Hoops Tonight - NBA Reaction: Cavaliers-Rockets, SGA drops 54 in Thunder W, Warriors flop vs. Kings - podcast episode cover

Hoops Tonight - NBA Reaction: Cavaliers-Rockets, SGA drops 54 in Thunder W, Warriors flop vs. Kings

Jan 23, 202529 min
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Episode description

Jason Timpf reacts to several games from across the NBA including Fred VanVleet and the Houston Rockets' thrilling 109-108 win over Donovan Mitchell and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Jason discusses how Houston's athleticism causes major problems for opponents and whether the Cavs' weaknesses are cause for concern. Later, Jason reacts to Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors' 123-117 loss to DeMar DeRozan and the Sacramento Kings, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander dropping 54 points in the Oklahoma City Thunder's 123-114 win over the Utah Jazz, and Jayson Tatum leading the Boston Celtics to a 117-113 win over the Los Angeles Clippers.

Timeline:

4:00 - Introduction

5:00 - Cavs/Rockets

15:00 - Houston’s athleticism is a problem

26:00 - Warriors/Kings

31:30 - SGA drops 54!

32:45 - Celtics-Clippers thriller

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Transcript

Speaker 1

The volume, from the football playoffs to college and pro basketball to the rush of hockey. What a time to be a sports fan. It's all happening and you can get in on all the action of the sports you love at Draft Kings Sports Book. With so many sports, every day is game day at DraftKings, that means unlimited opportunities to place your first bet, and DraftKings makes it easy. How easy? Try betting on something simple like picking a team to win. Go to the Draft Kings Sports Book app,

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seven seven or visit CCPG dot org. Please play responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino and Resort in Kansas twenty one plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction Voyden, Ontario, New customers only. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG dot co slash audio. All right, welcome to tonight here at the volume, Happy Thursday, everybody. Hope all

of you guys are having a great week. As promise for doing some game reactions today, We're going to do a deep dive into Cavs Rockets, which was a super entertaining game from last night, and then we're gonna do shorter dives into three other games, the Kings beating the Golden State Warriors, shake Gilgess, Alexander getting his career high fifty four points against the Utah Jazz, and then the Boston Celtics winning an exciting overtime game over the Los

Angeles Clippers. You guys have the trip before we get started. To subscribe to the Hoops and on YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JCNLTS. You guys don't miss any show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating in a review. On that front, we also have brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, and

Facebook where we're releasing content throughout this season. Make sure you guys follow us there and the last but not at least, keep dropping mailbag questions and the YouTube comments. We'll have another mail bag tomorrow. We have mail bags on Fridays throughout the season. You can drop those questions for those mail bags in the comments underneath these videos. All right, let's talk some basketball. So super interesting back and forth game in Houston between the Cavs and the Rockets.

Cleveland controlled things early until Houston's bench came into the game and they just completely changed things. Cam Whitmore was insanely good. Tarri Easton was good Jayshon Tate. They do a lot of damage with their rim pressure, and what that means is just like their aggressive athletic moves towards the rim. And this can come through a bunch of different ways. It can come through running your lane and transition.

It could come through crashing the offensive glass. It can come through cutting with the basketball, or cutting to get the basketball, rolling out of ball screens. There's so many different ways to generate pressure. But the specific thing that Cleveland was struggling with when in this particular one was their athletes coming off of their action downhill. So like getting downhill against Jared Allen in a drop coverage, but you're going so damn fast that everybody reacts to it.

And even if you miss the first layup, which they were making a lot of those first layups, even if you missed that first layup, there's just waves of athletes coming in behind, right. It's kind of what Houston does to you. They wear you down with just waves and waves of athleticism. And Houston was actually beating Cleveland pretty bad in the half court in the first half, which is an unusual occurrence for two teams that have these

types of strengths and weakness. As a matter of fact, in the first half, Houston was getting one point zero three points per possession in the half half court, Cleveland was getting only zero point eight three, So a twenty point per one hundred possession advantage in the half court

for Houston in the first half. Again a combination of their great defense, as Amen Thompson was giving Donovan Mitchell fits all night, which ended up being one of the defining factors in the late portion of the game, but just in general, them causing a lot of problems for Cleveland with their defense and then them getting out in transition and then pressuring the rim when they got stuck in the half court, and again with Houston, there's a certain amount of damage they're going to do to you

in transition no matter what, just because they run and they run, and they run and they run. And they did have twelve transition points in the first half, and that probably could have been worse because Tarry Easton missed a couple of relatively makeable layups in transition. So Houston ends up going in the late second quarter stretch with their first double digit lead of the game. So again Cleveland controls early Houston bench comes in, the athletes kind

of take control. Houston goes up ten in the late second quarter. At that point, the Cavs had only ran a handful of possessions of zone all game and nothing super substantial, and as soon the Rockets one up ten, Kenny Atkinson went pretty much all in on zone the rest of the game. There's still a good bit of man at different portions of the game, like middle of the third quarter, late third quarter, they've played some man, but a lot of zone from that point forward in

the game. And the idea there is is you're trying to take away the easy opportunities for Houston's athletes to get downhill because no matter when you have the ball against the zone, the zone is always loaded up on you. There's always a rim protector waiting, there's always guys in the gaps. It's difficult to dribble drive against the zone

compared to a man to man look. Right, So it basically puts more of the onus on Houston's weaknesses, right, Like Houston's weaknesses are they don't have a ton of guys that are super reliable knockdown, catch and shoot guys, and they're not the most offensively skilled and high offensive IQ type of team, and they're in those zones. You have to break them down with ball and player movement and the ability to knock down shots over the top

of the defense. And so Kenny Atkins's Kenny Atkinson was banking on that being what would specifically slow this team down, and they did. It's Houston struggled with the zone all game. Overall, Houston faced forty two possessions of zone in the game and managed just thirty one points. They gave up zero point seven to four points per possession Cleveland did in

those forty two possessions of zone. The worst stretch of it by far was in the fourth quarter, a stretch when Steven Adams was on the floor, which was a problem because shanegun Again, we talked about this a lot, but in the I think it was in the Lakers heat game from last week. But there's a certain amount of pressure in the zone that can be relieved if you have somebody who can get the ball into the

middle of the zone, who's a capable playmaker. Because as soon as you get the ball in the middle of the zone, there's a tendency for all five guys to

kind of turn towards you. The big man in the middle almost always steps up, and so there's ope opportunities for cuts along the baseline, kickouts to the corner, getting the ball to the middle of the flour to a guy who can actually make plays there is kind of a vital part of breaking down a zone, and so Steven Adams was out there in that fourth order stretch and at one point against Cleveland zone, Houston failed to score on sixteen consecutive possessions. Think about how crazy that is,

a complete and total offensive breakdown against Cleveland zone. Houston still defended pretty well in the stretch, so they only allowed nineteen points in that time, but it was a nineteen to zero run. So all of a sudden, a thirteen point Houston Rockets lead turns into a six point Cleveland Cavaliers lead, and it looks like this whole thing is going down in flames. But then finally somebody for Houston breaks through against Cleveland zone, and that person was

Fred Van Vliet. Again, the zone, like we talked about, requires you to break it down with good bomb player movement, and guys are gonna have to knock down threes. A lot of times, the shot you're conceding in a zone is like the skip or the swing from either the opposite wing or from the middle of the floor to the opposite wing, where that guy's gonna have to make like a twenty six footer, like a little bit outside the three point line, that's kind of contested, a little rush.

That's the kind of shot that a zone is going to give up. And you can't give that up to teams that have super elite shooting because they're just going to hit that shot at a pretty high rate. But again, in this case, Fred van Vliet hits two massive threes, one off of a skip pass in the zone, the other one off of an offensive rebound in the zone. Knocks down both threes. Finally it's tied. Now we're locked in there. I think it was one oh four to one oh four if I remember at that point in time.

So now we have ourselves a good old fashioned clutch basketball battle. And in the clutch, Houston's Wings just kept getting stop after stop after stop. First of men, Thompson gets a steal and a foul that puts Houston up by one. At the foul line he was given Donovan Mitchell fits all night long. He had nineteen points on

twenty one shots. And really, and this will become a theme here down the stretch, the only thing that Donovan Mitchell could do against the men Thompson was take extremely difficult off the dribble jump shots and he just wasn't able to make him in this game. Darius Garland ends up, so Houston goes up one off of the foul shot from a men Thompson. But then Darius Garland puts the cab back up on the left wing with a three

on a switch interchange that Houston botches. So like the couple guys linger with Garland and then one of them thinks, oh, I got to get back to my man, except for both of them thought that, so they ran away from Garland. Garland ends up wide open, he hits a three, makes it one oh seven to one O five. Shane Goon ties the game. He had won a bunch of big physical battles against Jared Allen down the stretch, and one of the big ones he got in this one he

ducked in in the post. It was kind of like a drive from Fred van Vliet where he kind of posed the ball out and Shane Gun had been rolling, and when he rolled, he had some pretty decent position and so he just just threw his ass back into to Jared Allen knocked him off his off his base and created a nice big passing window for Fred van Vliet.

Fred threw it to him and Jared was draped over the top, but Shane Gun just went up through him and he was so close to the basket that he really just had to get the ball up in the air and had a really good chance of going in. Makes that layup to make it one oh seven to one oh seven, and then from there that's when Houston just starts to getting stops again. Amen Thompson forces Donovan Mitchell into like this impossible left shoulder fate that has

very little chance of going in. And again the theme here is Mitchell can only get these super difficult off the dribble jump shots. Jalen Green got a big stop against Darius Garland where Daris Garland tried to go for like a low gather to draw foul, and like this was a game where like no fouls were getting called until randomly Shangoon gets two free throws at the end

of the game. We'll get to that in a minute, but like there was a lot of contact that was just getting allowed in this game, and so Garland made a mistake I thought, and trying to like draw foul with a low gather. Jalen Green ends up forcing the turnover. They go out the other way and then Amen Thompson forces Donovan Mitchell into another impossible step back three kind

of in the left wing area. Misses again, but on the shot Alprin shang Gun Alprin Shangun buries Jared Allen to get the rebound and creates the angle and Jared Allen fousand. Now I didn't agree with this call it by the book technically, but like it was one of those things where this game was kind of a physical blood bath where everything was getting let go. It was

kind of a theme early on in the game. The Rockets broadcast was talking about it quite a bit and how it actually favors Houston, which I agree because they are the bigger, more physical team, especially with Evan Mobley out of the lineup. But Shangun gets two foul shots right he makes both foul shots go out to the other end. Darius Garland gets to the foul line off of a reckless close out from Tarry East and he gets three free throws and the ball and makes only

one of them. And that wasn't even the first time that game he went one for three on a three point shot fal he went three for eight in the foul line of this game really was the difference between a win and a loss for Cleveland in this one. So Cleveland gets the ball back one point, game down,

one any bucket they win. But once again the best shot that Donovan Mitchell could get against Aman Thompson was a really really difficult right shoulder fade kind of along the baseline that barely grazed the rim, and so again Cleveland had the chance, couldn't get a bucket there. Houston

ends up getting out of there the win. I don't see too much point in like focusing on the specific result of this game, just because there was so much weirdness, like Evan Mobley was out, Darius Garland missing all those free throws that he usually makes, Houston going as ice cold as they did against his own in a playoff series, you'd probably bail on Steven Adams a little bit earlier if that happens. All those weird foul calls at the

end of the game. It was it was just a weird regular season game that Houston happened to come away with, so that I'm not overly concerned with. I did think the game was super revealing though, of both Cleveland and Houston's respective strengths and weaknesses. Starting with Houston, their athleticism is just a fucking problem on both ends of the floor. Garland and Mitchell were both really struggling to get separation and get to their spots. Role players were getting spooked.

That was the big thing. It felt like Cleveland was getting rushed a lot. We'll talk about that here in a minute. But georgi' niang smoked two easy layups on cuts because he was like terrified of Cam Whitmore coming over the top. One he tried to pump, bake and travel. The other one he just smoked the layup. They Houston had twenty three fast break points, They had twenty offensive rebounds.

On offense, it was their downhill attack that actually forced Cleveland to kind of default his zone as much as they did. The athleticism for Houston just gives them such an incredibly high floor. And then Shaneguon is just really good, Like I've seen Jared Allen outplay many of the best centers in the league this year, again in a different type of role, but just produce in his role at a higher level than some of his peers at his position have done. I thought shaneg Gun out played him

last night. The box score numbers were relatively similar. Jared Allen did win some battles. He had I think five or six offensive rebounds, was causing some problems with his tap out rebounds. He was a big part of Cleveland's third quarter surges that kept the game close with Jared Allen and the work he was doing on the glass. But Shane Gun was winning some specific battles. He won some big some big physical battles, namely that big duck in on Jared Allen late that tied the game, drawing

the foul on the defensive rebound down the stretch. Like he just won some key physical battles, and then there was a difference there too, like Shanggun was errating offense first team, Jared Allen was finishing plays, and obviously Jared Allen was still very good, But I thought Shanguon won that battle. And he's just such a smart offensive player. The duck in is a great example like, oh I've got good position, We're not really getting anything good right now.

I'm just gonna bury him right here and see if I can't create an easy shot. There was a play I clipped this play and put it on my Twitter feed at underscore jsonlt. But a play where it was against a man and man look if I remember correctly, but Shangoon caught it in the post on the left block. I think it was in like the like mid to late third quarter stretch, and the Calves zone up on him. So they zone up from the baseline, meaning like a

defender guarding somebody elsewhere on the floor. I think it was Tyderme if I remember correctly, but comes all the way across to the outside the paint and basically zones up on Shanggun and then Fred van Vlietzman Darius Garland was digging down and so Shanegun was like posting, but

he's looking at three bodies. He's looking at body right in front of him, body to the left, body to the right, at Jared Allen, I think was the guy guarding him, and so it looks like a well like you Lakers fans will listen to the show will recognize this as the way every team guards Anthony Davis in the post where it's just like complete load up. But Shanggun did something really really smart that got a great

shot for his team on this possession. So instead of like trying to probe against three defenders right in his face or trying to force a looping skip pass that Cleveland could have easily rotated out of or potentially deflected with ball pressure, he just dribbles out at Fred van Vliet as if he's going to do a dribble handoff with him. As soon as he does this, it triggers

a chain of events. Darius Garland, instead of digging down on Shangun, closes out to Fred van Vliet to get into chase position in case he has to chase him over a dribble handoff. Jared Allen just barely gets up out of his stance and slides off to his right to potentially contain a Fred van Vliet drive off of a ball screen. And then Shane Gun just keeps the

ball and drives into the middle of the lane. So he was facing this super loaded up man demand look and just by taking a dribble at Fred van Vliet and then turning back into the lane. He completely shifted Cleveland's defense, forced Garland and Allen to shift into more of a ball screen coverage, which created an opening in the middle of the floor for Shangun to drive that he drove right at it. Everyone collapsed, easy kickout Passatari Easton on the right wing he knocks down at three.

He's just such a smart offensive player and he has such a gift for like meandering and making stuff happen in tight space situations. I thought he was absolutely huge in this particular game. The one thing with the Rockets that was on display though, is just again they just lacked that like highly refined offensive skill that they had twenty two turnovers in this game. They had so many

ugly possessions in the half court on offense. So like a pretty good indication, pretty good demonstration of Houston's strengths

and weaknesses last night. And then with Cleveland, the big thing that stood out to me that they're definitely not as athletic as some of these teams at the top of the league, and it causes them when they run into that sort of team to rush things a little bit I've seen this in specifically the first game on the road in Boston, the one on the road in Oklahoma City, and then this one where they have these stretches where they kind of lose composure and start taking

bad shots, not trusting the things that caused them to succeed Earlier in the season. I talked about Mitchell forcing things against Oklahoma City. I thought he looked similar to that last night, just kind of taking extremely difficult shots against elite perimeter defenders. Darius Garland was missing some reads, Like there were about a half dozen possessions in this game. I clipped several of them and put them on my

Twitter feed. But there were about a half dozen possessions in this game where he took like pretty tough, contested twos while there were easy kickout raads available for good shooters, the kind of reads he had been making all season. But he just looked rushed, you know. That was kind of the story of the game for me. He looked rushed like George's Niang looked rushed on those layups. In general, the team didn't shoot well from three nextrs, and Dean

Wade went three for ten. Sam maryl was one for six, and had some really ugly misses, like some bricks that damn near put a hole on the backboard. Just something to keep an eye on. Like, I've seen them handle athletic pressure well and execute and make shots at stretches, but I've also seen them handle athletic pressure poorly and

lose composure. And I think I think that'll be one of their like kind of oscillating back and forth team characteristics that we see in the postseason when they lose games versus when they win games, will probably center around whether or not they can remain composed against more athletic teams. But I really thought they won the chess match in this one. Shout out to Kenny Ankinson in terms of their on the fly adjustments. They executed really well and

they had a great chance to win. And again, like overall, I thought it was a pretty impressive Cavs performance, Like you're that's a tough Houston team to be especially in Houston. Evan Mobley being out is a pretty substantial loss and you probably win that game if Darius Garland doesn't miss five free throws. So overall, pretty encouraging from the Cleveland Cavaliers. We're gonna hit three more games, but it's gonna be

a little bit more of a rapid fire kind of stop. So, first of all, how can we be sure that Steph can't lead a championship team when this is what he's working with? The Kings last night followed a game plan that many teams in the NBA have employed over the last couple of years against Steph Curry. Let's just get the ball out of Steph hands. Let's pressure him, let's top lock him, let's deny him. Let's blitz him on every ball screen, Let's shade heavy towards him on every drive.

Let's just overplay him and make all of these fringe NBA players beat us. And for most of the night it actually didn't work. Sacramento allowed on astonishing twenty unguarded catch and shoot jump shots, which is a lot to give up in any single game. Golden State made eleven of them and led by as much as eighteen in this game. That was a big part of the early story of this game. It was a long term investment.

You gave up a bunch of open looks, you gave up an early lead to Golden State, but a very important thing happened Steph was out of rhythm on the offensive end of the floor. It took just eleven shots, he had twelve assists, but he had just fourteen points, and so as the game progressed, Sacramento got a little sharper with their rotations. The open shots were fewer and further between. I think fourteen of the twenty open shots they conceded were in the first half, and nobody in

a Golden State uniform felt comfortable. When we ended up in crunch time, all the role players were out of rhythm, and Sacramento's defensive intensity picked up again. This is a team that has been really really good on defense in this span, their sixth in defense in their last eleven games. They made all the Golden State role players feel uncomfortable, and now we're in crunch time and Steph doesn't have any sort of rhythm or anything in his game going at that point in time, and it just led to

an absolutely brutal finish on offense for the Warriors. They were up by four on a Wiggans three with four minutes left. The Warriors did not score over the next three minutes, and change in the game slipped away from them. In that span to Marta Rozen got a bucket over Gie Santo's Malik Monk and Deren Fox kept getting to the foul line with their rim pressure and then they

iced the game. In the final minute, Deeron Fox hit a little mid range jump shot and Malik Monk had a driving layup and that ended up putting the game away. So the Kings trusted their defensive game plan. They didn't overreact to guys making shots early in the game, and it ended up working out in their favor as they got a huge win. The Kings are now ten to one in their last eleven games, fifth in offense, sixth in defense, just absolutely killing teams in clutch situations like this.

In that eleven game span, they've played six clutch games. In those six clutch games, they're six to zero. Malik Monk and deer and five or excuse me, Milike Monk and Demarta Rosen have made seventeen of their thirty two shot attempts in the clutch over that span. As a team, we talked about them being a lead on offense and

defense in the large sample over that span. In clutch situations, they have a one to thirty five offensive rating and an eighty defensive rating in those six clutch wins the Kings. And this is such a great example of what I've been talking about all year with respect to the Western Conference and not getting too high and getting too low. I don't think you could have been much lower than the Utah Jazz looked at the end of that or

exus me. Then the Sacramento Kings looked at the end of that ugly stretch that they had a little over about a month ago, right, it looked like things were legitimately like we were talking about Dearren Fox traits. That's how bad it got, right, And now the Kings are up to seventh in the Western Conference standings in just one game back of the five seat. Pretty wild turn around and clearly just taking to the new voice in

the room, Doug Christy. This is something like I've talked about a lot, as it pertains to like even the move from Frank Vogel to Darvin Ham with the Lakers, Like, there are many different reasons to potentially change your coach, and one of them is like sometimes the same guy preaches at you for so many years, you just get sick of them and you just need to hear a different voice, and that appears to be something that has helped this Sacramento King, this Sacramento Kings team get back

on track. But I wanted to briefly hit on that Warrior's closing group. The Warriors closed this game with Gie Santos and Quinton Post on the floor. I don't understand how we could possibly gauge what this team is or isn't capable of, or what Steph is or isn't capable of when he's playing with fringe NBA players due to injuries. When Jonathan Kaming is out, you know, when Gary Payton's out, when Draymond Green's out. Different guys have been in and

out of the lineup all season long. When Brandon Pajemski's out. When these guys have been out with injuries, we're seeing a depleted team that already had a top end talent issue. So I'm hoping that they can get their main guys out there again before the deadline and get a big winn or two just to convince the front office to invest in this team. Here's one crazy stat for you guys. Golden State has seven wins this year against teams that are in the top ten in point differential that is

the fifth most in the entire NBA. That is the same amount as Boston. That is more than teams like Denver or the Lakers or the Memphis Grizzlies. There is a top end here that we haven't seen in a while due to injuries and some funks, and even Steph's

a little banged up. But I'm hoping that this team makes a resurgence at some point this year because I really want to see Steph play in some high leverage basketball games, and this team is going to need to make some sort of talent upgrade at the deadline for

that to be the case. Shae Gosus Alexander put another feather in his MVP cap last night at home against a Utah Jazz team that, thanks to Will Hardy, was nice enough to kind of let Shaye work in traditional coverages in one on one all night long regardless of how hot he got, and Shaye delivered his career high as a result. He had fifty four points, just a

ridiculous jump shooting display. Took twenty jump shots in this game, made ten of them, just kept getting to his spots with a variety of different moves and footwork and dribble combinations and just hitting a ton of them. He's now shooting forty five percent on all jump shots this season, fifty six percent inside his seventeen feet, fifty percent on jump shots between seventeen feet and the three point line, and then supplemented it with a bunch of easy stuff

at the rim and at the foul line. He looks like a player that is in complete control of his game all the time. He never looks rushed or pressured. He's reaching a really special place as a guard in this league. And interestingly enough, according to DraftKings Shake Gildos, Alexander has now moved to minus five hundred to win MVP. That is a massive favorite. I think he deserves it and it will be a nice precursor to his first

playoff run with some real championship pressure. All right, last game for today, the Celtics win a thriller in Los Angeles against the Clippers. The Clippers gave the Celtics a bunch of issues with kind of like these freaky modern lineups with a bunch of wings who can switch and pressure the ball, fire around and transition in rotation, and they caused some problems for the Celtics. They sent the game to ot with that pressure, they forced a couple

of turnovers. They got a chicken wing offensive foul call. Then they trapped Jalen Brown, which forced him to just throw the ball directly to Derek Jones, who immediately pushed it down the floor in transition and got a layup to send it to overtime. But they settled down in overtime. It played some Celtics basketball. Got an easy three for Derek White on the left wing off of a slip switch.

This is something that again Boston does a lot. Jylen Brown came off the screen with Cornette two guys stuck with the ball for a minute, floated over the top to Cornette. We got a week side two on one, skipped out to Derek White, hit in above the break three.

I talked two days ago about Jason Tatum and how I really like his off the dribble threes when he gets separation versus when he doesn't, And like he hit Kobe Brown with a snatchback dribble and got lots of separation and didn't have to step too far back behind the line. It was like a classic little twenty four footer and knocked that one down. Jaylen Brown hit a huge three. Jaden Springer hit a huge three, had two big threes in this game. He was great, played great defense.

I thought he had some really awesome defensive reps against Kevin Porter Junior in this game, and then icing the game. Nimi Queta at the layup right underneath the basket is Jason Tatum again. The Clippers finally got sick of it and just started doubling, and they double Tatum out at half court. A nice little passing sequence leads to a layup for Quada and he ends up or for keda and he ends up icing the game. The Celtics get consecutive wins for the first time since January third, and

now they have an opportunity against the Lakers tonight. Will be covering that game either tonight or tomorrow morning, I'm not sure yet, but a nice little spurt for the Celtics as they try to get back on track. One thing, one little tiny negative note that I wanted to just call attention to. Late in the game, the Celtics centers ended up giving up some drives. Both Luke Cornette and

Nimi Quota gave up driving layups. Kada gave up a driving dunk to a mere coffee right the one before Derek Jones junior bucket, And it's just a reminder that, like a big part of what makes this team work is that they have pretty good defensive personnel all over the floor at all times and a scheme that works for all their different lineups, and there is a little bit of a tendency for their backup centers guys like guys like Cornett to have some trouble in space guarding speed.

And it's just something to keep in mind that if Boston were to end up against a great team in a playoff series and have some injury issues with Portlingis and Horford, that is a slight area of vulnerability on the roster to keep an eye on. All right, guys. So it's all I have for today is always sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We'll be back tomorrow with a mailbag as well as

some game reactions. I will see you guys then the volume what so, guys, As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting OOPS 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.

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