Hoops Tonight - Reaction to LeBron James & Russell Westbrook leading the Lakers over Nuggets

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in West Virginia. All right, Welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by Van Duel here at the volume. Happy Saturday, everybody, Although technically I am recording this on Friday night, had to work. My wife was out having sushi and hanging out and I was working. But if you have to work, you'd like to work watching incredibly entertaining basketball games like we had across the board tonight. The Lakers shockingly blow out the Nuggets with Anthony Davis missing the second half.

We're gonna be breaking down that game. Kyrie Irving. It's the first buzzer beater of his career and an incredibly entertaining matchup between the Raptors and the Nets. We're gonna

get into that game. And then the Orlando Magic have won five games in a row, all against teams that we considered to be higher level playoff threats, and then they top it off with a row would win over the Boston Celtics, looking like a really interesting young basketball team, So we're gonna talk about them as well towards the end. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channels. You don't miss any more

of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason Lts, you guys don't miss any show announcements. And then, last but not least, for whatever reason, you guys miss one of these shows and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish, you can find them wherever you get your podcasts. Under Hoops tonight, all right, let's talk some basketball. So I swear the Lakers are only capable of playing

weird basketball games. It was a really uneven first half, like Anthony Davis picks up his second foul and a questionable post stuff call against Nickely Yokich, and then just stops playing defense at all whatsoever. Lebron was playing with really low energy for the most part, with exception of a little burst there. We got going in transition, and then I thought Russ played his worst half of the season. In the first half. You had four turnovers, He's taking

all sorts of bad shots. He was kind of riding like a five game streak before this to where he was playing really poorly, to the point where I was completely out on him and I thought he needed to go um. So it's kind of a really weird first half. Lakers weren't playing any transition defense. Anthony Davis tweaks his foot or his ankle. We're not actually sure. We'll find out more tomorrow. But fortunately for the Lakers, the Denver Nuggets are one of the worst defensive teams in the league.

And so after all of that, it was sixty four with the Nuggets in front. But then we find out that Anthony Davis is going to take the rest of the game off, and I was almost certain that Lebron, James and Russell Westbrook were just gonna mail in the rest of the game. There it's just specifically the matchup with Anthony Davis out against Nicol Yokich. You're concerned about that.

Both of them had had pretty rough first halfs and the aggregate, when you factor in the way they were impacting the game on the defensive end and taking care of the basketball and all those different things, it just felt like a game that they were going to mail in.

But when you sub Anthony Davis out of the game, you've got to bring another center off the bench, and when you Gabriel is still hurt, and Damian Jones had a rough season, So it ended up being Thomas Bryant and Thomas It came into the game in that second half, and I felt like it was trying. He felt like

he was trying to send a message, you know. And you gotta remember he's a veteran minimum contract who was pretty young um and because of that partial a cl tere in Washington, like his stock had dropped quite a bit. He ended up in the with the Los Angeles Lakers. His career is kind of hanging in the balance a little bit. It's very much a contract year in a

big way for him. As a young player. He's trying to prove his spot in the league, and he has an opportunity against Nicola Yokich on national television to prove that, and he came out and played his damn ass off. Was just playing so incredibly hard on both ends of the floor. And you know, it's funny because I thought it was infectious, and I thought it really got Lebron James and Russell Westbrook to believe and to play hard. Because here's the thing. You can't mail it in when

you're big man is working his ass off. It's like there's too many people watching on national TV. The people in the arena. Fans are kind of like truth serum for for any basqu Vall team, for any professional sports team. Fans are a lot smarter than professional teams think. When you'd hear coaches talk and hear players talk, sometimes they denigrate fans and pretend like they don't know what they're seeing.

And look, not everybody is, as you know, in the loop as to the extras and os of what's happening on the court. But they can see when someone's playing hard and when someone is not. And you can't sit there and be the guy who's mailing it in while the big man is working his ass off and Lebron and Russ got swept up in it, and they started doing what they do best, which is create quality shots for three point shooters, for big guys in the dunker spot,

and for both running the floor in transition. You know when you saw there towards the end of the third quarter in early fourth, when the Lakers really went on their run, you started to see guys knocked down shots. You saw Dennis Shrewder hit some corner threes. You saw Patrick Beverley hit a corner three. You saw Max Christie come in and hit a couple of threes. You saw

Sreeves hit a three. Like when when you have competent three point shooting on the floor, it makes shot creators like Lebron James and Russell Westbrook, it sends their value through the roof, which is precisely why Lakers fans have been so irritated with the team building process over the

last few years. You've got two in Lebron and Russell Westbrook, of the best players of all time at generating wide open three point shots, and you had the worst roster in the entire league at guys who could convert those three point shots. And they still are in that shooting performance in the second half is not something they can

reliably count on. But this is why Lakers fans have been preaching that they need to go out and bring in professional shooters, because what Lebron, James and Russell Westbrook do best is feed professional shooters. And you saw that in that late third fourth quarter. What happens when you

add competent three point shooting to what they got. Those two do what those two shot creators do, and the Lakers road that wave to an eighteen point when when in a really nice palate cleanser after they're embarrassing loss to Boston again, I want a shout out Lebron and Rush. So Lebron finished with thirty and thirteen excuse me, finished with thirty on thirteen twenty shooting. He's sneaky, been really

good for about a month and a half now. So in his last thirteen games since November six, Lebron is now averaging twenty eight point three points per game on fifty one point four percent shooting. That's superstar level production, like top ten player in the world level production, maybe even top five. If you guys remember, during his slump, everyone was writing the obituary on him, and what I said was. I had seen him in training camp, and I had seen him in the early part of the

season look great physically. My only concern was could he stay healthy long enough to get into a rhythm, because when you add Lebron's basketball i Q to Lebron's skill set, he's automatically going to succeed as long as his body is able to move at a certain level. It's got to hit a certain level. But then he got sick and he was on with the foot thing, and as a result, he wasn't getting as much separation, he wasn't getting as much downhill pressure, so guys are pushing up

on his jump shot a little bit. Then his jump shots started like was just atrocious to start the year. And I told you, guys, if he could just get ten fift games in a row where he gets his rhythm. I saw him move well enough early in the year that I expected him to turn his season around. And that's exactly what's happened. Twenty eight point three points per game on fifty one percent shooting over shooting in a thirteen game span. That superstar level production that's still in

there for Lebron. He just had a banged up start to the year. Part of that's him being old, and that might be the thing that eventually knocks him back off of this level of play at some point during

the season. But if he stays healthy and he's going to be this good, and if a d stays healthy and he's gonna be as good as he's been, you absolutely have to invest in this team because those two together are two damn good looking at Russell Westbrook, you know that again, Like he I thought, he played the best three game starts of his career, not his career,

but if his Lakers career a few weeks ago. That game against the Blazers where he was like four or four teen, but he did an amazing job creating shots and playing defense and competing on the glass. And then he had the amazing game against the Milwaukee Bucks where he made the huge play at the end of the game diving on the floor for the loose ball. Then he had another really nice game in Washington on Sunday. Then since then he had played five games and had

been horrifically bad. He was minus fifty one in his minutes and the Lakers were like plus six team when he was off. The floor was going right back to everything that had screwed him up in a previous year, right like poor shots, election, turning the basketball over, making sloppy decisions on the defensive end of the floor, or just straight up going space case on total possessions. It was really bad. But and then then we got into the first half of this game, and it was more

of the same. Four turnovers in the first half, took an early clock pull up three, it took another early clock bank shot which he actually made. He was sloppy around the rim. It just was a really, really ugly half. It looked like things were trending in a really bad direction for us. But in that second half, he did his job. He pushed the pace in transition, zero turnovers after four turnovers in the first half. He was selective

about when he shot the basketball. He created open shots for his teammates, they converted him, and everything took off from there. And then one of the biggest things, you know, I talked about Russ. It's I've never just said, you know, Russ's terrible at everything. It's always just been the balance

of his good impact versus his bad impact. And one of the things that he's been good at most of the year is his size and athleticism is a big factor on physical confrontations on the defensive end of the floor. That's you know, isolation defense in certain situations when he comes over and help or double teams, and most importantly

contested rebound situations. The Lakers have to, because of their lack of perimeter size, compete on the defensive glass harder than just about any team in the league to make up for their lack of size, and Russ has just done an amazing job this entire season of securing defensive rebounds to push the pace in transition, he was amazing on the glass again tonight. If I could bottle up that second half. And by the way, it wasn't like I mean, he had a triple double, but it wasn't

like he was putting up massive numbers. It just the just the the tame decision making and doing his job. If I could bottle that up and get it every night, I would never want to trade Russell Westberk because that's a winning basketball player. But it's just too inconsistent and the bat has outweighed the good this year, which is precisely why on the scoreboard they've been so much better when he's off the floor in the aggregate this season.

But again, kudos A Russ for a great second half, and I hope sincerely, because I like, I love watching him when he's playing like that, I hope sincerely that he's able to keep that up quickly on the Nuggets Nicula Yokers completely fell apart after that yet an and one against Thomas Bryant where he was posting up at like kind of the just about the free throw line spun back, uh did a drop step into Thomas Bryant's chest, got called for foul, which I didn't think it was

even a good call, But he went to like a fade away off of that and he knocked it down and from there he just completely fell apart. Like it was one of the worst quarter and a half of basketball have seen him play. Him and Jamal Murray were way too careless with the basketball tonight. They combined for ten turnovers, which just led to that Lakers transition avalanche. More importantly, the entire Denver Nuggets roster once again just

put in an embarrassing defensive effort. They simply cannot compete for an NBA championship if they're going to be a bottom five defense, and well, right now, I'm pretty sure there bottom two defense or bottom three defense. It's just not possible. Throughout NBA history, we've just never seen anything like it. They have the personnel to be much better

than they are. They just have to be committed to the work, and they just simply aren't because they've been sitting, you know, well above five hundred just by outscoring teams. But when you actually look at it closely, they're bad against good teams, and they're good against bad teams, which is precisely the kind of thing that will get you beat in the postseason. All right, moving on the Nets Raptors,

so super entertaining game. Kyrie Irving just tossed friend Fred van Fred Vanvley decide with that pullback dribble for a game winner, his first buzzer beater of his career. All the highlight is gonna be surrounding that Kyrie game winner, as it should. It was nasty, it was ridiculous, it

was entertaining, it was everything. But I thought Kyrie was magnificent that entire fourth quarter, and I wanted to take some time to highlight just how effective he was, particularly in all of the pivotal possessions at the end of the game. So first of all, he had seven made field goals in the fourth quarter. Every variety. It's some pull up twos against Fred Vanvleety, had a step back jumper with his foot on the line against Scottie Barnes.

They've ran an aftertime outplay where he backcut from the elbow and caught the ball and just elevated in the air, took the contact and hung and then finished with his right hand. You know, Kyrie Irving is an incredible athlete. That's something that commonly gets you know, kind of looked over with him because he doesn't dunk the basketball often, but that's where the hanging time comes from. He's an

incredible athlete. You guys can find this on YouTube, but there's a pre draft video of Kyrie Irving doing a workout before the draft, and he's running from the three point line on the base line to the three point line on the other base or the other three point line along the same base line, and he's got a guy just passing in the basketball and he's just elevating and dunking with his left hand and then elevating and dunking with his right hand, left hand, right hand, just

ten times in a row, and he's getting way above the rim. It's a great example of how like NBA athleticism is so much greater than people even realize. You know, I I'm six six with six ten wingspan, and I can dunk the basketball really, really well. And I have people come up to me and gym's and be like, oh, why didn't you try to play? They don't understand that I am a good athlete and NBA athletes are way way,

way more athletic than me. Like, there's there's just an entire other level to this, and Kyrie Irving is a great example of that. Doesn't ever dunk the basketball, doesn't ever do your crazy athleticism type things that we grow accustomed to seeing. But if you put him in a gym by himself, he's putting his elbow above the rim. So that's why you gotta remember that the level of athleticism we're dealing with at the NBA level is just insane.

But then in crunch time, every single big play on the offensive end of the floor, so the Raptors get it back to one or nine, one oh eight, and he ISOs Malik Ei Flynn from the from the top of the key just kind of gets him on his right hip, takes a hard dribble to get to the free throw line, elevates and knocks the shotdown. Now they're back up three. Then the Raptors go on a four point run to take the lead one twelve to one eleven.

Kyrie gets the inbounds pass, catches the Raptors sleeping in transition, gets Fred VanVleet stuck on his left shoulder, works all the way down the lane and hits another acrobatic hang time finish with his right hand. Then the Raptors go down and take the lead again. Katie gets doubled. It's one. They run like a you know that classic one three pick and roll with Kyrie and Katie. Katie gets doubled.

Katie throws an awful pass to Kyrie. In the short roll that's contested Maliki fel And and Fred van Leader like sandwiching him somehow rises up and and just gets the rebound and gets the pass and Uh in that traffic orients himself beats Fred VanVleet to the middle of the floor, draws the help from Scotty Barns and kicks out. You know, Watt Nabby in the left corner knocks down the three. Just just an incredible basketball play that just goes down as an assist in the box score, but

really was impactful to the end of that game. Then the Raptors tied on two free throws from Scottie Barnes, gets Friend Vleet in isolation after they take a foul with like three and a half seconds left and just takes two hard dribbles to his right, snatch back Fred van Vleet shuffles one step too far and he sticks to three. You know, Kyrie has been a whirlwind of drama ever since he came to Brooklyn. He's been He was a whirlwind of drama in Boston, and he was

kind of dramatic there that last year in Cleveland. But teams keep having him in their rotation to you know, obviously, teams are leaning on him as secondary shot creators. That's why because when when it comes down to it, when Kyrie, when Kyrie Irving is healthy and engaged, when it comes to set situations against elite defenses, he's still one of the ten best guys in the entire league at creating shots. That's what he does better than just about everybody else

in the entire world. And as long as he can do that, there will always be NBA teams. I think the Kyrie Irving experience is worth it. Kevin Ryan was also incredible. The Raptors were doubling him basically the entire game. He had twenty eight points on just fifteen shots. And I don't even know how he does that, because, like, rhythm is such a delicate thing in basketball. You see guy get in foul trouble, rhythm just goes to hell.

You know, guy doesn't get the normal touches he usually gets, his rhythm goes to hell and he can't make shots anymore. For him to take fifteen shots in a game where he had all those touches, where he's navigating those double teams, and to make ten of them resulting in twenty eight points, it's alien behavior. I don't understand. I really just don't know how he doesn't that. His ability to put the ball in the basket efficiently is unparalleled in NBA history.

You know, there are guys that will have higher true shooting percentages, like a guy like Steph Curry, but it's because he's taken a ton of threes when it comes to just straight up on a shot by shot basis, the ability to put the ball in the basket with difficult shot making. I don't I don't know that anybody's ever been better than Katie. Fred VanVleet played a second

great game in a row thirty nine. UM. The Raptors really controlled the first half of that game, so it's kind of encouraging to see friend Fred starting to play pretty well because he had been having a like a mess season up to that point. UM. The Raptors took a big lead in that first half, but then in that third quarter, the Nets just locked in on the defensive end of the floor, held in its twenty two points.

Kyrie and Katie did their thing on the other end, and they kind of took to control the game from there.

You know, when you look at the Nets roster and you see Ben Simmons, and you see Nick Clackson, you see Kevin Duran, you see Royce O'Neil, and you see all those guys, they actually have a lot of defensive talent, which is kind of you know, why what made the Steve Nash things so lame, Like the Nets players were literally just not playing hard for him because they wanted to get their coach fired, which, by the way, it

was why I condoned the firing. Sometimes players tune out their coaches and you just need to have a change of a voice. One last thing with the Raptors that I wanted to hit before we move on. Scotty Barnes was just ridiculous in that fourth quarter is attacking the rim orly Let's Lee went at Katie twice, including dunking on him, and then just went right up into his

face and started talking ship. Then they switched Ben Simmons on and Ben Simmons pressuring him out the half court just He's really good at protecting the basketball with his back turned, which is like imperative for bigger players because shorter players, they're so low to the ground they can protect the basketball with their handle right, but taller players the ball has to travel further to the grounds. You have to learn to protect the ball with your body,

and Scotty Varnes does an incredible job of that. Ben Simmons is pressuring him, trying to reach he leans a little bit too far to the right. Scotty spins back the other way, goes all the way to the room and gets an and one. He had another huge clutch basket again in isolation against you to want Nabby where you to play great defense, contain him all the way to the room, and he just hung over the top

of him and knocked down a bank shot. Then he drives to the basket, gets fouled, and makes two clutch free throws to tie the game with eight seconds left. He's one of the most exciting young players in the league, and I just love the confidence too, to step to one of the best players in NBA history and then to back it up in a big setting like that against a really good team. I mean, obviously the Raptors

have had a really disappointing season. There's some encouragement to take from tonight with Fred VanVleet getting better and uh and Scotty Barnes obviously having that moment um. But you know, even if this season doesn't work out the way you hope it does, Scotty Barnes is one hell of a prospect to have in the chamber. There's a fun game between two teams made working on Friday night. Fund I would argue it was better than the sushi my wife had, but that's up for her to decide. I suppose alright,

Magic Celtics. So the Orlandic Magic have won five games in a row and all against good teams. They beat the Clippers, they beat the Raptors twice, they beat the Hawks, and now they have their signature win on the road in Boston against the Celtics. You know this team, and I'm only gonna talk about it for a couple of minutes tonight because so I did a huge deep dive on the Memphis Grizzlies that you can find on our YouTube channel right now. Uh did about twenty five minutes

really diving into that team. I plan on doing something similar with the Orlando Magic at some point over the course of the next couple of weeks, where I'll dive deeper into them, but I want to just briefly touch on them right now. The story of this team being

good is about perimeter size. You know, I've talked a lot about how in the modern NBA, as bigger players have become proficient as ball handlers and shooters, perimeter size is more important than ever because if you have big guys that can do that stuff and the other guy has short guys that do that stuff. They're just gonna be shooting over the top of them all game long.

This is just part of the way the game of basketball has changed over the last few decades is big guys are practicing ball handling and shooting a lot more as they're growing up. Between the Wagner brothers and Pala Bankara, they've got three bow Bowl two. Bow Bowl is another guy that's like this. But the thing with bow Bowl and I've I've been a little pessimistic about him, and I know that's kind of raining on the parade, but he uh, some of it is kind of like fast

and loose, open court basketball where he can succeed. But then when he plays against a really good defense that attacks his handle. Boston really attacked his handle tonight and kind of exposed him as someone that can't put the

ball on the floor in traffic. But between the Wagner Brothers and Pala Bancaro, they just have huge players that are all six ten and bigger, that can all dribble and shoot, and as a result, they're like they're bigger than even the prototypical NBA wing, Like they're bigger than Tatum and Brown, and so as a result, you know, when those guys that haven't going the way they did tonight, they can bully a good NBA team, and they bullied

Boston tonight, specifically on the glass. They attacked the basket relentlessly, got to the free throw line a bunch. And then the last guy I wanted to shout out was Franz Wagner. So you know, he spamed pick and roll most of the night tonight and did a really nice job making reads. I talked about this when we talked about the Magic

a few weeks ago. But Franz Wagner, he's a twenty one year old six ten wing who's run over three pick and rolls this year, and it's scoring zero point nine eight points per possession and pick and roll, which is really good. So think about how I'm saying that is a twenty one year old six ten wing who is a high volume pick and roll player who's scoring at an above average or generating points on an above

average rate including passes in pick and roll. That's really exciting because I've got Pala Moncarro, who's the walk king mismatch that can bully just about any player in the league and Franz Wagner the shot creator. That's a natural,

you know, complimentary set of skill sets. Franz. You know we always think of um Moe Wagner is like a shooter, right, but he did it all power play today, just bullying his way to the basket, getting offensive rebounds, finishing in the short role and attacking and transition making defensive plays as well. And then again if bull bull even amounts to anything, and if they can get Jonathan Isaac back. There are versions of the because like you know, they

played a lot of Mobama tonight. Mo Bamba was really really good as well. But there's a version of this where you put in a front like Jonathan Isaac as well, and you can go like real small ball, five outswitch everything ridiculous, like a much more skilled version of what the Toronto Raptors have. They're very exciting team. And again they were the worst team in the league there for a while. I think there were five and twenty at one point. Now they're ten and twenty. They beat five

good teams in a row. Obviously, I I young teams just struggle to replicate success, so I don't expect them to make a playoff run or anything this year. But what they're showing you is what this could look like in a couple of years when it all comes together. And again, we will do a deeper dive on the magic later on. Alright, guess that is all I have

for tonight. Is always, I sincerely appreciate your support. I'm going to take the next couple of days off, but we will be back on Monday with the show as always. I appreciate you, guys, and I'll see you next time. The volume