Hoops Tonight - LIVE: NUGGETS-CLIPPERS REACTION: Nikola Jokic & Jamal Murray lead Nuggets to DOMINANT Game 7 win over Clippers

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the Nuggets sent the Los Angeles Clippers home. We're gonna be breaking that game down from the perspective of both teams, focusing on where the Clippers should go from here, as obviously this is the season where things tended to go most right for them in terms of health, and yet here they are getting sent home in the first round and kind of disappointing fashion. And then we will also talk a little bit about the pending Nuggets Oklahoma City

Thunder series. You guys know the Joe Before we get started. To subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore JSONLTC. You guys don't miss you announcements, So forget about a podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcast on our Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson's doing great work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram,

and Facebook. Make sure you guys follow us there, and the last but not least, keep dropping mailback questions so we can get to them in our mailbags throughout the remainder of the season. We are also going over to playback after the show tonight, so when we are finished here, there's a link in the description to this video that will take you over to playback where you guys can follow the Hoops Tonight channel. We're gonna go over there, We're gonna take questions from you guys. I'll have some

of you guys on stage. We also will start to take a look at some film of the Nuggets Thunder matchup from the regular season as we start to prep for that second round series to make sure you guys get ready to head over to playback right when we finish up here live on YouTube, so and I'll get

send to Clippers home. One of the clearest bits of information that we had after the first six games of this series was that out of all of the units in the series, meaning Clipper defense, Clipper offense, Nuggets defense, Nuggets offense that the Nuggets offense was the best unit

in the series. Starting from the third quarter of Game four, everything seemed to click for them, and they had scored pretty much at will from that point forward in the series, with exception of the third quarter of Game six where they kind of lost control, right, but they had an offensive rating over one twenty five in games four and games five of the series when they took the three to two lead, and here in Game seven, when they needed to, they threw one of their best possible offensive

punches and closed the deal. Put up seventy two points in the second quarter and third quarter, overcoming a first quarter where Yokichen Murray couldn't make anything some good looks that neither of them could make in the early portion of the game. Ended with six players in double figures before we even got to the end of the third quarter, and what turned into a complete and total destructive blowout.

Classic Nuggets offensive machine. Advantaged creation from Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray, excellent play finishing from Aaron Gordon, Michael Porter, Christian Brown, Peyton, Watson, Russell, Westbrook again coming in off the bench and immediately providing scoring punch. It is so bizarre to see him aggressively looking for three point shots in them actually being good looks for this Denver offense. They just threw an excellent offensive punch in that middle

portion of the game. Completely rattled the Clippers foundation and they were never able to recover. On the other end of the four the Nuggets brought the requisite competitiveness on the ball against James Harden, against Kawhi Leonard. They held the Clippers to just forty points in that second and third quarter stretch. Then the Clippers just completely let go

of the rope. Tyler called a timeout with ten and a half minutes left in the third quarter when the Nuggets were up by fifteen, and coming out of the timeout, we had this horribly ugly possession where James Harden has the ball in the right corner and just sits with the ball in the triple threat until the clock nearly runs out, and then he dribbles into the teeth of the defense and misses a floater. Clippers don't get matched up in transition. Michael Porter, junior, wide open three on

the left wing, goes in they go down. Norman Pal turns the ball over. They go down the other end. Aaron Gordon Jamal Murray gets in the paint, easily draws zoobots and help. That frees up Aaron Gordon to fill in the gap on the offensive glass. He gets an easy tap and they go down. Aaron Gordon blocks Norman

Palle at the rim. Really nice defensive play from Aaron Gordon on that one, because Norman kind of went to his inside hand and tried to shield it with his back and Gordon just covered a ton of ground sneaky. Aaron started to look really good athletically towards the end of the series, which is encouraging given what we had heard early in the series about how he was really struggling to jump. He had a couple of dunks in this game too, that kind of showed that he still

had that vertical pot. But he blocks Norm and Pal off the rim. The Clippers leave Michael Porter Junior wide open again in transition, and just like that went from fifteen to twenty three and the game was basically over. That was out of a time out when ty Lu was trying to help regain control of the situation. The

Clippers completely fell apart easily. The most interesting part of that stretch was that Kawhi and James Harden, while Yo Kitchen the Nuggets are running away with the game, neither Kawhi nor James Harden were able to generate any sort of consistent offense against Denver in the half court, which is crazy considering where we were at with both of these teams coming into the series, and where we were at with James Harden as a player, where we were

at with Kawhi Leonard. It's time to have a serious talk about the Clippers moving forward, which we will do in a few minutes. But congrats to the Denver Nuggets for advancing to the second round. It looked super bleak through the first three and a half game. Their offense

had stalled out, They looked super banged up. But again in that third quarter of Game four, and I vividly remember at that point in time, the intensity from Nikola Jokic and just what he was able to do offensively to get them going in that third quarter just completely changed the tone and tenor of the series, and the Nuggets never looked back. I think the Nuggets also recaptured a good amount of their defensive identity in this series that we remember from the past, proof of concept in

a lot of ways. I've watched the Nuggets at points in this regular season, particularly in crunch time, look like they still had some of that defensive upside. The big question mark was whether or not they'd be able to get back to that level, and there are bigger challenges ahead.

This Clippers team is not as good offensively as at Oklahoma City thunder team, but I thought that this was a proof of concept that they can at the very least execute a game plan against a specific, high quality playoff opponent and get stops when they need to, whereas down the stretch of the season it was like they literally could not get any stops of any kind against anybody, and so I thought that that was an encouraging sign. They locked a one to thirteen defensive rating in the

first three wins of the series. Obviously the fourth one hasn't updated yet, but I feel like that's solid against this team. And then again tonight forty points during the middle two quarters of the game when they took control. The offense is in just such a good place. Jamal Murray in particular looks ready for what they need from him.

He had a layup in transition in the third quarter run where he palmed it and took off in traffic and went up and under and finished on the right side of the basket, and I was like, he just continues to get the lift and the explosiveness out of his legs, which is a good sign of what they're gonna need from him in the second round. We'll talk about the OKC series in a minute. I want to

spend a little bit of time on the Clippers. I have a lot of respect for this Nuggets team, especially for Nicole Yokich, who I think is the greatest offensive player to ever touch an NBA court, and I do think they have a solid puncher's chance to beat Oka. See as we will discuss in a few minutes, But this Nuggets team is not at the level of OKCE, Boston and Cleveland in terms of two way talent, and the Clippers got blown out in a single elimination game

against them. What that means is that you're not close. I think self awareness is important in the trajectory of an NBA franchise. You have to be aware of the fact that you're not close willing to admit it. Specifically, your stars aren't good enough. I believe in James Harden as a regular season offensive engine, and I think there's a lot of value there. His ability to just create advantages in the low intensity of the regular season will set your bar so high in terms of like the

types of advantages your role players are getting. You're gonna get a certain level of offense out of James Harden, But in the playoffs, time and time again, as it gets more intense later in this series, he just can't get his game off. Eleven points in Game five, seven points in Game seven. This is not This is something we all knew was part of James Harden in what his you know, trajectory looked like over the course of seasons. This is not the new information. This is the latest

bit of solidifying information. Kawhi Leonard is capable of reaching his peak for a game, but he did not have any type of sustained success in this series, and it's the most healthy he's looked in years. So it's time to acknowledge that Harden and Kwhi are not good enough anymore to get you where you want to go, which means it is time to at least start looking towards the future if you're the Clippers. I like a lot of things about the Clippers organization. I think tylu is

one of the five best coaches in the NBA. I think Lawrence Frank knows what he's doing in the front office. I thought his pivot from Paul George Jones and Chris Dunn was one of the smarter front office moves I've seen in the league in the last few years. An understanding of the diminishing returns of a tertiary star, an understanding of the value of perimeter athleticism and the ability to contain the ball in the modern NBA. I think got a ton of value out of those guys over

the course of this season. Everyone is pretty much under contract next year, depending on what Harden does with his player option. I would assume he's gonna take it, but we'll see. Maybe he ends up reupping on some sort of discounted deal. But you're super flexible outside of that. The year after next, a bunch of that money comes off and you're pretty much wide open. You're starting to see some of the light at the end of the tunnel of the damage that was done from the Shae

Yos Alexander trade. You have some draft picks on the horizon, but it's time to switch the focus of the front office towards finding the next generation of Clipper perimeter stars. I think Zoo obviously still has some good basketball left to bill around, but like it's time to start looking for who the next guys are that are gonna generate offense for this team. That means you might have to be willing to take on draft to pick Leyden offers

for quality role players that you have under contract. You might have to be willing to take, you know, take the hit of losing a quality role player like a Derek Jones, like a Chris Dunn, like a Nick batoom Right. You might have to be willing to potentially even flip a star if the right type of offer comes around. But ultimately you have to start thinking about getting as many cracks at the draft as possible over the course

of the next couple of years. That also means your scouting department has to shift gears towards looking for upside rather than looking for immediate contribution. You're in the market, you know. I talked about this last night with Detroit Detroit is in the opposite boat. They don't need to be drafting upside. They need to be drafting NBA ready role player talent. The Clippers need to be shifting gears towards looking entirely for upside. The arena is awesome. I

thought that was a resounding success. You have a bright future, but it's time to start building towards that future if you're the Clippers. We're gonna talk a little bit about the Nuggets versus Oklahoma City. I like the way Denver matches up in theory starts with the Nuggets being able to score that unit that Denver has on the strength of Jokicchen, the play finishing and the secondary shot creation he has around him. That is a really strong foundation

to compete in a playoff series. They would two and two versus each other this year, and the Nuggets had a one to twenty seven offensive rating in their two wins. They famously hung one hundred and forty points on him in their last win. The ability to score starts with Yo Kitchen Murray just being super comfortable in the matchup. In the last game, Jamal had thirty four points and

looked pretty comfortable against Okac's smaller guards Jo Kitchen. The two wins averaged twenty nine points, nineteen rebounds, twelve assists, sixty percent from the field and forty percent from three. Those two guys are pretty comfortable in this matchup because their guards can be a little small, and because Nicole Yoki is comfortable against everybody on the floor. They grabbed over thirty two percent of their own misses in the

season series. That's a combination of Denver size in Oklahoma City being a bad defensive rebounding team most of this year. They're good at passing the ball through Oklahoma City's aggression. Again, Oklahoma City's defense is built towards, you know, being really aggressive with ball pressure, playing more in passing lanes and gapping, trying to force turnovers. A lot of guys jumping passing lanes and gambling because it leads to their transition opportunities.

You need a high level playmaking talent to be able to pass the ball through that sort of thing. I like the way that Denver matches up there in theory on defense. They didn't guard the thunderwell this year statistically in wins or losses, but with the level they've been

playing at defensively in this series. In theory, if they load up on the strong side, if Christian Brown applies quality ball pressure, they rotate as well as they've been rotating on the backside, they should at least be able to challenge Oklahoma City's ability to process make Okahoma City solve the puzzle that is their strong side loaded defense. Oklahoma City is the better team and they absolutely should

be favored. But I do think this is a very interesting matchup, and I think the Nuggets will give them a run for their money. I am going to begin a continuing film session. We're going to talk some film when we head over to playback here in a little bit. But tomorrow morning, I will have a full series preview on Nuggets firs OKSE. So come around to our YouTube channel in the middle of the day tomorrow and you guys will get to see that series preview between Nuggets

between Denver and Oklahoma City. So we're gonna head over to playback now and over on playback, we're gonna take some questions from you guys. We're going to have some of you guys come up on stage. We're gonna watch some film. We're gonna hang out for a good forty five minutes over there, So I'll see you guys here on playback here in just a couple of minutes. It's always as sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show on the YouTube front. We will be

back again tomorrow morning for the series preview. Tomorrow night's gonna be a little tricky on the schedule because we have Pacers at three Pacific time, we have the Rockets Warriors Game seven at five point thirty Pacific time. But I'm actually going with Collin after the game. So we're gonna go with Colin after the game, and then after I'm done with Collin, We're gonna go live on YouTube,

and then we're also gonna do playback. So the normal cadence that we have is just gonna be delayed about an hour depending on how long we go with Colin, but delayed about an hour after the final buzzer of Rockets Warriors. But Hoops tonight will still be going live tomorrow night, So so you guys here and play back in in a few minutes for the YouTube crowd. I'll see you guys tomorrow morning. What's up, guys, As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight.

It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.