Hoops Tonight - Lakers beat Warriors in Steph Curry's return, Suns outlast Mavericks, 76ers' big win | Hoops Tonight

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having a great weekend. I'm not gonna go too long today because I'm away from the studio, but I'm gonna hit on the three big nationally televised games from the last two days. We're gonna hit Warriors Lakers, which just went down. Then we're gonna hit Souns MAVs in that crazy clutch showdown with Katie hitting the game winner, and then we're gonna finish up with the Sixers getting a signature win on the road in Milwaukee last night. You

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some basketball. So the Lakers get a huge win at home over the Golden State Warriors. I thought the story of this game was the ball handling differential between the Lakers guards, kind of just piecing together what a primary ball handler looks like versus kind of an uneven day from Jordan Pool in particular. But I do want to start with Ad because he was an absolute monster on both ends of the floor in this game, and he

deserves the most credit. Thirty nine points on twenty five shots, countless important baskets down the stretch, in the short roll and in isolation. He took much better care of the basketball than he did against Minnesota, which is a huge plot line in this game for the Lakers guards in particular, and he completely and utterly locked down the paint, held the Warriors to just twenty six points in the paint

in this game. Went with a similar scheme to what they've used against the Warriors in the last couple of matchups, ignoring the non shooters trying to deny in top lock the off ball shooters. The Warriors did a much better job in this game of getting separation from those top locks. They got a lot of open shots curling around. Steph got hot in the fourth quarter and they had to start chasing him off the line and started to open

up some things at the rim. But for the most part, Anthony Davis did an amazing job locking down the paint and on the biggest possession of the game, a straight face up ISO against Draymond Green on that left block. You know when I've been critical of him over the years of settling for jumpers a lot in those situations, he just ripped through to the baseline. And again, Draymond is probably, if not the best, one of the very

best defenders at his position in the league. Didn't settle, ripped through the baseline, went through that little push shot that he always goes to where he just kind of reaches up over the top of the defense and kind of shoots like a floater. And I've said a lot in recent weeks like that's when you can tell when Anthony Davis is really locked in, it is when he's making that little push shot, that floater. He had another big one in the short roll where he hit a

floater over Looney down the stretch. That's that same type of shot, just in a short roll situation instead of in an ISO situation. That's when you can tell that Anthony Davis is really locked in, and he he made all the big plays down the stretch of this game to get the win. So tip of the cap to him.

You know, I've said with a d a bunch, but this is such a great opportunity hit for him to prove his MVP value Because this Lakers team, if they can get healthy, if they can get D'Angelo Russell out there, if they can get Lebron James out there, they are good, not just good, but a legitimate threat in the Western Conference. But it doesn't matter if they don't make it out

of this play in tournament scramble situation. And the only way they're gonna do that with D'Angelo Russell taking his sweet time getting back from an ankle injury and Anthony Davis or excuse me, Lebron James being out with his foot injury. They need Anthony Davis to produce at an all world level, and for the most part, he's been doing that. It's been a little uneven from time to time, but he's done what he's needed to do to notch a couple of wins here. And you know, it is

specifically like that Minnesota Timberwolves win. That's a tough one. That's one that, especially with all of the other things that broke right for them in the standings, unique, but winning this one against Golden State, which I didn't think they'd be able to win without D'Angelo Russell, so major shout out to them. It kind of undoes some of

the damage from that loss to Minnesota. But again I said, the story of this game was the collective ball handling of the Lakers Austin Reeves, Lonnie Walker, Dennis Schroeder and Malik Beasley. They took way better care of the basketball than they did against Minnesota. Nine total turnovers. Those four guys combined for forty six points and seventeen assists. That's

cobbling together. Primary ball handling. Austin Reeves in particular was amazing sixteen points, eight assists in just twenty eight minutes only two turnovers made of huge three on the left wing in the fourth quarter. Just in general, you know, again, I like him slotted better as kind of like a second side guy, as that fifth starter, especially in clutch

situations and running bench groups. But all of these guys, all four of these guys have been put in a tough spot because with D'Angelo Russell being with Lebron James being out, every single one of them is kind of underqualified, so to speak, for what they're being asked to do filling those roles. And particularly in the thunder win when Anthony Davis sat out and in this game against the Warriors, though all of those guys stepped up and made big plays to help them win a game they shouldn't have

been able to win. One last Laker I wanted to shout out was Troy Brown Junior. He hit a bunch of super important threes, including one on the right wing there down the stretch that wasn't even open, just rose up and knocked it down. That's a that is a confident, you know, like audacity type of shot that you love to see from a guy. And I think it's a great example of the benefit of having the pedigree that

Troy Brown has. He's a former lottery pick who's now operating in a smaller role on a veteran minimum contract, But that is a player who earlier in his basketball career had the ball in his hands a lot and has a lot of confidence, and he leaned on it in that moment. On the Warriors front, I thought Steph was better than I expected him to be. He usually

struggles with rhythm in these types of games. Didn't struggle as nearly as much as I expected to Usually when he comes back from injury, there's that three four game kind of like get back up to speed, get the timing right on everything before he really starts clicking, and he was pretty good right away. The Warriors made several

runs in this game. I'm sure as a Warriors fan it was frustrating for you guys watching because it was like they just kept getting right back to within one, and then the Lakers would go on a run, and then they get back to with one, and then the Lakers would go on a run. That happened like seven or eight times in this game. The one guy in particular I thought really struggled today was Jordan Poole. And specifically on the last big Lakers run when they in

the middle of the fourth quarter. I thought Jordan Poole took a couple of really bad shots early in possessions without really having his feet set that I thought sprung those Laker that final Laker run to get them back into the league. Now, some of it's to be expected. You know, this is a guy who's been starting a lot out of this season as a result of the

Steph Curry injuries, and it's a complete roll shift. Not only is he coming off the bench, he's running with different groups plays that when he's on the floor with Steph's suddenly plays that we're running for him are being run for Steff. So I want to cut him some slack from the standpoint of just having that wrench thrown into everything. But I thought that him, in particular, that gap between like Austin Reeves's production today and Jordan Poole was a huge swing factor in a game that the

Warriors should have won. All right, let's move on to Suns MAVs. So I only caught the fourth quarter of this one, but I'm going to watch the rest tomorrow morning, and if I see anything specifically interesting. We'll cover it in tomorrow's show. We have Nick's Celtics tonight two. That game we're gonna be covering tomorrow as well, So a ton of good stuff to get into in tomorrow's show. But the Sun's win one thirty to one twenty six.

Katie hits the game winner with eleven seconds left. You know, it's an interesting counter from Katie on that possession because the MAVs doubled him on almost all of his touches, especially on like high post low post, like catching triple threat type of situations. They were double teaming him, and on this particular possession, he's kind of dribbling out front against Tim Hardaway Junior at the logo and Kyrie Irving

just hard doubles from the right wing. And what he did, which I thought was really smart, as he made the swing pass to ish Wayne Wright and then that caused Kyrie to recover, and then when he got the ball back, he did a rip through away from the double team. So he took the double team out as an option by going quickly in the opposite direction. The Dallas defense was set up to double from Kyrie's side, and by

Katie ripping through and going the other way. Kyrie kind of meandered in that direction like kind of soft, like chasing him like he was gonna double, but he would have had to sprint to get there in time, and that allowed Katie to operate one on one, and he just hit that classic dribble pull up jump shot that he's made so many times in his career and that he's been hitting at an insane rate this season. Kevin Durant is shooting a sixty percent effective field goal percentage

on pull up jump shots this year. How freaking insane is that that's pull up off the dribble jump shots, one of the toughest shots in the league, counting when you add the weight of three point shots in their value, a sixty percent effective field goal percentage, which was just insane. Then Luca goes down and he smokes an easy layup. But Devin Booker comes in and has a little moment

at his expense. And I tweeted about this, but like again, I liked Devin Booker for the record, so this is not me coming after him in the sense that you would think, But to be honest, like I thought it was kind of lame that, you know, Luca literally went into your house in a playoff series and embarrassed you. And in a regular season game where Kevin Durant hits the game winner, you're gonna start talking shit to Luca at that point like that just I mean again, some

of it, that's just Devin Booker's personality. He's a shit talker. He does that all the time. But it did come off kind of lame when it's like, Okay, you brought in maybe the best player in the world to win a battle for you, and then you're gonna talk shit when literally Luca just embarrassed you on the bigger stage, not a regular season stage, but literally a playoff stage when you were the one seed in the conferences. It was definitely a little bit weird. But the suns Lay

game offense was super interesting. Like I said, they were doubling Kad on the catch and they got a lot of really wide open shots out of that ish Waynwright and CP three in particular actually missed a couple of wide open shots down the stretch of this game, so their offense they were generating extremely high quality shots. There was a quote, I think it was from the last game, the Bulls game I can't remember who the reporter was,

so I apologize for not getting this right. But somebody questioned him on just how he's been handling the doubles, and Kadi said something in the presser that's been something that I've talked about a lot, which is if, like your job as in a primary initiator is not necessarily to shoot every time or to get the assist, it's to draw that second defender to create that initial advantage that the other basketball hit players on your team can

further the advantage and get that really great shot, right. And Katie straight up said that after when he was questioned about it and basically said, like, I understand that my role is to draw that second defender and from there, he said in the in the quote, he's like, from there we can play. That's when basketball starts, is the way he framed it. And that's the thing is like, when you have that four on three, now it's that driving kick basketball and guys making reads, but you need

to get the basketball to start. And the only way the basketball is gonna start is if your best player or whoever your primary initiator is, can draw that second defender in to start that four on three action, but even when the MAVs got misses, they couldn't close out the defensive possession. The MAVs got two stops in the final minute of that game, they forced CP three into a miss at the foul line, Devin Booker missed like a driving, floating bank shot, and on both of them,

DeAndre Ayton kept the possession alive. On the first one he drew a foul and then on the second one, when Booker shot that driving bank shot, he drew Powell into help and as a result, that left Kyrie and Luca to contend with DeAndre eton under the basket, which is a battle they're gonna lose almost every single time, he ended up getting the offensive rebound putback, and again like this is this is if you have real size and athleticism at the forward position, then you can crack

down from the wing and you have a chance of winning that rebounding battle. But this is a team that just doesn't have that athleticism. Like if Maxi Kleiba or Dwight Powell are drawn in to a ball handle or driving to the basket, everyone around them is going to be a guard or Luca, who's not a great athlete, So you're not going to win a lot of those contested rebound battles. That's just the reality of Dallas's predicament. Kyrie and Luca were both magnificent down the stretch of

this game. They went blow for blow with the Suns, but the Sun's got two additional opportunities because of a physical disadvantage in the front court in the form of DeAndre Ayton. It's impossible to win games, or I shouldn't say impossible, but it's gonna make it so much harder to win games when you're asking your players to be nearly perfect because the other team has more margin for

error because of their physical advantages. This game swung on Phoenix getting two additional shots because of two box out situations where the Mavericks couldn't contend physically. And the reality is is that problem will only get exacerbated when they get into the postseason. I'm going to dive into the film of this one tomorrow and if I see anything else interesting, we'll call. We'll dive into it in tomorrow's show. So the Sixers get a signature win on the road

in Milwaukee one thirty three to one thirty. I've said a half dozen times on the show in the last few months that I've been super impressed with the fight, just that like competitive energy, and that like we're in the trenches together and we're going to find a way to win this game. Type of energy that I've seen from James Harden and Joel Embiid not just on a night in a night out basis, but especially in these

major nationally televised games. Even in that game they lost against Boston, like they battled down the stretch of that game and made a lot of big plays, and you know what, you lost to a really good team on a really tough shot, which is gonna happen sometimes from Jason Tatum. But I've been impressed with their battle a

lot this season. And you know, last night went on the road to what I think is the best team in the league in the Milwaukee Bucks, and both James Harden and Joel Embiid out played Jannis to not yet another signature win for them. I wanted to start with the shift to start the fourth quarters. So the Bucks were up double digits and Harden's running the bench group and he got them back into the game on both

ends of the floor. On one end of the flour, he's guarding Jannis and on the other end of the flour, just making Milwaukee pay for their base shell principle defensive scheme. Like I've talked a lot when we talked about Michael Porter Junior, about having a tall player on the week

side who was an aggressive and dead eye shooter. When you have that, it makes even shell drill principles, you know, useless, because the idea of shell drills, like if the balls on the opposite side of the floor and I'm guarding the shooter, I am going to position myself several steps away from the shooter to be ready to help if I need to. Right. But when you have these super aggressive tall shooters a rifle pass into the shooting pocket, I can't rotate in time, not enough, not in time

to bother that shot. And James Harden time and time again to start the fourth quarter of this game, was making that swing pass across the court just like Yokich does the Michael Porter Jr. But to your just kneeang and he was knocking him down and that was the offensive side of the run. On the other end of the floor, James Harden held his own more than held his own against Giannis. There was a player Jannis got to the foul line, but for the most part, he

held his own. Now, that's not something that you're going to go to in large doses in a playoff series, Jannis would figure that out and he would barbecue him. But in small doses like that, Harden has some physical advantages. He's built like a truck. He's got a low center of gravity. He's really hard to move off his spot.

He's always a good post defender. Some of you guys might remember in that first elim ending game in the All Star Game, when James Harden was having some success guarding Jannis Antenna Kompo on the post right at the end of the day, like that, just sliding your feet, having that taking that contact in the chest, having the strength to hold your ground. That will at least force Jannis to make shots over the top. They're gonna be easier shots because he has such a height advantage, but

it's gonna make him make shots over the top. And Jannis has struggled making shots over the top this year, and James Harden got a bunch of stops there. But the bench unit basically erased a double digit lead, Milwaukee punched back. Brook Lopez was incredible down the stretch of this game, made a huge three. He had like a really nifty kind of under the rim layup on Joel Embiad made him nice play in the short role to Drew Holiday in the week side corner. He was magnificent.

But James Harden and Joel Embiid just went blow for blow with the Bucks every possession. Down the stretch of this game. Harden was beaten Chris Middleton off the dribble to draw fouls and to get all the way to the him. Joel embie when he was catching on his short roll, was being super physically aggressive to the rim to force the refs to blow the whistle. It wasn't grifty stuff, it was just physical aggression. He wasn't trying to draw fouls. He was just going hard to the

rim and it was resulting in fouls. That to me is a way more honorable way to get to the foul line. But then they won the game on two critical threes in two critical stops. The first three was James Harden. I think it was Drew Holiday went underneath the screen. Now from way out, it was like a twenty eight footer, but James Harden rose up and knocked down that three over the top of that of that

ball screen. And then the second one, Joel embiid with that pump bake and kind of reoriented himself and had a wide open three from the top of the key and he knocked it down. They made the two shots, and then on the other end they got two critical stops.

The first one, the Bucks ran a ton of Drew Jannis pick and roll down the stretch of this game, and you know, Jannis actually drew a couple of fouls in the fourth quarter on lob passes because it was kind of a tough predicament because you know, Drew Holliday hit a short pull up jump shot in the fourth quarter, so like Joel's having to come out from his drop to contain the ball handler right, which puts you in

a tough spot on the back line. But on the first stop after the James Harden three, if I'm getting my possessions correctly, he Joel and Be did a really impressive job of showing out to stop Drew from taking the three, but then sprinted back in time to force Jannis into a post up rather than just to catch and finish, and he forced Jannis into a miss under

the rim. It was an incredible defensive effort. And then after he hit the three to give him the lead, he just straight up switched the pick and roll onto Drew Holliday, which completely threw the Bucks off. They didn't even know what to do next because they were operating in that like pick and roll short roll situation the entire fourth quarter, and he slid his feet. Drew Holiday didn't kind of know what to do, and he ended

up taking a tough, contested three off the dribble. Joel got a good contest and he forced the miss and that was the game. So you know, down the stretch of this game, James Harden and Joel Embid were the two best players on the floor. They made all the big plays on both ends of the floor. And that's why I haven't been able to write off Philly again. Like I'm not gonna pick Philly to win the East.

I'm gonna pick probably Milwaukee or Boston. Right if Milwaukee or Boston end up in a playoff series against Philly in the second round, I will be picking Milwaukee or Boston. Okay, but all season long. What I've told you guys is Philly has a real chance. If James Harden and Joel and Bid play this well, they can beat anybody. I'm skeptical too. Embiad's perimeter jumpshot has fallen apart a few times. He's been exposed in some specific matchups with his foot speed.

James Harden obviously has a long resume of struggling in the NBA postseason. I'm skeptical too, but if they play to this level in the postseason, they are talented enough to beat anybody and we can't write them off. All right, guys, that's all I have for today. We're gonna be back tomorrow covering Nick Celtics, a little bit more from that Sun's MAVs game and whatever. I'll have to look at the slate to see if there's any other interesting games tonight.

That show should be releasing in the early evening tomorrow, so to keep an eye on the feeds. As always, I appreciate your guys as support and I will see you next time. The volume