Hoops Tonight - CELTICS-LAKERS REACTION: Jayson Tatum escapes late rally from Luka Doncic, LeBron leaves w/ injury

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show for you guys. Tonight we're going to hit that incredibly entertaining and very interesting game between two of the league's best teams, the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, the teams with the third and fourth best records in basketball right now. Very very interesting. A lot of key players missing, but a lot of stuff that's going to be the case if these two teams were to face and face each other in a post season run, so

I thought it was very revealing. We got some bad news about a Lebron James injury that we'll discuss a little bit further on, and then I want to talk a little bit about some realities about both the Celtics and the Lakers in the playoff context. After that, at the tail end of the show, I just have a quick rant about the Jokic Shay Gilgas Alexander MVP race, which is heating up. I just want to talk a little bit about where I stand in that debate. You

guys know the Joe before we get started. Subscribe to Oops and my YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLTS. You guys, don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about a podcast feed where you get your podcast on our Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front in the last minut least.

Keep dropping mail bag questions in the YouTube comments. We get to our mailbags typically on Fridays when I'm not on vacation throughout the season, and we'll have another one coming up this Friday. All right, let's talk some basketball. So I thought, obviously the story of this game was

Boston's defense. The Lakers actually, for large portions of this game played well, but there was the stretch from the end of the second quarter to the end of the third quarter where the Celtics literally strangled the life out of the Laker offense. Now, the Laker offense has been a work in progress since the Luka doncicch trade. They've had phases where it's looked really good and a lot of phases where it's looked really bad as Lucas struggled

to get his legs underneath him. As a team, they're playing so hard on defense that they're not making shots. On the other end, they've been shooting really poorly in spot up situations over the course of the last month. It's been a work in progress, but there have been phases where they've looked downright unguardable, and Boston was the first team that I saw straight up strangle the life out of them to where it looked like they couldn't even get good shots for a stretch there from the

late second to the late third. So I want to talk about three different concepts that Boston was deploying in this game that had such a profound effect on Luka Doncic and that Lakers offense. I was joking with our

producer Jackson before the before the show started. It's crazy because Luca finished like eleven for twenty two from the field and five to ten from three with thirty four points, and you'd think that was awesome, but he was legitimately terrible for the majority of the game, and specifically he was bad on both ends, but he was especially bad on offense during the majority of the game until Boston ended up going up by twenty and a big part of that was Jaylen Brown and the ball pressure that

he applied to Luca all game long. I talked about this concept after the knixt game on Thursday, the idea that there are these types of defenders in the NBA that Luca has his that he just has his way with right the skinnier, rangier athletes like Jaden McDaniels is consistently touted as one of the best, one of the best perimeter defenders in the league, and he just is hopeless against Luka Doncic. Herb Jones hopeless against Luka Doncics.

Guy like Dyson Daniels, hopeless against Luka Doncic, any of these guys where he's given up, They're giving up forty to fifty pounds in the matchup. Like Luca just has his way with those guys. But there are these like bigger, stronger types of perimeter defenders that can give Lucas some issues. And Ognobi gave him some issues. We talked about guys

like Lou Dort in the past. I thought Jalen Brown did an absolutely amazing job on Luca Dantchen this game, bringing a This game was very physical on both ends. There were a lot of uncalled fouls, which is something that's going to benefit a good strong perimeter defensive corps like the Boston Celtics, and Brown just brought this insane physical ball pressure on Luca every single time he was swiping at the basketball, every time Luca put the ball

on the floor. There was this consistent theme of Jalen

winning the early battle. When Lucas started getting the ball dribbling around a lot, he was able to get into some of his combinations of moves and footwork to where he can get closer to the rim, and you saw him get a couple of easier layout against Jalen in the second half, but for the majority of the game, either while Luca was fighting to get the ball at a spot, he'd beat him to the basketball and knock it away, or right when Luca would get it, he

would turn and face and like a triple threat, and he'd put the ball on the floor and Jalen would just immediately lunge in and swipe out at the basketball. He had a bunch of tip aways. He was obviously frustrating Luka Doncin. So that's always the hard part when I'm watching Luca, when he's like kind of favoring some

sort of injury. Is Over the years, I've noticed like when he's playing poorly, he tends to heavily favor the injury, and then when he's playing well, he has a habit of, you know, suddenly moving around like he's fine and like I thought, you know, obviously there was some real stuff with Luca. He was wearing a heat pad before the game.

I'm not trying to insinuate that he's faking it. I'm just saying, like Jalen frustrated him so much that Luca is doing a lot of complaining, a lot of a lot of favoring that injury and just playing it up, And I just thought it was a credit to Jalen who just did an amazing job on him all game. Second piece of it was the defensive scheme that the

Celtics deployed. Now, this was something that the Celtics did early in the NBA Finals last year too, and it's something that you're gonna see a lot of teams do against the Lakers. But the Celtics have been doing a lot with Horford at the five, and that's switching ball screens, right Like, that's the book if you've done any sort of research on the Lakers. The two big weaknesses for their offense right now is pressure the hell out of the basketball all game long and try to wear them down.

And Lebron and Luca can both be a little sloppy and they're passing out of those sorts of situations, you can get turnovers, you can get out in transition and then switch if you run drop coverage, like JJ Redick said, against Luka Doncic, it's death because his ability to kind of take advantage of the baked dribble penetration that comes from those ball screens. But if you switch, you gotta have guys that can hold up. And the Lakers made

a decision tonight to attack Al Horford. We're gonna talk about that in a minute, because I think the Lakers probably should have taken a different strategy in terms of who.

strong and good at absorbing contact. If you look at Lebron and Luca, they are guys that like, yeah, if they get deer in space, like these big, tall, lanky centers that can't change direction, Yeah, they can hit series of moves and generate drib penetration or get to a good look at a pullback three right, something like that.

But if they go against bigger, stronger players they like especially as Lebron's gotten older and Luca in general, like we've talked about earlier, they can actually struggle to get to their spots and to get separation right, And so Horford It's just such a valuable weapon in this matchup. If you look at a potential Lakers Celtics playoff series or an NBA Finals series, it would involve matchup attacking

no matter what. Because these are teams, the Lakers that switch one through and the Celtics that switch one through five with everybody but Porzingis and Cornette who won't play in a playoff series, and Porzingis generally has been asked to switch at times as well. These are teams that do a ton of switching. So if they're gonna do a ton of switching, it's gonna turn into who can you attack?

Austin and Luca like they were tissue paper. That really is the story of the game. In a switching scheme, It's gonna come down to attacking matchups in the Celtics in this one game. And it's just one game, guys. I want to be clear. The Lakers played the Celtics a little over a month ago and Lebron and Ad badly outplayed Jalen and Jason and they got a big win. This is all the regular season. However, there are certain realities.

If you ask me who's gonna be more comfortable attacking matchups Lebron and Luca versus Horford, and we'll see you. They got to have some success against Derek White in the second half, but or Tatum and Brown going against Austin and Luca. Those are matchups that favor Boston. I think in a large sample that would bear out in

Boston getting better shots. And that's a reality that you have to acknowledge after watching tonight, Like the Lakers don't have an answer for how are they gonna guard with Austin and Luca in space other than sending an extra defender, which is a suicide mission against Boston, who's actually at their best when they're going at catch and shoot stuff right. And so that was kind of the dynamic at play in this game. But Horford was just doing an amazing job defending in switches.

Lebron started to get really aggressive downhill towards the rim. Again, if you offer really easy help to read, So for instance, if I'm posting and you help from one pass away and I'm staring right at the guy, it's really easy for me to throw the ball back out and there's

a wide open three right. But like, let's say I'm driving to my right and I spin into my left, or let's say I get under the basket and I'm pump baking and I'm worrying about this guy, there's an opportunity for someone to peel off and help and offer a late contest off of a shooter without really running the risk of getting burned for it, especially in late

shot clock situations. There were a lot of those sequences tonight where Boston just was smarter with their help right And meanwhile on the other end, the Lakers, they've been a team that's been offering a ton of help in the past couple of weeks as their defense has been really successful, but not against Boston. Against Boston, you can't get away with that. If you gap into the driving lane, it's a simple swing pass. We'd saw one of those in the first half. Luka Doncic helping off of Al

Horford in the left corner. He's gapped right in the driving lane for the ball handler. If he's going to go to his left, simple swing pass to Al Horford in the corner. He knocks down to three. That's not a strategy that works against Boston. If you guys, remember when I was talking after I think it was the Pelicans game, I talked about how like Luca can guard.

He's I think he's a better defender than he gets credit for in terms of like his off ball defense, his basketball IQ, his ability to read and react to play. He's defensively, but what did I talk about? I said, Boston is an entirely different challenge. Luca was good in the playoffs last year defensively until he got to Boston

and he completely fell apart. Because Boston presents this unique problem, which is if you guard one on one, if you offer help in those one on one situations, They've got all these catch and shoot threats around, and they're really good at setting up their spacing and picking you apart. It's a very different setup than Luca's on the ball.

And there's a dude three feet to his right, and there's a dude three feet to his left, and if he somehow gets through all three of those, there's another guy helping, because the Lakers have two or three guys that they feel comfortable giving catch and.

But like, this team is playing really well. They're stoked. Every game is another opportunity for them to continue to build this cool new thing Oklahoma City. This is their first year where they're like, we actually can win the title. We're a dead serious team. Let's go get this thing every night. And all their players are like twenty six and younger. Boston's older Jason Tatum is the only guy

in their core eight who's twenty six and younger. They have won the championship before, they've been in all these deep playoff runs. They are not under the same level of day to day give a shit that the other teams are in the league. And the reality is when the shit hits the fan and they need to turn it up, they can put together multiple five man groupings where none of them are a real weak point on the defensive end of the floor and all of them

can dribble, shoot and pass really well. So like you're in this situation where it's like, oh shit, we either have to leave our worst defender on Tatum and Brown one on one and just pray that they take stupid shots and miss, or we're gonna have to send a second defender and allow them to get these catch and shoot looks that they burn everybody with. And what you just saw tonight was a team with Lebron James, Luka, Doncic, and Austin Reeves unable to create a decent look for

like a fifteen minute stretch of game time. That is the scalability that they have on defense, That is the scalability that they have on offense. And that's why no matter what I've seen this year, whether it's Oklahoma City going on a run, or it's Cleveland, or it's Houston beating every good team in the league for like three weeks, or it's this recent Lebron James led Lukadancic led Laker run, I don't think any of these teams can reach the level on both ends of the floor that the Boston

Celtics can reach. And that's why to me, they're just clearly the favorite. Does that mean they can lose or that they can't lose, of course not. They're beatable. Cleveland could beat them, Milwaukee could beat them. I still think that the Lakers could play a lot better than they play tonight. If the Lakers and Celtics met in the series in the finals, of course I think the Lakers

could win. But we would all be foolish to not pick Boston to win these matchups because when push comes to shove, they got five dudes that are all big and strong, that can guard a bunch of different positions, and they've got a million ways to create great shots. There's a whole portion there where they're like, hey, why don't we just throw the ball in the post to Al Horford against Austin Reeves and they got a bunch

of good stuff out of it. Porzingis is a whole other option that they can go to on that front. There's just so many different ways they can win, so many different shapes they can take. I believe that's the best team in the NBA right now. I want to shout out Jason Tatum. He was doing an amazing job picking up Luka Doncica, Jon Austin Reeves in this game. Forty points, twelve rebounds, and eight assists. I thought he was fantastic. This is a concept that I've been talking

about for a little while. There's a reputation around the league that Jason Tatum has, And for the record, I felt this way last year, so I'm not trying to like call anybody out, but there's this opinion out there that is somewhat pervasive in the NBA Twitter world where Tatum's like a second tier guy, and I think there was a combination of a bunch of factors that led to that reputation.

a jump shooter as he needed to be. Tatum has added those two pieces of his game into one now, and he's become this like really dynamic shot maker from all these different spots on the floor, one of the best three point shooters, like high volume, create his own shot type of three point shooters that we have in the league. And he's this big, strong, superversaal defensive player, and he's one of the best playmakers in the NBA right now.

guys multiple times. Here, look like he's better he was on the same floor Luka doncicin Lebron James, both of whom who have like Lebron's been playing at like a top five level for a month and a half and Luca is, Luka Doncic and Jason Tatum just looked like he was better than them tonight. And that is a level he can get to forty twelve and eight guys like he is absolutely one of the top tier guys in this league and deserves to be respected as one.

I just think that needs to be acknowledged. It's undeniable at this point. Moving on to the Lakers, a couple things. We'll talk about the Lebron news in a minute, because it's kind of like separate from the basketball team. I

disagreed with their approach of attacking Horford. They really really focused on attacking Al Horford for the majority of the game, for like two and a half quarters, And I think it was one of those things where Lebron and Luca liked it as a as an alternative to facing pressure.

So smaller players they're going to react to mismatches by applying ball pressure, right, and so you like, yeah, if you attack Derek White or Drew Holliday, Peyton Pritchard or same Houser, you're gonna have to deal with them up in your business, swiping at the basketball, being super physically aggressive, all that kind of stuff. So I think there was more of just like it's easy because Horford's like giving us space and letting us mess around with our dribble

a little bit be a little bit more comfortable. But that played directly into Boston's hands because al Horford was either conceding tough pull up threes that Lebron and Luca weren't making enough of, or holding up really well in the two point range, like holding up really well there. I understand that it's harder on the body, but the advantage there is like the advantage there in particular for Lebron and Luca is to attack the smaller players. And

by the way, there was a lot of success. Lucas started attacking Derek White, like in that second half run, and he gets an easy step through for a left handed layup, gets plenty of separation for a step back three, They got open shots in rotation out of that. Lebron had some success attacking Pritchard, like going at the smalls. I think is the way to go for Lebron and Luca. Austin reeves his game is shifty and quick and good

at getting defenders at a position. That's the kind of guy that you want attacking Al Horford because that's a matchup where he feels more comfortable. So I thought, I thought the Lakers just weren't as smart as Boston tonight. In just the way they went about matchup attacking throughout the game. I thought that was an area for improvement.

Luca just has to be better, Like, yeah, dude, if you're gonna let Jaylen Brown like take your lunch money for two and a half quarters, the Lakers aren't winning an NBA Finals series against Boston.

unnecessary help, leaving shooters open. There's a play where he straight up like hacked Jason Tatum on a pull up three because he was frustrated.

useful on defense? Steph Curry in his career had to figure that specific part out, right, Like, there's all these different challenges that superstars face in their career. For Luka Doncic, it's specifically guarding in space. It's there are a lot of defenders in the league that if you offer them lots of help and you set up a game plan to where their job is easy, they can thrive. But at the highest levels, as you get further along in the playoffs, you run into better teams that are better

at exploiting your weaknesses. For Luka Doncic, he's gonna have to find a way to at least heast make isoing him not the easiest pathway for another team to continually generate awesome shots. He's got to find a way to win more of those battles, to keep the defense out of rotation, to contain the ball a little bit better. There were some good possessions in there where he forced

him into tough step back jump shots. I thought he had a couple of good ones late against Jalen Brown where he slid his feet well and kind of flattened out some drives, but overall in the large sample, he was too easy of an opening there. Same thing for Austin Reeves. Austin won some battles late in the game, but he was getting picked apart in the middle portion of the game. Those guys have to hold up better

on the defensive end. I thought the Lakers made too many mistakes in this game, Like they were within four with like what four or five minutes left, and Jared Vanderbilt like just gifts the Celtics three free throws on a possession because he won't take his hand off Derek White while he's shooting a jump shot. That weird sequence from Jordan Goodwin to end the third quarter where he like stole a wide open three from Austin and threw the ball away and then had a wide open layup

in transition and trick the layup off. There was just way too much sloppiness, way too many mistakes for this caliber of NBA team to beat the way that the Boston Celtics can reach on both ends of the floor. I thought it was another game that was pretty revealing in terms of Jared vanderbuilt in the dunker spot. We've been talking about this a lot over the course.

take absolutely nothing from a game where you struggle. There are things that are there are real things that you can take away from those situations against the the teams on the defensive end of the floor, Jared Vanderbilt is gonna be a problem on offense. That's just a reality. That is part of the construct of this Laker team. On the Lebron front, it looked like it was a

classic case. So I don't know if you guys have ever played and done one of those crazy spin moves, but when you start really pivoting back and forth, it puts an enormous amount of strain on your groin. It's just centripetal force as you're spinning your body around in one of your legs that weighs forty to fifty pounds is getting slung out away from you, and you're trying to keep that thing under control. Looks like you heard,

is growing. There's six weeks until the playoffs, so I don't think there's any reason to like get super freaked out about it. We don't even know the degree of the injury. If it's a apparently, if it's pretty mild, he might be back in a couple of weeks. If it's a little more serious, he might be out four to six weeks.

Vincent and Jackson Hayes. Is maybe if you're considering a ninth Jackson Hayes, Jackson's down now, Ruey hot Tamura is down now, Lebron James is down now, Austin Reeves missed some time recently. Guys are dropping because this is a hard, competing defensive team that doesn't have a very deep rotation.

And so these are like when I talk about the Lakers, by far, the biggest weakness that I've seen is they just have a lot of different areas where if they get a key injury, things fall apart, Like Lebron and Ruey both out. You basically don't have a power forward on the roster. That's a concern moving forward. So like there are some frustrations that there are some realities that the Lakers have to deal with in terms of their

lack of depth that are starting to come to the surface. Now, all right, guys, before we get out of here for the night, I wanted to talk a little bit about the Nicola Jokis shake kills Alexander MVP debate. So this ends up being a constant debate over the course of the years because there is a lack of consistent criteria in my time following the NBA, everything shifts back and forth.

Different voters value different things. There are huge portions of the voting base for MVP that like dramatically consider, like seriously consider catch all metrics, which I vehemently disagree with. I think it's a bad way to try to make a decision of this caliber that involves such NBA history. There are a lot of different things about the MVP that I don't like, and that's why I don't spend

too much time talking about it. That said, I think there's a specific issue arising here that is probably not that should not be an issue involving whether or not Yokich has a real case.

the best player in the league. There's nothing that Shaye could do in the regular season context to take that away. In my opinion, that's it. There is this idea that Oklahoma City is overwhelmingly talented and that's why they're winning. And as a result, a lot of people are writing off Shay and it's like, Shay's the guy that's on the overwhelmingly talented team. Jokich is the guy that's carrying a bunch of bums. He's the guy that deserves to

win the MVP. Chet Holmgren's been out most of the season. His secondary shot creator, Jalen Williams, is very young by NBA standards. I saw a lot of people saying, like, Shay is surrounded by all this all world defensive talent. You're right, Shay is surrounded by a very good defensive team. There's no offensive player playing off of Shay that's as good as Jamal Murray is. There's no shooter that plays for the Thunder who's as good as Michael Porter Junior is.

They the Denver's construct is built more around offensive talent. Ogoma City's construct is built more around defensive talent. What Shay's job this year has been has been to create every single shot for his team throughout this entire season. With Jalen Williams off the floor, just playing with a bunch of defensive minded young athletes, He's been able to consistently put the ball in the basket and keep his

team afloat on the offensive end. And when you really get down to it, they are eleven games better, eleven games b better in the standings than Denver. Do you have any idea how much better Jokich would have to be than Shay in the regular season context for eleven games to be overcome. At the end of the day,

to me, MVP should come down to three factors. It should come down to who's been the best player on the best team in the league, So team success, value to your team, how your team performs with or without you, And then Lastly, I personally think it should factor in somewhat what your big picture reputation is in the league. Like if you're a player that we know can't play in the playoffs and is a merchant of regular season basketball,

I think that should factor in. If there's another player that's pretty close, but that's a proven we know this is one of the dudes in the NBA when we get to the playoffs, I do believe that should factor in. I do think Jokic has an advantage in that case. I'd even argue Jokic is more valuable to the Nuggets than Shae is to the Thunder, although I think Shay is a lot more valuable to the Thunder than people give him credit for. They're a good team without Shay,

they're a fucking awesome team with Shae. He lifts them to that level. I saw people say like, oh, if you take Jokic off the Nuggets, what does that team win? Take Shae off the Thunder? How many get they're in the play it? So it really comes down to that last piece, which is who's been the best team, And there's just such a massive advantage there. The Nuggets have very like the Nuggets have had substantial issues on defense.

They've consistently struggled against good teams in the league. They have not been nearly as good as a basketball team as the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the gap in value and reputation between the two is too small in my opinion to make up that gap, And it gets a little bit deeper when you start to factor in the reasons why Denver is struggled. Denver has been a bad defense this year, and it's not all Jokich's fault. I don't want to sit there and make it seem like

that's the case. There are a lot of guys that are struggling defensively on this team. Jamal can be a problem at times, Michael Porter Junior can be a problem at times. Aaron Gordon's been banged up all year and hasn't been as good defensively. The young guys, guys like Julian Strather's been a disaster on defense at times this year. There are other guys at fault, but there is a simple concept, a simple reality about Denver's construct that limits

them on the defensive end of the floor. Jokich cannot defend and drop coverage, and he cannot switch if he defends and drop coverage. He's nowhere near good enough at protecting the rim. A guy like that on his heels, guys go right around into the basket, and if you put him in space to switch, can't slide his feet well enough. He'll just give up dribble penetration. So there's like two coverages that the Nuggets can legitimately deploy, and

both of them involved putting two on the ball. They can bring Yokic up to the level, and they can blitz with him. Those are really the only two things they can do, and so they exist in rotation. They exist in these four on threes off the ball, and they're just not very good on the backside rotating out of it. That is a reality of why Denver struggles on the defensive end of the floor. Jokic is a

big part of it. That's why Phoenix continues to have success against this team scoring the basketball, even though obviously they've lost their last few against them. But Phoenix can score. When the Lakers went in there and won, it was just two on the ball, four on threes, easy, wide open threes every single time down the floor. Their defense struggles because their base concept demands excellent rotations on the backside due to Yokic, and they haven't been very good

on the backside. I think that that is just too big of a factor in a gas that is eleven games wide in the standings for me to just be like, well, Jokicic is the best player in the world, so therefore he deserves MVP. It's never been that way. The best player in the world deserve MVP. Lebron would have ten of them, mj would have ten of them. It'd be a completely different story. Kobe'd have five or six of them. That's just not how it works. It's never been how

it works. Shay's having a nearly as good season as Jokic for a much better team, and he may not be as valuable to them as Jokic is, but he's valuable enough that I think he deserves to be the favorite to win MVP. At this point, there's what twenty something games left. Maybe Shae falls apart and Jokic is amazing and Yokic snatches it, But if the season ends today, I think Shaye deserves it, and I hope that he.

I hope that if the circumstances stay the same that he ends up getting it, because that's the way we've done it throughout throughout NBA history. All right, guys, that is all I have for tonight. As always a sincerely appreciate you for support me and supporting the show. Tomorrow, I'm going with Colin in the evening, so keep an eye on his feed for that, and then we'll be back to it finally back to our normal routine on Monday, where we can start bouncing around the rest of the league.

There's always a sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show, and I will see you tomorrow the volume What's up guys? As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight. It would actually be really helpful for 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.