Hoops Tonight - Lakers-Suns Reaction: Durant & Phoenix BLOW OUT LA, what's wrong with LeBron James?

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Got a jam packshow for you tonight as we get through one of the final few nights of the in season tournament woll Play games, We're gonna be covering three games from tonight. The Suns get a dominant win against the Lakers in the return of Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal to the lineup. There now nine to one with KD in the lineup this year. We're gonna do a deep dive into that game on the perspective of both

teams of Lakers. Back to Mack games where they looked pretty sharp in the first half and then just completely decomposed in the second half. I want to get into that concept a little bit. After that, without Giannis, the Bucks go into Miami and beat the Heat. I want to talk about some of the chess match that was taking place down the stretch of that game, and talk a little bit about the struggles that the Miami Heat

have been having to this point in the season. And then, by far what I thought that was the most entertaining game of the night, the Houston Rockets in the Minnesota Timberwolves had a knockdown, drag out fistfight of a game that ended up going to overtime off of a huge steal from a men Thompson that extended the game. We're gonna be breaking that game down from the perspective of both teams. So lots of basketball to get into tonight. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribed

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So a huge win for the Suns, dominant left no doubt to improve to nine to one with Kevin Durant in the lineup. We're going to talk a little bit about the formula for this Sun's team, and it obviously relies a lot on their total amount of aggregate offensive skill, right Like, if you take Bradley Beal and Kevin Durant out of the equation and you take some defensive specialists and start asking them to do more with the basketball,

you're going to have some struggles. And the Suns obviously struggled quite a bit with KD out, But there's a formula that works when they have all of their guys, and you saw an excellent example of it there in that third quarter run. I really want to shine a light on Devin Booker and use of Nurkic here, because I thought they were the two primary driving forces behind

that run. Nurkic was incredible the entire run. He's had a rough season, that's been a lot of like pretty bad basketball from Musif durkicch for the most part this year, but I thought he dominated in his role tonight. He was setting massive screens to help free up Devin Booker.

The Lakers do a lot of switching on defense as one of the big differences between them this year and then last year under JJ Reddick, and he was repeatedly just going right through Ruyachimura's chest to finish easy shots one on one in the post, or catching deep position against Cam Reddish and finishing with and one's just really simple effective post moves and making layups, which has always been a little bit of an adventure for Useuf Nurkics. But he finished with a double double. He was plus

twenty and twenty seven minutes. We're getting I thought he kind of outplayed Anthony Davis in the second half of this game, it was a big time night for Musif Durkic.

He had a little step back against Austin along the baseline on the left side where you can tell Devin was like, this is a scrappy dude.

the rope. And this is a Laker team that's a little just in the last week, has been a little fragile when things don't go their way, and so you put together a good stretch of basketball against them, they have a tendency to fall apart, and that's what they did, and the Suns ended up getting out of there with a blowout win. The Suns were pretty much dominating their matchups down the roster in the second half. I thought

Nurkic outplayed Anthony Davis in that third quarter. Like I mentioned earlier, Bradley Beal was cooking Dalton connect all night the uh. One of the things too, that both Bradley Beal and Devin Booker were able to do against Max Christi too, is like Max Christy just has this tendency to give ground on any sort of like bump move, and then when they go into their pull ups, Max always tries to meet them up high, like at the top of the shot. And like I've talked about this

a lot on the show. When you're dealing with the best pull up jump shooters in the league, the professional scores, they have been shooting shots with hands in their face

their entire life. That's not what bothers them. You have to find a way to disrupt their rhythm before the shot, and the Lakers just don't have a Like Like, Max is one of the better perimeter athletes on the team, and he's just pretty light, pretty top heavy, doesn't hold his ground well, doesn't do a good job of disrupting rhythm, and so he can struggle against guys that aren't, you know,

dealing with some sort of significant size disadvantage. Max pretty good job against smaller guards, but he can really struggle against those bigger shot creators. Right, And like it was just a down the roster out classing, Right, Like Austin got the better of Devin Booker in the first half, but then Booker ended up getting much better of Austin in the second half. Right, Like Katie and Lebron weren't matched up with each other as much, but I thought

Katie was much much better than Lebron tonight. Like Lebron's been pretty bad by his standards for a while now, but we'll talk about that here in a little bit. But again, like a lot of times, when it comes down to these games, it's about like everybody's going into the event with a job. Like the shot creators have a job, the defensive specialists have a job, the connective pieces on offense have a job.

He scored nineteen points off of Lakers turnovers, which continues to be an issue for them. Again with the Lakers physical ball pressure, run in transition, You're gonna generate a lot of margin there because this is a team that is really, really sloppy in those two specific areas just handling ball pressure, handling physical perimeter defense, and running back in transition.

damn ball down the floor. I just in general, I thought the Suns just showed better fight and competitiveness throughout the game. And then we get beyond that to the formula, the formula that has worked really well for them this year, going nine to one in games that Kevin Durant has played in. And it's a simple concept, and I think Mike Budenholzer has done a good job of streamlining it.

But it's essentially the concept of advantage creation combined with smart spacing and then making the correct reads when you

have those advantage situations. Right, So like when you've got a guy like Nurkisch who sets really good screens, and you've got a trio of ball handlers, and I mean, Bradley Beal is not going to bring two to the ball as often, but at least Devin Booker and Kevin Durant are going to pretty consistently at least bring the screen defender up pretty high in the action, and like one of the flip sides is like this is Nurkic

helps a lot in this regard. The Suns have personnel to beat switches on both sides of the switch, right, So like if you end up running action and you get Ruey Hachimura switched on the use of Nurkic, you can throw the ball down to the block to him when he's sharper and when he's making his lips right. And then but on the flip side of that, like kd and Devin Booker can take their pick of Dalton connector D'Angelo Russell and take those guys to their sweet

spots and go to work on them, right. So, like you try not to switch, and if you're gonna try to keep Cam b Reddish or one of your better perimeter defenders on a Kevin Durant or on a Devin Booker in those moments, you're gonna have to show on the screens because you know Nurkic is setting really good screens to get separation from those guys, and they're just gonna walk into pull up jump shots and beat you.

So you end up showing up at the level right, and so by virtue of bringing two to the ball in actions where guys are chasing over screens or eventually bringing two to the ball again, the Lakers were content to just die on an island tonight. But like, if you have a guy that consistently can beat one on one matchups, you can bring two to the ball even without having to have a screen. And then from there it's about having your guys in spaces where they can

be immediate threats. So you want to have the guy that's catching that first pass to be a guy that makes the quick decision to see where the defense is overcompensating in their rotation, and generally speaking, it's gonna get worked around to the weak side corner. The vast majority of teams the weekside corner or the weak side wing right. Good defenses will make you take a week side wing.

Bad defenses will give up a weak side corner three right, Because just imagine this scenario where Kevin Durantz dribbling up the right side of the floor and he gets ball screen from use of Nurkic. It's being iced, but Katie's bringing the defender up to the level, and so Nurkic kind of short rolls. Right, Nurki short rolls and Katie hits him. You have a three on two on the

weak side. Right, you have the two defenders that were guarding the guy on the weak side wing and the guy in the weak side corner, and then you have Nurkic rolling to the basket. Really bad teams they'll just show with the low man the guy who's guarding the guy in the weak side corner, and then it's just an easy skip pass to the corner three. They're really good teams will have another rotation coming down from the wing to take away that corner three and force you

to make that pass up to the wing. But it's just a bunch of really smart offensive players that can quickly process the advantage that's in front of them, and a bunch of guys who can pay it off by either knocking down catch and shoot threes, driving closeouts, or as we talked about earlier, being able to beat switches that occur in those situations, also attacking the offensive glass as a way to take advantage of it. Tea that

is in rotation, But the formula is there. They just have all of the talent they need to consistently to

consistently generate great shots. And then on defense, like you know, they obviously have some personnel limitations there, but it's and this is something I'm gonna talk about a little bit with JJ Redick in a little bit, But like, find something you can be good at, right, Like the Suns are never going to be a dominant paint defense, right they just don't have the personnel for that, or at least like they could be abdominant paint defense, but it would be at the expense of giving up the three

point line. But the way that the Sons have approached it this year, I've been, in general really impressed by Phoenix's closeouts, just how quickly they get out to the perimeter and chase guys off the three point line. It

disrupts rhythm. Like the Lakers got some good looks from three in the late third quarter early fourth quarter that didn't go down, but it was after the game was already out of reach, and the Suns kind of relaxed a little bit, and none of their shooters were confident or in rhythm at that point because they weren't getting

good looks in the early part of the game. Again, like, if you think about it from an analytics standpoint, if you're bad defensively in terms of your personnel, and these are two teams that if you're ranking teams in their overall defensive personnel, the Suns and the Lakers are gonna be pretty far down in the list compared to the other you know, ambitious teams in the league this year

that are trying to win the title. Right, And so if you have limited personnel, then analytically there are shots that are more valuable.

might as well take one of those away. You know, find a way to take one of those types of shots and remove them from the equation, you might get shredded in the other area by virtue of just taking away one of the two most efficient shots that exists on the basketball court. You can raise your floor on the defensive end of the floor, and the Suns at the very least do a decent job of chasing teams off the three point line. And so there you go.

You got a good formula on both ends. And then, as we've seen before the injuries that hit them earlier this year, at the end of games, KD is just walking teams down in clutch situations, just getting great shots consistently. He's been one of the big guys that kind of like leverages his defensive talents at the end of games two to get key stops. But like, the formula is there, and I'm really really excited to watch this team now that they're healthy again. A great win for the Suns

to get back on track on the Lakers' front. This is the second strike game where they look like they kind of lost their will to fight in the second half, which is super weird.

the Cavs. That was the Max Strews game winner game, and I think that was the one where Jason Tatum missed a little fadeaway jump shot over Darius Garland at the elbow. And then a couple of nights later they ended up losing to Denver, Right, and that was obviously a concern because Boston had struggled against the top of

the West throughout the regular season. So like if you zoom in on any stretch of games, you can find even the best teams in the league will play some bad basketball for a certain amount of time, and so, like you know, in the big picture, that's why I'm I'm a believer in like not panicking, not overreacting to any singular stretch of games, because the eighty two game grind as long, and it takes a lot of mental toughness and a lot of resilience to fight through those stretches, right,

and the Lakers are clearly in one of those stretches right now. The difference is that it ended up being a a little bit tougher of a stretch than I thought, in the sense that the Denver game to me looked like an outlier. The Orlando Magic game was a game I thought the Lakers played great against a team that

athletically is kind of a mismatch for them. Lebron and ad were awesome, and they battled and they got a win until Anthony Davis missed three free throws in the final minute, right, So, like they didn't get a win. That's heartbreaking, But there's a lot of good basketball there, right, not anything to get too worked up about. And then you completely shit the bed in the third quarter against Denver. So it's like one of those things where you don't

want to overreact to it. But then I talked about in that second half against Denver how it was their offense that seemingly completely lost any sense of rhythm and flow, and every single player on the floor looked like they lost their confidence, like they'd lost their mojo. There was no like passion even behind the way they were playing. What scares the hell out of me is that's exactly

what happens tonight with the Suns. Like you're right there in the first half, Austin goes on a crazy run at the end of the second quarter that gets you back within two points, and then you come out in the third quarter and you're just lifeless. And again it's like they get hit in the mouth by a couple of shots, right, so you end up falling down by seven, nine points.

like they have lost the will to fight. My working theory right now is that it has a lot to do with the fact that Lebron James, their second best player, is just playing really poorly by his standards right now. Yet eighteen points, eight rebounds in tennisiss fine stat line. He was seven for sixteen with five turnovers, and again, it's about the standard. The Lebron James that we saw from you know, roughly mid January through the end of that first round series against Denver last year was one

of the five best players in the world. He was like, I can't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but it was something crazy like twenty eight eight and ten on like sixty seven percent true shooting over a massive span. Lebron was was playing at an insanely high level.

It wasn't like we always kind of think about Lebron as a player that so much little little basketball things that win games, but like Lebron was also bringing top tier, superstar level production at the tail end of last season, right that formula works with this team for a pretty high floor. When Ad is the guy that he's been all year and By the way, a lot of people are like, oh, AD's having this big, crazy bounce back season. Anthony Davis was kicking ass the entire second half of

last season. I've been saying that all year, like pretty much from mid January through the first round series against Jokich, Anthony Davis was playing at that insanely high level. And to start this year, Ad has for the most part been there. He was really bad in the Denver game. He's had his bad nights, but he's for the most part, has been there. Lebron is in an extended stretch where he hasn't been And there have been like three or four games where he's been at that level, but the

rest of them he just hasn't been. In the five games coming into tonight, he was at twenty two eight and nine. Here were shooting splits. We're at twenty two eight to nine, five point four turnovers per game, forty eight percent from the field, thirty five percent from three to sixty three percent of the line. That's that's not even that's not a top twenty player in the league right now. Again, just forget about the idea of what Lebron's gonna be. I think Lebron is gonna be fine.

I'm not worried about Lebron in the big picture, Like he kind of has a stretch like this every year at this phase of his career, and in the I am of the opinion that as long as he doesn't suffer an injury, when we get into March or April, he's gonna look like Lebron James. It's not a big picture problem in my opinion. It is a short term problem. Though You're in a really tough stretch to your schedule. You got some of the easy stretch out of the

way early. Now it's like, guess what's waiting for you right around the corner. A Spurs team in San Antonio that's been pretty damn tough to beat at home. An Oklahoma City team coming into Los Angeles on Friday, and it doesn't get any easier from there. And like the reality is is this roster does have limitations, especially when Jared Vanderbilt is out. Those limitations are they are very unathletic on the perimeter. And like one of the things with Lebron is like Lebron has a tendency to chill

in some ways. He'll chill on the defensive end in his rotations, he'll be sloppy with his mental focus. That's the turnover thing. Like Lebron is too good of a basketball player to be this sloppy with the basketball. It is a mental focus thing. He is not locked in the way that he needs to be. But like the big issue is Lebron at this phase of his career doesn't engage himself athletically as much in regular season games. But that's okay because he did the same thing last

year for big stretches as well. The difference was as he was pouring in twenty eight points a game hyper efficiently and was dishing out tennis sis snite and wasn't turning the ball over this much. So Lebron was bringing so much good with his making and his skill overall and his ability to surgically pick apart teams in the half court that even though that if he skipped a low man rotation or didn't fight for a defensive rebound, it wasn't.

for athleticism, you're going to continue to have issues. And so like, in the big picture, I'm not worried about Lebron, but in the short term, this is a tough stretch of schedule and I don't know that they can win many times without Lebron meeting Anthony Davis at least near the level that he's at. Even just as like decision makers, the Lakers perimeter players are all pretty inconsistent to varying degrees.

Lebron needs to be the guy that brings consistency to their perimeter decision making and their pre or firepower, and he just hasn't been.

Most of their issues come down to the fact that Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo are combining to average just a few more points than Anthony Davis is averaging by himself. They're not getting production star production from their stars. So you can talk about Terry Rogier and you can talk about like, oh man, these these you know, kilolware minutes are rough or whatever it is that your issue is, but like, it doesn't really matter if your stars aren't

playing at a superstar level. One of the things I talk about all the time is like, when superstars play at a superstar level, they eat up so much responsibility on both ends that it actually rafts these really small and achievable roles for the role players. Like if you've got an offensive star who is consistently bringing two to the ball because he's a devastating offensive weapon, all of a sudden, you can see some pretty mediocre role players

around the league look good because they're consistently getting great advantages. Right, But if those stars aren't playing super well and they aren't lighting the world on fire in single coverage situations or against traditional coverages, then you aren't gonna load up on them the way you need to, and those guys aren't gonna get great advantages off the ball and then guess what they're gonna start looking like pretty limited role players. Same thing goes on the defensive end of the floor.

I'm gonna talk about this again with the Bucks here in a minute. Jannison Brook Lopez have leveraged themselves defensively at a much higher level over the course of the last couple of weeks some real throwback games between those two guys. Brooke had another ridiculous block on a Tyler Harrow step back three along the right wing tonight. Because of that, the Bucks have looked sharper defensively. But it's

not just because those two. When the Bucks back line is flying around and making all these plays, it crafts small achievable roles for your defensive players, and then suddenly guys like Andre Jackson and aj Green and everyone else playing defensive roles for Milwaukee looks like they're a little bit more, you know, in their wheelhouse, something they can manage, right. It's the same thing on both ends of the floor.

And when you look at the Lakers, it's like when Lebron James and Anthony Davis are not bringing truly elite play on both.

You have two guys that make fifty, they got to do a lot so that the guys that don't make fifty can can have manageable roles. And again I'm referring to Lebron and Ad as a duo. Lebron is the main guy that's struggling. AD has been pulling his weight for the most part this year, but he's been really AD's two back to back really bad second alps, and

those are when things fell apart. In fact, Ad has been so good this year that he's been able to overcome most of Lebron's issues, But in the stretches where Ad has been bad, Like think about the stretches when Ad has been really bad second half again against Denver, they get blown out. Second half against the Suns, they get blown out. First half against Cleveland when Jared Allen

ate his lunch, they get blown out. So like again, it's mostly the start the superstar play that I believe is the issue behind this team that's leading to their funk. A couple other small things. The starting lineup piece. I understood the reasoning behind going to Cam Reddish mostly had to do with the fact that Delo wasn't playing well. Like the Austin Delo Ruey Lebron a D lineup works.

Just Delo was playing bad basketball, and I understood the reason why you went to look at the Cam Reddish piece. But Ruey's not playing good basketball right now, in large part because he just came back from an injury and

he's working his way back into rhythm. And so because Rui's not playing good basketball, and Cam is not playing good basketball, or Cam has his offensive limitations and Lebron's having a slump, now, all of a sudden, a starting lineup for the Lakers that's been really good offensively for a long time has not looked very good.

get energized when they're scoring. And so with that being the case, I think you've got to inject some more offensive firepower into the starting lineup with either d Lo or Dalton or both. They just got to find a way to do that. And then lastly, JJ in his scheme, JJ's been doing a lot of switching, and in the switching, they've been giving up a lot of different issues, a lot of offensive glass stuff. This is a This is

a defensive rebounding lineup. That a lineup that struggled the defensive rebound which, by the way, the Austin Delo Lebron ad Ruey lineup last year defensive rebounded really well. So like they're capable of rebounding better. A big part of it is switching. When Anthony Davis gets switched out onto the perimeter, who's on the back line lazy Lebron and Ruey who doesn't rebound. You see how that can be

an issue. So like, I think at a certain point, JJ's got to look at the data here and be like, we are a bottom three defense that can't rebound, So maybe the switching needs to be something that we take

a different look at. It's a delicate balance. It's the same thing with the starting lineup, because like, you never want to bail on things just because they're not going your way in a small sample, because sometimes basketball concepts take time to flush out, takes time for teams to pick up the habits and to get better, right uht. The Lakers offense last year is a great example of that. The five out stuff looked terrible at the start of the year. It was unguardable in the second half of

the year. So like, at a certain point, like there's a delicate balance between bailing on something, but like I wonder when JJ is going to look at this data and go like, all right, this isn't working. We need to try something. And the lastly on the Lakers, there was a comment that I received on Twitter from someone who listened to the video that I did referencing me saying, don't panic. Here's the thing that's still what you do.

You don't panic because you're ten and seven. Yeah, you're playing shit basketball and there's a bunch of good teams coming to town or vice versa. So yeah, you're in some trouble, but thankfully you bank some wins, so the world's not crumbling around you. Here's the reality. You're playing

shit basketball. Helps not coming. Yeah, the Lakers will hopefully make a trade this year, but it's probably not gonna happen until closer to February, which means you've got twenty thirty games here where you got to figure your shit out. This be an active participant in your own survival. No one is coming to help you. So you don't panic.

You identify what you're doing poorly, and you find a way to try to fight it, and you fight like hell until you find some relief, whether that's Jared Vanderbilt coming back, Lebron James getting his legs back underneath him, or a trade, whatever it ends up being, you've got to fight until then. I've seen that Lakers teams do it before. The Russell Westbrook Lakers fought like hell until they traded Russ and then they ended up making a

run to the Western Conference finals. That's the type of spirit that they need to see, that I need to see.

top of the key. It's like pass the ball to one guy at the elbow, and then there's some sort of screening action between the other two guys. There's like some sort of interchange between those three guys. Stack, pick and roll just a ball screen, but we're bringing a shooter into the action and we're backscreening for the role man as he's going, so he's interchanging to the top

of the key. Once again, three players all the threat. Right, you have a lot of like the all of the stuff that like Dallas has been doing, the Lakers been doing this too. A lot of teams are doing this stuff where they use their center as the passing folkrum at the top of the key, where they just enter the ball to the top of the key, and then you have your two guards like screen for each other, and then cut off and try to make something happen there.

Once again, three players all in some sort of like interchange. Double drag is nothing but a couple of screens where one guy rolls to the basket, so it's two staggered ball screens. The better athlete typically rolls, the better shooter typically pops. But the whole point of running a three man action is to take what is a simple decision and turn it into a complicated decision. So if like two guys interchange, it's just you get him, I get him. We're good, right a ball screen, Well I'm in a drop.

Oh we're switching. Oh I'm blitzing. Oh I'm hedging whatever it is. Oh I'm going under. There's just pretty simple decision making process. As soon as you bring that third guy into the equation, you can start to force teams to make some mistakes and Dame was just constantly finding the mistake in Miami's approach to that double drag at

the top of the key. So it was usually somebody like aj Greener, Andre Jackson and Brook Lopez setting the two picks, and then essentially as Dame is coming off to his left hand side, there's usually a guard guard switch in there somewhere. Usually the guy who's guarding Dame is going to pass him off to the guy who's guarding the other guard.

There was a time that Bam said, Ah, screw it, I'm just gonna switch, and he switched, and he was sitting too far back on his heels, and Dame just went to a little step back to his right and knocked it down. There was another play in the second half where it was just a straight up one on one situation with Bam and Dame, and Bam was just just overplaying the drive and Dame, who'd had hit like six or seven threes at that point, was just able to easy step back going to his left and knock

down a three point shot. But like Bam was sitting too far back on his switches. There was a play where Kevin Love was in the game where like the other guard who was switching was waiting on the other side of the second screen. So what did Dame do. He just came off the first screen, and when he came off the first screen, he just kind of settled into that soft spot right there in the middle of

the action and rose up and knocked it down. But Dame just got blazing hot from three just by spamming the same action that double drag at the top of the key, and then from there Miami basically had no choice but to start double teaming him because at that

point he was in rhythm. He hit the shot over Jimmy where like step back on the left wing of pump fake, Jimmy did everything right, broke his rhythm and he just kind of leaned back and reloaded and just kind of knocked it down off of the pump fake like he just had it going too much. So they had to start double teaming, and it worked and it got them back in the game. I thought the Bucks

were a little slow with their processing. And then one of the big things that you have to do when you're beating a blitz or a double team is you got to get the ball on time and on target. Like to put it simply, if I ask you to guard me and you're fifteen feet away and before you run at me, you have to throw me a chest pass right into my shooting pocket, You're not gonna be able to guard me, like I'm either gonna shoot it, or if you sprint, like hell, I'm just gonna go

right around you, right. But if you throw me a bad pass, like if you throw me a bounce pass, you know, three feet off to my left, or if I have to like go way down to grab it, or it's just it's difficult for me to catch all of a sudden, that fifteen foot close out for you become something that's more achievable. And like the Bucks were just throwing some sloppy passes, and like those four on threes were quickly turning into situations where there was no advantage,

and so Miami started to get now transition. They had fifteen transition points in the second half. They had a really rough jump shooting first half, and they finally started to make some jump shots in the second half. Terry Rogier in particular, hit three threes and a long two in that half, and so they were able to just kind of slowly but methodically work their way into game by doubling Dame getting out in transition. Jimmy was able to drop his shoulder on that left lane line drive

and get to the basket a couple of times. In the third quarter. They get themselves back into a game, and now it's a crunch Time game. But in the Crunch Time game, it was fascinating because Dame is again the superstar for the Bucks. Like we talked about in that segment earlier about your superstar doing his job, we saw a massive mismatch in the quality of superstar playing

Crunch Time. Dame, because of everything he did in the earlier phase of the game, was consistently bringing two to the ball, so they were able to pass out of it. And guess who ended up getting hot in crunch time.

AJ Green hit three threes in the second half, had a big one off of a double team, and then a ridiculously tough one, a tough one on the left wing where one of those sloppy passing sequences from the Bucks had AJ Green with Terry Rozier in like a straight up loaded situation late clock and aj did like a hard rip to the like kind of like a pullover to his right and then a rip, a hard rip to the left and was able to get enough separation from separation from from Tyler Harrow to just rise

up and knock down a huge just a huge bucket from AJ Green. He's been awesome. We'll talk about him here in a minute. But like Dame, was able to generate quality shots by virtue of his threat by bringing two guys to the ball, and on the other end of the floor, they just the heat. Can't get anything out of Jimmy and Bam. Jimmy and Bam combined for five points in the fourth quarter. The two of them on the season are combining to average thirty six points

per game. It's just not gonna get it done, like I talked about it earlier, and I'm not gonna get too much deeper in it now, but like, don't look

any further off your Miami Heat fan. Then the fact that your stars are not providing superstar level production and when they're not, like and again, BAM's not a superstar level player, but he's close, and like, if he's not going to play up to that level, if Jimmy and Bam are, if neither of them are going to play at a top twenty five level, then you're you're not gonna win many games in the NBA with how much

talent there is right now. And that ended up being the difference in the game is there was a little bit of a faux pause. Andre Jackson like panicked and turned it over, and they ended up giving up a three to Terry Rozier in transition, and so Miami did end up getting a better chance to try to steal

that game. But like the Bucks were up four l A, they should have put it away easier than they did, because once again, Dame was able to provide the superstar impact of bringing two to the ball and Jimmy and Bam couldn't do anything on the offensive end down the stretch of that game. The Bucks have now won five in a row seven out of eight, and again that one loss in there was that Giannis foul of LaMelo ball.

They've had over a twenty before tonight's game because Giannis didn't play tonight, they had over one hundred and twenty points in three consecutive games. In the previous three games, and again, like early in the season, it wasn't just the defense. The offense where it wasn't where it needed to be, but like getting you're getting the offensive burst.

damn good point of attack defender. Sides his feet well, gets over screens well, He's got a really strong like build in low center of gravity, so he absorbs contact well like and he's just a better offensive player. But like, those two guys are are providing forty eight minutes of pretty decent quality perimeter defense. I mean they played they close both of them together tonight, obviously with Giannis out

of the lineup. So like starting to look like a serious basketball team in Milwaukee after not looking like a serious basketball team in the in the early stretch of the year. Not gonna spend too much time on Rockets bowlves, but it was a really really fun game. The the Rockets were really bogging down Minnesota's offense in the first three quarters. In Minnesota's offense has a boatload of issues.

I'm gonna get into that here in just a minute, but it turned into this really interesting, like crunch time battle because the Wolves just kind of methodically took control of the game, just slowly chopped away and ended up taking control of the game. And they really should have won this one. Rob Dillingham had a really bad turnover against the men Thompson that ended up leading to a

layup that tied the game. And then Anthony Edwards missed two wide open threes and he had like a little bank shot that he shot at the buzzer that hit every part of the rim and didn't go down. So like it it got to be a discouraging one for Wolves fans. Because it felt like a game that they

should should have won. But what was really fascinating down the stretch in the fourth quarter when the Wolves were taking control up until the final minute, it was kind of a formula that I liked in the sense that, like, it's kind of ugly and clunky, but Ant and Julius are guys that have a lot of physical advantages against the guys that are guarding them, and they can get

to their spots. And so as long as the Wolves can tighten the screws on the defensive end of the floor and get stops and Julius can generate some pretty solid looks down the stretch of a game. And it was kind of impressive as they kind of worked their way back into it. It has like three or four plays a game now where he just snakes through like four bodies and gets to the basket for.

in fast break situations just in the ot period. A Men Thompson, who got the huge deal against Rob Dillingham, hit a massive three on the right wing, and then Alpert and Saning Goudo several occasions in the game was just going right at Rudy Gobert, which I thought was really fascinating. Was able to get to a nice little left shoulder hook that iced things and the Rockets ended

up stealing that game from the Wolves. I've talked quite a bit about the Rockets in the last week, so you guys can go to my channel to find some of that content in the Power Inkings video, and then we did a deep dive on the Rockets. I think it was after the Bucks game if I remember correctly. Last week. I want to talk a little bit about

the Wolves though specifically and their issues was shooting. So one of the things that happened at the tail end of this game was mostly Jabari Smith Junior, but as a couple other guys, they would put a defender on Jada McDaniels and just ignore him and just offer help everywhere. And Jaden, i think, went four for sixteen from the field, couldn't make a three point shot to save his life. Multiple beautiful, completely uncontested three point looks in crunch time,

and none of them were close. There was a play where had this like crazy slithering drive and like whipped a beautiful left handed cross court passed to hit Jaden right in the shooting pocket in the right corner, and it was a brick. And like I've been saying a lot on my show that I love Anthony Edwards. He's probably my favorite young prospect in the league, and I'm rooting for him in a big way. But like, I believe in the Wolves less this year than I ever have,

and I hate this roster construct. And one of the big reasons why is, like, again, play into your stars strengths. Anthony Edwards is over two hundred jump shots this year, damn near one point two points per attempt. He is a really good jump shooter. That is something that I've emphasized as a piece of his growth that I believe is real. And I think He's demonstrated that over a pretty massive sample size between last year's playoffs, the stuff with Team USA this summer, and the stuff with the

Wolves this year. But his absolute superstar superpower is nobody can guard this dude. No one can keep him in front, and yet every time he beats his man off the dribble, he's got to slither through three or four help defenders to get anything off at the rim. And it's because you're closing out short, if not outright ignoring Jaden McDaniels, you're closing out short on Julius Randall and Rudy Gobert can hardly catch the damn ball, let alone put it in the basket. It is such a flawed construct and

like every game with the Wolves is so ugly. And for the record, I understand there's another side to this, which is they have the defensive personnel to cause some real problems for teams, But like, ultimately, ultimately, I think if you're going to get the best out of Anthony Edwards and what this offense can be, and even taking it a step further with Julius Randall is a guy who can really beat matchups and use his athletic tools to pressure the rim. You gotta get some guys who

can hit some shots in this lineup. And like, I don't know what's going on with Jade McDaniels because the development is just stalled out. Like in this league, if you're just a non threat, it becomes pretty difficult to consider you to be a reliable rotation piece. He's looking a lot closer to Jared Vanderbilt than he is prime McHale Bridges, and that concerns me because I don't know. I don't know that there's a good solid for that other than ant takes eleven three is a game and

hopefully makes five of them. But that was a really entertaining game. That was probably the game that I enjoyed most watching tonight. That's all I have for tonight is always sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. I recorded over an hour with Sam Vessini earlier this afternoon, talking a bunch of stuff about the contenders at the top of the league.

I apologize, trust me, no one's more irritated than I am about that. But we do have more content coming out with Sam Vassini. Every year for Thanksgiving, we take Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday Sunday off me and our whole team so that we could take a little break before we get into the n season tournament. So no new content after the Sam Vasini video until our Power Rankings video on Monday.

But once we get to the Power Rankings video on Monday, it's grind time and you guys can count on that same Monday through Friday schedule basically through to the All Star break again. I sincerely appreciate you guys for rocking with me and rocking with the show. If you have an opportunity to spend some time with family and food this holiday. I hope you guys enjoy it and I'll see you guys with Sam and then on Monday.