Hoops Tonight - NBA Finals Mailbag: Can Luka and the Mavs come back from 3-1 down???

this that goes off the rails so quickly. So what we're gonna do at the tail end is just do a mailbag. So drop questions in the chat. Paul, our producer, is going to text them to me so we can hit them at the tail end of the show. Drop questions in the chat. We'll go for about ten minutes on the game, and then we'll get into the mailbag. You guys are the drop before we get started. Subscribed to the Hoops and I YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter

at underscore JCNLTS. You guys, don't missow announcements. Don't forget about a podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcast under Hoops tonight and then keep dropping mail back questions in those YouTube comments so that can keep hitting them over the course of the rest of the summer. All right, let's talk some basketball, so storry. This game was obviously Dallas's improved defensive effort. Now, Dallas is defended pretty well in this series, not as well as they're capable of,

not as well as the numbers would show. Either. There's a couple of pretty bad, like specifically inept Boston stretches, particularly spamming the second and third quarters of Game one, and then obviously that bad run in the middle of the fourth quarter in Game three, and then there's also some shooting variants there. But Dallas has done a decent job. But we all can agree that they are capable of

doing a much much better job. And there's been a lot of focus on the dribble penetration element in containing the basketball, a lot of that on this show as well, and I want to make sure we call attention to that. But I thought that Dallas did an amazing job in all four phases of half court defense in this game. I would kind of delineate the roles of a defense or the four parts of the defensive job down to

these things. First, containing the ball. Second, what you do in rotation, meaning like when you suffer some sort of defensive breakdown, whether it's a coverage related thing or some dribble penetration, how do you kind of, like on the fly, go from the next matchup to the next matchup in your rotation to try to regain control of the situation. It's like with the fire extinguisher, trying to put out

whatever the problem is. Right, the third piece of it is contesting without fouling, and the fourth piece of it is the defensive rebound, and all of them are actually connected to each other. But that ball contained piece is what we're going to start with, because all of those other three become easier when you do a better job containing the basketball. So to put it simply, I talk a lot about on this show the concept of flattening

out drives. What that means is there's gonna be a certain amount of dribble penetration that you can't control, whether it's pushing the pace in transition, whether it's you're just dealing with freaky athletes, Like you don't go into a series against Anthony Edwards thinking like, we're just gonna completely stop him from beating anybody off the dribble. It's like, no, that's not how it works, right. So at a certain point, what you're trying to do is turn a straight line

drive into a rounded off drive. You're trying to turn a straight line drive into something where there's contact that he has to fight through or he has to make a counter move, so it's easier for that next help defender to get into place. And when you do a better job of that, when you flatten out drives, suddenly what could be a hard help turns into maybe a

dig down. So for instance, like let's imagine that a guy is dribbling on the left wing and he makes an aggressive move towards the let's just say towards the left side, towards the sideline because the defender's kind of funneling him that way, and he gets just absolutely toasted off the dribble. Then the next guy, the low man out of that weakside corner, has to come all the way over in hard help and it turns into like a super easy kickout pass to the corner, or if

they rotate, it's an easy kickout pass to the wing. Right, But if you flatten out the drive, then instead of that guy having to hard help, maybe he sinks in a little bit, maybe he stunts, but he's in a

better position to rotate. All of a sudden, that closeout is a little bit easier, right, Or the next guy who's up on the wing doesn't have to sink all the way down to the corner, and maybe he's just kind of stunting down, right, Like, that job gets easier the contesting without fouling piece when you actually contain the

ball and then do a good job in rotation. The last piece of it is eventually someone's gonna be looking up at the clock and it's like we just tried this drive and this drive and this drive and this drive, and oh shit, there's four seconds on the shot clock. One of us has to shoot. From there. You're gonna be in a position where that guy's probably gonna have to take a tough contested either shot at the rim,

shot in mid raine, or catch and shoot three. Right, That contesting without fouling piece is easier when you do a better job containing the ball throughout the possession and then finally the defensive rebound. I was looking at the stats at the end of the third quarter when we started getting ready for the show. When I checked, I think Boston only had two offensive rebounds. They only had like eleven free throw attempts. So that's a clear sign

of you contesting without fouling and getting the defensive rebound. Now, think of it like this. If you get toasted off the dribble and somebody has to hard help, and now everyone's in rotation, nobody's matched up. If nobody's matched up, then when the shot goes up, it gets that much harder to box out because now everyone's caught in that blender and no one has a clear matchup to box out.

But if you flatten out the drive and you make your rotations easier, and you do a good job in those rotations, and you work deep into the clock and the guy has to settle for some tougher contested jump shot, everyone is now all of a sudden, there aren't these like free runs to the rim from a wide open guy because his defender got pulled into rotation. Elsewhere, everything waterfalls down from containing the basketball. But I want to be clear, they did an amazing job in all four

of those areas. I want to turn my attention to Luca for just a minute, because I want to be clear, because like, there's been a lot of criticism directed towards Luca in this series, including from myself, and I believe it's fair. I believe the criticism of some of the whining at the officials, the stuff with his effort, focus and energy on the defensive end is completely fair criticism. And by the way, you want to know why, ask a Dallas Mavericks fan what do you think of Luca?

Ninety nine percent of them are going to tell you he's the best player in the world. Ninety nine percent of them are going to tell you he's an all time great in the making. Ninety nine percent of them are going to tell you he's better than this guy, that guy, and this guy and that guy at that

phase of their careers. What that means is he's held to a different standards, not held to the standard of you know, let's say forty year old Lebron James, who's on the tail end of his prime, and it's like he's not being held to that best player in the world standard. You understand, when forty year old Lebron takes

a random possession off here or there. You understand when you see a player that's not considered one of the top tier apex predators in the league, making him a lackadaisical effort or something like that, you just kind of just allow it, right, You don't even think that much about it. Luca has put himself through the by virtue of his greatness under a microscope. That's just that's the

it's the it's at all. It's that old expression. Right, heavy looks like heavy is the head that wears the crown, right Like there is a there is a pressure and an expectation that comes from his individual greatness. I want to be clear, He's not why they're down for one in this series. He is the reason why they're here, as so many have been saying. That is that that I want to be clear. He his indomitable offensive greatness,

got them to this point. However, it is unquestionable that this series had a better chance to be competitive had Luca given a better effort to this point. And again, as I talked about, like there was so much focus on the blowbys, and he still got beat off the dribble a couple of times tonight. But as I said, like that is nowhere near as damaging as not doing

your job. When the highlight clip was going around, If you guys remember after I think it was after Game two, the highlight clip that was going around of Luca getting blown by and it was like the most blowbys in over ten years of NBA Finals history, right, If you guys remember that video, a lot of Mavericks fans were saying things like, this is by design, this is what we do. We funnel with Luca's job is to funnel guys into the paint. Now, that's obviously ridiculous. However, I

guarantee you that Jason Kidd is prepared for that. Luca's job is to do a better job containing the basketball. He needs to compete better on the perimeter. That goes without saying, but there is some truth to the fact that when Jason Kidd is sitting down with his assistant coaching staff and they're coming up with the game plan, they're sitting there like, Luca's gonna give up a certain

amount of dribble penetration. How do we deal with this? Well, there's obviously the back line element that's the other four players, but they've crafted a job for Luca. His job after he gets beat off the dribble is to make the next rotation. That was something that was missing in the first three games of this series. There was a specific play tonight that I thought encapsulated Luca doing that job

a much better in a much better way. Luca gets beat off the dribble by Jason Tatum in the left corner, and in the sequence the ball gets worked, driven and kicked over to the right corner. There's another drive. There's a drop off to Jason Tatum in the dunker spot in the right side. Luca had gotten thrown into the blender with everybody else, but he made an extra rotation. He came across the lane at the last second, jumped up with verticality, contested Tatum at the rim, enforced to miss.

That is the important part of the defense. As I said in the mailbag episode yesterday, the blowbys are the least concerning thing with Luca. You want him to do better, and he did a much better job of containing the basketball tonight, forced a bunch of turnovers by just applying some physical ball pressure. Luca was much better on the ball. But the more important piece is making sure he's back

in transition defense. After giving up any sort of dribble penetration, or if a teammate gives up dribble penetration, being in the right spot in the rotation, and then making those efforts on the defensive glass. That is what it takes to run a functional defense. Every single offensively limited star or excuse me, I should say defensively limited star, whether it's Steph Curry in the mid twenty tens or it's Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic in this era, they are

still just asked to do a job. Okay, Jokic, you struggle to protect the rim. Here's what we need you to do. We need you to come up to the level of the screen, be active with your hands, and be more of a disruptor. We'll put more of the rim protection responsibility of on Aaron Gordon. As long as you do those things up at the level and you get back into the lane to grab defensive rebounds, we

can as a team put together a functional defense. And again, that was all that we were asking for from Luca. We know he's the reason why they're here. We know he's an APEX superstar. We know he's on an all time great trajectory. That shit he did in the first three games was not good enough. It was not good enough, did it wasn't befitting of his reputation in the league.

And what you saw tonight was much more in line with what he's capable of, which is, yeah, he's gonna get beat off the dribble sometimes, but he can do his job within the defensive scheme, and I thought he did a beautiful job of that tonight. In addition to him and Kyrie completely dominating the game offensively, they pour in fifty points through the first three quarters, shot fifty percent from the field, only two turnovers between the two of them. Come, you've got their best and most efficient

offensive game of the series. By far their best defensive game of the series. They soundly outplay Jason Tatum and Jaylen Brown. And by the way, like I want to be clear about something else, from the beginning of this game, this was there was an effort element, and we're going to get into that that You'd be foolish to not pretend that's not a factor here. However, I did think, especially early in the game, Tatum and Brown were trying

to get downhill. There were several plays where Mavericks made defensive slides to cut off driving angles, and Tatum and Brown were being really persistent about trying to beat that guy off the dribble. Dallas was just doing doing a good job of flattening them out, so like it wasn't for It wasn't like Boston was just passing the ball around the perimeter and just trying to jack up threes. Boston was trying to get dribble penetration in this game.

It was the desperate effort from Dallas that rejected those attempts. And again, it starts from your superstar, it trickles down. Another guy I really want to shout out tonight is Derek Lively. At the end the third quarter, get eleven points and twelve rebounds in just twenty two minutes of play. He had seven offensive rebounds, just an athletic wrecking ball in this game. Was really intrigued by that corner three he hit early on. One of the things with Lively.

I tweeted this out during the game, but like the when I look at Dallas's potential and like, here's the thing. Do I think They're going to be back in the finals next year? Probably not, But that's literally because of what NBA history tells us, right, Like, we have not had a Western Conference team make more than one trip to the finals in the totality of the last six years since Kevin Durant and Steph Curry broke up as teammates, Right, So, like that's just the West is too deep with teams.

Chances are we'll be sitting here exactly twelve months from now talking about a team like the Minnesota Timberwolves, or the Oklahoma City Thunder or the Memphis Grizzly, just some random team that just kind of rises from the midst right, Like, But if there is a dominant version of this Dallas Maverick team that takes shape over the course of the

next few years, there's your guy. It's Derek Lively. If Derek Lively turns into Tyson Chandler Across with like a little bit of Anthony Davis Cross with a little bit of like legitimate like can shoot corner threes and stretch the floor a little bit, that's a top thirty, top thirty five player in the NBA that can be a profoundly impactful foundational piece alongside Luca and whoever his secondary star is in the long run, whether it's Kyrie or it's someone else, and like, just I mean kind of

removing ourselves from the scope of this series for a minute. Derek Lively, just what if he's just awesome? If he's just awesome, that could go a long way towards adding another layer of resilience to what this Dallas Mavericks team can accomplish year on a year out. What's the pathway for Dallas. Dallas is going to somehow win this series? What does it look like? Well, it's really simple. You gotta win one basketball game on Monday. It's in Boston.

To my Mavericks fans that are listening, are you confident any you think that you're a better team than Boston, If any of you think that the level of optimism that you had going into the series, if you think there's legitimacy to that, go in a game. Go in one game in Boston on Monday. Contain. Do exactly what

you did tonight. Work on the ball to contain flap maout, dribble penetration, make for easier rotations so that it's easier to contest without fouling, so that you can contain on the contain defensive rebounds, right, and all of those things trickle down to transition opportunities, which trickle down into cross matches which prevent Boston from establishing their game plan. Not to mention, we have the Porzingis injury wrinkle in all

of this. Right, So go to Boston on Monday and win one game from there, you're the home team on Thursday, You'll be favored. You'll be favored to send this thing back to Boston for a game seven, where the exact same principle applies. Like, we have never seen a team come back from down three to zero, but we have seen a team come back from down three to one before in the NBA Finals, right, and it's a momentum thing. Once Cleveland won Game five, which, by the way, how

did they win? They won because Lebron James and Kyrie Irving went into that building and dropped eighty two points. Do we think Luca and Kyrie are capable of that? I sure as hell do that. It's a long shot, but they're capable of it. Right, you win that game, you come home with all the momentum. Do you guys remember that Cavs Warriors Game six, It was like thirty three to eleven or something in the first quarter, like

they jumped them early. That game was never truly competitive, right, and then you end up in the knockdown, drag out fight Game seven. So that's the pathway. If you believe you're the better team, go into Boston on Monday, execute on the details, win that game. From there, you have a home game with a chance to send it to send yourselves to a winner take all game seven. So yeah, like do I think that's going to happen? Obviously not, But that is the pathway, and that's where you have

to drive that belief. And there's no way you can do it if you don't believe. And that is what the mentality of that locker room is going to be over the course of the next couple of days on the Boston front. Like it's really this simple, Like you can't fake urgency, it's completely impossible. There's playing hard and then there's playing like your life depends on it. And like playing hard is a character thing. It's what we refer to as motor right. You either have the willingness

to push yourself when you're tired or you don't. Right, that is like a thing that goes comes down to the individual, right. But playing hard and playing desperate are two fundamentally different things. It's impossible to replicate what you saw tonight was a crazy desperate Dallas effort, right, So all you have to do is bring that same level of desperation in game five. For you, it's the exact same concept in reverse that were talking about with Dallas.

You have to win on Monday, because if you don't, you got to go to Dallas where they're gonna be favored to send this thing to seven. Right, So everything comes down to closing the deal on Monday, bringing that urgency, flipping that dynamic, riding the home crowd again, a lot of like game plan discipline stuff. So like Joe Mizula has been talking a lot about spacing. That was the quote coming out of halftime. All those same diligent all the things that Boston was being very diligent about in

the first three games. Getting the right matchup, running action early in the set to get switches so that you have Dallas's rim protectors above the break rather than along the baseline, and then from there creating dribble penetration, hunting the great shot instead of the good shot. You do all of that. You score. If you score, you get to set your defense. If you set your defense, you

don't have transition cross matches. If you don't have transition cross matches, you can execute your defensive game play, which is something that Boston has done really well over the course of this series. I think Boston is gonna win Game five. However, we would all be foolish to write off Luca and Kyrie in a must win game like that. That certainly is a possibility that's on the table. But I do think Boston is going to close it out

in game five. All Right, Well, you're going to get into the mailbag, drop questions to the chat, and we're going to get to as many as we can here over the next twenty minutes or so. We're this close to crowding a new NBA champion, and with the action heating up on the court, it's even hotter. At Draft Kings Sportsbook, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. Draft Kings Sportsbook has you covered every step of the way with same game parlays, live betting odds, boosts in so

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expire one hundred sixty eight hours after issuance. See DKG dot co slash BB for eligibility and deposit restrictions, terms and responsible gaming resources. All right, first question, is Derek White the best role player in the NBA? If not, who is? This is a tough one. I'd have to I'd have to take some time to really think about, to really think about who the other candidates for that type of kind of title is. That said, I do think Derek White is kind of like the perfect NBA

role player. And the main reason why is there's like a positional versatility with him. Like he's a guard, but he's pretty big, and he's pretty athletic, and like can do things with his length and athleticism on the back line as a rebounder and as a shot blocker. You know, there was a a comment I can't remember, Oh, it's

a tweet. It was a tweet that came out of like a report somebody I'm gonna blank on who it was, but somebody reported that Derek White could be considered for the Olympic team spot should should Kawhi Leonard be on a to participate? And when I saw that, I thought that was interesting because like there's these other names that you're going to see thrown around, right, Like, well what

about Tyrie? What about Jaylen Brown? And like both of those guys would certainly be more deserving, right Like, if you're just going on who has the better basketball reputation, that player should get the spot. I agree, but strictly's

thinking about the game of basketball. Derek White, to me, is an incredible spot up player who can run inverted ball screen actions and has a ton of experience running inverted ball screen actions, meaning he can set screens for Lebron, set screens for KD, set screens for Jason Tatum who will be on that team as well, and pop and create advantages there a second piece of it, Like Derek White is a professional off ball player, he is a

professional off of Superstars player, right. He is a guy that has made his living learning how to be next to a supreme talent and fit his talent a lot longside what he does and to accentuate what the team does. And so I actually reeded when I saw that. I was like, Derek White would be perfect. He'd be willing to take an on ball defensive role like it was the most important thing that he's doing. Right. I think Derek White is the consummate NBA role player that you

could plug into any team anywhere around the league. He's great above the break, he's great in the corners. He can run action, he can run inverted action. He's an athlete that can impact the game on both ends. I absolutely think that Derek White's in the conversation for best role player in the NBA. Let's see should Joe Mizzoula play Krisops Porzingis in Game five? There's two things that

you have to factor in here when it comes to Porzingis. One, like Boston has a chance to repeat, like they're not in the Western Conference where it's like ten bloodbath teams every single year. Like the East is gonna be better next year, but I think Boston is gonna be favored to win the East next year, right, And so what you can't do with is risk potentially him having some sort of bigger injury that extends into next year or

affects his ability to stay in shape over the summer. Right, Like, we don't even know what the fallout of this injury is going to be like in the short term. So there's that piece of it. There's like a risk reward factor. If you think you can win the series without porzingis you got to try to win the series without porzingis. Second piece of it is how's mobility? Like, part of what happened with Christops porzingis is he was playing awesome in the first two games and a lot of that

had to do with his mobility. After he kind of tweaked it, he wasn't playing as well, right, So, like it doesn't matter if he's out there. If he's not Christops porzingis, So like it really depends on the coaching staff to know how much risk there is for severe additional injury and two and I guess that's up to the medical staff. And then two for the coaching staff. How well is he actually moving? Is he actually moving in a way where he can impact things? Because if

he's not, then it's not worth it all. Right, next question, is there an argument that Tatum is the most switchable defender in the league. So uh yeah, absolutely at this point in time, because like we've seen, like there are guys that are in that conversation for like best permitter defender, Guys that are like Jaden McDaniels, who are like too thin to guard the bigger, stronger players in the league.

But like to be clear, like Lucas had a lot of success against Jason Tatum in this series too, So like I wouldn't go as far as to say, like some of that's just Luca being unguardable, right, But yeah, Tatum, with his size and strength, should in theory be able to do a better job on him than a guy like Jada McDaniels. A. Jalen Suggs is another guy who's regarded as one of the best permitter defenders in the league.

He's a touch on the small side, right, like Lou Dort is a guy that I think can cause a lot of problems to some power players, but like you know, he can be a little bit on the underside side in terms of lengths. So what about pull up shooters when it comes to against a guy like him. Tatum has that unique capability of like real size and strength and perimeter mobility. Now, I don't think Tatum has been the same level of defender that he was in twenty

twenty two this year. I think Jalen Brown has made improvements since then. I think Tatum has gone down a little bit of a level since then. But like, Tatum hasn't done as good a job on the perimeter in this series, but he's been really good at the rim. He's been really good on the defensive glass, He's done a good job holding up under any sort of physicality that Gafford brings to the table. But like in terms of switchability, meaning actual ability to guard one through five,

Tatum is certainly in that conversation. Again, I'd have to think more about it to give you guys an actual list. Let's see how do the Warriors become contenders next season. So, anytime I see a team get written off, and we just saw this last year with Dallas and we're seeing it this year with Golden State, when you're writing a team off, usually if they've got a couple of real key foundational pieces, in this case Kyrie and Luca, or in the Warriors case like Steph Curry. Some draft compensation.

Jonathan kaminga Draymond Green is still one of the best defensive players in the league. Right, You've got foundational pieces, so it's really about smart Tweaks. It's a little bit more complicated for Golden State because Steph wasn't playing well to end the season. He was like he was like seventy five percent of himself for basically the last half of the year. So like Steph is gonna have to one get back to being Steph and then just smart Tweaks. I think they absolutely have to get a bona fide

secondary shot creator. There's been a lot of buzz surrounding like Zach Lavine with Golden State. In recent weeks. I've talked about like Dejontay Murray. We've talked about, you know, like like more on the margins moves, guys like Michale Bridges. There are a bunch of different directions they could go. But whoever that guy is, he needs to be somebody that can legitimately take the reins from Steph for large

doses of basketball games. One of the underrated pieces of the Warriors decline over the last couple of years is Jordan Poole, kind of fell off and Andrew Wiggins kind of fell off, and those two guys kind of like combined for that legitimate secondary star in terms of offensive firepower. I don't know that Wiggans ever is going to get back to that, and Jordan is gone. I don't think Chris Paul is going to be that. I'm not even sure if he's gonna be on the roster next year.

So like you got to find a bona fide secondary shot creator. A little bit more interior size, I think is the second piece. I actually like their wing athleticism. They just need to have a big look where they can be more physically imposing, maybe a Draymond Green at the four type of look. But again, don't underestimate small tweaks on the margins and how they can improve a team like Dallas literally just got a like a couple

of rim runners and a legitimate forward in PJ. Washington and they nailed one veteran minimum signing and then boom NBA Finals. So like that, that's again this stuff is I always talk about that quote that I got from Mark Titus that basketball is more art than science. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about, Like you can't

just add up the pieces on paper. There's like a synergy to the way basketball players fit together, and slight tweaks that accentuate each other's strength can kind of lock into place and allow you to become a basketball team that is greater than the sum of its parts. With the passing of the great Jerry West, I've always wondered your favorite players from the older generations, and who do

you think would play well in today's NBA. I'm not going to go that far back, mainly just because for me, like as a basketball fan, I especially when you go out past the eighties, I just I have not watched enough of those guys to give an educated opinion on how an opinion about how I believe they would fit

into today's game. All I will say is like, for me, the guys that I ended up watching a ton of even though I didn't watch them when I was actually a kid, but more as an adult, is like the kind of players that kind of had my same build. So like I'm six ' six, I have long arms, and I play on the wing. So like I watched a lot of Bobbie Bryant growing up, I watched a

lot of Michael Jordan. Growing up, I watched a lot of Grant Hill, Anny Hardaway, those kind of guys, because those guys just kind of like played a we had similar like frame to me, so like I would try to play like they played because I wanted to do the kind of things that they could do. And so those are the guys that, like, I watched a lot of like film on and things along those lines, and I've watched a lot of like NBA Classic games and stuff like that. But when it comes to like Jerry

West generation, I'm just so under exposed to them. And one of the things that I try to do on this show is like not talk about things unless i'm unless I've done the appropriate amount of research. And so so I don't talk about the draft until we get out of the finals. I'm not going to sit here and pontificate about draft picks when I haven't done the

requisite research. But interesting question again to me, Jerry West, like I said this on the show with Colin, to me, he's just one of the great basketball geniuses of all time, and I look at things like him putting Kobe and Shack together, him stopping the Kevin love for Klay Thompson, trade him kind of like being one of the guys, one of the in the brain trust that assembled to Clippers, and they're the Clippers were supposed to be like Boston

in so many different ways, right and we're seeing that come to fruition in the championship right now. So like to me, Jerry West was just kind of in touch with where the game of basketball was going and was one of the great geniuses of our time. Hey, Jason fan from India enjoyed the content. I've been learning a lot about about basketball. Keep up the good work. Oh, by the way, thank you for the kind words to sincerely appreciate it. The one professional basketball contract I signed

before I hung up the shoes was in India. I was going to play in this league called the Uba. They paid me for like two weeks and then the league and then the league folded. And then at that point I like looked at my wife and I was like, I can't keep doing this. I just got to go to work. But I got to meet the When when that league was being put to it was in like

the third or fourth season. They were doing like a major showcase here in the US, and they've like flew all these people out and I got to meet a ton of people that actually live in India and it was just like a really cool part of that experience. And big one if for me in my life is always wonder what would happened if that season would have come to Fruition and then I would have gone over there. Work ethic and psycho competitiveness is paramount to the greats.

As a GM, how do you evaluate players in the draft for that intangible So here's the thing, Like I'm a big believer in kind of staying in your wheelhouse. It's impossible for me to really get into touch with the intangibles of draft prospects because the people that do it year round and watch every single interview, they do, watch every single one of their games and really keep an eye on their motor in the different their their

competitiveness within games and things along those lines. For me, I have to do kind of a very abbreviated version of that. Like the NBA Finals, let's say they end on Monday, that's what the seventeenth. So like, I'm going to have less than two weeks to prepare for the draft, and so for me, I'm gonna be primarily focusing on skills like skills and tape, Like just as much as I can digest in a short period of time, that's it.

If I was working in the draft, that would be a major element to my focus on player development, Like player evaluations, I should say to me, Like, it goes into the competitiveness or your you're like being a psycho, your work ethic, those sorts of things, those to me, they don't just manifest in skill development, they manifest in the games, right, Like in order to be the kind of player that buys into a defensive scheme and is willing to do the dirty work, you've got to be nasty,

You've got to be competitive. There are no there are no lazy guys that do that type of job. Right But in addition to that, it's about the competitiveness, the pettiness, the wanting to be better than the guy next to you. That's what drives you on a daily basis to put in the work. And one of the things I talk

about a lot on the show. And I know this just from my own personal experience because I went through skill development in my twenties because I was so late to pick up the game of basketball, Like it's incremental guys, Like you shoot ten thousand jump shots over the course of two months over the summer, and you might get this much better, like it is a year over year, like just painstaking effort to improve your game on the margins.

The same thing goes with ball handling, ball handling and shooting, Like you might experience some initial improvement, but it plateaus pretty quickly and then it's like incremental improvement and so like you got to be the psycho to be the guy that improves in those areas, and it requires like if you're just going into the gym three four times a week over the summer with the trainer and shooting a couple hundred shots, like that's literally not going to

do it. There is a psycho level of work you have to achieve on a day to day basis to make those sorts of improvements. How much of Browning having better production than Jason Tatum in this playoffs has been based on how they're being defended, for example, being guarded by Nempard versus Nie Smith. It's a huge factor, right, Like Tatum's always getting the primary defensive player. In terms of the actions, it's the same, Like both guys are

getting the same help. Both guys are getting like aggressive coverages and ball screens and things along those lines. But there's no doubt in terms of the individual matchup, Tatum has a tougher shake. One of the bigger pieces of it is just the jump shooting. Though Jason Tatum is just having a nightmare jump shooting postseason, Jalen Brown is

shooting better. That's the give and take of basketball, right, Like if I always talk about like defenders being on their toes or being on their heels, if they are terrified of you shooting a jumper, they're going to be up on their toes, which will make it easier for you to go around them. If they're terrified of you getting downhill, they're going to be on their heels. But if they only have to worry about one of those things,

they can really sit on whatever that is. And so Jason Tatum, it's like offer a late contest and he's missing it right now. So like these guys are, it makes containing him easier in dribble drive situations. So again, I think it's part of it's the matchups. Part of it is Jason Tatum is having a bad jump shooting

stretch and by the way, that can happen. That's part of the game of basketball, right Like Lebron James last year had the worst jump shooting season he's had in ten years, and then this year he had the best jump shooting season he's had in ten years. I'm sure he worked hard last summer. I'm sure that was part of it, but it's not like Lebron made some gigantic improvement year over year in terms of his actual core shooting capability. He had a rough season, he had a

hot season. Jason Tatum has been in a shooting slump that's been lasting for a few months now. Who would you favor in a potential Game six in Dallas? So Boston deserves to be heavy favorite in Game five, right as they should be if Dallas were to steal that game. My guess is the line will be very slightly in Dallas. His favorite something like Dallas minus point five. I also wouldn't be surprised if Boston was a very slight favorite in that game, like a minus one and a half,

a minus point five, something like that. For me going into Game six in Dallas, it'd be a coin flip for me. Main reason why is Boston's been really good on the road. I do believe Boston is the better team. I think that Boston has more advantages in this series. And so even if Dallas were to get some sort of crazy Kyrie Luca effort to steal Game five, I'd still make it basically a coin flip in Game six, but Dallas absolutely could win that game. What do you

think of Jordan Pool to the Nuggets. Wow, that's a really interesting type of deal. I went on Washington Sports radio a few days ago, and I was talking a lot about how I wouldn't give up on Jordan Pool, and so I imagine they'll keep him. I think that young guards in particular have very volatile, you know, kind of life cycles, and so I think that, you know, Jordan Pool at age twenty seven is going to be a pretty steady pro and I think whatever team bets

on that is going to have some success. Or the reason why simple Jordan Poole can beat people off triple inting knockdown jump shots. He's like, that's a really good combination. Like he's quick as hell and he can knock down jump shots. Now, you hadn't shot the ball well in a couple of years, but that capability is certainly there. We've seen it in the past. As far as the Nuggets fit though, one of the things I talked about

a lot with the Nuggets. I love everything about that team except for they don't have anybody that can just generate dribble penetration since Bruce Brown has has left right, Like everything with Jokich's size related, Jamal Murray's screen related right, So like having a guy like Jordan Pooh can beat people off the dribble would be a would be a huge asset to that team. It'd be tricky to figure out how to do the to work out that type

of deal, though, especially at his salary. Is Luca a younger James Harden, an excellent scorer who doesn't know what defense is. No, Luca's a way better version of James Harden. In my opinion, James Harden was. James Harden was. What happens when analytics takes too much of a role in constructing an NBA offense. For instance, like James Harden, the step back three, the left handed drive off of the off of the between the legs dribble, and the occasional

crossover back to the right. Everything with James Harden in his prime was at the rim step back three. The rim step back three added a little bit of a floater in twenty nineteen right, but like there was a predictability with James Harden that made him easier to defend as playoff series progressed. One of the reasons why I think Luca has been a better player in the postseason than James Harden is he never it seems like every attack from him looks different. Like he's willing to attack

from the post. He's willing to attack straight iso, but he's also willing to attack in ball screens. He's not just taking step back threes. He's also getting into the mid range. He's taking step backs from the mid range. He's taking turnaround jumpers from the mid range. He can put you in jail and kind of like manipulate things from the middle of the floor. James Harden never would stop in the middle of the floor in his prime.

In the twenty eighteen twenty nineteen stretch, that little like kind of right handed push shot where he kind of powers his way along the right lane line and kind of fights her position and shoots that little pop shot Like there's just so much more variety in Luca's game. That makes him a much more a much more resilient offensive player, especially against elite defenses down the line, as far as the defensive end of the floor. Like, I think Luca's gonna learn his lesson. I think he's just young.

I think he's arrogant. I think he needs to have humiliation to kind of like have that slam slapped in his face, right, Like I've talked about it with Lebron all the time, Like twenty eleven, Lebron got embarrassed. Dude, your jump shots two inconsistent. You don't have much of it back to the basket game. You just you in general just aren't good enough in these details to get

to where you want to go. And like a huge part of what turned around his career twenty twelve in twenty thirteen was his ability to turn his back to the basket against KWHI Leonard, his ability to knock down over the top jumpers, like his jumper saved him literally in twenty twelve on the road in Game six in Boston when they were down three to two, Like, Lebron reached a level as a player as a result of humiliation he like remember, he like disappeared that entire summer,

like didn't talk to anybody when he came back to following seasons like reading books and shit, and like he was just like Lebron, like got straight up humbled in twenty eleven and it made him a better version of himself. I think Luca needed to. I think Luca needed to get punched in the mouth and like, hey, dude, you're really fucking good, but you're not good enough and there's these clear areas where you can improve, and I think this series is amounting to that for Luca. What are

your thoughts on the Luca Carmelo cump As players. I don't really see how they're that similar, even if I point out the point, even if I get the point about the poor defense, So don't look at it so much as the player cump because obviously they're very very different types of players. Right, Luca is a playmaking forward. Carmelo is a scoring forward, but lucas also an elite scorer. Right Like to me, Luca is just a much better

player with a much better standing in the league. I never thought Carmelo was like a true Apex superstar, Like he was just always in that second tier for me, Like even when he was on those really good Denver Nuggets teams in the late two thousands, Like I never thought he was like at the Kobe level, at the Lebron level. I always thought he was just like a tier below that. I think Luca's been an APEX star for you know, the better part of a half decade now.

So like to me, I don't see that specific side of the cup where I do agree. And the point that I think Colin is trying to point out is like it's about unachieved potential. Like Luca's insanely good, and he can be so much better. Like if he actually became psycho competitive about how he cares for his body and he became like a leaner, more muscular, better conditioned version of himself, that's just a way better basketball player. And when you combine that with the mentality to be

engaged on the defensive end, he can achieve anything. He could be the goat that like, that's he could absolutely go on a run and be remembered. As in the conversation with Lebron James and Michael Jordan, that is an absolute potential for Luca. But it is non negotiable that he addresses those things. I don't think Carmelo ever had that potential. But if you talked about what held him back,

it's the same things. It's a lack of attention to a health and fitness and a lack of commitment to the details, especially on the defensive end of the floor. So I think that's the point he was trying to make. Again, like, it's not a perfect comp but there are some similarities there. Somehow, some way, somebody has to break the streak and win from down to three. Could it be this Maps team?

Of course it could, It's just not likely. What I always talk about with this is any team that has the ability to go up three to zero has advantages that allowed them to go up three to zero. You don't go three up three to zero as a fluke. You do it with advantages, right, So like, in order for you to turn around and do the same thing and win four in a row, you better have all

the advantages, and that would require roster dynamics flipping. So like, I think the team that eventually breaks the three streak, and it'll happen eventually, But the team that eventually breaks

the oh three Strake. It's gonna be injury related. It's gonna be some team that goes up three to zero and then some sort of pivotally pivotally important member of the team gets hurt and then suddenly it just flips all those advantages, and then the team with the advantages, which is the down oh three team, is able to rack together some wins just for fun. Who do you think would win a seven game series between the twenty twenty Lakers and the twenty twenty four Celtics. I just

think it's an interesting matchup when comparing champions. So I think the twenty twenty Lakers are the best team since the two thousand and Night since the twenty eighteen Warriors. Main reason why is it's the only team in that span that had two bona fide top five players in the league. The Raptors had Kawhi. Your second best player is Pascal Siakam, Right, the twenty twenty one Bucks, it's

like Giannis, and then it's Chris Middleton and Drew Drew Holliday. Right, it's twenty twenty two Warriors, it's Steph Curry, and then it's like Andrew Wiggins is probably second best player on the team Denver Nuggets, it's Nicole Jokic and Jamal Murray is really good. I have the Nuggets, I think if I remember correctly, have him second in that list, but like that team had like Jamal Murray is like somewhere around the fifteenth to sixteenth best player in the league, right.

And then you have the Celtics team where I think they have two guys that are in that like six to ten range, right, So, like the Lakers had the unbelievable top end star power. As far as the matchup goes, the Lakers actually matchup pretty well with the Celtics because they were an excellent team on the perimeter. Defensively they had had They started Game six of the NBA Finals against the Miami Heat with Lebron James, Anthony Davis, Alex Caruso,

Contavious Colwall Pope, and Danny Green. That's KCP dominant perimeter defender, Alex Cruso dominant perimeter defender. Twenty twenty was the last great defensive season of Lebron's career. Anthony Davis was the best defensive player in the world. Danny Green was the worst defensive player in that lineup. The Lakers would have had the best player in the series. They'd had the

best two players in the series. Now, as we all know, the Anthony Davis host twenty twenty, by virtue of injuries and a lack of commitment to the details, has declined as a jump shooter and has become a player that's actually down in that tier with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown now. But in twenty twenty, he was better than both of those guys, and than these versions of both of these guys. Like you guys remember Ad in the bubble, he was like like Kevin Durant mixed with the best

defensive player in the world right like he was. There was a case to make that he was at the same level as Lebron, and it was certainly close. Although I still think Lebron is the best player in the world at that point. Do you think Jalen Brown can reach top tier superstar status. I don't know. I never want to say never, especially to a top tier athlete.

The one thing with Jylen Brown that I think would hold him back is even as he's made improvements as a playmaker, most of the top tier superstars are at least above average playmakers, and I don't think Jalen Brown has ever been able to reach that level, but I would never say never with a guy like Jaylen Brown. Hypothetical, who would you have picked in the twenty twenty two Western Conference Finals had the Sons beat the MAVs in Game seven and played the Warriors, that's interesting, but give

me the give me the Warriors. I think Steph Curry would have been the best player in the series by a mile. That Suns team in particular two like they. I was never as high on that Sun's team as everybody else. They in twenty twenty one, I thought the Lakers would have beat him if Anthony Davis didn't get hurt. The reason why they made it to the finals had a lot to do with injuries they ended up facing

that injured the Clippers team in the conference finals. Their best player was Devin Booker, and I really like Devin Booker, but I don't think Devin Booker is an APEX star. They would have been. I would have picked the Warriors against them, for sure. Saw a summer trade rumor of marketing into the Knicks. What do you think of that?

That'd be awesome? That's like a now I think one of the things with the Knicks is I think they similarly to what we talked about the Warriors, I think they need a legitimate secondary shot creator, and unfortunately Market is more of a play finisher than a shot creator, but he would certainly make them better as like kind of a slot into that Julius Randall position and putting ogn and Obi at the three. But if I was, if I was the Knicks, I'd be targeting someone who's

more capable of creating things off the bounce. Should Lively be considered the third best rookie behind Chet and Wemby. That's tough, certainly, certainly if you're factoring in postseason contributions, right, I'd have to go back and look at all the rookies, but certainly considering postseason postseason contributions. Did Joe Missoula leak the formula to playing against Luca? So? I talked about

this after game was a one or two? I can't remember, but like, I immediately thought back to the Minnesota series and I was like, man, shouldn't should they have just put Jaden McDaniels on Daniel Gafford and put Rudy goo Baer and Derek Jones Junior and done the exact same thing essentially, meaning put your biggest forward on Dallas's lob threats, put your rim protector on their bad above the break shooters,

which are Derek Jones and PJ. Washington. I don't know if it would have been enough to turn around the Minnesota series because Minnesota had issues on the other end with their inability to penetrate Dallas's load up the strong side type of defense. But like this, I do think that Joe Miszoula has put together probably the best game plan. And again, like when people talk about the Mavericks, like their build is fine, they have rim protection, they have

perimeter defenders, they have the superstars. The one weakness is they do not have a guy who can both guard on the perimeter and hit above the break threes consistently. So if you look at their situation, there's not really a ton of opportunity to improve the roster this summer, especially because they've gone all in in so many different ways. But what I would do is I'd go to PJ.

Washington and I'd be and Derek Jones and I'd be like, and who knows, Derek Jones might end up being poached this summer because he had such good season and mostly maybe the I think the Mavericks will probably try to keep them with their mid level exception. But if if Dallas can keep Derek Jones in PJ. Washington, you basically point point to those guys in their postseason kind of like wrap up meeting, and you say, above the break threes all summer long, above the break threes and corner threes,

above the break threes and corner threes. Again, it's there's a there's a It's not about winning one series against a really good team. You have to beat four teams, and every team is going to defend you in different ways. Boston did put together a nice formula with Joe Miszula for how to slow down Dallas' offense, and the only counter for that is to be able to either have Derek Lively turn into a three point shooter so that he can pick and pop in those situations, or to

have Derek Jones PJ. Washington, that group of guys, Josh Green, you know, that group of guys become effective above the break shooters. Because again, if you if we look at the geometry of the four, if the dunker spot is occupied because Tatum or the other team's best forward is there, and guys are glued up on the corners because they don't need to help because the biggest forward is under the rim. Then you're setting ball screens to attack their

center with your forward. If Luca's trying to get downhill in that ball screen, just imagine the geometry of the floor center in the dunker spot, Luca driving shooters in the corners. That's four players. Where is the opening. The entire above the brake line is open. If you have that guy, the guy setting the screen in this case, Derek Jones or PJ. Washington, if you have them roll, they're rolling into all that shit show underneath the rim.

If you have them pop, there's just a ton of opening above the brake and those guys are going to be wide open every single time. So like that is the ultimate counter to what Boston is doing is you've got to You've got to force whoever it is that they'll stop at that point because they won't want their

rim protector being pulled out above the break. You can literally cancel out that adjustment and force them to go back to putting their center on your center as long as that guy's capable of hitting above the break threes, and so that I think is going to be a big kind of like skill development piece that PJ and Derek Jones or whoever it is that they end up filling that spot with. We'll have to work on over the summer. All right, guys, that is all I have

for tonight. I sincerely appreciate you guys' participation in the mail bag and as always for supporting the show. We're going to run. This mail bag is breakout clips probably on Saturday and Sunday, and then we'll be back with Colin on Monday night to break down Game five after the final buzzer live on YouTube. I will see you guys. Then the volume