Hoops Tonight - Luka Doncic & LeBron lead epic win over Nikola Jokic

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one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkang dot co slash b ball. All right, welcome to hoops tonight. You're at the volume. Happy Saturday, everybody, If all of you guys are having a great start to your weekend. Well the For as long as I can remember, the Denver Nuggets

have completely owned the Los Angeles Lakers. As someone who roots for that team, I've had to do some pretty uncomfortable shows over the years, including last year having to come up onto this stream right after Jamal Murray ended games with buzzer beaters. As the Nuggets have seemingly won a million games in a row against the Lakers. The one that they won was the down three to zero

in the series last year game in Los Angeles. It's a matchup the Nuggets have dominated, even as recently as this season, as they blew them out in Los Angeles in a second half avalanche that they didn't seem to have any chance to control. We're gonna be breaking that game down from the perspective of both teams as the Lakers go into Denver and blow them out tonight. You guys know the joke before we get started to subscribed to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels. You don't miss any

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YouTube comments. So we can get to them on our Friday shows throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So I want to be clear front here. I don't think any single regular season matchup is any sort of sweeping decoration about what two teams could look like in the postseason. I would even go as far as to say a dominant entire regular season

series between two teams wouldn't make that much of a difference. Famously, last year, the Phoenix Suns owned the Minnesota Timberwolves all regular season. They had a specific game plan that worked against them in the regular season, and then they got into the playoffs and got swept because the dynamics can change, and more often than not, what I'm looking at in these regular season situations is not so much what can happen in one single game, but rather the problems that

either team present for each other. Those problems that they present are the things you can lean on during a two week long playoff series to try to gain an advantage.

And we're gonna talk in a little bit about the defensive game plan the Lakers had, because I actually thought they did a really nice job on yokicch in this game. But one of the things that I kept trying to harp on was, like everyone's focused on whether or not the Lakers can handle Yokic. Why is no one paying attention to the simple fact that on the other end of the floor, how is Denver going to guard the Lakers.

There's a simple dynamic taking place in this game that was leading to the Nuggets being in rotation constantly and the Lakers being able to move the ball around for wide open threes for guys that are all pretty damn good and knockdown, catch and shoot three point shooters. And it was a simple fact that when Luka don would come off of a ball screen. Michael Malone was bringing the cool of jokicch up to the level of the screen. This is the coverage that the Nuggets use most frequently.

This is the coverage that the Nuggets are going to use when they get into the playoffs. This is how they defend teams. They force you to skip the ball and then they plan on their rotations trying to funnel you into shots that they're okay with. Right well, when you bring Jokic up to the level, when you bring him up onto Luca out twenty five feet from the

basket behind, that is a four on three. And it really starts with a simple dynamic, which is Jackson Hayes rolling to the rim in Denver having to decide whether they're gonna tag it when they tag him with Gordon, the skip passes open. They try to play early in the game where they didn't tag him. Jackson had an easy, uncontested layup a seven footer under the basket when nobody within fifteen feet of him on any side because they didn't tag it. So then Denver started tagging him with Gordon.

Now it's a skip past every single time, and who's in that corner. It's either Ruy Hatchramura, who's shooting over fifty percent on catch and shoot threes this year, or it's Lebron James who can drive it for a dunk or drive it to make the next play. They when they used Ruey as a screener on Yokic, when Yokich was on Ruey instead of Jackson, He's just popping the pick and pop is always wide open unless you switch

it or you rotate from the weak side. Ruey is catching up at the top wide open three, or a rotation moving the ball around someone else is getting a wide open shot. Luka Doncic has this. He's one of the very best in the world at this. The Lakers have had guys like Lebron who can do this in the past, but because Luka can do it, it puts

Lebron off the ball. And when you're dealing with an offense that has Jackson, Hayes who can dunk everything under the back, and Lebron, Ruey and Austin who can all be knocked down catch and shoot guys but can also drive closeouts and make plays that can also cut along the baseline that can also oh you threw a good rotation. But guess what. Austin's a score. He can get buckets, Lebron's a score, buckets, Rui's a score. So even when

you rotate well, these guys are in advantages. You're asking high level offensive players to score with a nugget sprinting at them from like ten to fifteen feet away. They

tried a bunch of different things in this game. They tried going to a three to two zone there in the late third quarter, which was the only thing they actually did in this game that made the Lakers a little bit uncomfortable on offense, and it was because Jared Vanderbilt was in the game and the three to two kind of forces Van Doh to do a lot of high level skill stuff in the middle of the floor, which is not his game, and they were able to get a couple of stops there, but even then they

just took him out. Then they started screening the top man. They got a couple buckets against the three to two to start.

in the front, you're staying out of rotation. But I'd argue at Reeves, Lebron, James and Luka Doncic is one of the best personnel groupings you'll find in the league for attacking a drop coverage. You want to let Lebron come screaming downhill against Jokic backpedaling towards the rim. Rim protection's not his strength. You want to let Luca methodically work downhill. What does he do every single time? He just drops that shoulder, bumps you off, and hits that

little bank shot from five feet. Austin Reeves is like a magician in the middle of the floor, hitting little ten to fifteen footers, drawing fouls, doing all of the scoring stuff that he can do there in the middle of the floor. Like, there's a lot of like overthinking it that I've seen in terms of the way the Lakers have been covered. Look, I don't leave this game tonight thinking they're Boston. I don't leave this game tonight thinking they might be that. But we need to see

a lot more basketball. But there's a simple, basic reality with this roster now that people need to acknowledge, and that's that Lebron, Luca, and Austin are as good a set of shot creators as you find in the league.

In even the guys that gave Vincent that you would look at as a somewhat average shooter, he's been shooting the ball pretty well. There's not really an answer there, Like, I don't need to see much more to know that the Lakers are gonna score. Whether or not they have the potential to get to the ultimate goal is gonna come down to their ability to achieve peak unguardability, and that will require them to show a lot of success against elite switching teams. Them to show a lot of success.

Like what if it is a team like Dallas and they sit Anthony Davis down in a big drop coverage and he's a guy that's sitting around the rim and that ends up being a problem, Like they'll need to They'll need to check a lot more boxes to get to that point. But I absolutely think that they can achieve that they have the personnel to attack all of those different things that they can see. The last thing I want to talk about with the Lakers on offense

before we move on. I loved how when Luca was on the floor, they leaned into him as the on ball creator. This is something that we talked about a lot in the first week after the trade, which is that Lebron's like turned himself into one of the best catch and shoot guys in the league. And you saw what he can do driving clothes outs. He drove that close out on the baseline and got a dunk. He drove a close out and dumped all over Mark Williams

last week or earlier this week. I should say the Lebron can play off the ball, Austin can play off the ball. All these guys can play off the ball. Luca can, but it's not like his strength. So I love the idea of like Luca's on the floor, let's just give him the ball and he has one job. Just make the first read. They chase over the top, they sit back in a deep drop. His read is to methodically work downhill and get a nice easy shot closer to the wrint. They bring the screen defender up

to the level. His job is to either is to read the low man. Okay, they're tagging Jackson, I'm making the skip pass they don't tag Jackson, or a ball fake to the skip pass. I'm dropping it to Jackson. He's got a dumb he just has to make the first read. Oh they're switching. Okay, Well, I'm gonna get a lesser defender on me.

It's a pretty straightforward process from there, and then when Luca comes out of the game, Lebron and Austin can scale up their on ball aggression the way they need to, and then they have just these short windows of time where they really need to test their bodies to create advantages.

Lebron was super aggressive to the rim tonight. There was a specific play a late shotcock a late shot clock play in the early fourth quarter against Zeke Naji where Lebron kind of had a predicament clock's running down and he had a triple thread against Naji at the top of the key before Luca came to town. Lebron's taken that three. You know why, because he's got a lot of basketball left, and when you get to five four, three, two minutes left, He's gonna be the guy that has

to create all the shots. So, like he didn't really have a choice in times past but to try to conserve energy by settling from time to time, that's no longer the case. He can go like it's the early fourth quarter. I just got to carry this unit till about seven to six it's left. Then I get to go sit down, and when I come back, Luca is the guy that's gonna be able to help me down the stretch.

checking out. Let's see who's on the floor now, Well, it's gonna be Luca and Lebron, or it's gonna be Lebron in Austin, or it's gonna be Luca in Austin. It's wave after wave after wave of high level shot creation. Again, they're gonna have to achieve a level of peak unguardability from matchup to matchup, and they're gonna have to maintain

this type of defensive game planning that we've seen. But I think we would all be foolish, even though we don't know how they're going to be yet, I think we would be foolish to not consider this team a threat.

When you continually get great shot after great shot after great shot, it has an impact on the flow of the game. It has an impact on the rhythm of the game. Like, for instance, one of the things that we're going to talk about when we talk about the Lakers defensive scheme, they were trying to shade everything towards Russell Westbrook, Christian Brown and Aaron Gordon making threes just like I said they would.

keep up making shots. When I look back to some of the most dominant Luca playoff performances ever Game seven against Phoenix, Game five against Minnesota, many of them come down to he sucks the life out of the other team by strangling the flow of the game, by continually generating fantastic shots, and it allowing you to set your defense. It leading to the opponent not being confident, because how how can you be super confident when Luca is like

strangling the game? It becomes very difficult to do. And there's only a handful of players in the league that have the ability to go.

follow it and get the rebound. He's too much bigger than all those guys. He's got to try to like try to force his way through. Sometimes I think a little bit more. But one of the things I talked about even though Denver presents issue to the Lakers for seventeen games coming into tonight, and I haven't seen the updated stats, but I would assume it's tonight. After eighteen games two, the Lakers have been the very best defense

in all of NBA basketball. That doesn't mean they're gonna strangle Jokis for a seven game series, but what it does mean is they're probably gonna get some stomps. The two things that I talked about when we talked about the Laker defense were they've got good defensive personnel, better defensive personnel than people think. Vando's a great defender. Defense is a good defender, Gabe's a good defender. Lebron when he's engaged is a good defender. They Austin when he's

engaged as a good defender. They've got good defenders. But the second piece of it was defensive game planning, which has been a strength an underdiscussed strength of JJ Reddick's coaching job this entire season. The game plan with Jokisch was simple, starting with Ruyanim put Jackson on Aaron Gordon in help, but regardless of who was on him, because they were transition cross matches and other different things where the Lakers would end up with kind of different matchups.

But it started with fronting the post. Anytime anyone else had the ball, if Jokic was trying to post, the guy guarding him was getting in front. Funding the post is a very difficult job. Jokic is good at sealing people on his backside. You gotta use swim moves, you gotta use move your feet quickly. You gotta sit low. You gotta squat down and push him back to force an over the top pass. What happens with an over the top pass. The Miami Heat are the best at this.

You bracket it with backside help to shrink the passing window. Makes it much harder.

post would quick disengage and get behind. Then he would start playing the inside shoulder, the paint side shoulder of Jokic and try to force him towards the baseline. As soon as Jokic spun out of the baseline, he would spin down towards the baseline and the Lakers would double off of Aaron Gordon, whoever it was that was in the dunker spot from the baseline. Then whoever was guarding the weak side shooter would dig down on Aaron Gordon.

They were packing the paint doubling on that baseline side.

gonna get open, and guys made shots. There's a version of this game where Aaron Gordon, Christian Brown and Russell Westbrook don't make eight threes and the Lakers are up twenty five in the first half. They gave up, they gave up some of those looks, but they never overreacted. They stuck to their game plan. They stayed disciplined and did their jobs. They tilted the shots towards other players.

And that's that's the game plan for JJ. What JJ is saying is, We're gonna have to give up some stuff, but good luck keeping up with us on the other end of the floor, because you're gonna have Aaron Gordon taking jump shots. You're gonna have Christian Brown taking jump shots. You're gonna have Russell Westbrook taking jump shots. The Lakers are gonna have Ruy Hatchamuria Lebron, James, Dorian Finney Smith, Austin Reeves, Luka Doncics reigning threes, and they're all gonna

be pretty open. And all of those guys are forty plus percent except for Austin. And you tell me how you feel when you're a fan rooting against Austin Reeves when he has a wide open look. Tell me if you think it's going in. I thought it was a really, really well like secuted game plan. The Lakers battled on the glass. They did a great job of digging down and deflecting the ball away from the bigger Nuggets players.

Like that's the other big chess piece here, right, is like can Denver use their size to dominate the Lakers on the glass? They had twelve offensive rebounds, the Lakers had nine. It wasn't a substantial factor in this game. I want to start on defense for Denver because there's gonna have to be something they do. Bringing Jokic up to the level I don't think is going to work. I don't think they're going to be able to stop the Lakers from getting wide open threes if they do that.

They were very fortunate in the first half that Gabe Dfs and Rui were two for eleven from three in all. Eleven of them were wide open, and eventually they stuck with that coverage and in the second half they started going in and it caused problems. So the two potential routes that we talked about earlier are switching or a deeper drop coverage. I don't think switching would work. I think Luka Doncic excuse me, Nikola Jokic to guard on the perimeter against Lebron, Austin and Luka all night long

would be a terrible mistake. So that really leaves it to a deeper drop. And I tweeted this at halftime. I actually think it's possible that Mike Malone is going to hold this for a potential playoff matchup to try to like kind of mix things up. What's the difference between a deeper drop and an at the level coverage in and at the level coverage when you bring Jokic up to the level, meaning as the ball handlers coming off the screen, Yokic is waiting there. When you do that,

the roller gets behind Jokic. If the roller gets behind Jokic, you're creating a two on one between the skip pass and the lob pass that Aaron Gordon has to account for. If you sit Jokic deeper back, then Aaron Gordon can stay on that skip pass and now Jokic can keep the roll man in front. There's a way for Jokic to guard that to where he can force Luka, Doncic, force Lebron James, force Austin Reeves to make drop covered shots. That's a lot of shots in the mid range right now.

To be clear, like I mentioned earlier, that might be the best group of drop coverage attackers that we have in the league. But at least you're taking You're making them take contested twos instead of wide open threes when all those dudes are wide open forty plus percent shooters. We didn't see much deep drop tonight. There was a late possession in the late fourth quarter where Austin Reeves hit a pull up three, but again that's a tough shot.

That's what you gotta ask yourself. Do you want to watch Austin Reeves take tough, contested pull up threes in ball screens? Or do you want to watch Dorian Phinney Smith and and Ruy Hatchamura just standing completely wide open at the three point line all season long or all series long. Right, that's the type of decision that they're going to have to make. I think that's probably their

best bet is to go with a deeper drop. As for the offensive end of the floor, again, there's certain things you can do with your spacing to try to make it so that when Jokic spins, he's got easier reads. They did some stuff with Russell Westbrook in the second half where they had him tee up or like basically cut right in front of the rim, so that Yokic would have two cutreads. As he's spinning to the baseline, he has Gordon on the baseline waiting, and he's got

Russ right in front of the rim. Do you remember that play where Russ got the layup right by Lebron and then he fell down and slid into camera row. That's a perfect example of that type of sequence where you can try to at least attack it with cutting instead of all of these skip passes to mediocre shooters. But like, I think Jokic is gonna have to just

start trying to be a bowling ball. He's gonna have to just pound and spin off of that first defender, try to go through the double and just get those arms out wide, start hitting bodies, get offensive rebounds and put backs. Like Yokic is gonna have to start trying to attack this as a score. I think that's something that they're gonna have to look into. They did get good stuff with Jamal Murray. That was an encouraging piece.

The Lakers were doing a lot of going under actions with Jamal Murray and just forcing him to make those mildly contested pull up jump shots, and he was hitting them. I think he had six threes in this game. Again, if you're gonna piece together a successful offense, it's gotta be multiple different things you can do. The Jamal Murray stuff worked. I thought Michael Porter Junior got some decent looks coming off of curls that he missed. There's a version of that where some of more of those go in.

You actually hit quite a few shots with your mediocre shooters. You're gonna have to get Jokic to provide more scoring pop, though, and the only way he's gonna do that is if he looks at the double and says, screw that, I'm trying to score anyway. Really interesting game. We're gonna see a lot more from the Lakers and learn a lot more about them in time. Their schedule is brutal at

this point. They're gonna face a bunch of different types of teams that are gonna force their offense to try to shape shift and.

taking this team seriously as a championship contender. All right, guys, that is all I have for tonight. As always, as sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We are taking tomorrow off, but we'd be back on Monday to cover a jam packed Sunday slate and a bunch of other stuff.