Hoops Tonight - Lakers BACK? LeBron James & LA BLOW OUT Tatum & Celtics, time to go ALL-IN

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for the show today. We're gonna do two episodes in this one. I watched Lakers Celtics live last night and I just wanted to give my Lakers Celtics thoughts here in the morning. Then when I'm done here, I'm gonna go back and watch some more games from last night and do our mailbag. So just Laker Celtics in this video and then keep an eye on the feed. Later today we'll have more instant reaction content as well as a mailbag. You guys are the joke before we get started.

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follow us there. And the last but not least, keep dropping mail bag questions in the YouTube comments so we can keep hitting them on Fridays throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So after the Lakers got smashed by the Clippers, I did an episode where I talked about the Lakers looking like they're starting to lose belief a little bit, some bad body language, some comments, and the postgame presser from JJ Reddick and

Lebron James. It just kind of seemed like they didn't, they were losing confidence in their ability to achieve their ultimate goal this year. After last night's dominant win against the Boston Celtics, JJ Reddick said, hopefully there's some belief reinforced here about what we can and be, And so I wanted to take a second, just really quickly before we dive into the deeper details of this game, to talk about why belief is so important to a basketball team.

In my opinion, there are two mental hurdles that every team has to get through in order to play championship basketball. And these are separate from anything with talent on the roster because we all can agree that, like, in order to accomplish something as a basketball team, you have to have talented players, and then you have to play a certain type of way. Right, it's a combination of two factors, right.

The first mental hurdle is you got to compete. You have to get your competitive motor running, meaning you have to be bought into the concept of winning, not just playing basketball. I've referred to this concept on the show as the fear of losing, because I think that's actually more how it manifests for competitors, Like I think it has more to do with just like a trying to survive that game without losing that mentality that brings that

competitive nature out of people. If you're not going to compete, you're not going to win. If you're just okay with losing and you're more in it for love of the game, you're never gonna get to where you want to go in terms of championship goals. I thought that D'Angelo Russell quote was an interesting example of that when he talked about never taking for granted playing free basketball again. Free

basketball is fun. I know the feeling. I vividly remember when I finished my last practice, last game, last sequence playing in college, and I came home and I went to go play pick up at the University of Arizona Rec Center, and I vividly remember this feeling where I was like, this is fun, Like it's not work anymore. Like it's like, if I happen to not get back on defense on this possession, I'm not going to have

a coach chewing me out or anything like that. And especially coming off of that particular season, which was the most structured team that I ever played with, and so like I sympathize with the feeling of like what it feels like to play stakes free basketball, but at the end of the day, like it has some fun to it. But playing winning basketball is a fundamentally different thing. It's also fun, but in a different way. It's more like work.

The attention to detail consumes your every thought. That last year that I played in college, I played at the NAIA level up in Phoenix at a school called Arizona Christian University. At the NAIA level, the coaching is insane.

Shout out to coach Jeff Rudder up there by far the most structured team that I played in in college and the closest thing to the pros in terms of like advanced schematic stuff on both ends of the floor, and so like there what I had a coaching staff that was relentlessly holding me accountable to my job on both ends of the floor when I was there. That it's like work, but the rewards come in different ways. Like you build camaraderie with your teammates as you survive

the grind together. You have these team accomplishments like winning games or winning trophies, and yes, you do still have some fun. Do you think the Lakers were having fun when they were kicking the shit out of the Celtics last night. Like it's fun when it all comes together, but it definitely feels overall more like work. So you got to get your competitive motor running so that you're willing to do the work. But if basketball is gonna feel like work, if it's going to feel like a chore,

then you better be getting rewarded for it. This is where belief comes into the equation. Playing winning basketball is a pain in the ass. It's constant mental engagement. It's a shit ton of running, it's taking a bunch of physical contact. It's holding onto the rope. No matter how good or how bad things get, it's really hard to do. The team needs to believe that they're hard work the shit that sucks will actually lead to them getting the

thing that they want, in this case, silario'brian Trophy. Before this game against the Celtics, the Lakers had been consistently dropping games against good teams. The Clippers controlled them, These Spurs destroyed them in the second half. The Mavericks destroyed them in the second half. The Rockets basically led them wire to wire. The Lakers got it close a couple times, but Houston always pulled away the Cavs. The Lakers hung tight for about two and a half quarters and then lost control.

trade for more talent, which we'll get into later. But if you bring in more talent, obviously Lebron and Ad will believe more. But a second thing that can accomplish that is a signature win, a win that demonstrates to you what your ceiling looks like. So you can at least strive to be at that ceiling as much as

possible moving forward. And I thought last night was that for the Lakers internally, Lebron James in his postgame presser was really trying to dump a bunch of water on that win and talk about it's just another night in the NBA.

that there were some other factors that play here. I thought that last night had a lot more to do with like good Lakers than any sort of like big picture problem that the Celtics have. Like the Lakers played a great game. The Celtics weren't playing their best and they were worn down. That's how you end up getting a blowout, right But I do think where I disagree with Lebron is I do think it's an example of

what they can be. I saw a lot of potential outcomes in my mind for last night's game, including some that involved the Lakers winning. I thought they could win that game, but I never in a million years thought the Lakers would control that game from wire to wire, blow them out, and do it with their defense. That was Boston's first twenty point loss of this entire season. It was only the second twenty point loss in the Drew Holiday, and chrisops porzingis era here with the Celtics.

So again, everyone including Lakers fans, knows that the Boston Celtics are not at their best right now and that when they see them again in March, it will probably be a much greater challenge. But the Lakers also played their best game of the season last night. It's okay to acknowledge that too. To JJ's point, hopefully there's some belief reinforced about what this team can be.

bad road team. They have shaken my faith in them, in large part beyond it because the roster issues I knew about going into the season. In large part what shook my faith in them is the lack of commitment. I thought after what happened with Darvin ham last night, I thought that or last season. I thought that JJ Reddick coming in and trying to establish more structure with the group from are to finish and on a possession of possession basis, would galvanize these guys to actually attack

a regular season and that's not what happened. I think that there's a mandatory minimum level of regular season engagement for a team to win a title, and I think the Lakers have fallen woefully short of that in the large sample this season. But there have been moments where we've seen what it looks like last night is at least the kind of win that JJ can use to try to put up on a pedestal as an example and put it in the team's face and be like,

this is what you're capable of doing. This is where I want to start getting into some specifics from the game. JJ Reddick talked about them keeping the ball in front. It was a big part of how the Lakers kept the Celtics out of wide open catch and shoot jump shots last night. The Celtics generate sixteen unguarded catch and shoot jump shots per game according to Synergy, that's the third most in the NBA. They generated only eleven last night. A big part of that was the Lakers containing the

basketball staying out of rotation. Are the Lakers an elite perimeter defense full of guys that can put the clamps on people? No, of course not. But they do have plenty of guys who can guard. And there is a huge difference in this team between when they're really competing to stay in front of the ball and when they aren't. The other thing that JJ talked a lot about was game plan discipline. He said it was their best game plan discipline game of the season. The big thing there

was not overreacting to Boston hunting mismatches. The Celtics are a killer whale offense, right They pick on your worst defender, try to attack him, usually in the post or with an ISO. When Porzingis would catch a smaller player in the post, whether it was Max or was Austin. They weren't doubling. They were doing what you're supposed to do

in a switching defense. They were crowding, digging, stunting, but all within the context of being able to quickly close out to a shooter to not give up the easy swing pass, swing pass, wide open catch and shoot. Three types of things that can happen when you recklessly double or you're not set up for that sort of thing. Anthony Davis was really the only guy last night that would occasionally completely leave his man to try to like go for a late shot block on a player in

the post, or like really dig down. But again, Anthony Davis his if you think of it like this, like if you the camera are the shooter and I am the offensive player that has the ball, there's a space between us, right and if you're the help defender, your ability to cover ground is going to dictate how much you can come over to help. If you're a freaky athlete, you might be able to straight up double team and

then recover. Like there are guys like Gary Payton with the Warriors, Draymond Green with the Warriors I've talked about where it's like they can straight up double team but then still get out. Yehannest for years did this with the Bucks and still does from time to time, where it's like he can help at the rim or double team but still close out to a shooter. That's that's

unique player to player. Anthony Davis was the guy last night that was a little bit more aggressive in terms of his helper's doubles or stunts or is attempting to go in and get a block at the end of an ISO. But for the most part, everyone else was kind of splitting that difference and not overreacting to those attacks.

straight line drives, they've been dominated in the post. They've been standing around off ball and glued up to shooters and just leaving a guy on an island one on one instead of crowding and making it more of a tight space type of ISO to make life easier for your on ball defender. And then the gang rebounding piece. They give up a switch, and then they'd all just standing around while the ball came off the rim, and a big player that's matched up with a little player

would go get the rebound over the little player. It's pretty clear after what you saw last night and what we've seen at times this year, they are capable of executing that scheme properly. And that's the vision that JJ sees when he's in practice, when he's looking at the roster, when he's you know, at home, obsessing over this kind of thing. He thinks, like, these fucking guys can switch. I know they can do it. This is a scheme that will work for us. They just gotta fucking do it.

That's what he's thinking. That's what's going on in JJ's head, and that's why like he stuck with it as long as he did.

get into the postseason. So I like the idea of continuing to try to build it out. I just think they might have to stick with more traditional schemes for the most part during the regular season because this team just doesn't want to do the job in order for that switching scheme to work. I've always talked about how to guard Boston. In my opinion, the best way to guard Boston is to switch and contain, because if you switch and contain, then you force them to take off

the dribble jump shots. As soon as you get compromised in containment, meaning they start driving past you or posting through you, that's when you're gonna start either giving up layups which will beat you, or having a hard help which will beat you with them getting wide open threes. But switching and containing is the way to guard Boston. It is the appropriate game plan. The Lakers did it, they did it right, and it worked. Like JJ said, it was their best game plan discipline game of the season.

Their rebounding was super sharp. The Lakers have been a bad rebounding team all season. Specifically, they allow an offensive rebound on about thirty percent of their opponent's misses on the season, that ranks twenty third in the NBA. Last night, the group effort was excellent. There were some weak spots, like I thought Ruey had a RUI. I think he had six or seven rebounds, but he lost several. He allowed several offensive rebounds by missing box outs and not

crashing properly. But as a team, I thought they did great. They allowed an offensive rebound on just twenty three percent of Boston's missus last night, which is an excellent number. That's a seventy seven percent defensive rebound percenters.

is a lowman and is inconsistent effort. The lowman is an incredibly important position in the NBA because in terms of defensive responsibility, the reason why, like what usually happens there is you're putting the You're always going to put the lowman is typically on the opponent's worst offensive player, a guy that they're typically gonna jam in the corner in the dunker spot, right because they want to have them provide a very basic role to try to provide

some spacing, but they're not going to do much in the way ball handling, right, And so then what ends up happening is your elite ball handlers, they're all like great jump shooters, and so as they're coming up off these screens, you got to have your big up at the level. You got to get your big up there, right, So Anthony Davis is coming up to the level of screens, he's getting out on the perimeter, especially in these switches, right like when the Lakers are switching, Anthony Davis is

ending up on the perimeter. And so what ends up happening is like in those ball screens, the low man all of a sudden becomes responsible for two people. Because if Anthony Davis is up at the level and there's a role man behind, Lebron now has to account for the role man who got behind Anthony Davis and Lebron's

man in the corner. Or if Anthony Davis switches out onto the perimeter in a switch and now there's a post player looking to attack a smaller Laker, Lebron once again is the primary helper and rebounder in that situation. If he's gonna help the guy in the post. He's the guy who's closest, He's the guy who's got to

get the rebound when the shot goes up. There's a lot of physical responsibility on that position, a lot of meeting guys at the rim, like rim confrontations, a lot of big contested rebounds, a lot of difficult rotations out

to a shooter in the corner. It's a difficult position, and you got a forty year old playing it, a forty year old that on nights like last night looks like a dominant lowman, and then on many nights this season is a downright destructive lowman because he's not jumping for every contested rebound, not jumping in every ring confrontation, and not making those rotations on.

Christy is playing. You know, now, Austin Reeves is not your best perimmeter defender in the starting lineup, right, Like, they have good talent around them in terms of at least adequate defensive talent. When Lebron and ad are engaged like that, they can actually be a really successful defensive group. But this is one of the things, like, and again, I've been on the fence about the trading for a center thing because I think it's got to be the

right kind of center. If it's a really good center, I think it's the kind of thing that could add a physical element to this team that makes them difficult to deal with. I just think a really good center is expensive and maybe not available, and I'm not sure that the Lakers can pull it off. And I think bringing in a mediocre center or a bad center, you know, relative to starting centers in the league, doesn't really accomplish anything.

But if you want to know why that like too big look that Anthony Davis talks about a lot is something that's appealing to him, it's specifically because Anthony Davis would love to have a lowman who does that kind of stuff consistently night tonight, unlike Lebron James does, or maybe he'd like to be the low man. Right, this

is where we talk about the Jannis and brook Lopez concept. Right, like it's a bracket if you're defending action three on two in ball screens, meaning like you're ball screen defenders coming up to the level and back like a high drop and back, and your lowman is going help at

the rim corner. Help at the rim corner. There's these two large amounts of space that you have to cover both vertically and side to side, and so having two seven foot dudes that can get back and forth in those situations is really difficult to deal with for any offense. And so one of the reasons why Anthony Davis has talked a lot about wanting to have a center is he envisions a world where you send a center. Let's call it Walker Kestler. And I think Walker Kestler is

a very very long shot. I think it's very unlikely that Utah trades him, but he's kind of like a dream target for me, just because I think he's the kind of guy that could really add a physical dynamic to the Lakers. You send Walker Kessler up to the level. Anthony Davis is your low man. You saw how good Lebron was at it last night. Imagine Anthony Davis doing that in large chunks throughout the season.

people are willing to admit. And so from that standpoint, like, it's got to be the right kind of guy. But it is an interesting concept. One of the things that we saw last night is Lebron James himself can scale up and be a great low man in the postseason. This is why the Lakers are very difficult to discuss as a regular season team. They are definitely more dangerous as a playoff team than they are as a regular

season team. Their regular season performances are not necessarily the best representation of what they would look like in the postseason. When I watch the Calves, I'm watching a Calves team that's gonna play more or less the same way in the postseason. They're young, they're athletic, They're playing great basketball every single night. Their pathway is, we're gonna perfect basketball and see if it carries us when we get into the postseason. This is a forty year old Lebron James.

It's completely unrealistic to expect him to be as locked in in the regular season every single night as some of these other teams are. That said, even within that context, I think there is a certain threshold, a mandatory minimum of regular season engagement. Like I talked about, that is mandatory that Lebron and the Lakers have fallen short of this season.

Reeves in really important games. He just I don't know if it's it's the expression, it's like he's a gamer. That's literally what it is for Austin, Like, if it's a really big, really important game, I just count on Austin Reeves to be the best version of himself. I

thought his dribble penetration was key last night. He was just constantly attacking getting downhill a lot of like pace, meaning like instead of dribbling the ball off the floor slowly and then statically standing at it, staring at a defender and then trying to drive past him, which is going to be the hardest time to drive past a good defender, especially a good defender like a Derek whit or Drew Holiday, Right, that's the hardest time to do it.

But if you're going up pace, meaning like let's say you get a defensive rebound, you throw it up to Austin, Austin dribbles up the floor and then with like he's all right, but he got ahead of steam. He's coming at you at full speed and then it's in and out crossover, Like while he's coming at you full speed, that's so much harder to contain. That's so much harder to keep in front, right, And like he was just

all night like made basket miss basket. It didn't matter Austin was coming at the Celtics with a head of steam and getting into the paint. I actually thought he generated some catch and shoot looks that didn't go down either. Like I thought, Austin played a great game, didn't turn the ball over, competed defensively, just a really really solid game. Gave Vincent defended well all night. There was an early fourth quarter stretch where Peyton Pritchard kept trying to bully him,

and he just stood him up and got stops. He had four threes gave Vincent, by the way, in his last sixteen games of shooting forty one percent from three on four attempts per game. But I want to just just before we're done with the Lakers, I just want

to shout out Lebron James and Anthony Davis. I've been really critical of them this year for inconsistent engagement, and I've blamed them in a lot of ways for this lopsided season that they've had, and I do believe that their their lack of engagement has been a problem for this Lakers team in terms of their kind of uneven performance throughout this season. But I just thought they were absolutely fantastic on both ends of the floor last night.

I thought they were the two best players last night. And again, I know Jaylen Brown and Jason Tatum were gassed, and again I set them aside for a minute. We're talking about the Lakers. I'm just saying in that particular game, Lebron James and Anthony Davis were better. They were truly physically dominant on both ends of the floor in a way that they have often looked when they get to the postseason. That's why it's so hard to quit these guys.

You have a six nine, two hundred and sixty pound monster power forward and a six ' eleven, two hundred and sixty pound monster center with a seven to six wingspan that can play power forward. They both can run and jump with the best in the league and their elite defensive players when they want to be, and they both thrive offensively as the physicality and the intensity go up, Which brings me to my final point.

a smaller deal on the margins. You need to include first round draft compensation. And if you don't think Lebron James and Anthony Davis can do it, which I think would be fucking insane after what we saw last night, then pull the dam of team up, Like, if you don't think they can do it, trade the guys. But a smaller move accomplishes nothing. Either be about it or don't be about it. No more sitting around and watching the greatest basketball player of all time and another top

ten player in this league. Try to fight through what you guys know, damn well, is not a championship roster. Frankly, if you Rob Polinka and Jeanie Buss are not going to compete alongside Lebron James and Anthony Davis, then you need to send them to a team that will compete with them. And so at that point, I mean, Lebron and Ad said a clear message last night. We can still go. We can still go with the best guys, but they need horses, and you've got two first round picks.

How are we gonna look back at the Lebron era with the Lakers? How are we gonna look back when it's five years from now in the Lake are mid rebuild, but they have two extra first round picks instead of the you know seven or whatever they would or they could get by taking on bad salary and trading role players for draft compensation. They could easily recoup all this stuff down the line. You know what happens when you

trade for good players. They're good players. So when you trade for good players, then suddenly you don't need the good players anymore. You get to trade the good players. And when you get to trade the good players, you get picks back. Put the picks on the table, Do everything in your power to give these guys what they need to fight or be done with this, be done with it. Trade them. But like Lebron and Ad want it as frustrating as their commitment has been this year.

So either meet them at that level or don't. On the Celtics front, I don't think there's much to get in here. Ironically, as I talked about, this is their first twenty point loss of the season and only their second indie drew holiday Christops porzingis era. Guess what their last twenty point loss was January last year, a thirty plus point blowout loss in Milwaukee. Also a fifth game and seven nights, also the tail end of a back

to back, also an overtime game the night before. Most of this was just fatigue, guys, not too much to get into there. I talked about settling the other day. Settling is about conserving energy, and settling, to me is just like I have a mismatch, but instead of attacking it with physicality, I'm gonna take a jump shot. There was a lot of settling last night, but a good amount of that is almost to be expected under the circumstances, and again something we've seen.

That's not good process. Still a ton of settling. That really is the main issue that I'm seeing if you ask me to like pinpoint one specific issue with the Celtics right now. They're trying to beat mismatches too often with jump shots instead of physical aggression. When you're physically aggressive against the mismatch, you get easy twos. When you get easy twos, it becomes untenable for the defense. When it becomes untenable for the defense, they start to send

extra bodies. When they start to send extra bodies, that's when you get your wide open catch and shoot threes. It happens in that order. If you attack mismatches by settling, you get tougher twos. If you get tougher twos, you don't hit enough of them. If you don't hit enough of them, the defense doesn't view it as untenable. If the defense doesn't view it as an untenable. They're gonna

let you keep attacking like that. They let you keep attacking like that, you'll continue to hit inefficient twos and you won't keep your team in rhythm with catch and shoot jump shots in the ball popping ground. It's just a it's an order of operations for Boston. And again I'm not judging last night because I think it's about fatigue.

But like I talked about that sixteen catch and shoot wide open, sixteen unguarded catch shoo jump shots at the Celtics attempt every game that ranks third in the NBA. Last night was the fifth consecutive game where they did not reach sixteen unguarded catching shoots six games in a row or five games five games in a row like that. That's a troubling trend in terms of just their overall offensive approach. That's the thing that they got a picks

to get this thing back on track. All right, guys, that's all I have for today, or all I have for this morning. I should say I'll be back later. Today was some more game reactions in a mailbag.