Hoops Tonight - LeBron & Lakers impress vs. Clippers, Wolves-Mavericks, Celtics-Pacers, Bucks issues

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responsible gambling resources. All right, welcome to hoops tonight here at the Volume. Happy Monday, everybody helpe. All of you guys had an incredible weekend. We got a jam pack show for you today. Normally we do power Rankings on Monday, but tomorrow evening I am flying to Salt Lake City to do some skiing in Park City, first key trip

of the year. Very very excited, But because I want to have some content coming out during the week, at the end of tomorrow's show, I'm gonna do power Rankings in a mail bag so that we can kind of have some stuff while I'm out of town. So tonight we're just gonna do today. We're just going to do four instant reactions to games from over the weekend. We're

gonna start with Clippers Lakers from last night. After that we're gonna go into the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Dallas Mavericks is the Mavericks have a great game on a great performance from Kyrie Irving to come back and win that game late. The Celtics and the Pacers. The Pacers have been red hot. The Celtics cooled them off in a big way last night. Gonna talk about Jason Tatum in his red hot pull up shooting in what that means.

And then at the end we're gonna talk Bucks Rockets, some early encouraging defensive stuff from Houston, and then what's wrong with the Bucks who have lost four out of seven? So we're gonna do four instant reactions. Then tomorrow will get to our power rankings. You guys are the Joe four We get started to subscribe to our brand new YouTube channel mean a lot to me if you guys wild take a second to scroll down and hit that subscribe button. Don't forget about our podcast feeds wherever you

get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason lt so you guys don't miss the film threads that I do from time to time or show announcements. And then, last but not least, keep dropping mail bag questions in the YouTube comments so that we can hit a good mail bag at the end of

tomorrow's show. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Lakers have been stuck in the mud ever since the n season tournament, but they brought it in a big way last night against the Clippers.

they were gonna show up and play. And like, I know, the vast majority, I shouldn't say the fast majority, a good chunk of the people who listen to this show don't think the Lakers are good and think that I'm, you know, allowing my bias to seep in and in my positive, you know, interpretation of that team in terms of their big picture potential. And I'm not here to tell you guys, you guys are wrong. I think it's a debatable thing. It's been such a weird Lakers season

that if you want to call them great. There's things you can point to, right like won the nd season tournament, beat the shit out of the Thunder in Oklahoma City, you know, beat the Clippers twice.

any other team in the league. And I think you saw it in big way against the Clippers last night. The Clippers are red hot right now.

I shouldn't say the difference, but I hate it. It's pet peeve of mine when people constantly say shot variance, shot variants, like oh, these guys just missed or oh, these guys just made shots. To me, is like a kind of a loser mentality from the same point of like controlling your own destiny. I do think that shot variance is a thing in basketball. I just think it's too commonly used as a crutch and more often than not.

I think I think in a small sample like if your offense generates three good looks at the end of a game and they just happen to miss, that's one thing, But any sort of large sample size, like if you're the Lakers, the Lakers, Lakers fans keep going, man, I can't believe this guy keeps hitting making shots. I can't believe these guys keep coming into our building and shooting well. And it's like, Okay, either you're just really unlucky or you're.

leads to shot result. And I wanted to give an example because last night Lebron James was on Kawhi Leonard Kwhi Leonard finished six for seventeen with more turnovers than assists. This is a Kawhi Leonard who shot sixty percent from the field over his previous fourteen games. Only once in that span was he held under fifty percent, and he was like forty seven percent from the field. This is Kawhi who has been laser efficient all season long. One

of the things that Kawhi did last night. The Clippers run a lot of sets where they'll have like James Harden operating with the ball on like the right wing, and he's kind of orchestrating things, and they'll have Zubac Zubat's set like a wide pin down for Kawhi Leonard so that he's coming around with the curl to get to basically give him an opportunity to attack with an advantage, just smart offensive process. Right from the jump, Lebron is

top blocking that. So Anthony Davis is sitting back in the paint so that if Kawhi cuts back door, he's not cutting into a place where he can easily finish. And Lebron was literally what is top blocking mean. It means he's literally positioning himself between the offensive player and the screen. So if you're the offensive player and I'm looking to set a screen for you, you're looking to brush off on my left shoulder. Here, Lebron was sitting right in between and facing Kawhi and forcing him to

take weird routes to try to get the basketball. So as a result, now instead of catching the ball in his usual spots, he's catching it in different spots. Instead of catching the ball with the defender and trail position, he's often catching it in a different position on the floor.

Lebron in general was applying a lot of physical ball pressure, and then in addition to that, Lebron's one of the few guys in the league like there are certain types of matchups that, like even in Lebron's old age, He's

a perfect matchup for So, it's like Zion Williamson. Zion Williamson is a bullyball player that can be a little predictable with his driving angles, and so Lebron, a really smart player who happens to be big and strong enough to hold up under Zion's bullyball, can beat him to spots, force him to misshots, cause problems. Right, Kawhi Leonard is a guy that uses his strength to get to spots, and Lebron's just every bit is strong, if not stronger than it, and so it's harder for him to get

to those spots. And that's just one example, but I've pointed out these types of examples all over the place. And we have another one later in the show. We're gonna talk about Damian Lillard h his struggles with the Bucks and the job that Houston did, like from the jump with ball pressure, switching with physicality, stunting at the basketball, finding ways to make Damian Lillard uncomfortable. And this Lebron just top blocking and applying physical ball pressure went a

long way. And you know what, Like Kawi missed a corner three late in the game against the Lakers, and I saw a lot of Clippers fans like, oh, I can't believe you missed that shot, and you're right, like, this is our Like, if Kawhi gets a wide up in corner three, it's got a good percentage chance of going in. But again, if you ask yourself, what is the difference between a six for seventeen shooting night and a thirteen for seventeen shooting night. If you think it's

just luck, I'm gonna disagree with you. I think that process is what leads to it, so that when Kawhi catches that ball in the corner, he's having a tough night, and so he's not feeling as confident and comfortable as he's going up into that shot. I think those things are connected and related. That's a consistent theme that you hear from me on this show. And I feel the same way with the Lakers when it pertains to defense. Oh, I can't believe Dante Exam keeps making shots. Oh, how

is it that Marcus Smart? I saw Lakers fans like, oh, Marcus Smart is shooting twenty six percent from three and then he makes eight threes. You were giving him wide open shots, and this is the same Marcus Smart that's made two threes a game for the majority of his

career and loves to take them. So what that usually means for a guy that like takes five six threes a game and shoots like in the you know, thirty three thirty four range for his career, what that means is like, he takes a ton of them, and sometimes he goes one for six and sometimes he goes four for six, And generally speaking, the four for six nights are gonna be on the nights when he has all

damn day and he feels great about his shot. And so it goes both ways as it pertains to the Lakers, But it's a consistent theme you'll see for me on this show. I'm a big believer in process when it comes to shot results, and I think the Lakers defended the Clippers into having a rough shooting night, not vice versa. That's a consistent theme you'll see for me on the show. A couple other things I thought Cam Reddish, Toryan Prince, and Jared Vanderbilt all did a great job on the

Clipper wings. The Lakers did a lot of switching to where like if there was some sort of situation where a guy got caught out of position, or if Lebron is top locking and then Kawhi cut back door, he might signal for a switch and then go and grab Paul George.

this game. Too active with his hands. He had three steals. They got some key contributions on offense from Christian Wood and D'Angelo Russell. Christian Wood was just just a monster at this at the end of this game, both on the glass, knocked down some big threes. That Tip Donkey had at the beginning of the fourth quarter was nasty. D' Angela Russell huge spot up shooting. It took one of those textbook pull up transition threes that he likes to take.

It was just a great all around performance from the Lakers that they came around and then crunch time just a steady diet of Anthony Davis in the post and Lebron James and pick and roll. This is a continuing theme we've seen from the Lakers this year whenever they're playing against a team that has to run drop coverage at the end of games because they don't have a big that they feel comfortable switching with. Saw this with the Suns, saw it again with the Clippers last night.

It's gonna be Lebron ad pick and roll, Lebron James. Ice is the game. In the final minute, three point game, has Zubac in drop coverage, snakes the pick and roll, gets back to the left and takes his little patented little right shoulder fade as he's kind of drifting towards the baseline. He took a similar shot earlier in the game and made it so it's one that he was

comfortable with and that basically ice to the game. But I thought Ad hit a couple of big hook shots light and that's a huge piece too, and it's a big part of why I've maintained confidence with the Lakers despite some of their struggles this year. Like Anthony Davis, ten of his twenty points last night were on over the top shots, hook shots and jump shots. He was hitting that pick and pop jumper at the elbow confidently, like eighty looks great, Lebron looks great. They both look

better than they did last year. Yeah, there's shit on the margins that they have to work out, and yeah they have effort and focus and consistency issues, but Lebron

and Ady being this good is super encouraging. And once again, down the stretch, which has been another consistent theme for the Lakers, five minutes of clutch time meaning within five points with less than five minutes left, five minutes of clutch time against the the Clippers last night, Lakers had a one to twenty offensive rating and a one hundred defensive rating. That's excellent on both ends of the floor,

and they got a win. So once again, because of how well Lebron James and Anthony Davis are playing in that slow down half court environment at the end of the game, they can thrive when they need to, and that is encouraging. Now big picture with the Lakers because they've been sucking horribly since the n season tournament, and I don't want to gloss over that. As we talked about last night's win, I tweeted after the loss to the Grizzlies. Those of you guys who follow me on

Twitter will remember this. I said, I thought it was the funniest Laker game of the season because it was an unseious effort. There was game plan stuff like we talked about with Marcus Smart. They were ducking under picks and giving him catch and pull up threes. They were helping way off of him off the ball and giving

him wide open catch and shoot threes. In general, they were doing the same thing with Jaron Jackson as well, like they just the game plan was bad, but there was also execution stuff like Lebron and Austin in particular, We're getting lost off the ball a lot in the fourth quarter on guys they shouldn't have lost, and just in general it looked like an unseious game. He had like Cam red Is dribbling into traffic, trying to do stuff.

Lebron hitting the corner of the backboard and then throwing the getting rebound and throwing the pass out of bounds, like they just looked unserious, and like I kind of

saw this coming. Those of you guys who remember the MAVs game after the N Season Tournament when they lost that game, I said to Lakers fans, I said, prepare yourself for a really frustrating season, because they already were one of the worst effort and focused teams before the N Season Tournament, and then winning the N Season Tournament gave that team like a sense of positive reinforcement that almost made that whole effort and energy thing even worse.

And since the Ncason Tournament, they've been one of the worst teams in the league. And here's the thing. Say what you want about the Lakers, and if you don't believe they're a contender, I'm not gonna say you're wrong. But they're not the worst team in the league either, Okay, So, like, clearly they were playing some trash basketball or trash ketball

or whatever you want to talk to call it. They playing bad basketball, and like I expect that to continue for the record, because I thought last week was the pinnacle between the Grizzlies game and the loss to the Heat, which was one of the ugliest games of the season. To me, they look like a team that wants to get their coach fired. I've been hearing all kinds of stuff behind the scenes about just how bad the rift is in the locker room between the players and the coach.

I saw a report two days ago that multiple player agents have been contacting Rob Polinka with frustration with their players minutes.

wins for the rest of the month. That's what I expect in January, like when we get past February.

to just lock in and get this done. And I expect the Lakers to lock in and look more serious after the deadline.

seen stretches like this before last night. In Lebron's previous six games, twenty three points per game, forty five percent from the field. Last night, he was by far the best player on the floor with Kawhi Leonard who's been playing like an MVP, and Anthony Davis who's been playing incredible lately, like Lebron's best player on the floor. What was before those six games? Forty points for Lebron? And oksee, like that's what we're getting from Lebron, Like he's he's

just getting through the season at this point. I've seen this a bunch of times. I remember in twenty eighteen before the deadline, there was a long, extent ended stretch before the Minnesota game. It was like, I want to say, it was like fifteen games, seventeen games, I think, where he's at twenty two points per game on forty seven percent shooting that sounded like the same Lebron that murdered

everybody in that playoff run. Was twenty two points on forty seven points percent from the field before the deadline. And then if you remember that Minnesota game, the Minnesota game where he hit the game winner over Jimmy Butler, the one leg fadeaway. Rest of the season, Lebron thirty points, ten rebounds, ten assists on fifty four percent from the

field and thirty nine percent from three. Now, Lebron's not as good now as he was then, to be clear, but this idea of like a Lebron team that definitely has championship aspirations but clearly needs some change before the deadline, and like them just floundering in January super like super common Ever since Lebron left Miami. It's happened like on like four different seasons, right Like it's it's not exactly unheard of.

But I do think it's getting kind of serious. And that's the one thing that's gonna be tricky for the Lakers is we are four weeks from the deadline, and if they're gonna play unserious basketball until then, they could drop three four games below five hundred and then be in a situation where they're struggling post deadline. So I'm

not sure it's the best strategy. And it's kind of a catch twenty two for the Lakers because if Lebron and ad want to pout their way to Darvin Ham getting fired, I don't think that that necessarily is a.

two they have there. But yeah, like I'll be clear, like I don't think we're gonna learn much about the Lakers and what they really can do in terms of competition against the best teams in the league until we get past the deadlin and we know for sure if Darvin Ham's the coach and Once that's solidified, then everybody in the locker room has no real choice but to focus on the ultimate goal. And I think they'll get

more serious there. But there is no team that has a larger gap between their day to day effort and like floor versus their ceiling than the Lakers. And that's why you can make the case that they're championship contender, and you can make the case that they suck and they're gonna miss the playoffs, and neither side's really wrong at this point. It's more about you know whether or not you believe in what they can do in the postseason.

Moving on to the Clippers, I said the other day I wanted to wait until I saw a few more high leverage games before I put them into my contenders list.

the Lakers and send a message. And for the record, like I mentioned earlier, I think the Lakers are a little bit of a bad matchup for the Clippers because they're a pull up jump shooting team and the Lakers have length to contest. And then also when they close with Zubots, they just can run their pick and roll the lebron ad pick and roll and they can get great shots out of it, which is a consistent theme

we've seen over the course of the season. Right but since November seventeenth, make no mistake, Clippers are nineteen and six, second best record in basketball over that span, second to Boston, sixth in offense, eleventh in defense, ninth and rebounding.

That's assistant problem that AD's had is like, this is why he struggles with Jokic too, is like those big body centers that are really like like push and pull on you and try to knock you off your center of gravity. Like he had a big offensive rebound over

Anthony Davis late in this game. He had a big hook shot late that that cut it to one point where eighty tried to block him and he just leaned into him and reached out and around and and and put it up in And they they're the thing with the the thing with this Clippers team, and they kind of remind me of Minnesota in this sense. They're not as imposing physically, but they do have the ability to really contain on the perimeter at the end of games.

And again that that's where the Zubac lebron dropped coverage late game pick and roll thing was something that they could go to. And then obviously the Lakers have the ability just to throw the ball to Anthony Davis in the post too late in the game. But like other teams that like to run a lot of like like perimeter initiator ball handler types, the Clippers just match up really well with them. And then similar to Minnesota, and we saw this in the Dallas Mavericks game, which we're

going to talk about. When they stick their perimeter defenders on you and they really lock in, you can go really stagnant and have a lot of issues. Except for differently from Minnesota on the other end of the floor, the Clippers, after really struggling on offense to start this after the trade, they even cook it on offense and they've been second best offense in the league over the

last month. So like when you combine, when you combine that elite half court two way potential, the biggest concern for me still remains just overall size on the interior. Can you play zubots in particular matchups when you go small, do you have enough aggregate size to hang physically. We've seen them struggle in that instance in some moments this season. They do have a couple more chances on the horizon

for signature wins. The fourteenth they play the Timberwolves down in Minnesota, and then on the sixteenth they play the Oklahoma City Thunder in Los Angeles and then they have the Lakers again on the twenty third. So here in the next couple of weeks, I think we're gonna learn a lot about the Clippers in some more high leverage matchups. I've decided, because I feel like I'm holding them to an unfair standard, I am going to add them to my list of contenders. I have too much confidence in

Kawhi as a playoff player. Obviously health is a concern, but they're playing at too high of a level to ignore anymore. It's just a matter of where I'm gonna put them on that list, and I want to wait until after those two games on the fourteenth and the sixteenth, when they play Minnesota, and Okay, see, I want to see those two games and kind of see how they shake out, and then we'll pick where we're gonna put them on that contender tier. We'll do some sort of

like contender update list when I get back from Park City. Alright, moving onto Wolves MAVs. The Wolves end up making a late run in a similar way to what I was talking about with the Clippers earlier. They had Jade McDaniels on Luka Doncic and they had Anthony Edwards on Kyrie Irving. They actually both spend some time on each guy down the stretch of the game, but they were really locking in defensively and stagnating Dallas. And then on the other end of the floor is the steady diet of jump

shots from Anthony Edwards and from Carl Towns. Carl Towns hid a couple of pick and pop threes off of Mike Conley, picking pot to the top of the key. Anthony Edwards was just hitting these tough pull up jump shots. He had a one leg pull up on the left side, I think that was in Luca's face. And then he hit like a against Tim Hardaway Junior, like a body bump, little bank shot on the right side that he hit,

and they take this six point lead. It's one oh six to one hundred, and then late in the game the MAVs get it back. There was one tough shot from one O six to one o three. Kyrie hit like a jab step jumper in Jaden McDaniel's face from the top of the key that tied it.

He knocks that one down and then they ice the game from one o nine one oh six with Derek Jones slipping. Another trap bounce pass from Luca hits Derek Jones Jr. And he just goes up and dunks it with two hands, and that effectively ice is the game. But I want to I want to get back to that in a minute when we talk about the Wolves, because defensively, I don't agree.

to rush the shot, and he missed them both. They forced a team with a lot of size and power and one of the best downhill athletes in the league and Ant to take a bunch of jump shots down the end of the game. And then this is a Mavericks team that struggled with rebounding and Derek Jones Junior came flying in for a bunch of big defensive rebounds to finish the game with ten rebounds the Mavericks. This

is a crazy stat for you guys. Over the last ten games, the Mavericks have the third best defense in the league. They have guys competing at the point of attack. Guys are rotating, they've got their stars locked in on defense, and they're grabbing important defensive rebounds at the end of games.

That's a curious trend to see if it continues, because if the MAVs end up getting into that like twelve eleven to ten range defensively for an extended stretch, where like they're an above average defense going into the postseason and you have Kyrie and Luca as like outstanding perimeter initiators, That's where we get to what could be a better version of the MAVs that made the conference finals a

couple of years ago. It's not the same team. They're not as fast in terms of like their wing defense, right, Like I like Derek Jones junior and he's doing a good job. Tim Hardaway Junior, Derek Jones Junior, and Kyrie Irving all had key possessions late where they forced Ant into jump shots. So I want to credit those guys. But like obviously Dorian Finney Smith was a little bit

more of a versatile defensive player. They don't have that type of thing, but I think they have a little bit more offensive.

tier themselves. If they can just give me another month or two of legitimate defense to demonstrate that it's real and now we're talking about a serious team down Kyrie Irving was incredible down the stretch. We talked about him hitting the game tying three in ice so and then the eventual what basically amounted to the game winner in

the right corner. But in the last three games, twenty nine points, nine rebounds, and five assists, fifty three percent from the field, fifty seven percent from three to eighty eight percent from the line. So after being a little iffy in that first game, as he's getting his rhythm back, Kyrie is cooking with gas now on the Wolves front. Again, My main concern with them all year has been half court offense. I'm a little worried about the types of

shots they can generate. It's pretty much Ant pick and roll with Go Bear and then Conley pick and pop with Towns. It's pretty much like the two pet actions that you'll see them run a lot. But like when they throw bodies at Ant. You saw that play, Like Ant feeds Go Bear on the roll and he gets kind of caught no man's land and he doesn't know how to read the floor, so he just makes a weird one hand a one foot jumping pass where he just turns the basketball over.

super super high quality shots in the half court. They're still at eighteenth in half court offense for the season. In their last seven games. They're now three and four, so starting to show some cracks in the armor after heading into a tougher stretch of their schedule. They're nineteenth in offense over that span and twelfth in defense. Their defense is slipping as well. Everything just comes down to their shot making. And this is a team that is

now twentieth in spot up efficiency. Like they convert spot up possessions the eleventh worst mark in the league. The mass in particular, were completely ignoring Gobert. They were conceding shots to Jaden McDaniels two, actually is a capable shooter, but they're not guarding him like he is right Anthony Edwards are forcing him in to pull up jump shots. On the season, he's thirty seven percent. That's zero point nine to two points per pull up jump shot for

Anthony Edwards. And so that's a big part of what's holding them back in the half court and that's only going to become a bigger problem when they get into the postseason. And then lastly, I really did not like

the defensive scheme against Dallas. So like one of the things that I loved about Minnesota last year is like at the end of these games, it's Jaden on an island and on an island, and like we got this, Like you see Kyrie Irving trying to iso Anthony Edwards and he goes to a right shoulder fade and Anthony as Edwards just blocks it into oblivion. Or Kyrie tried to iso Jada McDaniel's late in the game and ended

up turning it over. Like Luca made a tough step back jump shot over Jayden about like halfway through the fourth quarter, but like make it make more shots. What I don't understand is like your defense's strength is on the perimeter in those individual matchups overall, foot speed is not a strength of that lineup because you have two bigs on the floor. So when you get into rotation and they're running these four on threes, suddenly that defensive

personnel you on the perimeters not as valuable. And so why concede four on threes to Dallas when you can force Luca into tough, difficult, contested pull up jump shots over In my opinion, Jaden McDaniels the best perimeter defender in the league, are one of the very best perimeter defenders in the league, and so they allowed the MAVs to play four on three basketball late in the game, and they got open catch and shoot shot for Kyrie, easy roll to the basket for Dwight Powell, easy roll

to the basket for Derek Jones Junior, and that's how they ended up losing the game late. And so I didn't really agree with that strategy. I think they're capable of being a better defense than they've shown in this recent stretch. But they got a couple of tough games coming up, and then they're out of this tough part of their schedule. Their next two games at Orlando and at Boston, they can get through that. Things lighting up a little bit more with their schedule, all right, Celtics Pacers.

So one of the themes that I talked about a couple of weeks ago is this idea of Jason Tatum and hunting pull up threes and whether or not it's a smart shot for him. Well, the last four games, Jason Tatum is twelve for twenty one on pull up threes, which is awesome. Think about that. That's thirty six points on twenty one shots. That's what right around one and a half points per shot, So super efficient play for him.

In the last week and a half or so, he was hunting Obi Toppin and Jalen Switch, Jalen switch Jalen Smith in mismatches at the end of that Pacers game or in the fourth quarter of that Pacers game. And then literally once he get him on the switch, gave him space and he was hunting that pull up three. And then after that, Indiana started throwing multiple defenders at Tatum when he would get those guys in his switch

and he was making the pass out of it. Oshae Brissette ended up getting making a couple of plays on offense out of that. He smoked a layup that led to a Luke Cornett tip in, and then he had another driving layup driving out of the left corner where he got all the way to the rim. But like that is where I like the Tatum pull up three. It's not about the pull up three in a vacuum Steph Curry. His go to move is a pull up three, right.

The difference is he's so damn good at it that it's consistently so efficient that he's always drawing multiple defenders into the situation, which is allowing him to make it a consistently high value shot for his team, either him taking it or him drawing the multiple defenders and starting those four on threes.

way to do it. That can be a bread and butter for him. It just has to be like this, not necessarily twelve for twenty one, but he's got to be in the forties on it. If he can get to the point where he's shooting forty percent on pull up threes and it's worth one point two points per shot, that's where it starts to become something that can be his bread and butter. It's just a matter of efficiency, because that three point shot is a high value shot.

The only thing I'd say though, is again one of the reasons why Steph has to do that is he does not have the physical tools to play bullyball and get closer to the rim. Jason Tatum does, and so I'd like to see him balance that out a little bit better. But I do think these last four games are a great indicator of just how dynamic Tatum is. When he's making that pull up jump shot. The Boston offense has been like scorching hot since then. The Pacers

are completely helpless guarding him. At the end of the game, he had another drive on a close out for a layup. He had another play where he got Ben Mathurin and an Iso and INDIANAFL sleeper and they were glued up off the ball and Tatum just took him right to the basket bullyball style and got an and one. So he's cooking now. It's just a question of whether or not he can maintain this trend in the long run, but it does look good when the shots are falling.

Boston can completely dominated the fourth quarter on Jason Tatum's shot making. He finished with thirty eight points, but it was their defense that impressed me the most. Tyree's Halliburton has been busting everyone's ass for a month, and Boston straight up locked him up. He was taking bad shots, he was turning the ball over. The dead giveaway to me was he was kind of like forcing things, which

is not something you see Tyree Sliburton too. When he checked back in in the fourth quarter, the very first shot he took was an early clock step back three over Jason Tatum, and it's like, whoa, that's like just not a good decision, which is so unlike Tyres Halliburton. Right, And then like two possessions later, he tried to work and pick and roll and was kind of smothered by Derek White and tried to force a floater and ended

up getting blocked. When you see a really smart offensive player start to get a little discombobulated taking bad shots. He had four turnovers in this game too. That's very unlike Tyres Alliburton. That's a testament to the quality perimeter defense of Boston and what they're capable of when they're really locked in. The Celtics have won thirteen of their last fifteen. That is the best record in the league over that span. A one twenty six offensive rating in

that span, best in the league. That's outrageous. One twelve defensive rating. I think that'll be better to when Porzingis actually can get on the floor and stay healthy for an extended stretch. But like, here's the thing, man, Like, if Tatum can get that pull up jump shot going the way he had it going this last week, now we got to reevaluate Boston because a lot of our kind of approach with Boston has been geared around him being a guy who deliberately takes and hunts inefficient shots.

So that's the question, was this small sample size of Tatum being hot or a sign of his hard work paying off? Because we had a mailbag question last week. People were like, hey, why why isn't Tatum, you know, adjusting from these pull up threes? And one of the things I said was, I think he's trusting his work. I think he believes that he's worked hard enough on that shot for it to be his bread and butter,

and that's why he hunts it. If that's the case, then this twelve of twenty one could potentially be the first step in a new era of Tatum being a more efficient pull up jump shooter. All right, buck rockets, and then we're out of here for the day. So the big thing that stood out to me early on in this game was the difference in ball pressure between

the two teams. So I'm not going to talk about Milwaukee's perimeter defense defense in this particular video, just because we've done that like three times in the last two weeks, and I don't want to beat a dead horse. But I wanted to show you guys the juxtaposition of this, and I clipped a bunch of clips that demonstrate this. You can find him in my Twitter feed out Underscore Jason lt I did it, I think on Saturday or

Sunday morning. I think I did on Sunday morning. But early on in the game, Houston was applying aggressive and physical ball pressure.

night against the Bucks. He was seven for twenty one from the field, but he still had twenty one points and eleven rebounds. He had just super aggressive and confident in the post. Like Brook, Lopez has given him issues finishing around the rim, which is why shooting percentage was down, but he was going right at him. He's going right

at Giannis in the post and giving him buckets. I want to shout out Shangun in the big picture because in his last eight games, twenty seven points, eight rebounds and five assists on fifty five percent from the field.

He's the best player on that team, one of the better offensive engine bigs that we have in the league right now, which is becoming a very valuable thing with the way that NBA defenses are run, like so many NBA defenses geared around the ball handler and chasing in the screen defender being in a position to deal with the ball handler. That having that guy be an offensive thread is just such a huge value. And you're seeing Shane gun Be in the next in a long line

of guys who have thrived in that way. Jabari Smith Junior I thought he was incredible on defense in this game. He had a bunch of good possessions on Dame. He was doubling Giannis and rotating out of it. He was cleaning up the defensive glass. There's this possession where he's guarding Bobby Portis at the top of the key and he digs down and hard doubles Giannis. Giannis makes the

kickout pass. Jabari is such a great athlete. He actually gets back out from a hard double Giannis and chases Bobby Portis off the line, forces him into a pull up fifteen footer at the foul line misses. Jabari Smith comes flying back in from out by the three point line, grabs the defensive rebound, dribbles down the floor, and hits a pull up three in Yannis's face. This was a guy who couldn't dribble when he came out of the draft, and he's just continually massively improving on a month by

month basis. I'm super super excited about how good Jabari Smith Junior can be and what a good partner too to have alongside Alpera and Shangun in that in that front court. The Rockets, by the way, are now eighth in the standings, and they're fifth in defensive rating for the entire season. The Bucks we've lost four out of seven, twenty fifth in defense over that span, giving up one hundred and twenty points per one hundred possessions, a couple

of major issues. We've talked about the point of attack defense, so I don't want to do it again here, but that defense is being causing problems. I want to turn the attention to the offense today with Milwaukee, just because we've talked so much about Milwaukee's defense already. This Dame thing is starting to get weird. We had this three game stretch in mid December where he was hot, right because we had the first twenty two games of the

season he was pretty mediocre. Twenty two games, twenty five points per game, forty two percent from the field, thirty five percent from three.

his rhythm and this is gonna look better. Well, he went three games in a row where he averaged thirty seven points per game, fifty seven percent from the field and fifty three percent from three, ninety six percent from the line, and it's.

looks like his legs are there. I think he just looks a little hesitant to be aggressive with the way that that lineup is put together. Like the Bucks are weird in the sense that, like I think specifically Brook Lopez and Chris Middleton have a little bit of an

outsized opinion of how big their role should be. Like Giannis is playing at an MVP level, you need him doing all his wrecking ball Yannis stuff, but like Dame is the guy you gotta get going, And like I'd like to see Chris and Brooke play more like in the flow of the offense and less initiating possessions, Like there was a possession there in the Rockets game where it was like middle of the shot clock and Brook is like taking a spinning one leg fade away like

fifteen feet from the basket. I'm like, what are we even doing here? And like Brook's a great basketball player and I'm not trying to undercut him, but like it made more sense for Brooke and Chris and Drew to be aggressive when you.

So just in general, how often the ball is in his hands as an opportunity to initiate possessions is that it is at a much lower level this year, and I do think that he's struggling to adjust to that.

And one of those things too, like if we can get to the point where where Dame is basically running like a heliocentric your turn, my turn thing with Giannis, I think it's gonna end up leading to more opportunities for Brook and for Chris Middleton anyway, and that we have data with Brooke in particular that shows that he's just better when he takes shots in the flow. Brook Lopez unguarded catch and shoot jump shots thirty eight percent

one point one points per possession. That's great. Any other type of off the dribble or guarded jumps shot thirty five for one hundred and eighteen that's below thirty percent. He's also taking almost three and a half contested or

pull up jump shots per game. So like, what if instead of that, Brooke never took a contested shot except for at the end of a shot clock situation, and you just gave Dame the opportunity to take two more pull up threes in pick and roll like that could be the thing that helps get him into rhythm, especially early in games. And because the gist of the problem is this, you made a trade that sapped you of your best and most versatile perimeter defender and brought back

a superstar offensive player. But that offensive player hasn't played nearly as well as he's capable of. So now you're bad at defense and you're good at offense, but not good enough to make up for it. Right, Like over this last seven game stretch where they're three and four, they're seventh in offense and scoring one hundred and twenty points per one hundred possessions. Really good, but not good

enough if you're gonna be that bad on defense. And that's the thing is, like, I don't think the Bucks are gonna be able to make a significant upgrade in their point of attack defense. I think they'll be able to make a minor upgrade. I think they'll be able to make some sort of minor upgrade that sends Malik Beasley to the bench and puts a better perimeter defender at the two, but it's only going to be a mediocre upgrade. So I think it's vitally important that this

team reaches their offensive ceiling. And the only way they're gonna do that is if they get Dame back to where he closer to where he was last year. With the level Giannis is playing at this year, if you can combine that with Dame from last year, you could do some really special things in this playoff run. But they've got to figure out that balance. All right, guys,

That is all I have for today. We'll be back tomorrow with an instant reaction to one or two games from last night, as well as power rankings and a mail bag. And then, like I said, I'm gonna be in Park City. I'll bring my gear with me just in case like Darwin Am gets fired or if Pascal Siakam gets traded because he almost got traded last week.

But other than that, we'll plan on taking the rest of the week off and then we have one more I have one more ski trip at the end of the following week when I which is mostly over the weekend, and then when I get back it's grind time until playoffs. As always, I appreciate you guys, and I'll see you tomorrow. The volume