Hoops Tonight - LIVE: Game 5 Reactions: Nuggets/Clippers, Knicks/Pistons, Pacers/Bucks

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Last year, he had two thirty five point games total, and that is the biggest difference between this year's Celtics and last year's Celtics. Last year, Celtics did not have, in my opinion, a player that can reach that top tier, superstar level. Jason Tatum was incredibly versatile in that playoff run. He did a ton to make that team championship caliber.

But now he's bringing that extra level of shot making and half court surgery that makes him one of the very best players in the entire NBA and it just makes that Celtics team that much more difficult to deal with in this sort of setting. Again, no more thoughts on that game, Beau, I didn't get to watch it. When I saw that number. Again, he already has more thirty five point games in the first round that he did in the entire playoff run last year. Great sign

for Celtics fans. We're gonna start with Clippers Nuggets, and for two games in a row now it has felt like the Nuggets have had the Clippers. They're bringing late help on Kawhi when he gets into the mid range and preventing him from really getting into a good scoring rhythm as a shot maker there in that short to mid range where he.

him uncomfortable. They're bringing Jokic aggressively out to the level on him, and as the intensity of the series is picked up, James Harden has looked completely caught off guard by it. I was joking with my buddy Jason Maples on Twitter earlier, like, it's still shocking to me even with James Harden's playoff history, and when you're watching it happen, it's still jarring to see because like the game has this level of intensity and you can see it in

all these different ways. Right, it's two to two, game five of a series, basically a must win for both team games for obvious reason, it's just very difficult to put yourself in a situation where you have to win two games in a row just to survive, right, And you're seeing like the yelling and screaming of Russell Westbrook, the yelling and screaming of Christian Brown, even the intensity from like Nicole Jokicic just like barking at his teammates,

barking at officials, getting super excited every time one of his teammates makes a play. There's like this emotional momentum with the team as they're bringing the requisite intensity to meet the moment. The transition pushes from jokis just his eyes light up every time he sees an opportunity to make the defense pay for something. There's a level of like mental and physical intensity that is president in all

of these series. But you can see in the game tonight, and then you're watching James Harden and it looks like he'd much rather be playing in like kind of a chill pickup game, Like he's operating at a level of intensity that is just several levels below what the team

needs from him in that moment. And it always again, this has happened a lot over the course of his career, and it often comes in this phase of the series, towards the end of the series, when the team has been scouted out really well and the defender guarding James Harden has started to pick up on some of his cues and some of his little tips that he uses to tip off the moves that he's going to use, and the physical intensity and the overall urgency of the

moment picks up, and as it gets crazier and crazier, he struggles back to back very important games for the Clippers. James Harden had twenty six points total in the two games. I do want to credit the Nuggets defense, though, with exception of the fourth quarter in Game four when they kind of lost control of things in transition, and then you could tell just in general the Nuggets got out of their defensive groove. The Nuggets have looked like the

more intense team. They look like they want to win the series more. They have pretty quickly recaptured a level of defensive intensity much closer to what they had in the playoffs in twenty twenty three. It all starts with the bracket and the ball screens, the ball pressure that Christian Brown is applying on James Harden and Jokic getting out and making sure that Harden is not having an

easy time getting the pass out from those situations. And you could see James Harden get flummixed that he's like trying to force a pass to the role man when the skip passes open. But the guy Garden the skip pass is like on the role man and it's a turnover because he's getting sped up and he's struggling to deal with the physicality and he's not making the same reads that James Harden can make when things are just a little less intense or when he is more intense

and ready and engaged in the moment. But it all starts with those two at the level, Christian Brown and Nicola Jokic, the two of them are the guys that have stabilized this defense with what they've done in pick and roll and then the backside rotations. That's the third piece of it that they've managed to recapture. Again, the goal of your defense in the playoffs is to make opposing stars uncomfortable. Have they done that with Kawhi, Yes,

they've kept him from volume scoring. Have they done that with James Harden. Yes, they've kept him from picking them apart in pick and roll. And for as much as we've talked about the Nuggets defense down the stretch of the season, which was a major storyline, it was the main reason so many people, including most of the Nuggets fans that I follow, picked the Clippers to win the series was because their defense was in such a bad place. But they've been operating at an insanely high level on

offense for months. I thought Jokic was so much better than his box score looked tonight like he's four for thirteen from the field, But I thought he had complete command of the pace and flow of the game. He generated countless advantages. His transition pushes kept everybody out of position throughout the game. The team was playing out of those.

A lot of the looks that Jamal Murray got were out of those transition pushes, out of those Jokic post ups and Jokic high post kind of fulcrum situations where he's just setting these guys up with great advantages. It kept everyone in rhythm. As I mentioned earlier, I thought Yokich was fantastic defensively tonight, a way better game than the box score would to lead you to believe. And then Jamal Murray the sixth forty point playoff game of

his career. That's kind of a crazy stat dating back to his awesome shootout that he had with Donovan Mitchell back in the bubble. Jamal Murray looked fantastic tonight. Out of everything we saw, and we saw a ton of three point shot making. His three point shot was just dead eye tonight. He was getting separation on his moves, he was getting great lift all over the floor. But I thought the most exciting play for Denver's playoff chances was the transition Dunky had at the end of the game.

He got up and he ammed that thing, and you could tell he knew it too, and he was like he was pumped, and you could tell he was feeling great physically. And that bodes extremely well for the big picture with this Nuggets team. That really was the story of the series to this point, in my opinion, the Nuggets had some other big country since tonight. Russell Westbrook was amazing in the first half. Vintage like not just knocking down spot up threes and scoring as a hutter.

He was like getting buckets and causing actual problems for the Clippers on the ball. Michael Porter and Aaron Gordon were both excellent tonight. Christian Brown was great on both ends. Hit that huge three at the end of the third quarter that built that extra bit of margin going into the fourth. But at the end of the day, Jamal Murray and Nikol Jokic have badly outplayed James Harden and Kawhi Leonard. That's the series. Everything else flows down from there.

That's what dictates the types of advantages the role players are getting. James Harden is the guy on the Clippers that can consistently set people up with advantages. He hasn't done a very good job of that. Nikolejokic, even in a poor shooting night, set up his team with countless advantages throughout the game. And again, when I keep talking

about creating advantages, it's a very basic concept. Every basketball player, even the best basketball players in the world, are going to be more successful when they have a defender sprinting at them, versus when they have a defender set on them when the health defense is out of position and sprinting into help versus when the help is already pre loaded.

have a really high offensive floor. Everything flows down from those guys, and again the intensity, Like I don't think it's a coincidence that Nikola Jokic has looked like psychopathically competitive in these two games and his team has met the moment and been a buzzsaw versus a Clippers team that's had a lethargic James Harden and a generally quiet and like like Kawhi Leonard is not the type of personality that is going to galvanize a group with energy.

He's he gets called a robot for a reason. Now, Kawhi, I thought was pretty good tonight, and Kawhi in general is going to have a certain floor because he is going to bring the requisite intensity. But Kawhi is not the kind of guy that's gonna, like legitimately galvanize a group emotionally and be like, hey, like, wake the fuck up, It's time to go. What are we doing?

who won the previous game. Any chance for the Clippers to reverse the trend of this series is going to come down to those two flipping the script. Same thing I said about the Lakers versus the Wolves. Can the Lakers beat the Wolves? Yes, it starts with Luka doncicin Lebron James not getting completely outclassed by Anthony Edwards and naseried and Julius Randall at the end of games. Until they flip that dynamic, that nothing's gonna change. Same thing

goes here. Until James Harden can bring the requisite intensity and create the advantages necessary to get this offense to hum and until Kawhi Leonard can bring that volume scoring that he brought in Game two, they're going to struggle to flip this dynamic.

that they played them. They have the ability to break down the Thunder defense with their aggregate playmaking. One of the specific reasons that I've not been as high on this Clippers team is their lack of playmaking. Once you get past James and James, Harden can have some issues as the intensity gets leveraged.

think is a favorable matchup for them too. I think that would be a really fun series, a Thunder Nuggets series, a series that obviously the Thunder would be rightfully favored, but I think it would be a really fun example of two very different styles, a very experienced team versus an inexperienced team. That's what I'll be rooting for moving forward in the series.

straight to them. Before we move on to Pistons Nicks, I'm gonna do a very short version of the announcement we made last night. We did just start a new partnership with Playback. It's a app that I feel very passionate about. It's an opportunity for you guys to be more interacted, interactive with us on the show. And so starting tomorrow tomorrow, after the final buzzer of the Lakers Wolves game, right after we do our YouTube show, we're

gonna do our normal YouTube show here. When we're done, we're gonna go immediately after to what we're calling the Hoops tonight after show, and at the Hoops the night after show over on Playback, We're gonna take questions from you guys. We're gonna be able to actually bring you up on the stage. We're gonna be able to actually go through film live, so we'll be able to do a lot of like the actual visual examples of the

stuff that we talked about on the show. It's gonna be super interactive, a little bit more informal, something I'm really excited about. It's gonna be with the after show in this playoff run, and then we have some big picture goals for next year to start doing some live watch alongs where like we can watch big NBA League Pass games together and actually go through the games as

they're happening live together, something I'm really excited about. But for this season, we're just doing these after shows after our live YouTube shows. So when you guys have an opportunity, hit the link in the description, head over to the Hoops Tonight playback feed. Get set up so that you guys are ready to go tomorrow night again after the final, after we finished the live show tomorrow night on YouTube, we're all gonna head over to playback to start that

new venture I'm super excited about. I hope to see you guys over there. All right, let's talk Pistons Nicks. So the Nicks had a chance to close out the Pistons in the same fashion that they took a three to one lead with keep things close until you can out execute them down the stretch, but instead it ended up being Kate Cunningham and the Pistons that played better down the stretch and sent the series back to Detroit for Game six by quickly capitalizing on a late injury

to Jalen Brunson. So it was a crazy seat. Pistons are up ninety five ninety two, Jalen Brunson tweaks his ankle on a close out along the left wing. Kat literally goes down in a four on five and drops a bomb like a forty foot three from almost the logo that ties the game at one oh five. Just a huge shot, but Kate, very smartly, while Brunson is

still on the floor limping around, immediately looks to attack him. Now, Kid had been attacking Brunson throughout the series, and in that fourth quarter stretch already he had just hit a three against a hedge gap on like two or three possessions earlier. And again, a hedge gap is like when Caid's coming off the screen and Jalen Brunson tries to hedge or throw his body out to force Kaid to

retweet retreat. Ojananobi's going underneath the screen to try to meet him on the other side, and so there's a gap when right when Brunson's pulling back and OG's coming up. It's very similar to his switch interchange gap, which we've

talked about a lot on this show. And Kate was able to hit a three in that situation against the hedge, but after Jalen Brunson sprained his ankle, he didn't want to hedge anymore because he didn't want to, like have to throw his body into a lateral quickness situation, so instead he just hugged up on the screener. That put Kate in a situation where he had no hedge. And what happens if you set a good screen and there's

no hedge, You're gonna get downhill. He goes flying downhill, challenges the rim protector and misses a layup, but in the process occupies the rim protector, which allows Jalen Duran to fill the gap from behind and get the dunk right under the basket. There's a lot of that down

the stretch. Jalen Brunson had a very similar play that led to Mitchell Robinson and one where he like when you get to the basket, even if you miss a layup, if you engage the rim protector, if you force the rim protector to leave his feet and get out of position, you're gonna have your center rolling down the lane with nobody who's even remotely physical capable, physically capable of hanging

with him on the offensive glass. That's the lenge with the drop coverage big and that's why you'll see drop coverage bigs do so much stunting at the ball because they don't want to leave their feet because if they do, their out of position to box out and deal with the big man rolling down the lane, or to even deal with a lob right and we saw a bunch of that Jalen Brunson got. Mitchell Robinson opened that way

had on the first possession. After Jalen Brunson's injury, takes advantage of the lack of a hedge, gets downhill ends up getting the miss that Jalen Duran cleans up. On the other end of the floor, Tobias Harris gets a massive stop against Karl Anthony town So after Jalen Brunson gets hurt, they have to sub induce McBride right, and Josh Hart ended up getting hurt as well, and so we saw we saw a campaign end up coming in the game as well at one point, but it was

definitely an unfortunate set of circumstances for the Knicks. But Kat, as we saw it in many points in this series, has been able to create his own offense when needed. He's hit a couple of big left shoulder fades in crunch time, he had that crazy step back three against Jalen durn in game four or so. In theory, well we just go to Kat here he can create offense.

Tobias Hairs excellent individual defense against Kat forces him into a tough fade away, nearly blocks it and actually forces him into a really tough like a really bad miss, like a bad bad miss. Kid goes down the other end, the Knicks are all scrambled and transition defense. Jalen Duran ends up setting like a little brush screen for Kate

at the top of the key, same exact thing. Kid goes flying downhill misses but occupies all the help defenders, and there's Jalen Duran just standing under the basket ready for another finish. So more value in the form of rim pressure from Kate, and his rim pressure was fantastic down the stretch of this game. He got a transition push for a scoop shot. He was downhill non stop down the stretch, none of this tough mid range fade away shit that he was settling for in Game four.

Caid was going to the bucket down the stretch in this game and had a lot of success that way. So Kate goes down the hill, gets the miss that leads to the Jalen dura and put back. Now the pissons are up for Tim Hart, but the way Junior's

turn to get a big stop. This time they go to McHale, bridges Tim hardaway, forces him into like a tough leaning fade away along the right lane line, ends up missing, and then Cad closes the deal with a textbook drop coverage attack where he gets Juce McBride trapped on his side, puts him in jail, hits a little floater, and then on the very next possession a post fade where he turns over the double team and Asar Thompson just slips along the baseline right behind Karl Anthony Towns

and Cad rifles a perfect pass right to him underneath the basket for the easy layup. Cade was brilliant down the stretch of this game. And by the way, during that whole run, Tom Tibodau was never able to get Jalen Brunson back into the game. Now I understood the idea from Tim's He had one time out left, and the ability to advance the ball is it could make a huge difference in a comeback, right. So, like, first of all, you gotta remember Brunson was stepped out because he was.

what Tibbs was thinking is someone's gonna get fouled. Something's gonna go out of Bound's worst case scenario. This is why we have Kat, This is why we have Mikhale Bridges, so that they can run offense if we need to need them to in a situation. In theory, we have a better defensive lineup out there, maybe we can buy Jalen Brunson a few possessions. So I understood, But then it just by the time you got a chance to

use the timeout, it was too late. But like at the end of the day, the damage was done in those first couple of possessions after Jalen Brunson got hurt. And so I don't want to hyper focus on that decision there. From Tibbs, I could see what he was thinking. He just wanted to save that time out for a final passe ession should they need it. But the story of the game, and easily the most interesting storyline for the rest of the series, was Aasar Thompson's individual defense

on Jalen Brunson. Pistons fans had been clamoring for this adjustment for the entire series. There was some pretty strong lineup data that the Pistons were about the same on offense and considerably better on defense. When Aasar Thompson was on the floor. I was a little bit more on

the fence down the stretch. In Game four, a SAR made a couple of classic young guy mistakes on offense, so I thought it was at least defensible to at least in crunch time for excuse me, for the Pistons to go with like a more experienced and more polished offensive player. But down three to one, JB. Bickerstaff finally leans fully into a SAR. He plays a series high twenty nine minutes. He was plus nine in those minutes. Jalen Brunson finishes the game four for sixteen from the field.

Now as a team effort, several guys got big stops on Brunson on an island, Heyde got stops. Dennis Schroeder got stops. Guys did It was a team effort on Brunson. But Asar applied constant ball pressure. Was closing off driving angles by beating him to spots, was bumping him off his base on his fade away, got great contests on his mid range, was pursuing him over the top of ball screens and getting contests from behind those rear view contests.

And I thought his ball pressure in particular caused Brunson to play faster than usual. It sped him up throughout the entire game. He missed a couple of shots that he usually makes, like easy shots right at the rim. He took some unusual shots, like there was one where he had a catch in the left corner and Aasar Thompson closed out on him textbook closed out, closes out on the high side shoulder to funnel him towards the baseline. Brunson rips baseline and ends up taking kind of like

a eurostep floater. But Tobias Harris was like right there, like right there, and Brunson just shot the floater directly into Tobias's hands, like it barely got out of his hands before he got before he got blocked, and like Brunson usually sees that sort of thing, but I thought he was just a little bit rushed, just a little bit uncomfortable compared to what he looked like at other

points in the series. And so, I mean, especially with where the situation is gone to this point in the series, I think it was a worthwhile gamble from Jav Bickersoft to lean into a sar and more and it paid off. And that will be the biggest key in game six. Back in Detroit, Canon Brunson solved the SR. Thompson problem and get more comfortable throughout the game. I think the Knicks are going to go into Detroit in Game six and play like a veteran team that knows they need

to win. They had a similar game last year where they went into Philly, I think, and beat them in game six, where they kind of like looked a little sketchy, but then they were able to rise up on the

road and get the job done. My guess is it'll look a little bit like that, but it'll probably still be a close game because this Pistons team has had a lot of success with them again against them with their physicality, So I think it'll be a close game and it'll come down to a late game execution and if the Knicks can be what the Knicks are capable of beating and Jalen Brunson can stay on the floor, they should be able to close out the deal there.

But really impressive moment of growth there from Cad Cunningham and the Detroit Pistons. All Right, we'll talk quickly on Pacers Bucks and then we'll do a mail bag and then we'll get out of here Milwaukee through a hell of a punch. Tonight, Giannis played another amazing game in that like kind of point center role where he's next to Bobby Portis and he just kind of determines everything

as the half court shot creator. Thirty points, twenty rebounds, and thirteen assists with two steals and two blocks and absolutely insane stat line. I tweeted this earlier, like I was obviously wrong to pick the Bucks to beat the Pacers for a myriad of reasons, and obviously the Dame injury was a psychological punch to the gut for the

Bucks in the middle of the series. But I don't have any regrets for believing in Giannis and his ability to potentially win this series, like he is just he is amazing, and he's gonna go play somewhere else this summer, and some team is going to become frightening when they add Giannis to the mix, And there are a couple teams out there that have the assets to make a move for him, that are already really fucking good, and it could get incredibly scary. But Giannis played amazing. Gary

Trent Junior and AJ Green go nuclear from three. They hit fourteen of them, including Gary Trent hitting five of his eight threes in crunch time. But Tyre's Halliburton was even better. Think about how good you thought Gary Trent Junior was down the stretch, Like did it feel like when you were watching the game that Gary Trent was scoring every single time? He had fifteen points in crunch time. Tyres Haliburton had fourteen of his own in crunch time

to go with two assists. The Pacers overcame a seven

point deficit no tee. With a little over a half minute left, Andrew Nemhard hits a ball bomb coming off of ball screen like a deep like thirty foot three off the dribble at the top, and then Tyre's Halliburton beats his man off the dribble twice, once against aj Green on the right wing, once against Giannis on Tanakoompo on the left wing for the win, and on both of them like Aj Green physicality bumping up on Halliburton, He's Shiel turns the corner, he bumps him at the

rim and he still gets enough lift to power through the contact for a soft left handed finish off the glass and one and then attacking Giannis in a switch the nasty left to right crossover turns the corner and for the second time in crunch time, he elevates and actually gets an up and under to avoid rim protection and cleanly lay it down off the glass like that is the most athletic Tyrese has looked on his dribble drive and rim finishing attacks, especially out of one one

on ones, since the beginning of last year when he was kicking everybody's ass before he pulled his hamstring like.

There has been a consistent theme with Tyre's Halliburton in his range of potential outcomes, and it pretty much comes down to he can make all the reads, but in order to beat switches, he's got to be able to beat people off the dribble and hit stuff at the rim in traffic, and in order to dick take the type of coverage necessary to generate all the kinds of openings that he can kill teams with, he's got to

be able to hit his three. If he can hit his three off the dribble, that's the other ceiling raising piece that unlocks everything that he does, because if he can score effectively enough and drop coverage and he can score effectively enough and switches that unlocks his his peak trait, which is that he sees every he sees every read as it's happening, and he makes those reads on time, on target. The pass is always in the right place.

That's the ceiling raising piece. But it depends on his ability to be explosive in one on one situations and to knock down shots and drop coverage and so like, honestly, we're recording a Pacers Calves preview tomorrow morning, so keep an eye on the feeds early ish in the day tomorrow for that. But the main thing that I want to focus on is that they're going to need Tyrese Halliburton to be amazing to be able to win that series.

And this is the best that he's looked since the time that he came onto the scene early last year and everyone was like, oh my god, what are we watching? Like evolutionary Steve Nash here, Like he's showing that upside again. The first step on the move on Giannis was crazy, Everyone's slaying Giannis, and I mean, the dude had to do everything for his team, So like, I'm just not going to be super critical of him in that situation.

This is not like the Luka Doncic situation where he's being anchored by Lebron James and Austin Reeves and and somehow still running out of gas at the end of games. Like Giannis is the engine for everything this team does. Like who's the second best player on Gianni's team tonight.

It's scary Trent Junior. It's Kevin Porter Junior. You know, like like he took a bunch of league, like a replacement level players in the NBA and went in Indiana, very good Indiana Pacers team and nearly got the job done. But like in that last iso, Tyree's he toasted him on that move. He looked expl on that move and it wasn't like a high hesitation, just shoot the gap. He changed direction with a sweeping left to right crossover

and then hit the jet moving forward. They're gonna need him to be incredible to beat the Calves, and I thought that was a really good sign, how explosive he looked down the stretch. We had a really weird altercation at the end of the game with Tyres Alberton's dad, like walking onto the court to just shit Takianus on

the floor. That was super bizarre, But I thought both Tyrese and Jannis handled it really well in their postgame pressers, and that kind of took some of the uh, the weirdness away because you could see, like, I'm so glad that we've seen this from Tyrese. Like shit talk can get nasty sometimes, but there is something to be said about high level competition and the ability to separate what is high level competition from what things are like off

the court. And there are a lot of people out there that, like I mean, we were talking about this last night, Like I I like to think I'm a reasonably nice guy. I have been awful to people in the basketball court before, Like awful to the point where, like I think about it all week until I see

that person and I can apologize to them. Like there is a when you get out there and the competitive juice to start flowing, Like there is it is important to separate the competition from what things are like off the court. And like Giannis had a chance to go into that press conference and just rip Tyrese and talk all sorts of shit about who he thinks he is

as a person. Nope, tyres is a competitor, wish him all the best, but then calling attention to the obvious behavior from his dad, and same thing with Tyres Halliburn. He could have gone into the presser and been like, those boys talk shit the entire series and we busted their ass. Nope, he went up there and he was like, look, we're outside of the lines now, time to be a grown up.

they just weren't competing earlier. But I mean, like everything comes down to because of the way that Denver guards, Everything comes down to just the three parts of their pick and roll coverage, the ball pressure of Christian Brown, Nicole Jokic, at the level in their backside rotations, and they're just substantially sharper on all three fronts than they were in the regular season.

And it just was like the exact opposite of the energy we were seeing from James Harden, and it was crazy.

necessarily have like a gigantic variety of shot making. It's a lot of like the same three or four types of moves, And so I think there's a certain amount of like guys pick up on his cues.

great defenses. I think what ends up happening is like over the course of a series, you get tons of tape, and teams are pretty good at taking away what you like to do, and like you will find yourself in a basketball game where you're like, shit, the thing I like to do is not working.

thing around. And then there's the it's just not my night, you know, Like I know it does it almost like feels like that kind of energy from him where he almost like succumbs to it, and it's like, dude, James, this happens to everybody. This happens literally everybody in these games.

It gets really fucking hard, Like you just have to find a way to contribute, Just find a way, you know, And like for him, it could have literally just been creating advantages in ball screens by like getting downhill with the same verve that he brought in the fourth quarter a game.

put our center on the back line. And it's just really as you look through the Clippers roster, they don't really have like Kawhi effectively is that big forward, but he's better deployed on the perimeter. So basically, James Harden is playing the same role that you see so many teams use against Denver, which is he's basically their defensive four. I mean, who was this primary matchup earlier in the series. It was literally Aaron Gordon or Michael Porter Junior for

the most part. So like the idea there though, is like what James Harden is doing. Getting super aggressive up underneath Jokic is one part of the team defensive scheme of handling him, which really involves packing things on the back line and like making difficult passing reads as you have some non shooters on the floor.

It's like the old Lebron Wizard series for instance, you know, and like it's one of those things where you know, Kate has learned some valuable lessons over the course of this series. Caid early in the series was like not being as deliberate with hunting, screening actions in crunch time. It was attacking too much one on one in the middle of the series, made some bad reads where it's like trying to like split double teams and stuff and

turning the basketball over tonight. Very decisive in the actions that he was attacking and was relentlessly getting downhill, wasn't settling for some of the mid range jump shots that

he was settling earlier in the series. For like, Caid has shown growth over the course of this series, He's been really good defensively for stretches in this series, Like you're seeing a lot of stuff come to the surface of sar Thompson and what he's shown you as like kind of the literally the m N Thompson role just guard the other team's best guard and then operate as a baseline vertical spacer like the there's obviously a lot

of exciting stuff there. I personally was never very high on the Knicks at any point this season, Like there was not a single day from from the day they got the shit kicked out of him by the Celtics there was never a single day that I really took the Knicks that seriously as a championship contender. We'll see, we'll see if they can flip that script going against

the Knicks, but like Eric going against the Celtics. But like it also is a little tricky to me with this Jalen Brunson ankle thing, Like if he's not super explosive in game six and he deals with another game of Asar Thompson all over him, I could see things going south. Like I think the Knicks are gonna win, and I think they'll probably win in six, but there's like a hefty, like twenty percent chance that the Pistons

get this done. Like they are a real problem for the Knicks on a bunch of different levels.

to be getting to. All the time.

will get one this summer, I'm sure. But outside of that, like I like the idea of Luca being surrounded with guys that don't just finish plays, but that can extend advantages and play out of like like kind of complex clothes out attacking and connective playmaking and all that kind

of stuff. I you know, I've had this like vision for what the Lakers can be that has never really come to fruition yet, which involves basically Luca creating advantage and then Lebron and Austin and everyone else just playing off of that advantage and having a ton of success. But here we are the Lakers, are down three to one, and last year a team of Luca surrounded with play finishing was more successful. So then I look at why

why were they more successful? And I keep coming back to Derek Jones Junior and Derek and Daniel Gafford.

They press up, like Derek Jones was able to press up on Ant's pull up jump shot enough that he wasn't very comfortable with it, and Ant was dealing with a ton of rim protection when he would get past that first layer. And I want to be clear, and deserves more credit. He's not just beating the Lakers because of a lack of rimp protection. He has beat them with his passing and his three point shooting, which is just a testament to his development. But I think there's

something to be said about these types of guys. You're watching a Men Thompson have some success defensively, You're watching Asar Thompson have a lot of success defensively. You're like these Like, I think it's actually better to surround your supremely gifted offensive player with defense than offense. And one of the big reasons why I'm thinking that way, Jackson,

is these these shooters that don't make shots. There's all these shooters that don't make shots out there, and it's like, so it's like, what good is the shooter that doesn't make shots compared to the athlete that's athletic every single night, And so like at a certain point, I almost look at it and I go, like, how much different is the average like non athletic skill guard shooting on wide open catch and shoots in this series than some of

the better athletes who maybe aren't as good as shooters, but they feel fresher, they get more lift on their jump shot, and they can impact the game in all these other ways.

games where he hits three. It's like Malik Beasley. Yeah, he's not gonna do it every game, maybe one out of every five or two out of every five or whatever, but he is going to do that on occasion. And he's every single night going to bring the athleticism in size and speed and strength that someone like you know, just for the example, Malik Beasley is not providing.

super impactful defensively. It's just, you know, every single year I cover the league, I feel like I learned a little bit more, and you always are everything's also about the context, Like you you also, we've seen teams like Denver pull it off to where they can win without a ton of supreme athleticism on the floor just by overwhelming skill and size, or Golden State, where it's like Golden State has continued to win without much physical size

on the floor repeatedly over the course of the last decade, and so like there I there is no harder fast rule, to be clear, But as I'm looking specifically, like as a fan of the Lakers, for instance, as I look at that team I've been, all I can think about for the summer is getting more athletic.

elite level play finishers like a Malik Beasley. They are on that dude's hip, right, Milik Beasley is not getting many half court remotely open three pointers, while Jaden McDaniels, someone of that sort of ILK is getting open three pointers because defense are like, we will live with that, we will live with him shooting threes, and so then the equation changes even further where it's like, what would you prefer a contested in Malik Beasley three or a

wide open Jayden McDaniels three, And the numbers probably I don't even know what the numbers say. They would probably still land in Malik Beasley. But it's a lot closer. You're not actually comparing contested three for contested three. You're comparing contest for much of the game. You're comparing contested three from shooter versus open three from quote unquote non shooter.

make shots. Like to me, it's that's that tier below Malik Beasley where it's like that where the other team just puts a decent lock and trail defender on them that takes away the easy ones. And then like all of a sudden he becomes a useless player. Like but there's it's just it's just the volatility, because like I feel like Buddy Healed was this guy, and Buddy.

But like to me, it'd be like a guy like Chris Dunn, like how much value is there and a guy like Chris Dunn versus a guy like a Tim Hardaway junior, you know, And it's a complicated discussion, and like, you know, there are other times. There are other times I watch a game and I'm like, oh my god, shot making is the only thing that matters, Like it's all I feel like it all depends on like having

the perfect mixture of things. It's just I tend to think of it like like having Luka Doncic as like this supremely gifted offensive player that can create advantages.

But yeah, I've just been I've been very keyed in on the athletes, and we've just seen a lot of examples of the athletes kind of having big impact at this point.

they attack. But at the end of games, the Celtics will be able to strangle the pace and it's going to become about picking on matchups and there's no doubt that Donovan Mitchell is gonna have to go toe to toe.

Celtics and crunch time you know twice, you know, Like that's really the key to me is like I think if the I think if the Calves are going to beat the Celtics, they need like a couple of those games to be like run like between game one, two and five, they would need to win two of those games by like ten fifteen points, because I think it'd be I think it would be really difficult to ask Mitchell to out execute Tatum four times in a series in a crunch time, you know, slow down type of game.

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