Hoops Tonight - NBA Opening Night Reaction: Steph Curry & Warriors take down LeBron James & Lakers, Celtics beat Sixers.

your money out quickly. Use promo code Jason T and download the FanDuel app today to make every moment more This NBA Season twenty one plus in president Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana. Permitted parishes only, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Virginia or West Virginia. First online real money wager only. Refund issued as non withdrawable site credit that expires in fourteen days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sports book dot FanDuel dot com.

Gambling problem called one eight hundred, next step or tech next step to five three three four two in Arizona one eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG dot org slash chat in Connecticut one eight hundred Gambler or visit FanDuel dot com slash

RG in Colorado, Indiana, New Jersey. In Virginia one eight seven seven seven seven zero stop in Louisiana one eight hundred to seven zero seven one one seven for confidential help in Michigan one eight seven seven eight Hope and Why, or text hope and Why to four six seven three six nine in New York. In Tennessee redline dial one eight hundred eight eight nine nine seven eight nine in Tennessee, visit www one dot one eight hundred gambler dot net

in West Virginia. All right, Welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by Fan Duel here at the volume. Happy Tuesday, everybody, Happy season opener day. I'm very excited to be back doing instant reaction shows late at night, getting the body readjusted to this new schedule. I'm very, very excited. Though it's gonna be a really fun eight and a half

months of basketball. We're gonna keep it really simple. Tonight, We're gonna got dive into Lakers Warriors, and then we're gonna dive into Celtic Celtic Sixers, and then tomorrow I'll do a deep dive into the film from both of these games. You don't want to keep an eye on my Twitter feed because I'll have a lot of footage from both games there as well, and we'll kind of dive more into the intricate details of the game at

that point. The big difference between doing it like this versus going the next day is you just get to see and learn a lot more the second time around. But thankfully we have plenty of time to do that. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason lt so you guys don't miss any show announcements that will be important in this early part of the season.

Just you know when we're going live at night. That's also where I put all of our footage breakdowns because we have some limitations about what we can use on YouTube. And then, last but not least, for whatever reason, you miss one of these shows and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish them, you can find them

wherever you get your podcasts. Under Hoops Tonight, we also have one additional announcement tonight, we're going to take starting tonight, We're gonna try to get in the habit of doing this for every one of these live shows, but we're gonna take one or two questions from the chat. Um Our producer Ryan's gonna come on and read some of

those questions at the end of the show. I'll remind you guys here in a couple of minutes, but definitely get some questions into the chat about this particular game, and we will get to them at the end of the night. And on that No list talks in basketball, So as you guys know, I I I typically like to try to find find an overarching theme for any particular game, and I thought one of the themes from this particular game, this Lakers Warriors game, which was a

destructive blowout. I don't care about the late comeback from the Lakers. All you Laker fans have seen that movie before. That happened plenty last year when I thought they were even worse than this team was. Uh. Teams, it's just human nature. You let your foot off the gas when you have a big lead, especially a team like the Warriors that at this point is they didn't don't have anything to prove during the regular season. This was a

absolute destructive performance from the Warriors. They embarrassed and humiliated the Lakers just a few minutes after getting their rinks. And that's the way we're gonna frame this game, not as a oh the Lakers got it back down to eleven with a few minutes left. Um. But the big theme that I wanted to kind of hit on to start this this show tonight is the value of talent

down the roster. Those of you guys who have been listening to this show for a while know that this is something that have been kind of keying on for a while. I don't think it used to be as value as valuable as it is now, but as the game has changed, I think it's more important than ever to have lots of good basketball players, not just a couple of really really good basketball players, a concept that

is completely lost on Rob Blink and Jennie Buzz. If Lebron and a d play like I expect him to play this year, they're both top ten players, like legit top ten players in this league. You probably Lebron I have at four right now. Anthony Davis when he's actually playing like the Anthony Davis that we know he's capable of is probably in that seven to eight range, right, He's right up there, you know, right behind Joel and

beat A Nicola Nicola Yoki's right. But the Warriors, they only have one player that I even consider a top thirty player in this league. When I did my top twenty five player rankings this summer, I had twenty nine players that I selected from a pool and then I shortened it down to twenty five. There were no Warriors on that list outside of Steph Curry. But the Warriors are a much much, much better basketball team than the Los Angeles Lakers. Why is that? Because you don't just

need top thirty players to win NBA basketball games. You need lots and lots of good players. Every Laker not named Russe Lebron in a d tonight combined for thirty two points. Those are your three big investments on the Lakers payroll. Every non Steph Clay Draymond Warrior scored sixty eight points. That's more than double. They got utterly and completely dominated down the roster. Because in the modern NBA

you need talent down the roster. It's a lot a lot of it has to do with how the game has changed from going you know, fifteen years ago, you'd have to like a power forward in a center on the court, so it's like three out two in versus what it is now, where there's a lot more a lot more speed and quickness and skill, and it's five out. Back in those days, everybody's packing the paint, No one's taken a ton of threes. You could just lean on size and and strength with those power positions and the

roles are easier. But as we've gone towards five out, it's more important than ever to have five guys on the floor that can create their own shot. Five guys on the floor, they could put the basketball on the floor, knocked down a pull up jump shot or driving kick to a teammate. You know, Kendrick Gunns a solid player. Patrick Beverley, he's a solid basketball player. Austin Reeves solid basketball player. Those are the third, fourth, and fifth best

Lakers in my opinion. Are any of those guys better than any of the top five, six seven guys on the Golden State Warriors? No, this is a This is a massive talent deficit down the roster. Most of l A's rotation outside Lebron and a D wouldn't even get minutes for the Warriors want Siskono Anderson. It was completely out of the rotation by the time the Lakers made it to the players by the time the Warriors got to the playoffs last year, and then you see the

difference in the offseas. He's an approach between these two teams. The Warriors are constantly looking for talent on the margins to supplement their roster. They place a great deal of value in their role players. We just saw two massive extensions handed out to Andrew Wiggins and Jordan's Pool. Lakers, on the other hand, were obsessed with getting another star

and shipped off all of their good role players. Contagious called Pope and Kyle Kuzma to the Wizards, and then in the ensuing salary crunch, they lost Alex Crusoe as well. You can even see it in the trade targets this summer. It's like they don't want Buddy Healed and Miles Turner. They don't want Boyan Bgdonovitch and Rudy Gay and you know some some of the quality role players that played

for the Jazz. They wanted Kyrie Irving, and they keep telling you they want they're they're waiting for the right trade that makes them a true contender, which is just double speak for them wanting another star. The Warriors understand the value of role players and the Lakers do not. The Lakers run by clutch, think that it's Lebron jay Is and Anthony Davis winning basketball games. Guess what they combined for fifty eight points Tonight got their ass. Kick's

just not how it works anymore. But I mean, I just wanted to kind of get hit that like overarching topic for a second, because I think it kind of paints a picture of the of the difference between these two particular franchises. On that note, we can get into

some of the basketball. I thought one of the the key um xs and those concepts that drove the mismatch in Tonight's game and the ability to generate quality shots was the value of having Kevon Looney, Draymond Green, and Andrew Wiggins in your front line and the fact that those three guys not only are they great defensive players at their position, Kevon Looney is an outstanding, you know,

classic center defender. Draymond Green is obviously the Swiss army knife that he is, and Andrew Wiggins is kind of known as like your you know, stereotypical wing stopper, right, But the truth of the matter is is all three of those guys can guard up and down multiple positions. Looney holds up well on switches, Draymond can guard one through five. Andrew Wiggins could hold his own in post mismatches against Anthony Davis. And so what you saw that

specific concept do was disrupt the Lakers offense. One of the big things that Darvin Ham has done when he came into the Lakers is in still more actions or motion, just the idea of not being so brute force and just dribbling the ball down the floor giving it to Lebron and being like created shot, but rather, hey, let's let's get into a horn set, let's run a couple of cross screens, Let's get into a dribble handoff, Let's get people moving around a little bit, try to turn

that corner and get downhill. Then we can get into some driving kick. Right. But one of the biggest problems of the Lebron A d Russ trio is all three of them can be guarded by a big strong forward. The big strong forward is like what you have to put on Lebron or he's just gonna bully that guy every time down the floor. Anthony Davis is a finesse big Nine times out of ten, he's not looking to bully you in the post. He's looking to shoot fadeaways over the top or top hook shots and things along

those lines. And Russell Westbrook can't shoot and tries to pile through your chest and get to the rid. You know that everyone expected the Lebron Anthony Davis pick and roll to be kind of a staple of that era, but it's never been a staple of this era because every team in the NBA just switches that action every single time. So from the start of this game, and for the record, you need the right personnel to do it.

And the Lakers will run into a lot of teams here over the course of the season where they just don't have the personnel, and they will bully their way to the rim and destroy those teams offensively when they

have those particular matchups. But when you have Kevon Looney and you have Draymond Green and you have Andrew Wiggins, they can just switch all that stuff and you could really see that, especially early in the game and that horrific first quarter for the Lakers offensively, when they kind of look stagnant and no one was turning the corner coming off of those actions because they're just switching them. The only guy really getting downhill was Lonnie Walker because

they weren't switching it right. You know, they're actually asking the guards to chase over the top on that. But you know, I don't think the Warriors have the best defensive personnel in the league. They don't. Boston does, and order talk about that more later, but they do have They do have core defensive personnel that is a great

foundation to build on. And then when you put guys like Steph Curry who competes on that end out there, and Clay Thompson, who you know, one of the you know, one of the undertold stories of the two thousand twenty two Finals was the job he did on Jalen Brown, sliding his feet and taking that contact in the chest, shutting down Boston's driving kick. They've got three really good foundational defenders, and then everyone else on the roster competes

and does the best they can. And especially when you've got limited offenses like this Lakers team, They're just gonna make everything extremely difficult for them. Lakers forced their way to the rim a few times and managed to get to what fifty two points I think in the first half, but they couldn't score easily at all in the second half outside of their bizarre fate comeback at the end. I wanted to take We're gonna get to a bunch of more warrior stuff here in a second, But I

I you have to talk about the Lakers shooting. I said over the summer, this is the worst shooting roster in the entire mb A. That was proven tonight. They're gonna have a lot of bad shooting nights. You know, the Lakers could go into the locker room and be like Man, which just didn't make shots tonight. But judging by the roster construct, they're gonna not make shots a lot of the time. That's just the reality of their predicament,

you know. And what was funny is in this particular game, even they're good to slightly above average shooters, guys like Lebron you know, Patrick Beverley, Kendrick Nun they didn't shoot well early on Patrick in and uh I think Pat made one three at the end. Kendrick and Lebron made a few threes in the second half when the game was over. But when those guys don't shoot well, they're gonna start two for twenty from three and they're gonna

you just can't win basketball games that way. And we don't have to go I mean, we like it's it's basic spacing stuff. You know. The Warriors, just like the Lakers and a lot of other teams, they dig really

hard out of the strong sides. If Lebron's on the left wing, or if steps on the left wing and they come off of a ball screen towards the middle, the guy on the right wing, the guy who's defending him is digging down to the free throw line to dissuade that drive, to stop the guy from getting downhill. The differences is when the Lakers do that, they're giving up threes to above average quality three point shooters against

most teams in the league. But when the Warriors do that to the Lakers, that's Russell Westbrook on the right wing. They will live with him shooting that all night long. And yeah, you know what, he made one on the left wing in the in the in the first half, and he did like a you know, unloading the gun celebration. Dude, your career three point shooter. They will they they are happy you made that because it means you're just gonna take more of them. You know. It obviously is gonna

impact them on spacing. And then a big part like the Lakers had good stretches of defense in this game, several good stretches of defense. Darvin Ham has them competing. They're getting into the ball to make ball handlers uncomfortable. They're chasing over the top of screens. They're bigs, are packing the paint their to shut down the paint. They're gonna make things tough on the ball handler. Here's the problem.

If you brick thirty three point shots in a game, you're not gonna set your defense and they're gonna run it down your throat and get easy stuff when your defense isn't set. And you saw as the wheels came off in that game, it largely came from bad offense and the Lakers not being able to set up their defense. The reality, the reality of that predicament is Rob Polinka and Genie buss knew this going into this summer What was Rob's response when they question him in training camp?

He said, Oh, well, they're just gonna have to get better. Well, that's not gonna happen. It takes thousands and thousands and thousands of reps over months and months and months to improve as a three point shooter. This team will not shoot much better over the course of this season. This is what they have. They had the opportunity to package us with two first round picks to bring back some

quality shooting. They opt did not to do so because they believe there's some better deal down in the future. The problem is is you just lost this game. You're gonna be under five hundred through thirteen games because nine of those thirteen games are against teams that are better than you right now. And so even if you do get something better, how does that affect you in the seating,

How does that affect your continuity? This was the Rod Polincoln Jennie Buss set these guys up for failure and that that's a huge part of this story in tonight, and it needed to be addressed. We're gonna talk a little bit more about Russ here in a few minutes, but I want to you know, the Warriors won the game, and they deserve to get more focused. Um, there's two guys particular on the Warriors that I wanted to spend

some time talking about, Andrew Wiggins and James Wiseman. Wiggins to me is firmly the second best player on this team. He was unbelievably destructive to the Lakers on defense tonight. He holds up on switches like we were talking about earlier, getting deflections all over the place, applying ball pressure to

make people feel uncomfortable. He is so much more than a three in D player, And it's funny because to a contract like he got, you just need to be a three D player kind of like Michail Bridges is right, But like I mean, this is a This is a legit catching shoot three point shooter who also is one of the best perimeter defenders in the league. So he's got the three and D stuff checked. But he's also

like a legit score in this league. He hit back to back to back is O threes in Lebron's face and Anthony Davis his face and in Russell Westbrook's face to stop that fake come back in the fourth quarter. Just stared Lebron in the face, hard step back dribble with his left hand, knocked it down, same thing against Anthony Davis on the left wing, and then Russ just given him too much space there at the top of the key. He is a legitimate scorer in this league.

He can rescue possessions with complex shop making. He can consistently punish mismatches. If you put a smaller defender on him, you could take him all the way to the rim or He's got a really nice little step back around fifteen ft and he's excellent attacking closeouts, and he applies a ton of rim pressure. Like I said, with the tracking data from last year, he was third in the team and drives, and we've talked a ton about all the benefits of rim pressure. It's a huge part of

what makes a basketball team work. So he deserves every penny and more of what he got in that deal, and he continues to be one of the more undervalued players on that team. UM James Wiseman, I thought I thought he looked out standing tonight. UM. I was concerned a little bit about him after what I saw in summer league. I thought he was a little bit afraid of the physicality. UM you know, like fading on hook shots,

things along those lines. But then he had some upsides and some downsides, Like it was just classic young player stuff, and bigs in general are a little bit slower to develop.

But from what I've seen in preseason and what I saw tonight, like he's right now a legitimate center in this league for the role player center, not like the MBI yokis kind of thing, but for a guy who does what a center needs to do in the modern MBA, which is screen and I've hard to the rim, you know, defend at the rim and drop coverage, hold your own on the occasional switch, punished the occasional mismatch. He's already good at that stuff. He's already good at that stuff.

He defended the rim really well tonight. He stopped Lebron a few times in that first half. In particular, he was legit causing Lebron problems at the rim. He bothered every laker. He was crashing the offensive glass on the offensive end, rolling hard to the rim, catching stuff and

finishing everything. He's already good. If he can figure out some isolation scoring and become a knockdown shooter, he could be basically like a better version of DeAndre And that's a really exciting prospect for the Warriors, especially if this Draymond thing ends up crunching him out and he doesn't end up getting a deal and they end up having to let him go. You know, at this pace, I would feel a little bit more comfortable with that in

the future. Not for this season. You need Draymond this season, but in the future, Wiseman is beginning to look like the kind of guy that you can plug into that spot. It'll be a different team. It's a totally different look. He's not the same type of player as Raymond, but you can functionally build a basketball team around him as an anchor from what I can tell so far. Okay, so we gotta hit on the Lakers Big three before we move on to the next game. Um Russ had

some moments tonight. I think at eighteen points. He made some plays, he got to the rim and made some made some layups. But you gotta look at the total picture of the way he impacts the basketball team. Like, for instance, like I was talking about, how do you apply a like a value quotient to the fact that when he's on the right wing and Lebron has the ball that his defender just digs down to the free throw line every time, Like, how does that show up

on the box score? I struggled listening to Reggie Miller tonight, as I'm sure many of you guys did, and as he's preaching, the Russ plays hard all the time. And oh, you know he put up eighteens eight and seven last year. You'd be so thrilled if you got eighteen eight and seven. It's never been about the counting stats with Russ. It's never been about that. It's been about how it's been about the fit. It's it's the concept of diminishing returns.

What Russ is good at offensively, you don't need that much because Lebron's just better than him at it. And then what they actually need from a complimentary player from Lebron and a d he's not good at. He's a career three point shooter. The every team in the league's gonna live with him taking those shots. Smoked a bunch of layups tonight, had some unfortunate turnover, stepped out of bounds again, but like like which he's had issues with the sideline this entire season so far. Who knows what's

going on there. But again, like Russ made some plays, but it's the concept of diminishing returns. If you flip him for two players or three players that actually compliment Lebron, James and Anthony Davis's skill sets, you might find yourself in a better position than they were tonight. And I don't you guys know my rule. I'm not gonna talk much about Russ. I'm gonna try to avoid that topic as much as possible, and hopefully he's not a Laker soon and we won't have to talk about him. But

at this point, Robin Genie brought him back. They're putting him through this again, and right now they're digging themselves in a hole they might not be able to dig out of. And hopefully they end up getting rid of him sooner than later so that everyone can move on from this. Two really quick notes. Lebron had a rough night, but he's had a rough night on opening night almost every single year since he came to the Lakers. I think last year was the only year he played well

on opening night. He's always a guy that kind of plays his way into rhythm, plays his way into shape early in the season, he's not as aggressive looking for a shot. Although he did score thirty one tonight, most of those points were in garbage time when the game was actually in question. Lebron wasn't good tonight, but I'm not worried about that. He's the last guy on this team that you need to worry about. A d looked really good in the first half, but I thought he

struggled in the Warriors physicality in the second half. Everybody's playing them with their way into shape. I didn't even think the Warriors start played. Warrior Stars played exceptionally well. Um, that's all I have from this particular game. Like I said, we're gonna dive a lot into the film from this tomorrow, so keep and I on my Twitter feed. I underscore Jason lt for film analysis, and then we'll have another show. I haven't decided yet when tomorrow's show will be. Got

to talk to the wife. Maybe we'll try to squeeze something in at night. We'll figure it. We'll figure it out, but keep an eye on the feeds. Tomorrow will get further into this game. Tip off the NBA season with FanDuel America's number one sports book, New customers get one hundred and fifty dollars in free bets guaranteed when you place your first five dollar bet plus FanDuel is the only sports book that's giving all customers three months of NBA League Pass when they make a five dollar bet

on the NBA. Then you can watch all the action as you bet on everything from money line to point spreads to totals. I've talked about a lot of futures over the course of this summer. The one I like the most right now is Jannice to win the m v P. Get great odds on it. Luca doesn't really make a ton of sense to me because I don't think the Mavericks are gonna win enough games. The Bucks

are gonna win a ton of games. Janice is gonna put up crazy numbers and advanced metrics that the voters like so much, and he hasn't since, so he's fresh in the minds of the voters. I really really like Janice to an m v P, So don't miss out on your chance to get one hundred and fifty dollars in free bets plus three months of NBA League Pass with promo co Jason t make every moment more with fan Duel, the official sports book partner of the NBA.

Before we move on to Philly Boston, don't forget we're gonna take a couple of questions, one or two questions from the chat after talking Philly Boston, so make sure you guys drop some questions in there. So, Um, Boston's offense looked great tonight. They had a couple of ugly stretches, particularly in that first quarter, but overall they looked great. And I thought this was a huge part of the

upside that comes with Robert Williams being out. This is a huge part of some of the stuff I talked about over the summer and how you know Robert Williams. I do think the Celtics are good with him, but

I think they're just as good without him. And because on the defensive end, with what Rob Williams brings, he also freelances a lot and can get out of position, and he's actually responsible for a lot of their defensive breakdowns from last year's playoff run because he'll just randomly double a guy who doesn't need to be double, like he randomly double Draymond Green a bunch in the finals in the post, or he'll just uh, you know, freelance randomly to to help too far off of kevn Looney,

he'll get another offensive rebound like that kind of stuff. But also on the offensive end of the floor, vertical spacing is real. Vertical spacing is a legit form of spacing, but it's nowhere near as good or as effective as real five out spacing. And when Robert Williams is out because of how good of a shooter Al Horford is,

they just lean into real five out basketball. And when when you're playing a team like the Sixers in particular, you know, Joel Embiid is a good defensive center when you can keep him around the basket, But if you really space him out the way that the Celtics did, you're gonna get driving lanes all night long. You know why, because Tyrese Maxie is not a good defensive player and James Harden is not a good defensive player. So Joel Embiad's gonna become a less effective version of himself on

the perimeter. And I've got two other bad perimeter defenders out there. It doesn't matter how good Tobias Harris is, It doesn't matter how good p J. Tucker is you're going to give up driving lanes all game long, and they did. Though. Jalen Brown and Jayson Tatum were fantastic. They combined for seventy points. They both had incredible stretches of basketball in last year's postseason, and they're picking up right where they left off. They didn't play this well

over the course of last year's season. It was the defense that drove everything. They didn't even really shoot that well in the spring. You know, consistency is key with them. They go through these bad stretches. But if they get to the point because the good version of Jaylen Brown is a fringe top ten basketball player, he's just not consistent enough, right. And then Jayson Tatum, in my opinion,

is absolutely a top ten basketball player. If they both consistently play like top ten players, they're the best team in the league because they have the best defensive personnel in basketball, which we'll get two in a minute. You know, in order to four Boston, to reveal their ugly side on offense, you have to contain the basketball. This is what the Warriors did so well in the twenty two

Finals Finals. Over the last three games, they finally figured out how to contain Taintum and Brown, largely through Clay Thompson kind of solving Jalen's dribble package and figuring out he loves to drive left and he could absorb that

contact and force him to take bad jumpers. And then Wiggins just you know what he did to Luca and what he did to take Um over the course the last two rounds of the playoffs is you know, one of the big reasons why the Warriors have the trophy, but like if you, if you, you have to contain the basketball against Boston to bait them into their ugly tendencies where they start to jack up bad shots or fail to get into their driving kick, and the Sixers just don't have the personnel to do that. It's a

really really bad matchup for them. And then you know, the other thing that was killing Philly in this game is for starters, they were throwing the ball all over the court. They were They only had four team turnovers, which is not terrible, but it led to twenty two points because James Harden and Joel them Bead are so quick to just kind of let off the gas and not spread back in transition defense. They got outscored in

fast breakpoints twenty four to two in this game. And the other thing that keeps killing them on the defensive end of the floor is Joel embiad falling down under his offensive basket and Boston pushing the ball the other way. Then, when Philly was on offense, very very stagnant, very little movement. This is a brute force offense. They've never been really you know, they've they've never been really inventive with the

stuff that they try to do with the basketball. But at the same time, they've got such talented two stars that they're gonna find able four stars with their top four players. They've got such talent, so much top and talent, that they're gonna find a way to score. And early in that game, their shot making saved them. James Harden making a ton of shots, Tyrese Maxie made a lot of shots, Tobias Harris was playing really well in that

first half. But that stagnant, that stagnant offense eventually came back to bite them in that second half when Boston's defense really locked in. And that's where I want to get into Boston's defense. You know, every one of the top four teams that we talked about you know, Golden State, Boston, Milwaukee, and the Clippers. They all have significant strengths and significant weaknesses. This is not a league with a perfect team at

the top. I think Golden States the smartest team, The Clippers are the best drive and kicked team, The Bucks have the most imposing interior size, and the Celtics have the best defensive personnel. That's an oversimplification. There's a lot much more. There's a lot more, but those are some of their core identities right well. The Boston's Boston just flat out as the best defensive personnel in the league. Everyone can contain the ball at multiple positions. Even Marcus

Smart and Derek White can guard up a position. Everyone can play the passing lanes. Everyone can help at the rim. Everyone can dig down on ball handlers for steels. They swarmed Philly from the start and made them feel uncomfortable. They did one of the things that thought was they did too particular like strategic things tonight that I thought were really smart to keep Philly off balance. One, they

never stayed consistent with their double teams of Mbat. Sometimes they doubled him on the dribble, sometimes they doubled him on the catch. Sometimes they doubled him before the post entry, and they never did the same thing more than once in a row. They just kept changing that coverage to keep em beat off of balance, and that that that's gonna be a consistent problem that embiads eventually gonna have

to figure out. But that's just smart defense from Boston to kind of switch up their looks to keep them off balance. And then they did a lot of pre switching with Blake Griffin. I tweeted out a link that uh, one of the other people that I follow on Twitter put out there. But essentially, every time James Harden would pull up Blake Griffin's man to set a ball screen to try to get him on a switch, they would just run another Celtic up there instead, and Blake would

rotate to whichever player took his spot. So they're a very smart defense, and they have outstanding defensive personnel. That's their strength. If you can combine that with two top ten players, which requires Tatum and Brown becoming uh consistent, they're gonna be a damn tough basketball team to be alright. So a couple of quick notes James Harden eight and seven nine from fourteen from the field five of nine from three, hitting his step back twelve from twelve from

the free throw line, getting their plenty. There was a specific reason why I thought he'd have a revenge season. He's thirty two years old, and he hasn't suffered a significant joint injury like a torn a, c L or achilles or something like that. He got fat, dude, he got fat. It happens. Happened to me too, I'm thirty one.

I'm noticing these changes for myself. I used to be able to eat whatever the hell I wanted, never put on any way, and then in my late twenties, I put on some weight when I stopped playing, but then as soon as I'd start playing, I dropped the weight immediately. But then I went to Alaska with my wife for two weeks this summer, and I came back seventeen pounds heavier. And I haven't dropped it since i've I've lost about

half of it. But it's like it's been like a like an incredibly difficult journey to drop this weight because my body is just not the same as it used to beat. James Harden used to be able to live and like work hard, play hard, and what he's learning is now that he's in his early thirties, if he works hard, plays hard, then his body is going to carry a little bit extra weight. His hamstring is not

gonna hold up as well as it used to. And I think he learned that lesson and he had, you know, the struggle of humility from having a couple of rough seasons, and so I really expected a still firmly in his prime James Harden to come back this season in great shape and to play great. And again, this is just one game, but it's a good start, and I know everyone's like, even Charles Barkley at halftime was like, oh,

he's making a step back jumper. That's not real. That's not something that they can really take to the big I disagree. I think that his legs are a big part of why he was making his step back jump shot tonight. Having his legs underneath them as a conditioned athlete in peak shape, is going to help him in every single facet of his game. It gives him that

little bit of extra burst on that first step. It keeps the defender on his heels that in turn opens up separation for him to get to his step back and then the step back three in and of itself is a super athletic move. You have to cover a lot of ground and then go straight up and down and get really good lift to knock down a twenty six ft jump shot. You need your legs for that kind of thing. And when he was out of shape didn't quite have that burst. Defenders coming up on him more.

Now he's not getting as much separation and then he's not getting as much lift on the shot. So him getting his legs back, that's naturally going to lead to him getting more separation on those shots getting to the rim more. And he had plenty of bursts. There was a really nice, nasty like double crossover movie hit on Grant Williams to get all the way to the rim in the second half. I think he's poised for a

great season now. His defense was absolutely atrocious. But that's kind of a prime James Harden thing too, now, isn't it. Um Joel embiid He's got to figure out how to handle double teams now. I get that you could make a hog ighlight reel from this game with five or six passes that he made that were good passes. He made some good plays out of the double team. But why did Boston continue to do so, because surrounding all those plays were a whole lot of post ups where

nothing happened. Meanwhile, Lebron Luca don Chitch, Nicola Yokich as a peer of embiads, never get double teams because they consistently make you pay every single time you do so. And you know, there's a difference between just getting the ball out from a double team and then consistently making a pass on time and on target to the shooter that can make them pay. There are a lot of times where embiad Anthony Davis does this a lot too. It's a big problem that I have with big men

in general. But they get the ball, the double team comes and they're kind of just panicking and they're just looking for somebody to get rid of the basketball too, and every once in a while to make a nice play, but a lot of them are just swing passes back out to the perimeter and nothing happened. He they you could see it in his body language in that fourth quarter. He's frustrated. He doesn't like playing basketball when it's like that.

It it frustrates him, and I get that. No one wants to just sit there and face double teams all night long. But until he shows that he can consistently beat that double team, teams will continue to do it to him because it's just a way better option than letting him on an island flop all over the place shoot four teen free throws of games scored thirty seven points, and that on time, on target thing is the key

way to do that. You have to be patient and allowing the double to come to you quickly identify who the shooter is that's open or the cutter that's open, and you have to hit them on a rope in the shooting pocket because if you don't, they will rotate to the shooter. And now the double team was effective. That's the underrated part of passing that we look over when we're talking about Lebron, Luca and Nicola, Yo Kitchen,

Chris Paul and guys like that. They are so relentless and making the top to pass untime and on target that they consistently make you pay. There are a lot of guys that can make the reads, but they can't make the past because it's just a step too slow. They see the read, but it's a split second too slow, or because now they've picked up their dribble and the double team left and they're rotating that. It just he was frustrated by it. But that's not gonna go away

until he figures it out. He will have to find a way to eventually start beating those double teams, or every team in the league will do it too, really quickly. Before we take our questions that dust up at the end, I thought it was hilarious a couple of things. That's just flat out dirty play from Joel embiad trying to pull out Marcus Smart's shoulder. I thought it was a dirty play, but I did think it was hilarious the

kind of altercation that took place after Smarts quote. He said his reaction showed maturity because I could have cracked his head open, but I didn't. There was hilarious moment where Jalen Browns like pointing at Joel embid while backpedaling away from the scrum. The entire higher NBA fan base can see through that crap. No one wants to fight. You're all a bunch of really successful guys. You have

too much to lose. There's just just I wish at some point NBA players would figure out that we can see through that stuff all right, Where you're going to bring the secret hero of this show, Mr Ryan Brumley on to get some questions from the audience. That's high praise, unnecessary, but the very high praise. Um Speaking on Philly, Kyle Rector asked a few teams see one piece away from

being scary good? Philadelphia included what potentially taking team has a piece that you can see working with Philly oh Man, Okay, I know this is going to be an unsatisfying answer, Kyle, but I don't think it's a talent issue. I think that the Sixers have the best top four in the NBA. James Harden, Joel embiid Um, Tyrese Maxie, and Tobias Harris, p J. Tucker and Daniel House directly address some of their toughness concerns. The there's no magic piece that fixed this,

fixes this. The thing that puts the Sixers over the top is Joel Embiat and James Harden having a dominant playoff run. And I get that that can seem discouraging because James Harden is the worst playoff performer of this generation, but hey, I used to make fun of Paul George for losing five consecutive playoff series, and then he was one of the best players that I've seen in a in in that playoff run when he dragged the Clippers to win two within two games of the NBA Finals.

So the reality of the situation is is this is a If James Harden plays like I expect him to play this season, and Joel Embiat is healthy, learns how to manage the double teams, stays active and engaged for a whole playoff run, I think they have enough. Now. Matchups are gonna be part of it, but that's the same for every team in the league. The Warriors beat the Celtics, they might have lost to the Bucks, right, you know, like it's all about matchups with this kind

of thing. I don't like that Philly Boston matchup. It's a really bad matchup for them because their ability to double and recover, their ability to push them out to the perimeter and beat them off the dribble. But then again, if they run into you know, maybe maybe they're a

fantastic matchup for Milwaukee, and maybe Milwaukee beats Boston. You know, like that there's no perfect team matchups are gonna be a big thing here, But I don't I don't necessarily like they didn't even use matissetybol tonight really, So I mean, this is not a talent issue for Philly. They just

need their stars to play better. Sticking with Philly here, Eugene Isaakov asked, do you think I so heavy playing style of hardened Max and Bead could help Philly to win a lot or do they need to play more team friendly basketball because players stays have been out of rhythm, so I think it'll hurt them in the regular season. Um, you guys know my general philosophy with that, like brute force offenses, offenses that are very simple and rely on

their stars to create the advantage. Those are impossible to stop in the playoffs because there's no magic schematic fix for dealing with what James already can do with the basketball or with what I mean Joel Embiid can be taken out with some doubles, but specifically with guys like James Harden, but even go beyond like the Lakers and

you're looking at Lebron James and Anthony Davis. They were one of the worst half court offenses during the regular season, but they played that same style in the in the playoffs with Lebron and a d just kind of just bullying their way to the basket, and it turned out that you couldn't stop them in a playoff series. You know, I always will advocate for running actions and having more offensive organization to make basketball easy during the regular season.

But aside from a few teams like the Heat and the Warriors, actions aren't winning you a title. Skim like, offensive sets aren't winning you a title because they're going to scout those sets they're going to do, They're going to switch everything, they're gonna be ahead of those actions, and it's not going to work. So specifically for Philly, I'm not super concerned about it because their offense is

more geared towards a playoff environment. All right, let's get back to the Warriors here to underscore g ask Hey, Jason, do you think that Clay had more popped than his jump shot tonight? He will be a significant contributor this year. Last year he had moments but was still recovering from all of his injuries. I like Clay looked awesome tonight, even the jumpers he was missing early pop is a really interesting way of describing it. I was, I was trying.

I was actually uh talking with a friend of mine, Tommy, about this earlier, and like it's so we call it like a dip and a jump shooter, Like you want a natural dip as you rise up into a shot because it just kind of builds your rhythm for what

I call energy transfer. If you don't have if you don't have a good pathway of energy from your feet all the way up through your release, if there's a hitch, if there's anything that stops or makes it clunky, then you don't have the transfer of energy and the shot doesn't look good. And one of the night one of the beautiful things about the way Clay Thompson plays is he's so good at getting into that dip so that he can transfer his energy. He missed a couple of

shots early. He also struggled on a handful of possessions driving to the rim. But man, like, the other thing with Clay's dip is he it's it effectively sells his pump bake. And he's so good at like kind of dipping and pump baking to get the guy to run by and he's like sneaky, one of the best mid rain shooters in the league as well. I think Clay looks great. If you're a Warriors fan, you should be

feeling fantastic right now. I didn't even think they played well and they beat the ship out of the Lakers, so you've gotta be feeling good right now. Alright, last one, We'll only do one negative Lakers question because it's a long season. In just one game, can you tell the difference between Hands Lakers and Vogels Lakers from last year? Absolutely, Buying is a big part of it. Um, just having the like and this is not entirely Vogel's fault. UM. I think this is a phenomenon that happens a lot

in sports, particularly with coaches that are very demanded. You see this with Tom Thimodo Timido a lot in the NFL. You see this with Bill Belichick. When you have coaches that ask for really like labor intense um, you know, expectations from their teams. They either have lots of roster turnover or they burn out of a location every couple of years for the for the the the Patriots, you literally see that with roster turnover. But like, it's just I think Vogel burnt out the roster. Ham has them

bought it now. The other elements of it that I'm seeing are strong side help. Um. So Vogel was big on chasing teams off the three point line and packing the paint. The the Darvin Ham approach is more chasing the ball handler and leaving three point shots open, funneling to all your help around the basket. It's kind of the idea of like, hey, let's be great at two things.

Let's be great at stopping the ball handler, great at protecting the paint, and we'll live with the results of these role players making shots, you know, and that can that can that can win you a series when guys don't shoot well, you know, right, especially if role players get sweaty palms and they just can't knock down the big shots. But it can also lose you a series, like the Bucks did last year when the Celtics made like thirty nine threes or something crazy like that over

the last two games of that series. So you're seeing that in there and on the defensive end, and then just in general their offensive organization. It looks a lot better. Like with Vogel, they just they almost never ran sets. Um, you're seeing a ton of stuff out of Horns. Don't pay too much attention tonight because Golden State has specific personnel to switch all the lebron A d Russ drivel handoffs,

which kind of shut down the Lakers Horns actions. But they do have much better from what I could tell in preseason, they do have much better offensive organization as well. Him, like Frank Vogel, is an outstanding coach when the situation is perfect for him. This situation is no longer perfect for him. They made the right move getting rid of him. Darvin Ham has done a really nice job so far. Like again, it's one game. He's been dealt a terrible hand of cards in terms of a roster to work with.

There's a trade to be made here. I I think Darvin Ham is the least of the Lakers problems. I think Ron James and Anthony Davis are the least of the Lakers problems. It's everything else around that that is the issue. Al Right, guys, that is all I have for tonight, first show in the books. I sincerely appreciate you guys supporting the show. Keep an eye on my Twitter feed. Tomorrow morning, I'll have some video footage that

will be breaking down, as well as some scheduling. I'm not sure when we'll go tomorrow because I it would be nice to get to at least some of the games from tomorrow evenings, so we'll figure that out. We might even just release it on Thursday morning, so just keep an eye on the Twitter feed and we'll figure out those details later. As always, I appreciate you guys. It's gonna be a hell of a ride and I will see you soon. The volume