Hoops Tonight - NBA Opening Night Reaction: LeBron, AD & Lakers SHINE vs. Wolves + Knicks-Celtics

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let's talk some basketball. So Anthony Davis was the story of the night for the Los Angeles Lakers. Thirty six points and sixteen rebounds. Just an absolute monster. And you know this is obviously he's been playing like a monster for the majority of twenty twenty four. I want to get to that here in a minute, like this is not some revelation like oh my gosh, ad he's back. He's been awesome almost NonStop this entire year. It's been a big part of why I've been high on this team.

But this was a particularly great game from him, and I didn't even expect it to be after the way the game started. Because one of the most important parts of Ad in his you know ceiling, because AD's floor is so high, because he's such a good defensive rebounder, and because he's such a good defensive anchor for everything you're trying to do on the defensive end of the floor.

So like, even AD's bad games sometimes get you know, attributed as bad games when they really are just maybe not the most impressive box score performances, but he creates such a sound foundation for you to build a basketball team on that that just gets conveniently looked over.

But he broke out of that slump in the middle of the third quarter by virtue of him appsbsolutely needing to Lebron checks out of the game early into that quarter like he's been doing so far a since JJ Redick look over the team. He's checking out like around that seven six minute mark in the first and third quarters. And then there's this long extended stretch there of like five or six minutes a game time where AD's running

the show without Lebron out there. And this is where the matchup becomes fascinating because one of the things I talked about going into this matchup is that with Minnesota, they are going to give all sorts of problems to all the Laker perimeter players, right Like, they just are so good and so long, and so athletic and so strong, and they play so physical, and you guys probably saw a lot of that in the second half, right Like, just look at how as d Lo or Austin are

bringing the ball up the floor. There is physical ball pressure from Nikkeiel Alexander Walker, from Dante DiVincenzo, hicking those guys up full court, making them turn a bunch of times, making it so that by the time they make that high post entry pass to get started in that offense, there's already like thirteen fourteen seconds on the shot clock, you know, And like that's what Minnesota can do. They

can get really physical with your guards. The especially as the league has allowed more physicality, players that are not particularly big and strong can kind of get contained and corrowded by those guys. And so how you beat Minnesota is you have to attack their front line with size. You have to go through them with strength, through some

of their thinner players. And so Anthony Davis and Lebron are critically important in this particular matchup, And of course Lebron had I thought Lebron's game was pretty solid in terms of how dialed in he was on defense and a lot of like passing reads that he made little plays here and there. But he didn't have a big box score game, and so a lot fell on Anthony

Davis to kind of carry that load. And you could tell in that third quarter stretch there were just a bunch of possessions that ended with like seven or eight seconds on the shot clock, and AD's got the ball at the top of the key and it's time for him to go to work, and you could tell there was a little it's when he hit that little step back shot over Ridy Gobert kind of around the left elbow area. That was where you could tell Ad was like,

I just got to keep shooting through this. I know I'm not making shots right now, but I just got to keep shooting through this. And then that one fell, and then he got to the foul line a couple of times, and then he got that and one on Anthony Edwards, and then he hits a three, and then he hits.

this game. The exciting part is the jump shot piece of it, right, And like again, it's all every time we're looking at jump shot results, we want to make sure that we wait until we get larger sample sizes, right, But it's such an important part of elevating a half court offense. Like if you're gonna be elite half court offense, you gotta have guys that can make shots over the top. Like when we talk about offensive ratings, what are the

best offensive ratings in the league. Usually they're usually around like what point one, twenty two on twenty three, around that range, right, But the worst offensive ratings in the league are they're still like, you know, one, twelve, one eleven, and I can't tell off the top of my head, but they're right around that area, right, talking about ten points over one hundred possessions on average, right, And a big part of that is usually like on the possessions

where he plays great defense and they shut down your action and they take away the easy catch and shoot threes and the easy driving layup opportunities. It's like, who's gonna just kind of turn this possession into something when when no one else can. Right, Ad hit three or four shots tonight where he turned nothing into something, and

that's an important elevator for this offense. Remember, as we go back through this like kind of progression of the last few years of the Lakers offensively, two years ago, both Lebron and Ad were abysmal jump shooting and their offense was really bad and it became a big problem for them. They actually won on their defense as they made that Western Conference Finals run. Would go into the following season and Lebron James becomes a forty one percent

pretty high volume three point shooter. Just that fundamentally changed the offense for the Lakers. Right If they can get to the point where both Lebron and Ad are hitting some of these over the top jump shots with so much other physical imposition they can put against other teams, that would be a huge ceiling raizer for this team. But the interesting thing to me, though, is that Lebron and Ad have been basically awesome for all of twenty twenty four. I expected them to be awesome. Go look

at their numbers. Just go look for the final forty six games the last year's regular season, when the Lakers were the fourth best record in the league and the third best offense. Lebron and AD were consistently awesome. And then they were awesome with Team USA. They were awesome in the Nugget series. That series was lost on the margins and with some issues with some role player matchups. Lebron and AD were awesome in that series. Lebron and Ad are awesome. It's a huge part of why I'm

high on this team. What I'm specifically excited about is the details that help you win basketball games. I talk about this concept all the time on the show. Basketball games are one on the margins in many cases, and if you do not win or fight in those margins, you're setting yourself up to fail. It's like playing with an arm tied behind your back. And last year with Darvin Ham, there was one margin that the Lakers consistently kicked asid in and that was free throw differential, right.

But aside from that, they were really weak and a bunch of the other areas of the game. And so one of the specific things I was excited about with JJ Reddick was he came in talking about that I want to find more opportunities for margin attacking the offensive glass. JJ Reddick talks about this concept called limbo, right. It's this very simple idea between in that kind of transition

between a defense to offense. If you're not sprinting back in transition defense or you're not crashing the offensive glass, you were accomplishing nothing. And there were way too many possessions last year where the Lakers were not crashing the offensive glass and not getting back transition defense. There were a lot of guys getting caught in limbo there, and what you saw tonight is like, oh, actually the Lakers are pretty big. Rueyjachimura can get downhill in some of

these corner crashes and secure some of these rebounds. They got some athletes out there, why not try to build margin there. That was a huge part of the Lakers winning the possession battle tonight. They generated fifteen additional possessions off of offensive rebounds. Help side defense, the Lakers were this weird passive defense last year where it was like, Oh, we're gonna ignore this guy, we're gonna pack the paint,

we're gonna do these kind of basic concepts. And there's the same type of limbo that occurs in help side defense. If you're not taking away a shot on the weak side or actually helping, you're in limbo. You're not helping anything.

Look at how much more active the Lakers were in passing lanes just by virtue of being in the right spot, so that when Minnesota made mistakes, they were making mistakes to Laker hands that were in passing lanes as they were forcing turnovers and getting out in transition again, won the offensive glass battle, nine fewer turnovers, ten more fast

break points. Those little details. There's a possession in the second half, Julius Randall tries to take a shot, smokes it falls down or no, he actually made it made the layup falls down. Lebron and Ad immediately identify it inbound to Lebron. Lebron sprints down the floor, throws a love to Jackson Hayes for an easy layup on a possession while the Minnesota was down a man. Those are little details, little things on the margins that help you

win basketball games. That is what is the potential for this particular team taking what you had last year is a strong foundation, which is Lebron and Ad are two of the ten best players in the world, and you've got a good starting lineup. It's not a perfect starting lineup. I don't think it's a starting lineup that could contend with the best starting lineups in the league. I don't think they have enough two way talent. But it's a

good starting lineup. That's a good foundation. So if you can take the thing thing that you struggled with over the course of the season, like actually playing your best players as much as possible, which was a huge problem with Darvin Ham last year. Didn't start playing his best players until the second half of the season, and that

dug them in a hole in the staindings right. Paying attention to those details on the margins, like if you're just sharp crashing the offensive glass and getting back in transition defense and in your help side defense and defensive rebounding and all these different situations, you dramatically increase your probability of winning basketball games. It's not rocket science. There is so much that you can control with your execution. This was a huge thing I talked about after that

WNBA Finals game. Everyone's talking about the officiating. The Liberty were the sharper basketball team the entire second half of that game. It built them an opportunity to steal a game that they had no business winning. And so that's the part I'm excited about with JJ Redick in the long run, it's just those little details. I think there's a lot that they can get better at. Lebron still wasn't great tonight. I think he can be better. The

Lakers were five for thirty from three. I thought they generated a lot of really good looks for good shooters that did not go down. There were multiple times tonight where I'm watching that game where I'm like, Laker should be up twenty twenty five right now, and they're they're just not making shots.

Gobert some other big defensive rebounds. I thought rually looked awesome. The Browny stretch, you know, is interesting because I was a little nervous because you cram a five minute Brownie shift in there or a three minute Brownie shift in there, and you go minus eight and you lose a close game.

It's a really bad look, especially in the Western Conference where like the four seed I had home court advantage in the first round, was two games better than a playing team like that's the nature of the Western Conference. You can't afford a trick off games. But I thought JJ found a nice time for it. The time in the game when the Lakers were up by double figures

definitely got a little weird. But it just kind of felt like the Lakers were laying around this lebron and Bronny concept rather than just kind of playing basketball the way they had been. But you know, I thought Bronnie was fine. He got isoed twice by Julius Randall by Anthony Edwards, forced them both into tough, contested mid range jump shots. Julius Randall made his, Anthony Edwards missed his. I thought he held up fine there. I thought the shot that he took on the right wing was a

good look, he just missed it. Had a decent little offensive rebound attempt that Rudy Gobert got. But like as far as like a really high pressure like whatever you do, don't shit the bed type of situation, I thought Bronnie held up pretty well. He looked like a basketball player

out there. And now you got that out of the way, and now Bronnie can get his reps when he has opportunities in practice or with the State Ready group, get his reps with the G League, and just focus on becoming a really good basketball player over the next few years and see if he can't turn himself into an NBA player that has a meaningful spot in a rotation on the Wolves front. You know, and this is something I want to keep in mind for both the Wolves

and the Knicks. These are dramatically different basketball teams now in terms of their playing style. Dante DiVincenzo is like an entirely different weapon that you have to incorporate. By the way, I thought Dante was amazing tonight. So many big defensive plays, little rotations, deflections here and there. His ball pressure on d Lo really changed the pace of the game in the second half of this one. His shooting it's like he's open. It just feels like it's

going in every single time. He's just going to be a monster for this team. That's like that kind of guy is just so easy to plug in. It's just not an issue. But Julius Randall is just a fundamentally different type of basketball player than Karl Anthony Towns. Like you could literally feel the dynamic at play where was like Ant didn't really know when to be aggressive in the second of like once the Lakers went up double digits and just said, screw it, I'm putting everything up,

and he started just being super aggressive. But like to start the game, he didn't really know when to attack. Julius Randall didn't really know when to attack. You could tell that Julius in particular didn't know what to do when he was off the ball.

Right on the Lakers front, it's literally the same roster as last year with a couple of young guys coming in for some bench veterans, right, but like it's the same group of guys from last year. Yeah, there's some new things that JJ Reddick is plugging in, but it's a lot of the same. Right, So you've got two teams that know exactly how they want to play, that are going in and unleashing this kind of known commodity.

And then you've got two teams that a month before the start of the regular season fundamentally altered everything about what they do. And so, like, I don't really want to get into the let's have sweeping declarations about the Wolves, like, oh, they butchered everything we talked about this this summer. They needed to like I shouldn't say they needed They wanted to build more cat flexibility. By virtue of gaining that cat flexibility, they took a risk by bringing in Devincenzo

and Randall. Everyone knew is a risk. I promise you. The Wolves knew. I promise you the Wolves front office deep down new. There's a version of this where we're worse, but there's also a version of this where we're better, and it's going to take time to figure out. It's going to take a lot of time. Julius in particular, because he's a little bit of a ball stopper, and you can tell he's just he's not like that, just

a super fluid, connective piece alongside other basketball players. It's gonna take some time for to include incorporate Julius Randall. I wouldn't be surprised if the Wolves don't really hit the gas in terms of like hitting their ceiling as a team until the second half of the year. It's possible that they're middling in that four or five six range by the time we get to mid December. It's very, very possible that that's the case. And that's to me, is not some sort of, you know, a tombstone for

the Minnesota Timberwolves. There's a lot of time for us to figure out what this team is capable of. They also just for kind of sloppy tonight, Like this was a team that was a top ten rebounding team last year. Julius Randall is a better rebounder than Karl Anthony Towns. They just didn't rebound well tonight. Those corner crashes like there's a battle that takes place there. It's like as the dudes crashing out of the corner, the guy who's guarding him has to box them out coming from the corner.

can lead to some sloppiness. So again, I don't want to overreact to that sort of thing. I think the Dante DiVincenzo fit is perfect. You still saw what we know the Wolves can do there. This is a very good Laker offense. Mind you, they didn't shoot the ball well, but like in that second half, you saw what the Wolves do to everybody when they really tighten the screws on the perimeter. It's like, ah shit, like we can barely get the ball up the floor, and we can

barely get into our sets. When the Wolves were throwing that punch, it was Ad who saved the day by just kind of squeezing points out of there with his greatness, but like the ceiling is still in there. The team is going to be very good. It's just going to take some time for them to figure things out. And on the upside, I've on Aunt looked for the most

part great again. He got in the second half, we started forcing the issue a lot, and so obviously the shooting percentages aren't gonna look great, but i mean hit a lot of jump shots tonight. Again, that's a big thing I'm gonna be keeping an eye on as we're tracking him throughout the rest of the season, is just if this jump shooting, you know, improvement from him is real.

It's such an exciting thing for the potential of this team in the long run because it's one of the most dynamic downhill athletes that we have in this league. There's play in the second half tonight where he just cleanly toasted Anthony Davis off the dribble for a layup. He's just still such a dynamic downhill athlete. But yeah, let's not overreact to anything with the Wolves. Want to see a lot more opportunity for them to kind of

just learn how to play with each other. It's gonna take a few months for us to really see what they're capable of New York and Boston. Boston is perfected modern basketball. It was a very simple concept that they were unleashing tonight in order to generate all these quality threes. They generated twenty threes that were catching shoot threes that Synergy logged as uncontested, and they got over one point six points per attempt on those shots. It all stems

from a very basic concept. They want to create a weak side two on one, meaning like where you have a shooter on the wing, shooter on the corner with one defender that's kind of splitting the difference between those two. And they do that with a bunch of different ways. They usually find a matchup that they can hunt or an action that they can run that either brings two to the ball or brings the low man over from there. It's very basic, and they just play their driving kick.

In this particular game, it was two actions that they were consistently running. And this is something that we talked about in when we talked about the Knicks and what they could potentially look like this year. The two things that concerned me were Brunson and kat in the starting lineup. Yeah, they use some really dynamic defensive talent between those guys.

But those two guys, Brunson's gonna hedge and recover. That means put two on the ball for a second, and Karl Anthony Towns is gonna run some variation of a drop coverage and so consistently in this game, they'd bring Brunson's man over to set a screen and they'd have I think it was Derek White, Derek Whiter, Drew Holliday, whoever's on him slip out of it, because again the hedge. The idea with the hedge is like, Okay, Tatum's got the ball, we have Derek White come set the screen.

If Jalen Brunson just runs up with him, Tatum's going right downhill to the rim, probably dunkin on somebody, especially with your five out spacing, and there's nobody underneath the rim, right, so Brunson has to cut off the driving lane. If he hedges out to cut off the driving lane, then Derek White can slip out of it. Tatum throws that little pass over the top. Now we're in our week

side two on one right, Carl Anthony Towns. This is a big part in the early part of the game, Tatum's first three really really deep drop coverage from Karl Anthony Towns. Tatum comes right off and hits the shot. There were like four baskets that Boston got in the opening minutes on plays where Kat was sagging really far back.

And then in the later portions of the game, Kat started to come out to the level, but once again they were doing it as a drop coverage, so he'd show at the level, but the guard would still be chasing over the top two on the ball. Now that there's two on the ball, we have our week side two on one right, and from that week side two on one, Boston is just the best team in the league of getting the ball to the guy that can be the decision maker who can then make that kickout

pass to the shooter on the weak side. There's three major elements to it. There's the driver as the decision maker, off ball spacing like making sure you're always in a spot that make help defenders make a decision. Way too often in the NBA, you will see teams when they get sloppy as the driving kick gets going, guys will stand too close to each other, they'll end up in the same spot and like all of a sudden, you make yourself easy to guard. Those spacing principles are critical.

It's not just five out either. Boston will have guards and bigs cut along the baseline. It's kind of like this a constantly churning machine where guys always know like, Okay, this guy's driving and he's gonna be coming out to the corner. That means I need to relocate up here to the wing, and this guy might need to cut through. Like there's all these different, like little spacing dynamics that

they're great at. Right, So the driver is the decision maker off ball spacing and then elite shot making ability. Eighteen of the Celtics catch and shoot threes in this game in this game were guarded, and they still got one point seven points per attempt on those shots. Because elite shooters, it doesn't matter if the hand comes in late. As soon as they catch and they get their rhythm, they don't even see that hand. The only way you're really bothering them is if you can bother the shooting

pocket or bother their base. And what's interesting to me is all those concepts feed into each other and it just kind of goes off the rails right, like elite shooting creates hard closeouts. Hard closeouts make for easier drives. Drives to the rim, create those week side two on ones in proper spacing and good decision making gets the

ball to the open man. That's where the elite shooting comes back game as these guys are knocking these shots down, Like it's so interesting, because like there's a conversation to have.

that's when it turns into ugly basketball. We're gonna see a lot of teams this year try to mimic Boston. In the coming years, it'll probably get worse and worse. And if you don't do it the right way, you won't get the results and it will look ugly. And so I think it's interesting to me because everyone talks about Boston and them being this like high volume three point shooting team, but it goes so much deeper than

that to the process. They have such a beautiful process for generating elite catch and shoot opportunities for elite shooters, and they just that is what makes this team so difficult to guard. Tatum was absolutely amazing. One of my big predictions for this year, if you guys remember, is like his shooting slump was real, the real shooting slump that lasted the entire postseason and the Team USA experience. But I consistently said, it's just a slump. There's a

lot of talk about go to Tatum, get too buff. No, he didn't get too buff.

You can shoot thousands and thousands and thousands of reps over months and months and months and then go three for seventeen in your first three games, Like it is a mind fuck and so it is possible to enter into slumps where you start to overthink your shot and it just kind of expands on itself and it becomes worse and worse and worse, And like Tatum has just been too good of a jump shooter for too long for it to be any more than just an actual slump. Well,

how about eight for eleven from three tonight. How about ten for thirteen on jump shots overall? He had one game all year last year where he made eight threes. He hit eight jump shots just off the dribble. He was eight for ten on off the dribble jump shots. That's about as resounding of a you bet your ass I can shoot the basketball type of statement from Tatum that you could see. Again, super small sample size, but that's some of the best jump shooting we've ever seen

from Jason Tatum. One of the most common mail bag questions I got this summer was like, Okay, so Jason Tatum is not considered one of the top tier superstars.

He's he's like three or four years in a row where he's been below a point per possession on pull up jump shots. If he gets set up to like one point zero five one point one points per attempt on volume and he's hitting threes off the move and that sort of thing like that would be a massive ceiling razer for him because he's just so damn tall, and especially in this system. I mean, you saw there was a play in the first half where he had like a drive against Josh Hart, just easy, breezy, little

left handed drive for Lea. This team creates so much space, you're gonna see teams go like, Okay, we need to stay home off the ball, and that's where those opportunities for him to drive to the basket will be there. But the better he is as a pull up shooter, the more those guys have to be on their toes to contest, which creates easier opportunities to blow by them off the dribble. Just a resounding statement from Jason Tatum. Super super excited to see how much of this is real.

Over the course of this season, every starter was awesome for Boston. They were combined twenty six for forty one from three. We talked about margins for the Lakers. The Celtics dominated the margins in this game. Did a really good job of chasing the Knicks off the three point line. Like we talked so much about three point volume, that's two sides of the floor. If you take a million threes, that's great, but if you give up a million threes, you're gonna lose. And they just did a really nice

job of chasing the Knicks off the line. They held him to only thirty three point attempts. Like the Knicks actually shot fifty five percent from the field in this game, but because they chased him off the three point line, they kept him off the offensive glass only five offensive rebounds. They Boston took care of the basketball so which prevented any sort of live ball turnover situations. They had just four turnovers. They allowed only four fast break points for

the Knicks. They dominated the margins. It was like a complete and total outclassing of the Knicks that we saw from Boston tonight. Again, above and beyond anything having to do with shot making, the Celtics just looked like a sharper basketball team tonight. And that's the scary part on the Knicks front. Again, similar to what I talked about with the Wolves. I don't care about the offensive end. It's basically a brand new basketball team. There's no Devincenzo,

there's no Randall, there's no Mitchell Robinson. Think about how much Isaiah Hartenstein was a cog for them in their five out attack last year. Isaiah Hartenstein, like you're gonna see him with the thunder this year when his hand heels, that dude is a He just greases the wheels for those five out offenses and not having in there as

a change. Adding McHale Bridges, adding Karl Anthony Towns, you can tell, especially the Karl Anthony Towns, oh Gannnobi and mchal Bridges, all of them don't really know when to be aggressive or when to keep the ball moving. Like you can tell they're still feeling out like their order of operations on offense, that's guaranteed to lead to super inconsistent and sloppy play over the first few months. Same

goes for Minnesota. So I don't really want to have any sort of sweeping declarations about either of these teams until we get out a minimum like twenty games into this. It's gonna take some time for them to figure it out. McKale Bridges made some bizarre tweak to his shooting form and he hasn't shot the ball well at all since it started training camp. He is two for sixteen on catching choot jump shots in preseason, two for seven from three to night. Again, I think they'll be fine, but

just give them time. I was really disappointed in their defensive effort though. They did a terrible job of containing the ball, which is like a death sentence against I talked about it earlier. Karl Anthony Towns was way too passive and his help and drop situations to start the game just sitting back in the paint. That won't work against Boston either. I thought their rotations were slow, they got killed on the glass, and it was disappointing because,

like you built this team to contend with Boston. So like, even with you adding all this talent, you're still at a talent disadvantage. What did I say in the season preview? If you guys remember I said to me the Knicks are basically a lesser version of the Celtics. Yes, Jalen Brunson is better than any of their guards, but Brunson, Josh Hart or Brunsonduce McBride is not that much better

than Derek White and Drew Holliday. And when you factor in their defensive contributions, you could argue it's close to even ognnob Michal Bridge is really damn good basketball players, They're not as good as Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum.

Like I personally think, even though kat If I was starting a franchise with, he's a better basketball player than Christaps Porzingis, but within these roles on these teams, because Porzingis has better rimp protector, because Porzingis is nearly as good as an above the breakshooter, because Porzingis can post mismatches and score so well, Porzingis is every bit as good as as Cat, if not even better, in his

specific role on these teams. So like I was having a hard time conceptualizing anyway for the Knicks to beat Boston anyway. But you're already at a disadvantage. You can't afford to also be the sloppier team. And that's the disappointing part is it's not like you went in there and Boston shot your face off and you lost by fifteen. But you played a great game. You played an awful

basketball game. But it is very early. I'd just like to see when teams are locked in to start the year, because to me, that's an indicator of how serious you are. But it's definitely a disappointing start to the season for the Knicks. I will be covering both of these games in more detailed tomorrow in an episode of TIMPs tape that probably won't be on the podcast feed, that will

probably just be on YouTube. But I'm gonna wake up tomorrow morning, I'm gonna rewatch both games, and I'm gonna put together a bunch of film and we're gonna get into more detail on these concepts. So make sure you guys check out the YouTube feed. That's all I have for tonight.

I'm stoke that we're starting this season back up. We're not going live tomorrow night, but we will be going live on Thursday night and I will be covering Wednesday night's games and Thursday Morning show.