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Happy Saturday. Everybody, congrats on making it to the weekend. Although I'm technically recording this late in the night on Friday, we had a jam packed, highly entertaining NBA slate tonight and I caught bits and pieces of eight different games tonight, so we're gonna be touching on all of them. That's gonna be Hawks, Lakers, Calves, Nuggets, Nets, Pelicans, Nick's, Raptors, Hornets, Bucks, Sixers, Bulls, Blazers, Pacers, and Heat Sun. So a lot we're gonna get into.
Just gonna go rapid fire through all those games. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribed to the Volumes YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason lt S. You guys don't miss any show announcements and if for whatever reason you guys miss one of these videos and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish. Remember, you can find them wherever you get to your podcasts
under Hoops Tonight. Last, but not least, January is going to be a jam packed sports month. Obviously, we got the college football National Championship game right around the corner, the NFL Playoffs all right around the corner, and then college basketball and the NBA are heating up as we head towards the tournament and the NBA Playoffs, which I love so much. What does that mean? That means lots of good games for us to watch? Or better yet, how about we go to some of these games? And
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let's talk some basketball. So the Lakers win again against the Hawks, one thirty to one fourteen. I believe that's their fourth consecutive win. Atlanta looked like they were just about ready to quit in the first half of this game. We'll get to them here in just a second. Then the Lakers kind of came out in that third quarter, didn't play a whole lot of defense. Atlanta kind of got back into it. I think they got as close as ten, but they were never truly threatened. Thomas Bryant
was a monster again, nineteen points and thirteen rebounds. I wanted to shout out Dennis Schroeder, Patrick Beverley, and Russell Westbrook because we talked about them briefly in our last show, but the job that those three are doing on the perimeter is massively alleviating the concerns of losing Anthony Davis as a rim protector, all three of them, but I
wanted to shout out specifically Russ tonight. We had one of his best games as a Laker uh in this particular game, just violently chasing over the top of screens and bothering guys like Trey Young and Boyan Bogdanovich and and Gen bogged on Bogdanovitch and dejont Murray as they were coming over the top of these screens. Again, this is a steady pick and roll offense that Atlanta runs, and these guys love to feel comfortable in that mid range.
And you kind of saw the field of that game early on first few possessions, Degen Murray was comfortable coming off and he was hitting those shots. Then they got a little bit better with that back pressure and they started to force some misses. All three of those guys also hit massive shots on the on the other end of the floor from three, so big time game from the Lakers backcourt. Kendrick Nunn used the Trey Young assignment
to finally break out of his slump. He had a season high twenty three, and then Lebron was great again seven in ten um. You know. There there, we all have our basketball philosophies, like our core basketball philosophies, and one of those of you guys who have been listening to the show for a long time have heard me kind of break down my specific philosophies. And one of the ones that I feel very passionately about is slotting.
You know, if you ask me, like, how is it that this Lakers supporting cast that is so undermanned, particularly on the wing. And then we find out that Lonnie Walkers out for at least two weeks, and we find out that Austin Reeves is out for at least two weeks, and Troy Brown Jr. Just had a quad strain he'll probably be out for a little while. And they're still winning. And the reason why is because of what Lebron James
brings to the table as a superstar. Obviously, in other settings, like you catch the heat in a game without Lebron and a d not bringing their best effort, you get a win. This Atlanta Hawks team kind of has the vibe of a quitting basketball team, So it buys you a little extra margin for error there. But over the course of this stretch without Anthony Davis their seven and five and they have some impressive wins, including beating that
Denver Nuggets team that is so incredibly good. And so what I wanted to drive home here is that point about slotting. When you have a superstar, a true superstar like Lebron James, he removes so many responsibilities from the table by generating quality shots and then the stuff he does on the defensive end of the floor, particularly grabbing contesting contested rebounds, which is something Lebron has been fantastic at over the course of this season, or just general
back line help. When you take all that stuff off the table, that creates small, achievable roles that even limited players that aren't as good as other role players around the league can thrive and succeed in those roles. And the Lakers have two of those guys. Between Lebron James and Anthony Davis. You're seeing the benefits of slotting right here.
With one superstar, you can imagine what it looks like when Lebron and Ad are together playing at that level I know we haven't seen a lot of it over the last two years, but in the two years before that, we did see it, and you saw the way that trickled down the roster to achievable roles for role players.
This is why I've been hammering home the idea of the Lakers trying to go after a legit tall wing like a Kyle Kuzma or a boy On Vigdanovitch, because that even further slots some of the role players into even smaller roles. And you're seeing right now, I mean the Lakers, guys, this is insane. The Lakers are now two games back of the six seed, two games back from being out of the Plan two. That's how good
of a position there in. Despite the horrific start to the season, I truly believe that with Lebron playing at this level, and with Anthony Davis coming back and hopefully getting back to the level he was at before, that this team is one legit move away, one legit wing away from being a legit contender in the Western Conference.
There you know again, I would say that the only duo in the league that is certainly better than Lebron James and Anthony Davis in terms of consistency and availability is Jalen Brown and Jayson Tatum, and I would argue and Lebron and A d are available, they're actually better than those guys. That's the advantage the Lakers have over
the rest of the league. They're big disadvantage is the supporting players, particularly on the wing when you actually look at the roster because of Thomas Bryant coming out as such a viable weapon for the Lakers. They're great at center, they're great at the power forward with Lebron's minutes, and they're pretty solid in the back court because of how well Dennis Schroeder's playing. Patrick Beverley is starting to hit shot, so is defensive presence is starting to be more noticeable.
And then Austin Reeves and Lonnie Walker. Those are two decent shooting guards in this league. So the area of weakness is the wing. That's the one spot on the roster that desperately needs attention, and if they address that, suddenly this is a well rounded basketball team that will have to potentially the two best players on the floor in most playoff series against against everybody but a handful of teams around the league. There's real reason for optimism there.
And then lastly on the Hawks. You know, we've been talking. This has been a theme of the show over the last couple of the last couple of weeks. You either fight for your season or you don't. And Atlanta looks like a team that's not fighting for their season. I would not be surprised, um if we hear about Nate McMillan either stepping down or being fired in the next couple of days. They need a new voice in the locker room. They're not even coming out with an intensity
like they believe they can win games. All right. Moving on to Cleveland Denver, We're gonna start to kind of move a little quicker here. Denver wins one oh eight. Donovan Mitchell missed this game, Ya gets finished with and ten. He's averaging twelve and ten in his last fifteen games. Denver is playing very much like the best team in the league right now. They're twelve and three in their
last fifteen games. They completely embarrassed the Clippers last night, like one of the most embarrassing beat downs I can remember seeing from a real Marquee matchup of two you know, heavyweights in in any conference, at one point the Nuggets for beating the Clippers eight four to forty one, and in one note on the Clippers, they lost again tonight to Minnesota. Kawai and Paul George left the game at halftime in that Denver game and then skipped the back
end of the back to back against Minnesota tonight. Those guys are just never available. I don't even know what to make of it. It makes them extremely difficult to evaluate, which is precisely why I dropped the Clippers off of my top tier of contenders. Uh, Denver's racking up some impressive wins. Just in the last ten games. They've beat the Calves, the Clippers, the Celtics, the Heat, the Kings, the Sons, the Blazers, and the Grizzlies. That's all super
impress us have wins. I don't necessarily trust their defense enough. I think there's still twenty second in defense or something like that. I don't trust their defense enough to put them in the top tier of contenders, but I'd have them at the top of that second tier, right below the top tier of contenders. All right, Moving on to Brooklyn and the New Orleans Pelicans. This was a super fun game I watched most of this one. The Pelicans were without Zion and brandon Ingram, but they really battled
in this game. And both Katie and Kyrie had uncharacteristic bad shooting nights. I'm pretty high shot quality, like they were missing some easy looks. You know. Katie I think started over five and four of his first five shots that he missed were pretty damn good looks that you are accustomed to seeing Kad knocked down. So between the competing Pelicans at home and Katie and Kyrie kind of having a rough night, you ended up having a close game. Nagi Marshall was really good in this game, kind of
stepping into a more aggressive role. He at twenty three points. You know, with what I do for a living, like I I'm always watching these games, and I'm watching them on a clip by clip basis, and I'm really diving in to try to see specifics about like how one guy does chasing over screens, or how one guy does attacking closeouts, or how one big does and pick and roll coverage, And I'm always trying to evaluate players, and
Nagy Marshall is one of those guys. All season when I've watched the Pelicans, where I've always felt like he's had a little bit more in his dribble package than what he's needed to do with the Pelicans on a
game by game basis. You know, we have roles that stack up on a basketball court, and when you're playing for a team like the Pelicans, and it's like Brandon Ingram's out there, and Zion Williamson's out there, and ce J McCollums out there, and Jose Alvarado's out there, like they have a lot of ball handling, and so you're not gonna get a lot of on ball touches if you're in a supporting role on that team. But a lot of guys in the NBA slot into rolls like that,
despite having skill sets that go above and beyond. And one of the things I know is actually tweeted out a clip the other day from a different Pelicans game where Nagy Marshall hit Dylan Brooks with a double crossover and like buckled him over at a rain the possession at the top of the key, just to beat some ball pressure. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, WHOA, That's a highly advanced dribble move from a guy that we think of is just kind of like a dirty
work role player on the wing. And you saw tonight what it looks like when you have an opportunity to fill in in a more aggressive role. Brandon Ingram's out, Zion's out. You need somebody that's going to be more aggressive, and Nasei Marshall stepped right up into that role. In the second half, though, the Nets really just locked in
on defense. They held the Pelicans at just thirty eight points, and then Kyrie, after a rough shooting night, made a bunch of big players in the fourth quarter, including hitting the dagger on a on a swing pass from KD at the top of the key, and the Nets are back on track. There now seventeen and two in their last nineteen games, all right, Moving on to the Knicks and the Raptors. The Knicks win one twelve to one oh eight. Julius Randall came out guns blazing from three
in the first quarter of this game. He cooled off a bit, but he finished with thirty two and eleven. Toronto had several stretches where they sped the game up and got out in transition and got it close. They had a nineteen to three fast breakpoint advantage. You kind of see as over the season we start to really familiarize ourselves with these teams. There's a consistent way that these that each team likes to win. And then there's
a consistent weakness that most of these teams have. And for Toronto it's always when they can get up and down, they can thrive, but when they get trapped in a half court, they can really struggle to score. And that's what happened. Every single time they got the game close, the Knicks would strangle the pace again, keep them in the half court and close the deal. The Knicks have
won four straight. I cursed them unfortunately during their eight game winning streak right at the end, I did back to back deep dive videos on them, and then they immediately lost five straight. But so like, but then they've won four straight since. So it's been this weird stretch where they won eight in a row, then they lost five in a row, then they won four in a row. Complete roller coaster. But still, like I said in our deep dive breakdowns, it's the good teams that give them trouble.
They're fifteen and five against below five hundred teams and seven and third team against teams that are five hundred are better. At the end of the day, they just don't have the top tier shot creators to consistently score in the half court against the best teams in the league. All Right, moving on to Charlotte Milwaukee. Charlotte came in and hung uh fifty one points on the Bucks in the first quarter and just completely blew them out in
their own building in Milwaukee. Terry Rosier, LaMelo Ball, and PJ Washington combined for eighteen made threes and eighty six points. And all I have to say about this game, because I didn't see much of it, is this just happens sometimes. You know. I have been watching the NBA for a long time, and one of the things that I've consistently seen over the years is right around from mid December to the All Star break, which I believe is mid February.
But during that two month period, there's this heavy malaise that kind of sets in across the league because that initial excitement of the first month of basketball passes. You know, during that first month, everyone's playing hard every night because everyone thinks they're gonna make up deep playoff run, and everyone's so excited but then you get to the point where you've played games and everyone just kind of falls into that funk and you start to see some truly
bizarre outcomes. And you know, in the modern n b A, I remember at the beginning of the season when I called it an unforgiving league. Like Terry Roziero LaMelo Ball are two really skilled guards, and so if you come into a game and you don't bring it defensively and they get going from three like you can get your butt kicked. And that's what happened. I mean, the Bucks basically had everyone in their rotation available except for Chris Middleton.
They had won three of their last four games coming in Janice was averaging thirty nine and fifteen in his last eight games, and he just had nine points tonight. So again, don't try to make any sense of it. We'll see a half dozen more games like this before the trade deadline, where you're like one in the world. The Detroit Pistons went into you know, Golden State and
beat the Warriors. You know, you're gonna see stuff like that just NonStop over the course of the next month or a month and a half or so until we get to the UH to the All Star Break. So for the Bucks, you just gotta kind of flush it away and move on. Alright, Bulls Sixers? How about the Bulls man on one sixteen in Philly over the Sixers. Although they did not have Joel Embiid, Zach Levine was awesome in this game, eleven for thirteen from three, finished
with forty one. The Bulls have now won seven out of ten games, and some impressive wins in that stretch. They beat the Heat, they beat the Knicks back when they were red hot. They beat the Milwaukee Bucks in that crazy comeback game. They beat the next bust their twelve game winning streak, and now they beat the Sixers. They're now just this recent run to save their season, so to speak, has put them just three and a half games out of the six seeds, so not entirely lost.
The one guy I wanted to specifically shout out here was Patrick Williams. He had eighteen against an Idea two nights ago in Brooklyn. He's made at least two threes and four of the last five games for the Bulls. He kind of brings that three and D element that they so desperately need because this is a team that doesn't have a lot of shooting, and that their stars don't really like to play defense, and so having a guy that's kind of thriving in that role so vitally
important to them. But the big thing that I've noticed in the last few games, and something that I've been keeping my eye on with Patrick Williams ever since this summer, is the stuff that he's able to do off the dribble. And again, it's not you know, high level creation, it's it's it's all low volume. But this is a guy that has clearly put in a lot of time over the offseason to build out his ball handling and shooting,
and you could see it. I noticed it a lot in the summer workouts in some of the videos he was sharing. There's real fluidity in his ability to dribble the basketball, which only comes through relentless hard work. So it's cool to see him have a couple of big scoring games. Again, we'll see if any of this last.
For Chicago. Nothing is super encouraging, Like they're still twenty second in defense over this ten game stretch, so they're basically just outscoring teams their fourth and offense, and their stars are super hot, especially from UH with their jump shots. So you know it's I don't want to rain on the parade, but obviously they're gonna need to defend better to have any chance of having consistent success. But here's
the glass half full way of looking at it. Winning games leads to buy in, and you've won seven out of ten. When you guys have buy in, guys get committed to all of the details, because that's part of what buying entails, is doing what the coaching staff asks you to do. And when you have buy in and then you have commitment to details, that's when the defense could follow. And if the defense follows with the way they're scoring the ball, they could really go on a run. Alright. Portland, Indiana,
the Pacers won one o eight to ninety nine. This was tied at late and then aaron Nie Smith broke the tie UH and then Buddy He'll picked off Anthony Simon's for a pick six that put him up four, and then Terris Aliberton hit a step back three that was basically the dagger. The Pacers closed this game on a nine oh run. What I wanted to focus on with the Pacers is their four guard lineup, So Tonight they closed with Haliburton Healed, Andrew Nemhard, Miles Turner and
aaron Nie Smith. Against the Sixers, they went with a similar lineup, but they swapped out Ni Smith for Ben Matherin.
But they've been doing a lot and and the Smith is a little bit bigger, he's like six ft five, But they've they've been doing a lot of this over the course the last few weeks where it's like four guards in Miles Turner, and it's fun to watch because they have tons and tons of speed and they're competing on defense, so they're getting up into all handlers and pressuring, switching a lot of screens, but at the same time flying around in rotation with all the foot speed they have.
And then they have Myles Turner protecting the rim. And then on the other end of the floor, it's so much ball handling and shooting with the four guards, and then Myles Turner is a guy that can knock down shots and make plays off the dribble. So they just have a really unselfish you know, move the ball around that extra drive and kicked that extra pass to get high quality shots. They're honestly, really really fun to watch.
And Pacers fans should be very excited. UM. Wanted to go through some line up data with you guys really quick. So when they have uh, Buddy Healed, Ben mathurin excuse me, Buddy held Uh, Tyrese Haliburton, Andrew m Hard, Miles Turner and aaron Nie Smith. That lineup they closed with tonight, not great so far this season minus ten net and four possessions, but they went They went really well tonight,
so we'll see how that. Excuse the data a little bit and then uh to in the Sixers game, they closed with mathin that lineup, So Tyrus Halliburton, Buddy yield In Jr. Nemhard, Ben math Any, Miles Turner. That's that group is plus fourteen net in two and eight possessions. So the four guard lineups, particularly with Ben math and are really working. UM, and it's just a really fun to watch Brandon basketball. They're becoming they're becoming one of
my favorite league past teams. All right. Lastly, before we get out of her, Miami Phoenix, Miami wins one for one oh four to nineties six. This was my bet of the week for Fandel. For those of guys who listened on the podcast feed where you see the vandel Ads. Miami was favored by one and a half, but they had just lost a disappointing game to the Lakers. And the Suns really can't score without Devin Booker, so I
had a feeling that he would win, which they did. Um, the Sun's this stuff with them not being able to score without Booker is pretty insane. This was their third straight game where they failed to score a hundred points. UM. They're averaging just one oh four point five points in their last six games, which is dead last in the NBA, and their schedule doesn't get any easier from here. This
is crazy. Check out check this out. Next eight games Calves, Warriors, Nuggets, the Timberwolves is the easiest game in the stretch, and the Timberwolves have won three games in a row because they're starting to defend like crazy and Anthony Edwards is getting going. Then they play the Grizzlies, Then they play the Brooklyn Nets, then they play that Pacers team we just talked about. Then they play the Memphis Grizzlies again.
So you know they're already on a what's that a five game losing streak, a thirteen game losing streak is legitimately on the table here, Like they're gonna be underdogs in all eight of those games. Now, I expect them to win one or two of them. But things are looking really bleak for Phoenix, and I expect them to consider completely blowing things up at the deadline. I mean, they've got some stuff to to really cling to. Like, I really like Devin Booker, you know, Michail Bridges is
a great foundational piece. I like Cam Johnson a lot. Deandreton needs to go because he doesn't even like being there, and their defense as a team has fallen off a cliff as well, and obviously DeAndre Aton hasn't been good enough to carry that. So I would expect potentially them to consider being super aggressive with Chris Paul and DeAndre Ayton and you know, Jay Crowder and just try to get back as much as they can to just kind of shuffle the deck and reset the culture in that
locker room. Um. The Miami Heat are now nine and four in their last thirteen games. They are now just one game back of six in the East to get out of the plan and bamade Bio is awesome again. Tonight eleven eight of those twenty one points were in post ups or ISOs um Like we talked about in our last show, he's on a ten game stretch where he's averaging about five additional points per game and post ups and ISOs so hit that mark again tonight with eight.
It's really cool, honestly as a basketball fan to see Bam starting to get his confidence as a score, because it's really a thing that builds momentum. He's always had the talent, now that you're seeing the confidence come with it. He's starting to hunt his shot more and now he's taking and making higher difficulty shots, which just continues to feed that confidence. And again, having Bam as that sort of legit, high volume score is the thing that could
be the ultimate ceiling razor for the Miami Heat. Wow. Okay, that was intense. That was fun. But that's all I have for tonight. Here's the plan. We're taking the rest of the weekend off and next week is gonna be really interesting. We're only gonna We're gonna take a break from instant reactions or game breakdowns, and we're gonna do one game breakdown next week. That's gonna be on Thursday night.
I can't remember exactly what the matchup is off the top of my head, but there's a big time, nationally televised game on Thursday that will break down. But the rest of the week, we're gonna do our mid season grades. So my plan for that is I'm gonna try to do We'll see how it works out because I'm actually leaving for my first ski trip on Friday of next week.
But we're gonna do um. I think we're gonna do four or five videos, and we're gonna hit on four or five teams per video, but we're basically gonna do deep dives into each of those teams as basically just like a you know, establishing the state of the Pistons or the state of the Warriors, the state of the Lakers, and we're gonna just kind of recap the first half
of their season for each of those teams. So it's gonna be a little bit more of a zoom out week next week before we get back into our group the following week. It's always I sincerely appreciate your guys support, and I will see you on Monday. The volume m