Hoops Tonight - LIVE: THUNDER WIN WEST REACTION: SGA, Chet Holmgren, J-Dub DOMINATE Game 5 vs. Anthony Edwards & Wolves

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are having a great week, well as expected. The Oklahoma City thunder delivered the death blow to the Minnesota Timberwolves tonight, immediately out the gates, just kicking their ass.

forward for Oklahoma City and Minnesota after that. For our Microsoft Course Correction segment this week, I want to talk a little bit about Alex.

I want to kind of dive into that concept, the transition from the Steph lebron kd era into this new era, and just some of the realities that face down stars like Shay Gils, Alexander and Tyrese Haliburton, Anthony Edwards and other guys who want to make an imprint on this league. And so that'll be our third segment tonight, and then when we are at when we are done with all of that, we'll take five to ten minutes of questions from the mail bag, So make sure you guys get

your questions into the chat. You guys are the joke before we get started. To subscribe to hoops Cent. Subscribe to the Hoops and O YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore jcnlt so you guys don't miss show announcement. Still, forget about a podcast feed where we 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 Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us there and keep dropping mailbag questions in the chat so that we can get to them. At the tail end of the show. Also, when we finish here tonight, right it over to playback again. That's playback dot TV slash shops tonight, We're gonna, you know, take callers, We'll watch some film, we'll have some fun.

It'll just be a it'll just be like a more informal kind of environment where we can all talk hoops together. So make sure you guys follow us over to playback when we finish up tonight. All right, let's talk some basketball. So what an ass.

of pressure and intensity. Ants pull up three point shot kind of abandoned him in this series, similar to what happened in the Western Conference Finals last year. And honestly, the wheels came off quickly and there one really a whole lot of chance there for Minnesota to try to

close the gap again. Like we can talk about all the different offensive talent on this team, and this Thunder offense has been impressive, as we've talked about them needing to conquer their demons in terms of spot up shooting and decision making for shake yieldes Alexander and some of the youthful inconsistency from j dub which has gone completely by the wayside since Game seven of the Denver Nuggets series.

And we can talk about all that, but the best attribute that this team has is their defense, and that's the thing that I think is going to win them the title. I said this after Game four. I thought Minnesota's chance at home to tie that series at two was the last chance, the last barrier. There's obviously games to win, but the last substantial barrier that stood in the way between them and winning the title, and they

conquered that. And I at this point, I would be absolutely stunned if Oklahoma City.

win seventy games. Like that's just the reality. When we talk about the all time great teams, we talk about the seventy three win Warriors losing, and we talk about the seventy two win Bulls, right, But like, when you get to the postseason, that is where you can make a name for yourself. That is where you can become a legend. That's going to be a theme when we

get into that face of the league conversation. This defense has been reputed as being an all time great defense third during the regular season based on the statistical performance of the defense. I'd argue what puts them into that conversation is the job that they did in this postseason. I have never seen Nikole Jokic in his prime play three consecutive bad playoff games. Oksee did that to him. Oklahoma City made Julius Randall when he had for two rounds,

revitalized his playoff reputation. They completely exposed him like a completely and utterly exposed him in the series to the point where I thought he kind of let go of the rope in terms of his effort and competitiveness in Game four, Anthony Edwards in the wonderful postseason he had been having shut him down in this series relative to

what his previous production was. This is where you can make a name for yourself and the next step if you shut down that Tyrese Haliburton led high octane Indiana Pacers offense, that is the last piece of the puzzle that can cement you as one of the defenses that we will remember in NBA history. It almost feels like there are steps to solving the Thunder puzzle. I was

thinking about this during the first half tonight. It felt like we couldn't even really get to the kind of the normal chain of playmaking with Aunt and Julius and them having disparate to the corners and attacking closeouts and breaking down Oklahoma City's defense incrementally because they couldn't handle

the ball pressure at the beginning of the possessions. It feels like the first step to solving the Thunder puzzle is you got to get the ball to the spots that you need the ball to begin, whether it's a specific action that you're looking to run, a specific post mismatch, something along those lines. And if you fail that test, like if you can't even get the ball to your spots, then you're just dead on arrival. Lou dorton Alex Caruso with seven steals tonight. We'll talk more about Caruso in

particular here in a few minutes. But like absolute wrecking balls, you're watching them try to throw the ball to Julius Randa on the post case on Wallace knocks the ball off of his chest. Oh, he finally gets a deep post catch on a transition seal. Oh, he tries to go up against a triple team and just gets swatted off the glass. They completely disrupted Minnesota before they could even get to the actions that they wanted to get to.

It was an incredibly impressive performance from the Thunder. Now, looking forward to the finals, there's a lot of different dynamics that we're gonna be looking at, and this is just gonna be a little brief teaser. Again, we're gonna have a full series preview. Most I think that the Pacers have a good chance to win tomorrow night, because I think the Knicks probably know they blew their chance.

do with the game plan. I think that for Mark Dagnall, this team's identity is what you saw tonight and forward aggression, battling at the point of attack with ball pressure, denying high post entries, doing everything you can to disrupt offense early in the sequence. And it's gonna be tricky because Indiana doesn't really turn the basketball over. Tyris Saliburton in particular, is one of the best guards in the league at taking care of the basketball. He's under averaging less than

two turnovers per game in this postseason run. He's also particularly gifted over the top passer, which is going to be the kind of opening that Okac is going to have to concede in their defensive scheme, but I do think it's worthwhile, considering that this is their identity. I think it's worthwhile to at least throw that punch at the beginning of game one, meaning picking up full court, pressuring the ball, trying to stop the Pacers from getting into their half court flow, and trying to see if

you can turn them over. My big key there would be Mark Dagnault being willing to pivot if it doesn't work. So if it's clear right in the first you know quarter and a half of Game one, that the ball pressure isn't bothering them and that they're getting the ball over the top to the weak side and they're starting to get you into rotation consistently, I think Dagnalton needs to pivot quickly. The Pacers have been a very difficult

team to beat in Indiana especially and must win games. Yeah, they've dropped a couple of games when they're up two to oh in the series, but when you have two to oh on the road, it's like the biggest that's the most dominant start to a series you can possibly have is to go up two to oh on the road, And so those games were a little bit weird in terms of a lack of intensity from Indiana, and in

both games it kind of lost their identity. You don't want to trick off an early game in the series to the Pacers because of a bad game plan and then go into a situation where they smell blood and they see the trophy and they get a couple of wins in Indiana, all of a sudden you're staring down the barrel of a three to one deficit. So early

in the series, if Halliburton needs Smith nemhard, these guys TJ. McConnell, if they handle pressure well and they get the ball over the top, over the top of your aggressive defense, and they get you into rotation and they start scoring easily. I think Dagnal needs to pivot quickly, not away from ball pressure necessarily, but away from some of the aggressive help in passing lanes. This is a team that if you force Tyrese Haliburton in Pascal Siakam to score one

on one, they can. It is certainly something they can do, but it is not the thing they do at a superstar level. And the thing that the Tyrese Haliburton is a superstar level playmaker every single night. This offense has a wonderful rhythm in terms of attacking when that advantage is already kind of baked into the equation. So like those sorts of things that accentuates the Pacers' strengths, if you force Haliburton in Seakam to play a bunch of one on one, that accentuates one of the weaker parts

of their formula. So with that being the case, the attentiveness in action to prevent easy openings, the communication through switches and then staying home off the ball and forcing those guys to play one on one and not conceding the easy openings that will get them into rotation because again they're good at it. If they're not gonna you can pass the ball better faster, then you can move with the ball as a ball handler, and it doesn't

matter how much they're rotating around. If they can pass the ball around and beat Oklahoma City's speed with just ball movement and quick processing and play finishing, there could be some issues there. So I'm just really curious to see the initial game plan, which I think will be standard for Oklahoma City. But if it works, like here's the thing, it might just work. You might just force Indiana to pee down their leg and all of a sudden things look really rough for them, and you never

have to bail on that game plan. But there's also a version of this where they handle it, and if they do, it just needs to be a quick pivot from Mark dagnall on the other end of the floor. We have seen in this series that the Timberwolves in particular had a little bit more success with some of their quicker on ball guards than Jaden McDaniels Nikkeil Alexander Walker in particular, I thought did the best job at kind of like beating shade of spots and at least

forcing him to make jump shots over the top. So in theory we could see a lot of you know, Aaron E. Smith weak guys. Aaron Ne Smith, over the course of the tail end of the series has done some serious damage to Jalen Brunson to the point where

he's not even looking to shoot. We went, we watched through the entire crunch time sequence of last game in the playback session last night, and he just didn't want to even look to score down the stretch of that game, in large part because of the work that Aaron Neismith did, and again, guys like Jalen Brunson was having an unbelievable playoff run before this kind of like trend that has taken hold here at the tail end of the series.

And so with that being the case, just keep in mind that this is going to be a different type of defensive matchup in terms of the level of bed foot speed on the perimeter that Indiana presents to the table. That being said, I still think that Oklahoma City should be able to score against this team. I just think

it's going to be a little bit different. It's going to be a little bit less of the dribble penetration, a little bit more of the kind of over the top matchup hunting against some of the smaller guards that the Pacers had. They do every im protection as well

with Miles Turner. So it's going to be kind of similar to some previous series, like this Minnesota series towards the end, as they've game planned more towards helping at the rim, or the Dallas series last year, where you can't just have Jadubb trying to test Miles Turner at the rim all series long. There has to be processing at the rim, quality rim decisions, moving the ball, hunting down the great shot. But it's going to be a

very interesting series. I initially, when I first started thinking about the series, thought Oklahoma City would beat the shit out of them. I thought it would be like a four or five game series. We had a little debate last night Jackson and I. You guys can find that. We broke it out as a clip on our YouTube channels.

You can find it under our list of uploads. But Jackson is me into being a little bit more bullish on the Pacers' chances to be more competitive in the series because of their processing, because of their smaller, quicker guards that can stay in front of the ball a little bit better, some of those things. But my initial impression at this point, before we get into our prediction phase, is that the Thunder will win that series in five

or six games. Looking forward for Minnesota, and we'll have a little bit more Thunder talk here in a minute, because I want to talk about Alex Cruso in our Microsoft segment with Minnesota. The Julius Randall experiment I thought

was rough. The big thing that I specifically was bothered by was just when they ran into some real adversity, I didn't like the way he handled it in terms of just his overall competitiveness, and it was like, in Game four, I thought he'd let go of the rope competitively. In Game five, I thought he tried to force the issue too much and was attacking two three bodies in traffic and getting blocked and stolen. And basically like his two different approaches to adversity in this series were to

not fight and to without using his head. And that was the kind of frustrating thing for me watching the

Timberwolves in this series. And so I think there's some reality to the fact that, like in retrospect, and by the way, guys, I am fully aware of how ridiculous this sounds after my series preview, But in retrospect, Minnesota matched up very favorably with the Lakers, and Julius Randall as a one on one ISO guy against big bodied forwards, was a great defensive option and did a lot of damage attacking certain types of mismatches in that series, and

was great against a Golden State Warriors team that didn't have Steph Curry. But there are some realities to the fact that Julius Randall has a player option and if you up re up and pay him a massive amount of money. You're taking up a big chunk your payroll for a player that I didn't think handled this higher leverage matchup very well. I would look to surround Anthony Edwards with high IQ players. There's a thing that happens

when you look at this roster on paper. I mean, there's a lot of Minnesota buzz going into this series. You know, even I thought that Minnesota would be more competitive in this series than they were, even though I picked the Thunder to win. And it's because you look on paper and it's like, man, all these dudes can guard and all these dudes can shoot.

high level processor that exists in the league. And I would argue that he could learn the most in that area and experience the most improvement in the coming years. And so you know, a simple example like if CP three is on the move away from San Antonio, I'd be looking to bring in Chris Paul as a backup guard, as a guy that can help ant literally just help him understand more of the processing and game flow elements

of that. On ball roll, I would look too down the line in terms of role players, connective playmakers, off ball shooters, stuff like that. Look for higher IQ, smarter players that will help him process some of these situations, that know how to be in the right spots, that won't make mistakes. I think that would be a direction that I would look to go if I was this offseason.

better basketball players than ant An, it's more popular. And that just eats at people and it makes them super irrational and upset, and then they take it out on Ant when the reality is is Ant's not doing anything but be an Ant, and he just happens to resonate with people in a certain way, which we're going to talk about that in a bigger picture context here when we talk about the face of the league. But for some reason, that just builds all this negativity towards Ant.

Here's the thing, back to back Western Conference Finals where Anthony Edwards got pretty badly outplayed by his counterpart on the other side, Luka Dancis last year, Shake gills Is Alexander this year.

anything like that. I think he's somewhere around the fifth to seventh best player in the NBA kind of just off of that kind of like reliable top tier superstar tier, and you know, depending on the matchup, when the matchup is right, he can kind of reach that level, but it's clear when he reaches tougher matchups he kind of feels more like a second tier star at this point. Here's the thing. He's twenty three years old and he

just went to back to back conference finals. And yes, he got out played by Shay and he got out played by Luca last year. But he went to Totoe with Nikola Jokich in a series where he beat him. He went to Totoe with Lebron James and Luka Doncic in a series where he beat them, and in that series, repeatedly down the stretch looked like the better player as he.

of room to improve. There's no way to describe his career up to age twenty three other than a resounding success. There's literally no way to describe. There's all of the other greats that went on to win titles, did it when they were twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight years old.

Showed a lot of higher level processing in this postseason run. Not enough, but showed a lot of higher level processing and took a leap. He's one step closer to his ultimate goals. He's not there yet, give him time. He's twenty three years old. Ant's development will be the key though for this team going over the top. There are some realities to being in a roster this build with some of these older veteran guys that make a lot

of money. There's not a lot of like, let's go bring in more talent type of situation going on here with Minnesota. Now, they can find better types of talent. They can find talent that is better fitting. We talked earlier about basketball IQ. But ultimately it will be Ant's individual improvement that will get him to where he needs to go. Shake Yodess Alexander to me, I think has in this playoff run very clearly snatched the title of being the second best player in the world behind Nikole Jokich.

I think he's got a better case than Yannis. I think he's got a better case than Luca. At this point. He is clearly to me in that second spot. The reason why he has that spot is he has flashed in this postseason run defense that is above average, the ability to score regardless of circumstance. Like Minnesota switched up their game plan, packed the paint and put him through a lot of the same stuff that Ant has saw

in this series. And in the pivotal game he hung forty points in ten assist, the incredible dribble penetration, the processing, the playmaking has gone up a massive level for him compared to last year. And like there was a it's very similar to Ant in the sense that Sga kind of had a little bit of a rough playmaking series last year in the postseason. It has been a thing

that he has substantially improved upon in this postseason. Because again, failure is what breeds the motivation that gets these guys to figure things out and take that next step. That's where Shay's at. Shay is what three years ahead of schedule on Shay. On Ant, he's three years older than him. He is currently, in my opinion, firmly holding onto that number two.

his cap. But the processing that Shay has gone through in the last few years, if you look at the player Shay was in twenty twenty three and you look at the player that he is now, there has been these improvements that have taken place as an over the top shot maker, as a half court processor, as a defensive player that have vaulted him into a situation where he is the second best player in the NBA. That

is the track that Ant has to follow. Minuscule improvements year over year in key areas understanding the game and processing, handling the ball against ball pressure and making those kickout raads in traffic, building out a back to back to the basket game, the ability to score over both shoulders at the high posts and in the mid post and on the low post. All of those different things are things that He's going to have to build out in order to reach the level that Shay is at right now.

But again, as I said, Shay's been doing this three years longer. Shay is at the age when typically the all time great players in our league start to figure it out and take their stake their claim at the top of the league. Ant is a head of schedule, guys. He's ahead of schedule, and like the burying of him that I've seen over the course of the last couple of days just reeks of insecurity, and honestly, it's it's reprehensible to me, but it is what it is. He's

doing just fine at twenty three years old. Back to back Western Conference Finals appearances, and literally the sky is the limit for what he can accomplish in the future. And honestly, as a basketball fan, I'm super fun or super pumped because I think the Shay versus Ant kind of rivalry could end up being a very very interesting

rivalry in this coming era. It kind of reminds me of the Lebron's deph rivalry in the sense that, like, Lebron is three years older and was obviously further along in the deal, but the two of them just kind of like seem to have this rivalry that existed over the course of their careers. I would love to see Ant and Shae face off in the postseason five more times over the course of the next ten years, and hopefully that ends up being something that we get to see.

It's a very fun rivalry. All right, Welcome to course correction, brought to you by Microsoft. Just like star players and teams navigating performance hurdles, business decision makers today are under immense pressure to get things right. They must rise to the occasion, turning challenges into opportunities. Microsoft empowers these visionaries with AI solutions, simplified cloud and data management and trustworthy, responsible AI. And when you're in the NBA, you have

your own hurdles to face. In this segment, we will highlight the player every week that has risen to the occasion when his team needed him. Whatever challenge you're facing, Microsoft empowers you with the expertise to say bring it on. The player we're highlighting this week is Alex Caruso of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Looking back at last year's potseason run for Oklahoma City, if you guys remember they had.

this team. So Sam Pressy, Sam Presty, excuse me, pulls off two very savvy moves this summer, one signing Isaiah Hartenstein away from the New York Knicks. Obviously, Isaiah was hividly important during the second round win versus the Denver Nuggets, a little less so in this series, but he still had his moments. And then trading Josh Giddy straight up with no draft compensation for Alex Crusoe. A player that is universally recognized as one of the best role player

wings in the NBA. A player that started an NBA Finals game for the twenty twenty Lakers. A player who has since then turned him turned himself into a much more reliable offensive player than he used to be. He was always a gifted cutter with the Lakers, but he's become a very good connective playmaker. He's become very good as a catch and shoot three point shooter. He hit forty four percent of his threes coming into in this

postseason run. But I want to focus on his defense for a minute, because he's putting together one of the best defensive playoff runs.

in the regular season. Basically, the only guy this year to exceed that output with at least forty six games played was Victor Wemenyama, and I chose forty six games played because that's how many games Victor women Yama played, But he was the only guy that averaged more stocks per thirty six minutes at that minimum number of games played. This year's Victor Wenmnyama Dyson Daniels matched Alex Crusoe's performance,

but Victor was the only one who exceeded it. He was that level of disruptive, defensive wrecking ball in this postseason. There have been some high profile assignments, like he did a lot of quality work.

Nuggets offense. But in the big picture, the funnest thing for me to watch as a fan has just been his defensive game playmaking literally anytime he sees someone try to dribble against him that has a questionable handle, like usually if it's a guy who's in rotation attacking a closeout or a guy in t Like there have been a half dozen plays in this postseason where some guy had like a one on one against Alex Crusoe in transition and was like, I'm going to try to score

on it, and it's like his eyes just light up and he.

at all possible. I truly believe that the Thunder lose in Round two this year if not for the work that Alex Crusoe did in that series, the workie he did on Nicole Jokicchen Game seven, but also the on ball defensive work throughout the series. He also hit fifteen threes in that series. He had nineteen assists with just

six turnovers in that series. As I said on the show Monday night, and as I said earlier tonight, I think it's a near certainty that the Thunder win the title at this point, and so you got an immediate championship level return for the Thunder given by Alex Caruso. That's it for this week's course correction. Remember Microsoft's AI solutions power empower you to take bold steps and make informed decisions, sparking new ideas to help drive your business forward.

If Microsoft is your trusted partner, you can navigate your journey with confidence, finding innovative solutions and reaching new possibilities. Visit Microsoft dot com slash challengers to learn more. All right, our last segment before we get into our mailbag, the face of the League talk. There's been a lot of talk about the current.

marketing its young stars? The main thing I want to focus on tonight is that last question, because I think the answer is relevant for all of those questions, and I think the perfect way to frame this conversation is to look at our two previous faces of the league, Lebron and Steph, which, by the way, this isn't a real thing. There's not an assignment for face of the league. It's just Lebron and Steph are far and away the most famous players of their generation.

valuable franchises in the NBA. But they just sold in twenty ten for like what the four hundred and fifty million.

gets drafted. Lebron and Steph have proved that you can supersede that and create legendary status for a smaller market for a player regardless of what the league does. Lebron and Steph made themselves in two faces of the league. How two ways. One they were must see television. Lebron James in his prime was arguably the best combination of size and athleticism ever to play sports. You couldn't watch a game in his prime without seeing a half dozen

absurd highlights. Crazy dunks, crazy layups, crazy chase down blocks, absurd you know, jump passes that nobody other player in the league could make jumping a passing lane. We think of him as like a savvy, old veteran player now, but back in the day, he was a nuclear athlete.

Every once in a while, some Lebron fan page on Twitter will tweet some video highlight of Lebron in like two thousand and nine or something, and it'll come across my feet and I'm always like, oh my god, I forgot this dude moved just different than anyone else in the league. And Steph Curry's far and away the greatest shot maker in the history of the NBA. His hot

streaks were unlike anything we had ever seen before. I remember in twenty twenty one when he was routinely going off after the All Star break, it was like, whatever you were doing, you had to stop when Steph was on a hot streak and just get to a television because it was musty TV, even for non you know, like guys that aren't necessarily super successful in the championship stage, like Kyrie only has one championship, but he is a profoundly entertaining player with a huge fan base. Why because

he's must see television. When you're watching Kyrie irving, chain together, dribble combinations and doing the things he does on the court, it resonates with people. It just does Anthony Edwards. Anthony Edwards is not as good at basketball as Shay, but he is absolutely more aesthetically appealing and that is why he he has such a huge, ravenous fan base behind him. The second part of it is the success from twenty

twelve to twenty twenty two. Lebron and Steph literally won eight championships in eleven years, and the three years they didn't win the championship, they were in the finals two of them. One of them was in the finals Lebron in twenty fourteen, Steph in twenty nineteen. You could not turn on your TV in June without seeing Lebron or Steph on the television. That's how they became legends. It's both,

you gotta have both. We've seen players like Tim Duncan that won a lot, but that didn't resonate with people because there wasn't an esthetically appealing element to his game. I still feel like there's a huge chunk of casual fans that don't really get the Jokic thing because there's not a huge aesthetically appealing part of his game. But if you can do both, if you can be must see television and you can consistently play in June and succeed in June, that is the kind of thing that

can influence the public. There is no marketing campaign that can influence the public like that. Every media entity covering the NBA, from myself to the people on ESPN or whoever it is, we could talk about Shay and Tyrese Halliburton every day for the next year and it would not influence the public the way that they could on ABC in June. That is where they win over the hearts and minds of the people. Anyone can become a legend. It doesn't matter if you're in Oklahoma City or New

York City. People don't even watch the same media anymore. All of us consume NBA content from one hundred different sources that perfectly fit what we like to hear. Some people want superficial stuff, some people want way in the weeds. Some people want team specific stuff. Some people want national media, some people want television. Some people want more of the podcast type of format. Some of you guys are big YouTube people. A lot of people do streaming services like

playback where they can be more interactive. Like, there's a million ways to consume NBA media. There isn't even a way in which the NBA could like force a star on us. The Internet is a tool that makes the quality of your work matter. The algorithm it's about for all of us content creators, it's about maintaining eyeballs. That's literally all that matters when it comes to the Internet. You have to bring the aura and the success that captures the attention of the people. Lebron and Steph it

doesn't matter where they've played in their careers. They have global fan bases. But it cannot be given to you or forced on you. It has to be earned. So here's the thing. This year's NBA Finals won't get good TV ratings, and that's fine. It's kind of inevitable under the circumstances. There's kind of a natural gap that exists between the eras that we're in right now, So it doesn't really matter what Shape and Tyree have done there in their mid twenties, they haven't been around long enough

to influence people the way they need to. This is this was inevitable. But the question is hand players like SGA, like Tyrese Halliburn, or teams like the Thunder or the Pacers, can they become faces of the NBA? Can they become the kinds of cultural forces that those old Warriors teams were, Cavs teams were that Lebron and Steph were. They certainly can. Like with SGA, you need both, right, You need success

and you need to be musty television. So continually making it to this point, continually winning games, that'll go a long way for SGA. But there is a reality to the fact. And again I know Thunder fans are super sensitive about this and they always have a conniption fit every time it gets brought up. But there is a reality to the fact that Shay sometimes has a hard time resonating with casual fans because of some of the weird,

non basketball, foul grifty stuff he does. He will become a legend and an icon by hitting contested mid range jump shots in the finals, not by lurching into defenders' bodies and grabbing their arms and throwing up fake shots like we can talk all we want about how the rule book is the rule book and you've got to find a way not to foul. And yess, he's a competitor that's just finding every advantage. Oh, that's true. The casual fan does not care. You guys that are watching me.

You don't watch this show because you're casual fans. You watch the show because you love basketball. We are the nut jobs. We're not the people that Shay has to win over. Shay has to win over the general public, and he's not going to win over the general public doing all that foul grifty shit. He absolutely has that potential, though, because he is legitimately a top tier shot maker. Coming into tonight, he was shooting fifty four percent on jump

shots inside of seventeen feet. He won a pivotal playoff game with it in the second half of Game FI. If he has more moments like that, in fewer moments like Game two where he puts up a monster stat line but takes like seven or eight of the most ridiculous fake shot attempts I've ever seen, If he has more moments like that second half in Game four, he will become a legend. I absolutely think he could become a fan favorite. As for Halliburton, I think his pathway

is shooting. As we've seen with Steph, that can be a musty television type of show. His shooting run in Game four was musky television. If he can improve as a three point shooter to the type of dynamic guy that can get super super hot and regularly hit five seven threes a game, I think he could resonate with fans. Combine that with the same success in June, he could

become a legend. The point is the point I'm trying to make the younger generation guys like Halliburton, SGA, even Anthony Edwards, they absolutely can become the faces of the NBA, victor Women, Yama, Cooper, Flagg, whoever it ends up being. But nobody is gonna give it to them. The NBA can't do.

Crusoe and Hartenstein. But overall, I thought they're playmaking in the middle of the floor, just the decisions they made in the middle of the floor in traffic in the series, and then the confidence with which they stepped into three point shots like they legitimately time time and time again in this postseason when we have seen them in this regular season, even in this postseason early in the Denver series, like we've seen them kind of lose their confidence in

catch and shoot situations. They've just been a very dependable catch and shoot three point shooting team in this postseason run, and I think it's been. I think it's been especially in big spots when they've needed to be And so I think I think that like connective playmaking piece, the not forcing shit at the rim, making those kickout passes and guys stepping into threes has been their biggest area of growth.

like knife through the lane. I don't think he quite has that athletic impact that Dwayne Wade had, but I think the man who Genobili and Kobe comparisons make a lot of sense to me.

this point. Like how many players by the age of twenty three eliminated the best player in the world in a playoff series, eliminated a team that Luka Doncic, John Lebron James on it, Like how many teams have been able to do that? Like he swept Kevin Durant and Devin Booker and the Suns and was like it was

like clowning on them that entire series. Like I think, I think there are some realities to the fact that he's shown some vulnerability to certain types of matchups, but I think overall, he's clearly improving year over year like that.

That's the second piece I would say, is like I would be so much more in line with this, Like can we keep saying he's twenty three when this is his second Western Conference Finals if he didn't look obviously better than he did last year, So let me actually pitch that back to you, Jackson, Am I out of am I out of my mind for thinking it is clearly better this year than he was last year.

unique compared to anything else in NBA history. There's like it like doesn't really there's really nothing you can compare it too, right.

plays bad against the Spurs and gets eliminated. Then he has a big statistical performing series against Boston in two thousand and seven, but gets but loses and gets outplayed by Paul Pierce in Game seven. In two thousand and eight was the uh Two thousand and seven was the Finals run. Two thousand and eight was the one year that they lost to the Celtics. Two thousand and nine puts up massive numbers but loses to an Orlando Magic

team in six games. Twenty ten like legitimately doesn't play well down the stretch of a series against Boston and loses, Like at that point he was already twenty six. Like guys like this could have been, Like this is the phase of careers where every star in NBA history has inconsistent and flawed results.

seen thrown around. I don't know how they would be able to make it work because I think Julius's salary would be tough to match with Kd's, and then I think they're second apron, so they'd have a hard time aggregating salaries. They'd have to shed salary this summer somehow. Let me rephrase it like this, like, and we can talk about this on playback, but like, would you waive the rights to nas reed so that you can get Kevin Durant like that?