Hoops Tonight - NBA Mailbag: LeBron to Warriors? Murray costing Nuggets? Lakers FAILING Redick

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in Ontario. Bet must win to receive reward. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKG dot co slash b ball. All right, welcome to hoopsinight here at the volume. Happy Friday, everybody hopeful. If you guys have had a great week so far, I got a jampack show for you today. It's mail bag Day. We're gonna be bouncing all around the league with questions you guys

dropped in the comments. I sincerely appreciate you guys for dropping the questions. Don't forget if you want to leave a question in the mail bag, you drop them in the YouTube comments. I take them from the Friday and then the Monday through Thursday leading into the Friday show. So if you want to get a mail bad question into next Friday show today or Monday through Thursday next week, make sure you drop those questions in the comments. You

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more content. Make sure you guys follow us there, and then, as I mentioned at the start, keep dropping mail bad questions in those YouTube comments so that we can hit them on Fridays. All right, let's talk some basketball. First question, Hey, Jason, love your videos with the Warriors, need for a second option and having thirty plus million in expiring salary. What do you think about a Brandon Ingram or Anthony Davis fit with the Warriors, are they realistically gettable? Who would

you also consider? So brandon Ingram is an interesting fit in a lot of ways on both sides of the spectrum. Like he is a bit of a ball stopper. Like brandon Ingram is at his best when he can play a more heliocentric style. He's one of the better passing forwards in the league, and he's really good at cross court passes. He's got long arms, he can get that just whip that thing across the court into the shooting pocket when a low man steps over and a ball screen.

He can like really be methodical. And when he's picking you part in spread pick and rolls, he likes to run a lot of ISOs around the elbow. He'll come off of off ball action and look to score around the elbow when he's got a defender trailing him in those actions. Technically, not a great fit within the Warriors offense, which is very much quick decisions, read and react and everyone's involved. The ball's flowing from side to side, So like that would be somewhat of a concern, right, But

there's more complications than that. For instance, he's shooting a lot more threes this year. He's taking seven per game and making thirty seven percent of them. He was below four attempts per game in each of the previous two seasons. He's converting spot up possessions at one point four to three points per possession, so he is doing a better job of quickly catching and attacking in those spot up situations. Also, there's something to be said about having variety in your offense.

That's potential upside right. And here's the thing. Anytime you make a star trade, there's risk. So for the record, before you ever even consider this process or even venture into this in terms of changing your kind of mental approach to this team towards tweaking the roster in the future, anytime you make a trade there's a risk. So if you want to pretend like this can't go wrong, I don't know what to tell you. Every trade has risk. Maybe the fit is super clunky and the team underachieves,

like that's a potential outcome. Maybe you trade Jonathan Kaminga in a deal like this and he goes somewhere else and he ends up being a superstar. Now I don't think that's likely Johnathankmine got a big game last night in the win against the Rockets, Right, But I don't think he has superstar upside. I think he has a star upside. I don't think he's superstar upside. Like if you told me Jonathan Kmingo was the twentieth best player

in the league in five years, I'd believe that. Do I think he's going to be the seventh best player in the league in five years? No, I don't think that he has them in there that that in his game. Right, But like, there's obviously a risk when you make that type of deal, right, Like look at the Clippers. You trade for Chris for Paul George, Suddenly you're the championship favorite in Vegas. Shay is a twenty year old rookie

who just averaged eleven points per game. Not to be clear, when Shae was Jonathan Kaminga's age right now, Shay was much much much better. He was like a twenty four point per game, fifty to forty guy. Like he was just at a much higher level than Jonathan Kaminga is at right now. But yeah, you make that trade and Shay goes off and becomes a top tier superstar I think he's the fourth best player in the world, and the Clippers underachieve, and so the gamble doesn't pay off.

That's part of the risk, right, But then there's also versions of that risk where things kind of click into place and it ends up dramatically improving your team, and who cares what happens with the other guys. You accomplished the goals that you want to accomplish. That's the game. That's the game of making tweaks to the roster, right, and there is up with a guy like Brandon Ingram. Even though Brandon plays different, playing different doesn't necessarily mean bad.

Their advantages to playing different ways in different parts of the game are being able to tweak your play style based on who you're playing against. Even the old Warriors teams, if you guys remember when like Sean Livingston and Leandro Barbosa would come into the game, they played very different

than the Steph Curry lineups. Talent is talent at the end of the day, and like again, you look at like those late game situations, like imagine the final couple possessions in the Denver Nuggets game, and all of a sudden you have Steph getting denied off ball and all of a sudden, the balls and Andrew Wiggins or Jonathan Kuminga's hands. If that's brandon Ingram, he's got a better chance of getting a bucket there because that's what he does for a living and improves your chances of thriving

in those types of situations. So like there's upside as well. And that's why it's like, anytime you want to make yourself better or improve your situation, you typically have to take a risk, and that risk comes with the possibility of reward or the possibility of it not working out in your favor. That's the name of the game. Now, Anthony Davis, like you mentioned your question, I just think

that's too unrealistic. I don't think the Lakers would trade Anthony Davis unless they got an absolute haul of draft compensation and young players back, and I just think that would drain the Warriors' resources too much. And then also Anthony Davis and Draymond Green are somewhat redundant, and so I don't think that makes a ton of sense. As a basketball fan, I would love to see Lebron play

with the Warriors. I just think him and Steph are such a natural fit, and I think it would instantly vault them into top tier championship contention, But it would just be way too difficult to pull it off. Like you'd have to convince Lebron to leave his family, and I just don't think he'd ever do that. And then Lebron's salary is huge and tough to match, so you'd have to include someone like Wiggins or Draymond, which includes a lot of risk and and potential downside there. It'd

be difficult to pull off. So it's never gonna happen. But obviously, as a basketball fan, I think it'd be fun to watch Lebron and Steph try to make a playoff run together. But like, the actual options are somewhat limited. Rights guys like Brandon Ingram, guys like Jeremy Grant, guys like Zach Lavine that are on the table, and all

of them come with risk. You just have to decide if you want to risk something to try to win a championship, and that's a tough decision to make, and I understand the complication, and that's why I always talk about like waiting till the deadline, you're just gonna have more information than you have now, you'll have roughly twice as much information when you get to that point, which will give you a better opportunity to make an informed decision at that point. Is Tyre's Halliburton even a top

ten point guard right now? He's just been so inconsistent slash bad this season. Here are guys ahead of him right now, in no particular order, Steph Shay, Luca Kyrie Dame, Jalen Brunson, Dearon Fox, LaMelo Ball, John Morant, and James Harden. I think I didn't agree with all those guys except

for LaMelo LaMelo. The stuff with LaMelo is a little complicated because, like, he is playing really heliocentric, really high usage, and even though he's putting up big box score numbers, the team isn't really scoring particularly well by the way, this is before his injury. But like the Lamello stuff is a little bit like fools gold good stats on a bad team kind of thing. But all those other

guys are definitely playing better than Tyres Halliburton. The Tyreese Haliburton thing is one of the strangest things that I can remember seeing in my time covering the league, with the way he was playing this time last year, he legitimately looked like the next great superstar in the league. He looked like evolutionary Steve Nash. The Bucks couldn't guard him, the Celtics couldn't guard him. Like it was just it

was just a problem for everybody. And then he heard his hamstring and he's never been able to get that athletic burst back. And what's scary about that is we've seen a couple examples of this where it's like James Harden hurts his hamstring and he's never really been the same.

Remember how good Devin Booker was in the NBA Finals run in twenty twenty one, and since then he's been able to have some bursts, but he's had some soft tissue injuries that have kind of recurred over the last few years, and he's been somewhat inconsistent in being able to reach the level of play that he that we envision for a Devin Booker, right, and so like, there are some examples of this where guys like James Harden, Tyrese Haliburt, and Devin Booker, where like the hamstring injury

seems to kind of limit their mobility a little bit and then they fail to reach the ceiling they were originally at. So I'm hoping that's not what it is. But it's just there's there's some weird stuff too with the burst, where like at home he seems to be like a lot more explosive. The home road splits for him are like crazy out of control. So I don't really know what to make of it. I think I

mostly agree with your list that. Like I said, outside of Lamello, I'm always hesitant to write guys off completely. Lebron said something in his postgame presser after the Heat game that I thought was interesting. He said, like he's like, I know how quickly things can turn in this league, and it's the truth. Like, reputation has this such a

lingering kind of effect on discourse surrounding players. It's like if a guy goes and plays bad for two weeks, it completely changes your impression of the of that player. Right Like as a Laker fan, I can think of like twenty twenty three, Ruey has an awesome playoff run, and coming out of that, everyone's like, man, Lebron, a

d Austin Ruey, what a core. That's a squad. Let's see if we can't anchor those guys with a few other good players and see if you can't make a run right, And then Rui's just flat out bad in the Denver series the next year, and now it's like, oh,

Ruey's unserious, he can't do this. Then like Ruey comes out to start the season and he's pretty good this year, but then as of Lady's been really bad, and it's like, all of a sudden, like your opinion of these guys just like wildly oscillates back and forth based on how

they're playing. And that's the thing, Like all it takes is him getting healthier, getting his legs underneath him, regaining his confidence, mojo rhythm, and going on a run for two weeks where he looks like the old Tyres Haliburton and all of a sudden, most people won't even care about the stretches where he looked bad and so like

it's it's kind of just a weird thing. And there's a lot of like other stuff going on with Indiana too, in terms of like rotation decisions, some of the stuff with like the fit with Ben Matherin, like they have a funk of their own that they're dealing with but like I will say that what I saw happen with Tyrey's Haliburton over the course of the last year is definitely one of the strangest things that I've seen in my time coming covering the league. Hey, Jason mailback, what

do you think is going on with Jamal Murray? Is it laziness or and satisfaction with one ring? I've heard via Denver beat writers that Murray never comes into seasons in shape and doesn't rehab as hard as he could for injuries. Is it coincidence either way for Denver to do anything this year? Murray needs to wake up and he just got a damn Max contract and put a ton of pressure on the Nuggets front office in order

to do so. So frustrating as a Nuggets fan. So you know, I've always thought it's interesting how this kind of thing can snowball. And another example of this kind of thing is with Joel Embiid, where it's like everyone focuses on the injuries, and like, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like injuries don't have a certain luck element to them and that there's some of that that's outside of your control. But on a base let's

talk through it. If you, as a professional athlete, take the level of seriousness necessary with your diet and your exercise regimen to be in shape, which should be like in theory, the baseline of being a professional athlete, right, then you limit your chances of sustaining an injury. If you limit your chances of sustaining an injury, you have longer, more consistent stretches of being healthy, which continue to help you be in better shape, which continue to perpetuate your

health and your ability to avoid those injuries. The exact opposite happens when you're not in shape. So like if Jamal Murray or Joel Embiid comes into the season out of shape, and he shows up to training camp, and I know there's not a ton of you guys that listen to the show that played in college, but I know there's some of you guys that played in college

or played in high school. Do you guys remember what it was like as a college basketball player showing up to campus in August and the type of like heavy duty conditioning and how they kick your ass on the court every day. Do you remember in high school in early November when you'd have your tryouts and then that first like two weeks in November, Like how much you have to run, how much conditioning there is, how many defensive drills you do. Those are hard on your body.

And like if you go into that situation out of shape, Yeah, you're playing your way into shape through that training camp or that early part of the season where you're starting starting up the engine, starting up that process. But that's also where you can sustain injuries if you're not in shape.

And so if you come into season out of shape and then you suffer a nagging injury in training camp in large part because you're out of shape, and that forces you to miss time, which makes it so that when you're trying to fight your way back onto the court, you're also out of shape. And then you get back onto the court and you're still not in the condition that you need to be and you suffer another little nagging injury. It can just kind of drag on throughout

the season. Luka Doncic is another guy that's kind of a victim of this type of approach. You dramatically improve your luck on the injury front just by taking care of your body before you go into these processes. If you can spend the month of August and September before NBA training camp, not necessarily playing with a lot of impact or killing your body, but at least hyper focusing on your diet and making sure you're at the right weight and have a good baseline for cardio and all

that kind of stuff going into training camp. You just have a better chance of surviving that process without suffering nagging injuries. So they are all related, and you're right, like, I've heard the same things about Jamal Murray in the way he approaches his rehab and he the type of condition he comes into training camp in, and I absolutely believe those things are connected. And so what's going to

turn things around for Jamal Murray? Getting in shape and staying in shape and not letting himself get out of shape. That will help him do better on the injury front. If you can go an extended stretch of not being injured, he'll feel his base getting stronger and he'll get in a better rhythm on the court, because that's the other part of it. If you're constantly banged up and in and out of the lineup and not feeling one hundred percent physically, it's hard for you to get into a rhythm.

I watched Jamal Murray hit a couple of jump shots in a game last week, can't remember which one, where he's just like not getting a ton of lyft and he's like making the shot, but it's like all wrist at the top of the shot because he's just not getting the lift that he needs. Like Jamal Murray that we've seen in the playoffs in the past, gets separation. He's an athlete. He'll dunk on you and he's just not in that conditions as often as he needs to be.

And there's some criticism that he deserves as a result of that. And you're right, there is pressure. Nicole Jokich is the best player in the world. This roster has enough talent to be good. They need Jamal Murray to be better, and so it starts with him. It starts with him in his approach and making sure that he holds up his end of the bargain as a professional athlete. Why don't the Nuggets play Jokic with more bench players as he can elevate everyone and instead try to give

that unit to Jamal and maybe Michael Porter Junior. I thought about this after looking at them at a post that said Jokic was the superstar that plays with the starters the most, and this leads to the bench being extremely terrible. I would be interested to see if you can pull up data that backs the notion of Jokic playing with the starters more compared to superstars like Giannis, Luca and Tatum, et cetera. So here's the thing. You inevitably have to play your superstar with bench groups, Like

there's the best. It's not like starters bench starters bench. That only happens if you can do like straight up line shifts, and that's extremely rare around the NBA. And typically you need to have really really talented lineups, like some of the stuff we've seen with the Warriors, where like their six through eleventh best players are as good as the third through tenth best players on a lot or third through ninth best players on some other teams. Right, Like,

they have a depth of talent. The top bend on the Warriors is limited, but they have a depth of talent, right, so they can get away with that sort of thing. For the vast majority of teams. There's your two primary offensive engines. Right, So let's take for the Nuggets, let's call it Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokich. There's going to be a bench unit that is led by Jamal Murray and there's going to be a bench unit that's led

by Nikola Jokich. If you imagine they start the game together, one of them goes to the bench, and this guy's got to carry a lineup, and then they swap and then that guy's got to carry a line up, and then they come back on the floor together and they close the half. Right, Like that's the It's more complicated than that, but that's the gist of it, right, And

so inevitably Jokich is gonna be playing with bench groups. Now, what I believe you're referencing is like pairing more of the starters when Yokich is off the floor, And there is some upside to that potentially, but the Nuggets have

done that over the years generally speaking. When it's like playoff time, it's a lot of like Aaron Gordon's out there with Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon's out there with Christian Brown and they're switching and they're trying to get stops and they're counting on Aaron Gordon and Jamal Murray

to make something out of nothing. The problem is is that, like it's really difficult to do that over the course of the regular season because then you're gonna put a lot of minutes on your starters, which can wear them

down in the big picture. And so, like I understand when coaches try to make it work with deep bench lineups, because every time you have a non damaging stretch with a deep bench lineup, you give yourself rest for your starters, and you dramatically improve your ability to compete over the extent of the season. There's also this thing that you run into a lot where coaches don't want to have to lean on that sort of thing because then you kind of pigeonhole yourself in that for the rest of

the season. So, for instance, like some lineups are bad, but if you give them time, they'll become better. And so you have to be willing to put up with some suck along the way, right, And so a lot of times, like you'll see a group out there and it'll be like, man, like, why don't they stagger this guy in there? Why don't they put that guy in there?

And it's like maybe coach Malone will do that if he needs to, but he wants to not do that if he can, because if he doesn't do that, he gives that lineup more reps, more opportunity for Julian Strather to try to create offense, right, more opportunity to let Russell Westbrook work with these bench guys and see what he can put together, and then hopefully in the long run, that lineup just performs better. Right, Like the on off data with Yokic at the beginning of the year was

like insane. The goal is to shrink that over the course of the year, not to just ask Jokic to solve all your problems. That's a lot to ask. And this isn't your last chance either. Yokic is in the heart of his prime. He's got multiple years left of being the best player in the league. There are big picture goals that you have to keep in mind as well. And so yeah, like I I think that that'll always be the way that Mike Malone confronts that problem in the in the big moments, it'll be a lot of

the starters without Jokich when the time comes. But you just you need, you need to be more cognizant of the big picture goals within the within the scope of the regular season. Next question, when are you going to criticize JJ like you criticized Ham. This is this was an inevitable question that was gonna come, and you're going to see a lot of this sort of thing being talked about on a lot of different networks and by a lot of different media personalities over the course the

next week or two. All of these things are more complicated than they look on the surface. So for instance, forget about the coaches for a second, both JJ and Darvin. The reason why I'm frustrated with the Lakers in this two and six stretch is the extended multi week like over two week stretch where they're just not interested in fighting, like you desperate need a win for so many reasons, and you go into Miami get kicked in the teeth

and don't in the first quarter. You just stop playing like straight up, stop playing the starters before the first TV timeout, stopped playing like that. That is an issue, right, So that's one issue. The fight of the team, the basketball character of the team. That's what I was focused on in yesterday's video. A reason why it is very simple because the eighty two games is your practice for the April May June reality of going after the trophy.

That is your opportunity to prepare to be a championship team. And if you skip that process, you will not be a champion. End of story. And I thought last year under Darvin Ham that that funk that they were in December had a lot more to do with them just being frustrated with Darvin Ham. I was wrong. It's their basketball character, as has been clearly displayed by them quitting on JJ Reddick in early December, Like, come on, you know, so that's why I'm off the Lakers. It's a basketball

character thing. But that's not the only reason the Lakers are struggling. Austin Reeves was out the last two games. He's the third best player. He's also like one of only the only guys on that team that have natural motor like that naturally play hard every game are Austin Reeves who's injured, Jared Vanderbilt who's injured, and then like maybe Gabe Vincent, maybe Jackson Hayes who's injured, and maybe a guy like Max Christy, but like Delo, is not

a natural motor guy. Rue's not a natural motor guy. Lebron's not a natural motor guy at this phase of his career. He Lebron is a great motor when the stakes are down, Like that's the thing is, like Lebron is the most dependable big game player that I can remember ever watching. Like, if it's an important game, Lebron's gonna be there and he's gonna give you his best. It's like a guarantee. But like in the regular season, he's not a motor guy. Anthony Davis is not motor guy.

What motor motor is just like your habit, your natural ability to just play hard regardless of what the circumstances are, right, and so like, there's more complicated things going on. Austin's hurt that sucks, Jared Vanderbilt's hurt that sucks. They're bigs. The two bench bigs that they have on the roster that aren't two way guys are Christian Wood and Jackson Hayes, and they're both hurt. So there are other factors at play.

Anthony Davis is dealing with planter fashion issues in his foot that could have something to do with why he's not necessarily fighting as hard as he usually does. Lebron's in a big funk. So like, there's other factors at play. Obviously, everything is a hell of a lot more complicated than what's just on the surface. So let's go back to last year, and I said this at the time. Is Darvin ham one hundred percent responsible for what happened with

the Lakers? Now? I have been abundantly clear about the issues with the Lakers roster as it pertains to their athleticism in their motor. I've said that for years now. That doesn't change the fact that Darvin was also a bad coach. Guys, Darvin was a bad coach. It was the worst kept secret in the league. It was consensus around the league. People I talked to that don't even cover the Lakers that were just watching from afar were like,

he doesn't know what he's doing. The players have repeatedly passive aggressively thrown Darvin under the bus for not knowing what he's doing. There were many, like obvious things for the fans on the outside, a complete lack of urgency. Anytime anything bad happened, it was hands in the pockets. It was a presser. Oh you know, it's a marathon, not a sprint and it's like, okay, you're not holding them accountable on a daily basis though he was not

an active coach. He was not on the sideline actively coaching the game. He would just basically stand there and watch, and then when they'd come back to the huddle, he throws some platitude, some meaningless platitude to them in the huddle, and then they'd go back out there. He was not a schematically smart coach like that. Was a bad basketball coach,

Darvin Ham. I will be shocked if Darvin Ham gets another head coaching job in the UD like I'll be floored if he gets Ano their head coaching job in the NBA. Darvin Ham was a bad coach. That is separate from other issues that the Lakers have. JJ Reddick has been coaching the team for a month and a half and from what I can see with him, he's been much more engaged on a daily basis. He's added

a lot more. They run more off ball action, like little things like Darvin Ham did not have them running exit screens and ball screens where you're doing stuff with the off ball defenders to keep off ball defenders occupied while you're running your action up until recently, the Lakers were running a much higher percentage of organized offense per game than they were running under Darvin Ham. There are a lot of clear things that JJ was doing better

and rectifying. The players were openly talking about the game plans and the attention to detail. So here's the thing. Do I know that JJ's a good coach? Yet? No, it's too early. He's only been doing it for a month and a half. I watched Darvin Ham for two years. He's a bad coach. So like, again, I understand on the surface that it looks bad that the players quit on Darvin. Darvin gets fired. Now the players quit on JJ, and it looks like it's unfair to Darvin. I get that.

I'm saying that they have some quit in them, and that's separate from the fact that Darvin Ham is a bad coach. And so like, let's not get those two things conflated. Here's the one troll I'm going to respond to today, and then I promise I'll stop. Can you actually start covering other teams? Now, the coverage of this channel is fifty to sixty percent Lakers, and then good teams only get a couple of minutes Also, Lakers fans need to apologize to everyone they just quickly labeled Lakers

hater for seeing this reality two seasons ago. First of all, no one's going to apologize to you because two seasons ago the Lakers were in the Western Conference Finals, so you were being a Lakers hater. And then secondly, this is one of my biggest pet peeves. I do talk about the Lakers a lot, you know why, they're my favorite team and I watch a lot of their games, you know, like I want to talk about them. They also have a very large fan base, so it monetarily

makes sense for us to cover the Lakers. That said, the idea that fifty to sixty percent of this channel is Lakers coverage is just a flat out lie. Like this week has been especially heavy in Lakers coverage because there's been a lot going on with Lebron being bad, which we covered on Tuesday, and then the complete meltdown in Miami, which we covered on Thursday. So we did in the first four days this week, we did like about forty five minutes of Lakers content. You're right, that's

a lot. We did three hours of shows. We did three hours of shows over those four days. So like we spent two hours and fifteen minutes covering the rest of the league, which is a lot. So in a week where we were very heavy in Lakers, we were like thirty percent Lakers, and the next week it'll be substantially lower, just like the previous week it was substantially lower.

Like week, we spend four to five hours a week covering the NBA, and that means three to four hours a week covering a lot of other teams beyond the Lakers, the Warriors, the Celtics, that the teams that we regularly hit.

I spent twenty minutes talking about the Atlanta Hawks yesterday, Like, So, it's just one of those things where it's like, if you what you will maybe think when you look at the channel because of the way our thumbnails are, You're gonna see a lot of Steph Curry, You're gonna see a lot of Lebron James, You're gonna see a lot of Lakers, You're gonna see a lot of these big brands, right because that's just smart for marketing, for us to

get as much exposure for the channel as possible. Every one of those episodes has me covering the rest of the league. I work extremely hard to cover the rest of the league, and it's just complete bullshit that people look at the channel and they think it's just a Lakers channel. It just could not be further from the truth, and it could not be further from reality. All right,

no more trolls. We're moving on. Next question. There's been a lot of conversation about the cliin in ratings, and historically the NBA has always changed slash implemented rules to keep the game entertaining. So my question is what rule would you change, slash ad to increase the entertainment value of the NBA. Thanks, love the show. So there's been a lot of talk about the three point shooting. I'm I'm less worried about that because I don't think it's

something that needs to be countered by the rules. I think it's something that will be countered by defensive evolvement. So like a revolution, I should say, so, the two most valuable shots are uncontested room attempts and uncontested three point shots. Right, so analytically it makes sense to guard

the three point line well. Teams will continue to emphasize guarding the three point line, and within the next five years defenses will get really good at guarding the three point line, and that will add variety to basketball that has been lacking over the course of the last couple years. I'm not really worried about that one on a rule level.

Everything for me, in terms of like opportunity for the game to be improved right now, stems around the flow of the game as television product, which stems around officiating. I don't like complaining about officiating on the team by team basis. I don't like complaining about officiating on a game by game basis. I think it's a loser mentality.

We've gone into that a lot on this show. However, in the big picture of the NBA, there's still way too much of like, Oh, Trey Young came around this ball screen and a dude's like side to side with him, and Trey just kind of jump bumps into him and throws some bullshit up and gets sent to the foul line. Now, this entertaining, up and down basketball game between the Bucks and the Hawks is now turning into a free throw contest. Like you, you don't want that as a fan of

the game. You don't want to watch team's parade to the free throw line. I as a Laker fan. I've watched Laker games before where I'm like, Okay, Ad just fell over for the third time and Austin Reeves just flopped in the mid range for the second time, and

the Lakers are shooting their tenth free throw of the quarter. Yeah, the team is doing well as a result, but this isn't fun to watch, right, Like, I get that, and so like I am of the belief that the NBA officiat side of things needs to focus on the flow of the game and the spirit of these rules more

than the technicality of these rules. The more we focus on the technicality, the more gamesmanship we'll see, the more choppy stop and go play we'll see because of guys parading to the line, the more subjectivity that we bring in, the more trying to implement the spirit of the rule, the more flow that will get to the game, and the better the television product will be. So that's the main thing that I think needs to be addressed over the course of the next couple of years in terms

of a rule change. Hey, Jason, I think the thing that is making the Hawk's new lineup so good is that they now have DeAndre Hunter and boy Bogdan Bogdanovitch now cooking other teams bench units, giving Atlanta extra offense from their bench, which is pretty reliable to count on. What do you think? I talked about this yesterday too, Like I even like the idea of being able to bring in Bogdan to play with the starters minus one

of the guys, usually someone like Zachary Resachetu. I think is the worst of the three wings at this point, just because he's younger and he still has a lot

of development to do. Allthough, Zachary is really exciting. He's got some pretty explosive like close out attacking shops, and I kind of see him as being like a guy that could become like a more of a like a kind of similar to like what Michael Bridges did for the Suns in the twenty twenty twenty twenty one area, where it's like capitalizing on skip passes and like making high level attacking moves in the mid range in the short range that is like another like ceiling raising scoring

piece that he does. Like they're they're gonna have a lot of upside there in the long run. But like it's like Norman Powell with the Clippers. Right, they have their main lineups that they're gonna go with. That's gonna have James Harden, three athletes and i Vi Kazubas, Right, But then they also have we can bring Norman Powell into this mix, and now we have more firepower on the floor, and we can we can score with teams. Right, Like,

don't overestimate or underestimate Norman Powell's contributions to the Clippers success. Right, Bogdanovich is what that role is for this Hawks team. He's the guy that brings a different type of more aggressive scoring to compliment Trey Young's playmaking. And you have versions of it where you can keep the two of them together, or you have versions of it where you

can lean into defense in one of the guys. Another team like this is the Sacramento Kings before Demarto Rosen entered the equation where it's like, Okay, this is a game where we can play Malik Monk and Dearon Fox together a lot. This is a game where we need to play Dearon Fox and another athletic defender instead, right, Like, that's the type of flexibility that comes from having those different looks and from having a really high powered offensive

player on the bench. In the event that the Lakers could ever make a trade where they keep D'Angelo Russell, That's the way I would look at that too. Oh, this is a matchup where d'angela Russell can close and he can be out there and his offensive ability is an upside. Or oh no, this is a game where D'Angel Russell needs to sit and we need to have this better athlete on the floor because we need more

support athletically on the perimeter. And like, that's kind of that approach, But like, again, I agree that that is a vitally important part to being a productive basketball team is having multiple guys that can take over the offense for extended stretches of the game. Jason, I know you're a Lakers fan, but I'm a Heat fan, and I'm curious to know your thoughts on our season. A lot of the specific Heat analysts who I follow all believe

that the window is closed. Jimmy's declined due to age and BAM's offensive struggles have been a big cause for concern. If the Heat stay at this playing level that they've been at for the past three years, what would you have them do this trade deadline slash offseason. Everyone talks about trading Jimmy but is a contract as big as his. Granted it's expiring for clearly declining player even valuable. Would love to know your thoughts on the decision making for

the Heat front office. Keep up the great content. Huge fan from Hong Kong, Thank you so much for supporting the show. It means a lot to me. The offensive struggles have been really bizarre. Jimmy Butler in the first part of the year was having some really weird games

where he was like not even looking to score. Then he came back from his injury and he's been gunning and he's been a lot better, and he's like over sixty percent from the field and over sixty percent from three on over twenty two points per games since it came back, like Jimmy's hoop it right bam, you know.

Ever since the Nuggets series, I was like, why can't this dude make anything around the rim that isn't a dunk, And like how many times he got like little five foot push shots or easy kind of layup finishes around the rim that he'd smoke in. How it hurt their chances in that Denver Nugget series, and that just has never ceased to be a problem that's extended into this year, where he's just been like flat out atrocious finishing around

the rim on anything that's not a dunk. And then there's also been like the oh, BAM's gonna take more jump shots thing, which has caused him to be less active in the middle of the floor and a little bit more spotting up, which is kind of getting him out of his original involvement in the offense in some ways. And so it's just been kind of funky, but at the same time, like you got to seriously ask yourself, like, was this team ever a championship team even when Jimmy

and Bam are really good? And the answer is no. Like going back to twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three, when there were better versions of Jimmy and Bam, was you know, Bam, they were still feisty, able to eliminate

limited teams. I used to call them the bouncer at the Championship Club because it was like, if you were not a real contender and you ran into Miami, you'd lose, but inevitably Miami would lose to the team that would win it all, or that was closer to winning it all, that was more of a legitimate championship contender because they

didn't have the firepower. And so like, if there was an opportunity to anchor Jimmy and Bam, it was getting a guy like Dame last year or making a more aggressive deal even the year before to try to anchor

those guys when they were at a higher level. At this point, though, Jimmy just kind of feels like a wild card and Bam seems like he's hit a ceiling in a lot of ways, and so like, at that point, you have to look at your big picture, and your big picture option is, like BAM's twenty seven years old. I do think he'll get a little bit better as time goes on. I do think he can shoot the ball a little bit better over the big picture, right, But Jimmy at this point is better served to bring

in other asset return now. One of the things that's nice is Jimmy is currently rehabbing his trade value with the way that he's been playing, So you could argue that the best thing to do is to continue what you've done since Jimmy came back, which is play through him more and have him put up numbers and rehab

his value. Then you move him in February to a team that's desperate and looks and wants to contend and recoup some sort of asset return so that you can then try to rebuild around Bam and maybe it's a Kelllware Bam front court where you have shooting. Like kell Aware's minutes have been really up and down, and I haven't been super high on him yet, but he's young

and that takes a lot of time, right. But Like at that point, you just kind of start to look around and you're like, Okay, if Tyler Harrow's not a real foundational piece for us, what can we get back for him? Right? Like, what are the guys that we're trying to build around in the long term? Like Pella Larson, he seems like a foundational type of role player within

the Heat system, right, Like Haimihawks Junior. His role has been a little bit different this year, but he's a guy that you want to continue to kind of give an opportunity to see what he can become in the big picture, Right, Nikole Jovich, I don't really know that there's much of a foundational type of player there. But like you start to give all those guys more opportunity and see what they're capable of, and you start to

kind of reconfigure from there. But like, unless you think you can contend for a title with Jimmy at this point, it's like it's kind of like anything else where. It's like his best ability to help this team at this point as asset return, but like he needs to continue to rehab his value, and the best way to do that is continue to play around him. In the big picture, I do think it'd be interesting to go in on

a big look. I think it'd be really interesting to find a center that could play alongside Bam, because when you have a really big, deep, monstrous defensive front line, it's just such a high floor. It's like the Brook

Lopezianis and Tenakumbo thing. It's like anytime Brooke and Giannis just like play really hard on defense, they're just in every game because the two of those guys are just so good together, right, And like, when you have that type of size and in physically imposing frontline, it's just

such a strong foundation to build on everything else. Right when you start to take chances on high level offensive players in the draft and try to see if you can't find a perimeter initiator that brings more juice to the table than a guy like Tyler Harrow or Terry Rozier Hi Jason. The Pistons have largely regained respectability this season, I agree, and Caid Ivy and the Kid Ivy pairing has been a huge positive given the influent initial questions

about their fit. However, the two common themes behind them losing games is inconsistent front court scoring and a lack of ball handling slash initiation outside of Kid. Getting a backup point guard like Alfred Payton should address the latter issue, but I do feel like in order to take the next step, Detroit needs to find a number one scoring week as I think Cad is best served as an

overqualified second scoring option. Asar and Ron Holland don't project to fit that mold, and I understand Trajan's view that this year is very much an evaluation of the current roster. But if you were the GM, would you consider trying to acquire an established vet like a Randall or an Ingram in a trade to accelerate this process or wait to get that player via the draft understanding of scoring

forward is arguably the most coveted player archetype moment. That's a good point, Like if you want to get in the race for a guy like Randall or Ingram, I don't think. I don't think Randall will gets traded, but maybe he will will see but whether it even like Jeremy Grant or like Zach Lavine, that kind of thing, like, there is going to be some fights for some of those guys and it could end up being expensive and it could end up setting your team back. Here's the thing,

don't be in a rush. I think Jade and Ivy is a really natural compliment to Kate, and the main reason why is he brings a different type of attack. Kate is a size methodical working out of the middle of the floor decision maker, meaning like getting into ball screens and putting his defender in jail and kind of just slowly operating in the middle of the floor till he sees an opportunity to score, to make those kickoff passes. He kind of has like a Luca Light type of

approach there. Jade and Ivy brings downhill burst. That is a great compliment Jaden can score the basketball. He has eight to twenty point games this year. He had seventeen all year last year. His true shooting percentage jumps by about two percent every year. He's up to fifty six percent you shooting now, which like for a young guard is really good, Like sixty percent is outstanding, and he's already starting to encroach on that on a year by

year basis. So like my thing is like, yeah, you are eventually going to want a third offensive player in there somewhere that can create his own shot and can create shots for others. But racing to get there at the expensive asset return is silly. The idea here is like a men, excuse me, Asar Thompson, You know Ron Holland, these guys, they are going to be playing your support roles alongside these guys, so they need to develop as

off ball scorers. Now, do I think Asar Thompson could be a Michael Porter junior esque off ball scorer, Mikhale Bridges esque off ball scorer? No? Do I think Ron Holland can be that? No? And so that's the really the next approach. It's I don't necessarily think they need to look for a guy that can be an offensive engine the way that Ivy and Kid can be at stretches of the game. I think they need off ball

scoring essentially. Just imagine a much better version of Tobias Harris, a guy that when you swing the ball to the weak side on that skip pass, he's either knocking down the three or he's getting chased off the line to where he can make a play. We've seen a lot of teams go this route. Like the number one overall draft pick this year, Zachary Rissoche is a perfect example of this. That is an off ball score who can

be a plus a defensive player for them. That's the like off ball scoring complements on ball scoring so well. On ball scoring with on ball scoring can be clunky, So like that, that's where it's like, if you were going to make that sort of deal, I would be targeting someone like a Lori Markin in this summer where it's like, what if we put Lori Markin in, Like if you were going to try to include young players, that's the type of player you want to go after.

Someone that has a lot more good basketball in them, that's earlier in their prime, that very wonderfully compliments your Stars. That would be the type of player that I'd make that type of deal for. But again, unless you feel like you can do it without giving up too much, you're better off just being patient and doing it through the draft, because again, it might be another two years.

But Jayden Ivy feels like a guy to me that's gonna average twenty six points per game on sixty percent for shooting at some point, and if he does, you're in a much better position at that point, and Caide's gonna keep improving and you're gonna be able to generate a lot of really high quality off ball opportunities. You need guys, you need guys who can be deadly in those particular types of situations. But I wouldn't trade for a brandon Ingram. I wouldn't trade for an older, injury

prone type of guy there. I would be going for either a young player, someone along the lines of Lori Markinen, or I'd be looking for that type of player in the draft to try to anchor those guys as an off ball score. Last question, Jason, I'm surprised to hear how this was from the Cave Celtics video on Monday. Jason, I'm surprised to hear how much you liked the shots Tatum was getting when he was hunting Garland, particularly at

the end of the game. As a Cavs fan, I was really happy when that was the Celtics late game offensive process. What makes the Celtics so good is they just have more high quality guys that can shooter attack close outs. In most teams, Hunting Garland basically neutralized that advantage and made their success come down to a low efficient shot that almost no team wants their players taking

contested mid range shots. It's hard to watch a smaller player consistently put into one on one situations over and over, and Tatum will convert on some of those possessions playing that way as he did in this game. But I will take that one hundred percent over ball movement and spraying threes. He just could not keep up with the math problem that presents a couple things. It's more complicated

than that. In order to get those spray in threes, Tatum needs to bring two to the ball, and his best way to bring two to the ball in that situation is to punish Garland one on one and so like It's one of those things where like Cleveland's defensive approach in that situation was we don't want Boston to get spray out easy catching shoot threes. By the way,

they still gave up a few. There is a play where Tatum attacked guard Land with about five minutes left on the right wing, beat him off the dribble, brought in an extra defender, and made a kickoff passing Al Horford at a wide up in corner three. But for the most part, Cleveland was trying to stay home and trying to force Tatum to score on Garland on an island. This is where we can get a little bit heavy

to playing the results. So for instance, Donovan Mitchell hit a pull up three, two of them in the in clutch time, a step back over Merrill and then or no, not over maryl over howser, excuse me? And then he hit that crossover on Drew Holliday where he kind of got caught on the screen and he hit that like

pull up three at the top of the key. Donovan Mitchell is shooting thirty seven point five percent on pull up jump shots this year, so they both went in, but there's a sixty two point five percent chance that he misses either of those shots. I based on the way Tatum was playing, those short range jump shots felt like a high percentage shot to me, like a shot that he was going to hit sixty sixty five percent

of the time. And so again, just because Jason Tatum missed an easy layup over Garland and Donovan Mitchell made a tough, contested pull up three doesn't mean that Cleveland got the better shots. That's the results in a late game situation. Anything can happen. You could be running really great process on both ends for both teams, but maybe this guy sinks a prayer at the end of the shot clock and this guy smokes a layup, and that's

the difference in the game. And I'm not saying that Cleveland smoke made a prayer at the end of the shocol like I'm talking about an imaginary situation. But you get the point, like, at the end of the day, you can have better process than your opponent and they might just make shots. So like, you can't really over index on the result and pay more attention to the process. The reality is the math advantage of the three point

shot only matters in the large sample. In the small sample, it only matters if the shot goes in, and it's a lower percentage shot than shots that are closer to the basket. So, like I tweeted this during the game while it was happening, but like I thought Boston was gonna win that game because I thought Tatum's mid range pull ups over Garland were higher percentage shots than anything

that Cleveland was getting, and they were. Donovan Mitchell just made two really tough pull up threes and Tatum missed a couple of layups. On one play where Darius Garland did a really good job rushing Tatum, driving into traffic, over penetrating and missing, and then another where Tatum made a great plane beat Garland and was right there, like he just he he makes that lay up, it's a different game, you know. And he drove by Garland and once again got a wide open three for Alhalford in

the left corner. There was a double team that led to another wide open three for Alhalford in the right corner. So like, again, I don't, technically, I haven't. I'll pull it up real quick just because I'm curious, But technically, on a percentage basis, al Horford shot has a higher percentage chance of going in. I'm gonna pull it up just to just to see. But I bet you, I bet you he's over forty percent on Al Horford on uncontested catch and shoot jump shots, shooting forty seven point

five percent twenty eight for fifty nine. Like, technically Boston got better shots, even on a point per shot basis down the stretch of that game. It's just again it went in shout out to Cleveland. That's why you play seven game series in the NBA, because we want to find out who the better teams are absence of some of the variants that can happen in basketball games. Right.

So again, like that's why I'm i I was harping on that because there's a huge difference between I'm operating in a ball screen and I'm taking like a rear view contested seventeen foot pull up jump shot off the dribble, which is a pretty low percentage and pretty low value shot versus Tatum six ' ten, big and strong versus Garland tiny guard fighting him down to like seven to eight feet from the rim and taking straight up and down short range jump shots that I think think he's

gonna make fifty five to sixty percent of the time, which means if we have three big clutch possessions at the end of the game, I feel like there's a pretty good chance that I might score on two of them.

Whereas if I'm James Harden, I'm taking step back threes. Yeah, you shot thirty eight percent on step back threes for a season, and that's worth a lot of points in a large sample, but like sixty two percent of the time he's missing that shot, and a lot of times in the playoffs he'd go through extended stretches where he

couldn't make them and it just didn't matter. So again, like that that's kind of hopefully just a better breakdown for you guys of why I kind of believe in that process over over the course of the tail ends of games, like large sample shot value, small sample field goal percentage, And like I had I had someone say, last thing and then we'll get out of here. I had someone say once like, well, that doesn't even factor in free throw shooting, so that doesn't work. You're right.

There's a stat that Synergy uses that I really like. It's called score percentage, which just takes the percentage of possessions that you score, meaning like made field goal or gets to the line and make at least one free throw. So like the score percentage is higher when the field goal percentage is higher, the points per possession is higher

when the shot value is better. Right, and so again when we get into these like slow down situations at the end of games, I'm looking for the most valuable shot on the most likely shot on that possession to earn me points, not the most valuable shot that I could get on that possession, If that makes sense. All right, guys, It's all I have for today and for this week, as always is severely sincerely appreciate you guys for rocking

with me and supporting the show. We'll be back on Monday with another set of power rankings as we bounce all the way around the league, I'll see you guys then the volume. What's so, guys? As always, I appreciate you for listening to and support hoops tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.