Hoops Tonight - Lakers-Warriors Reaction: LeBron James & LA survive Curry & Golden State in 2OT

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responsible gambling resources. All right, welcome to hoop tonight. You're at the volume. Happy Saturday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great weekend so far. Well, we had what was already a pretty bizarre NBA day around the league for Rive Week or whatever the NBA is branding it. As we had the we had Joelobiide Duck Nikole Jokic on the road at Denver again. We had the Nuggets end up in a weird dog fight with

the Sixers down their three best players. We had the Clippers on a tail end of a back to back go into Boston and beat the hell out of the Celtics. And then the end of the night ended up being weirder than all of it, as we had this truly bizarre Lakers Warriors game where the Warriors come out in the third quarter and just blitz the Lakers, and then Ad goes down what looks like a bad injuries. He's

limping incredibly slowly back to the locker room. Then the Lakers somehow come all the way back without Anthony Davis. Then Anthony Davis returns to the game. Then we have the Lakers blow the lead right before the end of regulation, and then they do it again in double overtime. We have this weird D'Angelo Russell stretch where he turns the ball over like three times in a row and then takes a pull up transition three that gives Lakers the lead.

Then on the final possession, we have Steve Kerr substitute Corey Joseph into the game in double overtime for defensive sub and then to tie it all together, we have Lebron James has been consistently criticized by some specific people that we won't mention here for not wanting to drive the basketball down the stretch of games, and he does so, gets a call, goes a line, knocks down both free throws,

and wins. It so just truly bizarre. It was. I had all these different notes that I had written down, and I could go on about this game for like forty five minutes, but it's pretty late, and so I want to kind of focus on some of the big things.

So what I'm gonna do instead as I'm gonna give you guys my three biggest takeaways from this particular game, and then I'm gonna talk a little bit about the Celtics and the Clippers, and then after that, I have some thoughts regarding the scoring outbursts we've seen around the league and some of the negative energy directed towards that, which I don't understand and quite frankly, I think is just wrong and a lot of misremembering how NBA history used to look. You guys know the drill before we

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keep saying invest in Lebron and Steph. There's been a lot of you know, takes flying around the NBA surrounding the Lakers and the Warriors, for the record, and I think you kind of saw that in this game tonight. Both of these teams have been dealing with some stuff in playing some really inconsistent basketball, right. Like the Warriors have had a lot of knights where they've looked particularly

good this year. They beat the Celtics this year, right, And like, they've also had a lot of weird circumstances between the Draymond suspension and a lot of lineup stuff going on with Steve Kerr. And then on the Lakers front, they're like the hot cold team of the NBA and they win the nd season tournament. They have all these massive wins. They beat the Clippers twice, they beat the Suns three times, and then they just look awful on

other nights. They lose to a Spurs team that had like three wins all season and had lost like a dozen games in a row, and they go in and lose to the Spurs. The Brooklyn Nets lose, you know, they win like two games in a month, and then they go into LA and beat the Lakers. So it's like both of these teams kind of are dealing with seasons that look a lot like that game, where for stretches they look great and then other stretches they don't.

But what I've said throughout is that at the end of the day, Lebron James and Steph Curry, in my opinion, are still, at least when you're ranking playoff players, like strictly within the aspect of the NBA playoffs, they're still in that short list of guys that can lead a team to an NBA championship. And so even though even though like I'm not in the interest of trading good players just for the sake of it, I know Jonathan Kaminge's got star potential at a lot of big moments. Again,

tonight and another twenty plus. I think that's his sixth

consecutive time going for twenty plus. But like, what I keep thinking is like, but that's Steph Curry and once again down the stretch of the game, while Lebron was getting these contributions from Austin Reeves with transition pushes and D'Angelo Russell, although he made some mistakes hitting big pull up jump shots, Anthony Davis attacking around the rib, like Steph Curry's out there trying to do everything, and he got a couple of big shots, particularly from Klay Thompson,

but other than that, it was a lot of just Steph Curry having to do everything. And I keep thinking, like, it doesn't have to look like this. You can potentially try to reinforce. And so that's what drives that opinion. And I'm not saying I'm not saying I've changed my mind or anything like that as it pertains to Jonathan Kaminga,

I'm just saying, this is what makes it complicated. He just had forty six three and seven Steph did he was cooking Anthony Davis in switches, just absolutely barbecuing him down the stretch of that game. Now, to AD's defense, he's the little hobbled with that hip injury that he had. But even with that hip injury, he's one of the best defensive players in the world. And Steph was cooking him. So that's why I keep saying, like, oh, you have one of those guys. You can't win the title without

one of those guys. So who gives a shit about some first round draft pick in a few years, You know, who gives a shit about what a guy can be when you have this right now? Like there are look at it. Look around the league and look at how many teams have absolutely no chance to win the title because they don't have one of those guys, but they have a bunch of interesting young talent. Right There are a lot of teams like that out there in the NBA.

That's what makes this complicated. Same thing with Lebron, Like, yeah, I get it, this team has a weird basketball character. They've gone up and down all year. But you have Lebron James and Anthony Davis on your team. That that is such an incredible foundation within the NBA playoffs to make a playoff runt. That that is why I keep saying, like, you gotta go all in with these guys. You gotta

try to make something happen. These are the unique talents that are capable of getting you to the Larry O'Brien Trophy. They've won eight of them since twenty fifteen. Guys, it is two, they've won eight of them. Like like that, that is why I feel this way about these two guys. Lebron James thirty six points, twenty rebounds and twelve assists, completely absurd, the over the top shot making once again in overtime and in double overtime, just like confidently stepping

into these tough pull up jump shots. There's another one of the reasons why, Like, as the Lakers have been kind of up and down all year, I've been like, hmm, Like Anthony Davis looks bat better than he has since twenty twenty. I know he's not making all the same pull up jump shots, but his passing is just at a complete other level from what it used to be. And so just as like an offensive folkrum, he's just

so much more versatile. And then I look at Lebron James and I'm like, he's clearly better than he was last year, and he's just stepping into these jump shots was so that was a huge problem last year. Over the top shot making and the lack thereof for the

Lakers was literally why they lost last year. They battled the Nuggets close every single game, and then at the end, Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic made shots when Lebron James could it and when Anthony Davis could it, and so like, yeah, there's something got to work out, and we're gonna talk about it in a minute as we talk about the Lakers. But like, the bottom line is is like I think

this version of Lebron is worth investing it. And like down the stretch of that game, driving to the basket, drawing a foul, confidently going to the line and making both like he's in He's just in that type of position where he looks he looks key, eat up and ready for this type of run, and I just think that's worth investing. In My second biggest takeaway, you can

see what the Lakers are supposed to look like. We've been dealing with this issue with the Lakers starting lineup forever and one of the main reasons why is I've kept saying is like, even as the offense has looked great, and the Laker offense has taken leaps and bounds over the course of the last month, which is super encouraging

for their big picture potential. But what I kept saying is, you can't play Lebron or excuse me, Torrian Prince, Austin Reeves and D'angela Russell is your one, two three against serious basketball teams. And the main reason why is they're just way too slow and unathletic at those three spots. And in the very perimeter oriented league, that's vitally important that speed, in that athleticism, that power and force from

the perimeter. And so one of the things I've been talking about is we've been talking about different versions of how to build a starting lineup. If you're going to play Austin Reeves and d'angela Russell, you you have to

play Jared Vanderbilt. If you're going to play Torrian Prince at the three, you have to play one of your athletic guys like a Max Christy or Cam Reddish at the two, strictly because you need to have somebody to throw out of Steph Curry or out of Jamal Murray at a Shay Gilders Alexander Austin Reeves got the Steph Curry matchup before this at the beginning of this game, before Jared Vanderbilt entered, and like he was getting cooked. That's not an Austin problem, that's the lineup problem. Like

Torrian would have got cooked too. Like that's the thing. Like when you're structuring these lineups. I always talk about this, like you gotta have the responsibilities of a basketball team fulfilled. On the basketball court. You have to have somebody that can guard at the point of attack. You have to have somebody that can protect the rim. You have to have somebody that can take that low man role that can help under the basket and in defensive rebounding situations.

Torrian Prince was minus twenty two in this game and Jared Vanderbilt was plus thirty. It's not that hard to figure out. Like when Jared Vanderbilt is out there next to Austin Reeves and D'Angelo Russell, there is a better fulfilling of the basketball responsibilities. Torrian Prince is a bad defensive rebounder. Jared Vanderbilt is an excellent defensive rebounder. Torrian Prince is an average point of attack defender. Jared Vanderbilt

is an excellent point of attack defender Torrian Prince. His motor runs hot and cold. Jared Vanderbilt's motor is going one hundred percent one hundred percent of the time. And so just from a simple concept of lineup construction, if you're gonna play the two skill guards, you gotta play Jared Vanderbilt, end of story. It's just what you have

to do. And like it was so bizarre because like Darvin Ham has been galaxy braining the starting lineup all season long, and when this lineup was a lineup that worked at least during the regular season all year. I have concerns about that lineup in the playoffs. I've talked about them all year. But like with with this from the standpoint of the regular season, that's just the way

you have to construct lineups. You know, last game, there was a run in the final couple of minutes of the first half where they went with Vanderbilt, D'Angelo Russell and Austin Reeves, and they promptly went on a run. And then they went into the second half and Darbenham didn't play them at all in the second half, like he he was out there, he watched it happen, he watched it work, and then he didn't do it. And and then in this particular game, like they go out to

start the game, it's an issue. They go out to start the second half, it's a massive issue. They call a time out early second half and they stay with Torrean prints and the lead grows, Like, you know, it's funny. I tweeted this earlier. Talked a lot about potential Laker trades.

They're one of the most common refrains that is that I've come across in my conversations with people behind the scenes about the Lakers trade deadline across the board is like, yeah, but what if Darvin ham just plays Torrian Prince thirty minutes that anyway, Like, Torrian Prince is a good bench wing, he could shoot the ball, he's really offensively skilled. He's just not a great athlete, and so you need him

playing against lower level NBA players on the perimeter. But like the like, it just doesn't matter if they trade for Jjonte Murray, if they trade for a Dorian Finney Smith, doesn't matter if those guys aren't actually on the floor, Like, and that's where the issue is, Like There are better guys Ruey Hatchramura, Jared Vanderbilt. There are better players than Torrian Prince right now that are buried behind him on

the bench. And so I thought tonight was just a resounding example, a fifty two point swing between those two guys. I thought that was a resounding I shouldn't say fifty two points on what was it plus thirty three to minus twenty whatever it was, but just a completely a completely flipped dynamic in the basketball game based on the diff between having a high motor athlete that can slot everybody properly. So now Austin Reeves isn't chasing Steph around,

He's chasing Clay around. It just slots everything properly and makes everything make more sense. So that's my second biggest takeaway. You can see what the Lakers are supposed to look like. And that, by the way, is why I keep talking about how getting a version of Vando that is a high motor athlete that can defend on the perimeter and also be a plus offensive player is the dream outcome. That's why I keep saying, even though I like the Dejonte Murray trade idea, but that's why I prefer the

Bruce Brown one. That what you're seeing Bruce Brown is Jared Vanderbilt at the two guard position, and that having him there actually makes a Jared a Torreon Prince more feasible at the three because he'll be playing in more achievable defensive assignments. Because as a lineup, you'll still hold up better at the point of attack because of Bruce Brown, because then Torrean's offensive strengths can kind of rise to this surface. I'm not even sure I'd probably still try

to play if it were. If it were up to me, I'd probably still play Ruey at the three. But my point is is like, if Darvin is just obsessed with playing Torrian Prince at the three, you gotta have some other type of athlete out there. I thought tonight was a great example of that. My third biggest takeaway you can see what the Warriors are supposed to look like. I put three things down three a list of three

keys for the Warriors to look like the Warriors. Number one, Steph has to play like a superstar a lot of the time. Over the course of these struggles. Steph is not the season He's been down across the board by almost any measure, And I don't blame him necessarily for that because it's been a shit show for lack of a better term, He's playing at with a lot of young players, I'm sure, just in terms of his own belief in the team's ability success to succeed, he's had

some struggles there. But like what you saw tonight, because here's the thing, Like, I know the Lakers, don't I know the Lakers have a lot of pessimism outside of the Laker fan base, but I actually think they're a really good team when they try hard. And the Warriors held up really well against them tonight and very easily could have won that game if a couple of different things go differently, And like a big part of that is just having Steph Curry playing like Steph Curry number two.

They have to defend. This is something that Steve Kerr talked about in the fourth quarter interview. I tweeted about it in the third quarter, Andrew Wiggins on the ball. They switched Andrew Wiggins onto D'Angelo Russell at some point in the first half. I can't remember exactly when, but they switched him on to Dangela Russell in the first half, and he just started ball pressuring the hell out of

d Lo and causing the Laker offense to stall. And then on the backside of it, Draymond Green just blowing up these roles and drives from Anthony Davis and Lebron James, and the Lakers are like something like nineteenth or twenty if I remember correctly, according to Cleaning the Glass and transition defense. But they're a good half court defense. Even with their trash effort all year. There's still eleventh and half court defense this year according to Cleaning the Glass.

So like, if you want to attack the Lakers, get out and run as much as you can. And when they went on that third quarter run, it was a steady diet of Wiggins and Draymond kind of defensive playmaking leading to these runout opportunities for the Warriors to avoid the Laker half court defense, because in the Laker half court defense, they had a hard time getting anything unless

Steph Curry was going off. So like, again, like the Warriors, we forget a lot of times when we talk about the Warriors historically, we go we emphasize things like, oh, it's the Splash Brothers, Oh it's Kevin Durant. Oh, it's the death lineup this or that They won with defense first and foremost. They were an excellent defensive team every year they won the title. The Warriors were thirtieth in

defensive raiding in January before tonight. Now, obviously Draymond was out for most of that, but that's my point that has to be the driving force of this team's success is if you get stuck in the half court, it's going to be a lot of Steph Curry facing multiple defenders and hedges and traps trying to make something happen. And he's a freaking magician and so he's going to

make some stuff happen. But it's just a really difficult way to win if you're not getting out into the flow that you can get into off of your defense. And then third, you have to get offensive support for Steph. In twenty twenty two, it was Jordan Poole, it was Andrew Wiggins, it was Klay Thompson, and Jordan Poole kind of fell off and then you traded him. And Andrew Wiggins and Klay Thompson have been really really hot and

cold since the title. Wiggins mostly cold, But I thought you saw it tonight and a big part of how they were able to compete like this was getting that type of scoring support. You got twenty points each from Kaminga, from Wiggins and from Klay Thompson. And I think Johnathan Kamena kind of sliding into that Jordan Poole role as like the young guy that kind of gives them microwave scoring has gone a long way to helping them in that regard. But you have to have all three of

those things to win. You have to have Steph playing like a star, you have to defend, and you have to get some kind of scoring support. You did get all three of those today and you had a good chance to beat a really good team, especially a really good team that the Warriors match up poorly with as we saw at the end of the regular season last year and in the playoffs. A couple other quick things

the starting lineup. When you're in a predicament like what the Warriors are in right now, which is your a couple of games out of the play in tournament, you can't afford to bs around. So, for instance, the one of the big reasons the Warriors lost to the Kings the other night is they started the game with Dario Sarich and Kevan Looney on the floor, and I was talking with Samus FONDII from light years after that game.

We did postgame show that night and that I was telling him, I'm like, that's the slowest front court for a serious basketball team that I can remember seeing in almost a decade. We gotta go way back to like old school Eastern Conference teams to try to find bitam Gasol type stuff, like you know, the Ilgauskis and goodin right, Like, you gotta go way back to find that type of slow footed front court because it just doesn't work in the modern NBA with the way teams can spread you out.

And the Kings are like a five out basketball team that plays a wing at the four and a kind of more of a perimeter oriented kind of skill big and Demonici bonus and like they got ran in the first shift of both halves of that game. You can't afford to kind of spot teams points with foolishness at this point. And that's on Steve curR And to his credit, finally tonight he goes with the Wiggins cominga Draymond starting lineup, which, if to put it simply, that's your five best players.

That's your five best players. How do you not start the game with your five best players. Gotta have him out there. And I think this is, in a weird way, even in a loss, a sign of a positive progression. The defense looked better for stretches tonight, even though they got cooked in other stretches. You started the right lineup, you got Steph kind of at a higher level than he's been at in a long time, and you got some offensive support off of him, not even just from

coming last thing. On the Warriors, they've lost seventeen games in clutch situations. That's what the game is within five or less than five minutes left. That is the second worst mark in the NBA. That is despite the fact that Steph has been completely outrageously good in the clutch. I looked up the numbers the other day because one of the callers on the on the Light Years pod came on and was saying that Steph was struggling at the end of games. And I looked him up and

he's like fifty forty ninety. It's like fifty to fifty ninety or something like that. In shooting percentages in clutch situation. So the bottom line is is you're just not getting enough support outside of Steph Curry in clutch situation. That's been one of their gest issues to this point. But yeah, again, I could go on about that game for like forty five minutes, but I think I think for right now,

that's enough from that completely wild game. We know what the Warriors are supposed to look like, we know what the Lakers are supposed to look like. And man, Steph Curry and Lebron James, Like, there's a reason why I think there's an emotional attachment. There's a reason why I think so many people are like, hey, man, let's give it one more shot. And it's because they can do stuff like that. All right, Two more topics before we

get out of here. Clippers Celtics. So I've kind of talked in my contender tiers and stuff about these like different archetypes of teams, right, and specifically among the contenders to me, there's two archetypes. There's the big traditional playoff teams. Right. These teams have huge front courts. They kind of like play like a rock fight style of basketball, right, Like this is your Milwaukee Bucks. This is kind of Philly

kind of falls into this this mold as well. This is the Denver Nuggets, This is the Minnesota Timberwolves, this is the Los Angeles Lakers. Right, these big, bruising front lines that are built more around the traditional basketball build. Right,

and then we have like these perimeter oriented teams. These are the teams that, like, they don't really have excellent rim protection, but they just have a boatload of guys that are that are you know, multi level scores, that can mix people up off the dribble, that can attack closeouts, that can play driving kick basketball. And they're typically a little more thin, and they're typically smaller, but they're typically

a hell of a lot more skilled. And generally speaking, like, either team can beat the other if they exploit their advantage, if they control Like again, styles make fights, but it's whichever style wins the fight, right, Like, it doesn't really like the quickness for size, Well, if the big guy weaponizes this size more than the quick guy can weaponize

his quickness, the big guy's gonna win or vice versa. Right, But like, this was an interesting example of the two top teams that I have in that perimeter oriented archet type. I did my I kind of redid my contender rankings last weekend with the Nerd Sage guys, and I had the Nuggets at won, the Celtics at two, the Bucks at three, and I had the Clippers at four. And so this is the two teams in that top four

that are of that archetype competing against each other. And then again like the Clippers too, like they they've won a lot of games, but a lot of the there have been some games where like Kawi has been out for major matchups against against kind of like higher profile teams. This was a good example of an opportunity for them to add just another layer of legitimacy to their success. And it could not have come at a worse time because they just played it back to back in Toronto.

The night before, I texted my buddy law Murray, who covers the Clippers for the Athletic, and I'm like, are they all playing tonight? And They're like, He told me that Paul George was coming off of kind of like an ankle issue and that he was questionable for the Toronto game and that he ended up still playing. And I was like, man, like, that's so lame that this game is going to be kind of like a little

bit clouded by the back to back thing. We also have chrisps Porzingis out with the with the ankle injury, right and that for the record, that's the one big difference between the Celtics and those other kind of perimeter oriented teams is they have chrisops Porzingis. He's the one thing that kind of like changes everything about what about what that team does. It's the it's the true difference maker, and it's one of the big reasons why I have

them in my top tier of contenders alongside Denver. It's not the same Boston team from years past. It's that Boston team with a legit stretch big. He's their second best on off guy on the team. And that became a big theme in this particular game the Clippers, particularly in that third quarter run. We're relentlessly attacking Al Horford in pick and roll. He's just a little too slow,

just a little too small. And it's not a shot at Al Horford, it's just the phase of his career that he's in right like, and it just goes to show you how different the Celtics look when Porzingis is not out there. Just how important he is. And for the record, like that's the case with all these teams, right Like, if Denver loses one of their starters, I think that fundamentally changes their title chances in a big way.

Regardless of which starter it is. Same thing goes for Milwaukee, same thing goes for Boston, same thing goes for the Clippers, the Lakers, all these teams. Nobody in this field is good enough to be able to afford losing an important player. But I thought you saw it tonight just exactly how important Chris hops Porzingis is like Al Horford actually this season that has a negative on off rating for the Celtics, And it just goes to show you the difference between

those two and what they can do. First of all, Porzingis is a type of pick and pop player that actually draws attention from the defense. There are a lot of like pick and pop bigs that teams will concede jumpers too. Al Horford is one of those guys. When Al Harvard picks and pops, you just kind of lived

with the results. Porzingis between his ability to actually attack mismatches in the post successfully and his skill just as a pick and pop big just kind of fundamentally changes their defense, and because of the difference in size between him and a typical perimeter player, it's going to lead to more traditional coverages, meaning they won't switch, which will force an over the top, you know, pursuit from a player.

That was one of the big themes in this game was the Clippers switching stagnated a lot of the screening actions that Boston was running, which specifically baits Boston into their worst tendencies, which is when they get to that point, they have a tendency to take a lot of really tough either quick catch and shoot threes that aren't that open, or tough pull up jump shots. They lack the kind of discipline to be like they're switching. We got to

find the smallest guy. We got to get rim pressure to try to get the defense into rotation so that we can play driving kick basketball, right. Porzingis because of the difference in size, you're not gonna switch that most of the time. It's gonna be more like what the Clippers were doing with the with actions that involved Horford.

They're running a drop, they're they're they're chasing over the top, right, And so that's that kind of goes to show you with porzingis he just gives you the ability to make the Clippers play a different type of defense, right, But like that went a long way in this particular game, porzingis being out attacking Horford and picking Roll as much as they did the switching to stagnate Boston And then honestly, like, if you really start to get down to it, I

think that the Celtics are the most talented team in the league. I think that's pretty clear. And I think the Celtics down the roster are more talented than the Clippers are. But if you look at the top guys, it's like, is Kawhi Leonard better than Jason Tatum, Yeah, he just is. He just is. Is Paul George better than Jaylen Brown? Yeah? I think so. And it just goes to show you, like, especially in higher leverage environments, the top guys matter more. That's been one of the

biggest problems for the Celtics over the years. It's like just Tatum runs into Steph and then kind of stalls out. Tatum runs into Jimmy Butler and then kind of stalls out. And like, specifically in a playoff environment, whoever has the best player on the floor does actually matter quite a bit, and it's one of the biggest question marks surrounding the Celtics in general. Will they have the best player in a series against the Bucks, No, they won't. Will they

have the best player in a series against the Sixers? Yeah, Tatum's out played Joe Ellenbiid pretty consistently. I think we can state down unequivocally. Would Jason Tatum be the best player in a series against the Miami Heat, Like, it's a toss up. Some years he out plays Jimmy Butler, some years he doesn't. Say he gets out of the conference and goes into the West. Is he the best player in a series with Denver? No? Is he the

best player in a series with the Clippers? No? Is he the best player in a series with the Lakers? I don't know. Like, I think Tatum is a better regular season player than both Lebron and ad but in a playoff setting, I think you may very well take both of them, right, So, like it just goes to show you, like how that can how they can play a bigger role down the line in a game like this.

It like Kawhi Leonard and Paul George are just better two way basketball players than Jason Tatum and Jaylen Brown, and that goes a long way towards that dynamic. The Clippers have arguably been the best team in the league after the hard and Trade, not by record, but just in terms of the amount of impressive wins that they've been putting up. This Daniel Tye signing has been a

home run. Like obviously he came in as a result of an injury, but like his ability to pick and pop once again, the same kind of concept that we talked about earlier involving the coverages. Like his ability to pick and pop just opens things up in terms of the driving lanes, especially with James Harden in pick and roll. But when I was watching that game today, like I thought, it was a textbook example of two teams that play a similar style. But the Clippers are disciplined and deliberate

about getting the right shots in the Celtics are not. Now, before we go too negative on the Celtics, because I'm not changing my contender ranking based on this particular game. Pordingis being out is a huge dealt him to win the title. They just do. He is the difference maker between the Celtics and these other teams at the top of the league. Boston was also really sloppy. They were really sloppy and transition defense that kept getting beat down

the floor. They were turning the basketball over. I thought also like it was a textbook example of a game where the scoreboard doesn't really properly reflect the difference between the two teams, because I thought the Celtics kind of lost spirit a little bit, and a lot of times when that happens, it can be a landslide. When one team is playing with confidence and another team is playing

utterly without it. It can the gap can build pretty wide and then like you could play again in the confidence dynamic, can you know, flip and then it could be completely different, right, But yeah, really really interesting game. Shout with the Clippers. That was how many times have you seen teams in the NBA this year be like, oh, running back to back on the road against a really good team, ask or it, let's just go home, you know, let's just let's float through this game and get out

of here. And that's not what happened. They showed up and they kicked the Celtics ass. I thought it was really impressive all right before we get out of here, I wanted to talk for a minute about these scoring bursts around the NBA. So I actually watched the end of that Mavericks Hawks game last night. It was hilarious as Luca was just torching the Hawks in single coverage and the Hawks were putting forth one of the more

embarrassing defensive efforts I've ever seen. And then suddenly when Luca gets into these like mid sixties, the Hawks are like, Okay, now we're gonna play defense. So like they're sitting in a stance and they're making extra rotations and they're doing all this stuff, and I'm like, I'm like, okay, this is kind of embarrassing. Like when it came to winning the game, you weren't overly interested in competing, But now that it's about stopping Luca from getting a record, now

you're all, you know, deeply invested. But it wasn't just that we had Devin Booker go for sixty plus. I saw a stat that was completely bonkers. I can't remember the exact number, but it was like twenty three times Devin Booker's made six threes in a game and not made a seventh, Like that's legitimately crazy, Like think about that, Like that would have been weird after the tenth time and it's up in twenty plus times. And then he ended up missing a tough pull up three at the

buzzer in the loss of the Pacers. But like we also had a seventy piece from Joel embiid if what was that like a week ago or so. But here's the thing. What was bothering me the most as we were watching that was everyone talking about how scoring is overinflated in the NBA, and you know, people talking about how it's bad television and all this different stuff, a lot of like negative stuff, which is weird to me because like my first instinct is to say, how about

we just have some fun. It's January. It's January. We are halfway through this thing, not even halfway when you factor in the playoffs, Like can we just have some fun? Can we just sit there and enjoy it? I enjoyed watching that game last night, Like the second piece of it is so much of this, so much of this revisionist history as it pertains to what NBA basketball used

to be, like drives me crazy. And I've been dealing with this my entire life, because obviously I grew up around the game, and over the years, I've played with a lot of older basketball players, you know, just you know, like just that pick up runs. I'd be chatting with them on the sideline and we'd talk NBA hoops, and a consistent thing is like, oh, these guys back then were way better, you know, the officiating was, it was more pure for the game, like the ball movement was better.

That this was better, like everything used to be better,

which fundamentally I just disagree with. I mean, you don't have to look around very hard to find out that all professional sports are evolving in a positive way, right, Like, like do you remember what NFL offenses used to look like like fifteen years ago, and then you look at it today and the different packages they use and the different like motion concepts and shovel passes and all this, like the route concepts and all these like like like

incredibly complex ways that NFL offenses can work, right, And you've got guys like Shanahan and McVeigh out there that are like trained sendentally that are transcendent offensive mines that are that are changing the game as we know it. Right, you watch Major League Baseball, and it used to be like when I got through one hundred miles an hour

is a big deal. And now like every team has like four relievers that can throw one hundred miles an hour, and like two of them have a nasty two seamer that dives off to the right like twelve inches and nobody can hit it, you know what I mean, Like like like big shock, We've worked on biomechanics and we know how to pitch better now than we used to. Like, and then NBA offenses, like everything about guarding in the NBA right now is so much more difficult than it

used to be. Dors Burke was doing a bit about it in the first half of the Lakers Warriors game tonight, Like, to start with, the sheer amount of offensive skill on the floor is way, way, way above what it used to be. And this is something that slowly took place, especially as a result of guys like Steph Curry and Damian Lillard in that in that mid twenty tens stretch when they were kind of like changing the way guards played between Luca or Luca. Of well, Luca's later, but

like Lebron bringing in kind of heliocentric basketball. But when Lebron came into the league, he was running along the baseline off off of floppy action, which is like just running off of baseline screens as like a two guard looking for catch and shoot jump shots. That's now Luca gets drafted and it's like, here's the keys to the offense, Luca. We're gonna put two shooters in the weak side corner

or in the in the two corners. We're gonna put another shooter on the weak side wing, and we're gonna have a rim runner for you, and we're just gonna construct an offense around around your strengths. It's just different now. It used to be that you had big, bruising power forwards that were primarily in the game just to beat the hell out of people. And now it's like Harrison Barnes plays the four. Right now, it's like Pascal Siaka

plays the four. It's just different now, Jonathan Kamingez four, you're getting high powered offensive players at at least four position groups. And then now we're seeing the rise of these offensive full crime centers from the perimeter. Sa Bonus and Anthony Davis and Nicole Jokic and Joel Embiid and like it is, you know, it is just it is so much harder now. And then to top it all off, you give anybody any space these days and they're hitting a pull up jump shot. In your grill, you die

on a screen for a second. The dude's rising from twenty seven feet and hitting a tough pull up jump shot. It is just objectively harder than it used to be. And then when defenses get into rotation, when one guy gets beat off the dribble, it just turns into this chaos situation and everyone can shoot. So you're trying to chase a guy off the line and you're trying to do all this stuff, like it is just hard to

play defense now. So between how difficult it is to guard, between the way offenses are set up to actually accentuate your best player strengths because guess what, we're just better at it now. Well, you're better at coaching NBA offense now than we used to be. And then the last piece of it that I wanted to hit, like when it comes to these scoring totals, this is kind of what January basketball can be. Like. Sometimes I don't see

dudes putting up seventy in the playoffs. Schematically, they'll take it away if a guy like look at the Lakers Warriors series last year. Look at all the defensive adjustments that took place, just simply because the Lakers were struggling to guard Steph Curry and pick and roll. Every single adjustment for both teams was like the Lakers trying to figure out how to deal with Steph the Warriors trying

to figure out how to deal with Anthony Davis. And you're all making these adjustments, and you would never let a guy just torch you for sixty sixty five points. This is January basketball. Joel Embiid did it, wasn't it against the San Antonio Spurs. The Luca did it against the Atlanta Hawks. Devin Booker did it against one of the worst defensive teams in the league in the Indiana Pacers.

Like a big part of this is just January hoops, like good scores going off against bad defensive teams that don't have a lot to play for, which, by the way, also happened twenty years ago. This is not a new trend. This has been a consistent theme throughout NBA history. So like to kind of put a bow on it, Like, how about when this happens, we just sit back and be basketball fans instead of trying to rewrite NBA history. Like, I have my issues with the NBA. I don't like

the way it's officiated like that. I think officiating is a massive problem in the NBA. Just at the end of regulation, there were like three atrocious bad calls in that Lakers Warriors game. That Anthony Davis rebound foul is really bad. The inadvertent whistle Draymond Green clubs Anthony Davis in the face, a clear flagrant doesn't it doesn't get called for it, Like like officiating in the NBA is just a it's just it's in a domination. But like as a matter of the game, the players, the coaching,

the schemes, everything's getting better. It's always getting better. So stop being the angry old man on your front porch talking about how basketball is not the same anymore. Because I promise you, if you go back fifteen years and just pick five random January games, they're gonna be ugly as all hell. Like I promise you, it wasn't utopia basketball back then. All right, I'm off my soapbox, all right, guys, we're gonna get out of here for tonight. As always,

I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show. We will be back on Monday to do our power rankings and some game breakdowns. I will see you guys then, enjoy your Sunday, enjoy the title games over at the NFL. The volume