Hoops Tonight - Heat-Celtics NBA Playoff Game 3 Reaction: Jimmy Butler & Miami embarrass Boston

for this Miami Heat team. And then at the end, I just have some brief thoughts about the Celtics moving forward. I don't want to do a full obituary until they lose, but statistically speaking, the Lakers and Celtics are any position where they have to do something that no team has ever done before, which has come from down three to zero. I'll share some thoughts on that as well. Here in just a minute, you guys know the drip before we get started. Subscribe to the Volumes Tube channels you don't

miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason lts. You guys, don't miss anyhow 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, all right, let's talk some basketball. So I was talking with Ryan, our lead producer, and shout out to Ryan. He does a ton of stuff behind the scenes to make this

show possible. We were talking. We kind of get together usually on Sunday and just kind of hash out with the schedule is going to be over the course of the next week or so. And obviously a couple of sweeps leads to a predicament, right in terms of days off, because the final start on June first, no matter what, which is ten days from now. It's a week from this coming Thursday, right, So we're kind of looking at it. We're like, man, what are the chances that Boston pushes

this thing to six? And I texted him, I said, the case is they're too talented to not take one of these next two and then win an elimination game at home, which would in theory push a series to six. But I said the reality is they look like a team that might crumble on the very next heat run. And when we were talking about that, it was in that first quarter sequence when Kevin Love was kind of hobbling around on the court and the Celtics looked like

the more physically aggressive team. And then they sub Kevin Love out at one point, it's a twenty one to twenty game, like I said, kind of a punky injury, and then he hit hit him in the mouth with a run. They go on a thirty eight to seventeen run over the next ten minutes of game clock, and from there there was just no fight. There's no fight in this team anymore. And so runs happened in basketball games.

It's certainly on the road right, Like it's just it's a guarantee the Nuggets go up huge right in the first half. Last night, It's like the Laker run was inevitable. It was just a question of whether or not Denver would be able to regain control of the game through their fight, and they were able to and Boston just simply was not able to. So what do I mean

when I say fight? Right to me? Like, remember when Lebron's talking after each of these series about how hard it is, right, like, Okay, we beat Memphis, but Golden State's going to be harder. Okay, we beat Golden State, but the Denver Nuggets are going to be harder. What does that mean? It means like in these basketball games, there's a desperation level that's taking place on the floor.

A lot of guys are pushing themselves when they're truly exhausted, when their body is at a point where we would most of us would consider that a limit. They're putting in another effort at that point. It's extremely difficult to do. And so in order to do that, you have to have a belief in a bigger goal, like you're making that extra effort when you're completely exhausted, because there's potentially

I Lari O'Brian trophy waiting at the end. And so when you actually remove a team, removed belief from a team so that they don't see that trophy anymore, it becomes extremely difficult to fight. And when they stop fighting, it can go downhill very quickly, because now we're talking about a great basketball team that is fighting because they do see the trophy against a team that is no longer making those extra efforts, no longer executing it and doing all the things they need to do to pursue

that ultimate goal. And so that's where stars in particular play a large role in basketball games. You know when there's an inevitability to a guy like a Jimmy Butler, and the fact that you just know that he feels more confident than both of your stars, and that he's getting to his spots better than both of your stars, and that no matter what happens in the runs of the game, the oscillations of the game, he's confident. Your stars are not, and that dynamic trickles down the roster.

Guys stop fighting, and then you end up predicament. We're an extremely like the Boston Celtics have more talent than the Miami Heat. That's just a fact there. There are blue chippers all over that roster, whereas you've got a bunch of undrafted guys in Miami. But the Miami Heat are a better basketball team. Why because they have more fight. Why do they have more fight because they have a star, the star that feeds them with confidence and allows them

to consistently play at the top of their game. A coach that consistently puts them in position to succeed and gets them to believe in that trophy, in their ability to get to it. And once the belief is there,

the fight follows. Once the fight is there, when you've got guys like bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler and dudes that are in these smaller roles because again, Jimmy Butler and bam Adebayo, because of what they do on both ends of the floor, they fulfill so many responsibilities on the court that the responsibilities for the other guys are relatively easy. They're not asking them to guard, you know, Jason Tatum, right like Kayleb Martin is gonna do some of it. Max Us is gonna do some of it,

Jimmy Butler's gonna do some of it. But they're they're not asking like you're not asking Kyle Lowry to defend on an island against one of those guys. Right Like, Jimmy and bam are doing the vast majority of the dirty work and doing so much for the team offensively, everything else is achievable, so undrafted level talent can OutKick their coverage, whereas if your other stars are not like

that and they don't fulfill all those responsibilities. Suddenly the shortcomings of those other guys start to show up, Like in that Lakers series, Lebron James and Anthony Davis are not having a good offensive series. It's been one of

the biggest issues for them in this entire season. Lebron's jump shot is a shell of what it used to be, and Anthony Davis can't score on the poster isolation anymore when he used to be so now all of a sudden, you are hyper focused on the fact that man Dennis Schroeder is having a bad series, Man D'Angelo Russell's having a bed series, whereas if these two were dominating the game offensively and doing the things that Jimmy Butler's doing in this series, for instance, and what BAM's doing in

an ancillary role to Jimmy consistently, and BAM's aggression has been amazing in this playoff run, especially physically. When that's happening, suddenly you're not focused on the other stuff, because Gabe Vincent doesn't have to take a bunch of extremely difficult shots unless he's in such a crazy rhythm like he is tonight that they're all going in right. But there's a lot less pressure on these guys, so they have more belief. And when they have more belief, they fight.

You guys get the point. And and that's what I find so impressive about this, this Jimmy Butler playoff run. He sapped them of belief and and that's the thing. Like one of the things that Boston has to focus

on is making the right play. But time and time again in this series, it's Jason Tatum driving down the lane in crunch time one oh three, one hundred, wide open kickout to Jaylen Brown, wide open kickout to Malcolm Brogden, runs Jimmy Butler over for a charge Jimmy Butler, Jaylen Brown offensive rebound under the basket, two open shooters on the wing, and he tries to force it in traffic and gets blocked. Meanwhile, you see a play like tonight. I wrote down this play because to me, it kind

of embodied this concept. Kyle Lowry runs the kind of dribble handoff thing with with Caleb Martin on the right wing and both guys go with Lowry. Lowry floats a pass over the top to Caleb Martin. Caleb Martin could he's a great athlete could have tried Jason Tatum at the rim, had an opportunity to just one guy, not a thicket of bodies. One guy, and rather than try to force it over a better athlete in Jason Tatum, he makes the extra pass. It ends up in a

Gabe Vincent catch and shoot three that goes in. If Caleb Martin forces that play, maybe Jason Tatum blocks it, which sparks the Boston's Celtics fast break, which leads to an easier shot for Boston. Instead, it's take it out of the net and go against our set defense because of one decision. And that's the type of decision that Boston never stayed locked in on. And I think I think all of that, the fight, the execution, it all comes down to Jimmy Butler sapping that team of their

belief that they can win. And it's crazy to me. I've seen a lot of comps about about Jimmy Butler and about this Miami Heat team, and I've seen the MJ comp get thrown around. Those of you guys who

are Heat fans. We've been listening to this show. I've been looking at more as a Lebron comp but I there are some similarities with both, Like I look at this as more of a Michael Jordan's type of defensive run with what uh with what Jimmy Butler is doing defensively, because it's more ball pressure, playing passing lanes, forcing turnovers, and starting fast breaks. Whereas Lebron defensively was always like

a backline guy. He could take on ball assignments and you'd seen him guard a Derrick Rose or Jamalmer in a pivotal moment. But for the most part, it's Lebron protecting the rim, right, it's blocking Thiago Splitter at the rim like it's he's one of the all time great

you know, back line guys in the NBA. Right, And uh So the defensively, I say it leans more towards m J. But on the offensive end of the floor, like MJ was a guy that worked a ton off ball, got to his spots, a ton of post ups, fadeaways over both shoulders, a lot of movement shooting like coming off of screens and curling, coming off of screens and

rising up and shooting. Jimmy Butler's offensive approach in the series reminds me more of Lebron because it's live dribble thirty five feet from the basket, picking on matchups, getting the easy shots close to the rim. That reminds me a lot of Lebron James in terms of the offensive approach. But regardless, I'm comparing Jimmy Butler in this playoff run to the two greatest basketball players who have ever graced planet Earth. And that's what's crazy about this, the other

reason why I keep going to Lebrons. It reminds me of the psychological advantage that Lebron had. Like, guess what in that first round series, he's going against Trey Young and Dejonte Murray. Those are two pretty well established, like great basketball players in this league. Right round two, it's

Jalen Brunson and Julius Randall. In round three, it's literally Jason Tatum and Jaylen Brown, two guys that are I think I had in the top twelve going into the season, Like these are really well respected guys around the league, and the only one of them who really went bucket for bucket with Jimmy as a competitor was Jalen Brunson. Everybody else was a shell of themselves. And I know

Tatum's put up some numbers. But in the pivotal moments of this series when they've needed him to do what Jimmy Butler does, which is run your offense, spam an action, this high pick and roll, this post up, this ISO on the right wing, whatever it is, he couldn't grab the reins of the game, dominate the pace and get great shots like what Jimmy Butler was doing on the other end of the floor. And it reminds me of Lebron in that twenty eighteen playoff run because you see

these results that just don't make sense the Pacers. You thought the Cavs were gonna beat the Pacers just simply because it's Lebron James and that Pacers team wasn't super established, But as soon as they started playing games, it's like,

oh shit, Indiana has more talent, you know. Then you go into the Toronto Raptors series and the Raptors are significant favorites, and they're like a fifty nine win team with home court advantage, and then like Lebron beats them in game one by stealing a game in crunch time. Game two, he hits all those fadeaways and just the life gets sucked out of the arena. You can see them stop fighting, you can see them cease to believe that they can win the game. Next thing, you know,

it's a sweep. That's what's happening here. And it's a more impressive version of that from the talent differential, because brunts Jaylen Brown and Jason Taana are better than Kyle Lowry and DeMar De Rosen. But it's the same type of personality dynamic like he is. He is such a presence on the court with how confident he is and how he's got his whole team believing that, like it's sapping the other team of belief. It's truly impressive to me. I wanted to do. I wanted to do some shout

outs for some other guys. Gave Vincent he had that massive late step back jump shot in game two where he kind of shucked off Jason Tatum into that step back jumper. Six threes tonight a bunch of a bunch, Like he kind of went a little cold in that last round, but throughout this entire playoffrund, he's hd a lot of timely shots. Duncan Robbinson hit three threes, made a bunch of plays off the dribble in the first

half that was kind of a surprise. And then Bam Adebayo like it hasn't been like super high volume scoring or anything, but he's just two things. He's been enough of a threat that it's warped Boston's defense enough that they're not leaving him on a island all that often. And then secondly, his physical aggression is actually having a similar impact on the belief of the opponent that Jimmy

Butler is having. And all the two plays that I look at are the play where al Horford gives up back to back offensive rebounds where he kind of like sort of boxes out and Bam grabs it over the top. And then on the very next shot, this was in Game two, he just like throws him to the side like a defensive end and grabs the rebound and dunks it.

And then tonight that spin move on Jalen Brown where it's like Jalen Brown is one of the biggest, strongest, most athletic wings in the league and Bam hits him with the spin move and just it looks like Giannis and he's dunking while Jalen Brown's looking on like sliding down the floor. That type of physical aggression is just as impactful and affecting the psychological elements of this series as Jimmy Butler. So Jimmy and Bam together have inflicted

that on their opponents for three straight rounds. Then that's what makes this NBA Final series potentially which statistically is going to happen, which is Denver versus Miami. That's what makes it so interesting is the idea of kind of

like an immovable object versus an unstoppable force. The unstoppable force being Jimmy Butler's massive basketball presence and the effect it has on anybody who's not a top, top, top tier veteran defending champion type of superstar versus Nikolae Jokic who's unflappable and is in the process of finishing off Kevin Durant Lebron James in consecutive rounds. So that's what makes that NBA Finals series so interesting, is who's gonna

be the one that folds there? You know, I'm unbelievably impressed by Miami as a basketball fan, like again, like and I've seen a lot of talk like, oh, what about the ratings, And I'm so not worried about it. For one thing, because our show is about basketball, it's not about the narratives and stuff, and so we're gonna have a great time regardless of who's playing. And most importantly, these are the types of teams that resonate with everything

that this show is about. Like, to me, I love basketball games and I'm obsessed with the process of winning basketball games. And these are two teams that are experts at that process despite not having the super team type of mold, right, And that's what makes it super fascinating to me. And we're gonna have a lot of fun for the next three weeks in the process. Boston, I'm not gonna do a deep dive on it tonight because

I want to spend a good amount of time this summer. Obviously, right after Boston gets eliminated will get started, but I want to take like two three days to really dive into what options are available for them out there. But I do think that something has to be done a couple of things. Joe Mizoula, I think, I think, I think for a team that has this type of championship expectations, you need a coach that has a little bit more

playoff experience. I think that's just the reality. Missoula very well might be a great NBA coach one day, but he was slow with adjustments in this entire playoff run. Really didn't really understand some of the more aggressive things that you can do that you saw other teams around the league do. And most importantly, his team didn't believe and that of one of the coach's jobs is to

keep a team fighting. And I know it sounds silly, but like the stuff like im Udoka just trashing his team early in the season, that sets an expectation in it. It forces the team to kind of buy into this like tough mentality that stems from the coach, right, you know, like Mike Malone, this entire Damn Lakers series has been telling lies about the reality of the series in terms

of the way it's being covered in the media. When everybody's picking Denver and they've been a favorite the whole I'm one of the few people who picked the Lakers and like, but he's doing that to keep his team motivated, like he's trying to put a chip on their shoulder. That's part of the job, and in this particular group, desperately needs a great motivator. They desperately need a great motivator. But it extends to the court as well, and so

I want to take a look at the court. So inevitably, I think they're gonna have to move on from Joe Mizoula, and I believe they will. What do you do with the roster though, so you know, it's funny. We knew they had a ball handling and decision making issue at the end of last season, but we thought the answer would be bringing aggregate ball handling, right, That's why all

of us praised the Malcolm Brogden trade. So you bring in Malcolm Brogden and now, like there's no doubt that the team has a ton of aggregate ball handling, so much so that this team actually opted to go small a lot of the time, whereas they were bigger much of last year with Robert Williams playing center, right, I think, which is a big part of why their half court defense wasn't quite as good as it as it was

last year. But it's become clear that that's not the issue because at the end of the day, you're not having Malcolm Brogden run your offense when the game is tight. It's got to be in a star's hands, a real star that can go blow for blow as a decision maker with Jimmy freakin Butler. So it's less about I think our lesson that we have to learn from this is it's less about aggregate ball handling and more about the top end ball handling, the actual star players in

the game. You need a star, like I said earlier, that can spam the same action against an elite NBA defense and consistently get good looks. The theme of this Boston offense is literally random. That's what they call it.

They call it random, and so as a result, it's like you've got stars masquerading as cogs in a system, and you've got cogs and a system masquerading as stars when guards just take over the offense for long stretches and they don't have that simplicity that Miami can go to in the form of picking on matchups with Jimmy Butler, with bam Adebayo kind of hovering around the short The semi circle is a release valve, and so when I look at that, I spent just about five minutes before

the show just looking to see if there was something that was obvious up front, and I don't see that guy. I don't know. I don't see a guy that Boston can get this offseason. That solves that specific problem. Kevin Durant was that guy, and I don't know, We don't know the details. We don't know if Brooklyn was never interested, we don't know if Boston never pulled the trigger. But again,

let's just have like a little exercise here. What if that's Kevin Durant instead of Jaylen Brown and you'd lose two solid role players, Like what is what does this look like now? If Kevin Durant is the guy that can be like, I'm the grown up in the room, I'm not scared of Jimmy Butler. Let me go blow for blow by spamming this action while Jimmy is attacking, you know, Malcolm Brogden or Grant Williams on the other end of the floor. And maybe that is the difference.

The problem is that guy's not available anymore. Phoenix is not getting rid of him. The reality is is that the most realistic option to bring in that type of player is Jason Tatum. Jayson Tatum has to become that guy, but he's young, and it might be three four years until then. So how do you reconcile that with the fact that this is a championship roster right now. And when you have championship rosters, guess what happened. Guys need to get paid. When guys need to get paid, they

get paid market value. And when you have a great amount of talent on your roster, less talented teams want to pay market value to poach your players. And so you could end up in a predicament where Jayson Tatum becomes that guy three years from now, but you no longer have a championship ross. And so I genuinely don't know that there's an easy fix, Like the right coach might be the only option. You know, it's tough to say. Maybe that's Brad Stevens. I don't know, but I will.

I will say this to Celtics fans. I'm gonna take some time after they do get eliminated. I'm gonna take some time to really kind of come up with some ideas because I think you gotta do something. The star players aren't enough, but the role players, that's so much talent and you have to find a way to capitalize on that. Just sherely from the standpoint of asset management. All Right, guys, that's all I have for tonight. As always,

I sincerely appreciate you guys to support. We will be back tomorrow night after the final buzzer with Colin Cowhard after Lakers Nuggets. I believe that the Lakers are going to get a win, actually really quickly. I on the whole coming down from three. In theory, it's not that complicated. Win a home game, right, then win a road game, just one. Just win one road game. Then you come back in game six, three to two at home. You'll be favored to win the game. You'll have all the momentum.

Win that game. Then in a game seven, anything can happen. Right in theory, it's not that complicated. Why does it not happen? Two things, All that stuff I was saying about belief and fight. The belief and fight is gone. The other team sees a pathway to end the series. You see an impossible pathway. But secondly, usually the team that's up three to zero is a better basketball team. Like, you don't go up three to zero unless you're better.

Now it might only be a little bit better, but it's hard to be the team that's a little bit better than you four times in a row. That's why it's never happened before. I do think it's possible. I think it's way more likely that the Lakers do it than the Celtics, too, because they have an elite defense, and obviously Lebron James and Anthony Davis haven't played very well. Maybe they just start playing well and that turns everything around. But even in the case of the Lakers, is just

so incredibly unlikely. You know, even if they steal Game four, they go in Game five in Denver and it's like ilacious Denver crowd that does not want to go back to LA for Game six. You're gonna get their very best punch. And so it's hard to believe that you're gonna beat Denver in Game six giving their very best

punch unless you're a better basketball team than them. And the only way that's happening is if Lebron James and Anthony Davis get better, which this is kind of the These are kind of the guys they've been this entire playoff run. Really good defensive players, both of them, just not the same type of offensive threats they were in twenty twenty, so it's hard to imagine, but I again, I do think the Lakers will win Game four. I

think Boston loses Game four. I think the Lakers win Game four and then Denver closes it out in five. But also I wouldn't be surprised if Denver closed it out in four as well. All right, guys, that's all I have. I will see you guys tomorrow night with Colin Coward after Game four the Western Conference Finals. The Volume