Hoops Tonight - Lakers Smoke Thunder, Rockets Body Warriors, Nuggets Defense In Shambles

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at the volume heavy Monday, everybody. Oh lol. If you guys had a great weekend, got a jam pack show for you today we're getting off the top with the Lakers getting a signature win for the first time since Lebron came back from injury against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Kind of a proof of concept of some of the things I've talked about in that matchup, albeit influenced by an absurd shooting performance by the Lakers, that should temper some of the some of the optimism coming out of

that matchup. After that, we're going to talk about the Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets and their showdown last night. The Rockets put Steph in jail, hold them to three points, showcase some of their upside in terms of their perimeter size. I want to talk about the difference between the Rockets defense and the OKC defense and some of the ways that that caused problems for the Warriors.

And then at the tail end of the show, we're gonna talk a little bit about the Indiana Pacers Nuggets game from last night. As the Pacers shredded Denver's defense, showed I have a couple of troubling statistics coming out of Denver's defense. We're going to talk a little bit about the Pacers offense and how they took advantage of those weaknesses. And then at the very end over the weekend, I missed it because I was busy, but there was a healthy out of reopening of the Steph versus Lebron debate,

which everyone is entitled to their opinion. I personally disagreed with a lot of what I heard. I'll give you guys my take at the tail end of the show. You guys are the Joe before we started to subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter, underscore JSNLTS, you guys don't miss you announcement. Don't forget about a podcast feed where we get your podcast on our Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating in

a review on that front, we als said. Brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, where Jackson's doing incredible work this year. Make sure you guys follow us there for extra content. The last but not at least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments so that we can hit them in our weekly mail bags throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Lakers blew out the thunder last night because

they shot extremely well. That was the reasoning for the blowout. They shot fifty one jump shots. I got seventy eight points out of them. That's that's insane. It's one point five to three points per shot, So that was the reason for the dramatic differential between the two teams. But as I allays say is I literally always say on the show, shooting variants or luck or whatever you want to call it plays a role in shot result, but

I always think comfort plays a larger role. The Lakers stars and by association, their role players were comfortable in that game, more comfortable than their Thunder counterparts. That allowed them to get into an offensive rhythm that the Thunder were not able to get into. You talk a lot about the Lakers shooting. That's the number three offense in the league that the Lakers held in ninety nine points

last night. And yeah, the Lakers have been somewhat inconsistent defensively since Lebron's injury, but as we saw it before Lebron's injury, they are capable of getting to that type of level on the defensive end of the floor. Arguably, the most exciting thing about what happened last night was

the Laker defense getting back to four. But the only way to flip shot result, like if you want shot result to go from seventy eight points on fifty one jump shots, to fifty two points on fifty one jump shots. You're not gonna get that just by rolling the dice. Again. If you roll that same set of dice and you allow the Lakers to get as comfortable as they did, they may not get one point five to three points per shot. They'll probably be one point two one point

three points per shot. If you let them get that comfortable. You have to find a way to flip the comfort dynamic in order to get that luck to play in your favor, which is why I always talk about that as a subsidiary factor and not the main factor in shot result when we're talking about basketball games. Why were Lebron and Lucas so comfortable They had forty nine points on thirty six shots, thirteen assists to just four turnovers. This is the Lakers advantage in this matchup perimeter size.

This perimeter size dynamic is the main reason why I've been viewing the Thunder matchup in particular as a matchup that the Lakers are capable of winning. The Thunder are much better at center, but the Thunder centers aren't necessarily physical. They're not going to pass you around like a Yokich or a Shangoon or a zubats right, so they aren't

able to bully the smaller groups. Then when you get out of the center position, the Lakers are just much much bigger and stronger on the perimeter, and so Luca and Lebron are able to use their size and strength to do two things. Get to spots on the floor because they can dislodge bases and fight for position because of their size and strength, and they can protect the ball.

They can keep the ball away from those guys. Only two turnovers for Lebron, only two turnovers for Luca in this game, because they're going against dudes that are somewhere between six three and six six, and every single one of them is given forty to fifty pounds up at a minimum to Lebron and Luca in these situations when they're attacking. It wasn't even just the smalls. Luca was having his way with Isaiah Hartenstein at the start of this game. As far as the offensive side of the

ball goes. The most exciting part of what we got out of that game, if you're a Lakers fan, is that they had success against a switching defense, an elite switching defense, historically a statistically prominent defense that switched every screen, and Luca was able to punish Isaiah Hartenstein and switches start to force the double teams that led to those kickout opportunities for the quality catch and shoot looks. Lebron and Luca attacking Smalls all right in the middle of

the floor where it's hard to double team. The short range shot making is such an important piece of Lebron and Luca punishing Smalls. The Lakers made nine short to mid range shots in this game, either floaters or short jump shots or mid range jump shots. That is how you punish those matchups to the point where they start sending extra attention. They ran thirty seven thirty seven ISOs and post ups in this game and were well over a point per possession. That is the verse version of

the team that can be successful against switching. Lebron and Luca both have to in Austin as well, to a certain extent, have to punish teams in single coverage enough to draw the help that leads to the rotation opportunities that lead to the rhythm and flow of their offense that gets them those catch and shoot threes that they get much more easily against a drop coverage or against an at the level coverage, but it requires a more

diligent punishing of matchups against switching. They did that last night. That's what it can look like. That's what I've been talking about NonStop since this trade. They can be good at beating switching defense. It starts with Lebron and Luca.

Like we're gonna talk about a little bit more in a minute, but like Luca has struggled so much against the top teams that they played against Boston, against Golden State, this was exactly what they needed from Luca in those games, punishing one on one attack that leads to the advantage situations that can come their way. The defense was equally impressive. They held the number three offense in the NBA to just ninety nine points. When the Laker defense was a

was dominant before Lebron's injury. They had this swarming feel. Every drive seemed to run into a pre They would funnel drive towards the sideline. There's a pre planned helper that's waiting outside of the block in kind of like a catch help situation. The guy on the ball will immediately start rotating. Everyone's flying around and the openings that

look like openings turn into pretty well contested threes. The Lakers allowed just ten unguarded catch and shoot jump shots yesterday against a team that should, in theory, be able to cut them to pieces with drive and kick. They kept them out of open threes. Okay See shot well on them, shot five for ten on their unguarded catch and shoot threes. But for all of that doubling and all of that swarming, they weren't getting a ton of

open looks. Shay was great, got his twenty six points, but every other Thunder player was held in check and the Lakers were able to hold on to their dominant lead.

And again, like even in that second half, as a Laker started to miss more shots and okay See started to turn up the defense, it was like every time okay Se'd make a couple plays in a row, it'd be like, here's another high post up for Lebron against Cason Wallace or Luca against Alex Crusoe, right in the middle of the floor, and just they're getting to an

easy shot. If they can keep that dynamic, which is containing the ball, defending Oklahoma City well, keeping them out of transition, they can turn this into a matchup hunting contest, and if they turn it into a matchup hunting contest, I like Lebron and Luca picking on their smaller defenders more than I like Shay and Jay Dubb taking contested mid range jump shots over taller players, because again, this is a team with a lot of length on the perimeter,

and so like there's a version of this that can tilt the other way, right, Lebron and Luca two turnovers each. There's a version of this game where you can imagine Lebron and Luke are a little more sloppy. They have a few early turnovers that lead to runouts. Okay, see gets a little bit of lead, gets a little bit of momentum. The pressure continues on the defensive end. The Lakers miss a few catch and shoot shots. Now they're down eighteen to nine. Are they still gonna slide their feet?

Are they still gonna fly around in rotation? There's an enormous amount of mental discipline that it takes for this Laker team to be good defensively and to take care of the ball in this matchup. I don't think the Lakers are gonna sweep the Thunder. I think the Thunder should be favored if they were to face in a series. I am just saying the Lakers can beat them. If they can. This is what it would look like in

the world where the Thunder control the series. Are in the moments where the Thunder control the series, it will be defense to transition, defense to transition, building momentum, lacking discipline from the Lakers, then in the half court them starting to cut them to pieces with driving kick as their defense starts to let go of the rope. Those are the versions of this matchup that will tilt Okac's direction.

The versions that tilt LA's direction. Taking care of the ball, ruthless matchup, hunting, elite shot making, great transition defense, and great half court defense. That's the version of it that will go the Lakers direction. I thought it was a particularly important win for the Lakers for several week reasons. First of all, they needed it for the standings. They were in some moderate danger of dropping to the plan

after the Golden State loss. That win last night makes it so that the Lakers need to go just two and two in their last four games in order to keep the three seed. If you drop both of these games to oksee then you have to beat Houston or Dallas, and those are gonna be tough games. Houston's beaten up on everybody. The Lakers are one of the few to get them as of late. And then you have that Dallas team, which is well rested. They don't play on Sunday, Monday,

or Tuesday before they play on Wednesday. The Mavericks play the Lakers on Wednesday in Dallas. That's a really tough game. By winning that game last night, you took most of the pressure off. You just got to get one of the OKC games, the Thunder game, or excuse me, the Thunder game, the Rockets game, or the Dallas game now, assuming you can get the job done in Portland. So

you did yourself a favor in the standing. Secondly, as a team, they had n't put together a signature win since Lebron's injury where they like that was a team before Lebron's injury that looked particularly exciting. After Lebron got hurt in that Celtics game, you start to zoom out. Didn't look good. They were just fourteen to ten after the Warriors game since the Luca trade. That's not very good.

That was a statement that they are capable of getting to the championship level on both ends of the floor. The defense from before the lebron the injury, combined with the offense that we saw last night. Thirdly, Luca looked fantastic. Luca had been slumping a bit and had looked especially bad in their last two games against top tier contenders Boston and Golden State. He looked rough. The team looked rough.

This was an important statement. Best team in the league, favored to win the title, best defense in the league, historically, great defense statistically, at least on their home floor, and Luca looked great. So again, it's not the end all be all. There are going to be tougher elements to this as Okase starts to leverage their advantages in this matchup, but it was a nice proof of concept of what

they are capable of. Are that are the Lakers going to be able to maintain that discipline when they don't shoot as well. More misses equals more long rebounds. More long rebounds equals more transition opportunities. More transition opportunities means more situations where the Lakers have to be incredibly sharp with their game plan discipline, getting back It's not going

to be easy, but they certainly can do this. They just have to drag the Thunder into these matchup attacking half court situations where Lebron and Luc are just better at it than their stars are. And then on the thunderfront, there's only so much they can do on defense with their size disadvantages, Like a certain amount of their approach is going to have to be hoping the Lakers missshots, meaning hoping Lebron and Luca miss their ISO jump shots,

hoping that their role players miss their kickouts. On offense, though, it is an example of something I've talked about a lot this year, which is big game team comes in and punches him in the mouth, really going after them defensively. We saw this in the Rockets game too. How many of these guys do you actually trust to be consistently good on offense? The truth is is it's Shay end of list. And so that's the part that makes it really hard for me to buy into the Thunder as

like a traditional dominant runaway championship contender. The way some of the metrics coming out of their look, the way the standings would look, That's why I view them as closer to the pack in the West, even if I have them at the top, because they're just prone to these like brutally bad stretches on offense. When you can keep them out of transition. It's just something to keep

an eye on as a vulnerability. Okay, as of right now, I'm not gonna jump the Lakers' way up just because they played really well one game against a great team. To me, OKAC still is deserving to be the favorite in the Western Conference. But they are not invulnerable, and I think we've seen that over the course of this weekend. All right, Moving on to Rockets Warriors. The Rockets are healthy again and they're back to doing what they did in January when they just started beating up on the

top teams in the league over and over again. Back to back huge wins against the Thunder and the Red Hot Warriors in the Bay. All that defense Fred Van Vlietna, Men Thompson literally put Steph Curry in handcuffs night. I thought Steph looked a little tired too. It was his

third game in four nights. All of his misses were short off the front of the rim, and you could literally see like his energy transfer just wasn't quite the same as it was in the previous couple of games, finished with just three points for the second time this year. But I do want to give the Rockets credit for the job they did defensively. They did not allow him to come free and clear off of anything. Both Fred and men were physical with him on and off the ball,

wearing him down. Everything was contested, everything was off balanced. A lot of his threes were an extra two or three feet further back than he usually gets them as a result of that pressure. This is where I want to talk about Houston's superpower on the perimeter, which is their athletic signs. This is the thing that makes them

fundamentally different than a team like Oka See. We think of them both as these young athletic teams, super fast, young athletic teams that play super hard, and that's their advantage in the regular season, and there's no doubt that's what it is. Like, I'm not prized that after having watched these teams all year that Okay See and Houston ended up at the top. It was pretty clear after

the first month of the season. It's like, Okay, these guys are super young and athletic and these other older veteran teams in the West are gonna have a hard time keeping up. They pulled away the way that they did, But Okay sees the like kind of athletic profile is very different. Okay See has rim protection in the form of chet Houston does not. I'd argue they have the opposite. Shane Gun is often the main entry point for their defense because he's the one guy they're not switching with.

It's the guy that you can get that baked in dribble penetration as long as you can lay a good screen on a men Thompson or Dylan Brooks, whoever it is that's on the ball, right. But once you get past that center position, Houston's athletic wings are also much bigger and stronger than Okay sees perimeter athletes. That size on a fundamental level gives them a better job, better ability to contest jump shots. I've talked about that in

the thunder Lakers matchup. To me, when it comes to pull up shooting over the top, shooting length is the advantage, right, that's where you can actually bother shooters. It also allows them to hold up better against wing bullies. I don't think it's a coincidence that Luca and Lebron struggled against Houston in a way they didn't against OKC. It's that extra two inches, it's that extra thirty pounds of muscle makes a huge difference when you're battling guys for position.

It's a little different posting up a Haison Wallace or in Isaiah Joe that it is posting up at Dylan Brooks. You guys get the point, right, That size and strength gives them just a different athletic profile than OKAC does. The theoretical way that you would attack Houston if you are Golden State is to use Jimmy Butler and Jonathan Kamana to attack mismatches to get them in rotation. Right, But Jimmy took seven shots as he continues to be

bizarrely unaggressive. He's driving to the rim, and every single time he drives to the rim about right on his last like gather dribble, he just starts looking away from the rim. He's not even looking at the room. He's just looking for those kickout opportunities. And like there's a time and a place when the offense is in a flow where that makes sense. But then there are times where they need you to be the bigger, stronger athlete

than the big strong athletes that you're going against. Jonathan Camingos four for ninety and a few really really ugly turnovers in the backcourt that continue to cause Steve Krdilou's trust in him. He got pulled after one of them for Gee Santo's. Thankfully, Buddy healed and Brandon Pajemski had big games to keep things respectable. And that's an upside if you're a Golden State fan. Is Pods continues to play super well. He's been shooting forty percent from three

for like almost four months now. That's a super exciting piece of it. But other than that, it was it was a pretty brutal offensive performance for the Warriors. On the Houston front. Jabari Smith, his development has been super fascinating to me because he came out in Summer League.

I remember the first year that I covered him as a guy that was not a good ball handler, and it was so fun to There were two plays in particular that I thought demonstrated just the way that he's gotten better getting to his spots as a basketball player so that he can unlock his talent which he's got great size, great shooting touch. He's got like this like

aggressive shot making piece to him too. And in order to get in order to get to that shot making talent, that size talent, you gotta be able to get your body to where you need to be on the floor. Footwork and ball handling. Foot work and ball handling are these skills that allow you to get your body from point A to point B with the basketball so that you can get to a spot where you can be a score. He had a play where he drove a close out Jimmy digs down from the top of the key.

As he's driving, snapped a push dribble with his left hand up the floor. A couple of feet ran up to the spot, got to it, and then popped up off the ground at that spot and made a little ten foot or just a nasty ball handling move from Jabari Smith. He had a little baseline iso where he looked like Kevin Durant, grabbed it, faced up, left foot, pivot foot, ripped to the left one drim a pull up just rose up over the top of the defender

with his size advantage knocked it down. He's turned into a super effective rebounder on both ends of the four. He had five offensive rebounds in the two games twenty six total rebounds against the Thunder and Warriors. His three point percentage is up to thirty eight percent on five attempts per game over his last sixteen games. Jabari's just

turned into a really useful role player. Kind of a combination of like that weak side scoring forward that we talked about, while also having some of those bigger forward, defensive and athletic capabilities that you see from like an Aaron Gordon type of player. Just a really exciting young player for Houston in their big picture goals. Dylan Brooks was incredible. He was attacking size mismatches out of the post. He went right over the top of Steph for two

right shoulder fades early in the game. His three point shot is so much quicker and more fluid now. Jalen Green, one of the things that consistently stood out to me against these more athletic defense is that he is able to get to his spots because he's such a good athlete.

That's kind of like what you needed from KAMINGA last night was like it's almost like Jalen Green is hectic and gonna make some bad decisions, but he's able to rise to the occasion against these super elite defenses as a shot maker in a way that some lesser athletes can't. That's kind of what you needed from Kaminga in that

matchup last night. Is he needed the mistakes. He's gonna make three, four, five big mistakes, but she needed seventeen points on fourteen shots as he was looking to be aggressive throughout the game, and that piece just wasn't there. Shane Gun continued his ass kicking tour. He went right at Draymond several times. He was destroying guards and switches.

He hit fifty points in the last two games. Again, I don't I still don't view Houston as a legitimate threat to win the conference because I don't think they have the offensive variety or offensive resilience to be able to win three series with the types of teams that we have coming out of this Western Conference. But they will be a pain in the ass, and I absolutely

think they're capable of upsetting eighteen. Like if we saw the Rockets play in the second round, I wouldn't be stunned, Like I wouldn't be completely shocked I just would be shocked if they ended up winning the conference entirely. Moving out of PACER's Nuggets. The Pacers just absolutely shredded Denver's defense in the middle portion of this game. Denver got off to a little bit of a lead early. Jokic was incredible in this game. He had a three point

shot going early in the game. They were leaving him in a lot of single coverage situations against Miles Turner and he was just being super aggressive. Jokic went for forty one points. It just didn't matter because in that middle portion of the game, the Pacers hung seventy four points in the second and third quarters on the Nuggets. And it all came down to a combination of two factors.

One a reality that I've been discussing a lot on this show, which is that the Nuggets defense is bad, and the reason why it's bad is a combination of two factors. They have to bring Yokic up to the level because he can't switch or protect the rim, so they have to bring him up to the level, which puts two on the ball. Now you're in these four on three situations. Jokich has not been very good with being active with his hands and disrupting when he comes

up to the level. So as a result, you're just playing four on three basketball and you haven't been very good in your rotations on the back line with those three guys. That is a death sentence. If you're gonna put two on the ball without bothering the ball and you're gonna operate three on four but not be a

good rotation team, you're gonna get cut to pieces. On the other side of that is a red hot Pacers team that's now one four in a row with Tyre's Halliburton and Miles Turner just running a deadly high ballscreen attack, and that just kind of that confluence of those two events just led to some hilarious basketball in Denver last night. I clipped a thread of a bunch of examples of this concept so you guys can see it. It's on

my Twitter feed at underscore json lt. But the Pacers just got either a wide open layup or a wide open three basically whenever they wanted against the Denver defense. A combination of a couple of things. Basic pick and pop action with Miles Turner Yo Kicch at the ball. Miles Turner is just sitting at the top of the key. They're not rotating from the weak side. Easy pitch back,

He's wide open. Several like transition excuse me, transition trailing types of shots for Miles Turner, where like you know, Halliburton would just do like a probing dribble attack right around the top of the key and the on ball defender would kind of be there, but Jokich would just sink down to like the foul line as like a kind of a token help situation. Just pitch it back to Miles Turner. He's right there at the top of the key. Shot a Miles Turner, by the way, Like

it's not just shooting, it's aggressive shooting. I talk about this all the time. There's a huge difference between a guy who hits forty percent of his threes and a guy who confidently and aggressively hunts his shot. That is the one that's gonna beat manifest better for the defense, right, that a manifest with more of a reaction from the defense, I should say. But like they the nuggets weren't accounting

for him, and Turner was being aggressive. He ended up hitting like a twenty seven foot or huge one on the left wing on a play because he got comfortable with all these easy shots and then he went into

a tougher one off the left wing. They ended up hitting, but a lot of them though they were rolling with Turner and tagging Turner, and so when they were tagging Turner, it just created those simple week side two on ones and it was just skip pass or swing swing wide open three, skip pass or swing swing wide open, layup, just over and over and over and over again, like it didn't even matter that Denver was scoring. On the

other end. Christian Brown went for thirty, slashing him to pieces on drives and transition pushes like Jokic goes for forty one. It didn't matter because the Pacers just got whatever they wanted on the other end of the floor, Obi topping. He kind of fits the mold of that week side scoring forward that I was talking about earlier.

He had twenty two points in this one, had a couple of possessions where he was on an island with Jokic, went right at Jokic with his speed, aggressive week side shooting, running his lane in transition. This is a Pacers offense that lives off of advantage creation, advantage extending and play finishing, everybody understanding their roles on the plays were Denver rotated better, there weren't many of them, but there were a few

on the plays when Denver rotated better. A lot of these like Andrew Nemhard Aaron Nie Smith close out opportunities with a defender coming out of them. And it was the same thing every time hard right hand drive, defender sliding and putting that hand up snatchback dribble. On that snatchback dribble, the defender goes flying, there's a wide open twelve footer, and both Nemhard and Nie Smith hit a bunch of those in this game. That's what ties it all together, right, Like, you need a guy who can

consistently get your defense in rotation. That's Tyrese Halliburton. Then you need guys that can be play finishers, right, Miles Turner hitting pick and pop three is Miles Turner finishing on the role obi top and hitting threes off of skip passes. Things along those lines. But then you also need advantage extenders. There are times when it's not as simple as drive and kick, swing, swing wide up in

layup or three. Sometimes you need a guy that can take a close out situation and turn it into points. And that's where you get your close out attackers in the form of Nie Smith and Nemhard and again Pascal Siakam didn't even play in this game, and he unlocks an entire different element of the Pacers offense in the form of that matchup attacking from the post. But they

just chewed up and spit out that Nuggets defense. They generated twenty six unguarded catch and shoot jump shots, which is the second most that the Pacers have generated in any game this season, which brings me to the Nuggets part of this, and it's something that we have to be realistic about. The Nuggets since January twenty third, with Nikola Jokic on the floor, have a one to twenty defensive rating. To be clear, it's not all Jokic's fault.

Like I said, it's a combination of two factors. Jokic constantly having to be at the level of the screen, but then him also not having the energy because he has so much offensive responsibility, he doesn't have the energy to be really active up at the level. So because he's not very active up at the level, the ball handler is able to make relatively easy reads and kickout passes from there, then you're in all these four on

threes and the rotations are just not being made. There's not connectivity even with the athletes, even guys like Aaron Gordon, Payton Watson, like they're not doing their job rotating on the backside. So again it's both Jokic is putting you in a compromising position on every single possession defensively, but you don't have the personnel to cover for him. So at a certain point, there's like a directional change that this organization needs to go through in terms of anchoring

Jokic as he gets older. I don't think he's going to get better at defense. So at a certain point, from a team construct standpoint, if you're gonna have Jokic generate everything for you on offense and you're not gonna get anything out of him on defense, and that at the level coverage, you've got to anchor him with better defensive talent. And I think that's something that they'll have to take a long look at when we get to this offseason. But like, here's the thing, I still view

the Nuggets as a championship contender. I would be insane to write off Nikola Jokic. However, this is a long, extended half the season, long stretch where they haven't just been bad defensively, they've been so bad that it's basically impossible to win in the NBA playoffs with the type of defense that they've been playing. Jokic has said before, I don't believe in a switch, meaning he doesn't think we can just flip the switch and be better in

the postseason. I agree. I've talked about this a lot. It's your habits. Your habits are what carry you when you run into adversity, when the shit hits the fan and you're not hitting shots and the other team has all this momentum. The only thing you can rely on is the instinctual way you play hard. What habitually? Have you been making these rotations all year? Have you been communicating through actions all year? Have you been cracked down

rebounding and boxing out all year? If you've been doing those things, they will still work for you when you run into adversity and carry you through rough stretches so that your offense can carry you back to the forefront. The Snuggets team's going to score a lot of points. They can score, but they will have stretches where they cool lot, and teams will pull away from them if they don't have a higher level than this that they

can reach defensively. Now, again, I won't write them off because I have seen this group play better defense than they've played. Hell, they played better defense in the early part of the year. But the problem is is they are practicing playing bad defense now. They are deliberately prepping for the postseason by playing a brand of basketball that will not work in the postseason on the defensive end of the floor. So they're playing with fire. What does

that mean? Does I mean they can't win? Of course not. They could go on a run, they could play better defense, Jokic could go crazy, they could hoist the trophy. But basketball history tells us it's more likely than not that this season ends in disappointment because they're practicing playing bad defense at this point and not really making any sort of serious attempt to improve on that end of the floor.

All right, before we get out of here today, I want to talk a little bit about the Steph Lebron debate. So Steph fans reinstigated this discussion over the weekend, basically trying to paint the picture that Steph is the defining player of this era, the greatest player of this era, and then had a better career than Lebron James. Steph fans have felt this way since twenty fifteen. This is not exactly a new idea. Many of you might remember the Steph better, the hashtag that used to go around

all the time. And to be clear, I don't blame more of yours fans for feeling this way. He's their hero, he brought them four titles. It'd be weird if they weren't lessly advocating for him in the all time context. I also find debates along these lines to be somewhat boring because no one's changing their mind. There's no Warriors fan that is going to budge based on this take

that I'm about to unleash. You guys have your way that you feel I respect, that, I have my way that I feel I respect that, or I would ask for the same in return. Right. But I have literally never heard a basketball person who isn't a Warriors fan or an outspoken anti Lebron guy make the case that

Steph was better than Lebron. Because it's absurd. Let's set aside the obvious stuff like that Lebron had a Hall of Fame career before Steph even entered his prime, and that Lebron is still every bit as good as him, or that Lebron has four times as many Finals MVPs or twice as many MVPs, or that Lebron is one of only two players in NBA history with four MVPs and four Finals MVPs. Let's set that stuff aside. Just the narrative that Warriors fans are trying to build as absurd.

Steph won his first title against Lebron in a series where both of his co stars were injured. Lebron literally received more Finals MVP consideration than Steph after that series. I disagreed with that line of thinking because I don't believe in rewarding the loser. I think Steph should have won at Finals MVP, but Lebron literally got more consideration

for Finals MVP than Steph that season. Then Lebron beat him in spectacular fashion in twenty sixteen back to back or two forty point games in Game five and Game six to extend the series. In that twenty sixteen series, Lebron badly outplayed Steph on both ends. Of the floor. Then Kevin Durant joined the team, and the Warriors were so insanely talented that they had a negative odds on

sportsbooks before the season to win the title. You were going you bet a dollar on the Warriors to win the title in October those years in seventeen and eighteen, you'd have made less than at all at the end of the season. Because it wasn't just Katie and Steph. It wasn't just the second and third best players in the league joining forces. It was Klay Thompson, the second best shooter of all time, one of the best perimeter defenders in basketball, with great size and strength at his

positioned an awesome role player in this league. Draymond Green arguably the greatest defender of this era. Andra g Woodallas such a versatile forward that he got the Finals MVP in twenty fifteen, and during that era was a do everything player for them. I'm a big fan of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love and j R. Smith, but it was a different level of talent that was on those two rosters. The way that whole four year saga is now being retroactively rebuild as a one on one rivalry

between Lebron and Steph is fucking outrageous. When Lebron was at his best, he was the best parts of Steph and Draymond put together. He was one of the most prolific offensive engines in the history of the sport and one of the best defensive players to ever play the game. What happened in the twenty sixteen Finals is kind of the perfect encapsulation of the difference between the two of them.

Lebron in that fourth quarter surgically took the Warriors apart in a way Steph was not able to on the other end of the floor, and yet still at the end of the game, Lebron saved it by leveraging his athleticism to make a superhuman play when Kyrie on the other end, attacked step because he was the lesser athlete on the court and a player he could get easy separation from. That's the difference between the two two all

time great offensive engines. I'd even argue Steph was a little bit better as an offensive engine than Lebron, but Lebron brought that Draymon level of playoff defensive impact while also being a five time First Team All NBA First Team All defensive player. Lebron was one of the great defenders to ever play this game. Think back to the Spurs series and the low man possessions on Tim Duncan

and Tiago Splitter at the rim. Think about him in twenty sixteen in on the famous brick that Steph shot over over Kevin Love at the top of the key, Lebron was lurking in the paint. He blocked nine shots over game five, six, and seven of that series. Think about the level Lebron was able to get to defensively in twenty twenty as he helped anchor one of the great defenses in NBA history as he won his fourth

championship the year after Kevin Durant left the Warriors. There was a level Lebron could get to in terms of his athletic imposition that Steph could never get to, and that to me is why they are on different tiers. I'm a huge Steph fan. He's you gotta take my word for this. I get it. He's legitimately my second favorite player, and I actually like him more as like a dude than Lebron. Half the time Lebron opens his mouth, it drives me crazy, super corny there are a lot

of things I don't like about the guy. To me, Steph is a more steady leader and a much more likable just guy. I'm a big Steph fan, but when it comes down to basketball, he's just not on the same tier as Lebron. All time, it's Lebron and MJ at the top, then there's a gap, and then it's Kobe, it's Magic, it's Steph, and it's Bird in that next tier. For me, I don't think Steph is even capable of

entering into the next tier. He's never even had an undisputed hold on the best player in the World title the way that Lebron did back in twenty thirteen or that Jokic does. Now, we can celebrate Steph without rewriting history and journeying to fantasyland that guys like. It was an awesome rivalry between the Cavs and Warriors, and it was fun in a stretch of the of the NBA history where we got to see these teams face over

and over again. But if you're painting that as like Steph versus Lebron playing one on one, that's dishonest and it's just it's not reality. So like I I like

like that athletic imposition element we're talking about. You want to know why Lebron's never had single digit points and you know, if God knows how many games or that, Lebron hasn't had three points in a game since December of two thousand and four, because there's a certain floor that comes from being six' nine two hundred and sixty pounds and big and strong and being able to leverage yourself in ways that don't strictly tie to shot. Making,

Now steph has a gravity. Element in The rockets game last, night for, instance he only had three. POINTS a lot of plays on film Where i'm Watching steph run off of an, action someone slip out of it and get. Open steph has value that goes beyond. It but there's more variance in his singular output on the game because he's a jump. Shooter sometimes the shots don't go. In sometimes he goes one for eight from three instead of you, know twelve for, Twenty and that's the up and down

that can come from that type of. Experience it's again like to, Me steph is one of the greats IN nba. HISTORY i have him at, FIVE i have him the top five player IN nba, history BUT i just don't think he was on the same level As lebron AND i thought it was just kind of hilarious the way that that was attempted to be made as a case over the course of the. Weekend all, right, guys that's ALL i have for today is always a sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the. Show No

oops tonight. Tonight we're going back, tomorrow BUT i am doing some stuff With kevin O'Connor tonight surrounding The National title. Game it's a little Bit Colle shoop, stuff SOME nba draft. Stuff we're also going to talk SOME nba in that, Show so make sure you guys check Out kevin's pod OTHERWISE i will see you guys. Tomorrow what, so, Guys as, ALWAYS i appreciate you for listening to and SUPPORTING oops.

Tonight they would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a. Review as, ALWAYS i appreciate you guys supporting, us but if you could take a minute to do, That i'd really appreciate. It the volume