Hoops Tonight - Celtics-Warriors Game 1 breakdown: Steph Curry, Draymond & Dubs collapse vs Boston

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eight hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by Fan Duel Here at the volume. I'm Jason timp Happy Friday. Everybody, congrats making it through the week. I hope you guys got big plans for the weekend. What an incredible start to the

NBA Finals. Very clearly the two best teams in the league that we are watching play, and both teams who have had a massive talent advantage over most of the teams they've played up to this point, definitely look like much more of a match for each other, which is going to lead to what I hope is a long and interesting series that goes back and forth, which I expected to, which we'll get to here in a minute. Last night, obviously, I went on with Mr Colin Cowherd

and we went for about a half hour. If you guys missed that or you haven't had a chance to check it out yet, go to the Volumes YouTube page. You can find it there, or you can find it on Collins podcast feed. But this morning I had the time to go back and rewatch the game and its entirety and really sift through on a possession by possession basis, especially that fourth quarter run in the way that Boston took command in resounding fashion to steal game one of

this series. We're gonna get into a bunch of nitty gritty details from this game in today's show before we get started. Follow the Volumes YouTube channel so that you don't miss any more of our content. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason lt S, you guys can see all the video content that I released. You can see some visual representations of the concepts that I talked about

on the show. And last but not least, if you happen to miss this show or miss any of our shows that are on YouTube, you can always find them on our podcast feed at Lakers tonight. Typically about an hour after things released on YouTube, you can find them on that front. But I wanted to start with kind of like a macro topic here, that kind of frames I think what amounts to the biggest mismatched manage that

Boston has in this series. For those of you guys who have listened to me a lot over the course of the last couple of years, you'll recognize this concept immediately. I do think size is one of the most important things in the NBA, just not on the interior. Coaches and a lot of you know, older fashioned basketball minds

are obsessed with interior size and rim protection. Everyone thinks that the layup is the highest percentage shot in basketball, which it is, and the idea there is, oh, if I can take away the paint, then everything else will work out fine for you. Ask Milwaukee. How that worked out. They defended the paint better than just about anybody in the league this year, and they just couldn't get enough stops, not only throughout the entire regular season, but in the

playoffs when it mattered. Because more often than not, it has a lot more to do with perimeter size players that have the ability to be big in every facet of the game, not just standing around the basket. That means being big in transition, running the floor, being big, closing out on players in rotation, being big at the point of attack as a slasher, getting advantage against smaller players.

This Boston team is huge, and they're big when they go big, with Al Horford at the four and Rob Williams at the five, but that's not the kind of size where they're having their biggest impact on Golden State. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about the Rob Williams thing with Boston later because I actually think they need to play him a lot less. But it's perimeter size for Boston that gives them their best physical advantage

in this series. Big offensive players that are strong and have a quick first step are incredibly difficult to guard, even for good defensive players who are small. This happened to Boston in each of the last two series against Miami and against Milwaukee. They have two guys in their rotation that are kind of small and not overly strong, Derrick White and Peyton Pritchard. They're gonna be a massive part of this series because Golden State doesn't really have

a big, rim, pressuring wing that can punish them. But against Jimmy Butler and against Janice, both Derrick White and Peyton Pritchard put email Uduka in a little bit of a conundrum. Can I play these guys because if I do, They're just gonna attack them in mismatches. To the point where Boston was doing the same stuff that Golden State's

doing with Steph to try to avoid his switches. Boston was doing the same stuff with Derrick White and Peyton Pritchard, hard hedges to try to keep them from getting attacked by the bigger, strong wings Golden State. And we talked about this a lot, and when I did that video talking about the drama between Katie and and Draymond on Twitter the other day. But you know, Colin talks a lot on his show about how Golden State is a

team without weaknesses. And he's right too. Relative to the rest of the league, they do everything well, but they do have one specific hole. Compared to other teams around the league, Golden State does not have a Jimmy Butler or a Janice or a Tatum or a Brown or a Lebron or a Kauai. You guys get the drift, a big slashing forward that can consistently and efficiently punish

smaller players in rock fight playoff games. And they still have been a dominant basketball team without that, which is a credit to everybody in the organization and the credit to Steph Curry and his greatness. But there's the reason why when Kevin Durant joined the Warriors, they became unbeatable, and it's because he became that guy for them. Not in the you know, you know, bullyball sense, but he

could persistently and efficiently attack mismatches on the perimeter. Boston doesn't have the issue anymore playing Peyton Pritchard or playing Derek White because Golden State doesn't have the ability to attack those matchups. Even Jordan Poole was struggling to score against Peyton Pritchard in switches last night because guess what Hayton Pritchard does compete on defense. Derek White does compete on defense. It is not a a effort or a

focus thing. It's simply a physical tools thing. They're just small and Golden State not having that type of player is an issue. Now, let's flip it the other way. Now.

I'm looking at Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum and their ability to persistently gain advantages against the Steph Curries and the Jordan Pools, and even a little bit of Clay Thompson and even a little bit of auto Porter Jr. When I was watching the tape last night or this morning from last night, anytime Jalen Brown or Jayson Tatum got Steph, Clay auto Porter Jr. Or Jordan Pool on a switch, their eyes lit up because they knew that just a simple rip through just taking the ball and

just being aggressive to the rim, they'd be able to get dribble penetration as a result of them punishing that perimeter size mismatch. Again, not an interior size mismatch, I'd argue Kevin and and he kind of dominated the interior size elements of the game last night didn't matter because perimeter size. It ends up being the biggest mismatch problem for teams in the playoffs, and Golden State is a

much much smaller perimeter team than Boston. As a result, Boston got persistent dribble penetration, which got their driving kick game going, which led to them having better shot quality, which led to them winning at the end of the game. This leads to the Golden State defensive conundrum that they're put in because, as everyone knows, the story of the game after the game was shooting. Boston made more than

half of their threes. You got uh you had uh Al Horford, Derek White, and Marcus Smart combined to go fifteen for twenty three from three. And you heard Raymond go, those guys win from three, will be fine. And he is right in the sense that they're not gonna shoot that well throughout the whole series. They might have another game or two, or they get hot, right, but it's unrealistic to expect players to go that efficient from the perimeter,

even when you're wide open. But it's important to acknowledge that they were wide open shots. Eleven of the fifteen made threes from Horford, White, and Smart were classified as wide open by NBA dot Com is tracking data, meaning the defender was at least six ft away on wide open shots in this playoff run. The Celtics as a team are shooting. So yeah, you're not gonna they're not gonna shoot on wide open threes, but they're gonna shoot

in the aggregate. You know, they're gonna have some bad nights, but they're that. That's kind of how it manifests for this Boston team. They have games where it looks like this, and then they have games where they can't shoot. And if if you're gonna go by this strategy, if they happen to have four of those games, they're gonna win the series. That's just the way it works. So the

conundrum is, you know, because this is the difference. And we're gonna talk about Boston's defense here in a minute, because I mentioned in last night with Colin the threes that Golden State is giving up are by design the threes that Boston gave up last night to Golden State. They were there. There were plays where Golden State really got going in rotation and were able to generate high

quality shots the same way Boston did. I don't want to undercut those but there were a lot of threes that Golden State got last night where it was like, Oh, Steph dribbled the ball up the floor in transition in the first quarter and nobody picks him up and he just walks into a pull up three. There were threes where it was like, Oh, Kevin Louney offensive rebound, baseball pitch to Steph, wide open, easy three that can be cleaned up by fixing your offensive rebound problem. There were

a bunch of threes. This was my biggest takeaway early in the game, where Boston in their drawp coverage with both Horford and Rob Williams were way too low and guys like Clay Thompson and Jordan Poole and Steph were coming off of ball screens wide open. There's an easy fix there for Boston. You can come up higher to the level of the screen like they did in the fourth quarter, which we're talking about in a minute. Guards

can do a better job fighting over the top. There's some execution things there that they can do to clean up those like guys. There's a reason why Steph had twenty one points in the first quarter. It was because they had a ton of defensive breakdowns. That's different than the conundrum that Golden State is in, because the conundrum that Golden State is in is you have to send help to manage these Jalen Brown and Jayson Tatum drives

that they're persistently getting against your smaller perimeter players. So if you want to take away those, like all those wide open threes that Al Horford and Derek White and Marcus Smart we're making, then you were going to have to take guys that were in help and push them a step further out so that they're more equipped to close out. If you do that, then you run the risk of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum getting going as

slashers to the rim. And that's the conundrum. Now what I recommend what I would do if I was Golden State because I've watched Boston, just like I watched all these playoff teams. I watched every single game Boston play this year, mostly twice in the playoffs. Boston is very you know, fickle Jekyll and Hide team. I've talked about

this NonStop on the show. They when they are going on offense, when they're making their shots, they have a swagger, they have a confidence, They have an audacity, they have an extra gear that they can get to defensively when

they're feeling themselves. But then the next night usually it doesn't go that way, and a lot of times they get sloppy, then they get indecisive, they lose a little bit of that confidence, their defense suffers as a result, and things can go poorly for them, And things did go poorly for them in each of the last two series Milwaukee in Miami. I don't think either of those teams are as good as Golden State, and those two

teams combined to take six games off of Boston. So if you're Golden State, the way you gotta look at it is, here's the deal. A little bit more aggressive with our clothes outs, try to just you know, maybe instead of it being a wide open shot, maybe it's just an open shot, you know, where it's a mild contest instead of no contest, or a decent contest instead

of a mild contest. Just a little bit more effort on those sirie, just a little bit more effort on those closeouts to take away those opportunity or just make them a little bit more difficult. But definitely stay in your pack to paint defense, because I do think it's vitally important to continue to contain Jalen Brown and Jayson

Tatum in their easy stuff going to the rim. If you look at it last night, if you're Golden State and Tatum had a nightmare game as a score and Jaylen Brown did get to the basket a few times, but a lot of what he was doing was pull up jump shooting. You have to tip your cap to Jalen Brown if he's gonna attack you with drew a pull ups all game long and make a bunch of them. Good for him if he if he lives with that through the whole series that goes, that could go well

for you. So if I'm a Golden State fan, I'm sitting there thinking, we don't have to do anything really differently, just do what we were doing a little bit better defensively, and just count on the fact that Boston gets arrogant, they slip out of their good habits, and they're prone to long, extended cold stretches, and that that's that That's the way you gotta look at it if you're Golden State in terms of Boston shooting. So I want to talk about the fourth quarter run for a minute, because

you know it's stood. It stood out to me immediately that they played better on both ends of the floor without rob Um. But I thought it most importantly just had to do with a little tweak in their defensive scheme. And I talked a little bit about this last night, but I wanted to go into more detail now that I've taken a closer look at the film. So with Rob Williams on the floor, early fourth quarter, so the run for Boston started early fourth quarter, and it started

offensively with Jalen Brown getting going. Jalen Brown had a monster beginning to that quarter, attacking Draymond Green, hitting a tough step back with his left hand. He hit a pull up three over the top of Jordan Pool. He had a pretty pretty decently contested three in the week's hide corner on a on a catching shoot. He had a really nice driving lob to Rob Williams. Amazing offensive performance from Jalen Brown to start the fourth quarter, but

they weren't getting stops really uh. Golden State was still functionally scoring well when Steph came back in a couple of minutes into the fourth quarter. For that first stretch for a few minutes there before Rob Williams came in and two steps credit he was dissecting a variety of Boston defensive coverages against the drop coverage. Obviously, he punished

them all night long, knocking down threes. And then there was a stretch there where they started trapping, and then you had that classic Golden State basketball where Steph is like coming off the ball screen, picking up that second defender, looping it over the top to Draymond under Iguadala rolling and then Draymond Arrigodala would roll down the lane and hit the other guy cutting out of the corner for a layup. They got to two layups just like that.

Literally looked like a replay the two thousand fifteen finals. Some classic stuff there, and then they started switching as an alternative, and almost immediately Steph attacked Robert Williams and hit a step back. There was a play where he uh beat Robert Williams to the basket with a nifty crossover. It just ended up getting rotated around and they didn't score.

But Steph was playing magnificently good basketball and they were struggling to deal with any pick and roll or Boston was struggling with any other pick and roll coverages to try to contain Steff. But then right around the seven minute mark, Al Horford checks into the game and checks in for Robert Williams, and two things happened. First of all, Robert Williams ran the same drop coverage that they were running earlier in the game, but one thing was completely different.

He was coming up in his drop and he was above the three point line. Now, again, when I'm talking about pick and roll coverage is semantically there's a million different ways to do it, and we could argue about what they're what they're called, different teams, called different coverages, different things. But to me, there's basically three ways to

guard a pick and roll. There's some variation of a drop coverage, which I call anything where the big man is effectively responsible for both the guarding and the rollman, where he's basically sagging back to help contain the entire action. There's a bunch of different ways to do that, right, Like, you can do it with the guard chasing over the top,

you do with the guard going underneath. You can do ice where the guard actually denies the screen and tries to send you away from the screen right, and then you can do there. You can have the guard the post player all the way back, or you can have him as high as the ball screen right. There's a million different ways to do that, but to me, that all constitutes drop coverage, some variation of drop coverage, and then you can switch it, and then you can trap it.

Teams used to hedge. They don't hedge as much anymore. They really only had with guards, but that type of pick and roll coverage, each one of them has a specific strength and a weakness. The drop coverage that they ran against Miami and against Milwaukee was smart because they were more interested in containing the paint. But this is a Golden State Warriors team that shoots the ball way too well for you to let these guys get free space coming off of those screens. It's a suicide mission.

So the adjustment was in that fourth quarter, Horford's drop went from hovering around the free throw line to above the three point line, and he's still backpedaling. He's still in a drop coverage, but just him being up there dissuades the pull up three as he's coming off the screen. And as soon as you dissuade the pull up three. That buys you just that little bit of time for Marcus Smart to fight over the top. Now, once he's over the top, then you can back pedal and work

your drop back into the lane. And because Robert Williams was sitting way too far back, it wasn't working earlier in the game. But uh Al Horford is a lot more mobile and he did a much better job being up higher and taking that action away. This is a wild stat this this year in the playoffs because they played three teams that like to try to get to the basket. The Celtics had a nine point five defensive rating in the first three rounds with rob Williams on

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partner of the NBA. Last night a one sixteen defensive rating with Rob Williams on the floor, and the reason why is that same coverage is a suicide mission against Golden State and Rob's just not quite mobile enough and doesn't quite have the defensive instincts necessary to do what Al Horford was doing, which is to bring his drop all the way up to the top of the key in the fourth quarter. Last night with Al Horford on and Rob Williams off running the coverage I'm talking about.

The Celtics had a forty defensive rating forty, roughly a third of what Rob Williams had for the entire game. That's how much of a difference that made. Because Al Horford was that high and taking away those dribble pull ups, pull ups off of those ball screens, all of a sudden, the entire Boston defense was able to engage itself in a way that they couldn't earlier in the game, and

they were able to strangle Golden State Again. We all talked about offense, and Jalen Brown was off awesome on offense to start that fourth quarter, But that game was decided in the middle of the fourth quarter by a defensive run from Boston, a seventeen o run. It's the zero there that puts the game away. If that's a seventeen to seven run, Golden State is still has a puncher's chance to steal that game. But because you held them to zero points for a significant chunk of the

fourth quarter, you end up winning going away. You end up winning comfortably, which is vitally important for this Boston Celtics team that struggles so much and crunch time. Like I've talked about a lot on the show. But here's the other thing with Rob being off that's so important. And I've been on this all postseason because I'm and for those of you guys who have listened to my show for a long time, you know how much I believe in five out basketball. Five out basketball with a

vacated paint just simply makes defensive rotations way harder. If Robert Williams is sitting in the dunker spot and Draymond Green's guarding him, he can kind of sit on the block and effectively guard Rob and guard anybody who's driving into the lane. But if he's guarding Al Horford and Al Horford's all the way in the corner, now that's a much different, much more difficult conundrum. If he sits in the block, now Al Horford is gonna get wide

open three is all game long. If he stays hugged up to Al Horford, driving lanes are there all night long. By spacing everybody out in a five out system, you make any defensive rotation around the paint, it's significantly more difficult to do. And if you do so, you're basically are inteed to give up a three last night with Rob on the floor, With Rob Willy Williams on the floor, so there four out one in they had a one oh seven point five offensive rating. With Rob off the floor,

they had a hundred and forty offensive rating. And for this entire playoff run, they've been six point four points better per one possessions on offense with Rob off the floor.

It's a simple five out concept which I've always been such a huge believer in, but every single time I see it bear out in these playoff environments, and I wish more people would kind of get behind that movement within the league, and I hope to see, you know, a bunch more teams try to adopt it over the course of the next couple of seasons, especially for a team like Boston that thrives and driving kick. We were talking about this with Colin Coward last night. You know

what Dallas does, the heliocentric system. It's difficult for guys to get into a rhythm. But Boston's at their best when everyone's involved and Marcus Smartest having driving kicks and Derek White is having driving kicks. Like, think about that system. That's their best lineup in this series is gonna be

Derek White and Smart Al Horford and Tatum Brown. Those five guys together can run a damn effective five out offense when they're all engaged and they're all touching the basketball, especially when Al Horford is shooting the ball as well as he did. Is one other interesting element in the series that I noticed last night. Kavan Looney continues to be an absolute monster on the offensive glass. We uh talked about this in the series preview. Had seven offensive

rebounds in the two regular season games against Boston. He can get engaged with Horford in a box out and just reach over the top and grab him because he's such a monstrously large human being. It's just just physically imposing and just understands rebounding. He understands the angles, and it's like that that funny, funny clip from the MJ documentary with Dennis Rodmen talking about the ball bouncing off

the rim and weird ways. He's just really, really good at that, and that's gonna be a serious problem for Boston that they're gonna have to address now. For me, I think the easiest way to do that, and I demonstrated this with a handful of clips on on the film that you guys saw. But it's not Horford's job to grab the rebound. It's Horford's job to box out Looney. If he boxes out Looney, Looney can't jump because if you're connected to someone's body and they jump, it's an

over the back foul. So it's the easiest way to to to take him out of the play. But if the ball comes directly at them, Looney has the advantage because he's bigger than Horford, and Horford has to squat down load to get into his box out. You have to crash from the perimeter to secure rebounds. This is what Golden State is so good at. They're so good with Auto Porter Jr. And Andrew Wiggins and Andrea Guadala

and all these bigger wings that they have. They all just come flying in and Draymond engages in the box out. I don't I don't give a damn about Draymond's rebound in numbers. His job is not to secure the rebound. His job is the box out. But the Celtics have to take on that same concept with his Looney situation. There were a lot of plays where I saw Looney grabbing offensive rebounds over Horford while Tatum and Brown were hugged up to their man and not doing their job

to crash the defensive class from the perimeter. It's an easy thing that Boston has to clean up, but into a Golden State in general, like you're you're struggling. You know, this is gonna be the biggest issue that Golden State's gonna have to deal with for the rest of this series. Golden State's best offensive players are not their best defensive players, and so they're constantly going to have to tow the line of how much defense they want on the floor

and how much offense they want on the floor. I think Looney, even though Golden State, even though Boston is not gonna guard him, is so impactful on the defensive end and so impactful as an offensive rebounder that I think it's worth the give and take there. So I'd like to see a little bit more Looney. Um uh, last touch for for Boston Tatum. Tatum at a rough night score in the basketball great night that stillitating, which

is what you expect. I didn't you know, I picked tatums under an or over under show, which was which was a ship show. I think I only got like half of them, right, Uh, gambling in a nutshell. Um. But Jayson Tatum, I I thoroughly expected him to struggle last night, because almost every star in the history of the league, when they get initially exposed to the NBA

Final stage, is caught off guard. It's just there are so many examples in NBA history of members of the media and players and coaches saying I've was completely blown away by the scope and the scale of the NBA Finals, the huge increase in media presence, the how early fans show up to games, just the pressure in the history, the Larry Obrian trophy being there. It used to be that they had the Larry O. Brian trophy painted on

the court at center court. It used to add this whole other vibe there, which I wish they would go back to doing. But the point is is it is a It's just a lot. I mean Jayson Tatum, I think he had two air balls in the first quarter and mishandled the basketball a few times like that's to be expected. And so if you're Tatum, look you got your bad one out of the way. Your team got

to win anyway. You need to settle down. Steph out playing Tatum in Game one was a pretty predictable thing because he is so experienced and he's been there so many times. So last, but not least, looking looking forward, not good for Golden State to blow a game where Steph plays as well as he does, to blow a game where Boston was as sloppy as they were in that first quarter. So not good, But this is survivable.

Boston is all but guaranteed to have a handful of games in this series where they don't play well because they don't shoot well and everything falls apart for them. Chances are it will happen at least once in Boston, so you can recover home court by getting a win in Game two in capitalizing on one of those poor Boston efforts in Game three or Game four. In terms of adjustments, it's simply just a little bit sharper on your defensive rotations, a little bit more effort on closeouts

to make those shots a little bit more difficult. But continue to pack the paint and trust that it's better to take away the easy driving lanes for Jalen Brown and for Jayson Tatum than it is to concede those at the at the expense of taking away those three point shots. I think Golden State is going to win big in Game two. I think they're desperate. I think

they understand the gravity of the situation. I think they will be psychotic and desperate with their closeouts and take away a lot of those easier opportunities that Boston got. Each of those shots will just be a little bit more rushed, and when they're a little bit more rushed, they'll miss a few. When they miss a few, it'll get in their head and it will it will steamroll on them. So I would take Golden State against the spread. I think they're getting four points, are giving up four

points right now. I expect him to cover that. I would not be surprised if this was a ten or fifteen point victory. I think Golden State the experienced team with the experience advantage, who understands just how important it is to win this game, and expecting Boston, just like they have throughout this entire playoff run, to let their foot off the gas and get sloppy and to start missing shots. I expect Golden State to win Game two.

For Boston adjustments moving forward. If you're gonna run drop coverage. You've gotta be above the three point line. You can't just let the best shooters of all time come free and clear off of screens. You've gotta be sharper in terms of some of the mistakes that you made in that first quarter, botching switches, not picking up people in in transition. But I expect them to be and last, but not least a little bit less Robert Williams and a little bit more of your five out system that

you thrive so much in. But I'm very, very excited for game too. It looks like we're gonna be going live with Colin again after that game, so I'll see you guys right after the final buzzer on Sunday. The Volume