Hoops Tonight - Mavericks-Thunder Reaction: OKC strikes first, BLOWS OUT Luka Doncic & Dallas

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so far, you're gonna hit two games tonight. The two home teams go up one to zero in our second round, one out West with the MAVs in the thunder and one out East with the Celtics, and the Cavs are gonna break it all down from the perspective of all four teams. You guys did the joke before we get started. Subscribe to a brand of YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter

at underscore JCNLTS. You guys, don't miss announcements. Don't forget about a podcast feed where if you get your podcasts under hoops tonight and they keep dropping mail back questions in the YouTube comments, I think I'm gonna do a mail bag tomorrow morning that just kind of bounces around the playoffs. So drop mail back questions underneath this video and we'll get to those tomorrow morning. All right, let's talk some basketball. So maps Thunder kind of a weird game.

I'm sure that Nuggets fans were super annoyed watching it because it was officiated like it was January, tons of

tiki tac calls. The game in general wasn't very physical or intense to start, Like, it's just weird watching from the opening tip, like Luca just dribble the ball easily up to court it without much ball pressure, right, Like, it wasn't as intense and physical as the game we watched last night, for sure, And the officiating was just tzars, super ticki tac, a lot of like grifty stuff that we haven't seen too much of in the postseason so far.

So it's kind of a weird game, But the biggest factor by far is that Shay Jay Gibs Alexander, in his first playoff run as the best player on his team in second series in that role, just badly outplayed Luka Duncic and kind of going back to my series preview, if you guys remember, I talked about how I viewed this series as razor thin, like incredibly thin, meaning I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if either team one and I don't feel good about my pick to start

to start the series, which was Dallas, right, but the reasons why I leaned towards Dallas, The three main reasons that I put if you guys remember the series preview, was Lucas better than Shay, they have a physical front line that could do damage to Oklahoma City in terms of just the blood bath underneath the rim. And then three, Hyrie is just a little bit more prepared for this

moment than Jaln Williams. Even though I have a ton of optimism about ja Dubb's future, I think he is incredibly good and has the potential to even be better than Shaye one day. That's how high I am on Jalen Williams, but second year player, first time in the playoffs. That was kind of the three things that I was leaning towards Dallas for. So let's go through all three of those and talk about how they played out in this game. Shae Verus Luca Shaye just badly outplayed him

in my opinion. He was a little shaky early at a couple of weird unforced turnovers where it just seemed like he was rushing things and and just a little bit out of sorts. But he got going at the line, So the whistle definitely helped him there. He got going at the line, seemed to kind of get his rhythm and get his confidence there. Really started cooking in that

third quarter. Hit a couple of threes at the at the top of the key, and those threes ended up being kind of like the original, Like the MAVs got back within two, and that was kind of when Oklaho in the City started to build their final margin. He's making a nice kickout Reads finished with twenty nine nine

to nine with a steal and two blocks. Luca, on the other hand, he keeps leaning on that step back jumper and he just can't make it, and it's kind of bizarre juxtaposed with the beginning of his career, because if you got remember early Luca, it was like he

was a mediocre three point shooter or slash pull up jump shooter in the regular season, but then you get into these playoff series against the Clippers and the Jazz and he would just be lights out and he'd be making them like crazy, and so it was kind of a weird dynamic, right. It's kind of like similar to what Anthony Edwards is doing, right, and then this year

it's the exact opposite. Luca has his best pull up jump shooting season by far, big part of his leap in this season, and he just can't make them in this playoff rum for whatever reason, keeps going to it and he's having some bad misses too. It's not like he's going in and out on every single one of them. He just can't get the rhythm on that pull up jumper.

And that was kind of the difference. When the thunder pulled away in the third quarter, again, MAVs were within two Shay hits, a couple of pull up threes Luca keeps missing. That starts the delusion that it's over from there and then Luca all said five turnovers, and again against Oklahoma City, that's suicide because they're really aggressive defense that loves to run in transition off of the those turnovers. Twenty two to twelve was the points off of turnovers

battle in favor of Oklahoma City. So Luca gets badly outplayed by Shay Check. That's the first thing that goes Oklahoma City's favor right. The second piece the physicality of the frontline. Now again the officiating didn't help here, but they got destroyed in the paint in this game, they got out rebounded fifty two to thirty nine. Oklahoma City

wins that battle sixteen to eleven in offensive rebounds. Remember that is a battle Dallas has to win, and not just win, but win convincingly, because that's one of their biggest advantages in this series. Oklahoma City is a bad defensive rebounding team, and coming into tonight, Dallas was the third best offensive rebounding team by percentage of all the playoff teams. They had grabbed thirty two percent of their

own misses. So you get badly out rebounded, you don't do anywhere near as much damage on the offensive glass as Oklahoma City. Does to you and you get outscored in the paint forty to thirty two. And this is where we got to get to chet Holmgren because he had a great offensive night. He had nineteen points. Three is big one in the corner there late, but he had the paint on lockdown all game long. Only two

steals in three blocks. I say, only that's an amazing achievement, but like that doesn't do a justice to what he was doing around the rim. He forced a ton of missus, had guys second guessing themselves. I'm actually really excited to pull up the shooting numbers when they update and just kind of look at Dallas's field goal percentages close to the rim in this game, because I felt like they missed a bunch of bunnies right around the rim. But

it wasn't like they were smoking easy layups. They were just kind of changing shots and shooting kind of funky, hesitant shots with Chet there. How many times did it feel like Gafford would catch on the roll and then like rise up like he's gonna dunk, and then at the last second be like, here's a little push shot because I don't actually have the advantage there, and seemed like he missed every single one of those, right, And so I can't say enough about Chet his his rim

protection just completely changed the game tonight. So in short, Shay Badley out plays Luca and Oklahoma City wins like dominates the physical battle. And like, let's just put it very simply, if Oklahoma City dominates the physical battle, they're just gonna win this series. Because again we talked about it. You know, Shay and Jalen, they're much better shot creators than that hard and PG duo that they just went against and down the roster. Oklahoma City has much more

offensive skill than Dallas does. These guys that are off the ball shooting for them, like Lou Dord is a much better three point shooter than that PJ. Washington, Derek Jones, Junior Josh Green kind of trio, right, Like Aaron Wiggins is a better shooter, case On Wallace is a better shooter. They're off ball, like, you know, three and d guys are really good shooters, whereas Dallas's guys are a little bit more inconsistent, right, So like that's not a battle

you're gonna win over the course of the series. Like Dallas got out shot tonight, and I don't really see universe where they don't get out shot over the course of the series. That's probably going to keep happening like that. That Oklahoma City is a better jump shooting team in terms of their role players. So you have to win

the physical battle. You have to do a better job defending at the point of attack without fouling, which we're gonna get to in a minute, and you have to do more damage to Oklahoma City's frontline if you're gonna win this series. The last piece of it, the JDub Kyrie matchup. Kyrie won that matchup big time through three quarters. Jadub really struggled. I think he was what two for eleven through the first three quarters. But Jadub really broke

out in that fourth quarter stretch. Remember that kind of like right handed scoop shot that he kept leaving short on the rim where he'd like jump into Gaffer's body and then kind of scoop around and like take that

right handed shot. He missed that a bunch of times over the course of the games, over the course of the game, and then he finally gets one to go in the fourth quarter, just gets it a little higher, a little softer, and instead of going into the body, he went around and used his athleticism instead of just like initiating the contact, he kind of went around and went higher and softer. Finally got one to go hit. A couple of jumpers including the three had that driving

dunk past PJ. Washington on the baseline, and then all of a sudden, he finishes the game with eighteen five and five fifteen shots. So like, really nice game for Jadab basically kept that matchup relatively even so the main three swing factors, Oklahoma City dominated two of them and held serve on the other, And so all of a sudden, Dallas doesn't have many advantages in this game, and Oklahoma City wins convincingly. Right, So that kind of to me

was the story of this particular game. A couple other shout outs, I want to hit really nice games from Aaron Wiggins in case on Wallace off the bench, excellent point of attack, defense, maintaining that physical ball pressure and then some scoring pop. They get twenty three points out of those two guys on the Dallas front. Have to do a better job without foul of non fouling. I should say, yes, it was a tough whistle, No doubt that played a role, but they weren't doing themselves any favors.

There were a lot of them in there where it was like these are tiki tags, should not be called.

But then there were others where it's like, yeah, but you're kind of playing into this situation by committing fouls that are going to get called the majority of the time, like hitting a jump shooter on the arm, Like if Shay's isoing, you just get a contest and he misses, like getting up into his space and touching him on the forearm right in front of the official, that's gonna get called every single time, right, Like jump shooting fouls like that are ones that refs are hyper sensitive too.

So like that's a little bit of it. The illegal screens, and this goes both ways. Luca was having a tendency to kind of like leave early. Kyrie did it at least once as well, where it's like there's a reason what that. There's a reason why they say the ball handlers to wait for the screens. So think of it like this, If I'm the ball handler and I've got my point of attack defender on me, as soon as

I start moving the point of attack. Defender is gonna follow me right like he's gonna slide with me, probably try to fight over the top of the screen. So if I wait until the screener is set and then I go, then he can kind of get away with a little bit. He can lean a little bit more, he can kind of stick that elbow out, stick the butt out a little bit. Whatever it is that they do, all the little gamesmanship tricks of the trade that you

do with screening. But the one thing that's gonna get called every single time is if Luca leaves or if Kyrie leaves early in the on ball defender follows him before this, like while the screen is still running up to get set, it's gonna get called every single time. And then like when you combine that with like Gafford was doing that little lunge into it, which again, if you do that and the ball handler waits for you,

has a better chance of going uncalled. Like the majority of NBA screens are illegal, you know, by the by the book. That's what's so stupid about that call getting overturned in the NIXT Pacers game is like that's just the same illegal screen that happens on just damn near

every single possession. But the one thing that's gonna get called every single time is when the ball hand ball handler leaves early, because then it just looks like an offensive lineman, like instead of it being like ball handler screen go, it's like you're hitting somebody on the move. You might as well be a pulling guard. You're gonna

get that called every single time. Right, better shooting a big one like Tim Hardaway Junior goes over four, had some bad misses to Derek Jones, Junior goes one for three. Josh Green, Josh Green was getting left open all game long, and he ends up going three for eight. He's gonna have to hit those shots over the course of the series. Three fright, it's not bad find any starts with the imagination, but like he's getting like left open, which means it's

kind of like janking up the offense. So he needs to be really efficient on that shot. And then Luca just has to be better. Luca has to be better. That's simple. Like you can't I understand that your your knees a little bulky, you know? So is Donovan Mitchell's Jamal Murray's playing on a bad calf. You're not getting sympathy points from anybody. You have to find a way to be better. And like again, I think it's gonna be like what he did with the Clippers. Stop settling

for that damn pull up jump shot. Work a little bit closer to the rim, use your size and strength, get going, and then when the in moments where the game's a little more under control, like you're up seven, or you're at home and you're up fifteen, whatever it is, when you're in a situation where you can actually afford to trick off some possessions, that's when you can try to work yourself back in rhythm on the pull up three or taken when they're open, Like if you have

to put one up at the end of the shot clock, that's fine. Guy ducks underneath the pick and you get a great look. That's fine. You get a guy on a switch and you do step that move move and get a ton of separation, that's fine. But he's taking it in a lot of like questionable situations right now, and it's just not going in enough to really justify that decision. One little x's and o's note. They did so they started with Gafford on Chet, but they did come out in the second half and they did what

we talked about in the series preview. They ended up moving Gafford over to Giddy and they had some success there, but then Oklahoma City just bailed on Josh Giddy and started leaning into Aaron Wiggins in case on Wallace Moore and Isaiah Joe Moore, and it just it just kind of mitigated that advantage. Right. They could probably try to find an alternate version of that where they put Gafford on one of those guys, but those guys are just better shooters and they have a chance to make you pay.

But yeah, so really tough game. I expect a much better Luca performance in Game two again, just as the more desperate team physically, they have to win that paint battle. My guess is Game two ends up being a much much closer game and it's gonna come down more to the Stars in the clutch time type of situation. But we will see. Moving on to Cavs Celtics, So the Celtics started with a similar coverage that they used in the regular season. We talked about it in the series previews.

So in the first Cave Celtics game of the season, they went more traditional, but in crunch time they moved Jason Tatum over to Jared Allen, and then they did it again in game in the second game where they actually started with Tatum on Allen and then went to him back at the end of the game closing. They started it like that today as well, went with Tatum on Evan Mobley. Now again there's a very specific reason why you do that, because of the Allen injury, you

still have another non shooter on the floor. Obviously Allen is the non shooter, or Allan and Mobley are both non shooters in their normal full starting lineup. But at korro and a Koro came out and hit a couple threes tonight and he's turned himself into a much more reliable catch and shoot guy. But he's again the big thing in the league is do they guard you. It's less about whether or not you make them and more

about whether or not they guard you right. And so they put Horford on a Coro, just had him ignore him and hang out in the paint. They put Tatum on Evan Mobley, and then they switch the Mobley ball screens because again like the Calves run a ton of pick and roll. I think there were ninth and pick and roll frequency this year. It's their primary kind of method of attack on offense, right, So it's a really

smart coverage for Boston to use. When you switch ball screens, you take away the baked in driving lanes right when there is a when it's when you switch. The only way you're gonna get dribble penetration is if you beat your man off the dribble, or you can do slips and posts and things like that. There are other ways to attack it, but it's much harder to get dribble

penetration in a ball screen where they don't switch. As long as you get your man caught on the screen, you're gonna get downhill in some way, shape or form. And so putting Tatum on Mobley does a good job of kind of mitigating some of that dribble penetration. Now, it was funny one of the early possessions of the game.

They run a ball screen I think it was Garland and Garland and Mobley and Tatum switches, and so they immediately go to Mobley against I think it was Derek White on the left block, and Mobley goes to work, and because he's just not a really experienced playmaker from the post. Boston brings like a triple team with Jason Tatum and Al Horford, and they just swat him off

the glass. So it's like they attacked it the right way tactically, but it's just you're making Evan Mobley make your decisions for you, and that's just not a very good idea, right, So like that wasn't working very well. The one of the ways the Cavs counter did is they just tried bringing Horford into the screen no matter what.

So a lot of times that was a coro. They just have him set the screen and Horford was running a drop there or cross matches like Horford usually would pick up Evan Mobley in any sort of transition situation, and then they would just bring Horford up and try to set the screen that way. Some guard guard stuff. They got Mitchell Downhill early in the game with just a Garland Mitchell too. Mett just have Garland set the

screen again. A lot of pushing and transition, and to Cleveland's credit, they stayed connected for most of the game early one until the late third quarter that Boston really got too far away. For it to matter, Boston kind of turning to them. They went heavy through Jalen Brown early in the game. Again, this is thing they've been doing for a while, Like they just run a lot of their early offense through Jalen Brown. He got Max Strus off his feet early with a pump fake and

hit a three. Had a nice close out attack where he went at Mobley's chest and got to the foul line. He went out of Coro in the post and got to the foul line. He found him on a kind of a fadeaway jumper, went at Donovan Mitchell in the post and hit a left shoulder fade. He had a layup that they There was a really nice ato that they ran. This was I want to say after Mitchell hit the three to get it to twenty three twenty one, but they that was when the Cavs took that early lead,

twenty three to twenty one. Come right out of an ato and Donovan Mitchell is on Derek White and this really smart set where like all game long they were trying because they were really trying to use Mitch Mitchell and Garland's man as a screener to try to get Jalen Brown or Jason Tatum downhill. That was a big thing that that Boston was doing early in the game.

And the way that this this ato, meaning after time outplay went they were in a horn set and they had they ran in action at the top kind of like if I remember correct, it was like a screen the screener thing, but it flowed into Derek White doing a dribble handoff with Jalen Brown out of the left corner and Mitchell's trailing to play pretty hard. And again what they were trying to do was hedge and recover.

In those situations, they want Garland and Mitchell to hedge and then recover hedging meaning stop the drive and then recover to the shooter. But the problem is is Mitchell was so out of position from the early part of the action that Jalen Brown was able to just get downhill easily off of the dho I think Streuce was on him at that point. He just got easily pinned on the screen. Jalen Brown got right downhill, got into

the lane, got a layup. It's a really nice way to come out of the time out and kind of get a quick bucket, an easy bucket to take the Cavs lead away. Jalen Brown had another transition drive at Max Strus off of a I think it was off of just a miss or a turnover. They got out in transition, got a layup. Jaler Brown had fifteen points in like the first something like seven minutes of the

first quarter. He came out just guns blazing. Middle of that first quarter, they started leaning more into Derek White and Jason Tatum a two man game. Garland was on Derek White, which is a matchup I didn't like, We'll get into that in a little bit, and Struce was on Tatum, but they didn't want to switch it, so like at first, like they were in this bind because it was like they switched it once and then Tatum just went right down to the post and easily scored

on Garland. He like missed a shop and easily got the offensive rebound and put it back. And then it's like then they didn't switch it, and then Derek White started breaking open because he was the ball handler, and Nexters didn't want to leave Jason Tatum. He was like kind of hugged up on Jason Tatum and Garland would get caught on the screen and Derek White was hitting threes, and Derek White is just so locked in from three point range right now. It's kind of like a death

sentence in its own right, right. And so again we're we're gonna talk about that in a little I'll just get into it right now. I didn't like the Garland on White decision. I understand why you do it to save Donovan Mitchell's legs, right because he's the one that's been carrying your offense for the majority of this postseason. But Derek White's on a heater right now, and Darius Garland is just too small and he cannot guard him.

He cannot bother his pull up jump shot. And so even though Mitchell has a lot of offensive responsibilities, more

physically equipped to do so, and again Derek White's torching you. He was the one who blew the game open late in the third quarter once again with this three point shooting. Hit, a couple catch and shoot threes, hit another one on a two man game with Jaylen Brown, where once again Darius Carlin kind of lingering in a soft hedge where he's more just kind of hanging out to help on the drive, and then he closed out and got a hand up on Derek White. But Derek White just doesn't

see his hand. He's too short and so and that really was what kind of blew the game open in that late third quarter. The highlight was that step back kind of like pull back dribble that he had on Sam Merrill's So it's like he's on the left wing. They call up a ball screen. Tristan Thompson shows up, throws like a random trap at Derek White. Derek White retreats out of it. When he retreats, Tristan Thompson goes away, and there's only like four seconds on the shot clock.

And so Derek White's hard dribble moved to the right like two three hard dribbles snatched back behind his back. And and talk about like skill development. Go watch that shot again and like try pausing it right when he does the snatchback dribble and then watch it. It looks literally like he goes straight up and down. It looks like a normal catch and shoot jump shot. That is the all of the best pull up jump shooters. They're actually it's all ball handling and footwork to get to

straight up and down jump shots. Like that's why they're so efficient. On those shots. They do their work early, They do their work with the handling and the footwork and the like strength to stop on a dime. Then once they get that separation, it's just going straight up and down into a jump shot. Beautiful move, beautiful shot from Derek White. But again, like, yeah, that's something I think the Caves are gonna need to take a look at. And we'll go over some options here in a few minutes.

But yeah, that Derek White hot street kind of put the game away in the third quarter. Two more guys I wanted to shout out Luke Cornette. He came in for a shift in the late first quarter and immediately had a couple of blocks. He blocked Isaacacorro slashing on a close out and then got Donovan Mitchell in a drop coverage that was part of the defensive run. They got Boston's first separation because again Caves kind of hung around.

They were up twenty three to twenty one after a Mitchell pull up three, and that defensive run kind of led by Cornette there. Getting those stops at the rim kind of helped them get that initial separation. Peyton Pritchard, he pitches in sixteen points off the bench, hit a huge pull up three at the buzzer in the third quarter that felt more or less like a dagger. It felt like the shot that kind of put the game out of reach on the Cavs front. Not a whole

lot they can do. They don't really have the firepower offensively, and without Jared Allen, they're too small in this matchup. They got killed on the glass today fifty five thirty eight,

thirteen to seven in offensive rebounds. You know, with Jared Allen, excuse me, with Jaron Allen, they're a pretty big team, but as soon as you take him out of the lineup, they fund like Evan mobiley undersized, you know, center right Like now you're going Max Struce and Isaac accorro as you're three to four and then Donovan Mitchell Darius Garland, two small guards. So they're just like almost like untenably small without Jared Allen. But if I had to do something,

I'd tinker with the matchups a little bit. We talked about maybe just swapping Garland and Mitchell. Another thing you could do just take your three best defenders and put them on their three best shot creators and hide Garland and Mitchell even if they're undersized on Horford and Drew, Like, just take Evan Mobley and put him on one of the wings and has shrew Sinecorro guard the other wing and Derek White and then have Donovan Mitchell guard Al

Horford and have Darius Garland guard guard Drew Holliday. And you know what, maybe you'll just disrupt Boston's offense by causing them to bail on their typical actions and start force feeding the post on Horford and Drew Holliday. Maybe you can double team and rotate out of it or front the post or something. Look, i don't expect any of this to work. I'm just kind of spitballing here on some options they have, but like Darius Garland on Derek White certainly is not gonna work. And like, this

is the thing that Boston does to you. This is so many damn good players that there aren't really good places for you to hide your guys, and they can put you in a predicament like this where it's like maybe you put your two small guards on their two phys strongest players in the starting lineup. It's it's just

this is these are Boston problems. Man, this is what Boston does to you more mixing up coverages too, like just throwing random blitzes, switching randomly going into They threw some token zone in garbage time, but like what if they went to a little bit more random zone, like just do it, like not not consistently, but a random possessions to disrupt rhythm. But it's all gimmicky, and the talent gap is just too wide to really make up

that gap. There's a reason why the Celtics were a minus twelve hundred favorite to win this series and every other series in the first round was substantially closer, and it's because there is a chasm between these two teams in talent, athleticism, size, everything, and it's just gonna be really, really hard for the Caves to hang around. All right, guys, that is all I have for tonight. As always, I

sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show. Tomorrow morning, I'll do a quick mailbag, So why don't you guys drop some questions in the YouTube comments and we'll get to those in the morning. And then tomorrow night is I want to say Game two of Knicks Pacers, and I think that's the only game tomorrow night, so we're gonna hit that one. We'll go live on YouTube right after that game, and then we'll get back into it on Thursday. All right, guys, I appreciate you. I'll see

you tomorrow. The Volume