Hoops Tonight - Is Chris Paul enough to bring Steph Curry and Draymond Green back to NBA Finals?

The series features exclusive, unprecedented access to Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins, and Marcus Mariota from the beginning of the twenty twenty two season all the way through to its conclusion, following them on and off the field, inside the huddle with

their teammates, and inside their homes with their families. The series features behind the scenes footage of the biggest moments of the season, as Patrick Mahomes set an NFL record for total offense on his way to winning the league in Super Bowl MVP Awards, as Kirk Cousins engineered the greatest comeback in NFL history and led to Minnesota Vikings to an NFC North Division title, and Marcus Mariota taking

over as the starting quarterback with the Atlanta Falcons. Quarterback is produced by NFL Films, Omaha Productions and two PM Productions. Executive producers include Peyton Manning for Omaha Productions, and Ross Katova, Pat Kelleher and Keith Costro for NFL Films. Again. In this season, you're gonna see Patrick and Brittany Mahomes, Kirk and Julie Cousins, and Marcus and Kyomi Mariota. This is an unprecedented look into one of the toughest jobs in sports, coming to Netflix on July twelfth.

We're gonna do scouting reports on Tray Jackson Davis, and Corey Joseph, and then at the end, I'm gonna kind of just tie boe everything by talking about whether or not I think the Warriors got materially better in the process. You guys know the job before we get started. Subscribe 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.

And for whatever reason, you guys missed 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, so quick recap of the off season. They drafted Brandon Podziamski. I did a scouting report on him on the day after the draft that you guys can find further back on the feet. I also broke down his first Summer League game the other day.

You can find that on the feeds as well. To make a long story short, I think he's going to be a great fit in their offense. He's awesome at advantage creation basketball, attacking closeouts, generating dribble penetration, not with overwhelming speed or quickness, but just with basketball like you, and weaponizing his shot fake and his ability to score in the mid range. And I also have been really impressed with his passing ability so far as I've been

scouting him. I think he's a big upgrade over Dante DiVincenzo offensively, although I do think he's a downgrade over Dante DiVincenzo on the defensive end of the floor. They also drafted tray Jackson Davis at the end of the second round. Really interesting player. I enjoyed scouting him this morning. I'm going to do a full breakdown of that here

in just a minute. They also traded Jordan Poole for Chris Paul, as you guys know, and they signed Corey Joseph for a veteran minimum contract in addition to re signing Draymond Green for four years, one hundred million dollars. That was something that absolutely had to happen. As I've said so many times on this show, Denver's the exception because they managed to win without a top tier defensive front line doesn't mean that you can't. They are the

exception that proves that rule. As you go back through NBA history, you don't win unless you have a dominant defensive front line. Draymond Green himself has four to five that line four times in his career. He is the one player. Him and Steph Are are the players that you cannot give up without losing your championship ceiling. So I thought that was the right move to resign Draymond Green. We will do a quick scouting report on Corey Joseph

here in a minute as well. All they lost is Dante DiVincenzo for the four year, fifty million dollar contract that he signed with the New York Knicks just got priced out. There's literally no way the Warriors could have retained him at that number. All right, let's do a quick scout of Trace Jackson. Davis got a hell of a pedigree. He was Mister Basketball in Indiana in twenty nineteen. He was a McDonald's All American. He was a two time Big Ten All Defense All Defense election, and he

was a consensus first team All American last year. His measurements is a lefty six foot at eight and a quarter without shoes. That means he'll be like a legit six ' nine in shoes, is a seven to one wing span, which makes up for some of his lack of height, and he weighs two hundred and forty pounds, so he's not overly thin by any stretch of the imagination. He's also a grown adult. He will turn twenty four this season, so he's two years older than Moses Moody.

He's three years older than Jonathan Kaminga, and he's been playing grown up basketball in a winning context for four seasons at a quality program. So you're not getting a kid, You're getting a young man. And I do think that that gives him a much better chance of being a useful rotation player for the Warriors next year. Last season, he averaged twenty one and eleven on fifty eight percent shooting two point nine blocks per game. Here's some data from play types on Synergy. He did most of his

work out of the post. He ran three hundred and seventy five post ups and scored three hundred and ninety two points including passes. That is one point zero five points per possession. There were seventy players in NCAA Division One basketball who logged at least two hundred post ups last year, and Trace ranked six team in points per possession. So is a very successful, very efficient, high volume post

up player. At that level. You primarily like to work from the right block and to try to get to his left hand hook over his right shoulder in the lane. He shot forty one percent on hook's overall, a higher percentage about forty five percent when he was going from that right block into the middle of the floor. He also handled double teams really well. He's patient and he makes the kill pass instead of just trying to get

rid of the basketball. Now, the Warriors are obviously not going to spam Tray Jackson Davis post ups, but it gives them a weapon to potentially attack switches. I also thought he demonstrated a lot of good stuff in ISO. He ran thirty nine ISOs and face ups that led

to forty seven points. It does a really nice job when there's a smaller defender on him of protecting the basketball and turning his back because again, when you're a bigger player, when you dribble the basketball, the ball's traveling longer to the ground back up to your hand every time, and so smaller players will swipe down at the basketball. You never want to expose the basketball when you have

a size advantage. You want to protect the basketball. So you turn your back and you pivot, and you pivot, you get to where you want to go, and you take a shot over the top. Then when you have a slower, bigger defender in front of you, that's when you can expose the basketball and use your quickness because they're not going to be able to attack that dribble pocket as well. Trace Doyes a really nice job of identifying what his advantage is and adjusting his attack accordingly.

I actually clipped three examples of Trace working out of isolations and put it on my Twitter feed to go to underscore json lt and you guys will see some examples of I picked a fake spin move that he did that I think will be a really interesting example of what he can do in fake dribble handoff situations to try to get downhill when he's got Steph Curry

or Clay Thompson coming off of a dribble handoff. And then I showed an example of him bullying a smaller player to the basket and him beating faster a slower, bigger player to the basket with his quickness with a drill, a hardcore in and out crossover going back to his right hand. So again, you guys can find those clips on my Twitter feed. Also in the isoclips that I watched, he's just a really good passer. His ability to identify where the defense is warping to him and hit shooters

and cutters really impressed me. On film. I really think that he has a chance to be a usable role player for this Warriors team. He was also a solid roleman. He averaged one point one to one points per possession. Seems kind of low, but if you watch the tape like I did this morning, you'll notice that he just gets absolutely swarmed on all those roleman possessions because he's their best player. So it's not like he's rolling into open space the way that he will with the Warriors.

He was rolling into a crowd, and when he's with the Warriors, he's going to be rolling into open space. So I'm excited to see him operate there. As in terms of his shooting touch, he's a non shooter. He was three for fourteen on jump shots last year, so super low volume, super low percentage, so that's not going

to be a factor, at least not yet. Also shot just about just under seventy percent on free throws, so that demonstrates that he doesn't have the greatest touch in the world in terms of future projections as a jump shooter, but you don't need to be a good jump shooter to be a role player. Big in the NBA is no floater. He shot seven for twenty four on floaters

on the season. Does have a decent hook shot though forty one percent, so touch is not his strength of his But I actually do think he dribbles the ball pretty well, so I think with the quality of shots he's going to be getting around the paint and with his ability to dribble and pass, I think he's actually going to be a really successful role man for the Warriors. Now,

his rim finishing was lower than you would expect. He only shot about sixty five percent there, but it's complicated because he took a lot of really tough shots at the rim at a post up situations. He was much higher percentage when he was operating as a cutter out of the dunkers body. He's seventy one percent in those situations. That to me is a more realistic representation of where his rim finishing will come with the Warriors. He's not

going to be posting up and shooting in traffic. It's going to be him attacking out of the short roll or coming out of the corner as Draymond's rolling down the middle of the floor, catching and dunking at the basket. He also had seventy three dunks last year, which was over to a game. He's really really springy as the ability to go up out of any footwork and quickly. He's got a good second jump, so I think his athleticism actually makes up for some of his size limitations.

Now on the defensive end, he was two time All defense for in the Big Ten his last two years average two point nine blocks per game. But the reality is is at six 's eight in the quarter without shoos on, he's probably too small to be like a dominant drop coverage big in the NBA. But I do think he's gonna be a successful switching big. There were eighteen possessions last year where guys tried to iso Jackson Davis in switches and he only gave up eight points

in those situations. Uh. One of three of those points was a bomb three against Miami in the NCAA tournament that he contested really well and it just went in. So he defended really well and switches. Honestly, he gets beat off the dribble a lot in those situations, but he does that lebron thing where he kind of like

gets beat but then just recovers and swats you. He has a really good idea of identifying where you're gonna shoot from and then he just sprints to that spot and recovers, even if it's on the other end of the rim. You'll see plays where he gets beat and then the I goes to the reverse and he just comes up on the other side of the room and smacks it off the glass. He had a bunch of blocks in those situations as well. I think he has the potential to be a plus defender in the NBA,

even with his physical tools. So what does that translate to. I think he has real potential to be a rotation big man for them. You know, if you really think about what like a guy like Mason Plumley can do as a bench big making five million dollars a year

in the NBA for a team like the Clippers. How big of a gap is there really compared to what someone like Tray Jackson Davis can do in a different context and more of a switching context and more of a jumping context instead of like a big, size and strength type of context. So I do, I do think that he has potential. It's not a guarantee. We'll see how it plays out on the floor, but I do think that that was the ideology that the Warriors were

going with late second round picks. You're not using any assets, You're not gonna have to pay him a ton of money, but hey, throw him out there. He's twenty four years old, he's got a lot of basketball experience playing in a winning context. Let's see if he can help us as a bench big. I thought that was a really smart move from the Warriors' front office. Corey Joseph he was

backup point guard for the Pistons last year. Played sixty two games, average seven points and four assists, play tight data slightly below average, and pick and roll he's zero point nine to four points per possession. But you do got a factor in there that he's playing with the pistons. He's got a lot of young, unpolished players that he's passing to, which is gonna hurt those numbers a little bit.

And then obviously the spacing is not great. He did average one point one to six points per possession in spot up situations, which is excellent. He zoom in on the shot types. He shot forty one percent on catch and shoot jump shots, sixty one percent when you wait that for threes, forty five percent on unguarded catch and shoot jump shots, which is sixty eight percent weighted for threes, and then thirty five percent on pull up jump shots

forty four percent waited for three. So when it comes to jump shooting and catch and shoot situations, he's deadly, and then he's capable in pull up jump shooting situations. It's forty one percent on floaters that'll be useful. And then he shot sixty percent at the rim, which is awesome for a small guard. All I look at that as is it adds depth. You basically flipped Jordan Pool

and Dante DiVincenzo two two guards. A lead guard who's pretty inconsistent in Jordan Poole for Chris Paul Brandon Potziemski and Corey Joseph a much more dependable at least not necessarily in terms of injury availability, but at least in

terms of performance. With Chris Paul and then Brandon Pozemski and Corey Joseph, you got kind of like a veteran option you can go to, and then you've got this young player with a lot of upside that you can, you know, play when he's playing well and shit when he's not playing well, and go with someone like Corey Joseph and said, it just gives you more depth for

when Steph Curry misses games. So I like the guard corp at this point, taking a look at the depth chart, the guard Corp is Steph Curry, Chris Paul, Gary Payton, the second, Corey Joseph and Brandon Potzemski. They're forwards Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, Jonathan Kaminga and Moses Moody. And they're bigs Draymond Green, Cavon Looney and Trace Jackson Davis and maybe they'll sign someone like Dario. Sorry. As you start to look at the archetypes, kind of makes a lot of sense.

You've got an excellent top toier point of attack defender and Gary Payton. The second you have an excellent wing defender and Andrew Wiggins. Both of those guys are top tier at their positions. Jonathan Kminga showed a lot in terms of kind of being like Andrew Wiggins light as an option to throw in perimeter defense situations. Klay Thompson did not have a good playoff run last year, but the year before and he had a lot of moments

as a wing defensive player. Obviously, Moses Moody had some moments in the Lakers series as a wing defensive player and as a guy who was making some corner threes. So they fill all of the necessary perimeter defense responsibilities. And then obviously in the front court, you can't do much better than Draymond Green and kim On Looni. They're a championship defense to front court and have done so four times. So really, to me, it comes down to depth.

So that brings us to our question did the Warriors do enough? I think they considerably improved within the postseason context. Why, Because Chris Paul is a massive upgrade over Jordan Poole. He just is. Jordan Poole was super inconsistent the playoff run he had in twenty twenty two. Obviously it's cemented in Stone he's a champion, but it's it's very uncommon for a young player to play that well on that stage. What happened last year is a better representtion of what

most most young guards do in a playoff setting. Chris Paul, again, as long as he can stay healthy, is going to be a more dependable option there, and he's going to give the Warriors a better chance of maintaining leads with Steph off the floor. Remember they were like plus forty seven with Steph on the floor and last year's playoffs and like minus forty nine with him off the floor, so they had a negative point differential because they struggled so much when Steph was off the floor. Chris Paul

gives you a better chance to fight in those situations. Also, as you can imagine, in a setting where you have to fall back on pick and roll because Anthony Davis is lingering in the paint and they're taking away all of your motion offense stuff, having Chris Paul is another option to run pick and rolls isn't advantage you can imagine even with Steph off the floor, a lineup with like Chris Paul, Klay Thompson and Kevon Looney just setting really hard screens to get Chris Paul open, drawing those

multiple defenders or giving him wide open pull up fifteen footers that are generating those close out opportunities for Klay Thompson. So Klay Thompson does and have to constantly attack a set defense at his age when Steph is off the floor. So I do think it improves their ceiling in the postseason context, but I am still worried about their ability to make it through an eighty two game season without running into similar problems that they ran into last year.

If you remember, after the season, I said they really needed to find a veteran forward that they could slot

between Andrew Wiggins and Draymond Green. Why because their size ended up being an issue for them on the road in particular last year, they could make up for it fighting with the energy of their home crowd and they were an elite defense and rebounding team at home, but that fell to pieces when they went on the road, and so having a veteran presence at the Ford spot I thought would have been a better use of the Jordan Poole contract in order to give them a better

chance of thriving in the physicality of those environments on the road. That said, that doesn't mean they don't have the same playoffs ceiling. It's more of a regular season problem.

In my opinion, I do think when push comes to shove, their lineup is going to be some combination of Draymonngray and Andrew Wiggins, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and I don't know if Chris Paul is going to make them too small or not, but at the end of the day, they're gonna have the ability and flexibility to potentially trade for that type of player when they get closer to

the deadline. Did they add a backup center, No, unless it's Tracey Jackson Davis, which means, once again, like last year, they're in a predicament where the developmental the developmental trajectory of their young players is going to play a huge role in what this team is capable of accomplishing. Because again, if you didn't get that forward to slot between between Andrew Wiggins and Draymond Green, that means it's got to be Tray Jackson Davis. Moses Moody, Jonathan Kamingo one of

those guys. Are they going to be ready yet? I don't know, And that's going to be the story of this particular season because remember that combination of older guys that are trying to find opportunities to conserve energy during the eighty two game season and younger players that are too inexperienced to consistently play well on the road put them in the predicament where they couldn't win games on

the road last year. So what I liked about a veteran forward is it adds depth so that these guys can conserve energy but still have enough and have more consistency compared to the up and down nature of young basketball players in the NBA. So again, like they have been getting a lot of reps. Jonathan Kaminga in particular, got a lot of reps last year, Moses Moody got more postseason reps in this particular postseason run against the Lakers.

And then again, Tray Jackson Davis is older than those guys and has been playing winning basketball for a while. So if one of those guys develops into that piece, then they won't have to make a trade. But once again, they could find themselves in a position where they're hovering around five hundred at the deadline and need to make a significant move to upgrade the front line, because I'm not sure if they have the depth to make it

all work now. Maybe Dario Sarach helps enough there, but I don't think he's athletic enough necessarily to dominate consistently in the physical environments they'll need him to on the road. There's also the Jordan element. How much of their road struggles last year came down to chemistry. You know, when you're on the road, you're traveling with your teammates all the time. When you're at home, you go home to your family, and so when you show up to the arena,

you're in a better mood. But on the road, it's like you're stuck with your teammates the whole time. And so if there's a chemistry beef and I don't I don't know the details. I don't know if Jordan Pool and Draymond Green still had issues that late in the season, but I don't know how much like if Jordan Poole and the relationship with Draymond had an adverse effect on their road situation. Getting Jordan Poole out of the situation might help as well with their chemistry and their ability

to bring good basketball away from trade from Chase Center. So, to take a long story short, I think that they're still in a predicament for the regular season and they could end up fighting for playoff position again all season,

which could be a problem. But I do think they considerably approved with improved within the postseason context because of the Chris Paul acquisition, and then again push comes to shove, maybe you can fly those young players at this deadline for that particular type of forward that you're looking for. All right, guys, that is all I have for today. Tomorrow, I am traveling to Vegas for Summer League. Don't forget

to come say hi while I'm out there. We have shows scheduled for Saturday and Sunday night that we're recording at the Blue Wires studio there at the Wind in Vegas. Don't forget to come say high. Like I said, I'll be sitting in the arena watching games for the most part. I also on playing some pickup basketball while I'm there too. I'll tweet out the locations that I'm going to, so I hope to see you this weekend. If not, then I'll see you guys on YouTube on Saturday night.