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for you today. We're gonna hit Suns Magic as the Orlando Magic had a defensive masterclass in the fourth quarter, just completely strangling the Suns as they came back to win by double digits. I thought that was super revealing about both teams. So we're gonna talk about that game for a little while, and then, as we usually do on Mondays, we're gonna do an edition of our power rankings.
My power Rankings. Two weeks ago, those ten teams combined to lose twenty five games over the last two weeks, so it's kind of gonna be like a weirdly negative version of the power rankings because basically, aside from the Clippers, there were really ugly moments for every team in that list. So we're gonna update our power rankings and then we'll get out of here for the day. You guys are the Joe for we get started. Subscribe to our brand
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Then don't forget about my Twitter feed at Underscore Jason LT. That's where I do the film threads in the morning as well as show announcements and then last not leaves keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments so we can keep hitting them throughout the week. All right, let's talk some basketball. So, as I said, a complete and total defensive masterclass from the Orlando Magic. And I just to give you guys, just set the stage here a
little bit. The Magic forced the Suns into seven turnovers just in the fourth quarter. From the ten minute mark of the fourth quarter to about the two minute mark of the fourth quarter, they allowed just two points to a team led by Devin Booker, Bradley Beale, and Kevin Durant. Right, if you watch it on tape, there were a couple of decent looks in there, but man, they could barely even break free for a half decent look at the
basket over that stretch. It was an amazing stretch of defensive basketball from the Orlando Magic in every phase of the game, in ball pressure situation, just getting up into the ball handlers as they're trying to bring the ball out the floor, when they're singing ball screens off ball denial played a huge role in this game, which forced
them into a bunch of turnovers. You know. And it's funny because Orlando brings very like they bring wave after wave of physicality and like every phase of the game, right, you've got these point of attack guys that can be up in your business, Guys like Jalen Suggs, right, Guys like Markel Foltz, Guys like Anthony Black had an amazing
stretch defensively in that fourth quarter. Then their ball handlers bring a certain level of that sort of kind of physicality, right, Like it's Palla Mancaro playing with a ton of physicality scoring in the posts in the fourth quarter, made a kickout on a double team to Franz Wagner for three. Franz in pick and roll brings a certain physical imposition
to it, right. And then even they're big guys like move Wagner dominated the fourth quarter this game by killing Drew Eubanks in an individual matchup, just by rolling hard to the rim and scoring through contact and crashing the offensive glass. Yeah, length on the perimeter with guys like Jonathan Isaac, it's just wave after wave that they bring a you in terms of their physicality, and to Jamal Moseley's credit, like it's part of the culture of this team.
It was kind of fun watching this game this morning because obviously, you know, I'm watching on I'm watching with the volume on, and you know, typically I'm listening to one of the uh the you know, the commentator crews for one of those league pass for league pass right. But in this particular game, what was dominating the audio kind of portion of the tape was the magic bench as they would force a turnover or play great individual
defense and force a tough shot. It almost sounded like a college game with the way that you'd see the entire bench and coaching staff like freaking out on the bench after every time they make a play, getting excited. Everyone's on their feet. You can tell this team wants to be great at defense. It is part of their culture. It is everything about their basketball identity. And the two guys that I wanted to like shine a particular light on in this video were Anthony Black and Jonathan Isaac.
I thought they kind of like like wrong the run, so to speak. In the middle of the fourth quarter, Anthony Black was on Bradley Beal at this phase in the middle of the fourth Devin Booker was actually on the bench, and Jonathan Isaac was on Kevin Durant. Now, I want to talk about the combination of ball pressure and off ball denial and how that can cause issues. Right, So, when you apply ball pressure, one of the most frequent things that you can do to a ball handler is
cause them to speed up. It's actually very rare to find ball handlers that are good at handling ball pressure by slowing down and using it to their advantage. Right, Like, that's one of the reasons why not having a point guard on this particular team. You know, I think it's been overplayed a little bit from the same point of like, offensive initiation is offensive initiation. But if there is one way or one form of the game where missing a
point guard has hurt this team, it's ball pressure. And I think you particularly see that at the end of games when teams really pick up their defensive pressure. Like guys like Kevin Durant and Devin Booker, if it were up to them, they'd rather get to their spots first. They would rather start where the pick and roll stars. They'd rather start where the ISO starts, or starts start
where the post up starts. Right. But like when part of the game is like actually getting the ball up the floor and getting into one of those spots, they can struggle a little bit there. And you've seen that in the turnovers throughout the season, which like literally has been a massive problem for the Suns all season long. But one of the things that the Magic do really well is we see so many teams in the NBA load up right, and when you load up, it makes
easy passes. I mean, they're difficult in the sense that you have to get him over the top of the defense and across the court, but they leave openings on the weak side right. And so what will end up happening is you'll see a guy dribble in the basketball and there'll be a guy guarding him and they'll be digging down into driving lanes and kind of packing the paint right, and then the swing passes tend to be open.
And you know what those defenses are trying to do is try to get you to basically settle for jump shots right, like they're looking to get you to pass the ball around the perimeter, because no one wants to drive into that thicket of defenders and take tough jump shots right. One of the things the Magic will do is they'll get up in you with ball pressure and
then they'll n off the ball. And so what ends up happening there is there actually are some driving lanes, but when you have strong individual defenders, guys like Anthony Black,
guys like Jonathan Isaac, Guys like Jalen Suggs. Right, Like, when you have those guys out there, the dude on the ball isn't just slashing around them and getting wide open layups, right, And so what ends up happening is when the on ball defender does a good job of basically forcing the on ball offensive player to either rush or to pick up his dribble or to get into a tough spot, then he starts looking for kickouts, right,
but where are the kickouts? The ball is getting denied, and so that's what ended up leading Phoenix into so many of these turnovers. You would see, you know, Devin Booker or Bradley Beal dribble into a tough spot, pick up their dribble and end up in trouble. And there's Jonathan Isaac just with the long arm of the laws, so to speak, denying Kevin Durant that post entry or high post entry, and they can't get that pass in there.
And so now they're throwing the ball all over the court, turning it over and like just the singular, you know, kind of force on defense of Anthony Black and Jonathan Isaac in that mid fourth quarter stretch. Just making Bradley Beal and Kevin Durant make a lot of mistakes went a long way to turning this game around. Because the thing with Orlando is they're not a very good offensive team right. In fact, they're a bad offensive team. Just to give you guys some stats, they scored ninety four
points six points per one hundred half court possessions. That ranks twenty sixth in the NBA. According to Cleaning the Glass, they are the third worst pick and roll attack in the NBA including passes. They are the tenth worst ISO attack in the NBA including passes. They are the third worst post up attack in the NBA including passes. They're not good in transition like that. A lot of it is just it's a young basketball team with young shot creators learning how to be more efficient in the NBA.
I'm not concerned about Palo and Frans in the long run in their ability to become much more efficient shot creators. But they're young, they're learning on the fly, right and so their biggest advantage right now is they're huge. They're athletic, and they're young, and they play hard, and so they find ways to get into basketball games on the strength
of their defense, and that's what they did. Like they they found a way to disrupt Phoenix's offense more than Phoenix could disrupt their offense, and that flipped the dynamic of the game again. They forced Phoenix into more turnovers in that fourth quarter than they had made field goals. It's seven turnovers and just five made field goals. And
it's because their defense is flat out oppressive. Fifth in defensive rating, seventh in defensive rebounding percentage, sixth and half court defense according to Cleaning the Glass, fifth in transition defensive points added per one hundred possessions. That's kind of
a catch all transition stat on Cleaning the Glass. They are the second best team in the league at forcing turnovers, sticking to that idea that I talked about about in ball pressure, aggressive blitzing, denying off the ball, just making it extremely difficult rushing teams into making mistakes. Right, They are the eighth best team in the league at limiting opponent three point makes. They are fourteenth and protecting the paint.
But a big of that, A big part of that is when you're ball pressuring and you're denying, if someone does break through their layups to be had. Also, the center position has been a little inconsistent for them all year, in large part because of injuries. Right, So, again credit to Jamal Moseley's got these dudes locked in on that end of the floor. Credit to all the individual players
for being uh for taking that on as a basketball character. Again, I will say watching them this year has been fun because of the just the energy and the verve that they bring to trying to win games in a way. Like, again, there's an offensive limitation there that is that is roster based. That's not gonna change. You can't. They're not gonna just suddenly become a great offense this season. They need to
slowly reach that point through player development. Right, But like, they can still win NBA games on their strengths, and they're so locked in and so disciplined and their and their their their habits are great, their communication is great, all the details are there, and it's allowing them to be a respectable NBA team in spite of their offensive limitations. They've even a lot of good teams this year. They have thirteen wins against teams that are five hundred or better.
That's the ninth most in the NBA and then on the Phoenix front. So there are three major issues that come off the screen for me most of the times that I watched the Suns this season, but especially in that game last night, one their stars struggling to handle ball pressure. They've had forty three turnovers in the last two games, including the Pacers game. They're actually the fifth worst team in the league at taking care of the basketball.
I talked about this earlier, but again, like you know, Phoenix, I don't think that their lack of a point guard so to speak, affects their ability to score because when they do get into the half court setting and they do get one of their stars to their spot, whether it's Devin Booker getting ready to run a ball screen or a kind of face up ISO at eighteen feet, or it's Kevin Durant doing the same thing, or it's Bradley Beal you know, getting his like kind of downhill
ISOs that he goes to where he's hitting a bunch of in and out dribbles. Right Like, regardless of where those spots are, when they get there, they're efficient. You don't have to look far to see the points per possession data and see that those guys can get quality shots when they get to those spots. But teams, what we've seen consistently throughout the year is aggressive defense towards those guys. That's the book is out, Like, that's what
the scouting report says. The scouting report says, ball pressure the hell out of Phoenix. Just ball pressure them, and over the course of the game, you'll kind of wear them down physically. And Like, one of the things that I've talked about is, like I talk a lot about the value of strength in basketball, and you know, we look at it with rebounding, and we look at it with like defense and holding your position and stuff, but strength is a big thing on the offensive end of
the floor too. You want to know why Nikola Jokic like always seems to kind of like thrive in those rock fight environments. He's so damn big and strong that you can't really deny him the basketball. Like Joel Embiid's the only guy I've really ever seen do it. He's just so big and strong he's going to be able to physically hold somebody off long enough to create a
passing angle. Right. Like in general, like we used to do this drill when I was when I was in college my last year in college, we called it the tight space passing drill, and it was like basically from the lane line to the corner kind of like up to where like the block was, and then back to the sideline like a square just kind of there in the short corner, and we'd put three defensive players or three offensive players in there and two defensive players and
basically we would just apply great ball pressure on the ball with one guy and then that other guy's kind of splitting the difference. But it's in such a small space that it's tough, and so it really comes down
to fighting for position. Like the on ball guy has a dude swiping at him and getting physical and being really aggressive, and so he has to be strong with the basketball to like create space for him to see the floor, and then one of those other two guys has to fight for position to create a passing angle for that second for that of the guy with the ball to actually make that pass. And we did it all the time because it was one of the drills that my coach a shout out coach Jeff Rudder at
Arizona Christian University. He kind of implemented that as a way to learn how to better take care of the basketball because one of the things that I consistently talk about is when you run into really good teams, they tend to be big and strong and athletic, right, And teams that are big and strong and athletics tend to be really good on defense, and really good, big, strong, athletic defensive teams tend to be very physically aggressive, and they tend to try to get up into the basketball
and get up into passing lands, no different than the Orlando Magic like we were talking about earlier, right, And so you know, one of the things is like, these are a lot of guys that are kind of used to operating from their spots, and these are a lot of guys that aren't particularly strong for their position, and so when teams bring really physical ball pressure, really physical ball denial, they can struggle to create openings. And you
saw that. I think that's been a I think that's one of the most clear weaknesses in this team that the league knows about, and that the league is going into these games looking to exploit. Like finesse is cool and all like, and it's a huge part of player development. And God knows that I teach that to the kids as well when I'm coaching my high school team. Right, but like it's all at all, it all can go south when somebody punches you in the mouth, right, when
somebody brings real physicality to the situation. Finesse can't be your only move. You've got to be able to do both right and then again like even extending onto the defensive end of the floor, when you when you've got big, strong guys like a Nicole Jokich or Franz Wagner and Pala Bancaro mo Wagner bring in just this like real kind of like downhill verve to the situation. It's that strength that allows you to hold up in those situations.
And so, like Phoenix is going to eventually run into a team in the playoffs that is big, strong and can bring that certain like physical imposition to the game, it's going to happen. They're going to have to find
a way to handle it. Now, there are some solutions, right, Like one of the things you can do to combat ball pressure is like don't have the guy bring it up against the best defensive player, right, Like find Paolo's man or Franz's man and have them bring the ball up the floor, right, Like have Eric Gordon or Grayson Allen bring the ball up the floor so that you're not going against Anthony Black, so that you're not going
against Jonathan Isaac. Those are things that you can do right, But the reality is is they just have to be better. Kevin Urant, Devin Booker, and Bradley Beal have to get better at handling those aggressive coverages, handling that ball pressure,
handling that ball denial. Because, to put it simply, that's gonna be what teams do in the postseason if they get into a first round series with the team the other team is gonna sit down and they're gonna start talking about their advantages, and one of the first things they're gonna look at is like, we got to get up into these guys ninety four feet and just try to wear them down at the point of attack and
try to force them into their worst tendencies. Number Two, The second biggest thing that stood out for me on the screen, true, you Banks probably can't play for you in a playoffs. Now. To be clear, use of Nurkic was out in this particular game, but Drewy Banks has been kind of their backup center a lot of this a lot for a lot this season. They've gone with a bunch of other guys as well. But he got his aunt his lunch eaten by Mo Wagner last night.
It was really struggling with him on hard rolls to the basket, was getting beat on baseline crashes on the offensive glass. There was one where it was like a middle fourth quarter where Drew kind of like saw Mo Wagner coming from that left side corner turn and like went to box him out, and Moe just like literally just ran him over. But like Drew just turns and starts complaining to the refs. But like one of the things there is like fighting for your position actually goes
a long way there. Like if you don't really fight for your position there and Mo comes in, the ref's not gonna want to reward you for not holding your ground, right unless you flop extravagantly, right, in which case you might get a call, depending on what kind of ref you're dealing with. Right, But like he like he wouldn't just if you actually like sit there and fight and
hold your ground. If Mo pushes through you, then you probably get an over the back call, but he just got manhandled by Mo all over the floor, you know. And again like this is gonna be an issue with them over the course of this playoff run as well,
is what do you do about the center position? Like Usuf Nurkic is gonna hold up really well in certain matchups, but then there are gonna be other matchups where it puts them in a predicament where they get attacked a lot and pick and roll, right, We've seen that throughout the season. So that center position is going to be something to keep an eye on, and it may come down to them having to do a lot more of the KD at the five than maybe they wanted to
when it comes time for the postseason. And then number three, the defensive commitment has to be part of their identity. It can't just be a fad that they do for a week or two. It's got to be something that they stick to long term. They had this seven game winning streak they defended the defense has completely fallen apart since, like they were really sloppy against Orlando. They were bad in transition defense, not getting matched up, they were bad
in their pick and roll coverages. Drew Eubanks was like atrocious in pick and roll. They're on ball guys were bad in pick and roll. They were hugged up on shooters off the ball, Like Bradley Beal at one point was just watching them score and pick and roll while he's standing guarding Anthony Black in the corner, who's a thirty percent I think a thirty three percent corner three point shooters. So, like, their off ball stuff isn't good. They're getting beat on back cuts, they're getting beat on
offensive rebound crashes. You know, Like and especially in a game like that last night, defense could be what helps you regain control because Orlando's offense isn't good. One of the ways that Phoenix could have fought through that mess was really lock in on defense, force Orlando into their worst tendencies and look for transition opportunities and try to kind of beat Orlando to two spots before they can really load up on their stars. Right, But like that
just wasn't the thing. It was like, as the offense was falling apart against Orlando, their defense was also falling apart. And that's how I mean, that's how you end up with the twenty one to two run as the game kind of flips on them like that. The bottom line
is the Suns are top heavy. They have three awesome players Kevin Durant, Bradley Beal, and Devin Booker, and they have two solid role player guards, Eric Gordon and Grayson Allen, Right, and then they have some flawed role players like Josha Kog and use Off Nurkic who are really good at some things and really bad at others, right, and then it's like a big drop off, like the rest of the roster are mostly guys that would not even be in rotations for really good playoff teams around the league.
And specifically, none of their top five guys on that roster, saying Kevin Durant, Bradley Beal, Devin Booker, Er, Gordon, Grayson Allen, none of those top five guys other than KD can really inflict their physicality on the game, right, So what does that mean? They can't afford to not be sharp on the details, right, Like they're gonna lose a lot of battles just because of their personnel, especially defensively, especially on the glass, right, Like that, some of that stuff
is just kind of baked into the roster. So what you can afford to do is also give up the plays that are to come from mistakes. Right, this team does not have the margin for error to not be disciplined, to not be sharp, to not have good habits. And it's not something that they can do for two weeks and be fine. They need months. They need months of these habits built up to go into the playoffs and be ready to get to be ready to compete physically
at that point. Right, Like, one of the things we talked about with Denver last year after the postseason, and where I had to admit I was wrong, is like they were a mediocre defense through most of the season, but they were huge. There was a physical imposition on the game that they were able to bring, and then they had good athlete defenders and cacp and Aaron Gordon that could take primary point of attack assignments and so they actually became a good defense when they got into
that postseason environment. Phoenix does not have that luxury. They have to be incredibly sharp. Every single guy on the roster, including their skill guys, has to be locked in on those details and it's just something to keep an eye on over the course of the rest of the season. They will hemorrhage points in many phases of the game. Because of their physical limitations. They can't also be lazy. That cannot be a characteristic of this team. Have you, guys,
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lost eighteen games. So this is gonna be a weirdly negative power rankings in the sense that, like, I'm gonna kind of complain about all the teams to some extent, just because I thought like a lot of their downsides were on display this year. It's just gonna be kind of the theme, except for the Clippers. The Clippers went five and ozens our last rankings, so they're gonna be fine. We had two teams drop out, the Pelicans, they've gone two to four since our last rankings and basically lost
to every good team they played over that span. In their defense is falling apart. Then the Miami Heat. They've lost six games in a row. They've been the worst offense in the league over that span in the twenty ninth ranked defense, so the bottom's falling out for Miami. They're off the rankings for now as well, So without any further ado, Number ten, the Indiana Pacers. Pascal Siakam is already helping the Pacers hold up better in the
physicality areas of the game. He's averaging eight rebounds per game. Before the trade, the Pacers were the fourth worst rebounding team in the league. In the six games since the Pacers have been the eighth best rebounding team in the league.
So from fourth worst to eighth best just since the Pascal Siakam trade just goes to show you how much having a real high quality NBA forward as that low man in the four spot can help reinforce a team that was really struggling in the physicality areas of the game. They've never been much of an offensive rebounding team, but they've been the fourth best offensive rebounding team since the trade, so they've brought a new element to their offensive attack
through attacking the offensive glass. They actually beat Phoenix the other night just relentlessly attacking the offensive glass. They've now won three games in a row, all without Tyrese Haliburton. Pascal Siakam in the sixth game span is averaging twenty one points, eight rebounds, and six assists on fifty nine percent from the field thirty nine percent from three to two.
It's giving them a legit shot creation. So far in six games for the Pacers, Siakams ran sixty pick and rolls, ISOs and post ups, including passes, leading to eighty points eighty one point three three points per possession. I talked about this before the trade, but Pascal was having one of his best shot creation seasons of his career in Toronto before coming over, especially out of the post. And so he's come over and brought that extra element immediately.
One other guy I wanted to shout out was Andrew Nemhart. It's kind of stepped into that primary shot creator role from the perimeter or from the guard position. I should say, since Tyre's Halliburton got hurt. Here's the thing, Like, like Andrew Nemhart's good. I broke down a game last year, if you guys remember against the Warriors where he, like I want to say, he ran something like thirty pick and rolls in a game that led to like fifty points.
Like he just utterly picked apart the Golden State Warriors in a game like he can he can play, and it's just a team that's loaded up with guards, and so he's been squeezed from time to time. But like I've seen a lot of talk about like whether or not Tyrese Haliburton is as valuable as people think, because the Pacers have looked good without him from time to time.
And it's like, how about we just credit the fact that they're really deep at guard, and so when they suffer an injury at guard, another really good guard waiting to step into that slot. And also, like they're seven and six without Tyrs Aliberton this year, it's not like they're killing people. Also, Pascal Siakam is awesome and has gone a long way towards helping them on that front, as they've gone three to zero in their last three games.
Number nine, the Philadelphia seventy six Ers. I was really high on the Sixers after their six game winning streak. They beat Sacramento, they beat Houston, they beat Denver in that impressive game where Joel and Bid kind of shut down the Nuggets offense down the stretch, and they beat Orlando, but then they went into Indiana and laid an egg
and then they late scratched every one against Denver. And look, I understand that Embiid's Embiid fans kind of feel like there's a narrative here and that the narrative isn't necessarily fair, But like, guys, and Bead's not doing himself any favors on this front. Like last year, Joel Embiid played in thirteen straight games before sitting out in Denver, and then immediately played in the next five games, So he played in eighteen out of nineteen games. In the one he
sat out was the game in Denver. This year, he plays in six straight games, including hunting points in a seventy point night against the San Antonio Spurs, and then goes, oh, well, I'm resting my knee. I'm gonna sit out against Denver. Like he told Jokic he'd see him there. He said so in his postgame presser after they won in Philly. He wasn't on the injury report before the game. Shamsrachrani reported fifteen minutes before the game he was not on
the injury report. The Sixers on social media were advertising the matchup as Jokis vs. MBID and then he sat out. They're almost certainly going to get fined for it. And again, like when when you're talking about the narrative, If you're gonna gun for seventy points against the Spurs and then sit out against Denver, saying we want to make sure his knee is ready for the playoffs, you're gonna get the side eye from a lot of people. You just are It's completely fair criticism. And also, I mean this
team kind of needed a signature win. They're twenty nine to fifteen, but they played a comically easy schedule. Just ten of those twenty nine wins were against teams that are five hundred are better. As of right now, they've played the third easiest schedule in the league per opponent win percentage. Those ten wins against five hundred are better
teams ranks sixteenth in the NBA. They are also just one in four on the road against teams in my contender list, with their one win being against the young and tiny Oklahoma City Thunder. So like they needed this kind of like big road win to kind of just almost as like a test, like it would have been a great test for them, and they punted it and it just left a bad taste in my mouth. So I have the Sixers down at number nine right now.
Number eight the Cleveland Cavaliers. They've won nine of their last ten games, including two wins over the Bucks and a couple of other dominant road wins against the Atlanta Hawks and the Orlando Magic. They're number one in defense and number one in net rating by a mile. Over that ten game stretch, the defense has been super impressive, Isaacacoro Max screws are competing at the point of attack. Dean Wade has been excellent in off bassage suations and
especially in switches. Donovan Mitchell has had some of the best closeouts I've ever seen from him in his NBA career. He looks locked in on the defensive end. And then
Jared Allen is this super versatile big. Honestly, like they're not the most talented team in the world with Evan Mobley and Darius Garland out of the lineup, but the lineup is much more synergistic now, Like it actually falls in line with my kind of like belief system surrounding the whole, Like, uh, you know, like normal basketball lineup type of construction, because you have athleticism in the backcourt, you have a perimeter forge, you have an interior four.
Like it just it's all lined up a lot better now because you have you just have guys kind of in all of the needed positions to construct a basketball team, especially on the defensive end of the floor. It just looked different when you were constantly running out there with two small guards, right, And I mean, like the Bucks really wanted to win that last game in Milwaukee. They really wanted to win that one, and and they just beat the Cash just went in there and beat them
and shut them down on offense. Like four different guys got stops on an island against Damian Lillard. They were constantly building a wall in front of Giannis and making him into a passer. It was a really impressive win. The Calves are good. I have Carter Rodriguez from the Chase Down Pod coming on the show on Wednesday for a deep dive on the Cleveland Cavaliers. So Cavs fans, make sure you're around on Wednesday. That should be fun,
all right. Number seven, the Milwaukee Bucks. They're four and two since our last rankings. They beat the Calves once and had a dominant win over a reeling Pelicans team. But I thought the Calves losses shined a light on some of their issues. We've talked a lot about their point of attack defense, but I want to focus on two other issues that have been popping up. One their transition defense. Cleveland exposed their lack of transition defense in
their last two losses. They scored sixty seven points in transition in those two games. Constantly bad floor balance, constantly bad principles like not getting matched up, not communicating, not sprinting back. Most importantly, they've looked slow in transition. You can really see their lack of footspeed beyond Giannis in the lineup. It's been a huge problem for them. And then secondly, another Dame stinker. In the last loss in Cleveland, he couldn't beat anyone off the dribble unless it was
Sam Merrill. He kept having to settle for these tough, contested jump shots. I talk a lot about this like push and pull when it comes to on ball scoring. Like if you're the defender and I'm the offensive player, and you're terrified of my pull up jump shot and you're terrified of my ability to beat you off the dribble, that's the perfect situation because then you're gonna have to either play up and I'm going right by you, or you're playing off and I'm knocking down the jump shot right.
But like, let's say my jumper is not going in now all of a sudden, even if I'm an outstanding driver to the basket, You're gonna start giving space and I'm gonna be able to have a hard time like finding those angles and you're seeing that kind of go both ways for Dame. He's not making these pull up jump shots, so guys are giving him a little bit more space. He's not as quick as he used to be,
so is he's starting to make those downhill moves. Guys are beating him to spots, and you're seeing it manifest in the numbers over the course of this eighteen game stretch. This over the course of Dame's last eighteen games, excuse me, twenty three point eight points per game on below forty percent from the field and thirty percent from three an eighteen game stretch, and we're we're almost halfway through that.
We are over halfway through the season now. And to put it simply, the Bucks will not win the title unless they get the Dame from last year, and they need some other stuff to go right as well. But they need Dame to be better than he has been. He has not been very good this year. Number six, the Minnesota Timberwolves just two and three in their last
five games, just dropped games to Charlotte and San Antonio. Now, some of this, I should say, most of this is just the letdown after getting through the tough part of their schedule, right like they get through this insane stretch where they play like twenty like something crazy, like sixteen seventeen straight games against really good teams. And they did really well in that stretch, and then you kind of like you're like, Okay, we're good, we feel accomplished, and
then you just exhale, right like you exhale. The problem is the NBA so damn talented that they'll make you pay for that. Charlotte has players Brandon Miller is cooking right now, and he lit them up. LaMelo Ball picked them apart. He had like thirteen assists in that game. Victor women Yama and Devin Vessala are hoopers, Like if you don't bring it against the Spurs, they can beat you, and so like a lot of this is like effort,
But the concerning part is their offense. My main concern with the Wolves all season has been their ability to function offensively in a slow down environment, especially in that like kind of playoff type of environment, and the two things that we look at to kind of track that
are like half court offense and clutch offense. That's the closest thing in the NBA regular season to the playoffs, and they've been a mediocre half court offense this year, and they've been a mediocre clutch offense this year, and especially as of late, they've been really bad in clutch situations on offense. They're one in three in clutch situations just in this five game stretch. Just the ninety two point one offensive rating in those clutch situations for the
season just to one oh eight point nine. That's not good. That's seventy five minutes a slow down end of game basketball where they have not been very good offensively. Like I said, Mike Conley is an older skill guard and he was out for two of those games. They depend on him a lot, but at the same time, he's an older skill guard. Anthony Edwards is a superstar in the making, but he's very very young, and young players struggle with decision making. And then Carl Towns is a
notorious poor decision maker in these types of situations. So it really doesn't matter how good their defense is or what the the other advantages they have if when they get into the slowdown environment, they can't execute as well as the other great teams around the league. It's been a consistent issue. It has been an issue in this stretch the defense is real and it's always gonna give
them a chance to win games. But they will fet they will face much better half court execution teams than them, and that could and that could end up being what
gets them beat Number five. The New York Knicks six and one since our last rankings, twelve and two in their last four team games, tied to the Clippers for the best record in the league over that span, seventh in offense, first in defense, and first and rebounding one ugly loss of the Orlando Magic in there where they kind of lost in a physical game and some ugly moments down the stretch of that game, but back to back dominant wins over the Eastern and Western Conference defending
champions in the Miami Heat in the Denver Nuggets, og and Andobi and Dante DiVincenzo are dominating at the point of attack. Defensively, Jalen Brunson and Julius Randall are bringing like a physical imposition on offense. Although Julius Randall dislocated his shoulder, Hopefully he's okay. But they're wearing teams down.
They're a really, really good team. I think I think the Knicks are one of those teams where like I don't think they can win the conference necessarily, but the teams that are above them that have flaws to exploit. Like I would not be surprised if New York knocked off a Milwaukee, I would not be surprised if New York knocked off of Philly. They have the talent to
do so, and those teams have flaws. That's really just when they get to the top top tier of the NBA, where I think they would run into some issues, just in terms of firepower. Number four, the Oklahoma City Thunder mixed results since our last rankings. They had impressive road wins at Minnesota and at New Orleans, but they got beat by the veteran Laker and Clippers teams, and then they got manhandled by Jalen Duran and the Pistons without Kid Cunningham last night. What a weird game that was.
The offense is sputtering their nineteenth in offense over this eight game span. Basically, everybody that's not Shay Gilders, Alexander or Jalen Williams is struggling, Chet is slumping, Josh Giddey is slumping, Loudort is slumping. But in spite of all that, they're five and four versus my top five contenders, and they're the number one seed in the West, so they're holding down the five spot for me, excuse me, the four spot for me for right now. Number three the
Boston Celtics dropping down from number one. Another disappointing loss and a major in a major game, they got dominated by the Clippers. On the tail, the Clippers run a back to back and they get dominated. They have three losses in their last ten games. Here's how they break down. They are seven and zero against teams that are outside of my top five contenders. They are zero to three against teams that are in my top five contenders, including
two of those losses at home. And even worse, what has been my main concern for the Celtics team all year offensive process. Can they make Can they consistently hunt and take and make the right shots against the best teams in the league. They had one hundred and two points against the Milwaukee Bucks, they had one hundred points against Denver. They had ninety six points against the Clippers. So they have only three losses in their last ten games,
all against my top contenders, all of them. The offense sputtered. That's concerning. It's very concerning. Jason Tatum last five games, eight for twenty six on pull up threes. That's thirty one percent. So we had a brief stretch where they were going in and it looked great and everything was great, and now we're back where we've been the previous three years. And again, guys like twenty six of them in five games.
This is a third of his shot diet. A third of Jason Tatum's shots are like pull up threes off the dribble that he makes about a third of the time, if not less, And so like it just was it was really discouraging. And again, like that's the thing with Celtics fans. I have them all the time in my comments. They'll be like, why didn't you say anything after we beat the shit out of Miami or why blah blah blah blah, And like again, I tell you, guys, like
it's in the schedule. I schedule the games I'm going to cover, and I primarily schedule Celtics games when they're playing the best teams and they keep losing to the best teams, and when they do, it's the same stuff that gets them beat the other times they lose to the best teams, and so like bizarrely enough, seven and three in their last ten games and a super super concerning stretch of Boston Celtic basketball. They seem super super
dependent on chrisops Porzingis as well. There's just again still have them as number two in my contenders list because everyone else has a bunch of issues too. And like I said at the start of this list, today's a very negative version of the power rankings. But I thought it was a concerning couple of weeks for the Boston Celtics.
Number two Nuggets three and two on their five game road trip, big wins over Boston and Indie, tough losses to New York and Philly teams with real size and physicality can give Denver some issues, especially when Denver's not locked in, like Embiid's denial of Jokic really bothered their offense when they were down in Philly. New York's athleticism and passing lanes caused Jokic to turn the ball over uncharacteristically a lot. Like you could tell like the big,
physical teams can give them some issues. But I still think this is the best team in basketball, and I think in the mix of all these teams struggling, I just trust them the most, So I'm keeping them at number two. Number one the Los Angeles Clippers. They're undefeated since our last list, thirteen and two in their last fifteen games. Number one offense in the league over that spanned, Number six defense, doing a ton of damage on the
offensive glass. Two. Their perimeter athleticism is a factor here, Like, they are really athletic on the perimeter, between Terrence Mann and Norman Powell and Russell Westbrook and Kawhi, Leonard and George, Like they just bring wave after wave of perimeter athleticism in a league that has so much more jump shooting, there's all these long rebounds, and so they can really do a lot of damage on the offensive glass just
with their perimeter athleticism. And again, like they're a bottom ten defensive rebounding team even over this span, So like it's important for them to try to kind of like make up for some of that on the other end of the floor. It's been interesting an incredibly impressive ass kicking of the Celtics in Boston. Kawhi and Paul George just thoroughly outplayed Jason Tatum and Jylen Brown. They are looking flat out scary, and I'm ending the show like
this today, I am moving my contenders again. I'm taking Milwaukee off of that three spot and I'm moving the Clippers up to number three. So I'm going Denver Boston Clippers than the Bucks. They just have fewer question marks in my opinion, and they went from going zero to six in their first six games after the hard and Trade to being number one in our power rankings. Shout out to the LA Clippers. All right, guys, that is all I have for today. We'll be back tomorrow with
a breakdown of some games from tonight's slave. We got a bunch of really good games tonight. I look forward to seeing you guys. Then. I appreciate the sport. See you tomorrow. The volume