Hoops Tonight - Nuggets on fire, Anthony Edwards & LeBron James comparison, 'Mind the Game' reaction

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varies by jurisdiction VOYD in Ontario. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. See dkang dot com slash b ball for eligibility and deposit restrictions, terms and responsible gaming resources. All right, welcome to hoop tonight. You're at the volume. Have you Wednesday? Everybody? If all of you guys are having an incredible week, we got a double show day for you today. So we're going short this morning. We're just gonna hit one game from

last night. The Denver Nuggets went into Minnesota and beat the Timberwolves, albeit very shorthanded. We had a weird slate last night. At the other four games that were played, five of those eight teams were below five hundred, So we're just focusing in on Nuggets Timberwolves as a game reaction.

After that, Lebron James and JJ Reddick had their first episode of their Mind of the Game podcast, and there were several basketball concepts that were hit in that show that I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into, so we'll do that in our middle segment. And then at the end, I've got four mail bag questions for us, some follow ups from yesterday's stuff about the goat debate, as well as some stuff about the Warriors and bam Adepayo who's made five of his last five threes in

the last four games. You guys know the joe for we get started. Subscribe to a brand new YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore jsn LTS. You guys, don't miss any more of our show announcements or film threads. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcast. Under Hoops Tonight is also helpful if you leave a

rating in a review on that front. And the last not least, keepdropping mail back questions in the YouTube comments so we can keep hitting them throughout the rest of the sea. And then before we get started, this is the best time of year to go out to a basketball game. Yes, we enjoy watching basketball on our couches as much as we can in our busy lives. But this is the best time of year to get out

to an arena. And I don't think there's a better version of the in person basketball fan experience than going to an NCAA tournament game. I've been fortunate to go to an Elite eight game before in my life. And when you go to these NCAA tournament games, they have these like crazy crowd dynamics where both teams have incredible support in the arena and it's kind of like a wave back and forth that follows the flow of the

game as the momentum swings back and forth. And in addition to that, it's single elimination basketball, and it's really hard to beat that level of urgency and intensity, especially as you get into the later rounds. So make sure you guys get out to an arena and see a game. Don't forget about our playoff basketball for the NBA as well.

We've got some older stars guys like Steph Lebron and KD And if Stephan and Lebron are lucky enough to get in given their predicamentment to play in tournament, but

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Create an account use code hoops that's Hops for twenty dollars off. Download game time today, last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. All right, let's talk some basketball. So Nuggets Timberwolves was kind of a funky game. The Timberwolves had just played the previous night in Utah, had one of those crazy like back to back things where they got back into town at like three am. Rudy Gobert is already out with an injury. Now Nas Reed as a result of the back to back is out, and obviously

Carl Townds is out with the miniscus tear. So all of a sudden, you have an incredibly small Minnesota Timberwolves team that typically obviously brings a very massive front line to the table, and so they started without a center

in this game. They brought Ni Alexander Walker into the starting lineup and slid Kyle Anderson down to center, brought Luca Garza off the bench, who obviously has his own limitations physically against some of the bigger centers in the league, and he can shoot the ball, which kind of brings a similar dynamic to guys like Carl Towns and Naz Reid,

but just not enough size on the front line. And Timberwolves they fought admirably they went down big early then went not a big run, but really it felt like whenever Denver was, you know, able to kind of engage themselves for a couple of minutes, they were able to pull away. I thought the key stretch of the game

was in the middle of the fourth quarter. I've talked a lot about like the that the Denver rotation, and one of the ways that it kind of swings is to start the second and fourth quarters, they'll go with like Jamal Murray and a bench group and they'll switch everything and they'll flow a lot through Jamal on the ball and kind of just let him pick his spots and really lean on one on one basketball, just kind

of matchup hunting. But then they go into like a phase in the middle of the second quarter, middle of the fourth quarter where they take Jamal off and they bring the center the starters on basically, and it's it's usually the starters, but with Reggie Jackson in for Jamal Murray. Was a little funky in this middle of the fourth quarter stretch because I'm not sure exactly why, but they left Aaron Gordon out longer, so Justin Holliday was in in the group. It was a little bit of a

smaller lineup. I think that might have been an attempt to try to generate some more spacing, because obviously when the Wolves went smaller, they's smaller with a ton of really good perimeter defenders, and so obviously to beat really good perimeter defenders off the dribble and to try to get into the lane and get good shots sometimes it helps to have a little bit more spacing. I'm guessing

that's what they were going with, but who knows. But Eric Gordon was out, so it was basically the starters with Justin Holliday and Reggie Jackson in for Gordon and Murray, and they went really heavy into the Michael Porter Junior and Nicole Yokics two man game, and the Wolves had got up four. They were up four in that kind of middle portion of the fourth quarter off of a

Luke Garza Friezo Luca Garza free throw, and they go down and they run MPJ Yokics two man game. A couple possessions in a row is a textbook example of the setup in the fake. So they start with the dribble handoff, Jokic pitches it to MPJ. MPJ comes off going to his left hand side hard step back dribble knocks down at three on the left wing, and then on the very next possession they go to run the

exact same thing. MPJ positions himself, the defenders getting physical with him and trying to bump him off of that line, and MPJ just stunts like he's gonna come off the dribble handoff and cuts back door. Yokic hits him on the slip. He dunks on a bunch of people underneath the basket. So now we've run the same drible handoff sequence, just with the fake on the back end. We get

five easy points. They go down, they get a stop, and MPG in transition hits a step back jump shot over Jade McDaniels, beating him with kind of like a pump fake and then a little off the dribble move going towards his left, and you know, it is a great example of what we talked about a lot, which is, you know, MIKEL. Porter Junior, in my opinion, has a lot more dribble pop, a lot more you know, kind of like ability to scale up offensively than he even

shows for large portions of the season. And you know, when he has an opportunity to kind of get more of the offense run directly through him. He can show you that he can be a guy that can kind of anchor an offense for a stretch, and that bigs. I thought that swung the game. You know, like Minnesota

a ton of momentum. Anthony Everards was playing out of his mind making all these crazy shots without a half dozen highlights from Anthony Edwards in this game, and it just kind of felt like the momentum was heading Minnesota's way. And when I tell you that sequence, those three possessions completely flipped the game. And then Jokic hit three threes in the fourth quarter and just like that, the game

was basically over. I wanted to talk about Jokic working on his jumper for a little bit because I thought this was a clear kind of tone that he was setting early. So he was being guarded by Kyle Anderson and he had plenty of opportunities to just kind of physically bully his way to the basket. And the dead giveaway was early in the game. Jokicic was just bombing fadeaways out of the post and he made I think

he made one or two of them. But he was missing a lot of them, but he was just bombing fadeaways. And then you go into the end of the game and he's bombing these long threes and some of them are contested and earlier in the shot clock, and I'm like, this is interesting, and I really think Jokic is just trying to polish up his jump shot to get ready for the postseason. This is something I've talked about a

good amount this year. But like the one thing I still even in spite of this, I think Jokic is the best player in the world by a comfortable margin. But if you had to nitpick Jokic for something this year, he just hasn't been as accurate as a jump shooter as he was last year. To give you an idea, last year, in the regular season, a Jokis jump shot was worth one point one seven points per shot, and in the postseason it went up from one point one seven to one point two to one points per jump shot.

So from basically training camp through to when they hoisted the trophy, Jokic was making his jumper at just a preposterous rate. You know, before the last couple of games this season, he had been down to zero point ninety nine points per jump shot, and in the last couple of games he shot well enough to tick it up, but still at this point for the entire season, he's

at one point zero one points per jump shot. So basically, like to put it simply, he is about what fifteen somewhere between fifteen and twenty percent worse as a jump

shooter this year as he was last year. Now, the big question what I've been saying is like, it's not so much whether or not he it's not so much whether or not he's bombing the exact same types of really difficult shots that he was last year in the postseason, because I really do think that Jokicic just kind of was in his zone in a lot of ways, and he was hitting some really like you'd a bunch of the somber shuffle shots and just a bunch of really

absurdly difficult shots. I'm more concerned about it in the perspective of the pick and pop, like I don't really look at those individual like crazy shots as massive swing factors over the course of a playoff runt, Like those are big plays and they obviously served their purpose, but those get categorized for me under rescue possession, which is like this is like there's a few seconds on the

shot clock and we're just throwing something up. I'm more concerned about, like, a big part of Jokic's offense last year was the pick and pop and you know, hitting

not just the pick and pop three, but getting a lot of close out opportunities off that where he pumped fake and then kind of rumbled down the lane towards his left hand side and get all the way to the rim for a layup or be able to make really good kickout reads for high quality shots from there.

I'm not saying it hasn't been a problem in the regular season for the most part, because obviously Jokic is still the best player in the world, and over the course of the eighty two it's it's just not something that's gonna manifest. But I do think that it's an important element to him being able to counter some of the very best teams at the top of the league when we get to the later rounds of the postseason. And so I think what was really encouraging about last

night is I think Jokic knows that. Because Jokic is very much not the kind of guy this year that would be bombing fadeaways when he has a significant size advantage or taking somewhat early clock contested threes. I think Jokic senses the urgency. I think he knows he's gonna need that shot to a certain extent when he gets into the postseason. And I think he's ramping up now.

He's like, it's middle March, today's March twentieth. We got what like three weeks or so until we get into the into the three and a half weeks, four weeks or whatever until we get into the postseason, and I think he's just trying to build it out, trying to build that rhythm, regain that confidence. We'll be keeping an eye on his jump shot over the course of the last few weeks of the regular season here, because I think that's going to be a strong endict because here's

the thing. If he shoots the ball like he did last year, they're just gonna win again. That to me is like what makes Jokic, being just a complete and total dead eye jump shooter pretty much makes Denver unbeatable. And I think Jokic has identified that and is really trying to build it out on the Wolves front. I want to talk about Ant for a minute. I've had a lot of fun watching him this year. He won

me over in a lot of ways. Last year I became a huge fan of the Timberwolves towards the tail end of the season as just a team that brought an insane level of physicality on the defensive end of the floor. And I just am a huge believer in Ant. I think he's the one American player that has like the real potential to rival these European bigs that are killing everybody, right, And you know, watching him lately as

reminded me a lot of young Lebron James. And they're not very similar as players, but they are similar as

transcendent athletes. And it kind of reminds me of young Lebron in the sense like when you watched young Lebron, and I'm talking like two thousand and three to twenty ten, like that first Cleveland stint, it was like every single night you watched him, he was making a half dozen highlight plays like I like, and they're all different, right, It'd be like a crazy tip dunk, classic transition runout, some sort of half court driving dunk in traffic that

just defies any sort of logic. One of the similarities that I see between ant and Lebron and their younger phase is the ability to take and make extremely difficult jump shots. When we talk about movement jump shots, so like that's anything that's flying off a screen and rising up and shooting some sort of dribble combination into a shot, host fadeaways, all that kind of stuff. The difficulty in those shots is not actually in the release. It's in

the legs. It's in the base. If you I have found personally when I'm taking post fades, step back threes,

things along those lines. As long as I get my lift, meaning like I get enough separation to get to my spot and I get great lift on the shot, the actual shot itself is just a jump shot, that's all it is, and as long as you have the appropriate amount of lyft, it feels more or less like a normal you know, a patch and shoot jump shot does there occasionally can get to another level of difficulty when you're drifting, because obviously the aiming element is a little

bit different, But it's all about legs. Those shots are all about legs. And Lebron when he was young and Anthony Edwards in this phase of his career. They have just this preposterous level of athleticism to where they can elevate out of really any spot or footwork ordriple combination

and get great lift, and so they get to these like so the highlights for and it's not just the dunks, it's not just the the there's some footwork stuff we're going to get to in a second that he does too, but a lot of it is like really high level, difficult jump shot making off of the virtue or off of the strength and power of his incredible athleticism in

his leg strength. We're seeing all this Like another big element of the ant highlight reel has been footwork as of late, and I think a lot of times we don't associate footwork as a skill when it really is like you work on ball handling, you work on shooting, But footwork is what connects all of those things. The only thing that will ever make it so that you can use your ball handling to get to a spot and then actually make a shot in that spot. The

bridge that connects those two things is footwork. And so the two main pieces of footwork that I wanted to dive into for Ant are his slow down steps. So this is one of the things he does in the lane where like he's this freaky athlete, but he'll slow down and take long, powerful steps. And one of the things that that does is when Ant beats a guy off the dribble, everyone's trying to recover back into space.

So a lot of times by slowing down he can find openings because the dudes who are recovering into the player coming in too fast, and so when he slows himself down, he can kind of wait for an opening to generate and then kind of slide into that opening and go He'll hit euro steps. Out of that, he'll hit like side step like kind of hooks and floaters and things like that. And then the second big one

is step throughs. And this is a fundamental part of a fundamental counter to the post fade, and this kind of originally, you know, we talk a lot about Kobe and MJ with this stuff, and Ant has definitely taken a big part of this. But like, we don't really see a lot of guys in the NBA that utilize

the step through these days. We see post fades. There are a lot of guys that take post fades, But the step through is kind of something that is a little bit of a lost art in the NBA, and it's been a big thing in the in the women's game. I've noticed, like the step through is is is very prominent when you watch women's college troops in WNBA basketball, where like the footwork is really sharp at that lot. Skill development in general in the women's game is super

super sharp. But like essentially what a step through is when you think of a right shoulder fade in the left shoulder fade, the footwork, the way it works is like if I have my back to the basket and I kind of pivot back and then I pivot over my right shoulder to take a right shoulder fade, I'm planting my left foot right as I elevate into the shot.

And if I take a left shoulder fade over this shoulder, I'm planting my right foot as I'm coming around to elevate and I'm trying to square up in mid air. So basically all you're doing on a step through is let's start with the right shoulder fade. As I'm coming around to plant for that right shoulder fade, I pump fake and then I just continue to pivot around. So

it's like it is basically a double pivot. It's the exact same footwork that you would to plant to elevate, but I'm planting again and pushing off and propelling myself forward towards the rim. And one of the things that it's interesting because I never saw it until it became super popular in the women's game, but you can actually

take another step on your step through. And that's something you did not see in the NBA when you go back to the Kobe's, in the in the in the MJ's that it was in the rule book, but it just wasn't something that players practiced and did. When you take that extra step, you don't have to jump off

two feet. You can actually step through with that extra foot and they consider it part of like your gather and right and as part of your gather steps, so it's not a travel and so you can step through and actually get way closer to the rim and get easy shots. And so it hit two of those last night, one on I want to say, he hit one on

Aaron Gordon and then one on Michael Porter Junior. And so against bigger players used footwork to get around them in the post, and like, you know, it kind of the way it kind of reminds me of the young Lebron piece is it almost feels like he knows he's so supremely gifted that he's just kind of trying shit sometimes like duh, Like let me try this move, let

me try that move. This shot is really difficult, but screw it, Let's just try it, you know, like that sort of thing, And like, you know, it's funny because when I think about the future of ant that's where I also think about the Lebron trajectory in the sense that, like when Lebron got out of there into Miami, he became more obsessed with efficiency and then it was less about trying stuff and like hyper focusing on the things that he's already great at. And what's like I talk

about low hanging fruit and basketball. I talk about how young players, when they grow up, what happens is they get really good at identifying what works in repeating that, and really good at identifying what doesn't work and stopping doing that, and that really is the pathway to efficiency.

And so Aunt is kind of in that young phase of his career where like the efficiency like, I think he had thirty last night, but he took like twenty six shots or something like that, or it was like twenty eight points on twenty six shots or something like That was the most efficient game that Anthony Edwards has ever had, And that obviously is something that's gonna be kind of part of his story at this phase of

his career. But he will reach a point where he's passed the young, exciting, just trying stuff phase and he's going to enter into like a what am I grade at? What do I need to work on? How do I up my efficiency? And then that's when he's going to

leap to an entirely different level. I saw a clip on Twitter this morning of him doing an interview with Taylor Rooks and she asked him, on a scale of one to ten, where he was in his potential and he said five out of ten, and then he started talking about Kevin Durant, how he's his favorite player, how he really wants to get to the point where KD is, where every single shot looks the same. And I've talked a lot on this this concept on the show, but like a jump shot is like muscle memory, even in

off the drib dribble combination types of stuff. You really want to just tweak the things that come before the shot. But when you elevate, you want it to look more or less like you're catching shoot jump shot. That's where

you can reach real consistency as a jump shooter. And when essentially it's about triggering a muscle memory that you've done so many thousands of times that you get more consistency out of it, right, And that to me is where I get really excited about and it's potential in the long run, is like he's got all of this ability now, but he hasn't even really figured out how to make it into something that's consistent and efficient yet. And when he figures that out, it's just it's just

it's it just watch out, man. And that's that's why I look at him as the one guy, the one American player who can enter into that conversation with Giannis and Embiid and yokicch And and Luca and those guys. Last last hit on the Timberwolves, Jade McDaniels, he had twenty six points on fifteen shots. Was trying to dunk everything in this game kind of reminds me of what happens when an athlete discovers his athletic advantage and and how like that kind of unlocks a level of aggressiveness.

And the dead giveaway to me was in the fourth quarter there was a play where I can't remember if it was on a cut or on a closeout, but he was driving along I think it was on a pocket pass. But when he caught the ball, he was rolling and Jokic was waiting for him at the rim, and he caught the ball kind of in the like right block, kind of extended out a little bit, and if you freeze frame it right when he catches it,

Jokic is kind of in his way. And I remember, as I was watching it live, I'm like, I'm like, I'd never even conceived that he might dunk it, and he just literally rose up over Yokic, and Jokic even was surprised. Bat he was like, oh shit, like he kind of pulled back at the last second, and Jaden just threw down this like jackhammer right right handed dunk, and like, to me, it's like that's where Jaden has started to realize, like like no one can actually kind

of contend with him above the rim. Or not many people can contend with him above the rim, and that to me is like cause he's shown he's shown high level shot making, right, he's got that little drifting jumper that he hits. He can knock down a three point shot at a big and one late in this game.

But like, really where he has his supreme advantage is in his length and athleticism and like that that was what was crazy about that twenty six points on fifteen shots, getting to the foul line a lot just by going aggressively to the rim and just getting hit right across the arms and stuff like that, people are gonna hit hit the arm instead of the ball just because of his athleticism. So again, not too much to take away from this game for the Timberwolves, just simply because of

the fact that so many guys were out. But they had won three in a row before that, so they're playing some good basketball. Then the Nuggets are just gonna tough to beat in that situation when you're giving up those kinds of advantages. For our next topic, Lebron James and JJ Reddick did a podcast yesterday something they recorded it seemed about a month ago when the Lakers beat the Clippers in that game where Lebron single handedly outscored them. At least that's kind of the way it was framed

at the beginning of the show. My initial takeaway on the show in general was just it was something that I think is important for the overall scale and scope of basketball coverage because JJ Reddick, in my opinion, is the very best in the world at what I do

for a living, meaning like covering the NBA on a national level. I think JJ's the best at it. He obviously does more than what I do as well, because he does color commentary and additional stuff like that and debate shows and things like that. But specifically within the realm of basketball analysis, I don't think anybody does it

better than JJ. And then Lebron James is arguably the most famous basketball player in the world, at least active basketball player, and he brings an incredible amount of IQ to the table, an incredible amount of CACHE to the table. Specifically, what stands out to me is they put up a ridiculous number on YouTube in that in that show, and it wasn't about anything urgent, Like it wasn't like we're

gonna break down what happened in last night's game. It wasn't like we're gonna break down this team or that team. It was just generic, in a vacuum basketball conversation. And I think like getting that kind of viewership for that sort of of like non urgent topic is just a testament to the power, the star power that those two guys bring to the table. And obviously namely Lebron, but JJ, JJ has reached a certain level of notoriety in his field as well, and so I really enjoyed it. There's

a lot of really good conversation. I'll be honest with you, I'm I A part of me wishes that this was something that was more consistent and more focused on the actual day to day NBA because I think it could be incredible. But it's early, so we'll see. We'll see

what ends up happening over time. I wanted to hit on a couple of specific things that they talked about talked about those so at the beginning there were is a conversation about the three things that make a good basketball player, and there was a specific point that JJ

made about something called that he calls competitive stamina. And I think this was really interesting to me because this is a very specific reason why I harp on something called habits, right, there's a reason why I've talked about it with the Sons and the Kings a lot souns Kings and MAVs a lot as of late. And what I mean by habits is like a habit is something

you do unconsciously. A habit is something that is so baked into your routine that you just it's it's almost easy to do because you're just accustomed to doing it.

And the reason why I think habits matter so much is when you get into any sort of situation with adversity, whether it's like a game that's slipping away from you or some sort of emotional adversity or whatever it is that's going on, your habits will carry you through those moments because, like like anything that you're not consistent in, when adversity hits, those will be the first things that you stop doing right and then like your true core

nature will reveal itself in those situations, And so you need to take your day to day routine and make it into a habit so that that is what you lean back on when the shit hits the fan. For lack of a better term, right, and so that like when when JJ talks about competitive stamina, that's literally that's literally what I think of think of when I talk about habits, so specifically, for instance, like for me, I

remember shooting workouts. I used to do them relatively casually when I was in my early twenties, and then I heard a lot from younger KD talking about doing your practice reps at game speed, and that was something that like when I first started doing was hard because like you're in an empty gym, and like, I have this shooting workout that I do that's like a combination of like four or five drills, and like I'll like I'll be I'll give you an example, like a rip through

one dribble pull up drill that I that I do every single day. And like, so I pitched the ball out to myself at the top of the key, facing away from the basket, and then I reverse pivot and I rip through as hard as I can, and then I do a left right take off into a pull up jump shot, and then I do the same thing

going left until I make five going both ways. Then I move it back with a counter move, so I rip through and then do a counter move and then take off going left and vice versa right and that drill.

Like when I was doing it casually, it was easy because you know, I have just reverse pivot and push the ball out in front and I elevate and it's just kind of almost like treated it almost like a warm up, And like all of a sudden, you realize you're practicing a shot that you'll never take in a game, because guess what, Never in a basketball game do you get to casually rise up into a jump shot, Like if you're gonna take a wonderable pull up, if you're

gonna shoot any sort off the dribble jump shot against real basketball players, you gotta be moving. You gotta be moving with real pace and speed. And like even for a guy who's as big and athletic as I am, like you still have to have a certain amount of pace that you bring to those shots to get him off against good defensive players. Because again, that's the thing, like six six and six ' ten wingspan, like like I have that's tall compared to like the average pickup game. Maybe,

but like if you go play against you know, go play at an open gym at a at a college somewhere, go play against real college athletes when they come back to town, or overseas athletes when they come back to town, and all of a sudden, there's a lot of wings that are six six and six seven and sixty eight, and suddenly you need to have a certain level of verve that you bring to the table to be able

to get your shot off right. So when you try the drill with like real game speed and I'm reverse pivoting and I'm ripping through as hard as I can, I'm covering a ton of ground and I'm elevating, it's hard. It hurts your body when you're in your mid thirties, like it. It takes a certain amount of like of like of exertion that's hard to do at the beginning

of a workout. And when I first started doing it, it was really challenging, but over the course of the weeks it became a habit for me, and now, like, I literally don't know how to do it any other way. And now when I go up to the gym and I go to do those those drills, like I ring a certain level of intensity to it just because that's the only way I know how to do it. It

has become a habit for me. And so as a result of that, like I have this like routine that I stick to every single day, and like even when I don't do it, it feels weird. Like if I happen to skip a shooting work out on one day because of whatever, I'm busy with work, or my wife and I are are have some sort of function, or we're out of town or whatever, it is, like it just feels weird, right, And like to me, like that, when JJ talks about competitive stamina, that's what I think about.

I think about establishing habits and making it so that specific behaviors of yours become habitual, even something simply like breakfast. I used to never have breakfast, and it was such a stupid thing because I'd deal with these crazy energy swings throughout the day. And now I have a five part breakfast every single morning, three over medium eggs. I take oatmeal, a banana, a yogurt, and an athletic greens every single day in the morning, first thing in the

morning when I wake up really hard at first. Now it's a habit. So now like every morning I wake up, that's just what I do, and that's helped me so much with energy levels throughout the day because I just get this really big, you know, kind of versatile breakfast every morning that kind of checks all of those boxes, right. And so the second part of it is what fuels a person to build those kinds of habits, Like what is it that allows a person to get to that point?

And a couple of things. Love of the game. Both Lebron James and JJ Reddick talked about love of the game. I think that is a key element because obviously, like it's easy to work on shooting drills, it's easy to get in the gym and work on your game when you love basketball, because like even something still like the only example the counter that I give is like when I was a kid, and I when I was in high school, when I was playing high school football my

freshman and sophomore year, I hated practice. So every day when you went to practice, you're just in survival mode. Now, my gew I was in Arizona, so it's hotter than well and uh and you're outside at the sun and it's and you know, every everybody who's played football knows exactly what I'm talking about. But like practice sucked, so it was hard to kind of get up to do

it right. And like, but basketball, It's like when I today today, because I'm covering Celtics Bucks, I am not gonna go to the normal pickup run that I go. So this afternoon, I'm gonna go do a shooting workout and like, that's gonna be fun for me. You're gonna put my headphones in, I'll listen to a podcast or listen to some music, and like for thirty to forty five minutes, it's gonna be enjoyable for me to do a workout because I love basketball, and so like that's

that is a that is a foundational concept. Secondly, competitiveness. To me, this is I talk about this on the show a lot, but separating love of the game from a hatred of losing, because I do think those are two very different things. I think there are people in the NBA who love basketball but don't hate losing enough to kind of push themselves to that next level, and so I think that that is an important element of it.

I think the greatest basketball players of all time are all people who both love the game but also hate losing. And then finally, a general lifestyle of excellence. And so what I mean by this, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to shout out a friend of mine, Sam Beskin. He came out a Tucson playing at Catelena

Foot Hills at the school that I coached. He was coaching, or he played there before I started coaching there, though, but I met him through the program and he went on to play at Stanford, and then he transferred from Stamford to play at Colorado School of Mines and he's been there this year and this year is his final season there. But I worked out with him over the course of the last three summers and got to know

him personally. And I've never met a human being that approaches every single task in his life with the same level of intensity and discipline and focus and competitiveness. And because I'm the exact opposite, I'm like anything involving my job which has to do with basketball, I'm locked in. I'm giving it everything I got. Anything having to do with basketball as a player or as coach, I'm handling it with like one hundred percent of everything that I have.

But like, if I wanted to go, if my wife was like, you want to go, run a couple of miles with me today, I'd have a really hard time pushing myself through that run. If I went on a hike, I'd have a hard time like pushing myself through that hike because like I'd be I'd get through it. But I just I have a hard time personally, like being

really engaged in things that I'm not passionate about. And like the sam My buddy Sam, like he just no matter what it is, whether it's his diet, whether it's school. He was a scholar athlete selection in the Pac twelve

when he was at Stanford. Uh, I like even like he told me a story about how he was in a run on campus with a with a guy who was a marathon or at Stanford, and like and like he got his butt kicked in the first lap and so he like pushed himself on the second lap and like actually managed to keep up with the guy and like, and I'm just I'm so impressed by just his overall like ability to get his mind and body to peak

efficiency and output regardless of what he's doing. And I think I think all of the best basketball players and best whatever it is that they do and whatever their profession in the world. Those people, it's not just that they love their profession, it's not just that they're competitive. They have a general lifestyle of excellence and like that that sort of thing, to me is is something that kind of goes under the table or that gets kind of like not given the appropriate level of regard when

we talk about these guys. Next, can basketball i Q be learned? This was the third thing that that JJ Redick put on his list of things that make a good basketball player. And Lebron and JJ had kind of a back and forth about it, and Lebron talked about some of it being kind of like you're born with and and and JJ talked about some of it that you can be that can learn. I tend to agree

that it can be learned. Separate basketball IQ from the natural gift, which is the ability to process information quickly in the heat of the moment. That to me is the the like the natural part of it. Right, So, like when I talk about guys like Lebron, nikolea Jokic, Luka, Doncicic, you know, Chris Paul h you know Trey Young, like all of the really really high level passers in the league, it's a couple of different things. It's not just basketball

IQ having to do with understanding reads. We'll talk about that in a minute. A lot of it is a human superpower in that in the heat of action, when lots of shit is going on around them, they can quickly interpret information and make decisions on the fly. That is the that to me is the natural gift that pushes them over the top. That is not learnable. That is something that you're born with, right But the basketball i Q piece is learned in my opinion, meaning like

the actual nature of the reads. So for instance, let's just talk about pick and roll. So like if I'm running a ball screen on the left side of the floor, I have and we'll talk about this not in the concept of five out, but rather in four. So I've got a guy standing in the left corner as a shooter, standing in the right corner as a shooter, standing on the right wing as the shooter, and I've got the guy coming up to set an all screen so i can get to my right hand downhill. In that situation,

you can learn what the reads are. So for instance, defender's icing the screen, meaning he is denying me access to the screen and forcing me towards the baseline side. I can do a couple of different things there as a read. I can either just take that baked in driving lane, draw the help defender and make a read from there. Or I can use it as an opportunity

to set him up for the screen. So hard dribble to the left, then a counter dribble, and then try to use the screen, basically trying to get him onto the opposite side of you so that you can use the screen. If he's in a trail position by come off of the screen and the guy is not digging down off the shooter on the right wing, and the big man is far back, and I can get some separation from the guy off the screen, I'm taking the three.

If the big is back and they're not digging down off the wing and the guard is chasing over the top and he's doing a good job staying attack, I need to continue to work downhill and if nobody else comes, I need to get a floater off before I get to the big man. If the big Man steps up, that's where the pocket pass is there. If the big Man stays back but there's nail help meaning the guy coming from the wing all I need to do is

make the swing pass to the wing. If the big man comes up and the pocket pass is not open because they're tagging from the weak side off of the guy in the corner, it's the skip pass to the corner and to hit that shooter or if he cuts along the baseline. You can learn those reads through a film study and just understanding the game, and literally anybody, even someone who's never played basketball in their life, can

learn basketball reads. But in the game, what applies those things is a combination of skill, meaning like the ability to dribble and pass and like actually handle a basketball right. But the second part of it is to be able to quickly process those things. There are lots of guys in the league who understand the reads but can't pick them up quickly. When you see one of your favorite players in the league go go into a ball screen and miss a skip pass or miss an easy read,

it's not because he doesn't know that read exists. He knows it's there, he just hasn't processed it in the heat of the moment. He struggled to see it all right. And there's no shame in that, because literally, it's like only a handful of guys at the top of the league that are that gifted at processing those things on the ball that quickly. Right now, there's a middle tier there in terms of processing speed in IQ, and this is where we get all the high IQ role players

and things along those lines. Those guys they can make reads relatively quickly in their specific role, and there's a ton of value there as well. But when I'm talking about the stars at the top of the league, it is kind of rare to have a guy that can quickly process those things super quickly every single time, get the ball in the right spots every single time. Two other quick ones before we move on Lebron's point about centers naturally wanting to drop towards the rim on help

on drives even if they're guarding shooters. This is fine. I just thought this was funny because this is something we talked about the show over the last few weeks. Specifically, I think it was when we were talking about the Cavs game when Cave Celtics, when Porzingis kept leaving Dean Wade open on the perimeter. I talked about the natural inclinations of centers and their tendency to want to drop back towards the rim and to be in a position

to help. And like how sometimes a player's natural tendencies will go against whatever the game plan discipline is. And so Lebron made a point about how like when he sees when he sees in a switch situation, a center guarding the shooter in the strong side corner and he's on the strong side wing, Lebron will just drive really hard towards that right hand side because he knows, even though the center is not supposed to help out the strong side wing or strong side corner, he knows he

wants to because it's his natural inclination. And I thought that was really really fascinating because like again, like there are these like little tendencies that you can capitalize on, and that's a great example of one. It's just like centers have a tendency to want to help, so if you drive in their general direction, you might be able to get an open three, just simply baked based on

that center's specific tendencies. And then finally, Lebron and JJ had a long conversation about the Warriors beating the Celtics in the twenty twenty two finals because of IQ and not talent. I just thought that was interesting because it's Lebron James saying it, and that's something that me and Colin talked about a ton heading into that series and

after that series. We both said before that series we thought the Celtics were the more talented team, but that we expected the Warriors to win on the strength of their experience and on Steph Curry being the best player in the series. And I one hundred percent agree. Lebron went on this rant about how the top four teams in the league when you get to the conference finals, those teams are all generally very good and all have lots of talent, and what separates from those four is IQ.

And I thought that was really fascinating because again, like margins get really tight at that point, and what swings margins are little tiny details, and teams that have high IQ don't make as many mistakes in the details. All right, quick mail bag, and then we're out of here. I heard you speak on why Kelly Ubre has been a very smart has been very smart with his reads on screen and rolls and getting open dunks on his tags and his tags. I'm sorry, guys, I'm gonna just start

that one over. I heard you speak on why Kelly Ubre has been very smart with his reads on screen and rolls and getting open dunks when it says in his tags the roller, but I'm assuming he means when the roller is tagged. If this is the case, why was he just not a good fit in Golden State? My impression was that he was is that he just wasn't good enough at the free flowing read and react type of offense and couldn't figure out how to get

how to gel well enough with Steph Curry. So I agree, But this this is a classic example of the difference between a four out offense and a five out offense. So, for instance, if you are in a situation where you are spotting up in the corner and they're running two man game and you are watching your lowman, right, so

the guy who's guarding you is now the lowman. So if I'm in the corner ball screens on the opposite wing, the guy who's guarding me, his job is if there's anything that happens to where the pick and roll gets compromised, meaning like the roman gets behind the screen defender, maybe the guard starts to get downhill or maybe it's a blitz and the ball gets to the short roll guy, he has to step up and basically be the guy who defends whoever it is that's coming down the lane.

And so you are now making a very simple read as the guy in the corner. Right, If he doesn't go very far, you want to stay in the corner to space. But if he steps up and leaves a vacancy like kind of a runway for you, that's when

you want to cut along the baseline. That's a simple read that is not as complicated as some of the more complicated reads that Kelly Yubrad had to make in Golden State's five out offense, and specifically for Golden State, they were a big believer in like even when you're open, you don't shoot, you turn and run a DHO for one of their shooters, right, Like Gary Payton's a great example of this. Like the dude will take if he's

just standing wide open, he'll take a shot. But if he catches and he's not in a great position to shoot, and I mean a great position to shoot, he's turning and flowing into a DHO, right, And like so much of that, there's more high level cutting in the Golden State offense from different spots on the floor and so againt like those are examples of him improving making reads within that specific role operating out of the corner as

a spacer. But it's not the same as some of the more like because no team in the league runs more action and I mean literally run sets out of five out than Golden State does. They are as structured an offense as you'll find in the league. Next question, what are your thoughts on BAM's recent three point attempt streak?

Is it sustainable? Why has it taken so long? So in the last four games, Bam and Toebayo's five for five from three, including a game winner against the Detroit Pistons a bomb from about twenty five feet at the top the key. Here's the thing. I don't think Bam needs a three point shot, and obviously if you can make it at a high percentage, you want to take it just from the same point of shot value. But for me, Bam is in a very similar situation to Yannis.

He primarily functions with his athleticism as a cog in their offense. It's different than yanis because down Jannis operates more, you know, kind of on an island, trying to attack and score. But what I mean by that is, like I don't think Yannis needs a three point shot. I think he needs to be able to make shots over contests around the rim, and I mean like before the rim, so like little push shots, floaters, half hooks, short jump shots, things like that matter more to Yannis. That's how I

feel about Bam. Great that he made five threes, but he misses like half of his shot attempts that aren't dunks within eight feet of the rim. So like that's the real problem. Like it's more can you make the floater, can you make the pop shot in the lane? Can you make the short jump shot or the little hook shot over the defense? Obviously the three point shot going in over the last four games is it's not like

it's a bad thing. But like, that's not the difference between Bam reaching where he is now and reaching his ultimate potential. To me, he's got to become a guy who can hit sixty sixty five percent of his non dunks around the rim, and he's just not there right now, and that's where he's holding himself back. Offensively. I've never heard of a tense seed, a tense seeded team getting exposed. We knew they sucked. This was after the Warriors lost

to the Knicks. Just going to take another example opportunity to talk really quickly about how the Warriors and Lakers are better than their record. Warriors are twenty three and

sixteen when both Draymond Green and Steph Curry play. That's a win percentage that if for the whole year they stayed at that level, they would pass the Lakers in the standings, they passed the Suns in the standings, they passed the Mavericks, and the standings, they passed the Kings in the standings, they'd be out of the play and

they'd be at the sixth seed right now. That's even with everything that's gone wrong this year, if they just had the winning percentage when Steph and Draymond are on the floor together and the Warriors are not on the upper tier, they are not as good as Denver, They're not as good as Boston. I don't even think they're

as good as a healthy Minnesota team. Necessarily, it's I would be tempted to pick teams like the Bucks and the Clippers over them, but everyone else, every other team in that group, whether it's the Knicks, whether it's the Sixers when they're healthy, whether it's the Suns or the Kings, or the Pelicans or the thunder like all those teams. I think the Warriors and the Lakers are just as

good as them. It's all those teams. It's about matchups, right, Like the Kings just did a number on the Bucks and Lakers and and then lost at home the other night. I'm blanking on who they actually lost to in that game. But everybody can lose to anybody on any given night. That's not a I think it was it was it the Knicks. I think it was the Knicks, But that that that group is very notchup oriented. Anybody can beat anybody. It's just a depend Like if your weakness aligns with

another team's strength, you'll lose in that matchup. But that doesn't mean you're necessarily a worst team, because that team's strength might match up differently with another team strength and weakness and they might lose that matchup. Right, The Lakers and the Warriors are way down in the standings. The Warriors because Draymond Green missed a significant chunk of the season and the Lakers because they went three to ten after winning the N Season Tournament, which dug them a

massive hole in the standings. Outside of the times that Draymond missed, the Warriors have been really good outside of that three and ten stretch after the N Season Tournament. The Lakers have been really good. They are better than their records. They are not top tier contenders, they're not even second tier contenders, but they're every bit as good

as those other teams in those tiers. And if you think just because they're a nine seed or a ten seed, that's an accurate representation of how much talent they have on the roster, I think I would disagree with you at that point. Last question this was in response to the Lebron Jay topic we had at the end of the show yesterday. A hair over Lebron, I said MJ

was a hair over Lebron. If you check the criteria for the goat of any sport, it's all about dominating the sport for a long enough period of time while

winning championships in a dominating fashion. Any case for Lebron James has to do with his longevity in dominating a conference and not the league. His underwhelming finals record speaks to that playing longer does it make you better unless we are just speaking to the best athlete. A couple things. I technically lean more towards dominating over longevity personally as well. That's why I have MJ Hairover Lebron. But a couple

of things. First of all, Lebron James dominating the Eastern Conference. I agree with you, it's an overrated kind of thing to talk about, right, Like he has ten conference championships, nine of which took place in the Eastern Conference. That's certainly impressive. But yeah, the Eastern Conference was weak more at the time, like it's The Eastern Conference is weak now in a different way than it is back in

Lebron's era. Like now the East is weak at the bottom, but there are still really good teams at the top every single year, usually two or three, like really good teams in Lebron's East. There just never was a team remotely as good as them, and so they kicked everyone's ass in the postseason every single year because the best team they'd face would be a Pacers team with Paul George or a you know, a Raptors team with De Mardiros in Kyle Lowry. But every time we have this conversation,

we gloss over a simple fact. Lebron James has won four NBA championships. So forget about the damn conference titles all you want. He has four damn championships since he came in the league. No player or franchise has won more championships than Lebron. That is a certain level of dominance in its own way. And so like again, like,

you're right, the conference championship thing is a little bit overblown. Yes, Lebron played in the East, and then he still ill hoisted the Dan Larry O'Brien Trophy four times, despite a lot of things that worked against him over that span, like the Cavs originally never putting a championship level roster around him in his first stretch there in Cleveland, Like the Kyrie fiasco in twenty eighteen, Like Anthony Davis's injury history and immediate decline after the twenty twenty playoff run.

Like if I told you after Lebron convinced Ad to come over in the summer of twenty nineteen, if I told you, hey, Lebron's going to be really good for all five of the next five years, you'd be like, Okay, they're winning multiple titles, but no ad had a significant

injury stretch and declined as significantly as a player. Went from being a guy who's in contention for the best player in the world to a guy who's a fringe top ten guy now right, And like that is the Despite all of that, he still hoisted the trophy four times. And so again, when we're talking about Lebron's dominance, he's not as dominant as MJ, but he's still pretty damn dominant. I didn't even talk about in that stretch, Like literally, after Lebron won his third title, the two best players

beneath him in the league teamed up. He's the best player in the league. He won his third title, just beat a seventy three win team, had back to back forty plus point games in the in the finals, had a stranglehold on the best player in the world title.

And then Kevin Durant and Steph Curry teamed up on a team that already had one of the best coaches in the league, the best defender in the league in Draymond Green, the best wing defender in the league, and Andre Udala, the second best shooter in the league who's also an excellent perimeter defender in Klay Thompson. All of that, plus the two players in the league that were right behind Lebron like like any still hoisted the trophy four times.

So like again, I think when we're I think when we're talking about Lebron James dominance, it's it's important to view it as different than MJ. But it's not a lack of accomplishment. Like think about the way Larry Bird is revered. He only has three of them, right, Like, it's it's not I think that the Lebron's dominance has actually become a little underrated in that regard. Lastly, his a playing longer doesn't make you better unless we are

just speaking to the best athlete. This I just fundamentally disagree with. Obviously, dominance is the larger factor as I talked about, but I do think longevity really matters, and

the reason why is simple. If I was talking about who the best basketball player ever was, I look at it from the perspective of if I was a if I owned a franchise and I had to start from scratch, and I could only pick one player in NBA history to start with, and I could have their entire career, which player gives me the most opportunity to win the

most championships in a vacuum. And if I get twenty years of Lebron James playing at a top ten level, during which a hefty I go like nine years from twenty twelve to twenty twenty, I thought he was clearly the best player in the world. So for a nine year stretch there he was literally number one. So I'm getting nine years of number one in an additional eleven years of top ten and then that first year, but

Lebron is still top twenty. So like with that being my kind of foundation for bringing in a star player to start my franchise, I have a really good chance to win. And so that's why I look at longevity as also a significant part of the case, because you want to see what ceiling the guy can reach, but how long he stays there is a big indicator. Because again in the NBA, like a lot of shit can

go down, matchups can be weird, injuries can happen. Sometimes, you sometimes even though you are in a good position to win the title, just bad things happen and you don't twenty fifteen, but another title, Lebron probably wins if his team is healthy. I believe a healthy Kyrie and Kevin Love with Lebron James be the Warriors in twenty fifteen. That's trophy number five. Like that, Like again, anything can happen.

And so that's why getting more cracks at the table, more you know, pulls at the slot machine, so to speak, give you more opportunities to win. And that's why longevity matters. All right, guys, that's all I have for today is always sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show. I shouldn't say that's all we have for today. That's all

we have for this morning. We will be back tonight right around about let's see, the game starts at seven thirty eastern, so right around like what's that going to be a right around like ten o'clock eastern. We'll be recording live on YouTube. After the final buzzer of Buck Celtics, I will see you guys that the volume