms out in the driving lane close enough where they feel like they

can close out, shrinking the floor. The Scoot Henderson drive against Austin Reeves, if you look, there's a Laker on either side of Austin in the gap, making it like a narrow lane for Scoot Henderson to try to drive through, and so he doesn't really try to go around Austin. He tries to go through Austin, and Austin takes one good slide to the left, absorbs that contact and attacks the basketball and ties Scoot Henderson up. If you don't

have those gaps there, excuse me. If you don't have those defenders gapping there and they're out of the way, you have a wider lane. That is what allows Scoot Henderson to really get to mixing Austin up. And once he starts mixing Austin up, that's where he has more of a speed advantage that he can take advantage of. Right fourth, you need to have a plan for dribble penetration. Which way if I'm gonna get beat off the dribble, which way do I want to funnel the guy where I have more help.

of this is February basketball. There have been good wins in there, so they've played really good defense against some good teams. They defended the Clippers really well. They defended the Knicks really well. They defended the Pacers well, but a lot of bad offenses were in there too. Games against Utah, games against Charlotte, games against Portland, games against Washington, those are gonna The Warriors offense has struggled a lot this year. Those are games that are gonna influence your

defensive rating a certain amount. Right, you add thirty plus minutes of Luka Doncic into the picture, and yeah, your defensive talent goes down a level. So I don't think this is gonna be some top five dominant defense. I'm not here today saying Lakers number one defense are gonna say number one defense, They're gonna win with defense. I don't think that's gonna be the case. But they don't need to be that type of dominant defense. This team absolutely needs to be a dominant top two or top

three level offense. And I do think that's a real possibility for them with the talent level that they have on that end of the floor. With Lebron playing at the level he's playing at, with Luca playing at the level he's capable of playing at, they can present an unsolvable problem to teams. But if they're a top two or top three level offense. They don't need to be a dominant defense, they just need to be good enough.

I've talked about this a lot in the context of like Denver in twenty twenty three, somewhere in that like ten to fifteen range of defense is good enough when you have peak unguardability on the offensive end of the flour And I absolutely think the Lakers can get to that point. I think the Lakers can be a slightly

above average defense with Luca in the picture. They've been getting too many stops now for a while, Like I'm seeing so many people just writing the Lakers defense off and who knows, maybe Luca gets in the pick sure and they actually can't guard. Maybe everything falls apart, but it's all conjecture at this point. There's too many good defenders in the lineup. We talked about how Austin's a better defender than people think. Gabe's a good defender, Drian

Phinney Smith's a good defender. Lebron for months now has been a good defender. Jared Vanderbilt when he's right, is a great defender. They have good defenders in this lineup. They're gonna get some stops I absolutely think they can

get into that slightly above average range of defense. I like the switching scheme as like a way for them to essentially they bend but not break, shut down screening actions try to bait teams into running a lot of inefficient ISOs and post ups, giving up some points but keeping teams in check enough for their offense to be a differentiator. My worry center around specific matchups like I've been talking about, like we talked about earlier with Boston,

and the realities of playoff series. Like I do, worry about Boston truly spacing them out to where they can't gap, to where they can't help and it becomes a problem. I can see a team like Denver where it's like they just can't keep Jokic off of the offensive glass, and even if they double team him and force teams into misses, he just waddles his way underneath the basket and starts shoving guys off and gets offensive rebounds and putbacks.

I can see that being a problem, But I think in the big picture, they're gonna get a lot more stops than people think. I don't view them as a top tier contender, even if they're at their peak simply because of the fact that they're gonna have severe matchup weaknesses.

But if they get their defense into that slightly above average range and they get their offense where they're capable of at the top tier in this league, I absolutely think they can enter into that second tier in the league with teams like Denver, with teams like Cleveland, I absolutely think that's in their potential. All right, let's get into our mail bag. First question, Hey, Jason up from Brazilla.

Loved the show. I've learned a lot from me last two years, and I usually agree with most of your takes. I'm always impressed by your knowledge of the game and how well you break the plays down and analyze them. Luca is my favorite player since Alan Iverson, and I've learned to appreciate Lebron, which was hard at first because I'm an MJ guy. However, I don't see a world where the Lakers will be able to take the beating and win multiple playoff series without a reliable center.

I used to hate the Lakers, but now I find myself rooting for them because of Luca. I just want to have some hope that they won't be embarrassed in a playoff series for their lack of defense. Again, it's a bend but not break kind of concept. I like the idea of switching within the context of this roster, and again, it's not about letting Austin and Luca get run through a million ball screens. You don't want them

running through screens. You want them switching. And then when they end up on the ball, there are things you can do, like you can scram guys out of mismatches. That was something they tried to do against Charlotte. They just botched a rotation at the back. You can gap and shrink those driving lanes and make it so it's harder for them to attack. You can tell them to play off and try to bait the guy they're guarding

into taking pull up jump shots. And if they're playing off and there's guys in the gaps, it's like, are you going to drive into three bodies or are you going to take.

of Lebron in Luca. It's vertical spacing really that you need from that position, and Jackson does a good job of that. I think Jackson's been really good since the Anthony Davis trade. What you hit on, which I am actually worried about is the ability to take a beating like you talked about. I do think they can double and rotate and get a certain amount of stops against Nicole Jokic. I do think that they can switch and contain and get a certain amount of stops against other teams.

But the question is can they do it over and over and over again for two weeks against a team like Denver, for four playoff rounds against a bunch of different kinds of teams. And they do have a thin rotation. They have like seven guys that I really trust, right, it's like Lebron, Luca Austin, Dorian Phinney Smith, Ruy Gabe and who.

you can overcome. Like there are a few guys now in their lineup that are like absolutely vitally important in terms of if they get injured, you're in big trouble. And so that's where my major concerns lie is, like I worry about Jokics just wearing them down over a playoff series and just destroying them on the offensive glass. I worry about them getting spaced out by teams like Boston, and then I worry about them breaking down. If you're gonna play small ball, you need guys like Lebron to

rebound really well. That's just really exhausting for him to have to do a lot. Feels like Tatum has been shooting the ball a lot better this year, but he's still only shooting thirty six percent from three as he takes a lot of tough pull ups that drags his efficiency down. I've seen arguments that even so is tough pull up is still critical to opening up room for

the whole offense. Do you agree with that view on a shot diet, Yes, he he has hurt his efficiency by taking a lot of really tough shots, but there's two things that's helped overcome it in my opinion. First of all, he's shooting better off the dribble. He's up over a point per shot off the dribble. That's the key one. It's becoming a situation, especially in ISO, where like it used to be, it's like, oh, just bait Tatum and to take in a tough step back and

he'll probably miss most of them. And like, now that's a battle he's winning more often than not. I think that will especially become valuable when he gets into the postseason and late clock shot making increases in value exponentially compared to the regular season's That's why we call him playoff shots.

He's been a twenty five, ten and five guy for as long as we can remember. It's about the impact, It's about how he does it. Within the context of each individual basketball game, Jason, why doesn't Tatum get more love as a future face of the league. Not that the conversation really matters much anyway, but he never gets brought up. American grown, twenty six year old champion, top five guy whose jersey sales have been top three to five and is quite polarizing, just seems like he doesn't

get any love compared to other guys. Not sure if it's an anti Celtics bias or what the national media's reason is. Love the show would love your insight. I straight up cannot even begin to care or ever be concerned with who the face of the NBA is. It hasn't meant anything in my entire time that I've been a fan of this game. I've never even felt like there was a single face of the NBA. Even through the Lebron era, it felt like Lebron and Kobe, then Lebron and KD, then Lebron and Steph like it.

only two guys in a lot of ways. Tatum the reason why he doesn't get as much buzz in terms of his personality is he's got a very muted personality. Jason Tatum is a pretty chill guy who doesn't talk a ton of shit, who doesn't act super you know,

he's not very performative in the media. He kind of just takes care of business and goes home, and so like, yeah, Jason Tatum doesn't have the sort of like big picture reputation that some of these other players have, but that has more to do with him than anything to do with the league.

a contender. So I question why you see the Thunder with ten losses in a dominant regular season as inflated and why the Celtics with sixteen losses and disinterested as title favorites. Clearly, the Thunder are building the foundation of good habits and have done it while significantly injured, so I believe they deserve the top spot in the contender rankings.

What you consider to be the Celtics being disinterested is top five in offense top five and defense sixth and defensive rebounding, so like the way I look at Boston is a very good regular season team that has punted some games, but in the aggregate has been really fucking good.

Still in the concept of the regular season. In the context of the regular season, I should say, and then, as I talked about in that opening segment involving the Celtics, I look at everything within the context of matchup to matchup. How versatile is a team, how capable are they of winning four playoff rounds? To me, the regular season performance

is more of just like a mandatory minimum. If you're not one of the top ten records in the NBA, if you're not consistently every single night providing a certain baseline average performance on either end of the floor that's keeping you sharp as a basketball team, I'm pretty much going to disqualify you as a contender in a lot of ways in terms of being a serious contender. But once you're in that group, to me, now it's like you kind of have to parse out things because guess.

Do you think the fact that the Thunder played harder in December and January is going to matter to the Boston Celtics when they're in TD and they're playing super hard because they have an opportunity to win the trophy. Now, all of a sudden, it comes down to parsing out the details I still get concerned about, and we're going to talk about this, I might as well skip ahead to it if I can find the question, the one

about Okay. See here it is, Hey, Jason, love the show and you're the truth when it comes to Hoops break down. You spoke on how Okac's defense is the ultimate calling card and them having a rating way above everyone else is in the league. It reminds me of the same discourse around the Celtics in twenty twenty two when they went to the finals. What similarities do you notice between the Celtics and twenty twenty two and the

OKCE defense. Now Celtics unfortunately lost in the finals, but as the defensive rating a full indicator that OKAC will get to the finals this year. And would you take the Seas twenty twenty two defense or the OKCE defense this year as the best defense as you've seen in the current era. They are similar in a lot of ways, right, because like that Seas team with Robert Williams had like a rim protection version, but then with Horford at center, they had like more of a switching type of version.

Same sort of thing with the Thunder They have these small groups where they're doing a ton of switching, but then they also have the ability to use chet at the basket. Right, There's like a kind of similar vibe there. Both teams won games with their defense, but had issues from times from time to time on the offensive ended FOURD which we'll get to in a minute. I think I would personally take the C's defense just because they

were bigger on the perimeter. Oklahoma City has a lot of guys in the like six four, six five range. The Celtics were putting out lineups where you would have you know, Derek White and Marcus Smart, but you'd have Jason Tatum, you'd have Jalen Brown in addition.

in their own way is aggression. Aggression in rotation. When you are aggressive on the ball, when you're trapping balls, when you're gapping and overhelping and really throwing a lot of resources in the direction of the ball, you create week side two on ones, meaning situations where you have a shooter in the corner, shooter on the wing with one guy there, and the thunder are just so good at quickly disengaging from their aggressive coverage and recovering out

to the perimeter. That's like their main thing that they do extremely well. But the offensive side of the floor, it's very similar to what we saw with Boston over the years in the sense that like if you remember in that game, if you guys remember in that game against or that series against the Bucks in twenty twenty two, they repeatedly time and time again kept challenging brook Lopez right at the rim instead of taking easy kickout passes.

When I look back at the Mavericks series last year, same sort of thing, Jalen Williams in particular, doing a lot of like trying to finish through Daniel Gafford or Derek Lively at the basket, and it's just that's a really low percentage shot. You need to be making those

extra kickout passes. There is a thing that happened with the Celtics where they learned between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty four to be more deliberate with their shot selection, to get the great shot instead of the good shot, and that is what pushed them over the top. And I still maintain that's the main barrier between the Thunder and where they want to get and where they are now.

It's that offensive process piece. Inevitably, they're going to run into some great defense that makes them super uncomfortable and they're going to have to really break a defense down. This is actually a perfect tee up into our second to last question. We have two more what happened to all the concerns that everyone, including you, had of the Celtics when it comes to offensive execution against an elite defense. They had no real opposition in the East.

when we're talking about what they can do. I think there's this misconception that when I talk about any concept, whether it's boxing out, containing the ball, making good decisions, running back in transition defense, that it means you do it every single time. Every team, even the Thunder, even the Celtics, even the Cavs, will make bad decisions on offense, miss box outs, not get back in transition defense, just in general, make execution errs. Everyone makes executioners. It's about

a ratio. How frequently are you making those executioners. Yes, Tatum still takes bad shots. Yes, Jalen Brown still takes bad shots. Yes, the Celtics have stretches where their offense looks bad, It is much fewer and much further between than it used to be, And I'd actually argue the Celtics have been particularly great this year at identifying when they're losing control of things and re centering themselves on offense and making those execution Making those better decisions on

offense that get them back on track. Kind of felt like the opposite in years past, where they would play good basketball and then they would lose sight of it, and especially when things got hard, they would revert to bad habits.

educate us that didn't play basketball at high level. It's great to get your perspective, and it's only fitting my question is best suited for a player like yourself? When I'm watching Luca the last few games with LA, doesn't look like he's just playing bad basketball, looks like he's broken mentally. It's crazy, as fans were programmed to be upset with players when they leave their teams, but when

organizations trade players, it's just business. Because of this, I don't think most people realize how big of an impact this has on an athlete. Watching Luca has bad play the last few games has seems psychological. Doesn't look like he's even having fun, and I don't think he's going to play any meaningful basketball again until he rediscovers his love for the game. To be clear, I don't think this will be a prolonged thing. I do think he'll get back on track. But I'm curious if you, as

a player, could take us through your thoughts. Do you agree with me or do you think his poor play is more of a lack of team chemistry. Thanks again, love the show. I'm not gonna see here and pretend like I don't think Luca's mentality or his mental state with all of this chaos over the course of the last few weeks isn't affecting him. Of course, it's affecting him. I just think it's affecting him more when he's off the court. You know, basketball is for guys like this too,

like they love the game so much. I would argue that for a guy like Luca, this is when he's having the most fun. It's one of those things where it's like when you're going back to a different house than you're, a different apartment than you usually go back to, and friends that you had in your old home are not there anymore, and you're building new friendships, but everything's

still kind of in a fledgling stage. Like I'm sure, he has a lot of moments where he's struggling a bit outside of the Lakers facility, but basketball is the happy place for most of these guys. I think it's mostly chemistry. One of the things that made things hard for Luca is the Lakers played awesome in the stretch before he showed up. After the trade. He like sat there and watched as Lebron and Austin played awesome and beat good teams. Luca has come into a situation with

a team playing great. Hell, he just sat out last night and they played great again. So like it's one of those things for Luca where I think he's reading the situation and he's trying really hard not to step on everyone's toes. That's the natural thing that happens every time you add a high volume ball handler to a team that already had ball handling. Everyone's gonna start looking at each other and it's like, is it your turn?

Is it my turn? I really could feel that at the tail end of the Charlotte game, where it's like Lucas in a.

But then as different guys check in and out of the lineup, different guys will become more aggressive. Lebron will check out in the mid the first quarter, Austin will start to be more aggressive, right, Luca will check out, Lebron will come in for the late first quarter group

that's when Lebron will really turn it on. We've seen a lot in recent weeks how in the early fourth quarter Lebron is like, this is my time to like really just fire every bullet I've gotten my gun to get us as much of a lead as I can so that Luca can come in and close the deal.

case in the big picture. He's gonna get it going. He's shooting a lot of really flat jump shots that are either way off the back room or way short, like that's just his jumper's way off. That's going to take time to figure out. He's out of rhythm as well, but he's also trying to figure out those chemistry things.

It's going to take time. It's interesting as I look at the Lakers, even with the ugly basketball that they've played with Lucas so far, I've already seen enough to know that I think they're gonna be a great offense. I'm just not worried about that at all whatsoever. As soon as Luca gets it going, I think they're going to take off on offense. The questions are going to be centered around whether or not they can get enough stops in particular matchups to win multiple playoff rounds.