Hoops Tonight - Lakers Lose Stunner To Hornets + SGA’s MVP Case

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one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkang dot co slash b ball. All right, welcome to tonight here at the Volume. Happy Thursday, everybody, Hope all of you guys are having a great week. Got a jampack show for you today. We got back to some NBA basketball last night as the Lakers put up a stinker against the Charlotte Hornets. Some brilliant basketball from Labelo Ball and Miles Bridges down the stretch.

podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you guys leave a rating and a review on that front. We also have brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Make sure you guys follow us there so you can get more content throughout the rest of the season. And last not at least keep dropping mailbag question so we can get to them in our Friday mailbags throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball.

So I honestly thought this was a really sloppy game from both teams outside of a few short stretches, like the Lakers controlled the first two and a half quarters, but I didn't think they were playing particularly well, really sloppy, especially on the offensive ends. Still a lot of guys feeling each other out.

than they've been playing the rest of this season. We'll get to that in a little bit, But just a lot of sloppiness right yet, somehow they're in control for the first two and a half quarters despite not playing well, and it's because despite everything I just said, the Hornets

were playing even worse. JJ Reddick talked after the game about some of the realities of teams he's been on post All Star break and how they can run into just a little bit of funk because you're just not used to playing basketball is very much a rhythm sport, and like he's been on teams where they've come out of the break and they've looked great, and he's been on teams where they've come out of the break and looked terrible. It's kind of just part of the sport,

right So they're playing some sloppy basketball. The Hornets come out in the late third quarter finally start playing what I thought was the first stretch of good basketball that either team played last night, and they promptly won and went on a twenty three to one run that really changed the dynamic of that game, and Charlie got going

on offense in that stretch. I thought Nurkic was really the catalyst of this portion of the game getting a You know, Nurkic is a guy that got a bad rap for a lot of things in Phoenix, and he's a really flawed player. And I'm not trying to sit here and pretend like he's some sort of a savior for the Charlotte Hornets or anything like that. But Nurkic has some skills and he can play like I was impressed in years past in Phoenix at some of his

drop coverage defense. He got a couple of big drop coverage stops, one on Lebron James where he stonewalled in the play where Austin Reeves got ejected. He stripped him down low and may or may not have been a foul, but like a lot of times, contact right around the basketball, refs are going to let that sort of thing go. It's kind of like a fifty to fifty call, and he got a good strip there that led to that ejection.

The free throw is also a stop. Like I've been, you know, generally keyed in on a couple of things that Nurkic can do well, and he did those things well.

a sudden, you got dribble penetration. JJ Redick and the Lakers were double teaming use of Nurkic in the post against this centerless Lakers group, which, by the way, Nurkic had zero points last night, so I would have probably like made him score once or twice before I started reacting the way that they did. But he made really nice passes out of the double team, got a wide open three for Miles Bridges on the left wing that

he knocked down. Got another wide open three to one pass away for Seth Curry on the right wing that he knocked down. I thought Nurkic was definitely the catalyst of that run, at least the initial part of the run as the Hornets took their initial lead. Shout out to Seth Curry too. He had a couple of huge plays in that strike, which kept two possessions alive. To stripped Jared Vanderbilt after a defensive rebound right underneath the basket. He beat Lebron to a loose ball that generated an

extra offensive rebound. They go on this run. They take a three point lead going into the early part of the fourth quarter. Then LaMelo comes into the game and immediately hits two threes and suddenly they're up by nine. It was kind of like this fancy screen and rescreen action with Seth Curry where LaMelo ball like screens down for Seth Curry who comes off the screen and then

immediately turns around and screens for LaMelo again. It's just designed to confuse switching and Gabe Vincent and Dalton connect for the two players involved, and Gabe was kind of waiting for whoever went in towards the paint, and Dalton should have been waiting forever who came for whoever came out, But Dalton wasn't paying attention. LaMelo just flashed to the top, caught the ball, knocked down a three point shot, and then the other three he hit was just simple drop

covered shot. Alex Lenz on the floor, he's sitting back in a drop just get that ball screen, gets a little bit of separation at the top of the key and knocks it down. Suddenly the Lakers are down by nine. That was how quickly things turned around. That whole run, That whole twenty three to one run took place in just a little bit over five minutes of game time. So that was like the first stretch of real serious basketball that either team played.

then a post up double of Luca. Lebron drives the close out instead of taking a three and throws down what I think was the dunk of the year against Mark Williams, just completely absurd. It actually reminded me of the dunk that he had back in twenty eighteen against Nurkic. Different dunk is on that dunk, Lebron is going down the left lane line and kind of dunked off to his right side, whereas this he's dunking over his body

to the left. But it reminded me in the sense that he kind of went around the center and then just extended, Like Lebron is a very underrated wingspan, he just kind of extended over the top and finished just.

on a switch. He had another nice play later in the game in clutch time where he drove Mark Williams on a switch and got a foul hit the three that gave them a shot late in the game, although he ended up missing the shot that could have tied the game, but just an unbelievable run from Lebron James kind of reinstigates some control for the Lakers as it

turns into a clutch battle. But then down the stretch Miles Bredge, Miles Ridges, and LaMelo Ball they just outdueled Lebron and Luca, in large part because the Lakers again not getting anything from Luca on the offensive end of the floor, at least by Luca's standards. Like Luca had a bunch of really nice plays and pick and roll

and out of the post regenerated advantages. You know, that's the thing with players of his talent level, like we all think he played like garbage and here's the thing he did by his standards, but like he still did a lot, They still won his minutes. But there's a certain level of there's a certain level of pop that you're gonna get from Luca offensively that you just haven't seen yet in.

got downhill and drew a foul against Jackson Hayes. Another one where he dropped it off to Mark Williams for an easy two under the rim. Miles Bridges hit a bunch of big stretch of shots in this stretch. I always talked about the idea Derek White is the best in the league at this in my opinion, but the idea of like switch interchange and the gap that takes

place there. So like basically, if if Miles Bridges is dribbling against one player and a hornet comes up and sets a screen, and that player is going to be the guy who's guarding the screener is going to be switching out to Miles Bridges. But there's like an interchange, right, There's a gap as the on ball defender disengages and the new switching defender engages. Now, really good switching defense there. You're usually closing out in those situations and switching with aggression.

You're switching with ball pressure to close that interchange gap as quickly as you can.

worth less than a point this year. So like some of this is like I can imagine the game plan was close out a bit shorter on some of these types of shots, but it doesn't matter in the moment when LaMelo is hitting and has been hitting all night, and Miles Bridges is hitting and has been hitting all night, like,

you kind of have to make that adjustment. And there were three times in the second half where Miles Bridges hit threes against those switch interchanges, particularly Jared Vanderbilt and Jackson Hayes on those switches were slow to get out to the perimeter and knock those shots down. Those were all huge shots for Miles Bridges that really kind of

helped Charlotte maintain control of the game. Then the two biggest plays of the game, so again Lebron draws a foul against Mark Williams and then Luca gets an offensive rebound put back. Suddenly the Lakers are up by one in the final minute just because of a couple of plays made by Lebron and Luca. But the Lakers just couldn't contain LaMelo. Two times in a row, he generates a bucket. The first one gets Luca on a switch, Dorian Finney Smith doubles. When Dorian Phinney Smith doubles, he

waves Luca out of the switch. Now when he waves Luca out of the double, Luca's got to rotate.

they're on I call him windshield wiper rotations. When they're connected, when guys are rotating at the same time, those openings close up immediately.

And then the second one, you put Vanderbilt in as a defense offense sub so that you can get a stop, and Vando just gets cooked by LaMelo. It just gets completely cooked. On a little left to right crossover. The Lakers were offering a lot of nail help where they were like digging down from the wing, but guys were just swiping instead of actually like containing the drive.

share after this one. LaMelo is such a polarizing player for me when I watch him, because he does a lot of things that drive me crazy.

he gets past you. He's just such a great finisher. He's such a great playmaker, and if you sit back and contain the drive. Again, he hasn't been shooting super well, but when he has this jump shot going, he can make you pay for sitting back off of him. Right, and last night he was hitting and he consistently made the Lakers pay. Just a really tantalizing prospect strictly from a talent perspective, even if he can drive me crazy sometimes Lakers front, I'm gonna say the same thing I

said after the Utah loss. The loss itself doesn't mean anything. Like, we all know that the Lakers could easily dispatch of the Charlotte Hornets if they were in a more urgent.

Other than Jared Vanderbilt, it seems like everyone is kind of like a perfect fit on the offensive end of the floor.

in the Luca era. In the three games that he's played so far with Luca, they have a minus twenty one point four net rating with him on the floor, one zero three offensive rating, a one twenty four defensive rating.

And that's the main thing I want to highlight right away, Like he's been really bad on defense, which is so unusual for it right Like a lot of dumb stuff last night, Like he had a play where he in the third quarter where he hard closed out on Dikwan Jefferies on the left wing, and it's like Dikwon Jefferies

can't shoot. He's like thirty percent on catch and shoot jump shots this year, hard close out ends up giving up a drive and dikwe hits a little scoop shot over the top of him, or like on that final possession losing LaMelo Ball on a straight line drive. Or he several times over the first couple of games where he's got defensive rebounds, but he hasn't had good awareness of what's happening around him, and he gets stripped from behind or.

lenn in that Utah game. Like the Lakers were plus twelve last night with Jackson Hayes on the floor, they were plus eight with Alex lenn on the floor. So they were plus twenty with their centers on the floor. That's how bad their small ball groups got butchered. And this team has a lot of good small ball personnel. JJ believes in small ball it wouldn't matter if you had Mark Williams or if you had a better center.

JJ's going to play a lot of small ball with this group and they're gonna have to figure that part out. There's a couple of different things I want to look at there, first of all, like Vando's got to find his space within this fit on the floor without a center on the offensive end of the floor. This extends beyond Vando, by the way, because there were small ball groups that have struggled even without Vando over the course

of this stretch. One of the things that changes when you shift to this style of offense, which is again I've talked about this a lot on the show, but like in when you're running a motion and you at the ball constantly flowing from side to side, and you have your big operating as a screener, dribble handoff fulkrim at the top of the key, which was the right way to play with Austin, Dillo and Lebron and that's why it worked so well last year under Darvin Ham.

When you have that five out motion concept, your dunker spot, your rollman type of stuff around the basket, it's always vacant until someone cuts into that space or rolls into

that space. Once you start playing more like this style where it's like a lot more of like Lebron Louke spread the floor, ball screens, post ups, where it's more brute force, it becomes easier to space the floor in more of a four out one in context, meaning like if Lebron's going to be attacking a matchup like a one on one matchup on the left wing, if everyone standing around the three point line, the gaps get pretty shrunken, right and then suddenly people are helping in driving lanes

and it gets.

is most likely a smaller player. And so one of the things the Lakers are having issues with is Jared Vanderbilt in many cases isn't even in the dunker spot, like he's kind of floating around, not even as screener

is kind of floating around. So part of it is like getting Vando into the dunker spot, or get Vando out of the dunker spot, have him operate out of the corner as a crasher, as an off ball screener, and try to have more situations where you have a guard right underneath the basket where you can quickly catch and finish. Have a Ruiyacha Murrow who's been drawing smaller defenders and did a lot of damage in the post last night. Have they gave Vincent down there in that spot?

But Vando's going to be the issue. There will be a lot of sequences where Vando is in the dunker spot, but he has a center on him, and that center feels comfortable splitting the difference between helping and contesting Vando at the rim. So what do you do in that situation when Vando is your issue underneath the basket. That is where having Luca at MVP level makes such a

huge difference. Luca is one of the very best shot makers in this league, Luca can be impervious to spacing at times because of his ability to score in the short to mid range right and so again, just by having and play much better on defense and by having Luca play much better on offense, these lineups can work a lot better than they have. However, I do think it's important to at least factor in that Vando could be an issue there. It's something that against the best

teams in the league that have elite rim protection. It's a problem that the Lakers might have to face and that they might have to deal with. And again, what you can do there is if vand do's off the floor, you can try to make up for that by having guards in the dunker spot to create spacing, like we talked about earlier, That's what the Celtics do so incredibly well. But again, just having Luca play better, having Jared Vanderbilt

play better on defense will go a long way. Austin too, Like I talked about this after the Utah game, like Austin's one of the most reliable big game players in the NBA. I trust that dude so much when it's an important game against a good team. But he can throw out some stinkers against some bad teams, and like I thought, Austin was really bad last night, and then he compounded it by complaining about a foul call, which, by the way, like I talked about earlier, was a

fifty to fifty call. It wasn't like a rake on the arms. It was a rake kind of right around the wrist ball area. And when it's a bang bang sequence in a basketball game, that's a call that refs will miss. Like I talked about earlier, I view that as like a fifty to fifty call. Sometimes you're going to get it. Sometimes it's going to be called a strip, and for you to lose control, run up on the ref say whatever you said he said, He said it three times. He bumped him on the elbow, Like you

made it so that you had to get ejected. And now all of a sudden you're in a situation where you have less talent on the floor down the stretch of the game.

So first of all, before we get into any like schematic stuff, you just have to do better, Like you just have to do a better job of containing the ball. And this goes deeper than just Luca. This goes down the roster to a bunch of different guys like Ruey got back cut a bunch of times last night, Like that's a way of giving up dribble penetration just by not paying attention, right, Like you're one of your top tier defenders, and Jared Vanderbilt gives up a.

giving up dribble penetration, you have to be prepared. There were large portions of this game where I thought they looked great in this regard.

some of those extra rotations. And then simple stuff like that double team or Dorian Finney Smith waved Luca out. If you're gonna scram Luca out of switches, and that's basically what that is. So like if Luca gets picked on on a switch and you just run a team over and get Luca out of there, you're scramming him out of a mismatch. You need to be prepared for that scram and in crunch time they had a sequence where they just weren't ready for it. And so again

different team. You're not used to having a guy like Luke on the floor that you have to cover for, but now you do. So you just got to figure out the back end of that. And so that's the thing, like when we talk about the Lakers, they're not gonna be some world beating.

the floor. They just need to get to the point where they get enough stops or they get enough defensive rebounds to allow their offense to push them over the top. And a lot of that will come down to everyone competing better on the ball well, getting actual high level defensive impact out of your high level defensive players, and having a plan for Luca. Got to have a plan for how to react to those situations when they start

picking on picking on Luca in space. The one last thing that stood out to me the much of this team and their potential success this year will come down to the play of younger players like Ruy Hachimura. Ruy's played great for the most part as of late, but he's a young player and he can make a lot of mistakes. I talked about him losing laur Markinen as a shooter a lot in the game right before the All Star break. He was lost a lot in this game.

There's a play with Nurkic where he was on the right wing close entry to Nurkic and his man just cuts right off of him, and he's just like he's not double teaming, he's not guarding any anybody. All of a sudden, his man catches the ball in the back cut, it gets sprayed out to Miles Bridges. Then he just throws this crazy, reckless close out Miles and Miles Bridges, who just kind of shows the ball, Ruby goes flying

by and then Miles hits the three. A lot of possessions like that where Rui's just kind of like all over the place on the defensive end of the floor.

is a young player. There's some guys in this rotation that are young players, and you know how I feel about young players. When you get to the postseason. It's something that could be an issue, but again, this team will demonstrate a much larger margin for error once they

figure out things on offense. And again I expect them to be a team that when I wouldn't be surprised if from now through the end of the season they were well north of a one to twenty offensive rating once they actually kind of get their sea legs underneath them. And I think it's only a matter of time, all right, before we get out of here tonight. Welcome to Course Correction,

brought to you by Microsoft. Just like the star players and teams navigating performance hurdles, business decision makers today are under immense pressure to get things right. They must rise to the occasion, turning challenges into opportunities. Microsoft empowers these visionaries with AI solutions, simplified cloud and data management and trustworthy responsible AI. When you're in the NBA, you have

your own hurdles to face. In this segment, we explore the challenges faced by teams or star players and how they can turn things around. Whatever challenge you're facing, Microsoft empowers you with the expertise to say bring it on. This week, we're discussing the challenge faced by current MVP favorite Shay Gilders Alexander. Two things happen this year that

made life substantially tougher on Shae Gilders, Alexander and the Thunder. First, Jalen Williams really talented young player, He's been embroiled in a season long shooting slump. His true shooting percentage is a full six percent lower than it was last year, which is not entirely uncommon for a young player. Young players go through going pains. This team has a lot of young players on board. That's been a issue for

the Thunder this year. Secondly, Shay loses his second or his most talented co star in Chet Holmgren broken hit. This is a huge chunk of the season, but it hasn't mattered at all. I saw this crazy stat that my friend Carson Breber from Nerd Sesh tweeted out yesterday. When shakeyil does Alexander is on the floor this year, when no Chet and no Jalen Williams. So just imagine shake yoes Alexander and a bunch of really young role players, good young role players, but young role players that have

flaws that have offensive limitations. One thousand two hundred and fifty eight possessions, a massive sample size, a plus twenty nine net rating, one thirty three offensive rating, a one to oh four defensive rating. Just unbelievable work from.

passes seventy fourth percentile. Just picking teams apart is shooting forty four percent on all pull up jumpers, fifty one percent on pull up jumpers if you wait them for threes, forty eight percent on floaters, sixty three percent on layups, which is insane for a guard. Some of the best athletic wings in the league hover in the high fifties at the rim on layups. Over a block and a steal per game. He's right around three stocks per game

Right now. He's minus five hundred to win MVP on DraftKings and I think he absolutely deserves it for overcoming adversity this season to lead the most dominant team in the league this regular season. That's it for this week's course correction. Remember Microsoft's AI solutions empower you to take bold steps and make informed decisions, sparking new ideas to

help drive your business forward. Microsoft as your trusted partner, you can navigate your journey with confidence, finding innovative solutions and reaching new possibilities. Visit Microsoft dot com slash challengers to learn more. All right, guys, that's all I have for tonight. As always, a sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We'll be back tomorrow with some breakdowns from another slate of NBA games and a mailbag.