Hoops Tonight - Pacers stifle Shai Gilgeous-Alexander & Thunder, Warriors fight + NBA Mailbag

Sportsbook app and use code hoops that's hoops. New customers can bet five bucks to get one hundred and fifty dollars instantly in bonus bets only at DraftKings Sportsbook with code hoops That's hops. The Crown is yours. Gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler or in West Virginia, visit www dot one eight hundred gambler dot net. In New York call eight seven seven eight hope and why, or text hope and Why to four six seven three six nine.

In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling called eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven, or visit CCPG dot org. Please play responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino and Resort in Kansas. Twenty one plus age varies by jurisdiction void in Ontario. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. See dkg dot com slash b ball for eligibility and deposit restrictions, terms and responsible gaming resources. All right, welcoon to hoops and

iight here at the volume. Happy Wednesday, everybody. Hope all you guys are having a great week. Just gonna do a really quick show this morning because we're going live again tonight, a very important game for both teams. Sacramento King's got a massive win over the Milwaukee Bucks last night. They will be facing off against a Lakers team that also desperately needs that game and has lost three straight

to the Kings. And Anthony Davis has got his bike kicked by Duvani Sabonis, so it should be a really, really fun matchup on ESPN tonight. We will be going live on YouTube right after the final buzzer of that game. But today's show a little short quick show. We're gonna hit one game. The Indiana Pacers have been pretty impressive on the road as of late, but they got a big win over the Oklahoma City Thunder in Oklahoma City,

largely on the strength of their defense. So we're gonna talk a little bit about the Pacers new starting lineup and some of the defensive success they've been having, a little bit more about Pascal Siakam's fit, some notes on Tyree Saliburton because I always love watching him, and then we'll hit a little bit on the thunderside. After that, I've got a couple of big picture stuff that I

want to hit on. Andrew Wiggins and Brandon Pitzemski had a little bit of a yelling match in the middle of their win the other night, and I think that I have some perspective to add to that because I've been in a similar kind of situation back when I was playing in college. That I wanted to give my thoughts on the whole We're done with the nineties trend that's going around on social media, just kind of have

the nineties back a little bit. And then at the very end of the show, we had one mailbag question having to do with kind of the format of our channel and how it's laid out. So I wanted to kind of help explain why we do things the way we do in terms of the way we roll out content. You guys know the joe before we get start to subscribe to our brand new YouTube channel, I mean a

lot to me. If you guys are take a second to scroll down and hit that subscribe button, don't forget about o podcast feet wherever you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also really helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLT, where you guys can see show announcements as well as film threads, and the last but not least, keep dropping mail back questions in the YouTube comments. We'll probably have at least one more, if not a

couple more mail bags this week. All right, let's talk some basketball so quick note on this one, no Jalen Williams for the thunder, although again, like you're not going to get a whole lot of sympathy from other NBA fan bases about guys missing games. It's kind of just something that happens, and the thunder have been kind of uniquely healthy in a lot of ways this particular but

obviously not a full strength thunder team. Jalen Williams two is not only has he been playing just incredibly well, has been one of the best pull up jump shooters in the league. But without him, it's a pretty steep dropoff in overall shot creation. Guys like Josh Kitty can

make plays. Guys like Chet Holmern can make plays. Guys like Gordon Hayward who slotted into the starting lineup, they can make plays off the bounce, but they're not really high level shot creators the way that Jalen Williams and Shake Gilds of Alexander are. And so that is what allowed Indiana to really leverage their defensive strengths on Shay and to kind of wear him down and make things tough on him. Had a really good, strong defensive performance

and they get a big win. Now. This starting line up that they've been using for a little while now since the trade, Tyres Alliburton at the one next to Andrew Nemhard, Aaron Nee Smith and Pascal Siakam and Miles Turner. The big key there being going with your defensive minded perimeter players, the two knees so to speak, Andrew Nemhard and Aaron Neie Smith and then putting your obviously your

core three foundational around that. But like again, I really like the idea of having defensive minded role players out there. That group, that group of five players so far this season has logged a one hundred and eleven defensive rating,

which is solid. That's something you can win with when you're an elite offense, like the Pacers are cable, being that they have not been we're going to get into that, but that one to eleven defensive rating to me with that group is a really strong indicator that that is their best configuration defensively. And again you've got in that group a really good perimeter defender and Aaron NEI Smith

in my opinion, he's one of my favorites. Really really physical player that can defend bigger wings as well, good low center of gravity, good at beating people to spots. And then Andrew Nemhard is a really good guard defender in my opinion, good physical on the ball defender, navigates

screen as well. And then again the key there is like Aaron Nesmith legitimately a good catch and shoot three point shooter, a real like slashing threat like I get a nasty driving dunk out of the left corner this game where he put Shake Gildas Alexander on a poster,

but like he brings like real slashing, like real rim pressure and slashing from that position. And then Andrew Nemhard I became a big fan of him after a game last year against the Warriors. I can't remember the exact details, but he ran something like thirty five pick and rolls in a game against the Warriors and scored like fifty five points on them, just absolutely dissected the Warriors in a game. And I was pouring over the film on that one, and I'm like, this guy's got all this stuff.

He's got to pull up three point shot out the dribble, he's got to pull up mid rang shot off the dribble. He can make all the reads out of pick and roll. Like this dude's this dude's just a hooper, And like that's translated. This year, he's been a guy that can run action and run it efficiently. He's a guy that can knock down catch and shoot threes at a high rate. Hasn't been as good in pull up situations, but still has been pretty good. Like he's a really good two

way basketball player. And so Essentially, you take your skill guard right in Tyree Saliburton, a guy that you can't really count on a lot in defensive situations, but the guy that's the hub of your entire offense. Got your mismatch tacking forward in Pascal Siakam. Then you've got your classic rim protecting center that can do a little bit of switching. Now he's not an outstanding switch defender, but

he can do a little bit of switching. And then you've got these two way role players that are willing to do the dirty work and that can maintain there being a threat on the offensive end of the floor. And all of a sudden, you have a pretty useful lineup there. And like one eleven defensive writing, like I said, solid,

also seventy four percent in defensive rebounding percentage. Early in the year, defensive rebounding was not a strength for this particular group, especially because they were so weak at those forward positions, and they've been rebounding really well with that specific group. To me, once you get up over that seventy two to seventy three percent, that's tenable. That's something that you can succeed with in a bigger picture. Now, big drawback. They have struggled to score in that group.

They have a one to eleven point five offensive rating, and that's a specific pieceell they'll need to figure out. But I'm not particularly worried about that. I think that I think that there's plenty of offensive skill in that group. I think it's kind of similar to what happened to the Clippers early on after the James Harden trade, where like it's more just putting all the pieces together and

making it work in the big picture. And I have little doubt that by the time they get to mid April that they will be able to figure out those things on the offensive end of the floor. But from the opening tip of this game, Andrew Demhar did an amazing job on Shake Gilders Alexander just being really physical, holding up on his bully ball moves to the basket, getting great contests, disrupting the dribble pocket. And then Aaron E.

Smith as well. He spent a lot of time on Gordon Hayward in this game, but they basically kept him on in waves so that Shay always had a good perimeter defender on him. And then from there, like obviously without Jalen Williams on the floor. They were, you know, conceding and digging down off of Josh Giddy a lot, and they don't have to worry too much about Gordon

Hayward hurting them. Chet Holmgren did have his three point shot going in this game, but was struggling to finish inside the three point line, which kind of helps sold things down for them offensively. Just a really strong defensive effort for the Pacers, and then on the other end of the floor. I thought this game was a great example. I know he only had sixteen points, but it was a great example of Pascal Siakam's skill and matchup attacking.

You know, Oklahoma City does a lot of switching in guard guard actions, and so as a result of that of Siakam got a lot of like Shakos Alexander on a switch down on the block. There was like a transition cross match where he beat everybody down the floor and he had Isaiah Joe on him in the post and they're just able to throw the ball down to him there and he's able to go force his way

close to the basket and score. There even was a pivotal stretch there in the middle of the fourth quarter where the Thunder had Cason Wallace on him and like Keason Wallas is a really good defensive player who can defend bigger than his size, but he's just giving up a lot in terms of length in that matchup Toakam, and Siakam was able to just bury him under the rim again and that was a big part of that run that they went on after a case on Wallace hid to three in the right corner that got it

down to one and that the Pacers just immediately blew it open from there. And a lot of it was that Siakam matchup with Cason Wallace in his ability to create quality shots is a mismatch attacking forward. Now, that's where I wanted to kind of dive into this concept as it pertains the team construction, because this is something we've talked about a lot on the show, and ironically the Nuggets to me are a really interesting example of this.

But like we've seen this particular kind of configuration of like skill guard and matchup attacking forward work really well. Right Like the original one was was Lebron James and Kyrie Irving right where it's like Lebron is doing all of the high level playmaking and getting the defense and rotation and it kind of managing more of the offense. But he was this guy that could really pick on mismatches around the floor, whereas like Kyrie just kind of

brought this high level scoring piece. Like there were a lot of possessions during those Cavs playoff runs where Lebron will walk up the floor and just go stand on the wing, and then Kyrie would just dribble up the floor and take seventeen dribbles into a step back two point shot and he make it fifty five percent of the time or whatever. And that was basically like a release valve to get quality offense while also letting Siakam rest. Now with this par or notaam excuse me, Lebron rest.

This configuration's a little different because the skill guard is the primary playmaker in Tyres Alliburton, where a Siakam is

more of the on the island score. But it's the same kind of thing where it's like Tyre's Halliburton can really just rest now for entire possessions on offense, where Siakam is like taking seventeen dribbles the back of a guy down into the post, and then take his patented little spin move hook shot over his left shoulder right or spin move a little jump shot over his right shoulder. He just that is the same kind of luxury it is.

It's not just the matchup attacking element of it, because that's the key, right, Like a skill guard can impact winning as a score in X y Z ways, right, But then the matchup attacking forward impacts winning on offense in the ABC ways right, Like it's like this guy's too small for me. I'm going to back him down.

I'm gonna get a really high percentage look close to the basket, whereas like where Tyros Halliburton, it's a lot of like shot value in the bigger picture type of stuff where it's like constantly catching the low hanging fruit and basketball which we're going to dive into it in a little bit, but like getting the high qual catch and shoot threes and transition opportunities, kicking the ball up the floor like he's managing the larger workflow of the offense,

whereas Siakam is like, on this possession, I can get you a fifty five percent type of shot right by the rim because I got this matchup. And again like between Jokich and Murray, same kind of thing. Like Yokic obviously is a center, but he's this big, giant, playmaking forward, and then Jamal Murray plays this skill guard position right, and like there's some other examples of it around the league. I think Luca and Kyrie is kind of another example.

Luca's kind of your mismatch attacking forward and Kyrie is like your skill guard. But I've always liked that configuration. It's something I've been a fan of. I think those two specific offensive styles compliment each other really really well. I think you need to be able to do both to win in the playoffs. I think you need to be able to run a high volume amount of pick and roll and just get quality shots out of it.

But I also think you need to be able to play bullyball and to get shots close to the rim. And so I just really liked that configuration. And I thought last night and seeing Siakam really taking some of the smaller thunder guards to task was a great example that. On the Tyre Saliburton front, I'm always just impressed by Tyre Saliburton's game management. He's a guy that we've talked a ton about on the show. Over the course of the season, I've said, I actually think that he's the

next great offensive engine in the league. I think he's the next guy that's gonna be that guy that we look at that's like there's just nothing you can do with to stop him from finding a quality shot somewhere on the court. Like he's just the ultimate read maker in the sense that, like in transition, he's always going to hit that kick ahead pass and get something out

of it. He's that guy that if you run pick and roll, whatever cover he bullets him, he's gonna hit the role man every single time developed the four on three. If you drop he can hit pull up jump shots, and he can hit floaters right. If you switch it, he can beat the big man off the dribble and

make the scoop shots off the glass. If you run a kind of like a a three on two coverage, he's consistently gonna make that skip pass to the corner, or get a little bit downhill and throw a lob pass to obi top and cutting out of the corner pass Galsiakam cutting out of the corner. He's the ultimate reed maker, right, But specifically I wanted to highlight the

idea of low hanging fruit. This is something I talked about a lot as we were talking about Victor women Yama yesterday, and just like what makes a basketball player the best version of himself is like there's this high level shot making piece which is super valuable, and we've seen Victor Wimenyama hit just some completely ridiculous step backs and multiple dribble combination types of shots, right, But like the best version of Victor is only gonna rely on

that for small portions of games. It's gonna be just a lot of like easy dunking lobs on rolls to the basket, either on lobs or pocket passes and things like that. It's gonna be a lot of picking and popping to the top of the key, knocking down wide open threes or driving closeouts in making plays. It's gonna be a lot of him playing with a high level guard one day, ball screen switch, take him down to

the post, and then easy basket over the top. Like he's just gonna get a lot of low hanging fruit, Yo Kitchen, my opinion is the master of low hanging fruit in the NBA right now, Like he could do all this crazy difficult stuff. But he just is gonna get fifteen easy shots a game for himself, right, like in first inmates, Like that's just what in probably more than fifteen when you factor in his teammates. Like that's

just what he does. Well, that's what Tyres Saliburton does to me, or does in my opinion, Like he's a low hanging fruit capitalizer, so to speak. Like every single kick ahead pass he sees, he's gonna push it up, He's gonna get an easy shot out of it. There's big play in the fourth quarter. I can't remember who it was that was running the left wing, but just

I think it was Niesmith. But just the thunderfell asleep or back in transition. I think Josh Giddy was slow getting back. Just easy kick adad pass, get an easy layup. Right, He's if you make any mistake in your coverage, oh you're dropped too far back. I can make this shot

you helped out of the weakside corner. I can hit this cutter along the baseline, or I can throw that skip pass to the shooter in the corner, Like I'm gonna run a go screen and if you defend it, well, I'll just run it again, and if you botch it in any way, shape or form, I'm just gonna make the right read and we're going to capitalize on it.

He capitalizes on all that low hanging fruit, which is what makes him such a beautiful fit with a matchup attacking forward because those are the guys that can go get the ugly stuff. Those are the guys that can bully their way to the basket and fish spight of a basketball game and get easy shots close to the rim. So I really do like the direction that Indiana is heading. I really like the starting lineup they're using right now.

The defensive stuff is encouraging. Just got to get the defense or got to get the offense up to full speed on the thunderside. Obviously, you know, Jalen Williams is a huge loss. The one thing that really stood out to me was like Shae kind of struggled with some of the physical defense at the point of attack from nem Hardeni Smith and so like you could tell there's a lot of like pull up, turn around jump shots that he was leading short as they were just kind

of wearing him down a little bit. Now, again, it's just one game and players are allowed to have bad games, and Shay is on the short list of guys where it's like, when he has a bad game, You're like, WHOA, that's weird. You don't see Shay do that very often, right, Like, So I'm not coming down on Shae. All I'm saying is like, I am really curious to see what Shae's first playoff run looks like as the number one guy. Just want to see it. Just want to see what

it looks like. I want to see if he's the kind of guy that really weathers that physicality well and is consistently great the way that he is in the right other season, or if inconsistency kind of creeps into his game a little bit as that physicality is ratcheted up. The officiating around the league has become more physical in general as of late, which I think is great. I think it's better for the playoffs to for the regular

season to mimic the playoff setting. I think it would just help us identify what teams can thrive well in that environment. I just think it's good for the game, right. But yeah, I am curious to see because Shade did struggle a little bit against those Pacers guards last night. All right, I've got three quick ones before we get out of here. First one like three kind of side topics, I should say, so. Andrew Wiggins on a fast break, running along the middle of the floor. Brandon Pazamski is

running his lane on the right side. He's open, but Andrew Wiggins is open too. And I didn't think Wiggins made a bad read in this case going up anyway. But Pazamski gets frustrated, is like past the ball, Wiggans starts yelling at him. They get into it with each other, and I didn't think it was a big deal. Didn't think two seconds about it after it happened. And later in the game when Pazemski and Wiggins were on the floor together, they seemed totally fine. Wiggins was cheering Pazemski

on when he was making shots and vice versa. Like I didn't think it was an issue. And then I started to look on social media and saw a lot of people talking about Pazemski is a rookie that has got too much dip on his chip, so to speak, and needs to be put in his place. And Andrew

Wiggins doesn't need to be taken that from him, and all this kind of stuff and all these people like Galaxy braining that conflict in my opinion, So here's the thing. I have seen this exact type of dynamic dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of times playing basketball. I've seen it in like college basketball locker rooms multiple times. This is such a normal part of basketball in the sense that, like in the heated competitive environment, guys can

get frustrated. Example, we just saw Travis kelce running up on Andy Reid in the Super Bowl. Andy Reid is one of the very best coaches, if not the best coach in the NFL. Travis Kelcey is a legendary tight end. He is. Both of those guys are extremely experienced. Travis Kelsey's been in the Super Bowl multiple times before. Andy Reid's been in the Super Bowl even more frequently than Travis Kelcey has. They're not in any sort of like

truly problematic predicament. There. There was no reason for that other than Travis Kelsey's a competitor, super competitive dude. He's fired up and he wanted to be involved more, and he ran up on his coach and yelled something, and like, here's the thing. Should Travis Kelce have done that? No? Should you watch that and be a little annoyed and be like, man, I got to have more self control. Yes, And I guarantee you. Brandon Pazemski feels the exact same way.

I guarantee you. After that, he saw the tape and was like, shit, man, like, I get it. I frustrated. Should not have yelled at Andrew Wiggins like that, But it's over. It was over in five seconds and it's a total non issue. This exact same thing happened to me when I was in junior college my second year plan and I was up in Utah and it was two on one fast break. I was trailing the play.

Miles Gatewood, our guard, our starting guard, was driving the right wing and shout out to milesgate would excellent three level scoring guard, one of my favorite players that I played with in my time in college, and running his right lane and him and I never had any issues, like we were not people that had beef at any point over the course of the season. And there was a it was a two on one, I was trailing him, he missed a layup. I yelled at him to pass

me the ball. After the play. Mind you again, I'm twenty one years old at this point, so I'm a little I'm I'm still a competitive hothead now at thirty two, so you can imagine what I was like when I was twenty one years old and didn't know any better. I got we got into an argument. Miles did the exact same thing that Andrew Wiggins. Dad was like, shut up,

you know, as he should have right and uh. And then our coach actually pulled both of us out of the game and we ended up having to sit ie for like it was either for the re I can't even remember exactly how long we sat, but we had our little like discipline disciplinary measure from the coach. I went back and watched the tape after the play. I wasn't open. I was. I thought it was a two on one from my angle, but Miles had a better angle because he was coming from the right wing. There

was a player trailing me. Had he hit me, there was another guy that could have made a defensive play. So I would just flat out in the wrong. But here's the thing, Like Miles and I buried it and moved on right away. I was wrong. I apologized to him, and we moved on, Like it's just such this kind of stuff is so incredibly common in basketball games because like the competitive energy just gets kind of like ramped up.

And Steph Curry had an interesting comment earlier on in the season about Potzemski and his like kind of fire that he plays with, and he's like, I would much rather have a guy like that that I need to tell to calm down a little bit, then a guy that doesn't have that, And I'm trying to get him to show some of that care, to show some of

that fight. And I could not agree more with Steph in the sense that, like, like I mean not to go out Andrew Wiggins here, but there are some times with Andrew Wiggins where you're like, come on, dude, like like you're the best athlete on the floor, Like show

some fight, show me what you got, man. Like there's some times that you get like that, and like that's the thing, like I would much rather have in my foxhole in a basketball game a dude who's a little bit of a hot head than a dude who is like that can go catatonic for extended stretches, And that's the thing, Like Paziemski is definitely a little bit of a hot head. He definitely has that really high level competitive energy. But that, to me is one of his strengths.

It's something he will have to learn to control over the years. Like, yeah, you're right, you can't. You can't yell at your teammate for missing a red. By the way, that's another thing that we haven't even mentioned. Guess what happens all the fucking time in basketball games. Guys miss open teammates. It happens all the time. Even the best I've I've seen the best passers in the NBA misreads.

From time to time it happens. It is. So that's the thing, Like, that's the lesson on the Pozemski side of it, is like you've got to learn to just kind of control your emotions a little bit better when you're in those situations. But my bottom line is that

I'm getting at here. There is no crisis, there's no festering dislike between teammates. There I guarantee you if you want to around the locker room. Pazemski'sen struggling a little bit as of Lady's going through a little bit of a rookie wall concept. We talked about yesterday when we

were talking about Victor women Yama. It is I guarantee you they all have his back, and I guarantee you they all view him as somebody that they need get the I thought it was really interesting what Steve Kerr said after It was either in after their last game or it was an a presser, but where he was like, I really do think this team has a chance to

make a playoff run. Like that, to me is encouraging because it's the same Steve Kerr that said last year very differently that he did not think that they were that type of team. So I think that that's encouraging. I don't view this as a speed bump at all whatsoever. And I just wanted to kind of give my two cents on what those kinds of arguments mean to me in terms of what basketball games look like in reality. Nextly, the next question, I should say, the done with the

nineties trend. So apparently there's all these clips going around. I've seen a few of them, but just like showing specific examples of like like Muggsy Bogues ripping Michael Jordan or Michael Jordan getting the Ben Simmons treatment. Getting like ignored at the three point line, or just various stretches of bad basketball that are being displayed and being like, we're so done with the nineties. These guys are the are being portrayed as the golden age of hoops, and

and it clearly isn't like that. I want to push back against that a little bit, because for Charters, you can take any basketball game, including some of the best basketball games that have ever been played. For instance, like, let's take like that Celtics just for the sake of sticking with somebody something that's recent that we all remember. Look at that nugget Celtics game from last week on Thursday.

That game was an awesome basketball game. I guarantee you I could find two or three thirty second stretches of that game that look embarrassing bad, where like guy takes a bad shot, guy other team goes over and turns it over, other team dribbles to the other end and run someone over and commits an offensive foul. You know,

every basketball game has ugly stretches in it. If you're hunting out of an entire decade, I guarantee you you will find some hilariously ugly stretches of basketball that to me, like basketball is very much a read and react sport, and so there are stretches where both teams are really sharp with their reads and it can look super fluid

and both teams can look super competent. But then you can also go through stretches where guys make a few bad reads and it can look really bad pretty quickly, or a guy that ends up in a situation where he has to do more than his skill set's capable of and it can look ugly. And so I don't think that that's a really fair way to kind of display that sort of era. But at the same time, like I do think it's important to acknowledge that the game is improved. I do think basketball players are better

now than they were in the nineties. I think basketball players are better in the nineties than they were in the eighties, in the seventies, and vice versa. I think that this league is in perpetual improvement. I think that's kind of the reason that explains that MJ Ben Simmons clip where MJ's being ignored at the three point line. What's happening there is like MJ doesn't want to take a three because like at that point in NBA history,

you didn't take that shot very often. Like just go to just go into your Google search bar and type NBA league averages. Basketball Reference has a page that just takes every single season of NBA history and just puts team averages during that era, So like offensive raiding, defensive or offensive rating, field goal percentage, three point percentage, volume, all that kind of stuff, right, and just go look and how many threes are taken now compared to how

many threes were taken in the eighties and nineties. It's not comparable. So like, yeah, like Ben Simmons getting ignored at the three point line because he literally cannot shoot is very different than like, like we know MJ wants to get to the mid range and he's probably gonna hunt that for this possession, and then if he has to take a three at the end of the shot clock,

you will. Like that's fundamentally different. That's not something that's just the game changing, right, And like that's the thing, like if you watch skill players from thirty years ago, you're right, they're not gonna have the advanced footwork and advanced shot making as skill players from the year twenty twenty four. Like, again, you gotta think we've all learned from these guys. I literally watch NBA players and I'm like, oh, that's interesting. I want to try that. That's how I

learned my step back three point shot footwork. I stole it from James Harden. Like a lot of my dribble combinations I stole from Luca in the sense that, like, I've always been fan of the way he uses his body language to get guys open, right, Like, just recently, I've been really impressed by Shay Gillers Alexander in the way that he ball handles in traffic, and there's some elements to like the the real like way he sells every single move even when he's in traffic, and just

how sharp his handle is. There's some stuff there that I'd like to steal. And like what's happening is over the generations, every young basketball player is stealing from the previous generation and stealing, and like, like we're gonna have some you know, new things that Anthony Edwards does over the course of his career that the next great two guard is gonna steal. But Anthony Edwards is stealing stuff from Dwayne Wade and from Kobe Bryant and from Michael Jordan,

and it just builds on itself in perpetuity. So of course they're getting better, which is exactly why, Like I don't see the point in like when Lebron fans are like, oh, MJ played against plumbers, It's like, no, MJ played against the NBA in his era and Lebron played against the NBA in his era, and so it's it's impossible to compare across eras as the league has improved, as the game has changed. So the most fair way to rate these players, in my opinion, is to look at specifically

how they played in their era. Because as much as Michael Jordan had to play against the nineties NBA, Michael Jordan didn't also didn't have the advantage that modern modern NBA prospects to do in terms of training. We just talked about all the footwork and moves that they can steal from modern players, just the tools that are at their disposal. It's a completely different universe now than it was when j MG is coming out of college nineteen

eighty four. Guys, that's literally forty years ago. Like this is an entire that's half a century so like, it doesn't make sense to compare him to this era because he just didn't play in this era. And so that's why I kind of look at it in that sense. But again, are the nineties as beautiful of basketball as twenty twenty? No? But are they as ugly as they can be made to appear in short, little highlight films.

Obviously not. And so I think it's more important for us to respect each of those eras in the way that they built on each other than to with them down just so that we can elevate players from now when that's not the point. We know they're better, We know they're better now. That's just like the players in twenty thirty four are going to be better really quickly before we get out of here. I had a mailback

question yesterday that I wanted to kind of clarify. Someone says, I love you bro best NBA content on YouTube, but I've never seen someone have so many duplicate videos. It's weird. So we kind of talked yesterday in the mail bag about kind of modern podcasting and kind of the way that its structured. I just wanted to explain to you guys why we do things the way that we do them just so that you guys know and some a little hints that'll help you guys. Our full episodes are

always under a different thumbnail than our breakout clips. So the full episodes, first of all, when you go to the YouTube channel on the homepage, we just list the full episodes, so that's where you can see everything I recorded on that particular day. Right, and again, the thumbnails they have that like yellow giant yellow font mixed with the white font. I think if I remember correctly, but there's dead giveaway. It's obvious that that's a full episode.

We do the breakout clips because of the way YouTube's algorithm works. On YouTube, there's only so much information you can put in a title, and there's only so much

information you can put in a thumbnail. So, for instance, if I hit five topics and one of them is an obscure game in terms of market size, like Thunder Pacers, then like I, if I market the show around bigger things that are gonna get more clicks like Lakers and whatever, Warriors, whatever, no one's gonna click it if they're a Pacers fan. No one's gonna click it if they are a Thunder fan. Right, Because there's nothing that says Pacers and Thunder on it.

So our workaround for that is we will brand the full episode around whatever the most urgent, you know, popular topic is, but then we put out breakout clips so that we can get out to those fans. We want a clip that says Thunder Pacers on it. That's a repeat, Yes it's a repeat, but the purpose it serves is so that Thunder and Pacers fans can find it and so that we can take advantage of the YouTube algorithm

to capitalize on that. And that's honestly, that's a piece of advice that I would give to other people that are trying to launch a podcast. If you sit down with your buddy and you talk about four things, and two of them are bigger picture things, and you broadcast those in the main episode, do a breakout of the other two topics so that you can have another crack at the algorithm with a different topic. So again, we're not doing duplicate videos to just like inundate you with videos.

The whole point is we want to make it really easily digestible. Full episodes on the homepage. You can find them all there. If you're looking for a specific topic. You can find it under the videos page with all those breakouts, but the primary purpose they serve is on

the algorithm. We want the search engine. If you just watched Pacers a thunder last night and you want to see a breakdown and you type in thunder, Pacers reaction or like thunder or whatever, then that video might pop up and we might have an opportunity to reach those people. So that's why we do it that way, and hopefully just by giving that quick breakdown, you guys have a better understanding it. All right, guys, that's all I have for today or for this part of today's show. We

will be back tonight on YouTube Live. After the final buzzer of Lakers Kings, I'll see you guys. Then the volume