Hoops Tonight - LIVE Lakers/Rockets & Celtics/Grizzlies Reactions + a Mini Mailbag

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hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, say DKG dot co slash audio. All right, welcome to tonight. You're at the ball. You have your Monday everybody hope all of you guys are having a great start to your week. Got a jam packshow for you tonight. We're hitting both of the TNT games as the Lakers get a big win against the red hot Houston Rockets team. The Celtics are peaking offensively

right now. We're gonna be talking about them in their big win against the Memphis Grizzlies, and then, like we've done for our last two live shows, the tail end of the show, Jackson's gonna hop on with us and we're gonna take questions from the chat for about ten to fifteen minutes. Remember, if you want to get questions in the chat, you gotta subscribe to the channel. So subscribe to the channel, drop your questions in the chat. We'll get to them at the tail end of the show.

You guys are the joke before we get started, subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JCNLTS. You guys, don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about a podcast fet wherever. You'ture podcasts on our Hoops Tonight so also super helpful if you leave a rating in a review on that front. We also have brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook where Jackson's doing

incredible work with film stuff. Make sure you guys follow us there. Then, last, but not least, keep dropping mail bag questions in the YouTube comments. Tomorrow morning, we're recording a mail bag. Since we're covering tonight's games, this episode will be your last chance to drop mailbag questions for tomorrow's mail bag as well. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Rockets have been a team that I've been

interested to see play the Lakers for several different reasons. One, they present probably the biggest physical mismatch for the Lakers on the perimeter. But they also have this Shanguon problem, and I've been watching Shangoon kick everyone's ass seemingly as of late. And they have these big, strong athletes that can wear on the you know, somewhat lesser athletes that

the Lakers have on the perimeter. The Lakers have good size on the perimeter, but they're not particularly athletic, and I think you saw a lot of examples of that today. There were a couple of plays with Dorian Finney Smith where like Dorian Phinney Smith is one of the better athletes on the Lakers, And there were a couple of plays today that The one that comes to mind are that Tarry Easton driving Iso smash in his face, just the two handed crunch right in his face off of

that little low gather move. And then the play where Men Thompson, who just every time I watched Men Thompson. I'm just completely blown away. But he had this euro step on the bastine where he left Dorian Infinny Smith just in the mud. And there were other examples where it's like Lebron's trying to back down Dylan Brooks, and like I always talk about those back down situations of like a contest to see who can dislodge the other player's base first is what those contests usually come down to.

And Dylan Brooks is dislodging Lebron's base, He's dislodging Luca's base, and so there's a bunch of physical mismatches at play. They're a team that can do quite a bit of switching, as you saw down the stretch as the Lakers were attacking Fred van Vliet quite a bit. And they also run a lot of zone defense as a late they

didn't run. I pulled the stat on the show a couple of days ago or last week, but the Rockets for like fifty something games this year ran zero possessions of zone and then suddenly in the last month they've just been running a ton of it, and they run a couple of different variations of it. But this was gonna be a good test for the Lakers on a bunch of different fronts, and I thought in general they

passed the test in a lot of ways. I thought the main reason today didn't look more like a convincing win or ten to fifteen point Laker win is none of the Lakers stars played well on offense. None of them provided volume scoring. But some of that is because they did the job, which is hanging with Houston physically.

And there were a couple stretches, like in the early part of the game, and the Lakers were missing shots against the zone, or they gave up some transition kick ahead stuff where guys are just standing wide open under the basket. Some of those kinds of mistakes, But for the most part, the Lakers held up on the margins. They tied them in offensive rebounds both teams at ten.

They held them to just thirteen fast break points. Those are the two main areas where they can get thrashed by this type of team, and they held up there. But there is something to be said about the cumulative wear and tear that happens when you play against a

team like the Houston Rockets. Like I talked about this all the time, I talked about it earlier this morning when we were I think it was when we were talking at the tail end of the show about Zachary Rossauche but talked about the difference between like what causes a shot to miss, while also acknowledging that there is a certain amount of luck in shooting. Generally speaking, I think that there's far more controllable in shot result than uncontrollable.

What kinds of shots are you getting? What else are you having to do in the gate? Like if you're getting worn down physically because you're fronting the post against Shane Goon and doing all this crackdown, rebounding to deal with their bigs underneath the basket, and sprinting back in transition, every single time there's a certain amount of it's difficult to then get the lift you need into a shot. Did you see Austin Reeves leaving that jumper short off

the front of the rim? Do you see that last wide open Rui Hachimura three that literally airballed short. Luca on all of his step backs couldn't get the ball to the rim. He had a couple alligator arm shots in this game that were well short of the front of the rim. Those are connected. That is a product of that cumulative wear and tear that a team like Houston puts on your legs. And as I always talk about, the jump shot is an energy transfer from the floor

all the way through to the release. If you disrupt the base or you disrupt the gather, it doesn't even feel like the same shot at the top. And there's a lot of that sort of thing where you could just feel the Lakers struggling to get their lift, and I do think there's a certain amount of like they're gonna have to overcome that if they run into Houston

in a second round series. There's a chance here if the way things shake out that the Lakers and the Rockets end up at the two three, and if the Rockets beat whoever comes out of that seven seed, there's a chance that it ends up being La Houston in

round two. And if that happens, it's going to be important that Lebron, Luca, and Austin find a way to contribute at a higher rate offensively while also winning these physical battles that they're gonna have to win, or losing fewer of the physical battles than you can lose to a team like Houston, same thing goes for the spot

up shooters. There are a couple guys try really well tonight, right, like Dorian Finney Smith and gave Vincent May twelve threes between the two and that that was massive, just absolutely

massive for them in this game. Gabe was getting a ton of open threes in the corner out of their zone attack, and then Dorian Finney Smith was getting a ton of threes at the top of the key out of the pick and pop. But everyone else shot poorly, you know, Ruy Hatcha Mura goes one for six, Austin Reeves goes oh for three, Jordan Goodwin gets two fantastic

wide open looks and he goes oh for two. There's a certain amount of that, where like the Lakers are going to have to make shots and generate offense while they're dealing with a very difficult physical ask to box out and run the floor in transition and do all of those things. I thought they handled the zone really well. I thought they consistently generated great shots. There's a certain there's a bunch of different stuff that happens with zone

to everybody involved. Defenses tend to struggle with rebounding why because they're not matched up, there's not clean box outs. Zones tend to breed passivity, meaning like guys feel like they're just in their spot and they don't need to cover a ton of ground, so they're less crashy, and so they can give up some offensive rebounds. And then on offense, it fundamentally changes the way your shots come

from right. Like we're gonna talk about this when we get into the Celtics, when we talk about Al Horford and chrisops Porzingis. But like, you run into a very different style of game, a very different style of offense, a very different style of defense. It can catch you off guard and it can be difficult to adjust to. So, for instance, like where do the Lakers usually get their

catch and shoot threes. They're typically coming out of skips and ball screens, like maybe an extra pass up the wing, but a lot of weak side wing, week side corner threes, a lot of picking pop threes in ball screens when they have a big on Dori and Finney Smith. That's where they tend to get their threes from right. Once you bring in a zone, it changes the way you get your threes. There's more threes off of swing passes, so you're not getting the ball out of the paint

as often. A lot of times it's off of a sideway's pass. You're changing your perspective on the basket as you turn to shoot. The closeouts tend to be different. A lot of times those gaps are with a defender closing out at you on your side as opposed to closing out at your face. It's a very different type of feel, and often even when you get great shots against zone, it can take time for you to kind of like get comfortable taking and making shots in those situations.

That said, this is why I feel so strongly about that concept. I talked earlier about shot quality and how variance plays a role, but ultimately it's about the kind of basketball that you're playing on both ends of the floor. If you continue to generate great shots for great shooters, they're gonna go in. And Gabe was off early in the game. They had a couple bad misses out of the corner, but he just kept getting clean looks. Two

damn good of a shooter. He's a pro. These guys are in the gym every damn day, shooting hundreds of shots. If you let him just sit there and set his feet, get his rhythm, he's gonna eventually knock him down. And that's the thing. Like these were like wide open looks for Dorian Finney Smith at the top of the key. These were wide open looks for Gave gay Vinson hit a couple of more tightly contested ones out of the corner, but he got going with these wide open shots, and

so to the Lakers credit, they trusted their shot. Qual I thought that was kind of like the theme of the game for the Lakers, like trusting the process. Like there's a certain amount of like you'll see a lot of old heads do this. I don't know if you guys have ever played with an older guy when you're playing pickup, where like you take a couple of wide open threes and you miss them, and the old guy goes like, we need to stop settling, we need to

go to the basket. Like it just starts yelling at you that kind of shit, Like we've all dealt with that before. But it's like a lot of times that can be the worst thing you can do because a lot of times those threes are open because the defense is packing the paint the defense is conceding those threes in a lot of cases. Case in point, the Dorian Finney Smith picking pop. Dorrian Finney Smith is gonna hit about five percent of those wide open above the break threes.

As Luke is coming off of that ball screen, whether it's Steven Adams or Alpern Shangoon, he's got two on the ball, he is driving to the basket. There's red jerseys or Rockets jerseys all around them. And so ultimately, what you need to do in that situation instead of trying to ram your head through the brick wall, is take what the defense is giving. Now, I agree with the old heads. If you're settling for bad shots, that's

a totally different game. Like if you're coming down the floor and you're doing the Jalen Green thing where it's like you're coming off of the top of the screen and you're getting off the dribble three with a rear view contest and you make a couple, but then you start missing. Like I, as a coach would probably be like, hey, like let's try to generate more clean catch and shoot looks instead of these like lower percentage types of shots.

But if you're getting if your offense is generating clean catch and shoot looks for good shooters, you don't bail on that just because they miss three or four early in the game. You trust that shot quality. Dorian Finney, Smith and Gabe Vincent total twenty four to three point

attempts tonight. That is relentless faith in the shot quality that they were generating, And so I just thought that was a really like there's a certain amount of it too with Houston, where it's like you can tell, like Lebron, you could literally see it in the body language of every Laker tonight, whether it's Luca dealing with Dylan Brooks or Lebron dealing with Dylan Brooks, or all those guys dealing with the men. Thompson and DFS got into it

with Steven Adams. No matter who beats the Rockets, whether it's the Lakers or it's somebody else, whoever gets rid of them, that's gonna be a shitty two weeks like that. You're going to be dealing with pain in the ass, physical athletes that are gonna talk shit like Jalen Green's rocking the baby every time he gets a driving layup in this game. Dylan Brooks every time he stonewalls Lebron or Luca is like talking shit. I literally saw him call Lebron trash after he got knocked over on the

last one. Like there's a certain amount of like this is gonna suck under any circumstances for anybody to play. And you could see the Lakers kind of in survival mode tonight, where they're like, can we just get out of here with a win and not see these guys for a while. But the reality is they might see them.

And that's why I think it's just so important for the Lakers to attack these final Cup weeks to improve their conditioning, to improve their ability to handle the physicality, because ultimately they're gonna need to against a big, physical athletic team. If it's not Houston, it'll be okay See,

who's just a much better version of Houston. And in that sort of situation, they're gonna have to be able to make good decisions, make good reads, and get their legs up into these shots so that they can knock some of these shots down if they're going to beat a team like Okay See. One of the things that stood out to me in this game was just in general the effort that the Lakers gave holding like finding ways to contribute even when they're not making shots, and

all the three stars I thought deserved some credit for this. So, for instance, like Austin reeves brutal shooting game. Jackson and I were talking before the show, like he definitely has a lower floor and he's more inconsistent against these really athletic teams just because they can wear on him physically to a certain extent. But one of the things I'll give Austin credit for is like he can identify when he's having that type of game, he'll just find ways

to make plays. There was a big sequence late in this game where he gets a pretty good look off of a nasty left right snatchback crossover against Jalen Green right around the right elbow, leaves it short off the front of the rim. It misses, and Jalen Green, you could tell, is just like, oh yeah, well watch this.

So he goes down the other end and he starts go right at Austin's chest and Austin cleanly strips him, absorbs the contact, slides open, waits for Jalen to expose the ball in his shooting pocket and reaches out and he strips him clean. Look at the way Austin was

flying around on rebounds. He had a contest on a Dylan Brooks left shoulder fade away, which, by the way, like there are a lot of guys in this league where if Dylan Brooks went to take a left shoulder fade away, they'd be like, all right, bro, Like you go ahead and shoot that, We'll just grab the rebound. Austin was like, no, Like, I am not leaving this to chance. I am going to get the best possible contest I can get, and he damn near blocked Dylan

Brooks on that left shoulder fade along the baseline. Lebron making that defensive play against Shangun. Shang Gun spins off of Austin, gets him in a switch. There's no help out of that right corner because it's vacant. Shangun has an easy drop step to his right hand on that right side of the basket. He makes that. It's the exact same situation they were just in where they were struggling to get the ball in bounds and they could potentially turn the ball over there like they did against Chicago,

or have to go make more free throws. Lebron said, nah, fuck that, I'm gonna make a defensive play here. He read the whole thing from the start. You know, Shanegun, he really is Jokich light and I really enjoy watching him for a lot of the same reasons. But the two biggest differences is he's just not as big as Yokich and he's just not as good a passer as

Jokich is. And like Shanggun really just telegraphed and mailed in that move to where Lebron just saw it coming a mile away, got up there and make the block. He had those two clutch free throws at the end of the game. Luca, like we talked about it the shot making earlier, like he was leaving everything short. Was just brutally bad as a shot maker in this game. But he was the guy that was consistently generating those fantastic looks for Dorian Finney Smith at the top of

the key. He also hit Gabe a few times on skips in ball screens. Like to Luca's credit, he generated great shots for his team in this game as best as he could, even though the shot making wasn't there, and so all in all, I thought it was an impressive effort for the Lakers, while at the same time revealing of the fact that there's a certain amount of wear and tear that these young athletic teams can inflict

on this Lakers roster. And so there's a certain amount of like that war of attrition, which is, like how much can the athletes wear down the Lakers stars versus how much can the Lakers Stars solve these defenses to the point where it starts to get easier for them.

And so there's a certain amount of that sort of like tug of war that's going to be an important swing factor for the Lakers as they head into the postseason, which is, are they willing and able to survive a two week series against a super athletic, super young team and gets stronger as the series progresses, because that can also go the other way, and we've seen, like I mean, just like at Minnesota versus Phoenix last year, where sometimes

the physicality ratchets up, those athletes really start to get their hands on you, and it can turn into something that gets ugly pretty quick. But yeah, so it was a good win for them. I think they're trending in the right direction. This was one of their better physical, competitive types of games in the last week or so, But this was also the game where their offense took a step back after their offense had been starting to

gain some ground in recent weeks. So ultimately, for the Lakers, it's about putting it all together and getting to the point where all these different facets of what make them good are all available and reliable at the same time. Moving out to Boston Memphis, I talked earlier about running into an opponent that plays a dramatically different style, right with the Lakers running into a zone defense. I talked about this concept with Porzingis and Horford in the Suns game.

If you guys remember, they're just a matchup problem for most front courts in the NBA. They had Zach Edy and Santi Aldamin hell tonight. There was a stretch at the beginning of this game for about quarter and a half or the Grizzlies were hooping, John Morant was cooking,

and most of Boston's perimeter players were cold. Derek White and Drew Holliday had like zero points through the first you know, twelve fourteen minutes or so of this game, and Al Horford and Chris hops Porzingis literally kept them in the game until their offense finally got going in that late second quarter stretch and Drew Halliding and Derek

White started hitting three, Jason Tatum started getting aggressive. That was when they took over and they were able to kind of slowly and methodically take control of the game from there. But they were hanging on for dear life early on as none of their perimeter players can get anything going, and John Morant was really going and guys were hitting threes, and it just was one of those things where they needed somebody to keep them attached, and

it was Horford and Porzingis. The Celtics make you play a different type of game. So many teams that run spread, pick and roll in the NBA allow teams to kind of set their defense up in a way that is repetitive. Right, So say you're guarding Luca Jackson ball screen. Right, You're gonna have a guy chase over the top, your BIG's gonna come up to the level or whatever. You're gonna

tag the roller. That means a skip is open. But there's a classic rotation from the wing to the skip and the two on the ball have to disengage and someone's got to rotate to the wing, and there's a certain amount of like when you're facing these spread, pick and roll teams, where like you play sixty games a year playing that type of defense, and so you kind

of get really good at it. You kind of get your reads down, you get your your it kind of becomes instinctual, like what you're gonna do in all these

different types of situations. One of the things that the Celtics do is they allow them They allow their team to play with Horford and porzingis they allow their team to play a brand of driving kick basketball that is positionless in the purest sense of where guys are on the floor, meaning like sometimes it is Tatum in the corner and Horford on the wing and a guard in

the dunker spot and porzingis on the opposite wing. But then sometimes Horford's in the corner and sometimes porzingis is operating out against a switch in the middle of the floor.

Everyone's in a different spot all the time. It happening is like everybody on the team is like doing these weird things like oh, you're a guard and now you're making a help side rotation underneath the basket because your bigs are out above the break and there's a guard in the dunker spot, so like it's your help rotation.

So now you're protecting the rim as like a six foot two athletic thin guard or whatever it might be, right, or you're as a big man like all of a sudden, like you're defending in a driving kick situation where it's like, oh, I'm dealing with Horford and a pick and pop, or now I'm Zach Edy, I'm switched on to Derek White on the left wing, and like now I'm like trying to slide my feet against Derek White, and all he has to do is kind of shimmy a little bit

and he back pedals too much and then he rises up and knocks down a pull up three right in his face. It just puts everybody in these like really awkward situations, and you could tell the Celtics new that that was their best option because they were hunting it relentlessly.

They even ran in action at one point, it was in the second quarter if I remember correctly, where they had Horford and Porzingis run an off ball action off of the wing and Horford screens Santiel Dama and Porzingis cuts or kind of kind of curls it and they defend it like a drop coverage. So Santel Dama is like chasing over the top and Edie is in a kind of like a drop right around like ten feet

from the basket. Porzingis catches the ball in the move and he's going downhill right at Edie's face, and he just spins into it, just dunks it with two hands right in his head. And I'm like, like, this is not normal stuff you expect to deal with when you're coaching.

Zach Edy like like, all right, you know how you ran drop coverage for the last two weeks, Well tonight, we need you to be defending off ball action for a big who can shoot twenty seven footers and post up and do all and spin into dunks in your face and all this different kind of stuff. Al Horford, it's not just the shooting. It's it's confident and aggressive shooting, which are two very different things. I'm able to knock

down to catch and shoot three. It's not the same as if you leave me open, I'm gonna shoot it and I'm gonna hit you know, close to forty percent of them, and that just puts you in all these different predicaments. Like I watched Horford tonight jab into the corner, drive middle hit a little fling hook shot in the lane. That's a guard move. That's a guard move that you're asking your bigs to defend in space. Like it just

ultimately puts you in all of these uncomfortable positions. And like I thought, Zach Eatie in particular and santi all Dom in particular just looked completely lost on the floorida night. And that's what Horford and Porzingis do to you. And they were spamming that advantage. Boston was a lot of Porzingis post ups in this game. I thought Porzingis gave them issues with his rim protection as well. It's just been really fun in the last few weeks to watch

those guys give teams fits. The CEA's perimeterive players finally got going that second quarter as well. I've been talking a lot lately about the Celtics in their pursuit of great shots right, and this might have been their best offensive process game of the season. Thirty assists on thirty nine midfield goals, They generated thirty two unguarded catch and shoot jump shots in that game that was by far

their highest total of the season. They've general at least twenty unguarded catch and shoots in five consecutive games, and that's the exciting part. Like most of this is shaping up exactly like you would hope for a title defense. They're having an excellent regular season, but at the same time, they're not over extending themselves trying to keep up with a couple of young athletic teams in Cleveland and OKC.

They're taking care of their bodies, sitting guys when they need to sit guys, while also maintaining their identity while also giving young guys a lot of opportunity. We've seen a lot more Baylor shiremen as of late. They're allowing themselves to have a multifaceted approach to this regular season, while at the same time, right now March thirty first,

turning up their intensity in time for the playoffs. They've won nine in a row, just had their best shot quality game of the season, five consecutive games of just a lot of really good catch and shoot looks, which to me are like the number one barometer for the Celtics in their offense. There's just a lot to get excited about if you're a Celtics fan. They are peaking at the right time on the Memphis front. Their defense

has been awful in the skid. They have a one to twenty point three defensive rating in this one and six stretch, and I'm not surprised at all that they were the team that gave up the most wide open threes to Boston. This was an issue throughout the entirety of the Taylor Jenkins era, and we've talked about this on the show many times. They're an overhelped team. There's a huge difference between digging and recovering and just sitting in driving lanes and conceiting threes. Over the course of

this span. I checked before the show it's either fifth or sixth, But in the seven game span, they've given up the fifth or sixth most unguarded catch and shoot, jump shot or wide open PERMBA dot Com at least six feet away defenders or defender at least six feet away. They've given up, let's just say, the sixth most in

the league over this seven game span. There's a certain amount of that where you're going to allow teams to pick you apart and get great looks, and it's just gonna be really difficult for you to get enough stops. If you're deliberate with your shot selection in ball movement against Memphis, you can absolutely get open looks against them. They look a little bit like a team that's letting go of the rope right now, doing the exact opposite of what we talked about with Boston. They're losing team

as we had for the postseason. I don't think they're good enough on either end of the floor to win four playoff rounds. Definitely looking a little bleak in Memphis. All right, Jackson, let's get into that mail bag. What do you got for us?

Do you think Denver will fall to the four seed and rest players to avoid a potential Warriors or Timberwolves matchup in the first round of the playoffs, And we can sort of expand the question I think generally to like, do you think teams actually do this try to intentionally lose games or intentionally how much do these teams think about seeding and their potential first round matchups against teams they might struggle with.

I generally tend to think that the basketball gods will reward you most when you attempt to play the best possible basketball, and that ultimately, even if you were able to avoid Minnesota or a Golden State in the first round, you're gonna have to face somebody that attacks your weaknesses at some point in the postseason. The best thing you can do to prepare for that is to be the best basketball team that you can be, and the only way to do that is to attack every day in

the process of becoming a better basketball team. So, like I think there's a fan case for it, I just don't think there's a basketball case for it, just simply because it's just bad process for a basketball team. What do you think, Yeah, I.

your best basketball. I think going into the playoffs and in those early parts of the playoffs, if you want it's it's not like Denver's a team that would be happy to win one one round, right, If you're a genuine title contender, you want to be playing your best basketball because whoever you get. If you're if you're Denver, you're thinking a lot more about how do you beat Okay see than you are how you beat If you're if you're stressing about how do you beat Minnesota, you're

not beating Okay. So so exactly, yeah, all right, next question, we'll do this one's sort of about tonight's connected tonight's game, because it does feel like there was a lot of talk on the broadcast about Jalen green Is sitting at the end of the game. Uh, do you think the Rockets will look target a veteran star they can help them score in crunch time this offseason. Who do you think the ideal fit would be. I know, Kevin Durant sort of be obvious, he's been rumored to them in

the past. But what's the sort of solution, potential solution to their late game execution offensive sort of struggles.

play through Shangun and Fred Van Vliet. I thought Jabari Smith was amazing in this game on the glass and then his timely jump shooting. That three hit in transition on the right wing was huge. That little shot he hit from Shaneguon in the like ten twelve feet there in the lane that little soft jump shot he shot,

and then Dylan obviously you need him for defense. Shangon was your biggest matchup advantage, and then a men Thompson was crushing everybody, So like, who who are you taking out for Jalen Green when you're gonna be running the offense to Fred Van Vliet anyway, So I thought that was the right call. But yeah, ultimately I think there I was advocating for this around the deadline. This was before you started working with us Jackson, but I was like NonStop. I was like, I was like, should the

Rockets be training for some of these guys? Like there's do you remember that stretch in the early part of the or middle part of the season where they just beat great teams every single night for like a month.

it this year, and we'll see ultimately. I mean, their offense looked so brutally bad at times tonight, and it always tends to do that and just about every single game. So there's a certain amount of like I think Houston need their GM, their front office needs to see just how bad their offense looks in April before they end up understanding just how serious they need to get about chasing down that type of scoring talent.

superstar like that. I think I'm in Thompson obviously has you know, crazy high ceiling, but I don't know what he's going to be, right, But even Jalen Green and Sengoon, who are are awesome at times, like I don't think either of those guys because of Sengoon sort of passing in size struggles and that per your point about the Yoakic comparison and Jalen Green sort of consistency and efficiency struggles.

I don't know if either of those guys project to be legitimate playoff go to scorers in the half court, and if and if they don't have even one of those guys, it's like, what.

like build, But that's without Shay. You know, they like don't have They need to cash in some of their hips to try to go after someone who can actually lift them over the top and the half court offensively.

a certain like ceiling with him that's there. And so to your point, like if you don't have somebody that's like, oh, this guy, Like it's like the Anthony Edwards conundrum with Minnesota, it's like a certain amount of their a certain amount of their like game plan for the franchise is like we expect Aunt to make dramatic leaps every year for the next like five years, whereas like I think aman Thompson's gonna take those kinds of leaps, but I just don't see him as the surgical There's not a guy

in there that's gonna be that surgical offensive player. And so if you're not gonna get that player through the draft, then you gotta find that guy out in free agency or in u in the trade market. And so ultimately, I think I think it's just a matter of when they pulled the trigger.

And they also have this like anchored front court with Raymond Green protecting the rim, and so there's a certain amount like with with Golden State, they can make them feel uncomfortable on defense while also having the jimmy to attack matchups of various perimeter size matchups. And Steph has just been really comfortable against them, and he's made a lot of plays against them, and so I think Golden

State's an interesting example. Minnesota would be another example with like really good rim protection, because we've seen we've seen Oklahoma City struggle in the Dallas series last year against really good rim protection. The Lakers are another example of a team that they have the Luca Lebron, who are you gonna Who's gonna guard them? Type of problem. The thing that scares me for the Lakers with Oklahoma City

is their turnover to transition problem. Yeah, And like I could see that series having a little bit of a Minnesota Denver type of feel where there are these games where the Lakers methodically beat okay See, but then there are these games where Okay Se just kicks the shit out of them because they let go of the rope and they start turning the ball over and it's just a track meet and transition.

And whether it's the Luca Lebron plot problem, the stuff problem, or they ok problem, Like those three teams have some sort of skeleton key that can just unlock a playoff series in a way that the other Western Conference teams don't really have offensively.

NBA history is the twenty twenty one Jazz. Like right, I was going to say all season long they were able to maintain a certain baseline with their defense because of Rudy Gobert. In the large sample, it was really effective until the Clippers were like, let's see how you guys, garden space. Yeah, and I mean they beat them without Kawhi like that. That was like a pretty dramatic type of upset. So I think I think, like overall, athletic

perimeter speed is more valuable than rim protection. Like Boston I think is a great example. Like I think Boston's defensive look with Horford at center, with the with the their four other great perimeter players, that's the look where it's like we're switching everything and it's like take your pick, who do you want to try to score on. You don't really have a good option here. I think that that has more resilience in the playoffs than just pure rim protection. Yeah.

feel and YadA YadA. And then there's also people also doing these Cooper flag to the Celtics after his Ricky dealer rumors. So the Celtics are going to be really expensive moving forward. What lottery team, if any, would accept a Drew Holliday, Jalen Brown and a couple first round picks for the number one overall pick to get Cooper flag to the Celtics.

If you have a center with those two guys playing at three four, there's a certain like foot speed, like Jalen Brown's fastest ship and guards the other team's best player every day. Yeah, like there's a like can Cooper Flag do that? You know, there's a certain amount of that sort of thing. But this is an interesting thought exercise, and I think I think you. I think Utah. You talked to me into Utah. That makes it. That's a that that one makes a little bit of sense.

parentheses and realistic first round matchup for the Lakers? Okay, that's a really lot of Memphis because they feel like the easiest first round matchup forever.

who's only one loss ahead of the eight seed. Like the Lakers at the four seed are only three losses ahead of the Clippers at the eight seed, So like it could literally be anybody. Yeah, I think I think the Lakers would do destroy Memphis because they run too many traditional coverages. Golden State is a tricky one because they haven't played since Jimmy Butler came on board. I personally am scared of Golden State as a fan who's rooting for the Lakers. Golden State is a team I'd

rather not play. Minnesota is a team I'd rather not play. I just know that they can, like really physically alter a series to the point where it becomes a big problem. I think the Lakers would beat Denver. I know Nugget Nuggets fans will kill me for saying that, but I think I think the Lakers are a better team than Denver right now. I think they also, I think Luca

just fundamentally changes the matchup. Yeah, Like, like Luca just goes from Denver's defense can hold up reasonably well against the Lakers to now, Denver's defense is hopeless to stop the Lakers from generating wide open threes every single time down the floor. So I think the Lakers would define against Denver. I think the Lakers would do fine against Memphis. I'd say Golden State in Minnesota would be the two that I'd be worried about in first round matchups.

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