Hoops Tonight - MVP LeBron James leads Lakers over Pacers in NBA In-Season Tournament Final

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restrictions apply. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. Terms at sportsbook dot DraftKings dot com slash basketball terms. All right, welcome to hoops tonight. You're at the volume. Happy Saturday, everybody, hope all if you guys are having an incredible weekend. So, the Los Angeles Lakers are the NBA's first in season tournament champion, and Lebron James is the NBA's first in season tournament MVP. You're gonna hit this game from a bunch of different angles.

I want to talk some basketball off the top. Then we'll get into some big picture stuff, what it means for the Lakers, what it means for Lebron, and then I have a take involving the actual n season tournament itself and something I'd like to see them kind of tweak going into next year that could potentially make it even better. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to our brand new YouTube channel it would mean a lot to me if you guys would scroll down

and hit that subscribe button. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason lt so you guys don't miss any show announcements or the film threads that I do most mornings. And then, last but not least, keep dropping mail bag questions in the YouTube comments so that we can keep hitting them throughout the rest of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So from a basketball perspective, if those of you guys who listened to the preview that me and the Nerd Sesh guys did yesterday, it more

or less went exactly as I expected. The Lakers put Cam Reddish on Tyrese Haliburton to start the game, and then Jared Vanderbilt off the bench. They brought Ad up to the level of the screen to be aggressive in pick and roll to basically get the ball out of his hands, and then it was athletes rotating on the backside, specifically Lebron operating as a low man or he can

blow plays up. Tyres Haliburton didn't notch a single turnover against the Celtics, didn't notch a single turnover against the Milwaukee Bucks, and then his first turnover of this game was an aggressive Anthony Davis pick and roll coverage up at the level the pocket pass two Miles Turner downhill and Lebron jumping that passing lane and getting in there. It's just, you know, I've said this many times on

the show, and I truly believe it. I know, obviously this kind of thing is subjective and there are people that disagree, and I don't have numbers to back it up because they have not been the best defense by defensive raiding this year. But I truly believe that this Laker defense is the best defense in the league when they're playing hard. And it's different than the twenty twenty year because like the twenty twenty year was much better

at the guard position. You know, Alex Cruzo and Contavius Calopope were just better guard defenders, but the and then I'll also Dwight Howard and JaVale McGee were better shot blockers than Christian Wood and Jackson Hay, So it was a different type of defense. But one of the things that that team did not have was real wing athleticism. Like Danny Green was a good player on that Laker team, but he was a little slow that whole year he struggled with quicker guards. He was kind of more of

like a big positional defender, right. And then Kyle Kuzma, same thing. He's six foot nine, but not super laterally quick. He wasn't like an outstanding screen navigator, and he was best in help defense positioning. Right, This team has real wing athletes next to Lebron James and Anthony Davis. It's again, it's skill guards in the backcourt, very different than the KCP Alex Cruso mold. But on the wing it's Cam Reddish freak athlete six ' eight, Jared Vanderbilt freak athlete

six ' nine. You know, Ruby hachimur Ruyachimura is more than that Kyle Kuzma group, right. But Torian Prince, even as a six six eight like league average athlete, is a bigger, more athletic wing than anybody the Lakers had in that twenty twenty season not named Lebron James, right, and so like, it's a different kind of defense than the twenty twenty defense, but it's impactful at a similar level.

And the main reason why is just that combination of point of attack athleticism and then Anthony Davis on the back end. Now, one of the biggest questions coming into this season was would the Lakers have good enough point of attack defense? And honestly, like Cam Reddis has just been a revelation. He's been an absolute revelation at the point of attack. And I don't know, we seen this a few times throughout the history of the NBA modern NBA history, where a lottery player ends up in a

different situation and things go well. But this is bizarre because he's been in three other situations, played with the Blazers, played with the Knicks, played with the Hawks, and this is the first team where you've seen his tools and his fit makes sense. He's even been pretty good attacking close outs. Hit a big time three point shot tonight. He had a big time three point shot against the Suns a few weeks ago. Like he's I don't know

what else to say. I'm in the big picture, I think it's I don't even want to get into that tonight. But like, is Cam Reddish the right answer for a team that has a chance to win a championship in the picture, We'll talk about that later, I'm not sure.

But within the context of the regular season, He's been everything the Lakers needed because they lost Ennis Schroder and they didn't have good point of attack defense to start theyar and Jared Vanderbilt was out of the lineup, and then there was the big offensive question with Jared Vanderbilt, right, even just in this small portion of the season that he's been playing, he struggled a little bit to finish when he's been given advantage situations on offense, right, And

so Cam Reddish has just kind of giving them another option there. And then Max Christy as every bit as impactful defensively as Cam Reddish can be, a little bit less athletic, but a little bit more sharp offensively, a little bit better shooter, a little bit better attacking closeouts, right. And so those two guys have taken what looked like a flaw on the roster, the point of attack position. And now it's like, Okay, you play the Lakers tomorrow.

Here's what's gonna happen. You're the best perimeter initiator on your team. You're gonna get Cam Reddish with Anthony Davis behind him and tons of athletes rotating on the backside like Torian Prince and Lebron James right, and then oh, you made it through the first group. Here comes Max Christy, Here comes Jared Vanderbilt, Here comes through Rijat Tamuras, more athletes, and so again, the offensive questions for the Lakers are there,

and we'll see them bear out over the season. I'm more optimistic than most just based on what we've seen in crunch time and in this tournament as well. And a big piece of that is just how well Austin Raves has been playing and Lebron James just being a level better offensively than he was last year. But I want to cut the give the Laker defense some credit because that combination of real wing athleticism with what Lebron and Anthony Davis can do on the backside cleaning things up,

has made them dominant. And this was a team that the Pacers that put up one hundred and twenty two points on the Celtics. This was a team that put up one hundred and twenty eight points on the Bucks and could not force tyres Aaliburton into a turnover. Lakers held him to one oh nine and forced Alibert. Now, Haliburtn's insane. You guys know how high I am on him.

I literally think he's on an all time great trajectory. Right, twenty points and eleven assists tonight with three turnovers on just fourteen shots, fourteen from the field, So like they threw the kitchen sink at him, and he still put up a really good stat line, which just goes to show you how insanely good Tyre's Halliburton is. But this is where I would be remiss if I didn't talk about Anthony Davis and the fact that he's anchoring behind

all of that. Yes, the Lakers' point of attack defense has been a revelation this year or something we did not expect and something that has made their defense better than we could have expected them to be to this point in the season. That is true, But none of this happens without Anthony Davis. Now, over the course of the regular season, are there guys who try harder, more

consistently on a night in, night out basis, Yes? Are there guys that are more reliable from an injury perspective, yes, Although Anthony Davis has been on a good streak of health basically since the trade deadline last year. Right, that's it. When ad is locked in and engaged on the defensive end of the floor. There is nobody in this league that can reach his level defensively. He is the very best.

That is why the second best defense in the league, Boston could not do to Tyres Halliburton what the Lakers did to Tyrese haliburn. I'll talk about this concept all the time, the idea of back end rotations in disrupting at the point of attack. So if you blitz, if you put two to the ball, lots of teams do this, by the way, almost everybody does it to the elite guards in the league, right, especially when they start cooking.

You got to get the ball out of their hands at some point, right, Well, what happens is is they'll put two to the ball. Tyres will makes some quick pass, a quick feed on a pocket pass or a skip pass or something like that, or a swing pass, and then it's a quick four on three and it's boom

boom boom, layuper three point shot. Right. What makes it difference is Anthony Davis and his ability at the level of the screen and in blitz situations with high hands and low hands to disrupt that pocket pass and to disrupt that over the top pass. What ends up happening is that pocket pass is maybe thrown at an angle that's not great to where the role the short role man is right, or that over the top pass instead of it being a rifle pass over the top, it's

more floating over the top. Okay, But now who's on the backside. It's Tori and Prince and Lebron James with the starters right, it's Max Christy and Hatcha Mura with the bench guys right, it's athletes on the backside. And so when Anthony Davis buys you time by making that pass difficult out of that blitz situation or showing high, he makes it so that it's easy to rotate on the backside, at least given the athleticism that the Lakers have.

And that was the strategy I expected from the Lakers to start basically just rotating out on the backside, and it worked again, allowed just one hundred and nine points in this game after they put up one to twenty two on the Celtics and one twenty eight on the Bucks. Now on the other end of the floor, the Lakers had a massive size advantage all over the floor. As we know, right, there were two specific actions that were

working that I thought was really interesting. So Aaron Nesmith was doing a really nice job on Lebron James with his ball pressure. So one of the things the Lakers did to counter that give the ball to Austin Reeves and then Lebron was setting on ball picks. And basically what was happening is the Pacers did not want to switch that action, especially since for most of those bench group situations it was a lot of like a TJ McConnell there, and they didn't want to get TJ McConnell

on Lebron. So when he would set the screen on TJ and they didn't switch, Austin's getting downhill. Why because Aaron Nesmith doesn't know how to play drop coverage. He doesn't know how to He's just Carlyle's telling him to just bully Lebron all over the floor, right, So he's staying glued up to Lebron, And so Austin Reeves started getting downhill in making plays right. And then when they

did switch. There were a couple of times where they switched and Lebron just got a nice inside seals over the top pass and he was able to score make passes out of that right and so the Austin lebron two man game was a great counter for the Lakers against the aeron Ne Smith ball pressure. And then they were not switching the lebron Ad pick and roll with Miles Turner, and that was where you saw the lob pass and Lebron getting all the way down to the

rim and finishing with his right hand. And that's the thing, like, like you, the Pacers don't have the personnel because they don't have too big forwards to just switch that action. You can't put aeron Ne Smith on Anthony Davis right or Lebron on Myles Turner right. So they had to run a traditional drop coverage and like we saw against the Phoenix Suns, whenever Lebron sees a drop coverage, he goes at it with Anthony Davis and pick and roll again.

Like Laker fans are always talking like why aren't the Lakers running more lebron Ad pick and roll? Why aren't they running more lebron Ad pick and roll. The vast majority of teams out there just switch that action. That's why they don't run it a lot. They usually have a center in the forward and they live with the center on Lebron and they live with the ford on Anthony Davis, and the Pacers just couldn't get away with doing that until Lebron was able to make plays in

pick and roll. And then late in the game when they got Miles Turner and foul trouble, they ended up going to Anthony Davis in the post against Jackson and he just started drawing fouls and getting to the foul line because Jackson can't guard him down there. And so they really smart offensive thought process from the Lakers taking advantage of what their advantages were. There were a lot of people on Twitter saying, like, why aren't the Lakers

taking any threes? Why aren't the Lakers taking any threes? Now, in the big picture, I think the Lakers should take more threes because it's just from the same point in math, something that could help their offense a little bit, right, But it's matchup dependent in a one game sample size against the Indiana Pacers, when you get a trophy at the end of it, go to the damn paint because

that's where your advantage is. And so I loved that the Lakers didn't settle for threes at the end of the game, they took a few, but like they made a few, I should say, I think Torrian Prince made one and then cam Retis made one. But they weren't taking a lot of threes because that just wasn't the right offensive approach for that game. This is a team that was giving up like four five six inches on most of their most of their defensive matchups in this game.

That was their advantage. They stuck to it. That's how they won. I think that again, just kind of looking at the Lakers first, like that, to me is what their identity is. And this is something I've been preaching

about all year. Don't worry about trading for DeRozan, don't worry about trading for zach Lavine, trade for if you're going to make a trade, go after a starter caliber two way player, basically an upgraded version of a cam reddish Er, an upgraded version of a Torrium Prince, so that you can slot everybody a little bit better, so you're better in a playoff series, because again, you know there are going to be teams that are going to Dare Camp that are going to be able to contain

La a little bit better on both on the when they're on offense, and they're gonna do so by ignoring Cam Reddish, by ignoring Jared Vanderbilt. Right, Like a team like the Nuggets, they live with Anthony Davis on an island against Jokic. They live with Lebron James on an island against Aaron Gordon. And so again, it's better for me, in my for the Lakers in my opinion, to lean

into what they're best at. This team's identity, in my opinion is they are the best defensive team of the contenders, right, Like the Bucks. It's like damianis pick and roll good luck, right. The Nuggets, it's this incredible five man offense, right, and then they defend at a high level as well. You know the Celtics, it's driving kick basketball, and they do a ton of switching on defense, and they can be an elite perimeter defense. Right, Like every team kind of

has their identity. The Lakers are world beating defense, like all time great defense. That's their identity. Like, we're just going to maul you physically with our incredible defensive potential, and on the other end of the floor, we're gonna pick you apart with a bunch of really smart basketball players. And so again, I think this tournament is a great sign for the Lakers of what specifically they need to do to reach their ultimate goal, which is to get

the Larry O'Brien Trophy. Defense. Defense, defense, that's how they win. Don't try to be the Bucks training for Zach Lavine. If you want to go get into a scoring contest with some of these teams that are at the top of the West and East, you're going to lose those scoring contests because you're just not as good at it as they are. But if you try to be better on defense than everybody by a wide margin, that's your best pathway to get the trophy. Anthony Davis the other

thing too. I talk a lot about him on the defensive end of the floor, as we've done so far in the show, but when he brings it offensively the way that he did tonight, and again, it's just being physically aggressive in the post, running the floor on offense

for opportunities, rolling hard to the rim. Obviously, the advantages the Pacers presented to him in this game more important, right, hit a little step back jump shot early in the game as well, but him dominating down there on the block that is the difference between the AD that could be the sixth or seventh best player in the league, in the AD that can be the second earth third best player in the league. If he wants to enter

into that conversation. Offensive consistency is the gap there. But like when it comes to his ceiling, his ceiling is as high as anybody in the league because it's best defensive player in the world, and he can give you forty points if he's got physical advantages in the post, and that's just what makes him such an incredibly dominant player. He played one of the better individual games that I've seen in a long time. Tonight w forty something and

twenty something just unbelievable from Anthony Davis. Austin Reeves twenty eight. Tonight averaged twenty two points per game in this tournament, twenty in the first game, seventeen in the second game. Obviously lower in large part because they beat the living shit out of the Pelicans, right, but once again chips down big games, high stakes environment, Austin Reeves comes through

for you again. And I'm just so happy for Austin because I literally could not believe how like a significant portion of Laker fans were like off of the Austin Reeves bandwagon after like fifteen bad regular season games, like completely unfathomable to me, unfathible to unfathomable to me, Like

I just I just didn't understand it. And so once again, like again, he was a huge factor in the Laker offensive success tonight with the two man game with Lebron, like we talked about earlier, just shout out to Austin Reeves that dude is a big time player and Lebron James winning the MVP obviously, tonight was a little different. He was getting heavy ball pressure from Aaron Nesmith, who's

done a really good job all week. Thought he made a bunch of really smart plays in this game to take advantage of the downhill opportunities that were there, and then he started making plays out of the post with the pass as well. I thought he was magnificent in this entire tournament, and I thought he deserved to win the MVP in the big picture, because this is gonna

lead all the shows right tomorrow. What does this in season tournament championship and MVP mean for Lebron James' legacy, right, Like, that's what we're going to see all over the shows, right, And this is really all I have to say about it. It's not gonna change anybody's mind. There's no anti Lebron guy that's gonna be like, oh, in season tournament, my goat now, right. And in the big picture, what the n season tournament means as an accomplishment is hard to

tell now because this is the first one. We don't have a point of reference right now. Twenty years from now, it might be different and you might look at it as more of accounting accomplishment, right, So it's hard to say what it means for his legacy in terms of the court of public opinion. Here's what it says to me, though,

this dude is a winner. He always has been. It's been one of the most underdiscussed things about his personality just because he's jovial and has fun while he's on the court, and some people just can't process that because it's not Mamba mentality assassin behavior. Right, But like, here's the thing, all thirty teams could have got that trophy.

Lebron wanted it and he went and got it, and that, to me is one of the things that I've always loved about Lebron and one of the reasons why I've been such a big fan of him over the years, Like, when push comes to shove, is the dude a performer, Yes, which, by the way, is a post when you're the face of the NBA embraced the fact that you're putting on

a show, right like like it is. Has Lebron been a little bit more jovial and a little bit more passive at the end of games than Kobe Bryant or some of the other guys through at NBA history, Sure, But when push comes to shove, this dude puts winning basketball games at the very top of his list of priorities, and in this era there has not been a single player better at it than him, and arguably an NBA history, he's the best at When you're listing Lebron's traits, the

first trade on that list is wins basketball games. Finds a way to win basketball games. And like I think his obsessive competitive nature and the simple fact that he wanted this trophy and went to get it was an encapsulation of everything that's made Lebron who he is and in his career. He won the trophy tonight because he's the same type of dude who won for Larry O'Brien trophies.

It's a continuation of that personality trait, and so, like again, it's not gonna swing anybody's opinion, but for me as a fan, I just had a faith that he was gonna pull it off, because, like, it's Lebron James Man, four time NBA champion, Lebron James a guy that a guy that just a guy that when he sees that goal and he has an opportunity to get it, there's literally nobody in this era that can stop him from getting to that point, right, And I just shout out

to Lebron Man because, like again, it's not gonna go down with his accomplishments in terms of what he's done in June, but I can just tell you as a fan, watching him in this tournament was really fun because like he just he just he just fucking wanted it, man, He just he just wanted it, and he went and

got it and played incredible doing it. His game against the Pelicans, we didn't even see this stat in time for our instant reaction that night, but thirty points, five rebounds of five assists in less than twenty three minutes first time in NBA history. It was one of the most incredible individual performances we've ever seen, and then ad followed it up with one of the most incredible individual

performances we've ever seen tonight. So shout out to Lebron again, Like, I just I can't believe he's still doing this, and I obviously the the Larry O'Brien is what he's truly after, but I thought it was cool that he I think this was great for the NBA simply from the standpoint of him adding legitimacy to it. Because if Lebron James in a four time NBA champion thirty nine years old, was like, I want that trophy. That's gonna set a tone year and in year out. That's gonna get everybody

to want that trophy. And I think it was the best possible thing that could happen for the Lakers last take before we get out of here on the n season Tournament. I loved it. One thing I would say, though, is I would push it from full four pool play

games up to six. I don't know if they need to kind of move around the way the actual pools worked, but I think I think if you ideally the single elimination, you want to make it so that it's easier for the better teams in the league to get in, right, Like you want to see the Denver Nuggets in that tournament, right, Like you want to see you want to see the

best teams in the league get into that tournament. Now, they a lot of them were, right the Lakers in my top tier contenders I had, the Celtics were in it, the Bucks were in it, and the Lakers were in it,

and the Suns were in it. So four of my preseason top six contenders were in it, and the two that didn't get in where the Warriors in the in the Nuggets, right, but even like Minnesota not getting in because of an n season tournament loss, right, Like, if you push it to six, couple things like I think next year the teams are gonna really see the importance of each individual pool play game and understand like, oh shit, you can go three and one and not get in, right,

and they'll take it more seriously. But I think if you push it from four to six, it just makes it a little bit more likely for a team to be able to weather like a hey Jamal Murray missed a game because of a hammy and we were still able to get into the tournament. And now Jamal's healthy and we're playing single elimination games, right, So like that'd

be the one tweek I'd make. But other than that, I thought it was amazing simply because it gave us something different in the middle of the regular season instead of just going October November, December, January, February, Okay, brief break for trade the line. This is cool. Some stuff happened March April, Okay, Now we're finally in the playoffs instead now it's like October November, oh, in season tournament, and then it's like January February. Oh, now we're like.

It kind of breaks up the monotony of the regular season, which I think served a really cool purpose within this season. All right, guys, that is all I have for the rest of this weekend. I'll see you on Monday for power rankings, and then we have Jovan Buja from the Athletic to come on to do a Lakers deep dive

like we usually have once every other week. Then Tuesday next week we've got Chris Mannix coming on to do a Celtics deep dive, and then I think the slate on Tuesday night is crazy, like all sorts of playoff teams playing against each other, so I think we're probably gonna work on Tuesday nights. I'll see you guys then as well. All right, have a good weekend. I'll see you on Monday. The Volume