Hoops Tonight - LIVE: THUNDER-NUGGETS REACTION: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander beats Nikola Jokic & Murray in rock fight Game 4

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New customers only bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkang dot co slash audio. All right, welcome to hips tonight. You're at the volume. Happy Sunday, everybody. Hope all you guys are having a great weekend. Schedule is a little weird today because I'm going with calling Coward later tonight, so we are not covering pacers Calves in today's show. We're gonna be covering that tomorrow mornings. Keep

an eye on the feed for that. In today's show, we're just hitting Denver versus OKC. I viewed this game and the game later this evening as games where whoever wins is most likely going to win the series. The Thunder could either tie it, take it back to OKC for a best of three with all the momentum, especially after having basically choked away two of the games, and

be in a commanding position to win. Or Denver could go up three to one and put themselves in a position where it's extremely difficult to lose three games in a row, and same thing goes for Calves Pacers. Calves get a win tonight, it's two to two, going back to Cleveland, totally different series. Pacers get a win Tonight's

three to one, feels like they're in control. And round one of these two big games today goes to the Oklahoma City thunder down eight in the early fourth quarter off of a Peyton Watson hook shot and they just methodically walk down the Denver Nuggets to get a huge win to save their season and send them back to oklahom City. You guys are the Joe before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops and I YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter

at underscore JSNLTS. You guys don't miss sho announcements. Don't forget about a podcast feet where we get your podcast on or Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if we leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson's doing great work on our social media feeds Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, make sure you guys follow us there more content throughout the season, and then keep dropping mailbag questions into the

YouTube comments. Since we only have one game today, we'll probably do a solid fifteen minutes or so of questions from the chat at the tail end of the show, So make sure you guys get your questions in there. And then when we finish up here today, we will be going over to watch playback for our typical after show. It's more informal. We take callers, we watch some film, we'll have some fun over there. Probably a little shorter

because I gotta be ready for Collins. We'll probably only go for about a half hour today, but head over to Playback's playback dot tv slash Hoops tonight when we are done. You can also find that link in the description of this video. All right, let's talk some basketball. So this was a weird game in the sense that with Denver playing as much zone as they did, both Shay and j Dubb had really rough games, taking bad

shots against the zone, forcing things early. The two of them I thought were pretty awful on offense throughout this game. Both of them made defensive plays at various points in the game, but I thought both of them really struggled against the zone. And so what I want to talk about here for a few minutes is specifically how Oklahoma City broke the zone, because that was basically how they won this game. In the late third quarter, they started to hit some of their catch and shoot threes against

the zone. You could see that rhythm build and then suddenly they were a runaway freight train. In that fourth quarter, ended up scoring twenty nine points, their most productive offensive quarter of this particular game. And really, what a two three zone is designed to do is to break your rhythm.

We talked about this concept after the Calves Pacers game, if you guys remember, because the Calves utilized a three two zone in that series, and three to two zone does a very good job of guarding the three point line. Has some vulnerabilities on the back line simply because there are two players that are responsible for both the paint and the corners and in many cases also coming up

a little bit to the elbows. And so with that being the case, there's just not as much manpower accommodating the back line with the two three zone fundamentally different. You've got a guy who's just pretty much sitting back there in Nikola Jokic, and the four guys around them are you know, syncing in and jutting back out, but they're they're in a position where four guys are covering all that space on the three point line, and so there are open threes that are available against the zone.

But one of the things that can be a problem against the zone is when you just start taking the first decent looking three that you get your eyes on, and what happens there is it will disrupt the rhythm of your offense, and all of a sudden, your possessions are quick and they don't really have any flow to them, and a missed three can be kind of disheartening as you head back down the other way. And I thought Ja Billis did an awesome job kind of breaking this

down on the broadcast. But one of the things that the Thunder started to do a much better job of in the late third quarter was just getting some natural rhythm within their two three zone attack, so essentially getting the ball from side to side. They would like screen the top, swing screen the top, drive into the gap, swing to the wing, then like backscreen for somebody, swing

swing back to the opposite side of the floor. The ball was popping around and they were able to generate some natural rhythm from a zone possession that is typically not there the way you would see it in a man possession, and a man possession, you run the same actions you've been running all season. It's the same reads that you've been seeing all season. There are only three or four different types of coverages that you're gonna see, and you kind of know what to expect in all

those situations. Against a zone, it's very different. You have to find a way to be comfortable. And this is where I have to shout out Oklahoma City's bench guys, because they desperately needed somebody to start knocking down shots there in that second half, and Aaron Wiggins in Kason Wallace in that late third quarter got the lid off of the rim, and that ended up being enough for the entire team to just kind of relax a little

bit and start making some plays. Between Kason, Aaron Wiggins, and Alex Crusoe, those guys hit eight threes in fourteen attempts, and every single one of them was vitally important for this Thunder team. And then you know, as bad as Jade and Shae were for the majority of this game, they each made some big plays in that fourth quarter stretch. J Dub had a nice ball screen against the zone where he got into the middle of the paint and

threw a lob to Hartenstein. That was the play where Payton Watson tried to block him and he got the and one. J Dubb had a nice driving layup off the left wing. Late Shay had a driving layup. There was a fun sequence where the lead was at three off of a thunder bucket. Mark Dagenal calls a time out. Comes out of the time out with a ton of backcourt ball pressure forces a five second out of bounds call.

Ball goes back to OKC. They inbound to Shae, and Shae just goes right to his right shoulder, fade away and finally gets one to go over his right shoulder. That pushes the lead to five. And at that point, like the entire psychology, the game shifted so heavily towards OKC, it felt like it was beyond Denver's grasp. So for as bad as those guys were offensively, they did make a couple of big late in the game, and they

needed every single one of them. But I want to highlight the defense because obviously, if you hold a team to eight points in the opening quarter, as we had the lowest scoring first quarter in NBA, playoff history, or at least tied for it, but then also holding them to eighteen in the fourth quarter after giving up that thirty three point third quarter. And there's several different elements that I want to zoom in on. First of all, Keason Wallace, I thought did an amazing job on Jamal

Murray in the first half. In particular, he didn't get as much of an opportunity to work on him in the third quarter run when Denver's offense started to get going. But in that first half, he was downright disruptive to Jamal, especially in that first quarter as Oklahoma City built their initial lead, and then all like every opportunity that he had, he just did a little bit better job navigating screens.

I thought Jamal was able to get a little bit more separation from Lou on some of those screening actions than he was from Kaison. Keison's just so good at navigating those screen situations. And then this is where I want to turn to Isaiah Hartens, because you know, there are many reasons why the Thunder went after Isaiah Hartenstein.

He kind of landed into a specific gap in their payroll where their younger players weren't going to have to get paid for a few years, so they could afford to throw a bunch of money at a starting caliber NBA center that was going to cost a lot, but not have to worry about it handcuffing their ability to build a roster around their stars in the future. And the actual utility of Hartenstein was the ability to play a two big look with chet Holmgren at the four.

But I bet you if you got into the year of that front office, they would tell you it was mostly about the Jokich matchup. And here's the thing. We're going to talk about yokicch in a bigger picture context because I think Jokic is kind of fumbling the bag here a little bit. But Isaiah Hartenstein's doing a really

good job. There's a couple of key things. Did you guys notice on some of those jab step sequences that Jokich is putting on him, he's not going for the jab step and he's sitting on that right shoulder, so basically he's opening up his stance and conceding the drive because he knows he has all sorts of help on the back line, and he's just getting his left foot almost like up where Jokic's right foot is to the point where he's just sitting on that right shoulder, so

Jokic can't get the separation on his jab step to try to get a clean look from three. He's just driving to the left right into the teeth of the defense. And the other thing too, is like Jokic will go to his left hand with his short range shot making, but as Isaiah's riding that right shoulder all the way into the lane, it's having a substantial effect disrupting Yokic's

short range shot making. He's having to power through Hartenstein with that right shoulder just to get to that little floater that hook shot somewhere in the lane and a hard and Stein's just doing a great jobs. It's again, part of it is Nikola Jokic and him just going through one of the most bizarre shooting slumps I've seen from him in a very long time. He's not even

making free throws right now. But at the very least, Isaiah's doing the job of making life more difficult on Nikola Jokic and then all of the guys around that making plays. Alex Kruz I think is has been particularly important for them on the defensive rebounding. This was another thing that j Billis called out in the broadcast that I thought was really smart. Jay's doing a great job, by the way, coming over from college basketball, completely agenda

free and just doing some high quality NBA analysis. But he was talking about Alex Cruso's tap out rebounds, and you know, when you get into these offensive rebounding situations, Jokic is like leaning on a person, and the upside of him leaning on a person is he can, you know, shove that person down and create a rebounding angle. But it makes it so that Jokic can't really jump, and

so in those situations they call it crackdown rebound. It's super important for the guys on the outside to come flying in and to tap at the ball to prevent it from falling into the offensive rebounder's hands when he's got great position like that. I thought Alex Cruso had several of those sequences where he came flying in and

knocked the ball away. He had like all these like just little tiny plays that made a huge difference, Like oh, big transition sequence, the Nuggets are on a run, Jamal Murray goes for behind the back drib just reaches in there and pokes it out or like did a similar thing to Russell Westbrook forcing a turnover earlier in the game. There's just a lot of like activity down the roster as they just kind of play Denver into a lot of their mistakes. Like the whole thing with Oklahoma City

is like you guys see it. There was a possession where Aaron Gordon was dribbling up the right wing and

he ended up drawing a foul. But like you could see, like whenever there's a big guy for Denver dribbling up the floor, you literally just see all the OKAC guards just swarm them because their whole style is predicated on just forcing you to make mistakes by rushing you and getting you to not be disciplined with your decision making and like you're protecting the ball and finding passing angles when you're just trying to get into your offense, Like, oh,

you're sloppy here, we're gonna take the ball away. You're sloppy there, We're gonna cause a problem. Michael Porter Junior wide open on a baseline cut late and gets set up right in front of the basket. But he's just rushing because of how Oklahoma City's defense can speed you up.

And I think like in a lot of ways, like we can talk all we want about Oklahoma City's offense, and I think most of the criticism of Oklahoma City's offense that you've seen throughout the year has been kind of proven correct in a lot of ways in this series. But their defense is one of the greats. And you know, I was talking with Jackson before we got on on the live here, there was there was like a dynamic at play in Game one where it felt like Denver

was physically dominating them. I've shared some clips in the film session of Jokics just like literally like a man amongst boys on the back line, just getting every single rebound that he wanted. And they did twenty one offensive rebounds in Game one to just thirteen for Oklahoma City. But as we go down the line after that Game two,

Oklahoma City held up better. They held Denver to just thirteen offensive rebounds, and then in Game three and in Game four they actually out rebounded Denver on the offensive glass eighteen to five, and offensive rebounds in Game three and then once again today out rebounding Denver fifty five to forty nine overall, fifteen to twelve on the offensive glass. And I think there's several dynamics there because it's not it's ball pursuit. Because again we talked about those crackdown rebounds.

There's a lot of opportunities where the ball's coming long off the rim and Okay, see's just faster to the ball, and then also just Okay sees pressure and they're athleticism.

It wears you down. And for all to talk about Denver's home court advantage and the way it can wear people down like Oklahoma City's athleticism wears you down, and you can literally see Denver losing some of the physical battles that they typically win because they're just overwhelmed by the intensity and the physicality that Oklahoma City brings to

the table on the Denver front. I want to kind of focus on Nikole Jokicic for a minute, because you know, we can nitpick certain things like Russell Westbrook had a really rough night tonight. He was minus twenty and twenty seven minutes. That's brutal. Two for nine from three, two for twelve overall, missed a airball a wide open three in the left corner that could have given them a lead late in the game. Just didn't bring that offensive

pop that he brought earlier in the series. You could talk about, you know, Jamal Murray not being as reliable as a shot maker as you need. You can talk about Michael Porter Junior going one for seven Ohver five from three. I thought he missed a couple of key rebounds where he just was sloppy with the ball in case On Wallace would just come in and knocked the ball away from it. We talked about him smoking that

wide open layup opportunity and transition. Here's the thing, though, when I look at those guys, they're not an advantageous situation against Oklahoma City. When we talk about Oklahoma City and their roster, they're flat out better than Denver. They're like, flat out better in terms of just talent than Denver. They are way more athletic. I don't like Jamal Murray's getting hounded by Alex Crusoe and Lou Dort the entire series. Like Russell Westbrook is not dealing with the same athletic

advantages he has in other matchups. Michael Porter Junior in general has struggled against peak level athletes like I don't view those guys as capable of solving this problem. But I think Nikole Jokic is the best basketball player in the world, and I hold him to an extremely high standard as a result of that, and he does have favorable matchups. I think Isaiah Hardenstein's a good defender, and

I think he's done a good job on Jokich. But he's still getting to all the same types of little bits of short range and long range shot making that he's had access to over the course of his entire prime here, and he's just missing everything. He's missing all of his threes, he's missing all of his mid range shot making. That little jab step mid range face up jump shot that Hartenstein's been given him all series. He

just literally can't make it. He's not making any of his like somber shuffle shots or any of his turnarounds over either shoulder out of the post. He's even if he on floaters when he gets into that range here, he's missing layups right at the front of the rim. His shot making has been absolutely brutal. Seven for twenty two today he goes in Game three. In Game three's eight for twenty five and then I think he was six for sixteen in Game two, if I remember correctly,

I'm pulling it up real quick. And then he goes six for sixteen in Game two. This is three games in a row where Yokic's shot making is just not there. I was talking with Jackson before we went live. It actually reminds me this series, and the series isn't over, obviously, but it reminds me a lot of the Cleveland Golden State Series in twenty fifteen, where now it's different because for Cleveland it was because of injuries. For Oklahoma City, it's because they're just, you know, one of the more

talented rosters in the league. But there's a clear talent gap, right But Lebron at that phase in his career. You know, I know Steph fans are inclined to disagree, but I thought Lebron was clearly the best player in the series. I think Jokich is clearly the best player in this series. And I thought it was gettible. When I go back and I think about twenty fifteen, I thought it was gettable.

But the thing is is that that one season, that twenty fifteen season, was the one time in that stretch from like twenty twelve to twenty twenty when Lebron was the best player in the world, where he just couldn't shoot. That was the year Lebron couldn't shoot. And I feel like, if you literally just take twenty sixteen Lebron and put him in that series, they win the championship. But it

was like kind of just a missed opportunity. Lebron is still the best player, and he's still you know, because Steph was struggling his ass off in that series too, But he's still the best player, and he's still making all these plays, and he's still doing all these good things, but just that little bit of shot making wasn't there, and it was just the difference between them closing that deal in them not closing that deal. And that's literally

how I feel about Nicole Jokic in this series. Oklahoma City's better, They're substantially favored, they should be favored because of the talent advantage, but here we are, Oklahoma City's struggling a little bit under the pressure and intensity of the moment, just like Golden State did in that final series, and Nikole Jokic has the ability to snatch this series. It's sitting there right in front of him and he

can't make a shot, and it's just weird. It's just weird to be in this kind of situation again where it just feels like you've got the best player in the world just kind of missing such a vitally important part of his game, and it kind of feels like the difference, Like I don't know about you, guys, I feel like the difference between Denver being up, not just up three to one, but having won easily in game three and Game four is just Jokic making shots and

he can't make shots, and that's it. Like I've heard people talking about Shaye and Jadub and Shane jdab are bad today. Here's the thing, guys, I've I've never used the phrase shade shakeyos Alexander's best player in the world, don't. I don't think Shae's that level of player. I think Jokic is better than him. I hold him to a different standard. I view Jokic as a guy who's rapidly ascending the all time great players in NBA history list.

I'm holding him to a different standard. And I feel like this was a series Denver could have won and Jokic's inability to make anything outside of the paint, or really anything outside of three feet in front of the basket has been such a huge difference in their ability

to contend in these games. And now it feels really tough, like, I don't know, the athleticism is really starting to wear on Denver, and I just don't feel confident in their ability to go win a game again in Oklahoma City, especially when you really zoom out from this series, and it's felt, it's felt like Oklahoma City has been in control for the most part outside of these clutch situations.

And here we were in another clutch situation tonight and Yokic couldn't make a shot, and Shay and j Dubb made shots, and of role players made shots, and here Oklahoma City is tying the series. So I think Oklahoma City should be a substantial favorite. Now, while we're taking questions, we'll look at DraftKings and see how the ads the odds have moved. But I would assume Oklahoma City is like minus five hundred to win the series or somewhere

in that department. Now, let's do a good fifteen to twenty minutes of questions and then we'll head over to playback.

So if you're gonna miss more than half your shots, it's like you can do everything right and it's probably not gonna go in. And so that ends up leading to like kind of a mental dynamic. The big one I'm seeing is Yokich is long on everything, Like everything's all off the heel of the rim, and so his touch is just off right now. I think he's in

his head about it. It gets to the point where, like when I saw him missing those free throws and like literally missing like his easy little like touch shots right three four, five feet in front of the rim. To me, I just think he's got like I think it's like in Yip's territory, Like he just has lost confidence in his ability to knock down shots and it's become a huge problem.

some credit for that. I to me, there isn't a There isn't a player out there who's clearly playing at a level higher than what I've seen Jokic be at in the past. It's just Jokic right now is underachieving to his relative ceiling. But I think I don't know about you, Jackson. I still think he's the best player in the world, don't you.

Which isn't an excuse to let say all they can just play bad, but it's it's fair to point out that Tatum is shooting poorly, Sga is shooting poorly, yok is shooting poorly. Steph has had some good games, he's also had some really bad shooting performances. A lot of stars are shooting the ball poorly.

He's shooting it, like he's literally not making anything right at the front of the rim. So like it's it's I don't necessarily it's it's really hard for me to process this because it's just so unusual compared to the rest of his career. But like this is supposed to be the one type of basketball that Jokic is impervious to, unlike the other stars in the league. And so that's

where it's discouraging. Like even Giannis over the years has struggled as like a half court surgeon in rock fight environments, but like Jokic hasn't, and like this is just the first substantial stretch where he has. And so I want to again, I want to give Okay seek credit. They're doing a great job swarming him. Hartenstein's doing a good job. But I think a good chunk of this is just jokicch is just playing well below his capability.

criticizing him through this entire series. I feel like he's pretty consistently at the end of these games kind of resulted to high ISOs. I thought he made some better plays against the zone in the final fifteen minutes or

so of this game. The big thing that he's running into is like there'll be these sequences where like Denver will get going and they'll hit a couple shots in a row, and he'll just come down and take a contested fifteen footer and it'll brick, and then it'll be like it'll just feel like a punch to the gut

for Okayse's offense. And then in that late third quarter stretch, like he straight up like for like seven straight minutes of game clocks just like wouldn't shoot, Like he just he just was dribbling the ball at the floor and just throwing swing passes. And so it's like, Okay, the no one's saying that you shouldn't shoot at all against the zone. We're just saying that you need to function

as like the thing that gets the zone moving. And so once once him and Jay Dubb started actually looking to get the ball into the middle of the floor to pass instead of get the ball into the middle of the floor to shoot, they started to have the ball pop around some more and have some of those better sequences. But the other thing, too, is like, you want to let the series play out, like there's a you know, they still got to win two more games and we'll see how Shaye looks at that point, and

there's more series in the future for them. But this is the first playoff run in Shaye's entire career where they are legitimately the championship favorites and all the pressure is on them, and so far through the seven games or eight games, he hasn't been very good. But there's still plenty of basketball left for him to figure it out. And here they are there two two, they still have

a very good chance to win the series. And so similarly, with Jason Tatum, like he deserves criticism for the way that he played during the two games as they drop down oh two, but the opportunity is still in front of him to cl out of this, and all we're gonna do is just cover it game to game. Shay's been pretty bad. I thought he was pretty bad again tonight.

I thought he made a couple of huge plays late in this game, which we're gonna credit when it happens, and if he breaks out and starts playing amazing, we'll then start discussing it in that context. But we're all just taking this game to game or we're writing this story as goes.

fights to end the series. It's possible, but I would assume that one of the two superstars is going to elevate their play and start making some shots, and we'll be we'll have to rewrite the way where whichever guy it ends up being, we're gonna have to rewrite the story in real time.

ever watched. He's stunk it up the last three games and it's been a problem. Like Denver scored eighty seven points today, Like that's not good enough for a guy that I considered to be the best offensive player that I've ever seen. And so like that, that's really my whole thing that I'll try to do is just try to be as consistent as possible and try very hard to not let you know my personal biases get in the way, even though they naturally will to a certain extent.

They ran zone fifty possessions today. But it just zone is It is such a different responsibility to zone shifts, the responsibility almost entirely to catch and shoot playing a players and not they ran forty five possessions of zone today, forty five possessions and Denver got or Oklahoma City got

just zero point seven to eight points per possession. But it really just comes down to, like those those guys at the point of attack, just getting the ball moving, whereas in man demand situations it's very much about like setting people up for like play finishing situations and looking to score. But like, if you try to score on

the ball against the zone, you're gonna have problems. But okay, see, to their credit ten possessions of zone in the fourth quarter, they did get one point per possession in the fourth quarter, so they did slowly start to figure it out over the course of the game.

over the years. But the problem is is when you put a smaller forward, So like let's talk like with the Lakers series, it was always Ruby Hachimura someone like that, Right, If you put a Ruby Hachimura on Nikola Jokic and you have Anthony Davis behind him, you have the rim

protection piece. But it's just so easy for Jokic to get to his short range shot making against Ruey because he's so much bigger than Ruey, and so what he can do is he can just kind of bump Ruy and get to like little short seven foot shots over both shoulders and he's gonna make them sixty five percent

of the time. The uniqueness of the Chet Hartenstein partnership is Chet provides the vertical length that you get from a center on the back line, but Isaiah Hartenstein provides the trunky like strength that you get from a center, And so it's basically like a literal two center. Look where instead of it being Ruy that's funneling you into Anthony Davis, it's Isaiah Hartenstein playing Jokic's right hand, so

basically forcing him to drive. So Jokic can't even get to higher quality short range looks, and they're funneling him into Chet who's got the length on the back line. And so I think they just kind of uniquely have the personnel to put a big, strong player on Jokic that is not you know, six' nine but is rather seven, feet but then also having real length behind, him and

then they're swarming and closing out really. Well BUT i still Think jokic should be able to solve This hartenstein problem and he needs to just do a better, job and most of it just comes down to his jump shots not going in at. All, NOW i do think that's like the that is specifically different is Just hartenstein being so big but also having a center behind. Him all, right, guys that's all we have for today on the YouTube. Live as, always as sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting

me and supporting the. Show we're gonna go over to playback and hang out for a little. BIT i will see you guys there. Again that's playback DOT tv Slash hoops. Tonight 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 guys supporting, us but if you could take a minute to do, THAT i really appreciate.