Hoops Tonight - Lakers take down Grizzlies, Suns beat Clippers, Heat upset Bucks, 76ers sweep Nets

of information that we have. We're also live on AMP, so if you're watching on YouTube or listening on the podcast feeds, don't forget that AMP is the very first place that you guys can get these shows. I also have some thoughts about Russell Westbrook and how great he looked today, and I think I need to make a little bit of an apology for the way that I covered him with the Lakers, So I want to talk about that a little bit and then share some thoughts on the Bucks Heat series as well as the Joel

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Download game Time today, last minute tickets, lowest price guarantee. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Lakers. I talked a lot after Game two, before Game two even that I expected them to bring a lack of daisical effort into risk dropping a game, and then they did. And I thought, even in my rewatch going back to look at that, it's hard to overstate just how much effort played a role in that. And I think a big part of it stems from Lebron James and Anthony Davis,

the two of them, from the top down. There are two guys that like like to inflict their physicality on the game relative to the amount that they feel threatened. And it's been like that, literally NonStop since the twenty twenty Championship that season, they were pretty consistently locked in. They'd have their occasional bad games, just like anybody else

would around the NBA. Nobody's perfect, but in terms of consistent night in and night out effort, the two of them were laser focused from training camp until they hoisted the Larry O'Brien Trophy in October, and they have not had that consistent level of effort ever since. That said, it has actually made them kind of an easy team

to predict. Just as confident as I was that they would struggle in Game two, I was very confident that they would play well in Game three, and Lebron James and Anthony Davis were going to bring the requisite level of force. The Memphis Grizzlies in Game two started doing a lot more switching, and we've talked about this a lot with the Lakers in particular, because the way that you attack switching defenses is very different than the way that you attack drop coverage or other traditional pick and

roll coverages. When you're attacking traditional pick and roll coverages, you need a certain type of ball handler that can make all the different shots that the coverage might give you and then make all the passing reads that the coverage might give you. That's very much about there's a couple of specific things you have to do. You have to get downhill to draw in the rim protector, and then from there you have to make really good reads. It's very much a decision making type of offense. Again,

attacking a switching scheme is the exact opposite. It's very much brute force and ironically like Lebron James and Anthony Davis represent probably the best possible switch attacking duo that you can have in the NBA because of the ability that Lebron James has to score from different spots on the floor and Anthony Davis just being this big walking mismatch, and most importantly they can beat mismatches at the rim.

There's a lot of times where we've seen in NBA history guys that are great at attacking switches but rely too heavily on their jump shot. Their jump shot fails them and they end up struggling. Lebron James and Anthony Davis can turn these switching contests into rock fights when they want to. The problem is is it demands that

you attack your switch with physicality. So think of it this way in a traditional pick and roll coverage, I'm just trying to get over the top of the screen and get downhill and engage that screen defender, which is going to bring over a different help defender to handle the role man, which is gonna open things up on the backside for wide open shooters. It's a lot easier to do that, especially if you're a big playmaking guy

like Lebron that sees the floor so well. When it comes to switching, those pick and rolls are just gonna result in this, which especially with Lebron James and Anthony Davis when they're guarded by Dylan Brooks and Jared Jackson, who they feel comfortable switching that matchup onto either guy right, And so as a result, all of a sudden, it stagnates everything and you're just kind of passing the ball around the perimeter, and the only time you're ever going

to actually get anything good going offensively is if you just drop your damn shoulder and go by the guy and start engaging help defenders, and you're either going to score at the rim or you're going to draw help defenders, and that will get you those wide open kickouts on the backside. It's much more labor intensive. Attacking pick and

roll coverages is very much a brains thing. Attacking a switching coverage is very much a bronze thing, especially for Lebron James and Anthony Davis in the way that they play, and many times this season we've seen this particular coverage

give them issues. As a matter of fact, if I was coaching to play the Lakers as an opposing coach, and I was coaching them in a series, I would go heavily into switching because that is the thing that has caused them the most problems throughout this season, mainly just because of Ron James and Anthony Davis and their inconsistent effort. You guys might remember that game that Lebron James hurt his foot. First half switching everything small guys

in Lebron James and Anthony Davis. The whole time, they're just passing the ball around the perimeter. No one's attacking. They couldn't score. Second half, Lebron James and Anthony Davis just possession after possession after possession, relentlessly posted up, lived at the rim, and dominated the Mavericks on their way to win. That's the way they have to play, and they're just not consistently consistent enough in their physical aggression there So I tweeted out for the game that the

Lakers are way better than the Grizzlies. Let's just flat out, I think I personally think the Lakers are way better than the Grizzlies. So therefore, if they play with the wreckers at force, they should dominate the game. And that's exactly what they did. Lebron James and it Austin Reeves in the first couple of possessions were going downhill at the rim, attacking the basket with force, got back to back layups that set the tone for the rest of

the game. And then for all the chirping from between Dylan Brooks and Lebron James, one of the things that I credit Lebron James for there, and this is something that he's dealt with in the past. This is not the first guy that is a lower echelon NBA player who's decided to pick on Lebron James. There have been many that have tried and it's pretty much been the same result every single time. But the difference is Lebron didn't buy into it. Dylan Brooks basically tried to bait

him into shooting his way to forty points. Lebron came out played team basketball. Dylan Brooks, on the other hand, took like eleven damn shots in the first quarter because he got wrapped up into that battle. And as we've talked about a lot on the show, Dylan Brooks is literally one of the most inefficient shot makers in the entire league this year in terms of pick and roll isolation. He just never converts those possessions at nearly the same rate as any of the full time ball handlers around

the league. So when he goes high usage, it actively hurts Memphis. But I thought they set the tone with that playing with force against the switching and attacking the rim as much as possible. Defensively, they gave John ran a ton of problems from two point range. We're going to talk about the Lakers John Moran's run in the fourth quarter in a second, but during the actual portions of the game, when the game was in question, I

believe he was two for ten inside the arc. A lot of Jared Vanderbilt ducking under picks and bothering John Moran as he's trying to get downhill, Anthony Davis coming high out of his drop. They're really bothering John Moran at the rim and with that little short range floater that he takes, and they're giving him a lot of issues. They have caused Desmond Bang to take extremely difficult shots

and he's been inefficient basically throughout this entire series. Jared Jackson is the only guy that's been consistently effective offensively for them. And all the role players played well, which is to be expected. Role Players tend to oscillate back and forth based on their confidence, and they always play more confident at home. Specifically Ruey Hachimura. This is a real assent from him because he played excellent on the road as well. There's a lot of people saying like

that was a big narrative coming out of Game one. Oh, Ruey hatch Mura had twenty eight. That'll never happen again. Okay, he was great in game two. Okay, he was great in Game three. Here's the thing, Laker been on this. He's been great for weeks now, and I've gone into it in depth in previous shows, so I won't go into it again. But he is buying into all the dirty work he has cleaned up that hitch that he had in his three point shot that was causing him

to leave all of them short. Now he's knocking down that three point shot. And there's always a pathway to connecting isolation scoring from individual workout to five on five practice to trying into games to actually being confident with it in games, and it is a process. You have to be able to knock down that shot hundreds of times a day in the gym by yourself, then you need to test it against individual defense. Then you need to try it in practice, then you need to try

it in games. And we had seen all these videos of Ruy working with Phil Handy and working on all these moves. A lot of people compared him to Kawhi Leonard when he was younger, which was obviously a bad comp but it's not like that hard work wasn't gonna eventually pay off. It just takes time and it takes confidence, and he's starting to build that. And this is real.

I believe that this assent from Ruey is real, and it is something that is a very encouraging sign for the Lakers, not just for this year but in the future because he is the ideal running made alongside Lebron James and Anthony Davis. Say, big strong forward that can handle some of the big forward defensive responsibilities, that is good defensively, good on the glass, and can knock down shots both off the ball and on the ball. He

brings a ton of value for this team. I thought Austin Reeves and d Loo would play well off of the force that Lebron James and Anthony Davis generated, and they did. It was I thought it was a very dominant effort from the Lakers, and I thought that manifested in that first quarter. Now, right after the first quarter, the Lakers did what they are known to do every single time they switch from underdog to favorite in their mentality,

they immediately let their foot off the glass. Gas I tweeted after the first quarter, I expect the Lakers to do the absolute bare minimum to get through this game, and that's exactly what they did. I'm not trying to undercut what John Morant did in the fourth quarter, but this is not like what the Lakers did in Game two. The Lakers hit the Jets early third when they were down twenty, and they worked. They worked it all the way down to like six, and they were in this game.

Down the stretch, the Lakers just completely relaxed. The dead giveaway is when they're giving up transition baskets on max. When you're seeing like Austin Reeves get an offensive rebound put back or Anthony Davis get an offensive rebound put back, and next thing you know, John Morant's laying in the ball on the other end and Anthony Davis has barely crossed the three point line. Like again, credit to jaw,

he was playing with a ton of force. He was clearly feeling himself talking to the crowd a little bit. But you know, at the end of the day, the Lakers have just completely mailed that in at the end, and that's what they're going to do. And for the record, that's why I have been super hesitant to pick the Lakers as some sort of legitimate like team that could come out the West. That's why I've been favoring Golden State and Denver so far to this point in the playoffs.

And it's because the Lakers. I believe you will get beat if you play with that level of oscillating effort. I talk about this all the time, but the margin of victory in the playoffs is super tiny. Sometimes you end up winning or losing a series on one game, and sometimes that one game can swing on one sequence.

How many of you guys remember the twenty eleven finals and the Miami Heat being up one to oh, up big in the fourth quarter, but relaxing a little bit and blowing a game to the Dallas Mavericks that ended up costing them the series. Back in twenty twenty one when they lost to the Suns, Anthony Davis laid an egg in game one, got outplayed by DeAndre Ayton. Then

they won games two and three. They would have been up three to OHO if they approached it with the necessary force in game one, then you could have bought yourself time for Anthony Davis to return from a groin injury, because you're probably gonna find a way to win that series. Anyway. It's time and time again. I have seen series gets one one way or another based on one game, based on one sequence, and you have to be laser focused

consistently to avoid those. There's a chance that this series, if it stretches out longer, that they're going to look back at game two as a missed opportunity or a similar situation like that will arise later on in the playoffs. But this series is trending about the way I expect. I expect the Lakers still to win in six. My guess is they win Game four, lose Game five, and then win Game six. I think they should approach it with the necessary effort to win Game five because they

need the break. They need rest for their older players and their legs. But we'll see what that ends up happening. I expect them to drop one because that's just in their basketball character, all right. Moving on to Clippers stun So, this series is basically over to Kawhi Leonard sitting out presumably the rest of the series. I think Chris Haynes

reported today that there's no timeline for his return. I wanted to talk about Russ for a second because this is something that you know, as you guys probably know, I'm relatively new to this industry. It's my second season covering the NBA for the volume. It's my third full season covering the NBA in various capacities, and so I'm learning just like anybody else who's relatively new to this. And I will say that I reacted to emotionally, I think just as a fan obviously, as you guys know,

I'm a fan of the Lakers. To my frustrations with Russell Westbrook, and I associated too much of his struggles with his ability as a player and not enough with the fit, the obvious lack of a basketball fit with the Lakers. Not to be clear, this is this is not all on the media and not all on the fans. There is a reason why Russell Westbrook was on whatever it was, five teams in five years. Russell Westbrook earned

his reputation. The level of defensive effort he's playing within this series is not the level of defensive effort, not even in the same stratosphere that he brought even for short bursts with any of his previous teams. This is like this, There is a very real reason why things did not go well with the Lakers. He was unwilling to embrace the dirty work and was not willing to polish up the skill set he would need to be a successful off ball player, and it caused a bunch

of problems. That said, Russ is still a very very good basketball player. The combination of rim pressure and his playmaking are a very very potent duo, and when you combine that with his other worldly defense that he's been displaying in this series, it makes for an extremely good basketball player. But again, it was about the fit with the Lakers. They did not need the ball in his hands, which is precisely why Rob Polinkash never allowed should never

have allowed that trade to happen to begin with. But he was he was going to a team where he was going to be asked to play off the ball a lot, and when he did have the ball in his hands, he was going to be playing on a team that did not have much shooting. And those are the two things that are going to be vitally important to Russell Westbrook being a successful basketball player. He needs the ball in his hands and he needs to be surrounded by shooting. And like, look like, I don't care

what you want to say. I don't care that Phoenix's point of attack defense isn't very good. I don't care that you know, Phoenix is probably playing with some minimal effort because they know they're going to win the series because Kawhi can't play. I don't care that Kawhi and Paul George are out. And so Russell Westbrook has the ball in his hands the whole time. When you got and you throw a statline like that up in the NBA playoffs, you can't scoff at that. That's real production.

You cannot scoff at what he's the plays he's making defensively. He there's another one today where he got called for a foul on the baseline where impossibly he blocked Kevin Durant on a jump shot. How many times have you seen Kevin rank get blocked on a jump shot? Ever? And hasn't Russ done it to him like three times already in this series? Like that's freaking crazy, man. And so like again, Russ is not my favorite player. There are a lot of things about him that drive me

crazy as a basketball fan. I'll admit that. That said, like one of the big lessons I learned is I let my personal fan hood get in the way of the way I analyzed Russ, and I did not properly diagnose enough the way that the fit issues actually contributed

to his to his problems. And I do believe that he has several productive years left in the NBA, it just needs to be with teams like this that actually need him to have the ball in his hands and are surrounded with the requisite shooting to space the floor for his rim pressure to be a factor. And I will say as a basketball fan, even though this series is over, as a basketball fan, I have really really enjoyed watching Russell Westbrook this year with the Clippers moving

on to Bucks heat. So Jimmy Butler is phenomenal in this game, was really doing a good job attacking Drew Holley. Duncan Robinson kind of had a resurgence in this particular game. I feel terrible for Victor Oladipo. I have no idea what the actual word was on his injury, but that really bummed me out. But this is all I have

to say. I h look, the Bucks half court offense did not look good in this game, even though Chris Middleton made some shots early like he just if you were asking an NBA offense to run everything through Drew Holliday and Chris Middleton against a locked in defense, especially one that has some of the defensive personnel pieces like Jimmy Butler and bam Adebio that Miami has, You're gonna struggle. Like that's just the reality. Like I talk about slotting

all the time. But like Drew and and Chris, like when they're slotted behind Giannis, they make so much sense. But when you slot them up into Drew being your primary guy and Chris being your secondary guy, suddenly they're very underqualified and you're and you're gonna see that now. I do believe that Giannis is really hurt, but I also watched him play in game one after he got hurt, and he's still moving pretty well, which tells me that

this is probably a pain tolerance issue. So from that standpoint, the way I look at it is like Yannis probably plays if they're down two to oh right, but it's one one and you just dominated them without Yannis and you lost the game. I believe that Jannis is almost a sure thing to play in game four, and I believe the Bucks will win comfortably in Game four. I personally will not be worried about the Bucks until a report comes out that Yannis is not playing in game four.

And most importantly, and those of you guys who are longtime listeners of the show will remember this rant, but I've always called game three the buzzsaw game. There is a uh a play kind of a weirdness to the early phase of a playoff series, as teams are feeling each other out, but by game three, you're generally a little bit familiar with each other and you're going home. And like for all of these series, that game three, that first time playing at home, especially in the first round,

it's like the first playoff game at home. There's this like tangible energy. It's one of my favorite games to bet. And once again this year, the home team in Game three is five and three, and the only losses are Philly, who got swept because they're not nearly as talented as phil excuse me, Brooklyn who's not nearly as talented as Philly, and they got swept. That Denver team against Minnesota, which again just quality win for Denver, and that's a big

part of why I've been so impressed with Denver. And then the last one I believe was I'm blaking on it right now, but there was one other team that won in their home game in Game three, but the other five all one, Like it's just an extremely difficult

game to win. That's just the reality. Oh it was Clipper Suns is what it was, which once again Kawhi Leonard didn't play so two of the three times the home team in Game three loss, they were at gigantic personnel disadvantages that they were going to be basically incapable of overcoming. So again, great win. Fun watching Jimmy this game.

This series is certainly going to be more entertaining now, probably a little bit, considering that Philly and Boston might beat the shit out of each other in the second round, it's probably helpful for those two teams that Milwaukee has a little bit more of a battle in Round one. But I'm not I remain literally zero percent worried about Milwaukee last, but not least. And I'm only gonna talk about this for a second because I didn't actually watch much of this game. But the Sixers Joel Embiid, in

his knee injury again played through it. My guess is he'll probably try to play through this one too, But as we saw against Miami last year, if he misses the first two games and they dig themselves into two a hole, it's just too much of a gap to dig when you're playing to dig out of when you're playing against a team like Boston. If it was anybody else in that second round series, that feel a little bit better it. But if embiid is not ready to

go in Game one, they're not winning. It's really that simple. But the most encouraging thing to come out of that first round series was Tyres Maxey. I've talked a lot about how Philly before the Phoenix trade I thought had the most talented top four in the NBA. Tyras Maxie is one of those guys. As up and down as the James Harden experience has been, Tyres Maxy has been excellent in the first round so far, and that's encouraging. All right, guys, that is all I have for tonight.

We are going live after Warriors Kings Game four tomorrow with Colin Cowhard, so keep an eye on the feeds for that, and then we'll be back Monday morning breaking down the rest of the games from Sunday. As always, I appreciate you guys for rocking with us for the super successful first week that we had, and I will see you guys tomorrow. The volume