Hoops Tonight - Donovan Mitchell drops 71, Klay has 54 in Warriors win, LeBron & Embiid's big nights

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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 D five to two four seven zero zero in Wyoming, or visit www dot one hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by FanDuel here at the Volume. We had a jam packed Monday night slate in the NBA that we are going to be breaking down today.

We're gonna hit four games. Donovan Mitchell scoring outburst to beat the Bulls, Clay Thompson scoring outburst to beat the Atlanta Hawks, Joel Embiads scoring outburst to beat the New Orleans Pelicans, and Lebron James and yet another scoring outburst to beat the Charlotte Hornets. So we're gonna be talking about scorers today. 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 lt so you guys don't miss any show announcements. Then, 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. You can find them wherever you get your podcasts Under Hoops tonight. And lastly,

January is gonna be an awesome sports month. We've got the National Championship Game, with college football coming up next weekend, the NFL playoffs are starting soon, and basketball around the country for college and the pros. It's heating up now that football season is ending. Lots of good games for us all to watch. But even better or how about we go to some of these games. I want you guys to check out game Time, which is the fastest

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be going through four games today rapid fire style. We had forty two from Joel Embiid, forty three from lebron fifty four from Clay Thompson, and seventy one from Donovan Mitchell. A crazy stretch of scoring last night. So the Cavs are actually down. We're gonna start with Bulls Calves. The Caves are actually down two starters last night, Evan Mobile and Darius Garland were both out, and the Bulls of

sneakyve been playing some pretty good basketball. Um. It's always interesting to me when things start to go south for a team, what happens. Do they show fight and try to save their season or do they let go of the rope? I think, for instance, we're gonna talk about the Hawks today too, and then we're gonna talk about the Bulls and we're gonna talk about the Lakers. Those are three teams that, for various reasons, have had really

rough seasons. And you're seeing the Bulls and the Lakers actively fight to try to save their season, and you're seeing the Hawks just to send further and further into the struggle. UM. The Bulls had come in five and two in their previous seven games with some impressive wins. They'd beat a Heat team that's playing good ball lately, they beat the Hawks, they beat the Knicks when they were playing really well, and they beat the Milwaukee Bucks

in a really impressive comeback win. UM. They jumped the Calves early in this game too. They went up twenty one in the first half to Martin Rosen and Zach Lavine were absolutely cooking. Donovan Mitchell only had sixteen at halftime, but then the Mitchell Show began. He hung twenty four on them in the third quarter, eighteen in the fourth quarter, thirteen in the five minute overtime, perfect four for four from the field and three for three from three, and

finished with seventy one points. UM. Yesterday, I had I appeared as a guest on Sam Vicenni's podcast, who has a podcast called Game Theory for the Athletic Um. Sam does great work. You guys gotta check him out. I tweeted out a link to that show you could find on my twitter feed. We went for about an hour and a half. We talked to m v P, talked a lot Lakers, a lot of good stuff. And in that show we started talking about just the wild scoring

bursts that we're seeing around the league. And I presented to say in my theory, which is just that pull up shooting and the massive improvements league wide didn't pull up shooting and the fact that pull up shooting directly beats most NBA coverages is a big part of why

we're seeing so many scoring oppers. You take away the easy stuff, you take away the rim, even on the defensive end, rotating around on the perimeter to shooters, you're chasing guys off the line and funneling them into the paint. There's all these openings in the middle of the floor

for pull up midrange stuff. And then obviously in ball screens, anytime a guy gets caught on the screen, there's an opportunity to shoot a pull up three and take advantage of the math that's available to you there, so having a guy that can knock down pull up jump shots if he gets hot, it's so difficult to guard pull up shooting that I think that that's why you're seeing

more of these scoring outbursts. Like Alex Cruso was doing everything right last night, flying around screens and contesting shots, but Donovan's just making him and there's really nothing you can do about it. He was just sticking those pull up jump shots time and time again, and that's what he does. He's forty six point four percent on ten

pull up jump shots per game. That's outrageously good. On six pull up threes a game, there are thirty two players in the NBA this year taking at least three pull up threes per game, and Steph Curry is the only player in the NBA shooting better than Donovan Mitchell on those shots. And that pull up three, in particular, is what makes Donovan Mitchell so difficult to guard, because it's not just in ball screens, it's also an ISO situations.

He's got a really good pound through his right leg between the legs, step back three going to his left. He hit a couple of them last night. That what that does is it puts you in a really difficult predicament as an isolation defender, because when you're up on Donovan Mitchell, he's so good getting downhill to the rim

that you basically have to make a decision. Am I going to concede these pull up threes to Donovan Mitchell at the expense of trying to contain him, Or am I going to press up on him and he's gonna go right around me all game long. They ended up having to sub Alex Caruso, who's one of the better perimeter defenders in the league. They had to sub him out of this game to try anything else that might be able to slow Donovan down. And you know again, and this is where pull up three point shooting adds

an element that other pull up shooting does not. It's in iso enforcing defenders out on you. When you beat people off the dribble at twenty five feet, you can really get your head of steam going downhill before you get to the rim, as opposed to when defenders are meeting you lower, you know, seventeen eighteen, even twenty feet, you don't get as much room and not not as much of a runway to get a head start. You don't get as much momentum going downhill towards the room.

I think that's a huge part of what makes Donovan so hard to guard. Donovan Mitchell on the season twenty nine points, four rebounds, five assists on sixty three percent TRU shooting, which is just otherworldly, one point one four points per possession, and pick and roll including passes, which is sixth in the league among players who have run at least two hundred and a solid one point zero four points per possession in ISSO. And now the Calves are just two and a half games back and the

best record in basketball. I talked to Sam also about m v P and we did our rankings, and um know, we talked about how there's like eight dudes right now that have cases and eleven dudes that like realistically have a chance if things go one way or another before the end of the season. Donovan Mitchell's on that list.

If the Calves go on a little bit of a run here and end up with the best record in the league, there's no reason in the world why Donovan can't win m v P, especially with how good he's been offensively. And it's just kind of it's a testament to how talented the top of the league is. It's a testament to Donovan Mitchell and the score that he's become in this league, and just how excited I am for the NBA as a whole. Moving forward, all right, moving on to Hawks Warriors. So this was a wild

double overtime game. The Warriors jumped out too hugely. They were up twenty one early. Um the Hawks came all the way back and went up nine. Then the Warriors claud back and send it to overtime. Then the Warriors fell down big in the first overtime, claude back to send it to a second overtime. Then the Hawks fell down big in the second overtime and Jon T. Murray hits a pull up three, Trade Young hits a floater. Suddenly it's tied. But then Clay Thompson mrs the three

and Covon Looney battling underneath the rim. We're gonna talk about some of the details of that particular play here in a minute. But Kevon Looney battles under the rim and gets a put back at the buzzer to win it for the Warriors, who continued to roll without Steph Curry going on a run and Clay Thompson finished with fifty four eight and three countless big plays down the stretch of this game since November in his last seventeen games.

Remember how concerned Warriors fans were about Clay early in the season. In his last seventeen games, which is a massive sample size spanning over a month, twenty four points per game percent true shooting on eleven threes per game. That's a seventeen game sample size of vintage Clay Thompson.

Maybe not quite some of his higher scoring numbers because he had some stretches earlier in his career where he'd go for like twenty eight a game for a while, but in terms of efficiency and production, that's really really high level stuff from Clay Thompson. My favorite thing about Clay has always been his jump shot form. You know, it's funny when we talk about the Splash Brothers. Step is like the best shooter of all time, that's unassailable.

I think Clay Thompson is the second best shooter of all time. Most of us would agree. But ironically, like Steph is a little more unorthodox um in terms of his form, Like he shoots a little bit down in front of his head. He uses his opposite thumb. None of that's wrong. I'm a big believer in who cares what your form is as long as you can replicate it. But if I was teaching a player from scratch, Like if my son one day was like, I want to learn how to shoot the basketball, can you teach me?

I would teach him the way Clay Thompson shoots. And there's a couple of specific things that I wanted to focus on. Uh. First of all, absolutely no wasted motion. There's if you watch footage of Clay Thompson shooting, there is no unnecessary body movement. Everything is straight up and down. There's no weird back stuff, there's no weird legs stuff. And up top, he's very rigid with a natural release

coming off of his right hand. First, the limited motion is so important because that allows you to replicate your muscle memory easier. When there are lots of moving parts, it's a lot more area for you to make a mistake, and that decreased margin for error makes it so that it's harder for you to replicate that release. When you have less movement, it's easier to replicate fewer areas for you to make a mistake that that's that's how you can get dialed in and get outrageously hot the way

that Clay did last night. And the second thing I wanted to focus on was his wide base. Now, a lot of shooters, most shooters, I would say, kind of jump in a normal athletic stance where their feet are kind of even with their shoulders, maybe even a little bit more narrow. I think it's just a natural athletic thing that a lot of young basketball players do. Clay Thompson is a wide base his feet on and most of his three point attempts are outside of his shoulders.

And I have a very wide base when I shoot as well, And so that's one of the things that I've always looked at with Clay that I've related to because I've always done it that way for a very specific reason when you are moving, whether that's coming off of a screen to rise up with the one too off the catch for three, or that's coming off the screen and dribbling the way Clay did a bunch last night to get too difficult, you know, pull up two's um as defenders are chasing him over the top of

the screen regardless, in any movement situation, a wider base gives you a much better chance of establishing balance while on the move. For instance, if I'm jumping way off to the right, if I jump and I keep my feet close together, I might keep leaning that way, but if I keep my feet wide, it's more likely that this foot will establish enough force coming back the other way to steady me so that I can go straight up and down. Watch watch some footage of Clay Thompson shooting.

Watch how wide his feet are, and look at how it gives him the ability to get good balanced lift on his high difficulty three point shots that he takes. I also wanted to shout out well first of all before we move on. Um. But anyway, I told you guys earlier when Clay was struggling, that I wasn't worried about it because two reasons, he was still playing great defensively,

and two teams were guarding him like he was. Clay Thompson, I care way less about the percentages on jump shots than I do about the way teams are guarding you. The reason why is Clay, let's say he takes eleven threes per game. If he makes four of them instead of six of them, that's only six points. Yeah, that might be the difference in the game one way or another, but who knows, Like, there's all this shooting variants that's

taking place. But if he is being guarded like Clay Thompson, then over a hundred possessions we might score a lot more than six points off of the attention that he garners and the way it opens up things for other players. When you start shooting low percentages and teams aren't guarding you,

that's where it becomes deeply problematic. There are a lot of players around the league that shoot thirty eight percent from three on wide open looks all game long because the team isn't guarding them, and it's easy to be like, oh, thirty eight percent from three, that equates to well over fifty effective field goal percentage. That's great for us. Yeah, but is he is his defender helping on every single one of your drives? Is his defender basically roaming around

the floor blowing up other actions? Because if that's the case, then that thirty eight percent three doesn't really matter. You're losing a lot of points over the course of the game. I didn't worry so much about Clay because he was being guarded like Clay, and on the other end, he was defending at a high level. Now the shots are going in. Now you're getting that ultimate ceiling with Clay Thompson fifty percent true shooting on twenty four points per

game over seventeen games. That's where you get that. That's just gravy. That's all just extra as it comes down to the result. But the most important thing is that they guard him like Clay. That's where the uh, the flow of the Golden State offense will come from. A couple of shout outs. So Draymond Green made a half dozen more just unbelievable defensive plays. He blew up another two on one break by blocking DeAndre Hunter, uh, stopping

what should have been a dunk. I talked a lot about these load passes around the rim that he keeps blowing up with his back line help. There's a play in this game where a Congo rolled to the basket for a lob. He was guarding I believe John Collins in the opposite corner, and he came flying off of John Collins at the last second to blow up a lot at the rim. Defenders in the league, that's a dunk, but for Draymond Green, it's erasing two points from the board.

And then he had a ridiculous block on a Trey Young pull up three and overtime as well. He's just been a defensive wrecking ball over the course of the last few weeks. And the Kevon Louney on the game winner.

Understand your advantage. That Hawk's lineup was pretty small, uh, DeAndre Hunter and John Collins were the front court at that point in the game, and because of some transition cross matches after tray Young's lay up, the Gold Go and say quickly pushed the ball off the floor, which was a really smart decision because it kept things kind

of chaotic. Now, transition defensive principles take take a control as opposed to regular defensive principles, so people aren't going for their match, they're just guarding the guy that's nearest to them. Well, um, I believe it was John Collins got stuck out towards mid court. DeAndre Hunter ended up on Clay Thompson, so Kevon Looney had de gen Ty

Murray on him. He understood that he had the advantage there just buried him under the basket, ended up actually getting two offensive rebounds in that final sequence, made the second one and the game was over. Another really, really impressive team win for the Golden State Warriors on the strength of a Clay Thompson nuclear explosion. The Atlanta Hawks have also lost four games in a row. They are now six and thirteen since November, which is the best

record in the league over that span. For the season, they're only thirteen and sixteen when both at Trey Young and Degen Murray plays, so it might actually be crisis mode at this point. And again, it's kind of one of our long standing philosophies on the show. When you build your team around two smaller guards, there are just some limitations in what you can do from the standpoint

of physicality. Alright, moving on Pelicans sixers, so Zion hung a smooth twenty six points on twelve shots before having to leave with a hamstring injury, which is kind of a bummer. Otherwise we might have had another forty point game tonight or like on Monday night. This game was actually tied at eighty nine. Early in the fourth quarter, James Harden and Montrese Harold just started spamming pick and roll.

You know, so many of these Sixers games I watched, you know, there's a lot of Joel and Beat stuff, and we're gonna talk to all and Beat stuff. But James Harden is having a fantastic season, just creating high quality shots with what he can do in pick and roll.

They were getting all sorts of wide open dunks and threes in the early fourth quarter, just spamming that Harold Harden pick and roll, and they actually built a little lead there, and then Joel and Beat came in and they started is suing him right around the free throw line, and he hit a jumper, hit another jumper, and is So drew double team and kicked to James Harden. He knocked down at three really high level stuff from James Harden and Joel and Beat in the fourth quarter of

this game to build a lead. But then the Pelicans threw a random curveball there in the middle of the fourth quarter. They went to a three to zone, which kind of jumbled up the Sixers for a few possessions, and the Pelicans actually worked it all the way back to three and then there was this chaotic possession where loose ball just happened to bounce into the Anthony Melton's hands on the left wing. He hit a three that ended up essentially being the dagger as the Sixers went

up by six and got the win. Um. James Harden and pick and roll this year done a really nice job passing. Like I mentioned earlier, a couple of specific things. Um, he doesn't always go directly to the rollman and they mix in a ton of pick and pop. Was Georges

kneeing as well. And he's got this really nice like behind the back passes he's coming off of ball screens where he just whips it around as the defenders kind of chasing around his hip and the screen defenders coming up on him and bracketing him, he just whips it around lefty behind his back. That starts that four on three a different way by hitting that shooter, and you're you're just Georges kneeing on the wing. Um. But then he also did a nice job hitting Montress Harold as

well throughout that game. But that's something he's done really well all season. The Sixers have scored one point zero five points per possession when James Harden has passed out of pick and roll, which is ex went. That's actually ninth in the league among players who have done it at least two hundred times this year. Um. And then also handling traps. Uh, you're seeing James Harden get trapped

and pick and roll a lot more frequently lately. Um. Uh, he's been the The Sixers are scoring almost two points per possession unplaced where James Harden has been trapped in pick and roll this year thirteen times for twenty two points, just getting rid of the basketball quickly. Again, that behind the back pass to the popping screener that I was talking about earlier, um. And then Joel Embiad and ISO. You know, we talked about how he went to work a little bit from the free throw line with pull

up jump shots there in the fourth quarter. He this season is scoring one point one six points per possession on ISO including passes, which is fourth in the NBA among players who have done it at least a hundred times. Joel Embiad has already run two hundred and fifty one ISOs this year, which is just an insane number. And a big part of it is the jump shot. What I've always said with Joel Embid, especially with Anthony Davis

as well. Neither of them are great passers, and there's a case to be made that Joel Ebad has actually even been a little worse passing out of double teams this year. This year than he's been in previous seasons. He's turning the basketball more frequently than he used to. So you know, it's so important for both of those guys to be able to hit pull up jump shots because that's their best way to beat teams packing the paint, since they can't beat teams backing packing the paint with

the pass. And Joel e Bead in his career, has struggled, particularly in the postseason, to knock down perimeter jump shots, but this season has been his best perimeter jump shooting season by far, and if that translates to the playoffs, that's monumentally important for Philly um. Joel e beats shooting on short jumpers out to seventy on long jumpers from seventeen ft to the three point line, and a respectable percent from three. But most importantly, he's doing all of

this on volume. He's taken three hundred, almost three hundred jump shots this year, so he's efficient on a steady diet. Of jump shots, and it's also helping him beat double teams. There are a lot of plays this year where he's catching in the double was coming, but the double is not aggressive because teams are terrified of fouling him because he's so good at drawing fouls, and so he's actually able just to rise up with his height in the fear of fouling, to rise up over a double team

and knock down a jump shot. It's ironic he's beating doubles just by shooting over the top of them. Um. The Sixers have now won ten out of twelve and they are just three and a half games back of the best record in the league, which is really interesting for Joel Embid potentially as an m VP candidate. And like I said, I expect the Sixers to go on a big run here in January now that Tyree s Max he's back and they're healthy and they're defending as well as they have been. Lookout for the Sixers to

go on a run alright. Last game Lakers Hornets, really impressive win over a Hornets team that kind of punished them last week. UM, just with their size and physicality, especially in the offensive class. They won that game with the key offensive rebound back at Staples Center, I should say Crypto dot com arena. Uh, there's kind of a funny moment in the fourth quarter or Dennis Smith. Dennis Smith, when you're tried to dunk on Lebron and Lebron kind

of protected himself a little bit. Dennis took took exception to it because he I guess he thought it was a dirty foul or something. Um. Then he started talking trash to Dennis Schroeder too, And so now Lebron and Dennis Struder like john back and forth with Dennis Smith while just killing them on the other end of the floor every single time down. Uh. Kind of ballsy to go at Lebron when he's playing as well as he

has been. Um. And then Lebron just methodically worked his way to forty three eleven and six on sixty percent true shooting. Dennis Shudder also made a couple of big plays in the fourth hit some threes and had a nasty pullback druble crossover where he broke someone's ankles and knockdown a jumper. Lebron has had thirty plus on sixty on at least six shooting three times in the last six games, it's looking like two thousand thirteen all over again.

The Lakers were plus nine with him on the floor and minus three with him off in Lebron's last eleven games. This is insane. Eleven games, that's almost a month. He's averaging thirty five seven and seven on six true shooting. What's wild is he's just from three on six attempts per game, So he's literally playing some of the best basketball of his career despite the fact that he's having this kind of relentless three point shooting slump that he

just can't break through. Um, which is crazy because you have to think, with the consistency that he shot the three over the course of the previous you know, half decade, you expect him to eventually turn that around. I mean, if he just shot thirty seven percent from three during this span, which is respectable more or less what you

would expect with Lebron playing as dialed in as he is. UM, if you're shooting thirty seven percent from three, he'd be averaging over thirty six points per game during this span. But somehow, against all odds, the Lakers are now five and five since the Anthony Davis injury, which just feels impossible because of an m v P level run from Lebron James over the course of this last month. I wanted to shout out one other Laker before we call it a day to day. Thomas Bryant. It's awesome again.

Last night eighteen and fifteen five offensive rebounds had an amazing putback, dunk and crunch time. When the Hornets made a little bit of a run to get it somewhat close, offensive rebound rose up and dunked it. It It was just a monstrous momentum play to ice the game. Um. You know, as we look at Thomas Bryant, he does have some

defensive limitations. He's a little bit short, and he's not a great athlete, so in vertical situations around the rim, he can struggle, which is something that you know, it's kind of out of his control. I just simply doesn't have the tools to be a better defensive player than

he is. But he is a very very good offensive center, and I would argue that his contributions on the offensive end in particular for this Lakers team has probably been the second most important thing behind this five and five stretch without a d behind Lebron, so he's been monumentally valuable to this recent stretch and a couple of specific things. He runs the floor super well. He's a great screener,

which is opening things up and pick and roll. He's got great hands to catch those difficult feeds in traffic and pick and roll. And he's a really strong finisher around the basket. He shooting se restricted area this year. He just muscles people off balance in those under the rim confrontations. We talked a lot about post defense when we were talking about Yoka Chaw. It's like a battle of balance, like whoever can knock the dude off of their like a base first has the better chance to

go up and score around the rim. And Thomas just knocks people off their base and then goes up strong to the rim. That prevents the taller, more athletic, longer defenders from getting up above him and blocking shots. He also crashes the offensive glass really well, and he's shooting

the laces off the basketball for from three this year. Again, his offensive contributions have kind of been that other thing that has revitalized the Lakers without Anthony Davis, who again five and five since the A D injury is is just probably the absolute best case scenario under the circus stances. And what's crazy, as you can say, they blew that first Hornets game could very easily be six and four.

But the Lakers again, you know, there are a lot of reasons to let go of the rope, but they just keep fighting and riding the strength of what I believe is still a top five player in this game Lebron. I ranked him forward to start the season and he's held up his end of the bargain after a rough start. You guys, I sincerely appreciate your support. As always, we're

gonna be taking tomorrow off. Um. We will be back Thursday night breaking down I believe it's Celtics Mavericks, and then Friday night I'm staying up to cover those games. They'll actually be put on the Beats on Saturday morning. As always, I appreciate your support and I'll see you guys next night. U