Hoops Tonight - Lakers-Nuggets Reaction: Murray GAME-WINNER stuns LeBron & LA, Jokic triple-double

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the Volume having Monday. Everybody, Oh ball, If you guys are having an incredible week, Well, we just got an absolutely unbelievable basketball game, and we're gonna be breaking down Lakers Nuggets as well as Nick Sixers. Man. I had to take a few minutes after that one just to kind of soak it all in. That was literally unbelievable.

Before we even get into the show, I just want to say I am so happy for Nuggets fans because that is a truly special basketball team you have there, And as heart wrenching as that was for myself and for so many Lakers fans out there, I'm sure it was the exact opposite in a good way for all of you Nuggets fans. And again, like this is just

the beginning too. I think this team is gonna be around for a long time, and I think they're gonna win a lot of basketball games in multiple championships, and so tonight is like one of those special kind of like checkpoints along the way in that journey. So I just want to say that I'm happy for you Nuggets fans because, like, man, what a special basketball team you guys are. The joefore we get started. Subscribe to a brand new YouTube channel so you don't miss any more

of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore jcnlt so you guys don't misshow announcements as well as the film threads that I do from time to time. Don't forget podcast feed wherever you get your podcast on our Hoops tonight. No, that's not least, keep dropping mail back questions in those YouTube comments so we can keep hitting them throughout the rest of this week. All right, Paul, my producer, has been telling me, you guys in the chat are bringing your a game with the trash talk.

I love it. Keep it coming. We're gonna get into it. I want to start by just saluting all the players in this game, the stars in particular, because all four of them gave us just unbelievable nights. Lebron James at age thirty nine, you can tell he wants this so bad. Remember last year in the postseason, it was his inability to hit shots over the top that was a big

factor in their late game execution struggles. And he went into the lab all summer long and he worked on his jump shot, and he came back and had the best jump shooting season of his career. And here in this environment when he desperately needed to make some shots, he hit three four actually massive jump shots in the fourth quarter, left it all out there on the floor, gave his everything on the defensive end of the floor. I had multiple big time swing plays down the stretch,

and he got a loss out of it. And so you know, here's the thing. He's one of the all time greats. He's not going to be around much longer. And that fight that you just saw from that guy at thirty nine years old, that's the reason why he's had the success he's had in his career. It didn't happen on accident. It's because he's wired the way that

he's wired. Anthony Davis, this is the guy who's gotten his ass kicked by Jokich at every single turn or for years now, and he went right at him in this game and had one of his best scoring games of his career. Actually forced the I should say in terms of efficiency, because he makes fourteen out of his first fifteen shots. He actually forced Denver to make an adjustment, which is something substantial adjustment, which is something they hadn't had to do for the most part over the course

of these two series. To this point, I thought he was amazing up int till the end of the game when he got into some foul trouble Nikole Jokich again, ad going right at him all game. By the way that happens in the NBA. Sometimes a guy that you know that's not as good as you gets on a heater and makes a bunch of shots, and he was defended relatively well, just forcing Ad into his weakness, which

is over the top shot making. That's something that for the most part over the last four years has been a weak point of his and he just stepped up and knocked down shots. That's that that you kind of

just have to tip the cap. But you know what Jokic did, grabbed twenty something rebounds and down the stretch of the game, took Ad into his office there on the right block and gave him bucket after bucket as the Nuggets walked down the Lakers and then finally Jamal Murray struggled really for what the first seven quarters of

this series. Shout out to Austin Reeves, a guy that you know, it's kind of gotten lost in the in the offensive surge from the Lakers over the course of the last like three four but Austin Reeves has been forced to take some high leverage point of attack assignments, and he's been really good for a couple of months now, and he did an amazing job on Jamal Murray over

the course of the first three quarters of this game. Honestly, if there's something that you could kind of nitpick with the Lakers down the stretch, I thought they got a little cute in their coverages and probably should have left Austin on Austin on Jamal because Jamal was able to shake free from Lebron and Ad down the stretch for

pull up jump shots. But Jamal Murray nightmare seven quarters, nightmare seven quarters, and he just completely takes over the game down the stretch in its massive shot after massive shot, all contested, all absolutely necessary for them to win the game. So again, I just want to tip the cap to all four of those guys because we get that amazing product, that unbelievable basketball game that we saw because of the supreme competitive energy that you get from four of the

very best players in this world. I think Jamal Murray is a top ten playoff player in the world. I think Lebron has been the third best player in the league since the All Star Break, behind Jokich and Luka Doncic. Anthony Davis showed you tonight how he's capable of playing like a top tier superstar when he's at his best, and Nikola Jokic is the bona fide, undisputed best player in the world, and we got to watch them all tonight have massive moments in a big time playoff game.

That was just fun as a basketball fan. Again, Like it's crazy because I had to as I was invested in that as a fan watching right and and like down the stretch of that game, it's like it just feel. It just felt like Denver was coming, and they were coming, and the Lakers kept throwing the jab and trying to hold them off, and then they just couldn't get that

one stop that they needed. As a matter of fact, the Nuggets scored on eight of their last nine possessions in this game, and with exception of that chaotic sequence where there was the transition kick ahead passage. By the way, this gets lost in the shuffle of all this, the Nuggets every single time the Lakers would make or miss a layup, but even after makes they were looking to push and Lebron gets downhill and he makes that layup

to put the Lakers up three. They immediately get the ball in bounds and whip it down the floor, and it was kind of a dangerous sequence because Austin Ryes almost broke the play up, but Aaron Gordon saves it in bounds and swings it back to Michael Porter Junior. D Loo comes back into the play and gets a nice rearview can tested the last second, but just bottoms

from Michael Porter Junior to tie the game. With exception of that shot, all of the other eight buckets that the Nuggets scored on their last nine possessions or Jokichen Murray, Jokic cooking Ad on the block and hitting easy shots off offensive rebounds, and he hit I think he hit a little jumper at the right elbow if I remember correctly as well, and then Jamal Murray just doing what he does again, like we get it gets lost in

the shuffle of the Jokic storyline. But like as much as Jokich is this like deadly accurate shot maker around on the rim, and he is, like he's a high sixty percent guy when he gets within you know, seven eight feet from the rim. Jabal Murray shoots forty six percent on pull up jump shots this year. Not effective field goal percentage, not weighted for threes field goal percentage. Like he makes half of them. That's what he does.

He makes half of them, and so that means, yeah, he might have stretching the game, and he had plenty of them over the first seven quarters where he misses three four in a row, but he's absolutely capable of going ahead and making three four in a row, and he made three or four in a row there at the end of the game. I thought Lebron and Ad got solid contests on the last two, but not as good as they could have gotten out that they were

both super fatigued. And that's the problem. Like you know, and this is kind of to kind of tilted back towards the Lakers for a second, Like this is the problem with having a team where your core five players Ruey Austin and Di Loo can't engage physically on the level that KCP Aaron Gordon can't. Right, So the problem is Lebron and Ad, your two best players, are also

your most physically imposing players. And so if you're gonna do something like slow down that massive Denver Nuggets front line, you need Lebron James and Anthony Davis to bring chaotic, unrelenting defensive energy. And they did. I want to shout those guys out. They did a really nice job in this game, and then they ran out of gas. And

that's why AD went cold down the stretch. That's why Lebron could barely make a layup in that third quarter, and that's why down the stretch of the game, AD and Lebron were on their heels defensively against Jamal Murray. And again, this is a team build thing, Like the reality we can talk about this all we want. The Nuggets in crunch time and two games against the Lakers in the regular season had an offensive rating over one ninety. Okay, you gave up a bucket on eight of your last

nine possessions. This is not like a You're close to being able to guard Denver's late game offense. No, you're fucking hopeless. You you cannot stop them. And and that is one hundred percent on the team building. That's on a Rob Polinka. They knew after last year's series that they did not have a starting caliber defender to throw on Jamal Murray. They knew they didn't have one. They knew it right after the Nuggets series. Oh shit, Dennis

Charter's too small. That's not gonna work. They need somebody. They needed to go get a bigger guard, a guard who could defend but also stay on the floor offensively and be like a fuck. That's why I say, that's what I mean. Want to say starting caliber, Right, anybody who's a legitimate starter for a good NBA team has

to be a two way player. Like if you're Aaron Gordon and you're not a great jump shooter, you have to be great at all of these other things offensively to be able to make that work, right, they didn't do it. And so when Pushkamp comes to shove at the end of every single one of these games, it's

Jamal Murray that they can't handle. You know, with Jokich, they can shade him and they can send multiple defenders and they could do all those things, but they cannot handle Jamal Murray because they do not have a quality perimeter defender on the roster that can stay on the

floor as a starter. So, like that's the thing. Like, if you the Nuggets are so good, they might score on six of their last nine possessions against most teams, the Nuggets are so good they might have a one thirty offensive rating against you when they're really locked in

down the stretch. When you're giving up one hundred and ninety something points per one hundred possessions and crunch time against this team over two clutch time games in the regular season, and you give up a bucket on eight of your last nine possessions, that's not oh, we're playing really good defense and Denver's just hitting shots. No, they're barbecuing you. They're scoring every single time down the floor.

You literally cannot get a stop, and so like, that's the thing, Like when I when I looked at all the teams after the Boston Denver tier, you know, dall Clippers, the Suns, the Lakers, the Wolves, the Thunder, all those teams, every single one of them has a gaping hole, not just a hole, but like a gaping hole somewhere on their roster, like a massive issue that they have to deal with. Denver doesn't have that, and Boston doesn't have that, and that's why they're so head and shoulders above the

rest of the league. The Lakers problem is they do not have a starting quality perimeter defender on the roster. It burned them in the regular season, burned them right here now, and so you did everything you could. You took all the punches, and you played a great game, and you put yourself in a position to win, and then Denver walked you down and scored every single time

down the floor. So like again, when this is all done, when the when the you know, I still I still think that the Lakers are going to get one in this series. Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe maybe Denver's just hell bent on sweeping these guys into oblivion, and maybe that's what will happen. But I think the Lakers will get one regardless when we get to the obitual are here

because the Nuggets are going to win the series. By the way, I would have come on the show had the Lakers one game too, I would have come on the show and told you I still think Denver's gonna win the series. Yeah, I mean, all you had to do was watch that game to know that, like, the Lakers outshot them. They played the game of their lives and they and they were just barely clinging on for dear life. So like, I didn't see this as a

series that was tilting towards the Lakers either way. I kind of looked at it vaguely similar to Lebron's game again in Game one against the Warriors in the twenty eighteen Finals, Like, yeah, it would have been a cool story for a few days if if you know, if jarr Smith doesn't forget that the game is tied and kicks the ball out to Lebron and Lebron hits a three at the top of the key, or George Hill makes that extra free throw or or whatever it is. The Lebron and that ISO against Steph at the top

of the key. If you would have scored somehow there, they wouldn't that game. It would have been a cute story. You would have come out of them and like, man, what a battle. But the Warriors were just better. They were gonna win that series and five had that not happened. And that's kind of how I felt about this game. The Lakers literally threw the punch of their lives and

did everything they could and it still wasn't enough. And so again, like I just want to I like, there is a certain there is a certain inevitability that happens with Denver. And I've talked about this quite a bit, but I think when we really start to sift through this, they literally could not stop Denver. Ever in these clutch time situations. They're getting damn near two points of possession against the Lakers in the clutch over a large sample size.

Now that you're not close, the Lakers are not close to beating Denver. They are there is a chasm between these two teams, and by the way, I think there's a chasm between Denver and every team in the West. So that's why I told you guys during the season. Unless Denver suffers an injury to one of their five starters. I personally would be surprised if they didn't win the conference, and honestly if they didn't win the title. That's how

I feel about this Denver team. So to kind of bring it back to what I said at the top of the show, just like, I'm really happy for you Denver fans because you guys got yourselves a real special one here, not just the team, but the player. I said this with Colin last night. I don't Nikola Jokic is playing on the offensive end at a higher level than any player that I've personally ever watched to play basketball.

That's what he's at right now. He had a relatively bad game and then he walked down the best defensive player in the world at the end of the game and gave him easy buckets. Not just buckets, easy buckets. This is a special group, major issue at the end of the game. I again, bad calls happen, and I think complaining about bad calls is stupid and I think

it's a loser mentality. But when I thought there was a questionable call at the end of the game where Lebron kind of bumped Jamal Murray a little bit on a drive and I thought Darvin ham with he had two timeouts left and it was a penalty. It was a it was a foul in the penalty that would have sent Jamal Murray to the line, and he just saved it, just didn't use it. I don't understand what

he was saving it for. You had two timeouts left, so even if you use it and it gets it doesn't get overturned, you still have your other time out left. And and literally those free throws tied the game. And if you go back through the game, there was a ton of contact that was getting allowed. On every drive. Ad is fouling Nicole Jokic on every post up, Christian Brown and Jamal Murray are fouling Lebron and every single iso. Ad is getting fouled by Aaron Gordon on his last

couple of post ups. Like everyone's fouling everybody. And when they go to these the challenge board and it's like it's like marginal contact, this marginal contact out. There was a play where d Lo got literally raked across the face and it was overturned on a challenge. So, like the point is, the refs were allowing a certain amount of physicality, So that was more or less, in the scope of the game, a bad call. So Darvin, that's his job there. Everyone else is doing their job, right,

Lebron's doing his job, eighty's doing their job. They're all fighting and scratching and clawing to try to win the game. And Darvin sitting on the sideline with his hands in his pockets not challenging a pivotal call in the game.

I thought that was bizarre. Also a little side note there, the Nuggets had a seventeen to thirteen free throw advantage, so to just kind of tie it all together, the Lakers had a nineteen to six free throw advantage in Game one in Denver one, and then in this game, Denver had a seventeen to thirteen free throw advantage and

got a crucial call down the stretch. So hopefully we can just put that stupid ass the league is trying to give the Lakers an abnormal free throw differential so that they could try to win the That was one of the dumbest things I've ever seen, And hopefully after

tonight we can finally put that to rest. Which, by the way, as I mentioned on the show the other day, this current Lakers team free throw differential doesn't even crack the top forty for highest free throw differential teams since the So there's literally nothing exceptional about the Lakers free throw differential except for the fact that they're the Lakers. And that was really dumb and I'm hoping after tonight we can finally put that to rest Denver second half front.

So the Lakers, one of the big ways they were getting going in this game, especially in the third quarter, was through Lebron ad pick and roll. So one of the reasons why I talked about how I expected the Lakers to be able to score in this series is there are baked in coverage advantages against Denvers that the Lakers struggle with against other teams. So for instance, when they play against switching teams like the Clippers. For instance, when teams do a lot of switching against the Lakers,

they get super stagnant and they struggle to score. And one of the main reasons why is like, when you're playing switching teams, you really have to play with force, and it requires Lebron and Ad to beat mismatches. Why because Austin and Di Loo are not guys that can beat people off the dribble. Rui's not really a guy that can beat someone off the dribble. He has to get like a really good guard matchup for it to work. So the Laker offense can really get stagged against switching defense.

Is it, by the way, that's happening against Denver in this series in the minutes when Yokic is off the floor, right, But they have guys that are really good at navigating screening actions when teams are in traditional coverages, and so in this series, like you saw at the start of this game, Austin reeves a ton of stuff on the ball to make Jamal Murray guard right, and Jamal's chasing over the top of screens. So Austin's getting into the lane that's a baked in driving lane. If it's a switch,

Austin has to beat someone off the dribble. If it's a ball screen, Austin all he has to do is set his man up for the screen and then he can get over the top and get downhill right. So like in general, the Laker the lebron Ad pick and roll. Most teams switch the lebron Ad pick and roll right, not the Nuggets they have Joki, John Ad. They have Gordon on Lebron, they chase over the top. That allows the Laker, the Lebron to get downhill, pull in Jokic

make those pocket passes to at so Ad. So in general, the Lakers were able to kind of take advantage of some baked in coverage advantages with Denver right, but there is an adjustment. So they're in that middle of that third quarter, Mike Malone calls the time out. They come out and they change the matchups and so again I want to put some of this credit to Ad as well, because it wasn't just the ball screens. AD was also

doing some damage to yokch in the post. So they put Aaron Gordon on Anthony Davis, they put Jokic on Ruey, and they move KCP to Lebron And that helps in a bunch of different ways. It gives Ad a different look in the post. The main difference was ball pressure. Jokic was basically playing on his heels and allowing Ad to shoot over the top shots and he was making them. Gordon was pressuring like you could see AD's in his triple threat, Jokic or Gordon swiping down at the ball,

getting up on him. So now Ady's capable of beating Gordon in the post too, but it's a different look, right, And Gordon's big enough that Ad is not just gonna be able to rip through him easily. Right, So that's a heece of defensive versatility with Aaron Gordon. He can guard a D and be the low man, or he can guard Ruey and be the low man. Right. So like those are advantages there, right, Jokic moves to Ruey KCP on Lebron. I thought KCP did a solid job

on Lebron at the end of this game. He actually stripped him in a post up off the left block. Now, Lebron hit some shots because Lebron's Lebron, and he obviously is one of the greatest players of all time, and he's gonna win some battles no matter what you do. But this is why I always talk about defensive versatility during the regular season. It's not so much about your baseline coverage. Your baseline coverage is what carries you for

the eighty two. Your baseline coverage is literally just a Your baseline coverage is literally just something that carries you. It's an innings eater, right. Utah Jazz used to have some really good defenses around Rudy Gobert that they could eat innings with over the eighty two. But then as soon as they ran into teams that could pull Rudy Gobert away from the rim, it exposed all of the weaker defensive personnel around it. Defensive versatility is okay, your

base coverage doesn't work anymore. Do you have personnel that can do something different? And they do. Anthony Davis didn't just start bullying Aaron Gordon because Aaron Gordon can guard bigger post scorers, right. KCP didn't just get ripped up by Lebron because he can guard bigger forward defenders right, or bigger forward offensive players. Right. That's why I talk

so much about offensive versatility. And so basically the Lakers countered that by bringing Ruey up into ball screens instead, and now as a result, it left Aaron Gordon as the low man. So one of the problems with the lebron Ada pick and roll when Yo Kicch and Gordon were guarding them. If Gordon's on the ball and Yo Kicch is on Lebron in a drop, who's on the back line? Do you remember when Ad got those back to back and ones to start the third quarter. Who

is the back line, Jamal Murray. When you move KCP to the ball and you put Aaron Gordon on a d a guy who made some jumpers in the first half but didn't make any in the in this and half, and so he kind of Gordon was able to help off of him. Now Gordon's on the back line, and so then what started happening, What was made layups turned into miss layups. Now there were some really easy missed ones there. Ruey missed a dunk right under the rim.

After the miss dunk, AD missed a completely uncontested put back layup. That was weird. There was a lot of weird shooting in this game, Like in the third quarter, the Nuggets missed a bunch of good looks from jump shot range and the Lakers missed like a half dozen

layups around the rim. But some of that was defensive effort from the Lakers making things more difficult for the Nuggets, and Aaron Gordon on the back line making things more difficult for the Lakers, Right, But I thought that was a really interesting adjustment and it showed just the versatility that Denver has defensively that they were able to switch up their look and slow down the Laker offense. And again, I thought putting Gordon on the back line as opposed

to on the ball kind of unlocked all of that. Also, like Ruyachimura rolling to the basket just not the same as Anthony Davis and Ruey the first game. I won't blame him because he had to guard it Jokic so much. Ruey was just asleep this game. I don't know what was going on with him. He missed in the first half, he missed a couple of point blank layups. He just in general just didn't seem very focused in this particular game for whatever reason. And that's something that he's gonna

have to fix when they get back to LA. But yeah, like I thought, putting him in the situation where he was the role man and Gordon as the low man, I thought, really changed the outlook of that game. And then from there that was what turned the twenty point lead into a ten point lead, right. And then some of it was bad execution too. Like I talked about with the Lakers, it's not about forty six minutes of execution. It's about forty eight minutes of execution. Just ask Sixers fans.

They did a really good job keeping New York off the offensive glass for forty seven and a half minutes, and then they let go of the rope for thirty seconds at the end of the game when they were tired, and it cost him a playoff game. That can happen, and so kind of on the Lakers side of it here,

like there was a stretch there. Do you remember Delo's ridiculous lob pass to Anthony Davis that was promptly followed by Torrian Prince randomly going Kevin Durant on the left wing and clanging a jumper that was with plenty of time on the shot clock. Spencer Dinwoodie just randomly in transition against Peyton Watson, who's one of the best athletic rim protector defenders that Denver has, Spencer just goes, screw it,

I'm gonna drive and shoot. Here these are critical execution errors like and again, you can't get into crunch time with Denver because you can't guard Denver. They score on you. They don't score on you half the time, they score on you every time in crunch time. So you got to keep your lead. The game was lost when they allowed it to get from twenty to ten there in the middle of the end of that third quarter. And

there were some execution errors in there. Obviously I want to credit Denver for the adjustment as well, but the Lakers had some execution errors. And again against Denver, what do they do? What does Denver do? Denver never lets go of the rope, and so when you do, they immediately gain ground and they can put you into some trouble. There got into a crunch time situation that couldn't get stops,

and that was it. Looking forward, Like I said, I didn't see this series tilting towards the Lakers even if they had one tonight. But that's gonna be really bad, really difficult to bounce back from. I still think the Lakers are gonna get one. I'll go. I'll go with Game three. The one thing that could be interesting is if the Nuggets stick with that adjustment and keep Gordon

on Ad and you'll get John Rui. That could cause them some problems because anytime Ad is in a spot up role, he's just not as good as a spot up player as Ruey is, and Ruey's not as good of a role man as Ad is. So that adjustment just kind of puts them into some into a predicament, right, And I don't know the Lakers. There's some things they could do. They could try to run screening actions like a ram screen. It would be an interesting one. So a RAMS screen is a downscreen for a ball screener

when he comes up to the level. So basically, imagine Ad standing under the basket guarded by Gordon. You have Ruy run down and make sure he hits Aaron Gordon. If he hits Aaron Gordon and Ad sprints up to the ball screen, chances are Jokich will follow him. That's an action that you can run to try to get a switch. It's no different than Jalen Brunson running a guard guard screen to get tyres Maxy on him before

he flows into the ball screen. Like, those are little intricacies you can use to try to fight against these adjustments. I think that's something that they will do again. We saw a little bit of Lebron on Jamal Murray tonight. I think that could work better in a game where the Lakers role players carry them and Lebron has the energy.

But in a night like tonight, and if Game three ends up being like this where Lebron and ad really have to engage themselves physically to keep the game close, I think you stick with Austin just because it doesn't matter if Lebron's capable, if he's too tired, right, and so I think that I think that's something that they'll look at. But there's not really a fix. Denver's better

than you. That's just the reality. It's just unfortunate because again, like I said, I thought the I thought the Lakers, specifically Lebron, a D d Lo, there were some guys for the Lakers that really left it all out there tonight, and they played well enough to win. But Denver's Denver, and so it was a loss instead. So it is what it is. Again, I'm gonna I'm gonna go Denver and five. At this point. Any hope of Denver and six I think fell apart with them losing tonight's game.

It's just it's just really difficult to bounce back from that. But man, what a basketball game. Moving on to Nick Sixers, I'm gonna I'm not gonna spend too much time on this one just because we've been going for a while already, and I'm gonna spend more time on this series during

the during the week the rest of the week. But as we talked about in our series preview, the Sixers I have more talent in the half court, right, and so one of the things we talked about is like, if they can just hold up better and the physical

areas of the game. I don't have the numbers right in front of me because it's in a different note, but they outscored the Knicks in the half court by twenty two points per one hundred posessions in Game one, and then they lost second chance points in fast break points by something crazy like thirty five points or something like that. They got absolutely blitzed, right, so they needed to hold up better. They did. They won the fast breakpoints battle, I think fourteen to ten. They held up

much better on the glass. They gave up twelve offensive rebounds and got ten of their own, so they held up better, right. But that final sequence, again, like I thought, the critical error there was they rushed their inbound and Tyres was kind of running along the baseline and had guys in pursuit. That's a difficult play no matter what. And again you gotta understand the predicament, so like in the same way that Darvin Ham needs to be able to read the situation and go, hey, this game's a

blood path, so if I challenge this, it might get overturned. Earlier, Mike Malone challenged d Lo getting slapped across the face on a layup attempt, clearly on video, and it got overturned. So maybe I should challenge this one too. That's reading the situation. Nick Nurse should have looked at the situation and been like, holy shit, this game has been super physical. Everyone's getting away with everything. I probably should call a time out here to make sure we get a clean catch. No,

he didn't. He tried to call a time out after the ball got inbounded. If I remember correctly, there's some footage going around. I think he called the timeout. He tried to call a time out right when Tyre's caught it, and then I think he tried to call it again when Tyrese was on the ground, and that, you know, here's the thing. Probably should have been accounted for by the refs. But as soon as that chaos is happening,

everyone's caught up in the chaos, including the refs. So like, the reality is they should never have thrown that inbound pass. They should never have thrown that inbound pass. They should have identified that that was a high risk situation and called a timeout before the ball even got inbound. And I haven't seen the replay yet, So if I if Nick Nurse did end up calling it before the inbounds pass was thrown that brown, then maybe that's something different.

But from what I could tell, it looked like the timeout call was after the inbound I have to go back and look at it. But again, like that's that's just about as catastrophic a loss as you'll see too. It's it's so funny because the Lakers got out done in Game two, but man, like, you do everything right and you're literally up by five in the final minute and offensive rebounds just once again, just inability to control the offensive glass giving multiple opportunities. Jalen Brunson gets an

extra shot in the corner. Then Dante DiVincenzo gets two looks at the top of the key and Dante had it going that game, big bounce back game from Dante, and he hit the game would ended up being the game winner. One last note on this one. It's not really gonna be a Brunson series in my opinion, Like like the way that the Sixers are kind of loading up, like the poor shooting Brunson numbers are, they're not a coincidence, They're not just bad luck. Like the Sixers are throwing

the kitchen sink at him. They have lanky defenders on him all the time, even when he has got Tyree s Maxie on him. Tyres Maxie's done a great job with back pressure and Joel embiad is anchoring things around the rim. This is not going to be a super high percentage efficient Brunson series. He might have a game or two or he shoots over fifty percent because he's a superstar in my opinion, and he's capable of that, but this is really going to be the pendulum is

going to be dirty work. Brunson has just had a huge disadvantage personnel wise as a shot creator compared to where Tyrese Maxi and Joel Embiid are. And you saw that down the stretch of that game. Who got better shots down the end the Sixers did, with exception of those offensive rebound jumpers that the Knicks got late. So that dynamic is not going to change this game. This series will continue to oscillate back and forth on the

dirty work, the offensive glass, and the transition sequence. I believe that the Sixers are going to blow the Knicks out in game three. I would not be surprised at all if they tied up this series. This series is not over that set. It is really difficult to beat a team four times out of seven without home court advantage, let alone five. And you beat the Knicks tonight for forty seven and a half minutes and they came back and got you on a crazy sequence at the end

of the game. So now you basically have to beat them five times out of seven. That is not going to be easy. But go home. You're the more talented team. You're at home. You're desperate beat them up in game three. Game four will be close. If m beating MAXI can close the deal and if they can control those things on the margins too to two series, then you get your rematch in New York to try to undo what

happened in this particular game. But I mean, that's gonna be really tough to balance back from no matter how you slice it. That's a really really tough set of circumstances. I want to shout Tyris Maxi in this game again. I've always been a big Tyres mac fan. I've told you guys this before, but I ran into him in Vegas. And I've seen forty NBA players hanging out in Vegas,

and he was the only guy I saw working out. Now, to be clear, I'm sure most of those players were working out while they're in Vegas, but just when I saw him, it just was just it was just cool because I was like, Man, this guy's here, but he's he's like this business trip. I'm hanging out, gonna have some fun, but it's a business trip. And I just have always been a fan of Tyres Maxzin in general. I think he's got a really fun game and came out this game super hot, by the way, playing through

flu like symptoms. Came out super hot, and he got ice cold there in that third quarter stretch, and he couldn't hit a jumper to save his life, and obviously Joel Embiid was super fatigued there down the stretch of the game. But I thought, I thought max he was magnificent down the stretch of this game, and I thought that you know, for this being his first opportunity to be kind of the tip of the spear in an NBA playoff environment for a team with real expectations, he's

showing us that he can do this. He can do this at a really high level. I think he's a legitimate number two. And he just went into MSG and hit a big shot after big shot down the stretch and gave his team a really good chance to win. And honestly, like I don't blame him for that final sequence.

That's on the coach in my opinion, that that ball should never have been inbounded, that should never have made its way to Tyris Maxi under the circumstances again, and this is something everyone's got to adjust, including the coaching stabs. They got to adjust and understand that this is brutally physical basketball that we're seeing in most of these games. And you got to understand that if you allow like congested environments to take place, guys might get fouled and

it just might not get called. And you have to account for that in your game planning. All right, guys, that is all I have for tonight. As always, I sincerely appreciate you for supporting the show probably going to take the daytime tomorrow off, but we will be back later in the evening for an instant reaction video after the final game of the night. I will see you guys then. Thanks for rocking with me, See you tomorrow. The volume