Hoops Tonight - LeBron James lifts Lakers past Ja Morant & Grizzlies in OT thriller

Grizzlies and the Los Angeles Lakers. Desmond Bade and John Moran soundly outplay Lebron James and Anthony Davis, and then somehow Lebron James and Year twenty digs down and steals the game. We have. I don't even know where to start. I've got tons of thoughts on this particular game. We're gonna hit it from every single angle. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos.

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Download game Time today, last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. All right, let's talk some basketball. So you know I talked a lot about rock fights over the course of the regular season. The rock Fights happen a lot in the NBA playoffs, and it's a huge part of why I've always been such a big believer in the Lebron James and Anthony Davis corp and my skepticism surrounding the Lakers.

And we're gonna talk a lot about my skepticism surrounding the Lakers in the second half of this video, But my skepticism surrounds more this specific iteration of the Lebron James Anthony Davis tuo and some of the issues with this particular roster and with their particular kind of like their makeup and their basketball character. But at its core, Lebron James and Anthony Davis is my favorite duo that you could possibly have for these types of basketball games.

And the reason why I think that's so dangerous is so many NBA games, especially in the playoffs, devolve into this type of basketball. There are games that are more free flowing, there are games where skill players dominate, and you will see games like that, and this Lakers team will lose games like that sometimes. As a matter of fact, there was one guy in this game that had all of his skill shots going. It was Desmond Baine in

Big shock. He was like the best player on the floor for most of the night, right because in a game where nobody can make a wide open three and so much contacts being allowed at the rim, those little, short, little fifteen foot pull up jump shots in the mid range were kind of where things were opening up. And Desmond Bain was the only guy confidently stepping into jump shots tonight, and that's what made him so valuable in

this particular game. But usually over the tons of physicality wears on everyone's legs, takes everyone out of rhythm, and even really skilled players can struggle to put the ball in the basket. I think you saw that even among the many skilled players that play for both of these

teams in this particular game. And here's the advantage environment where it's a fistfight and everything is allowed, and if you go to the basket and you take some contact and you miss a layup and you fall on the ground, they're running the other way while you're complaining to the rest. And there was a lot of that from John Morant tonight, there was a lot of that from Anthony Davis tonight. There's a lot of that from everybody on both teams tonight.

There's a lot of falling down and complaining when nothing was getting called. And the reality was is that's just the kind of game it was. And having guys that are built like a truck that can finish through contact

around the rim becomes immensely valuable in this setting. And so Lebron's credit because Lebron was being kind of hesitant he was being guarded by Xavier Tillman down the stretch of this game, and I kept thinking to myself, like, man, like, he's got to be able to beat Xavier Tillman off the dribble, but he kept calling for action to get John Morant into the screen, and like Rowey Hotcha, Murrow would set the screen and Ruey would roll to the basket, and Jah would do what a lot of teams do

when they don't want to switch their w your defender onto another team's best player, they will hedge and recover. So John would like kind of hedge out on Lebron that would kind of temporarily dissuade Lebron from taking that quick three, and then Xavier Tillman would just kind of wait there at the three point line and Ruey hat Chimura is rolling to the basket, but he's not open because everything's congested in the basket, because nobody can make

a three in the damn game. And so I kept thinking to myself, like these John Moran go these ghost screens with Ruy Hatchamura aren't doing anything, Like he's gotta eventually just beat Xavier Tillman off the dribble. And there was last possession down to six seconds left. Lebron James dug way deep in his reservoir and beat Xavier Tillman off the dribble and elevated as high as he possibly could over a rapidly approaching Jaron Jackson Junior and somehow

finished over the top. And then he did it two additional times in overtime. But like all of these are ugly. They're going into traffic, guys like riding his hip and he's throwing an off arm. The other guy's hitting him with his hands. He's getting hacked on the way, like everyone's getting found. It's just go put the ball in the basket by any means necessary. It almost devolves into

like American gladiator. Like I remember when my brother, you know, my brothers and I were we all played sports in college. Were all athletes were all bigger guys. We used to like throw a laundry basket on the ottoman in the living room, and like ball have a bald up sock, and you're like tackling each other to get and put the bald up sock in the in the laundry basket when you're a kid just trying to find something to occupy yourself. Or I've talked about pool basketball and how

violent that can be. Like that's what these games devolved down into. And Lebron's two hundred and seventy pounds and six foot nine and is used to finishing through contact.

So suddenly what happened down the stretch of this game after Desmond bay was so skilled and knocking down all these shots, and big shout out to D'Angelo Russell, who I thought had a really rough night on both of the floor, but he had three massive threes down the stretch of this game that completely erased the damage that Desmond Bain had been doing and gave the Lakers a fighting chance before he fouled out of the game. But

what happened from there then Desmond Bain went cold. John Moran who kind of got going at various points in the game went cold. So now Desmond Bain is cold, John Morant's cold, Lebron James is cold, Anthony Davis is cold.

Nobody knows what to do in that environment. Lebron ascended and became the best player on the floor in a night where for forty six minutes or so, Desmond Bain and John Morant were the two best players on the floor in the last two minutes or last few possessions, and then all of overtime, all of a sudden, Anthony Davis and Lebron James became the best players on the floor. I was a little critical of them earlier in the game because I didn't think Lebron and Nadi were bringing

enough athletic effort. There was a huge play down the stretch of the game where Desmond Bain hit a three to put Memphis up seven, and if you remember, on that play, Xavier Tillman crashed out of the corner on Lebron. Lebron didn't box him out, and then Jared Jackson was in a battle with Anthony Davis for rebounding position and Anthony Davis just kind of let him go around him, and Jared Jackson got an offensive rebound kick out to Desmond Bay pump fake Ausin Reeves lives by knocks down

the three. A couple possessions later, though, Lebron and Ad finally engaged themselves. D'Angelo Russell rims out of three from the top of the key. Lebron comes flying in and taps it back out because guess what, he's still one of the best athletes on the floor. Ends up in dangel Russell's hands again. Another wide open three misses it again. Now Anthony Davis comes flying in and grabs the offensive rebound and goes up and draws a foul on Xavier Tillman.

As soon as Lebron and Ad started to match Memphis' effort and physicality, they ascended and became the best players on the floor in a rock fight. Now what's in this game became monumentally important for the Lakers. They're not gonna face the team as physical as this team. Probably the rest of their time in the Western Conference, they might find something like that. Out of the East. They're gonna be bigger and stronger than Golden State at every position.

They're gonna be bigger and stronger than Sacramento at every position, They'll probably be bigger and stronger. They will be bigger and stronger than Phoenix at every position, and they're gonna have some advantages against Denver, But in this particular matchup, physicality rules the day, and it was so important for them to end this series quickly. Memphis has a really good chance to win Game five, and they should feel good about their chances, especially if they play with a

similar effort that they played with tonight. But getting into three to one gives you a guaranteed closeout game in game six, So massive win for the Lakers, And if you want on a bright side of things, like I will say that in an environment like this where you get Ruy Hachimura's first so so game of the series, Lebron James struggling in a bunch of specific shot making areas, Anthony Davis with like one of the worst games I've ever seen him play, certainly in the playoffs up until

the final few minutes to win that game. That to me is an indicator of some of the strengths of this roster overall, because one of the things that this particular group has is depth, which is something they did not have in the past. And they could not weather bad lebron games, in bad Anthony Davis games. But in a night where Austin Reeves kind of struggled to make rim decisions, he made a couple of plays at the end, and I think you finished with twenty something points. They

got enough out of Austin Reeves. They got enough out of D'Angelo Russell even ruly, for as much as he struggled in certain phases of the game, I thought he grabbed a couple of massively important, contested defensive rebounds down the stretch of this game. But I mean, like you got to really bad game at a Dennis he was just throwing the ball away like like a lot of things did not go the Lakers' way in this game,

and they won. But I do I do want to like point out some of the realities of the way I view this team in the grand scheme of things, because I got a lot of Laker fans on my case today because with Colin Coward yesterday, I basically just said, like, hey, like their inconsistent effort has the potential to get them beat and again, like we're not just talking about Lakers Grizzlies. It's there are thirty NBA teams, one gets the trophy. They're twenty that make the postseason. One gets the trophy.

There are sixteen that are guaranteed to have to be beaten four times. At a seven, one gets the trophy. There are a lot of teams with lots of talent, Like we can talk about the good with the Lakers, like Lebron James and Anthony Davis. They've got skilled players around them. They've got two different forwards that they can go to that have kind of different archetypes that can help in different ways. They've got three really good guards, where like any two of them kind of make an

interesting kind of combination. They've got some shooting and some other guys that can do some things off the bench.

They've got lots of players. But guess what, So do the Celtics, So to the Bucks, so to the Sixers, so to the Warriors, The Warriors of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson and Draymond Green and Andrew Wiggins and Jordan Poole, Sacramento Kings have a lot of good A lot of all these teams have good players, and so it becomes like tiny, tiny margins that we're talking about here, Like, look, look at this game in particular the Lakers. I expect

Memphis to win Game five. I think that they're playing at a level that in the last couple of quarters that I don't know if the Lakers are gonna be able to match that on the road. That might actually be the first game that I say bet a large scoring margin, since the Lakers have a tendency to lay down sometimes. But like the Lakers are gonna have a chance to close them down and close them out in Game six, that goes down differently, Lebron misses that layup.

Now it's two two on the road in Game five in Memphis, where they're probably going to be a slight favorite. Now all of a sudden, you lose that game. Now your back is against the wall. All these playoff series are defined by the tiniest of margins, and the margins get tinier the further you get along when you start to play against better teams, and so like little things like like I thought the Laker effort for the most part was good tonight. There were a handful of bad stretches.

There was a bad stretch in the middle of the fourth quarter, and there was a bad stretch at the end of the second quarter when they blew that thirteen or fifteen point lead or whatever, and Memphis got it back to two before the half. But like that stretch before the end of half, that to me is what

changed the entire game. Desmond Baines started being super aggressive, really started trying to put his head down and go to the rim, and he gained his confidence in that late second quarter run, including hitting that three right for the end of the half. The Lakers relaxing a little bit, bought a player in Desmond Baine who has been pretty consistently bad in his playoff career, got him into rhythm,

and then he had confidence. Confidence is a real thing, a couple of specific adjustments, you know, especially in the Laker front. Speaking of confidence, one of the big reasons why I think Anthony Davis is having such a bad series offensively is he's playing extended stretches of the game with Jared Vanderbilt on the floor, especially with the starting lineup when Memphis is huge. I tweeted out a picture.

I tweeted out a picture with the like kind of line score off the ESPN app and you'll see two flat stretches there's like a flat Laker stretch at the beginning and then a lot of scoring, and then a flat Laker stretch at the end in the first half, and those two flat stretches are the Jared Vanderbilt stretches, because when Jared Vanderbilt is on the floor, they put Xavier Tillman on Anthony Dave and they put Jared Jackson on Jared Vanderbilt, and they just ignore Jared Vanderbilt and

it gives them the ability to hawk them. And again, like, Okay, Jared made two threes, that's great. Here's the problem. That's six points. Okay, every other possession he's not being guarded. So if it's dramatically affecting the Lakers offensive production in all of the other possessions too, that six points is

not enough to make up for it. I've been talking for a while about how the major adjustment I expect Darvinham to eventually make, and I don't know when he's gonna make it, but it's to put Ruy Hachimura in the starting lineup. He's a better player than Jared Vanderbilt right now. And I mean Dennis Schroeder at least gives you an option another guy that you can put on a John Rance. You don't necessarily have to have Ruy or you don't necessarily have to have Jared in that position.

But it's just a big it's a big part of starting the game. Like that is gonna naturally get Anthony Davis more space, which is gonna naturally get him in a better rhythm. Like what ends up happening is you go these long stretches without touching the ball, and then the handful of times you do, you're getting swarmed, and so you turn it over and you miss a shot.

You don't feel great about yourself. Look at the difference in just the way John Moran Desmond Bain played from the beginning of the game when they didn't feel comfortable and they didn't feel confident, versus when they got their rhythm and then suddenly they're just confidently working to their spots. I believe it go a long way just simply moving Ruey Hachimura into the starting lineup. But this is this

is this series is not over the thing. One of the biggest reasons why I've been hesitant to consider the Lakers a legitimate championship contender is that effort piece they just don't get it. This Memphis team in particular, you have to play forty eight minutes of good basketball to

beat them. They will not lay down. You could play thirty good minutes and then as soon as you relax, they will just drive the ball to the basket relentlessly and run it down your throat and transition and suddenly you're gonna find yourself in a seven or eight point game, and that that is gonna even go up a level when they play against better teams. One other thing I wanted to talk about, just in general, was the Darvin Ham situation. I noticed this with every team around the league.

They're very quick to be critical of coaches, and I believe it stems from just the passion of fan hood. You know, so I want to cut people some slack, but I've typically been very hesitant to be critical of coaches.

And one of the main reasons why is like, to me, like, it's so easy to Monday morning quarterback this stuff, and coaches have really tough decisions, and sometimes it's like it's like, well, why aren't you playing this guy off the bench, or why aren't you playing that guy off the bench, And it's like, well, the gap between that guy and the guy we're talking about is usually pretty small, and like real like he probably has some strength that the coach

is seeing that he fits into the rotation in that specific spot. And every fan base hates their rotation, and so I'm typically very slow to jump onto that train. But I want to be critical of Darvin Hans tonight because Ruey Hatchimura has been your third best player in the series. Lakers called a timeout with seven and a half minutes left in the third quarter because Memphis was

on a run. There had been twenty nine and a half minutes of gameplay, or twenty eight and a half minutes of gameplay, and in that twenty eight and a half minutes, Jared Vanderbilt had played twenty, Troy Brown Junior had played twelve, and Ruy Hotchi Mura had played eight minutes out of twenty nine minutes. He's one of your three best players in this series. That's self sabotage. You're keeping one of your best players on the bench, which and and like I was, I was just genuinely, genuinely

confused by that. The way he's been rotating the guards has been confusing to me too, just these super long shifts for guys who are struggling. When the whole advantage of having four guards that can play and Malik Beasley, Austin, Austin Reeves, d'angela Russell, and Dennis Schroeder is like, you can kind of play him based on who's playing well. Okay, Dlo doesn't have it tonight. Dennis is a starting level guard that can play thirty five minutes. Let's go with him. Okay,

Dennis doesn't have it tonight. Dangela Russell is a starting level guard that can play thirty five minutes. Let's lean on him heavily. Okay, Austin doesn't have it tonight. You know, you guys get the point. And then lastly, just the the inability to adjust on the fly and make and slow down runs with a timeout. There were a lot of my Bucks fans are critical of Mike Budenholzer as they blew their late twelve point lead against the Miami Heat. And by the way, we are going to break that

game down tomorrow. But the whole run, he just didn't call a time out, and same thing down the stretch of the first half in this game, I think the Lakers were up forty eight to thirty three or something like that, and Memphis is going on a run and Darvin Ham's just sitting there with his hands in his pockets, like, call a time out, identify what the issue is, Discuss

with your players what's going on. Do something, and if for no reason other than to just disrupt the rhythm of the team that is scoring on you every time down the floor, make them go sit down and cool

off for a minute. Again, I'm not the kind of guy that's typically very critical of coaches, but tonight I thought it was like fifteen percent those handful of possessions where they're a handful of stretches where the Lakers let their foot off the gas, Like forty percent Anthony Davis just really having a bad game, and then the rest of it, the forty five percent remaining Darvin Ham, I thought was respond for a big chunk of the predicament

that they were in. Play your best players, play complimentary players. Jared Jackson, Taylor Jenkins is deliberately stubbing Jaron Jackson out of the game early so that when Anthony Davis goes to the bench, he can bring Jaron Jackson back in to play like six or seven consecutive minutes against the Lakers bench, and they happen to farewell against him in this game, but in the other three games they've been

getting destroyed in those minutes. It's a simple adjustment. Taylor Jenkins is like, Okay, Darvin Ham is just gonna stick with his scheduled rotation, so I might as well play Jared Jackson against them, and Darvin Ham will not make that adjustment. So, I mean, Laker fans have been complaining about that all season. I've had many Laker fans, even something that I'm very close with, say I don't believe in this team because of Darvin Ham, and I've been like, Eh,

you're fine. Tonight was the first night where I was like, whoa, he's doing some like serious damage here. And it's something that again, like when the margins get tighter, that can be a problem. Like I said earlier, we're gonna break down heat Bucks at some point tomorrow or Wednesday. Keep an eye on my Twitter feed as I let you guys know the rest of the schedule. But that's all we have for Tonight was always I sincerely appreciate your guys' support,

and we'll see you Guys. Later this week, the volume