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two oh over. The DA Pacers get a little bit of a Willis Reed moment from Jalen Brunson as he leaves the game in the first quarter with what appears to be a foot injury, comes back in the second half leads them to a comeback victory. We're gonna break it down from the perspective of both teams. You guys, are the drill before we get started. Subscribe to our brand new YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLT so
you guys don't miss an show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight in the last minute, least kep dropping mail back questions on those YouTube comments so we can keep hitting them throughout the remainder of the postseason. All right, let's talk some basketball. I want to open tonight with Jalen Brunson.
And I know it seems a little bit unusual to randomly kind of talk big picture Jalen Brunson when he finally breaks his forty points streak after what doing it four times in a row and only finishing with twenty
nine points tonight. But tonight was one of my favorite Jalen Brunson games that I've watched because, in addition to the adversity from the injury and the Pacers kind of taking control of that game in the first half, entering into the second half up double figure scoring early in the second half and going up by twelve.
In addition to that, I thought the level of.
Difficulty on almost every shot attempt he had in that second half was off the charts. It was kind of like the quintessential expression of Jalen Brunson as a basketball player.
There's a craftiness to him. I was talking on Twitter during the game about how I don't even know how you would describe a player like Jalen Brunson to the next generation of basketball fans, because we've been talking a lot in this postseason about athleticism and strength and how this is, you know, prison ball with the increased physicality, and it's just so incredibly difficult for anybody to break
free from anything in these physical, defensive minded environments. And Jalen Brunson is a bit undersized, not particularly fast, not like he doesn't bring any sort of exceptional physical tools.
To the table.
He's pretty strong, has a really good start stop quickness. I don't want to part like he's not an excellent athlete, but there are definitely guys around them like he's not Anthony Edwards. He's not going out there bigger, faster, stronger than everybody at his position group, right, and yet he just continues to dominate, not just dominate, but dominate efficiently. Rough first two games against the Philadelphia seventy six ers, and he's just been just completely locked in in the
six games since then. So I have been a big fan of Jalen Brunson's for a long time. Those are you guys who have been listening to the show for a while, may or may not remember me getting into big trouble before the season for saying that I thought that as of right now, he's a better basketball player than John Moran, and that mainly comes down to game management. And where Jalen Brunson really won me over in that
regard was the twenty twenty two postseason. So if you guys remember Luka don Chitz was hurt and missed, I want to say the first two games, if I remember correct, might have been the first three games of that Utah Jazz series, and Jalen Brunson just like found a way.
To steal a game early in that series with that Luca.
If I remember correctly, it was Game two and he had like forty something points in the game, and it was the first time I watched him kind of manage a basketball game in a vaguely similar sense to the way he does with the new York Knicks, and there's a huge difference between filling the box score and managing a basketball game. Basketball games have a flow to them from a start to finish, a possession by possession type of flow, and one of the most important responsibilities for
a primary ball handler is to manage that. So, for instance, if you just go iso a bunch of possessions in a row, you can get the rest of your team out of rhythm. There is a delicate balance to it, and I actually thought we saw a lot of that in the fourth quarter of this game, because Brunson knew I can score over Andrew Nemhard whenever I want that
guy can't guard me. And yet he still called for ball screens from Tyrese Haliburt, and he still tried to work with the pass to kind of keep guys involved.
Still uses the give and go to.
Try to get dribble penetration to get downhill and get the defense into road. He has a really good feel for when it's time for him to shoot and when it's time for him to try to get the defense into rotation and kind of handle that part of the offensive responsibility more proactively. And like again that twenty twenty two Jazz series was the first time that I thought he really kind of flashed that high end potential.
Right. And again, like I talked.
About before the Cavs series last year, if you guys remember I specifically said Donovan Mitchell has like more offensively obviously with his athleticism, but I viewed Jalen Brunson as a better game manager. He's just better at kind of navigating that surgical half court environment in the NBA playoffs,
and he demonstrated that last year beating the Cavs. And honestly, like if it wasn't for if Julius Raynald gives him anything, like literally anything, last year, they go to the conference finals. And this is where we really have to kind of like reevaluate the way we look at Jalen relative to the rest of the league, because like he's he's really getting better still, Like he's.
A legit four level scorer.
Now, remember I look at scoring in four levels at the rim, short range shot making, mid range shot making, and then three point shooting.
So think of it like long twos, short twos at.
The rim and the three point line, right, and he's got that completely down, Like he's got all the floaters and hooks and push shots and all these different kind of like crafty shots around the rim that he can get all the way to the rim and finish and draw fouls. He can shoot from the mid range, but he can shoot from the mid range, not just pull up jump shots and pick and roll. He can turn his back to the basket and he can hit post
up fade aways over both shoulders. He can take a guy in ISO off the dribble and hit short step backs and things in straight ISO out of the mid range at the three point line. He can shoot pull up threes in ball screens. He can shoot pull up threes and step back threes in ISO. He has the complete scoring package. There's also like this weird craftiness to him.
There's like a half dozen times a game or it looks like he's trapped and it looks like he's got nowhere to go, but he just somehow finds a little angle and slips around a guy, he gets all the way into the basket, makes a layup, or finds an
opening to make a little short push out. How many times in that sixers series last last round did you see Jalen Brunson like trapped in that bracket between Nick Batoom or Kelly Ubray and Joel Embiid and just somehow find the space to like with a funky angle and a little bit of a funky release to get a shot off. It's like almost improvisational shot making. It's like he can tweak his release and tweak his angle at any given moment to find an opening that would not
be there for other players. In addition to that, furn himself and do an excellent playmaker. He's averaging eight assists in this postseason run. That's not a thing that was kind of looked at as a strength of his game when he was in Dallas. It's something that he's grown into in this role. And then again, like obviously I don't like foul grifting and I want it to be taken out of the game. But as I've always said, I never blame the players for that. That's the players
are competitors. They're looking for an advantage. Jalen Brunson, and you know that a lot of the guys are gonna be going against on any given night, or Anthony Edwards level athletes, or maybe not Anthony Edwards, but more athletic than you. You got to find a way to compete, and so you bet you're ass you're gonna try to find every single little advantage that you can get, and that includes finding gaps in the rules for you to grift your.
Way to the foul line. I'm not mad at Jalen for that.
I'm mad at the NBA for that, and I respect that he's added that as an additional strength to his game. And this is where I want to kind of get to where we evaluate Jalen in the big picture, because I used to, like many others, be in the camp that's like, Jalen can't be the best player on a
championship team. Even with how much I liked him coming out of Dallas and after last year in New York, I still thought, ideally you want him in like that Kyrie Irving role rather than the actual primary shot creator. I think we have to revisit that. I don't think that's the case anymore. This is too consistent, too efficient, too reliable. Even when he's not feeling great physically, he can still find openings and score when defenses are throwing
the damn kitchen sink at him. And so honestly, like, let's just revisit it like this. If he is a number one, if he is capable of being the number one on a championship team, all you're asking there is a legitimate secondary option, which as good as Ojnnob is, he's not as good as Dante de Vincenzo is. And Dante DiVincenzo is a huge part of that second half run. We're gonna get to it in a minute. But I don't think Dantete de Vincenzo is that kind of guy either.
So let's just make a very basic kind of comp Let's say we took somebody in that, you know, eighteen to twenty five range around the league, like just a bona fide number two. Like what if you gave Jalen Brunson Paul George. Do you think if you put Paul George on this Knicks team that they could win the championship?
You're damn right they can. They absolutely can. That Like that's like they are.
They're gonna make to the make it to the conference finals in all Likelihoo, unless this ojn Andobi injury ends up being a bigger issue there, they have a really good chance to make it to the conference finals and they do not have a secondary shot creator, and and he's not on the other side of the bracket, or you're playing Orlando in Cleveland, like and a Miami Heat team that's that's missing all those guys. He just just
kicked Joel Embiid out of the postseason. And guess what, Joel Embiid did have a legitimate co star he and he's doing it right now to Tyre Saliburton in Pascal Siakam in the Indiana Pacers. I absolutely think I have to I'm changing my mind on this from where I had been in the past. I absolutely think Jalen can be the best player on a championship team. I just
think you have to give him a legitimate secondary shot creator. Unfortunately, I have a feeling he's gonna run into just a sheer talent gap when he gets into the later rounds, whether it's Boston most likely going to be Boston in the in the next round, or if it ends up being somebody like a Denver or Minnesota or or OKAC or Dallas in the in the in the finals, Like at a certain point, the lack of shock creation could
very much be an issue. But like, I absolutely think Jalen can be the best player on a championship team. Indiana had no idea what to do with him in that fourth quarter, Like Jim McConnell's picking up with some full court ball pressure and Jalen just get the ball across half court, bring Ben Shepard into a screen and
start attacking Ben Shephard. Eventually, Rick Carlisle just had TJ McConnell double him because they had to double team him because he was getting off too easy against Ben Shepherd. Then they go back to the starters and it's Tyre's Halliburton and Andrew Nemhard And we're going to talk about the matchups here in a minute, because I basically begged Rick Carlisle to try something different than Adren Nemhard after
Game one, and he just didn't do it. But they go in with Nemhard and teach once again, like Jalen just knew, I can score on Andrew Nemhar whenever I want, But I can't just go iso the rest of this game.
I have to manage the game. I have to manage the flow.
We have to get the ball into rotation some and a big part of it was just getting Tyre's Halliburton into the action and drawing that second defender and getting them getting the short role man rolling downhill. He was so effective attacking with guard guard screens at the in that middle portion of the fourth quarter that Rick Carlisle had to start trapping him as he was just dribbling
a past half court. As soon as he did that, that was when Dante DiVincenzo started burning them with those corner threes.
And so they they tried everything.
They tried switching and doubling, they tried hedging with Tyres Halliburton, they tried trapping at half court. They tried just like, oh, maybe we'll leave him in single coverage, and it just nothing works. Indiana has nothing that they can do to slow down Jalen Brunton at this point, at least among the strategies that they that they've tried.
And again, I thought that.
Jalen just did a really good job of managing the flow down the stretch of that game, in like making sure that he mixed up his approach enough to not become predictable. Again, that's the major thing with these NBA playoff settings. If you go to James Harden route and you just dribble the ball at the floor and you attack and straight iso or pick and roll from the exact same spot on the floor, and you use the
same three or four moves every single time. It'll work in the regular season, and then you'll run to an elite defender in a postseason environment who sees them moves for two straight weeks, who sees the same damn action that you run for two straight weeks, and he figures it out. He slows you down, he makes you less efficient. That's not what it's like with Jalen Brunson. I love that he'll just like he never if he tries to go to some sort of step back and he gets
cut off. It's the same thing every time. Find that release valve and then backcut and then usually he'll end up catching the ball in the back cut. They'll all collapse around him and he'll make reads from there all game long. Honestly, the Nicks did an amazing job catching pacers, defenders, ball watching and cutting behind the defense and finding open
finding openings that way. Honestly, that's where I want to kind of get into the early second half ront because Dante DiVincenzo was a huge part of how they regained control of the game. In that early third quarter stretch, hit a couple of corner threes, upped his ball pressure and Tyre's Halliburton, who was just lights out in the first half and they needed to kind of find a
way to slow him down. He had a big back cut on a dunk where aaron Ne Smith kind of lunged out in him at the three point line, just backcut, and then literally Myles Turner kind of was like side by side with him on the dunk. He just went up and just was like, I have to go strong because Miles Turner can block this, and he just kind of forced it over the front of the rim and dunked at home. I thought he was amazing in this game.
And again he was the guy who hit those two big threes out of the traps of Jalen Brunson out at half court earlier in that fourth quarter stretch. Moving to Pacers, I let's say in the nixt for a second, because I got hit a couple of other things. They were really struggling on the offensive glass through the first three quarters, and the Pacers actually won that battle and they managed to flip the script and they actually brought the rebounding the offensive rebounding total down to fourteen to
twelve as they kind of closed that gap. Now as far as the og And Andobi injury goes, they're referring to it as sorenis. That is a little sketchy to me because of the way he pulled up. He pulled up so aggressively and like he was in so much pain that they it kind of seemed like it was a more substantial twenty two to seventeen was the second chance points advantage for Indiana, So they kind of closed that gap from where it was in the early part. So obviously the way he pulled up makes me feel
like it's a little more serious. Now, you don't know, because it could be it's either pulled a hamstring, or it could also be that he had some sort of cramp, Like he could literally have just cramped and then just kind of bailed on it and not put any more weight on it and taking it easy.
Right, So, like we'll see. Now here's the thing.
I actually think they're capable of beating Indiana without og In and Obi. You can kiss any hope of beating Boston goodbye without og And So hopefully if it is something more serious, hopefully it can he can get better in a couple of weeks because he's gonna need to be back in time for Boston. But I do think that the Knicks are capable of beating Indiana without Og, and and ob it'll be hard. I wouldn't be surprised without Og if they went back and tied the series.
But again, it's really hard to beat a team four times in five tries, especially when they've got Glen Brunson on the team and when he's playing at the level he's playing. Also, hopefully his foot is not more serious than he's letting on and hopefully he's able to rebound quickly from that. But obviously injuries are a big thing to keep an eye on. Obviously it's been a disaster for the Knicks with injuries. Mitchell Robinson out for the rest of the postseason with what appears to be some
sort of stress injury and his ankle. So obviously a lot kind of coming apart at the seams in terms of injuries. But thankfully the Knicks do have a good amount of depth, and getting Precious to Chua in that deal gives you just another big forward who can help, and obviously Precious has some work to do. He had a couple of bad defensive breakdowns late in the game, but he also had a couple of big finishes around the rim in offensive rebound situations at the end of
the game. So we found a way to impact. But yeah, injuries are the one thing that could end up derailing this for the Knicks. Now on the pacer side, I still don't like the matchups for Rick Carlisle that Rick Carlisle is using in this series. Again, I understood why they went away from TJ a little bit. TJ was doing a really good job on TJ was doing a really good job on Brunson. But as soon as you go to TJ, you kind of have to run the offense through TJ right because that he's just off the
ball because he's not a good three point shooter. It becomes a little bit of an issue when Tyre's Halliburton has the ball right and if you have Tyre's Halliburton out there and he's just spotting up in the corner while TJ's running offense, now you have Tyrese Haliburton spotting up on one end and being a bad defensive player on the other end, and that's just like a really bad trade off. And so I kind of get why Carlisle is willing to go to TJ and Tyrese at
the same time. Maybe in the middle portions of games for stretches, but maybe not at the end of the game. That said, the problem is not like the problem is with Nemmark. He's too small and Brunson can easily shoot over the top of him. With a guy like Aaron Nee Smith, you at least have a better chance of making it more difficult for him shooting over the top. Now Brunson has drawn fouls on Aeron Smith, Brunson has managed to drive pass aaron Ne Smith. He's a superstar.
You're not gonna just put him on him and throw him in jail. I just think you have a better chance by putting Nie Smith on Brunson and at least putting him in a situation where he doesn't feel comfortable attacking as comfortable attacking one on one when you've kind of dug down around him, so that Nemhard or that Nie Smith can't be driven past as easily. And again
it's gonna put you in some rebounding predictments. Obviously, when you have Josh Hart and Dante Di Vincenzo crashing from the perimeter and Nie Smith is on the ball, some bigger challenge on that back line. But once again, you're not getting rebounds anyway, So like, at least give yourself a better chance to guard Brunson. What I don't understand
is sticking with Nemhart. Even going with TJ would have been a better option, even with all the offensive limitations than going with them hard because even though Nemhart is a good defensive player, he's a bad matchup for Brunson. Runson is not gonna have a size advantage over many perimeter defenders in the league.
He does have a size advantage over Andrew Nemhart.
So again, I just want to see I want to see Nie Smith on the ball, and I want to see a better team effort on the glass, and I think they can close.
I make the at least a little bit tougher.
One last note, Tyrius Halliburton much better game, really dynamic in that first half. I disagreed with some of the assertion in the second half from stan Van Gundy that, like Tyrese was like more or less ineffectual because there were stretches in that early second early third quarter run where Tyree's was like Tyree set up Pascal Siakam with an absolutely perfect pocket pass and Siakam just smoked a
point blank layup wide open at the rim. Halliburton set Aaron Nee Smith up with a wide open wing catch and shoot three during like they got a lot of good looks over that stretch that didn't go in. And again I understand because he had twenty something in the first half and only finished with thirty four. But like, Halliburton is more like Steve Nash two point zero. He's not you know, you can't think of him like Jalen Brunson.
He's not a score first kind of guy. He can score, and he demonstrated that tonight, but he's more of like the twelve thirteen assists kind of guy, right, And so I thought Haliburton did an okay job in that second half of generating shots.
He could do better.
He needs to learn to deal with physicality a little bit better. Dante DiVincenzo up to that ball pressure in the second half kind of slowed him down a little bit. So there is a lot of room for improvement. He still is missing that athletic burst that he had before
his hamstring injury. Like early in the season, he would just toast people off the dribble and he had this deadly scoop shot off the glass that he'd attack bigs on switches with, and he hasn't really been able to go to that because he just doesn't quite have that athletic burst. So he's got to get that athletic burst back. He's got to put on a little bit more muscle
to handle some of that ball pressure. But I do think overall he had a good shot creation game, and again, thirty four points and nine to as sists is nothing to just completely dismiss, but his impact did tail off a little bit in that second half, and I did think that was an indicator of some of his struggles with physical ball pressure and individual shot creation for himself.
But again, I think Indiana obviously is gonna be a buzzag game home and going home in Game three, it's gonna be really tough game for the Knicks to win, especially banged up series is not over. Indiana certainly has a chance to get back into it, just really hard to beat a team like the Knicks led by Jalen Brunson four times out of five, So good start for the Knicks, up two to zero in the series. All right, guys, that's all I have for today. Tomorrow morning, we have
a mail bag coming out. I recorded it today, that'll be up first thing in the morning, and we went for about a half hour hit like a dozen questions went all around the league. Tomorrow night, we're actually taking off taking a short break for Game two of Celtics Heat and MAVs Thunder, but I am going to be covering both of those games on Friday morning, So mail
back tomorrow morning. Breakdowns are the Thursday night games on Friday morning, and then we're back for what is going to be a huge Game three live on YouTube after Nuggets Timberwolves on Game three, first bit of real, first bit of real adversity for Nikola Jokic in the Nuggets in Game three going into Minnesota again, I got a lot of Nuggets fans were disagreeing with me because of the idea that you know, they've had seasons in the past where guys have been hurt, came back from three
to one in the bubble twice.
You know, guys were.
Injured in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two. Yeah, no doubt those were. That's a different kind of adversity. That's adversity in terms of like bad things happening to you. However, I'm looking at adversity through the lens of expectations. And last year there was real expectations on the Nuggets. Okay, two time, MVP, you're healthy, now show us what you got. And the Nuggets absolutely demolished that test and passed it with flying colors, right as they ran through the league
and dominated the playoffs. But this this is the first time in this era where they've had they have real expectations. You're the better team, you were the favorite going into the series. You have the undisputed best player in the world, and you got punked on your home court and went
down oh two. That's real adversity. I look back at the other stars, like Lebron, you know, dropping Game five in Miami before they before they have to go on the road to Game six in Boston down three to two as the favorite.
That's real adversity. Right Like there I was. I was looking at like.
The H that Steph series in twenty twenty two against the Celtics down to one on the road in Boston. Yeah, you entered the series as the favorite. That's real adversity, right, like that, that is that is different. This is what happened in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two, where Yokic like stole a game off Golden State or beat Portland.
That's more in line with like Jannis in twenty twenty two, where like Chris Middleton got hurt and he had that crazy run through seven games to push that series long, but no one like expected the Bucks to win that series. They were an underdog without Chris Middleton Like that, to me is not the same level of pressure and expectation.
So I'm really excited for that Friday night game. That to me is gonna be the first real opportunity for Jokics to just shut everybody the hell up and show him what he's capable of, show everybody what he's capable of. And so we'll be going live on YouTube after that. All right, guys, it's all for tonight. I see you tomorrow morning for the mailbag. Appreciate you guys.
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