Hoops Tonight - Does Russell Westbrook make Clippers greater NBA Finals threat?

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seven seven zero stop. In l A visit www dot m D gambling help dot org in Maryland dial one eight seven seven eight hope and why, or text hope and why to four six seven three six nine in New York, called one five to two four seven zero zero in Wyoming, or visit www Dot one gambler dot net in West Virginia. All right, welcome to hoops tonight for by Fan Duel here at the Volume. Happy Monday, everybody. I hope all of you guys had a great weekend, a very boring All Star weekend, and we're not going

to talk about that today. The players didn't seem to care much, so I don't see why we should. The game itself was not entertaining in the least, not quality basketball, not interesting in any way, shape or form. And we had a very interesting basketball story come down this morning. Russell Westbrook is going to be a Los Angeles Clippers. So what we're gonna do today, it's just dive into the basketball elements of russ is fit with a major

Western Conference playoff contender. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribed to the Volumes YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason lts. You guys, don't miss show announcements, and last but not least, for whatever reason, you guys miss one of these videos and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish, don't forget. You can find them wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops tonight.

And then lastly, on Saturday morning, we released a video that was a footage breakdown of the five greatest scoring moments of Lebron's career. It's kind of a fun trip down memory lane with a bunch of major playoff moments, and we went went through the way we do on this show in the weeds, looking at the schematics, looking at um the skill set stuff, from the footwork stuff, and all the little details of those major moments in Lebron's playoff career. I thought, I'm super proud of our team.

They did such an amazing job producing it on the back end and getting the footage to where it needed to be. I think it's one of our best projects that we've done since I started with the company a little over a year ago. Want you guys to check that out, So scroll back on our YouTube channel feed to Saturday morning, five greatest scoring moments of Lebron's career. I think you guys will really like it. But let's talk some basketball so you know it's funny right before

I'll star break. The last game I watched was on Friday morning. I watched the Clippers play the Suns, and we didn't cover the game because there wasn't enough to put a full show together. But I watched the game and I was incredibly impressed by the Clippers. They put on a defensive clinic, shutting down the Sun's pick and roll offense. Everybody looks great. Quite didn't shoot the ball well in this particular game, but he's been looking great

for a while. Paul George looks great. They've been going with Terrence Man basically since the beginning of the year as their starting point guard, and that's been working well. They've really taken off since then. Since January, which is a full month, the Clippers are ten and four, which is the third best record in the league over that span. They're also second in offense over that span, so they're really clicking right now. Um, now, did they need to

look at bringing in a point guard? Yeah, but I thought they tried to do that at the deadline, swapping Reggie Jackson for bones Highland. I didn't see anybody in the buyout market that released it out. To me, that made sense. And the main reason why is, you know, the point guard position as the Clippers need it is not what Russell Westbrook is in my opinion. To me, a point guard is about consistency and stability, especially for

the way that the Clippers need that position filled. That's like, can you bring the ball up the floor against ball pressure every single possession and get the team into your sets? Can you run you know, respectable second side action when Kauai and Paul George gave the basketball up and you need someone to further the action. Can you on the

can you be a threat off the ball? Can you on the other end of the floor guard the other team's opposing point guard and run your pick and roll coverage is properly That's the stability they need from that position. And Russ is just way more volatile. Russ is like adding a bunch of alcohol to any sort of social situation. It can lead to like the best night ever, or it could lead to a complete in total disaster. It's

a force multiplier. It just brings out extreme outcomes on either end of the spectrum, and it's kind of like an emotional roller coaster. As someone who rooted for the Lakers of the last couple of years, it was really stressful on a night in, a night out basis. So I didn't like this move for the Clippers simply because this is a team that was clicking and trending in the right direction for a good a good chance of getting out of the Western Conference on a playoff run.

And what you've done is you fundamentally changed the profile of your team and you've thrown a massive wild card into the mix, and you know it has the it could work. There's a version of this story where this ends up pushing the Clippers over the top, but it also could be the thing that puts them under as well. Um. But you know, I, even though I don't like the move, it is what happened. And so what we're gonna do today is we're gonna look at the basketball fit for

Russ on both ends of the floor. Again, you guys know, Russ is not my favorite player, but I take my job very seriously and I do see the good things that Russ does. So I want to talk about how that fits with the Clippers. So let's start with the offensive end of the floor, and let's talk about what Russ does well. Russ is very good at pushing the pace, which is a very intriguing thing with this particular team

because this team likes to play slow. Now, I think that's gonna cause some issues if they play him with the starters a lot, but in bench groups, I like the idea of adding a change up and having the team play with a lot more pace. And Russ is one of the best players in the league at consistently pushing the pace. Every time he gets a rebound or a kick out, he brings the ball to the floor relentlessly, probably better than anybody in the league. But it's volatile.

There's a lot of turnovers. He's gonna push the ball in transition when there's opportunities that aren't there, and he'll drive into traffic and turn it over. He'll throw bad passes, he'll miss a lot of layups. But on a points per possession basis, that's an effective offense in the in

the aggregate over many possessions. To have Russ pushing the ball in transition, The Lakers were seventh in transition frequency according to Cleaning the glass and Russ played a huge part in that, but the volatility of it makes it so that you don't want that sort of thing at

the end of games. And there were a lot of options, a lot of situations, particularly last year for the Lakers, where Russ would engage in those reckless transition pushes at the end of games and it would lead to disastrous outcomes. So it kind of serves the Clippers better in the middle portions of games to have him pushing the pace when they get into the half court. When Russ has good matchups, He's been an effective ball handler this year

a lot more than I think people realize. He's one of the best rim pressuring perimeter players that we have in the league. And rim pressure just causes a bunch of positive outcomes. That leads to offensive rebounds because you're occupying rim protectors. That leads to you know, drop offs and kickouts for easy dunks out of the dunker spot or two shooters in the corner. It collapses the defense and opens things up. There's a ton of value and

rim pressure, and you do see that with Russ. Uh the Lakers scored six hundred and fifty three points on six hundred and eighteen pick and rolls this year. That's one point one at one point zero six points per possession. There are forty two players in the league have run at least five hundred picking rolls this year. That's it's pretty solid. He's also been the best post up player in the league to run at least fifty post ups,

scoring one point three one points per possession. There are sixty three players who have run at least fifty and Russ is number one. But that's typically when he gets good matchups. That's posting up smaller guards that are usually coming off the bench for teams, and then pick and roll against a backup center, which usually is a very poor pick and roll defender. You know, think of like the way the way that Thomas Bryant was for the

Lakers or DeAndre Jordan was for the Nuggets. That there there is those backup ring protectors are typically the easiest guys to score on and pick role. So again, it seems to make the most sense in bench lineups. You can kind of see a trend that I'm that I'm hinting at here, and then off the ball, this is where his weaknesses are. He's shooting below from three on

outrageously good shot quality. So even when the defenders at least six ft away, which NBA dot com classifies is wide open, he's shooting thirty point seven percent on almost three attempts per games, so on stands still wide open completely conceded threes, he's making less than a third of them, which is a major problem. That's what allows teams to completely ignore him. So what allows teams to put their

center on them? And you'll see that a lot, and you might think to yourself self like, oh, well, that means that we can get zoobots with a better matchup, But it doesn't matter if your center is ignoring us

to help on that said post up. Right, So, there's a bunch of issues that come with Russ off the basketball, and the only way to counter that is a nonshooter to be relentless as a cutter and as an offensive rebounder and as a screener, which those are three things that Russ has done on occasion, but is never bought fully into enough to make himself a positive as an off ball player. So as I loop all of that together,

there's an obvious role that takes shape. You want him in the middle portions of games, when you can put the ball in his hands so the off ball stuff is not a problem. And you let him run the show for one shift each half, bridging the end of the first and early second, and bridging the end of the third and early fourth. You let him run those two shifts. You put the ball in his hands, he pushes the pace, he does all of those things. That's when you can get real positive outcomes out of Russ.

He's going to bully all the smaller guards to come off the bench for teams. He's gonna bully all of the lesser rim protectors in the league that come off the bench for teams. That's where he can have some success and the Lakers. For the Lakers did not have a very good shooting roster. In fact, I said before the season, and I still believe up until the deadline they had the worst shooting roster in the entire league.

The Clippers are an excellent jump shooting team, and Mason Plumley, that who they brought in at the deadline to be their bench big, runs the floor really well. So this could even be a better version of what the Lakers had when Russ was coming off the bench. But if they start games with him and they close games with him,

I suddenly view this as a huge net negative. First of all, when you give Russ the basketball, you're taking touches away from better players like Paul George and Kawhi Leonards, so you feel the need to put him off the ball. But then off the ball, he will hinder their offense, not as much as it did the Lakers. Kauai and Paul George are professional pull up jump shooters, so they will be able to have more success with Russ on

the floor than the Lakers did. But still you prefer if Kauai has a rim driving threat or if Paul George has a rim driving threat to balance out that pull up jump shooting so defenders can't press up on them as much. It absolutely will hurt them in some ways, just not as much as it hurts the Lakers. And then in crunch situation, crunch time situations, if you play Russ,

that's where his volatility can become a problem. Like I said in the large sample size, the up and down nature of Russ's game is not as big of a deal because if he's running, you know, thirty five possessions in a game off the bench, and he makes, you know, fifteen good plays in ten dad plays, it's gonna be fine. But if you put him in a crunch time situation where it's just a small handful of possessions, his mistakes become so much more damaging. And I'll give you some example.

So like, there was a play earlier this year against Portland at the end of a game, Lebron and Adre on the floor. I think the Lakers were down one at this point and are up one at this point, and they basket basically seals the game. And Russ just goes off script and dribbles up the floor on the right wing and takes a pull up jump shot. And he's like the worst pull up jump shooter in the league. There's no basketball case for him to take that shot. It's a pivotal possession at the end of a game.

But up here Russ goes, I'm shooting this, and that sort of volatility can cost you games. There were a couple of key late game mistakes against Boston and Philly this year where Russ decided to play isolation basketball against

excellent centers. He did it against Joel Embiid, and then he did it against al Horford, going off script instead of giving the ball to his better players to attack the other team's best defensive player under the basket, and too he threw the ball into the bottom of the rim against al Horford, and then he got fouled against

Joel Embid. But you know, those kinds of falcohols don't usually get made at the end of games, and he didn't have an advantage in that situation, and had he not been Vould, Joe would have blocked him up top. That sort of volatility and decision making at the end of games could really hurt them. The one other thing that concerns me is the Clippers core players, like we talked about earlier, Kawhile, Leonard Paul George uh Marcus Morrison, evicazoo Bach, they don't like to play fast. Those are

slow basketball players. The Clippers have been one of the slowest teams in the league this year. So it makes sense off the bench when you put him with Norman Powell and you put him out there with um Mason Plumbly and they're sprinting up and down the or in they're getting great shots. That kind of makes sense. But with that core group, there's some there's some clash just in their overall play styles, which will be a problem.

Like those core Clipper lineups are gonna like to play in the half court, and that's where Russ is at his least level of impacts. So you know, overall, so much of it will come down to the role. If Tyler uses Russ in the middle portions of games, two shifts a night, one in the first half, one in the second half, in bench groups against bench guards and against bench rim protectors, I think he could be a significant net positive that raises the ceiling of the Clippers.

But if they play him to start games, if they play him to close games with the style clash of the slow style that the Clippers like to play, and with him having to do more things off the ball, I think it could quickly shift into being a massive negative. I do like the influx of athleticism though, like even in Russ's decline state, he's very fast, and the Clippers do not have a ton of speed on the roster.

They've got a lot of length, they've got a lot of offensive skill, but they don't have a lot of speed. So I like the different physical profile that he brings, and you'll really see that on the defensive end of the floor. He's been a very good on ball defender this year, particularly when bigger players try to take advantage of him by backing him down in the post. He's been killing All Star Wings all season long in post defense. Off the ball, it's a little bit more of a

mixed bag. He's a freelancer, so he will blow up plays like flying around with his athleticism, but then he'll also give up offensive rebounds or to lose a shooter because he's too much of a freelancer and he forgets his baseline responsibility within the defensive scheme. But overall, I do like the physical force he brings to the team. This move is entirely gonna come down to how Tyler uses him, and if he uses him well. I do

believe it can work. But my prediction is that there will be a lot of pressure internally, just the same pressure that lead the Clippers to make this signing. There will be a lot of pressure inter internally to play Russ with the core lineups. Um. I don't know if Tyler will be able to fight that off. You'll probably get roped into it as well, and and it's gonna be a roller coaster. There will be nights where RUSS wins the Clippers games, there will be knights with RUSS

loses the Clippers games. And overall, I think that volatility hurts the team. So I do feel less optimistic about the Clippers chances after this move, and I wish they would have just stood pat. And yes, it sucks that you don't have a point guard, but there's nobody in the buyout market that really stands out. Patrick Beverley is a defensive point guard, but he's not an offensive point guard.

That doesn't really solve the problem. Even then, though, I'd rather have Patrick Beverley on this Clippers team than Russell Westbrook. So it was a confusing move, but hopefully this video gives you guys a better idea of just how it will fit offensively and defensively. Here's our plan for the

rest of the week. UM. I'll tweet out the the actual schedule UM as soon as I finalize some things, but we're planning uncovering the top five or six players in this year's NBA draft over the course of the next couple of days, and then dude, We're like, look

at the slates. The slate starting Thursday get incredible. Uh, We're gonna be covering a lot of basketball, a lot of instant reaction breakdown nights where we do four or five six games at a night starting Thursday, and it's gonna be a grind the rest of the regular season and heading into the playoffs. I'm very, very excited for it. As always, I appreciate you guys rocking with me and I'll see you in a couple of days. The volume