Hoops Tonight - Lakers-Warriors Reaction: LeBron James & Steph Curry DUEL, Reaves' GAME-WINNER

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this video. We're just gonna focus on that game. Then today I'm gonna come back with another episode because I'm gonna have to go take several hours to watch a bunch of film. I'll come back later today with the reaction to the other four Christmas Day games. So just Lakers Warriors in this one the rest of Christmas Day later today. You guys know the Joe before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter

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in the YouTube comments four hour Friday mail Bags. All right, let's get into the Lakers Warriors. So it's interesting game. The Lakers mostly controlled it, especially over the last two and a half quarters. The Golden State. Golden State had their last lead with a little over ten minutes left in the second quarter. So it was one of those games where the Lakers kind of felt like they were

in control, but I was terrified. Like even when the Lakers were up by ten with three minutes and twenty seven seconds left, I was literally watching the TV just like, I know this is about to go off the rails any second. Then up by seven with less than a minute left, I still don't feel comfortable. I've just seen Steph come back from that sort of deficit with crazy shot making so many times in my lifetime. It's always crazy.

I always think you learn the most about what a player does well when you're rooting against him, and you learn the most about what a player does poorly when you're rooting for him, Because when you're rooting for a player and you're constantly watching every single possession, you see the mistakes that they make right, But when you're rooting against a player, what they're great at always scares the

shit out of you. And Steph was scaring me. Next thing you know, he hits a three off of a tap out offensive rebound, hits a driving layup against Max Christie. In transition, hits a smothered corner three over Lebron in the right corner and then ties the game with a

thirty five foot running to his left one. In particular, that annoyed me because Max Christie, who had a pretty good game overall, had made a few mistakes on Steph throughout the game where he was conceding a switch, and like, obviously when you're dealing with switching, and there are certain things that you do for other players that you don't do for Steph Curry, Like, for instance, he gave a

three to Steph on a play where he peel. He did what's called a peel off switch, where like he as he was going like he was going to chase over the screen, but then at the last second decided to switch and went back and ducked underneath Tray Jackson Davis and tried to box him out, which again is what you're supposed to do with other players, Like, oh, this guy is going to be helping me on the other end of the screen, my responsibility now shifts to inside positions so that I can keep him off the

offensive glass or prepare for a post up to attack the other end of the switch. Right, that's what you do against normal basketball players, not against Steph Curry. Against Steph Curry, you do not switch, ever, unless you are a hundred percent sure that he's already accounted for on the other side to the screen. Austin Reeves wasn't ready for it. Max Christy just points and dies on the pick and gets his inside position on the screener. Next thing you know is Steph is wide open. And like, again,

those are little things. We're gonna talk about Max later. There's a little things that he'll have to learn. Young players make that kind of mistake every once in a while. You won't see veterans make that kind of mistake because they've been burned by Steph Curry too many times over

the course of his career. But Steph is just ridiculous, man, Like, you know how absurd it is that I'm sitting there with a double digit lead as a fan with three and a half minutes left, and I'm in my head going like Steph's gonna find a way to make this a game, and he makes it a game, Like it's just it's just completely absurd, and like we were just dealt such a treat last night. I thought Lebron was fantastic.

We're gonna talk about him later. Just wonderful job attacking the Warriors out of the post, not just Andrew, not just on mismatches, but also directly on Andrew Wiggins. We're gonna get more into it in a minute. But like Lebron and Steph just put on an absolute show last night. It's insane to me that December of twenty twenty four, we are still getting incredible, high level basketball from both

of these guys. It's crazy to me that the passion of the American basketball fan base is still linked to these two because they are straight up out performing the majority of the young American talent.

Scart guarding the inbounder. He lunges over to deny the pass into Lebron on and so Austin catches with six seconds left Andrew Wiggins on him, and he's looking back towards half court and he sees Lebron effectively double teamed forty feet from the basket, and he instantly makes a decision. If I try to get it to Lebron here, it's very high risk and there might not be enough time for him to make a move once he gets it. I have to do something quickly, turns and faces Andrew

Wiggins hard jab step. Such a simple and effective move. Again, like I've talked about this a lot in skill development with my young players. I talk about it on the show too. It's not about chaining together seventeen dribble combinations.

There are guys who can do that extremely well. In the league, but more often than not, if you make a simple move like a jab step, a crossover in in and out, an in and out dribble, or a hard reverse pivot if you're in the post, like if you sell the change in direction, so on the jab step, if you sell the right handed drive, it will work.

it was just shoulder fakes. It's like, I'm gonna fake with this shoulder or that shoulder, and you're gonna end up biting on the wrong one and I'm gonna turn over the opposite one and I'm gonna get a shot that I like. Simplicity works in basketball when you sell the moves, and Austin just hard jab steps on Andrew

Wiggins breaks Wiggins off with it and gets dribble penetration. Okay, Wiggins is there, he's kind of like on his side, he's a great athlete, he's recovering, but Austin's got dribble penetration.

If we talked about this in the Infny Simon's game winner between the Blazers and the Nuggets, right, Like, yeah, Russell Westbrook has to do a better job containing the ball. He did an even worse job than Andrew Wiggins did here. But like when you get beat, there's a team defense element that you have to be prepared for dribble penetration. The Nuggets were loaded up on help on the wrong side of that drive, and for the Warriors, Jonathan Kaminga again,

Ruy cuts along the baseline. Dennis Schroeder is there as the low man. He can step in if Ruy tries to make himself available for a cut. If Kaminga steps over and helps, at the very least, you're gonna make

them make a jump shot. And if you give up clean dribble penetration on a game winner type of situation, there again, you don't want to give up a wide open shot, but you'd rather give up a wide open shot than a wide open layup or a moderately contested layup that a guy like Austin is gonna make more often than not. It was just really really bad team defense.

about the way we discussed the game. It's the stupidest thing about the player narratives and the stand behavior and how we talk about this guy and that guy and this guy and that guy, is we forget that basketball is this infinitely complex combination of organisms that comes together to make this like beautiful game that's very complicated and it's not as simple as there's one guy here, one

guy there doing this or that. It's It's way, way, way more complicated than that bad team defense from the Warriors. They ended up having to throw up a full court heave at the buzzer that they miss and the Lakers get a win. Just a huge play from Austin Reeves. I mean, I thought Austin was amazing all game. Twenty six points, ten rebounds in tennis sis a triple double, led the bench units with a lot of Ruey like two man game with Ruey where he's getting great looks there.

The Lakers were only minus two with Lebron off the floor. Again in a game where Anthony this is a This was a huge win for the Lakers because Anthony Davis was basically out in Dangelo Russell, who was vitally important for their offense in a lot of cases, was out, and so it's kind of like a Lebron Austin Ruey show. And Austin just did a really nice job running those Lebron off units with Ruey two man game. I thought

he defended Dennis Schroeder pretty well all game long. He ran the clutch offense with Lebron and helped him get I thought they got pretty good looks down the stretch, like they had some misses right, Like Austin had to pull up three that he missed at the top of the key. That was a pretty good look. Lebron had a right shoulder fade over Steph Curry that was a pretty good look that missed. Like there were some good

looks that they missed it. Steph just made every damn shot down the stretch, which is why I turned into a game. But like I thought, he ran good clutch offense with Lebron. He had ten rebounds, which is a huge deal in a scrappy athletic mismatch like that, Like the Warriors are a more athletic team on the perimeter. I said, I tweeted this last night, and it's just

the truth. Like there's obviously a basketball way to describe Austin Reeves, and we're going to get into that in just a second, but one of the basic ways that I can describe him is that, like when you're in a really big game, he's a guy that you love having on your team. I can't tell you how many times over the last few years I've seen the Lakers in a big game and I'm Austin's just not the guy.

I'm worried about, you know how that is when you're when you're when you're rooting for your team, Like, there are guys when the Lakers are in a big game that I'm worried about. I'm like, man like, is Anthony Davis gonna be as locked in as he's capable of being?

pretty damn sure they're gonna be great. And Anthony Davis, with his talent, is usually great, but his mental engagement in physical engagement can have a little bit of oscillation even in big games. But like, Austin's just one of those guys that you want to have on your team in a big moment. So let's try to break it down on a basketball level. He has a specific combination

of traits that makes him useful in big games. One, he's pretty good at everything, so you can kind of plug him into a variety of roles depending on what the game calls for. So like, for instance, he's a very good scorer both on ball and off the ball. He's a guy that you can run a bunch of ball screens for and he can get a pretty decent

shot every time down the floor. He can be an off ball a scorer though, in the sense that he can set inverted ball screens for guys like Lebron and slip out of it and make a lot of good plays out of it. And he's a very good connective spot up Guy's great at driving closeouts, hitting spot up threes, scoring and closeout situations, and then playmaking in both situations as well. If he's on ball play making a pick

and roll. He's gotten a lot better with that. Again Tennis's game last night right in off ball play making when he's slipping out of screens with Lebron and he creates four on threes and he can play make out of that. He's a great connective passer in spot up situations when he's driving closeouts and making that next three. So he can do so many different things well on offense that regardless of what the game calls for, Austin can plug into that type of role. Right, he is

a solid defensive player. Again, we've talked about this with Austin. You don't want him guarding the other team's best player all night. That's gonna go poorly for him. But guess what with the way the Lakers have been playing lately, keeping Max Christy cam Reddish and Gabe Vincent on the floor at all times. One of those three on the floor at all times, they're guarding Steph, So Austin gets to guard Dennis, which is a much more achievable role for him, and he does a pretty good job. He's

a good defender, He's just not a professional defender. So like what that means is professional defenders are the guys guarding the other team's best player every night.

more athletic than he actually is. And so since he's great, since he's good, I should say, at all of these things, he can fill any type of r And he's just so competitive. That's the big piece. He's freakishly competitive. You're never watching a big game in wondering where Austin is on the floor. He's out there scrapping. And then lastly, he's super smart in a big game. A lot of young players in particular, are prone to mistakes. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like Austin's perfect. He does

make mistakes. He had a big turnover with Dennis in the left corner down the stretch. But for the most part, you're not worried about Austin making too many mistakes in a big game like that. And so that's why he just is so reliable when the stakes go up, and that's why he's been one of the That's why every Lakers fan that I talk to says Austin's clearly their

third best player. There are these little pockets where it's like, oh, actually it's Ruey or oh actually it's de Lo, and it's like but when you get into the big games, Austin is so much more dependable than Ruey and Di Loo. And that's why I think he's the third best player on the team. And it comes down to a combination of all those.

under unfavorable circumstances with Anthony Davis Indiangelo Russell out. He was also like, it wasn't just mismatches either. He did a lot of work against mismatches against Dennis and Uh Brandon Pajamskian just doing work in the post, but a lot of it was directly to Wiggins, and that's an important piece. Like a lot of times like the defense is good and locked in and you don't get the mismatch you want, and you don't get the advantage you want, and you just got to go against the other team's

best perimeter defender and get a bucket. And Lebron did that several times last night against Andrew Wiggins. He can also, like we talked about with Austin, slot into different roles. He did a bunch of work as an off ball scorer in this game as a screener with Lebron that picking pop three that he hit at the top of the key late, which was huge. That's work as a screener.

Anthony Davis is out, so you're getting some Christian Colloco minutes, but it's a lot of small ball units that puts a lot of physical pressure on Lebron to contend as a big He did a great job at that all night. And then again, one of the biggest things about Lebron as of late has been his mental engagement in avoiding mistakes. Only had one turnover last night. I thought he generated a ton of advantage situations with his passing without making

the turnovers that compromise them in transition. Even when he didn't get assists, he was getting the defense in rotation, like a skip pass to Gabe in transition that generates a rotation situation where Austin Reeves gets a wide open three or drawing two in the post and making the kickout pass and not getting the assist. But now the Warriors are in rotation and they get a bucket out of it. Like I just thought, he had a really really good all around game, and since he came back,

he's been playing really damn well. I talked about this the other day. He built his confidence in rhythm back just by playing hard, and so even though the box score wasn't super impressive in the in the like the Memphis game, he still was just playing good basketball. And then in the last three games, as a result of him building that confidence, now he's starting to really produce his last three games thirty point seven rebounds, nine assists on fifty seven percent from the field in only two

point three turnovers per game. The focus is there, the energy is there, and now he's in a rhythm and it's coming all together and he's back to playing at the superstar level that the Lakers desperately need him to be at Ruyacha Mura hit a bunch of huge threes in this game. A lot of it was in like kind of like situations with Austin where he's hitting picking pops in the two man game, chaos situation, so like offensive rebounds are in transition skip passes and pick and

roll where he's hitting threes. A lot of like quality spacing that he brought to the table. And then he had a really big play late in the game and one against Steph Curry on a duck in. And so what a duck in is is like when you identify that you have a mismatch, it's just basically a quick post up.

and gets an and one. That's a big time play in a smart play taking advantage of a mismatch by virtue of a transition cross match, meaning like you're running up the floor in transition, everyone's grabbing the nearest guy. Now Steph suddenly on Ruey quick duck in he gets a bucket. I thought that was huge. Max Christy really solid game from him. He generated some key offense. He had sixteen points, hit some big shots in the Lebron

off units, a couple contested threes. He had this big driving layup on Dennis where he just went at him in a late clock situation, protected the ball, thought through him and made a little bank shot. He had a big clutch bucket out of a two man game with Lebron where he slipped to the basket and turned and finished. I think it was over drama. It's either Draymond or tray Jackson. Davis right at the rim, a nice floater off the glass, just made a few more defensive mistakes

than you'd like to see. And that again, that's young basketball player stuff, like you don't leave Steph Curry in la game situation. You give anybody else an open shot before you give Steph Curry a shot. I think Buddy Heil had like five points in that game. You don't You're not You're focused on guarding Steph Curry and Steph Curry only he's the only problem there pointing and saying

somebody else do it. That's not your job. Those are little mistakes that he'll have to learn and throughout the game. I thought the Lakers did a poor job with their switching. We'll talk about that in a minute. Don't connects a lot of smothered scoring as well. I'd like this kind of scoring, I think is super important because, like again I talk about this, over the course of a game,

you're gonna get a bunch of different types of shots. Right, You're gonna get a certain amount of like really easy buckets right at the rim, through like defensive breakdowns, transition pushes off of turnovers that's offensive rebound putbacks, meant a certain amount of shots where it's like these are going

in every single time, no matter what. Then you're gonna get like a certain amount of like open catch and shoot threes, right like you're somewhere around you know, ten to twenty depending on the game wide open catch and shoot threes.

got to create a bucket out of nothing. Right, and like Dalton like a smothered catch and shoot three in the left corner in the first half, like a ridiculous turnaround, left shoulder fade away over Draymond Green driving a close out in a late clock situation where it's like we're gonna get zero points out of this possession unless Dalton makes a tough shot, and he makes a tough shot. He had another like smothered driving left handed finish over

Trace Jackson Davis in the first half. Like when you look at offensive ratings and a lot of cases, they're all separate, Like all the teams are getting somewhere around one o eight to one twenty points per one hundred possessions.

That's really only a like a what a ten to fifteen percent gap right between the best and the worst, and a lot of times the differences are like, all these teams are getting the easy layups on the defensive breakdowns and steals and runouts and stuff, and all these teams are getting these wide up and catching shoot threes

that they're either making or missing. And obviously the good teams generate more of those, But like a lot of times, it's like the other parts, the tougher shot making that elevate your offense to that elite level, and the Lakers offense is at their best when they have their guys making tough shots to kind of just squeeze extra points

out of additional possessions. Overall, thoughts on the Lakers rolle Lebron being disengaged and this good is the main difference between the team now in the way the team looked year three weeks ago. He has brought this incredible level of both mental and physical engagement. It has trickled down. Everyone is following suit. As a result, everyone's playing some of their best basketball of the year, and it's coming

together in a more respectable basketball product. The defense, though I talked about this after the defense looked really good in that five game stretch. One of the things I said is it's one thing to defend really well when you play five games in sixteen days or whatever it was over the course of that end season tournament stretch, when you have eleven days off to rest your body, that's great. But guess what, immediately now that they've started

playing every other night, the defense has slipped. They had a one to nineteen defensive rating against the Pistons and the loss in a one to nineteen defensive rating against the Warriors in a win. So the defense has already fallen way off since they started playing every other night again, and in both games, it's just that attention to detail. I thought the switching was really really bad against Golden State.

A lot of bots switches passive switches where guys are getting open shots on interchanges, meaning like while the switching defenders pulling off or the main defenders pulling off and the switching defenders getting there, there's like a gap and in that gap, guys are hitting shots or just not picking up and they're getting downhill again. You saw that on the last possession where it's like Max is conceding a switch which he shouldn't be doing, and Austin's not

ready for the switch, which he should be doing. And it's like there's just a lot of mistakes in the details there. And again like they had good stretches of defense in this game. I thought they were pretty good defensively in the second and third quarter against the Warriors. But again, this team isn't good enough to accomplish anything in the big picture unless they have a consistent commitment to the defensive end and building out those details. And

I won't take them seriously until they make that commitment. Yeah, they're in a good seventeen and thirteen six seed in the West. Good spot right now, eleventh best record in the league. I've seen a lot more Lakers optimism after the win last night. I don't disagree, But again, these things can shift in a matter of weeks. In the Western Conference, you have two bad weeks, you could be the eleven seed, you know. So like again, it's not

about what the ceilings are for these teams. It's about consistency. Who can consistently raise their floor to the point where they're playing better basketball on both ends of the floor so that they get to their ceiling more often and they're not as punished as they are by their low end, and so again I just want to keep an eye on them in the big picture. Again, this was a tough stretch of games, the two road games in Sacramento, the home game for Detroit, and the road game at

Golden State. Ironically, I thought they'd lose the three road games and beat Detroit. They lost to Detroit, won the three road games. So it's kind of a confusing team. But again, you're playing good ball, but it's about consistency and I'm still skeptical on that front. On the Warriors front,

there's three main things I want to hit. Obviously, we talked about step and the show that he put on earlier in the show, but I want to talk about Johnathan Kaminga because we had a little bit of a story earlier in the week centering around Jonathan Kaminga in his shot selection, a comment that Steve Kerr made in a postgame presser, some confusion about who he was talking about, a bunch of different stuff like that, and the main idea was based around Steve Kerr basically pointing out like, hey,

like when we're playing basketball, this like tough contested mid range jump shot with fifteen seconds on the shot clock while Steph Curry is on the.

I've been there, I've been in this spot. I was an All conference scorer in JUCO and then I went to Arizona Christian University and suddenly I was asked to play a role and take better shots. And I was the guy that was like, but, well, like, I should be able to take this shot. I should be able

to try to find my rhythm. And it's like, you have to understand that the shots are going to come to you naturally in the flow of the game, and by forcing the action, you disrupt rhythm for yourself and for your team, and so like, for instance, eighteen seconds on the shot clock the pull up jump shot. No one's telling you that you can't take a contested mid range jump shot. All they're saying is you flow action

side to side in the system. And if you catch with six seconds on the shot clock and nothing has materialized, by all means, drive on Dalton, connect and fade over.

be in a great rhythm. If you're Mikale Bridges like and you're in that rhythm that you were in against the Spurs yesterday, then by all means, you want to trust that rhythm and flow. But when you're out of rhythm and you're taking the worst shot in basketball, while one of the best offensive players in the league is on the floor with you and there's that much time left on the shot clock. You are hurting your team and you're hurting yourself. And so like, I don't blame

Steve Kerf for speaking up. There's a big play in the fourth corner six minutes left, Jonathan minga driving in transition. There are three Lakers back. It's a one on three and he tries to shoot through all three of them and misses, and Lakers get the ball. They're going back the other way. It is a decision making problem, and he's just not sharp enough elsewhere for it to be a positive impact. Like, his off ball defense has always been bad. I'm complaining about it, but it's always been bad.

What happened on that last play is the kind of thing that Jonathan does a lot because he's a young basketball player. He was minus seventeen last night. Think about how close that game was. Jonathan Dimingo is minus seventeen. So like, regardless of how you feel about him in the big picture, he's not helping this team right now. All year long, they've been substantially better with him off the floor versus on. So it's in the best interest of all parties to move on. He's not helping the Warriors,

he's probably making them a bit worse. So it's not helping Golden State in their organization. Two, He's not going to be a superstar. He does not have that upside, so like it's not in the best interest of the Golden State organization in the long run. Okay, and for Jonathan Kaminga in his development. On his end, this is not a good spot for him because he needs to be able to go somewhere where he can make mistakes

and not be under a ton of pressure. He needs to go somewhere where he can learn to not make mistakes over a five year period with a lot less stress and a lot less pressure. Like there are young players who are ready right away to contribute to this type of environment. Jonathan Kaminga is not one of them.

So it's in the best interest of both parties to use Jonathan Kamena to bring in talent to help this Warriors team while sending Jonathan Minga to a situation where he can learn how to play basketball at a slower less.

there comes Trace Jackson Davis for a dunk. Again, Like like I talked about, I like this Dennis move in the context of bringing in another type of player, right, which brings me to the big one of the big takeaways I had from this game. The Lakers played small a lot, a lot of Lebron Ruey in the front court, a lot of like three guard lineups, a lot of small Lakers on the floor. This is where if you have a big forward that can create shots, someone like

a brandon Ingram, someone like a Jimmy Butler. That's the kind of guy that would torture a small ball Lakers group, picking on their smaller guards and getting to his spots and creating great offense. That's something that this Warriors roster right now cannot do. And so as a result, the Lakers were able to get away with those small ball groups and actually play really well for those stretches. That's the reason why I keep talking about that type of player.

It's about the versatility of attack different types of games, different parts of the games, different types of matchups, depending on what the circumstances call for. I get it that it's discouraging for Warriors fans right now. Here's what I would say, There's still a lot of good role players on this team. You need the star power to craft smaller roles so that guys can start exceeding expectations in

those roles. As long as you have one star and he's not feeling as many of those responsibilities as some of the other teams with more firepower are all of a sudden, those roles are a little bigger for your role players, and they will start to underwhelm in those situations. That's why I don't like again. That's what your optimism has to center around bringing in additional talent. It's just on the front office to make that happen. Now, all right, guys,

it's all I have for show number one. I'll see you guys a few hours later today for a breakdown to the rest of the games.