Hoops Tonight - LeBron James & Anthony Davis lead Lakers past Warriors, Knicks pull even with Heat

cash back? Two incredible games? The Lakers play two different completely two completely different styles going at it at Chase Center in San Francisco. We're gonna break down every single angle from that game. And then Eric Spolstra tried to whip out his Chess Master card and beat the New York Nickson MSG and almost did it. I have some thoughts on that game as well. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to Thevollumes YouTube channel

so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason lt so you guys don't miss any show announcements. And if, for whatever reason, you guys miss one of these shows and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish, don't forget you can find them wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight. Last but not least, you guys have heard me talk about game Time, the fastest growing ticketing app in the

United States. If you're looking to get out to an NBA game, or an NHL game, a baseball game, or even a concert or comedy show, game Time has amazing last minute deals on tickets to all of these. So if you're looking to get out to catch a second

round NBA playoff game, game Time has you covered. If you're looking to get out to a Major League Baseball game, which is increasingly harder and harder to find on television for whatever reason, bold marketing strategy that it is, you can find tickets on game Time to Major League Baseball games as well. They've taken amazing care of me in the past. You're gonna find a great deal, you're gonna find a great seat, and overall it's gonna be a

very smooth user experience for you guys. I highly recommend you try it no matter where you live, get out and have some fun this week. Download the game Time app and to your email and redeem code Hoops for twenty dollars off your first purchase. Terms apply again. Ent your email and code Hoops. That's Hoops for twenty dollars off. Download game time today, last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed.

All right, let us talk some basketball. So, you know, one of the things that I used to say a lot during the playoffs playoffs last year, is like, there's this cliche, right, styles make fights, And this is kind of a perfect example of that because you have two completely different styles. Right. You've got this rim assault team in the Los Angeles Lakers, full of guys that constantly apply pressure on the rim. Lebron James and Anthony Davis,

obviously Dennis Schroeder to a certain extent. Rii Ha Chamura plays a power game that tries to get close to the rim, and even Dangelo Russell and Austin Reeves are pick and roll ball handlers that prefer to get as close to the rim as possible. They're constantly trying to advance towards the best and the warriors. Why they will, while they will take rim opportunities that are there, they play that as a counter to their three point attack.

They're hunting three point shots from their guards. And you know a lot of times, you know people will be like, oh, we're gonna go small so we can play that big team off the floor, or a big team will say we were gonna play big so that we can force them to size up and compete with us. And usually it has a lot less to do with what the specific styles are and what their weaknesses and strengths are, and just who's doing a better job. And there's gonna be a push and pull in this series that you

will see. In the games where the Lakers are super engaged defensively and are very, very relentless with their attack of the rim, they are going to have a ton of success. And in the games where the Warriors are able to shake free from the weakness of the Laker defense, which is typically their perimeter defenders. Although we're gonna talk about Jared Vanderbilt in the job he did tonight, they're gonna have a lot of success. There's going to be a push and pull. When the skill wins, the Warriors

will win. When the size and power wins, the Lakers will win, and Round one goes to the Lakers. There's so many different angles I want I want to hit from this. I want to talk about some game plan stuff, some matchups that we kind of saw coming in our

series preview. I thought Golden State unlocked a couple of different things and the towards that towards the end of that fourth quarter as a Lakers, as someone who's rooting for the Lakers, I will tell you that I cannot think of a team that's more terrifying than Golden State

down ten in the fourth quarter. Why they're the team one of the teams that I covered so closely this year, and I can't tell you how many times they came back from ten down, including in a game against Milwaukee this year without Johannest they came back what down eight with like less than two minutes left, Like the Warriors

are never dead. But in the process of that comeback in that fourth quarter, I thought they I thought we learned some things about weaknesses in the Lakers in a way for Golden State to counter some of the defensive stuff that the Lakers were doing. But I want to start with the Lakers on the defensive end, and I want to start with the dynamic of Jared Vanderbilt. So you know, there is generally speaking, running a drop coverage, and again, drop coverage implies that the defense. The center

is sitting back. But let's just call it a traditional screen and roll coverage, where you're asking your guard to chase over the top and you have your big man somewhere between where the ball handler is and the rim, depending on how much separation the guard gets right. Typically, I hate that against a Steph Curry led offense, especially when he's spaming high pick and roll, which he really didn't do in this game until the very end. But a lot of it has to do with the type

of personnel that you have. If your drop coverage big is Al Horford, who is not a guy that's going to be super that's not going to be much of a pest against a pull up jump shooter because he's not the best athlete anymore and he's not as big as some of the bigger centers in the league. And you have a small guard, someone like a Derek White or a Marcus Smart chasing over the top, there's not as much length on both ends of that cover for

it to work. But when we sub in Jared Vanderbilt and we sub in Anthony Davis, Anthony Davis, who I believe is the best defensive player in the world. When he's locked in who is much longer and causes a lot more problems in those pull up jump shooting situations, and Jared Vanderbilt, applying back pressure with real length suddenly flips that dynamic. So this is where I want to talk about Jared Vanderbilt, because again, back pressure is very

different than front pressure. Why because the guard typically can't see it coming right. So if I'm a guard and I know that I got separation and I'm getting downhill and I've got a small guard chasing me, I know if I elevate into my shot, he's not blocking that thing.

But Jared Vanderbilt actually is a super long athlete that's good at fighting over the top of screens and can apply real back pressure on these guys from behind against Steph Curry is the best player in the world in my opinion, and he's gonna win that matchup several times

in the series. I'm almost certain of it. But all you can ask as a defender is to make it difficult on him, and he forced Steph Curry into a ten ten for twenty four shooting night and just twenty seven points on twenty four shots, which is far below the normal level of efficiency of Steph Curry. So again it's just one game. That matchup is going to go a bunch of different directions, and I think we're going

to see his very specific counter. But credit to Jared Vanderbilt and Anthony Davis for making that kind of like sandwich coverage that chase over the top with big man help at the ball screen, and that works the same for off ball actions as well. It's the exact same concept. Those coverages have the exact same principles in an off ball setting as well. But they had a lot of success making things difficult on Steph Curry, and I thought that was one of the foundational pieces to how the

Lakers won Game one. Now, the Warriors won on a run at the end of this game, and there was a couple of different things they did. Three things in particular I want to call attention to. First of all, they switched to his own and again, like we're going to talk a lot about zone when we get into the Heat Knicks game, but zone is tricky. It's a

tricky balance. If zones are designed to give things away at the expense of taking other things away, and so they're more of like a solving a puzzle type of thing than a personnel brute force type of thing, and really smart basketball players tend to figure that out. So I'm not sure how much zone they're gonna be able to run in the series, But in that small sample size, just as a curveball and you're down double digits in the fourth I loved the way that it just threw

the Lakers off in a small sample size. Then what did the Warriors do? They pushed the ball like crazy in transition when guys were attacking the offensive glass. Guys like Anthony Davis and Jared Vanderbilt, the two guys that were causing so many problems for the Warriors in the coverage, were stuck in the backcourt as the Warriors are running down the floor, and they got a bunch of easy,

quick baskets in transition. And then, lastly, the last little adjustment that I saw from Golden say something that I talked about a lot in our series preview. In the series preview I preview, I talked to you guys about how the fundamental defensive principle for the Lakers, which is gonna be top lock as much as possible, don't let them use the screens but if they do happen to get past you, then lock and trail and force them

downhill into all of your size. And Lebron James and Anthony Davis are gonna be ignoring Kevon Looney and Draymond Green every opportunity they get to sag in the paint, and so you'll force them to curl over the top of screens and to backcut and do all these different things. They're gonna funnel them into all of the size. But if you go to high pick and roll, just give Steph the ball at the top of the key against Jared Vanderbilt, I think they can actually cause the Lakers

more problems. And they did. Steph ended up hitting a couple threes at a high pick and roll in this game down the stretch. I think that's gonna be a major counter that the Warriors are gonna have to go to. Then there's gonna be another counter from the Lakers. I wouldn't be surprised if you start to see the Lakers

switch and just throw Anthony Davis on Steph. But that provides another predicament for the Lakers, because now Anthony Davis is away from the basket, dealing with Steph Curry, and if you beat them off the dribble or just simply plays point guard and makes a read to somewhere else someone else, there's not as much rim protection. But these are again, these are two incredibly good teams that have a bunch of versatility in different punches that they can

go to. You're gonna see a bunch of different types of games. This game was much more free flowing, but you know in this series we're gonna see rock fights. We're gonna see a bunch of different types of games because of the different types of ways that these teams can cause problems for each other. But make no mistake. In Game one, the Laker identity of size and physicality and defense won the day. Anthony Davis thirty points and twenty three rebounds was a freaking monster on the defensive

end of the floor everywhere. Lebron James couldn't buy jumps out to save his life, but he had a lot of success around the rim and attacking. In transition, the Warriors ran a lot of drop coverage in their sets against Austin Reeves and D'Angelo Russell. I think that's interesting that reminded me of Game one. Of the Memphis LA series where Austin Reeves was really really good early just attacking pick and roll. Those guys love to operate in that short to mid range with little floaters and pull

up shots and things along those lines. I think Golden State another adjustment that's available for them is what Memphis did, just start switching everything that bait the Lakers into their worst tendencies, which is stagnation, Anthony Davis and Lebron James settling for jump shots instead of attacking the rim, dribbling the shot clock out, not playing with any sort of pace or flow right. So I'd like to see Golden State try to switch a little bit more as well.

I think that could cause the Lakers some problems. One other schematic thing, and this is something to keep an

eye on throughout the series. The Warriors did go on a run in the first half, in that middle of the second quarter when the Lakers went up I think like five or seven points or something like that, and the next thing you know, the Warriors were up by three or four, and Jordan Poole hit a bunch of shots in that stretch, and Klay Thompson hit a bunch of shots and I thought Jeff Angunny did a really

nice job of breaking down the reality of game plan discipline. Okay, so game plan discipline is like, hey, we have this list of rules that we ask everybody to pay attention to in their defensive responsibilities. Right, And it's clear what the responsibilities are for the Lakers. It's Lebron James and Anthony Davis sitting back in the paint but making reads identify where the guards are. If they're in trouble, run

up and off for help and then get back. But if they're not in trouble, sit back, right, and then all the guards are supposed top lock and deny, and then when they get beat, they're supposed to lock and trail. That's clearly what the what the scheme is. But Troy Brown Junior in particular, Dangel Russell got lost in a couple of these as well. But there's a bunch of plays there in that second quarter where Laker guards started to do things that are going to play directly into

Golden State's hands. Dennis Schruder is having a problem ducking under picks. That means instead of chasing over the top, you go underneath the pick, which gives the guard a moment of separation, Troy Brown Junior kept trying to shoot the gap. What does that mean? We're chasing each other over a screen instead of me following him, I'm gonna

shoot under the screen. Problem is is they train these guards to flare out in that instance, and the passers will throw that pass over the top, and then the screener can reverse the screen on Troy Brown and catch him, and then Klay Thompson can get free in the corner for like a flaring three out to the wing. Right. When you get away from your game plan discipline, which is lock and trail, stay attached to your shooters, you're

gonna give up wide open looks. And that push and pull in the game plan is gonna be something that we see throughout this series and games that the Warriors win, the Lakers will not be as tight with their discipline, and in games that the Lakers win, the Warriors will not be as tight with their discipline. Same thing with helping, like the Warriors need to load the paint up and try to take The Lakers won the points in the paint battle fifty four to twenty eight. In this game,

they committed a ton of fouls. They gave up twenty nine free throw attempts, and again, a lot of people are gonna talk about the free throw disparity. I'm glad Jeff and Gunny pointed it out. It's something I've been pointing out all season. The Lakers are one of the best teams in the league at defending without fouling and one of the best teams in the league at drawing fouls, and the Warriors are one of the war teams in

the league at both. So you're gonna see a huge free throw disparity and just about every single one of these games, you guys might as well get used to it. Even Steve Kerr in his third quarter or in his post halftime interview told one of the reporters covering the game that he didn't think it was an officiating problem. It's just the reality of them fouling. They need to

pack the paint, make things more congested. That even makes it harder for the referees to see the contact of the contact that's taking place, makes you get away with more fouling, enforces Lebron James and Anthony Davis to play in traffic. I thought Golden State kind of stayed a little bit too home off the ball and let the Lakers be too comfortable. But size won in this game. Shout out to Jared Vanderbilt defensively, Anthony Davis defensively and

scoring in the paint again. Lebron James thought played a solid game. Dangel Russell, especially in the first half, made a bunch of big plays. Really solid effort from a really good Lakers team. And I think there's some good opportunity for the Warriors to find counters again. I'd love to see a lot more Steph high pick and roll. I'd love to see Klay Thompson be a little bit more aggressive in that Austin Reeves matchup. He struggled in this particular game, but he did get some good looks

in the Austin Reeves matchup. Another thing you saw the Lakers do or the Warriors do at the end of the game, which I thought was really smart, as they started switching or they started running guard to guard screens before the ball screen. So run a guard to guard screen to get Austin Reeves switched on to Steph, then run your ball screen. Because Austin Reeves is one of those smaller, less athletic guards. That's not gonna bother Steph

in a back pressure situation. There's so many counters available to both teams. There's gonna be so many swings in this series. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope you guys did too, Man, I would certainly love to see seven games of that. What an incredible game. I think I just about hit everything. We're gonna be going again tomorrow morning with the guys from Nerd Sesh, the group that we just brought on. You guys have heard of seeing

Carson on the show. I'm gonna watch this game over again in the morning and we'll touch it in a deeper sense from a film study point of view in tomorrow morning's matchup. In the meantime, let's move on to Nicks and Heat. So very interesting game because Eric Spolser went heavy on zone and the Nix in particular, I didn't think responded well to the way that that they

the way that they attacked the zone. Again, like we talked about, zone is designed to take away certain things and give other things right, and so it's more about solving than brute force, and so a lot of teams play into the hands of the zone by making silly decisions right, and a lot of the knicks passing around the perimeter taking contested threes instead of finding the open threes that were there in the zone. They were not occupying the middle of the floor. A lot of this

is Julius Randall, in my opinion. Julius Randall like and he had eight assists in this game. But Julius Randall is a little slow making reads. He's a little bit hesitant to to kind of like take what the defense gives him and tries to force the action a little bit. I'd love to see him operate out of the middle of the floor more. And it's a simple question of math. As soon as you get Julius Randall to catch at the top at the at the free throw line, bam

Adebayo has to step up. If bam Adebayo has to step up suddenly, if Mitchell Robinson is in the dunker spot, Julius Randall can just throw it up. It's a simple question of floor balance and occupying spots where zone defenders are and filling two spots where a zone defender has to cover multiple spots. Right. So bam Adebio is responsible for the rim, and he's also responsible for the foul line.

So if you can occupy both of those spots by getting Julius Randall to catch and getting Mitchell Robinson opportunities around the rim, you can beat him quickly with like pass pass finish above the rim right. But if you play directly into their hands by playing strictly on the perimeter and just jacking up shots, you're gonna run into

some problems. And it was a sophisticated zone. And like Eric's, one of the other best ways to attack zones, especially in the higher levels of basketball, when you have great ball handlers, just to run ball screens right. So if I've got if I'm on the right side of the floor and I'm attacking the top right guy in the zone, if I set a screen on his outside, I can get downhill and draw one of the help defenders and make an easy read out to one of those two

guys right. But Spolster was having the other guard just sprint over and essentially show on that ball screen, right Julius Jalen Brunston actually ended up hitting a tough, contested three over Caleb Martin in one of those sequences at the end of the Towards the end of the fourth quarter credits of the Knicks, they made a bunch of

big plays down the stretch. Two plays in particular, Jalen Brunston hit that pull up three on the right wing that I was talking about against that ball screen coverage in the zone that Spolster was using. And then there was that play where Julius Randall just bullied his way inside. Again. I talked a lot about how and this is gonna matter more when Jimmy's out there and they're running less zone. The Knicks are eventually going to solve the zone, and then Spolser will have to go back to using it

in spurts rather than using it in larger doses. Again, like I said, there's just too many smart basketball players on the floor. But when they're doing that switching, that's another big thing that Julius Randall's gonna need to do. Just back his way down, get to that elbow area where he can either shoot over the top of a smaller guard in a high percentage short range jump shot, or he can dry second defender and make a kick

oout pass. He had a really nice play at the end of this game where he backed his way down, drew the help defender, kicked it to Josh Hart in the right corner, and he knocked it down. So credit to the Knicks for battling through. But I mean, look, I'm seriously fearful for them because their guards are not playing as well as I thought. The Heat guards continue to basically play the Nicks guards to a standstill, which

is a big problem in my opinion. You can't be getting you know, Jalen Brunson and a manual quickly scoring less points than Kyle Lowry and gave Vincent Like that's gonna be a problem, right, So I need to see I need to see the Nick's guards playing better over the course of this series to feel confident about their chances to win. But they you know, at the end of the day. And I'll say the same thing about

the Lakers. They blew a what a thirteen point lead or twelve point fourth quarter lead, but a win is a win, and and that's the same thing here. Like it was an ugly game. They got flummixed by the zone, but they got the win and that's all that matters. They're gonna need to make the necessary adjustments going into Game three. In Miami. All right, guys, that is all I have for tonight. As always, I sincerely appreciate you

guys for supporting the show. We will be back tomorrow with the Nerd Sash guys, and I'll see you guys there. The volume