Hoops Tonight - Mavericks-Warriors Reaction: Steph Curry TAKES OVER, outduels Klay Thompson & Dallas

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The first game, Joel Embiid's return for the Philadelphia seventy six Ers looked good at times, look sloppy at times. Some stuff to get excited about if you're a Sixers fans. Some other stuff that's discouraging. The Knicks having one of their sharper defensive performances of the season as they get a big win, and then the Golden State Warriors and the nightcap fall down by seven late to the Dallas Mavericks. And another game that was wildly back and forth as

the Golden State Warriors going another rundown. The stratch Steph Currage is absolutely amazing as they pull that one out. We're going to break down both games from the perspective of both teams. I also have kind of a bigger picture thought surrounding some of the change in the ways that teams like the Knicks and the Cavs have been playing offense. Jampack Show for you guys tonight. You guys

know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels, So you guys don't miss any more of more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at under score Jason lt so you guys don't miss show announcements. So forget about a podcast feed wherever you get your podcast under Hoops tonight, and then keep dropping mail bag questions in the YouTube comments. We're gonna be doing a long mail bag on the Friday show. We're actually recording that on Thursday, so make sure you guys

drop some questions in the YouTube comments. All right, let's talk some basketball. So this Warriors MAVs game had a really interesting flow to it.

and a game plan on both ends of the floor around a very specific trait that is thriving in the modern MBA, and that is speed, speed and transition, speed, covering ground on offense, speed covering ground on defense, speed, getting.

an efficient twenty plus on any given night. And so this game was kind of interesting because there were stretches where the Warriors offense kind of bogged down a little bit, and then Luca and Kyrie and Clay, who were all fantastic tonight, kind of started to methodically out execute them in the half court. And you'd see Luca use a ball screen to get Andrew Wiggins in a trail position so he can just kind of work down the lane line and shoot some sort of bank shot.

He's just on a crazy run He was incredible in the fourth quarter of this game as well, and then Luca kept burning more this moodie for helping too much into the lane on skip passes, and Klay Thompson is just benefiting off of the chaos, right, benefiting off of the additional bodies that get thrown towards Luca, benefiting on those skip passes, benefiting on transition chaos. He had a

big three on the right wing in transition. So like as the Warriors offense would bog down, the MAVs would kind of chip away, chip away, and they go on their runs. But then as soon as the Warriors started to execute on offense and hit a couple shots, they'd set their defense and then they have all this speed and they have all these waves of athleticism and they can get into the ball. Andrew Wiggins again, like this is the type of player two that like six '

eight rangey wing that typically has struggled with Luca. But the difference is Andrew's a bit bigger and stronger than people realize. He's bigger and stronger than say, like a Jaden McDaniels, for instance, and so on those bumps when he's bumping Luca, he's holding his ground a little better, He's knocking Luca off of his base a little bit more, and it just causes him to have a little bit more of an effect. And then Draymond Green is just this is the story of the tire Warriors roster, this

ability to erase mistakes, right. I talk about their closeouts all the time. They fly around on the perimeter using their speed. But Draymond is one of the best players in the league at being two places at once, and he had two big stops on Daniel Gaffer down the stretch of this game where he was up higher in help and was able to recover to one of the better rim finishers in the league underneath the basket to get stops, and then they would get stops and then

they would start going in transition. And that was kind of like the back and forth of this game. When the Warriors were scoring, they were setting their defense, they were getting stops, they were running in transition, and then every single time things kind of bogged down for them, the MAVs were able to kind of chisel away, and that's how you ended up with those wild, kind of oscillating leads throughout the game. I thought Steph was completely amazing in this game. He had a big run in

the third quarter. It's the Steph Curry classic problem. Right like, he comes off the ball screen Derek Lively sitting too far back. He hits the pull up three comes off the same ball screen a couple possessions later. This time Lively shows super high, just floats the little pass over the top to trace Jackson Davis, and he rolls to the rim. The MAVs went on that big run in the middle late third, and then Steph again in the late third, made a couple of huge plays down the stretch.

He hit that bank shot, the driving bank shot along the right side, and then in transition, you know, when he starts dancing with the ball above the break, guys start staring at him and they lose sight of what's happening on the backside. He had that whip left handed

fee to Jonathan Kaminga for a layup. Like every single time the MAVs went on one of their runs, Steph was able to stabilize them with this unbelievable, elite, top tier offense, and that, to me, is the most exciting piece of what we've seen over the course of the last week, Right, Like, if you go back to last season and some of the stuff that Steph was dealing with and the slump that he was in, and then you come into this offseason and some of the kind of it just kind of seemed like there was a

pessimistic attitude surrounding the Warriors coming into the season. And I'm guilty of that as well. I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I wasn't. But like, we get into this season and all these things start to look good, right, they start to look deep. They start to look like, oh wait, we might have hit on this Buddy Healed signing. You know, the Antony Melton thing is working. Johnathan Kaminga is embracing events roll, everyone seems

really bought into their roles. Oh man, we have thirteen players that can reasonably play in the rotation. And the one thing that was kind of the biggest question mark is they were succeeding in that first couple weeks of the season without really getting anything substantial out of Steph, not because of his fault. They were blowing out teams and then he got hurt, right, But the most exciting thing about this last week and a half or so is Steph went into Boston and outplayed Jason Tatum and

looked like the best player on the floor. Steph goes into Oklahoma City and outplays shake Vis Alexander looks like the best player on the floor. Steph in this game once again, time and time again, whenever it looked like things were teetering for Golden State, he was able to leverage his top tier superstar capabilities to regain control of the situation. That is that final piece that you're looking for if you're a Warriors fan for real optimism, which is can Steph get back to that level? And he

was unbelievable down the stretch of this game. I felt silly on Twitter. I was complaining because he had got Luca on a switch and he like toasted him off the dribble and made a little scoop shot, and then I was like, man, like, Luca just cannot guard this guy. Why are they continually trying to screen with Draymond to get I think it was lively back on to Steph when he's already got Luca on him, and then he ends up hitting a crazy step back three over the

center as well. So it's like I guess there's just nothing you can do about it. But again, that's what sets Steph apart. You know that if you want to get into the big picture, like those offensive lolls, those are things that are going to be somewhat part of the deal when you've got a roster that doesn't necessarily have as much offensive firepower as you see around the

rest of the league. But one of the things that I've always been a staunch believer in is like, even for the best offenses in the league, there are lolls lolls. You know, sometimes jump shots just don't go in. Sometimes you run quality offense and you throw a kickout pass to a good shooter who's in a catch and shoot situation and he misses. And then you go down the floor and you run a drop coverage and a guy comes off of a ball screen and hits a contested

pull up three. Like, there's a certain amount of out of your control that takes place on the offensive end of the floor because of the make and miss element, right, But there's so much that you can control. And that's where the Warriors have been so especially sharp this year. They are so sharp in their attention to detail on the defensive end of the floor that even when they go through these struggles, it's like, yeah, the MAVs were going on runs, but they were going on runs through

tough shot making. They were going on runs through the kinds of shots that the Warriors were trying to give up as part of their defensive scheme, And like that,

to me is the really exciting part. And who knows what this all looks like in the big picture in terms of whether or not the Warriors make some sort of consolidation move to try to bring in additional firepower, or if maybe Andrew Wiggins continues to pop and John Kamika continues to pop and Buddy Heel continues to pop and they make an internal decision that they don't need

to do that. But the most important piece was this team wasn't going anywhere without Steph Curry playing like a top tier superstar and three times against legitimate championship contending teams in the league, he looked like the best player on the floor, And that, to me is like the the the cherry on top of this wonderful start to the season for the Golden State Warriors.

Brandon Pitzemski he had a late third quarter run that I thought was pretty important. And again this was during a stretch of the game when when Dallas was starting to kind of gain some control, and he had a big three, like a little step back three in a ball screen. That's a huge shot in that situation. And then on the next possession, he got Derek Lively on a switch and beat him off the dribble and he

just got a shot up on the glass. But when he got the shot up on the glass, Lively was chasing him and it allowed Kevon Looney to kind of fill the gap in behind him and get an offensive

rebound put back. And so like those are those little things, just a little play here and there like oh buddy, Heal, just a nice little left to right crossover for a driving layup in crunch time like those, that's like found money in a game like this, especially for a team that relies so much on their defensive activity to try to drive their success.

and kick. It is about chasing guys off the three point line, covering ground in rotation, long rebounds coming off the back of the rim that are going eighteen nineteen feet from the basket, and they're turning into foot races to go get the basketball. It is constant activity, constant motion that is beating teams in the NBA right now, and this success that the Warriors are having should be incredibly informative to all of us about the direction that

the game of basketball is going on. The MAVs front a couple of different things. There's a lot to be discouraged about with this start to the season, but there were a lot of different variables, right Derek Lively missed several games. PJ Washington missed several games. Luca I went over some stats yesterday. Luca is down statistically in every single category. Its points are down, rebounds are down, assists

or down, steals are down, blocks are down. Field go percentage is down, three point percentages down, getting to the line less, he's getting making free throws less frequently. He's his pick and roll play making is down. His post up in ISO, points per possession are down. Like everything's down across the board, and that, to me is an encouraging thing if you're a Dallas fan. Because obviously, like Luca missed training camp, we're gonna talk about Joel Embiid

here in a little bit. He didn't look like Joel Embiid today. You know why, because it's tough to get

back up to the speed of playing NBA basketball. I thought tonight was the first game this season where Lucas started to look more like Luca, and I know that he wore down in that second half but in that first half in particular, you started to see him get a little more comfortable with that step back three, and then you started to see a lot of the stuff that we saw during the playoff run, the methodical body positioning stuff, getting defenders into trail position, working in that

short to mid range. We got to see the element that we've all been looking for this entire season, which is like just what it looks like when Klay Thompson

has to be accounted for. Again, like when you are defending Luca in ball screens and you have to put two on the ball or defend the action three on two if they position with their spacing properly so that the guy that's bagging the roller is coming off of Klay Thompson, which ended up being like Moses Moody down the stretch, there's going to be opportunities there for Clay and I thought he missed one another one where where I think it was Andrew Wiggins like threw a crazy

close out at him late and he pump faked, and he got another good look there that goes in. It could be a very different game. And so like, even though there's a lot to be discouraged about to me, there's things that are trending in the right direction. Luca I thought today played one of his better games of the season in terms of just how he looked in control of the situation. And then Kyrie's playing just some of the best basketball of his career. I don't even

know what to say about that. You could see the Klay Thompson fit being so natural. They had great stretches tonight of defense where they went on runs where they really strangled that Golden State offense. So there is positive there are positive trends that are taking place within this journey.

And again, you can't play too much on the results, right, Like in terms of the big picture of the eighty two game regular season, you played a game well enough to be up seven with three four minutes left, right, and obviously you went cold down the stretch Steph Curry, Steph Curried you. That can happen, But there's some positive progress in that game that you can take into the next game. So big time win for the Golden State

Warriors here to start the NBA Cup. We'll get a little bit further into both of these teams later in the week when we get into our film session. On Thursday, moving on to the Knicks and the Sixers, And before we get too much further into this game, I want to kind of dive into that big picture topic. I was talking about it as it pertains the offensive variety.

So what I think is really fascinating is these two teams have changed the way they've played in a lot of ways, the Knicks through changes in their roster and the Calves through a change in the head coaching job. Right So with the Calves, all of a sudden, we're seeing a lot more use out of Darius Garland. We're seeing a lot more usage out of Evan Evan Mobley doing a lot of work at the beginning of possessions

to get the defense in rotation. And one of the things we're seeing is Donovan Mitchell's scoring volume is down substantially from where it was last year. Right now, the Knicks did it through a roster change, but by bringing in Michale Bridges, bringing Karl Anthony Towns, oh Jan Andobe at the tail end of last year, we've seen a Jalen Brunson scoring volume take a dip. Now, both players have maintained at their efficiency, but their volume has taken

a dip. Interestingly enough, we even saw Jalen Brunson say that he doesn't think he's playing particularly well. And I understand that because there's obviously another level that he can get to, that he's capable of scoring more efficiently and at higher volume. But here's the thing. The Knicks and the Cavs are both top five offenses this year. Last

year they were not. And this comes down to a concept that I've been harping on NonStop since the NBA Finals last year between the MAVs and the Celtics, which is, yes, there is a certain there's a certain machine that works when you lean into the individual greatness of one player, right, they get into great rhythm, they have unwavering confidence. You can spam actions and attack matchups, and you can get

success out of that. But what happens is when you get into the playoffs, you have to win four playoffs series against typically four very different types of defenses, and your advantage is change from series to series. Same goes during the regular season. You're playing eighty two games, your advantages change from game to game, right, and in those situations, variety allows you to have a higher floor in all of those situations in addition.

There were large portions of the game where we had there were large portions of the game where we had Og and Obi being guarded by Gershan Yabuselli, and like that's a huge foot speed disadvantage. And we had three really big mistakes in the run that the Knicks went on when they went from being up two to up fourteen, where it was like Yabaseli misses a mid range jump shot around the elbow and it's like just kick ahead

pass and Ogn and Obi's getting a dunk. And then here's Yabuselli closing out on Og at the top of the key and he just toasts him off the dribble. Now they're in rotation, they give up a wide open corner three or the one the baseline dunk that Og and Andobi had. All that was was literally gwershon Yabuselli like sitting in help swing pass. Og just ripped to the baseline, toasted him off the dribble and got a dunk.

When you lean into the depth of talent on your roster, when you keep everybody involved, when you play equal opportunity. When you have that variety, you can do a better job of capitalizing on the weak points in the opponent's defense. It doesn't make sense to repeatedly go at Andrew Wiggins every single time down the floor. Ideally, you want to try to generate advantage situations for your best player, and the best way to do that is get the ball

moving side to side to run multiple actions. Not to mention, the more actions and interchanges you run on any given possession, the more potential there is for a defense to make a mistake. Sometimes you'll get just a wide open layup or wide up and dunk or wide open shot just simply because the first guy did his job, the second guy did his job, the third guy did his job, and then the fourth guy was caught not paying attention.

different mismatches. I don't think it's a coincidence that Donovan Mitchell and Jalen Brunson's scoring volume are both down, but the Knicks and the Cavs are both scoring at a much more effective rate overall as a team this season. I think that's a really fascinating concept on the Knicks front. For this particular game, it was kind of cool to see them start winning on the margins again. Like they've been such an elite offense to start this year. Karl

Anthony Towns has been so good. We're going to talk about him in a little bit more detail here in a second, but like part of what made the Knicks great last year was they won on the margins. They could go on defensive runs. They had a great defensive game tonight. They haven't had many of those this season. There's been a handful. They did it to the Pacers earlier this year, Like they have moments, but they haven't been as consistently good defensively as they need to be.

Tonight was a really strong defensive performance for them. They dominating the offensive glass has always been a substantial part of their identity, and like I think they only I think they the Sixers and Knicks relatively even on the offensive glass. But in the first half, the Knicks did a bunch of damage on the offensive glass. I think

that's seven offensive rebounds just in the first half. The pushing in transition, and part of this is like a weakness of Philly, which we'll talk about in a minute, but the Nicks scored twenty eight points in transition in this game, compared to only eleven for Philly. And so again, like this is where there's the half court battle, which is going to come down a lot to the roster. It's gonna come down a lot to execution and those

kinds of details. But on the margins, you increase your chances of winning by building margin in the small areas on the ancillary parts of the game, winning the possession battle, winning the battle in transition again, like leveraging those things like we talked about earlier that are not dependent on shot results, that are things that you can consistently rely on on a night in night out basis Karl Anthony

Towns Front. You know, it's fascinating because there's like some real basic stuff he does that makes things a lot easier, like with his shooting ability, Like he's trailing the play in transition, and centers just have a instinctual behavior which is when they run back and transition defense, they don't

think about the three point line. They think about the paint right and Kat, you know, burned Embiid tonight on a transition three where he just ran up the floor and Embiid's first few steps took him into the well inside the arc and Cat just kind of was trailing the play and he knocked it down. There's popping in ball screens, which has been a huge part of the

Knicks offense to start this year. There was a really interesting strategy we saw from Nick Nurse tonight where he actually just had Joel Embiid stay home on Cat on ball screens and then they offered help, you know how like usually they run a drop coverage right where the ball handler comes off the screen and it's the big

man that's waiting to kind of corral things. They were just having embiid as they put sometimes and offering help off the ball, which then of course got them into rotation and then the Knicks were able to drive and kick on them. But that's the problem that Karl Anthony towns. That's the offensive ceiling that can come from having spacing

from the five position. And so there's a lot of great that Kat does right with the shooting and the driving closeouts and all that stuff that we just talked about. But the other thing I wanted to touch base on was this action that we've been seeing all the way around the league, and I think it's actually a really smart example of just like how teams kind of copy each other and you see kind of like different concepts grow a bigger.

just have Cat kind of pivot into the defender's space and just flow to pass over the top and he can get a catch and now he's got dribble penetration the defenses in rotation. It kind of goes to the stuff we were talking about earlier, like teams just make mistakes, Like it's a simple set of reeds that comes out of that.

to Brunson and he shoots a wide open three. If the guard chases over the pick and Kat throws the pass over the top, now you basically have no choice but to either help out of one of the corners, which is going to leave a wide open kickout pass to the corner, or you're leaving that one on one with Brunson with the defender trailing him, and he's just so good at either finishing or doing you know what

he did to Embiid. I thought it was hilarious on the play when Embiid got the crowd going and then Brunson just toasted him off the dribble and then got him with the grift. Those two, it was kind of funny to watch their little back and forth because they're two of the biggest grifters in the league. And I've said this on the show before. I don't have a problem with the players grifting. To me, that's a problem with the league. You got to take that up with

the league. They're just competitors that are trying to take advantage of every single advantage they can get to try to win games. Moving on to the six ers for a second, you know, the Joel Andbiid looked exactly how I expected him to look like. He looks sloppy, he looked out of rhythm. It looked like the game was

moving really fast for him. I thought stan Van Gundhi did a really nice job on the broadcast of breaking down how like, no matter how much you play behind the scenes, no matter how much you no matter how much you uh run on the track or run on the treadmill or do conditioning work behind the scenes, there's nothing that can actually replicate a basketball game, and there's

nothing that can actually replicate urgency. Like I kind of felt it a little bit tonight in the NBA Cup, and I felt it a lot in opening week when teams are playing their first like one to two games, like when there's real intensity and teams are kind of like viewing the game as more valuable than a typical regular season night, and you see that intensity come out.

That to me was to be expected. I'm not paying too much attention to that. Paul George, for instance, is in the same boat, but he's just further along, right, first few games, like that the game where he hijacked the late possessions and took the step back three at the top of the key, when Tyre s Maxy was going, like he was not shooting the ball well in that

stretch right in that first game. In his first few games tonight, you could see like starting to get his legs underneath them a little bit, starting to get more lyft on his three point shots, starting to look more comfortable from the perimeter, right, Like it's a rhythm thing. You're building momentum over the course of the season. But I'm I'm finding it. I'm finding it hard to be too critical of the Sixers because of the way their roster is built. The roster is built around three stars.

They don't have any other players on the roster that make more than ten million dollars a year, right, And Like, what that tells you is in the in the market of these players and what they are worth, you have a lot of guys that are going to be flawed because they are tail end of the roster players that you're signing at heavily discounted deals because you have three MAX players right, when you do it this way, when you do it through free agency, and when you sign

a player outright, like the way they did with Paul George, there's a certain amount of limitation that's going to come with that. I thought the big thing that stood out tonight is like when Tyrese Maxey is out the on ball guard play for the Sixers falls off of a cliff. Right, it's Jared McCain, who we're going to talk about it, who's shown a lot of exciting stuff over the last

couple of games. But then after that, it's like there's Kyle Lowry, who's certainly on the tail end of his journey in the NBA, a lot of like Jeff Doughton on the ball tonight, and it's like I'm watching this and I'm like, this is a big, intense NBA game. We're on one side. All the action is being run by Jalen Brunson and McHale Bridges and og Nobi and Karl Anthony Towns and Duce McBride and these like pretty

high level players. And then there's Jeff Doughton who's running the offense for the Sixers for significant stretches of the game, right, But like that's to be expected because when your roster's built around three stars and any of the stars are out, you're going to struggle because the players have their flies like they have athletes, Right, This is a team that has athletes like Kelly Ubra is an athlete, Caleb Martin is an athlete, but they are discounted athletes because they

can't shoot right and they have their offensive limitations. Right, there are other players on the team that can shoot the ball but have different limitations, like where Shawn Yabaseli right and yabasel He's actually been pretty good for the

most part this season. The Sixers have actually been way better with him on the floor versus off But he is an offensive minded big who can really struggle in space defensively, right, So, like on a night like tonight where he goes one for seven from the field with zero system three turnovers, then his limitations on the defensive end and in transition rise to the surface in a

way that they don't when he's hitting shots. But that's the thing, Like when you're shopping in that market, you're gonna get a lot of one way players, right, Guys that are really good at some things but then have some substantial weaknesses in others. The big thing that stands out to me is like overall between Drummond, who's looking kind of big, Joel Embiid, who has we talked about, who's just getting back into things and he's out of shape,

the Gershon Yabuseli piece that we just talked about. Some of the guards too, like they're kind of slow, and that manifests in poor transition defense. Cleaning the Glass has a catch all transition stat that they use. It's called defensive Transition points added per one hundred possessions, and it kind of just combines the transition frequency in the transition efficiency of your transition defense. Right, Cleaning the Glass has them as the fifth worst transition defense in the league

here in the early part of the season. What's crazy about that is they've almost always been a bad transition defense with Joel Embiid, and they were like that without Joel Embiid to start the year. And so that to me is probably the biggest weakness of this particular roster

is you can run on them. There's a lot of teams in the league that are like that, and those teams when they leverage, when they play hard and they execute well, especially at home, when they're feeding on the home crowd, they can keep things under control athletically and then their superior gifts show. But when they lose control of that kind of athletic battle, that's when they can get run off the floor and it can get ugly

for them pretty quick. But in terms of like a silver lining, again, there's an advantage to this type of build, right, So when you build a roster around three stars and they're all healthy and they're on the floor together, then you have the ability to craft really small and achievable roles for.

into the season. And the reason why is like, when they're healthy, it's like if they're in rhythm, and it's like we got Joel Embiie, you know, a perennial MVP candidate, Tyrese Maxey, who I had dranked, is what the twenty third, twenty fourth best player, and I think I had him twenty first. Actually I have him in the top twenty five players in the NBA. I'm a huge Tyrese Maxi fan. And then Paul George as your third best player. You can't really do much better than that, right, and so's

there is a version of this that works. It just requires them all being healthy on the floor together, playing to their individual ceilings so that you can craft these small and achievable roles. One last note on the sixers. I want to talk about Jared McCain for a second.

Is so he's had a couple of good games in a row now, and the big thing that stands out to me is he's got a strong low center of gravity, and so when he's constantly running around, guys actually have a hard time bumping him off of his line, which allows him to get real dribble penetration. And he's constant motion, really attacking downhill in these ball screens, and he's kind

of snaking along the baseline and making kickout reads. He's got a natural gift for identifying where relocation opportunities are, so He's always moving around and getting himself open. Shots like this to me is like half the battle of being a shooter. Battle number one is knocked down the damn shot, but battle number two is getting yourself open against good defenses, and most of that comes down to perpetual motion. And like Jared McCain just brings perpetual motion

to the guard spot with aggressive shooting. And again, just like a good strong base, he competed on the defensive end tonight as well. I was impressed watching Jared McCain here in the early going this season. They're gonna need a lot out of him over this stretch that Tyrese Maxi is out, all right, So guys, we're gonna do a couple of mail back questions here for about ten minutes. So if you got any drop him in the chat. Paul's texting him to me. We'll get to some questions and

we'll get out of here for the night. If the playoffs started today, how many players are you taking over Steph Curry? That is a very good question. I think I would take Jokics for sure. I think he's on a I think he's on just like one of the special tears in NBA history, Luca, I think I'd take over him. Luca is better than he's shown in the early going this season. He missed training camp. That's gonna take him a little while to get going. Giannis is

playing some crazy good basketball this year too. I think I think i'd probably put him at five. I think that the top tier that that Shay Giannis, Luka Jokic tier is pretty is pretty great.

Warriors can't overcome. No, But that's where I keep talking about, Like in terms of the upside in cooling assets and making a consolidation trade is like you don't want to bring a knife to a gunfight. You don't want to find yourself in a series where you're down three to two after five games and Steph's averaging thirty three and no one else on the Warriors is averaging more than twelve, and Kyrie's averaging twenty five, Clays averaging twenty and Luca's

averaging twenty seven. Like, you don't want to find yourself in a situation where Steph has the responsibility of creating every big bucket in every big moment in a series. And like, again, it was I want to be clear about the twenty twenty two season. There's a couple different things. Steph was younger and a little more athletic back then.

That was the best season of Andrew Wiggins's career. But another big part of it, guys, was twenty twenty two was a little bit of a gap year around the league. There wasn't a lot of like there was the Boston Celtics were not the Boston Celtics that we think of them ass right, Like if you look through the Western Conference that year, there was a lot of good teams, but there were like there wasn't like great teams like some of the teams that we have at the top

of the West this year. That's not to take anything away from the championship. It's just this this year has one of the deepest fields of really great teams that I've seen in a long time, and so it's a lot to ask for Steph to kind of go at that sort of thing solo for four rounds against teams that are gonna have multiple, you know, high level shot creators that could that they that they can rely on. That's the specific reason why I've been harping on that.

But again, you know, wait till February and you see what happens. Because there is development here with Jonathan Kaminga. We don't know what version of Wiggans we're gonna get in the large sample. We don't know what John We don't know what Buddy Healed can do over the course of the large sample either, And so like just we'll give it some time and then when you get to

February you make a call at that point. But like to me, I would like to see Steph flanked by an efficient, consistent twenty plus point per game.

thing tomorrow morning, so you guys will see it. But I was talking with him about how going into the year, I saw this like clear top four in the East, right, you know, Boston, you know, New York, and then Milwaukee and Philly, right and now after that, like I kind of view Cleveland as the clear number two, although the Knicks to me, are a team that's still a work in progress and who knows what they'll look like in

a few months. But like I can't, I can't decide yet how I feel about Cleveland in the large sample, because like, part of what's made Cleveland's so good is Darius Garland and Evan Mobley are just playing a lot

better than they did last year. And it's been twelve games, and so like, if we're forty five games into this thing and the Calves still look like the Calves and they're, you know, hanging with the Celtics at the top of the league, and Evan Mobley and Darius Garland are still hooping, then we need to recalibrate whether are not like that roster is just a lot better than we originally anticipated. Right then it can get a little bit more difficult.

But like right now, it's like I feel more or less the same because Philly and Milwaukee have fallen off a map, but Cleveland's kind of retaken that one of those spots, and the Knicks to me, are still like a team that's figuring things out and could still be interesting. For the record, the Celtics, I am not worried about them at all. There's nothing I've seen from them that has changed my opinion about them. Like, here's a crazy

stat for you. The Celtics are yet to win a single game this year against a team that is over five hundred and I could care less. To me, there's still just a rock solid championship favorite. Like it just that I would need to see so much more to change my mind. But I haven't seen anything that's made me feel more or less confident, to be honest, because of the rise of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Who is your top dark horse contender? I I would say Golden State.

I think like when I look at the rosters around the league, and you know how much I'm harping on, who are the fast teams out there? The teams that have just tons and tons of speed on the perimeter, It's like teams like Oklahoma City, teams like Boston, and then there's like after that, there's a lot of good teams, but they have different strengths and weaknesses and they don't match up super well specifically with what Boston and Oklahoma

City do. And so like what excites me about Golden State is what you saw in the game in Boston. They have the ability to cover ground in a way that is a very nice counter to what Boston does, and they're driving kick situations. And I just have seen Steph Curry now back to back to back, outplay, Luca outplay, Shay outplay, Jason Tatum head to head. He just has that alpha dog ability to kind of pull these games

over the top. When their defense and their speed and Steve Kerr and everything that makes the Warriors the Warriors keeps them close in these games. So in terms of dark horse contenders, like a team that is not on my contender list, and by the way, my contender list right now, I was only too deep. It's Oklahoma City in Boston right now. But like in terms of a team that's not on that tier, that would be like

a dark horse team to look out for. I'd look out for the Warriors, and they have a trade to make too, and that's what makes them so interesting. Like, for instance, like I was higher on the coming into the season, I was higher on the Lakers than I was on the Warriors.

there you go, that's perfect. I just accidentally answered that question. Right now, it's the Warriors, it's the speed. To me, I can't harp on that enough. I'm sure you guys who have been listening to my show over the last week could probably stick of me saying it. But it's just something that I feel very strongly about. Do you think the Bucks trade if it gets substantially worse. Yes, But I mean they had a good bounce back game against the Raptors tonight. They play a really light schedule

over their next ten games. There's like a pretty decent chance that they're back over five hundred literally before we get to the thirty game mark, just because of how weak the schedule is in the Eastern Conference. So, like, I think it's too early for that sort of thing. But let's be clear, Like if they find themselves dead to rights halfway through the season, I think you'd be foolish not to consider blowing it up because they're not close. So if you're not close and Yannis is like in

his thirties now and entering into a different phase. Paul just sent me a question, says Jason de like teams' speed, but like with the Yiannis thing, Like if you get to that point and you're not close and Yannis is in his thirties and he's moving to a different phase, and Dame is in his mid thirties and he's moving

into a different phase. At a certain point, it's like, unless you feel like you can quickly turn around and build a contender around Giannis by just absolutely nailing like a Dame trade or something like, I mean, maybe that's what you do. You probably look at trading Dame first, and you just see if you can't get like, see

what your offers look like. And you're probably gonna have two different types offers, right, You're gonna have like like young player draft pick offers, and then you're gonna have like good current player offers with like multiple high level

role players from a team that can actually spare role players. Right, But like you have to make that decision based on what kind offers are available, and if there's an offer for Dame that you think can tweak things and get you back into contention with you, honest, you go for it like that. But I think, yeah, at that point, the more likely scenarios that they end up looking at a complete blow up. But I think it's way too soon for that. We've seen just too many examples of it.

The Lakers started two and ten two and ten guys, with Lebron and ad playing most of the games. They started two and ten in the twenty twenty two to twenty three season, and they made it to the Western Conference finals. So like it is, especially with how dreadfully weak the Eastern conferences at the bottom and how many easy opponents they have on a night in, night out basis, I think it's way too early to write off the Bucks. I agree the Warriors can use a consolidation trade, but

can they do it without Wiggins contract. He's one of our most valuable defensive players, and I think they need him to go all the way?

it works. He can be a lot like more inconsistent if you move him to the bench and it turns into like a inconsistent role and his touches are different

and that sort of thing. So like, like to me, I agree, if you're making a trade for a guard, or you're making a trade for a big, or your making a trade for a four, I would not include Wikens because I think he's just a rock solid starter and I think those are rare enough around the league that you shouldn't just give him away for no particular reason. But if you have the opportunity to bring in someone that plays his position, I think it makes some sense.

Let's see will the league take harsher steps against load management. I think they already have talked about that, like with their injury reporting and like guys sitting out national TV games and the fines and stuff that are.

people are getting hurt. And my thing is like, it's just too soon to know why people are getting hurt. None of us actually know, we're all just kind of pontificating and so like to me, I think it's also possible that in a ten to twelve game sample that it's just noise.

So I wouldn't go for a guard. The main reason why is, like, to me, specifically, if Steph is your skill guard. This is like our number those of you guys who have been listening to the show for a while. I have like a kind of a concept of a typical team build, and that is like, I want a skill guard, a guard who is excellent at running action.

Then I want an athletic guard, a guard that's excellent at the point of attack defensively, can run his lane and transition, and typically on offense at least can shoot and drive a close out. For the sake of this experiment, imagine like a contavious Colbo Pope as like an exam sample of that type of player.

multiple different ways. I want him to be able to drop, and I want him to be able to switch and at least be able to screen and make decisions as a passer at the top of the key and roll hard to the basket and finish above the rim. Right, Like that to me is liker your stereotypical team build. And obviously there's so many unicorns in the league that there are all these different builds and there's a lot

of different ways to do it. But that to me is like just a baseline kind of view of how I how I personally view that type of team construct. So Steph is your skill guard, then I wouldn't put

another kind of like loose. I'm just gonna use the word loose with LaMelo in the sense that like he's at a phase of his career where like there's all of this crazy high level basketball coming out of him, but he still can be very sloppy and inattentive on the details, right, Like you want you want bulldog athletes next to Steph. And that's what's making this Warriors team work, right, is like they have Steph out there, they have Buddy Healed out there, but the guards that are out there,

they're they're bulldog guards. It's the Anthony Mountain, It's Gary Payton, the second, it's Brandon Pajemski, they have bulldog guards that do the dirty work at a super high level. And so like I look more at the forward position, and again you have to you have to make that call when you get closer to that point. It also depends

on who's available. But there's a lot of There are a lot of potential forwards that could be available this year, guys like Jeremy Grant, Guys like Brandon Ingram that could be available at the tail end of this trade cycle

that you could be looking at. And to me, those make the most sense because that kind of slots into a position group where you get more inconsistent play, right, Like the backcourt concept works with Steph and Buddy in all the speed, right, but like the frontcour dynamic, it's like, you know, you know Moses Moody, some nicey's good, some nights he's not. You know Jonathan Aminge, some nights he's good,

some night, some nice he's not. There's a lot of inconsistency in the forward core, and that to me is like a spot where a scoring forward I think slots really well. The other thing, too, is like I've always liked it when your two best players play very different positions and draw two different types of defenders, because that makes you more dangerous in screening actions. Right, Like one of the downsides of the Lebron James Anthony Davis build with the Lakers is a lot of teams can switch

that action. The Lakers have always been very vulnerable to teams that can switch. That's what they did them in against the Detroit Pistons the other night.

and we can go to attack in the post. But the other thing, too, is like there's a lot of teams that will try to not give up those switches, and that's where you can get the defense in rotation with basic screening actions. So imagine you have a scoring forward and Steph is setting a ball screen for him, Like, are you gonna hedge off of Steph? Because if you hedge off of Steph he's slipping out of that and he's gonna get a wide open catch and shoot three

every time. Well, if you stay attached to Steph and he sets a screen, then you're forward. As long as Steph sets a good screen, the Ford's gonna get downhill.

We've already seen a lot of this. How often do the Warriors run that inverted ball screen action where they have Steph screen for Andrew Wiggins and the same sort of thing happens where Andrew tends to get downhill in those situations, right, Like, that's where you can get those sorts of easy advantages at the beginning of possessions, right, and so like that's kind of why and envision more of a scoring forward than a scoring guard is the type of guy that the Warriors.