Hoops Tonight - Reaction to Nikola Jokic, Nuggets holding off LeBron & Lakers in NBA WCF Game 1

to the billing. We had a hell of a battle between Anthony Davis and Nikola Jokic, although I did think that it was a little bit closer, excuse me, a little bit more, a little bit more of a disparity between those two guys in the box score would lead you to believe lots of interesting dynamics and matchups that we're going to dive into. A early series adjustment from Darvin Ham and the way they guarded Nikola Jokic, and even though the nugget up one zero, they've got a lot.

I think both of these teams really got to go back to the drawing board with their defensive approach. Albeit the Lakers had some positives there at the end of the game. You guys know the joke before we get started. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason lt so you guys don't miss any show announcements. And last but not least, if, for whatever reason, you guys missed one of these videos and you can't get

back over to YouTube to finish, don't forget. You can find them wherever you get your podcasts. Under hoops tonight. So I have a bunch of things I want to get into, but just quickly on the end of the game. There Typically when you get down twenty plus points in the second half, you can win, but you have to be perfect. And so I saw a lot of Laker fans focusing in on that Lebron James shot. Do I

love it? No, But a couple things like, clearly he could have gotten met Clearly he could have gotten a better look, but he had, you know, several inches on Jamal Murray to shoot over the top of him. Also was giving him a good amount of space, and despite his shooting struggles to start this postseason, he shot thirty nine percent from three on six attempts per game over his previous five playoff games, so games two through six of the Warrior series, so he's in a better groove

from three. And in his previous five playoff runs before this one, he was six attempts per game at thirty seven percent. So Labron's a better shooter than you would think given some of the narratives surrounding him in this postseason run. That said could have gotten a better shot. But to me, if you focus on just that shot from this game, if you're a Laker fan, I think you're missing a whole lot of other issues. That game

was lost in the first half. You spotted them an eighteen point lead with an atrocious defensive effort, especially in transition. I thought it was their worst defensive effort of the entire postseason to start. But you want to give the Nuggets a ton of credit. Obviously, they have the best home court advantage in basketball. There's no doubt that elevation

played a role. The Lakers brought significantly better energy in Game one of both of the Memphis Grizzlies and the Golden State Warrior series, and honestly, like that's how the Nuggets can win this series. So that's why I want to start with Jokis. I said going into the series in my series preview that down the roster, I believe the Lakers are better if you look at Lebron, James Austin Reeves, Rueyatcha Muraw, those guys, if you go down

the roster, they're better. Like that's gonna be the very best you're gonna see if Jamal Murray as a shot making performance, You're gonna see Lebron do a lot of what he did tonight throughout the entire series, because he's the second best player of all time, and he's in a really good groove right now, right But the jok Ad matchup is where this entire series swinks. Now, if you look at the Anthony Davis box score, you're gonna

think it was pretty close. But aside from Ad scoring well mostly in the short role, I didn't think he played a particularly great game. I didn't think he defended as well as he was capable of. I didn't think he controlled the glass as well as he was capable of. Gave him by a critical offensive rebound late in the game to Aaron Gordon on a play that ruy Hatcha Murrow was contesting Jokic, and he didn't need Anthony Davis.

Like if you're if you're on Aaron Gordon under the basket three point game late, like that's gotta be your rebound. That's Aaron Gordon. You're Anthony Davis, right. I didn't think he made particularly great decisions in his post ups and in his ISOs, like just driving into traffic and fumbling the basketball, thrown up some shots that were extremely high difficulty. I didn't think it was Anthony Davis's best game. That's why, you know, and this is something we talk about a

ton on this show. Box scores don't really mean a ton to me. I thought Nikola Jokic was the best player on the floor by a mile. I thought he dominated the game and basically every single facet except for his rim protection and on the defensive end to the floor. Obviously, the Lakers picked the Nuggets apart in this game on the offensive end. That's their big silver lining and we'll get to that later. But aside from Jokic defensively, I

thought he dominated every other phase of the game. He dominated the glass on both ends, killed him on the offensive glass, was doing a great job finishing defensive possessions by securing the defensive rebound, bringing the ball up the floor, making those kick ahead passes to the Nuggets wings that were sprinting the floor. It's a huge part of the

Nuggets offense. I've been on this for years now. Ever since we started first started having the embiid Yokic debate, I talk a lot about how Jokic can beat teams in transition. That was a huge part of the series preview. That's a big way that Jokic, I think knows he can beat this Laker team, secure defensive rebounds and kick it to a wing and sprint up the floor while Anthony Davis is yelling at the refs or falling on the ground or jogging like he tends to do a

lot of the time. Jokic killed ad in the post in single coverage when they doubled him. He made the right reads and guys made shots cutting and at the three point line. He did really nice to out of pulling Anthony Davis above the foul line, which opened up a lot of slashing opportunities and cutting opportunities for the Nuggets on the back line. I thought he screened extremely well for his guards and allowed them to get a

good amount of separation. I thought he just played a much better game than Anthony Davis, and that is going to be the trickle down effect for the rest of these the dynamics that take place in this series. And again, we're gonna get to some of the stuff that went down in that fourth quarter as the Lakers made their run.

But as far as I'm concerned, in the total picture of Game one, Jokic looked like the best player in the series, and so round one goes to Jokic in that matchup, and I don't think it's a coincidence that the Nuggets went up one zero as a result. I thought Jamal Murray was fantastic. I thought that's the peak Jamal Murray game. I posted a picture of his shot chart. You can find it on my Twitter feed, and you'll

see a ton of variety. You're gonna see above the break threes from different spots, some of them off of movement, some off of a catch off the dribble and pick and roll. He had shots in the mid range off the dribble, handoffs and out of pick and roll. He had to play at the end late third quarter. I think where he started attacking Lonnie Walker in the post. Like I told you guys, he's going to start attacking those smaller Laker guards in the posts and wherever he

season opportunity. I thought he had some really good physical takes to the basket. He missed a few, but he puts real rim pressure and missed layup. Often when they occupy the rim protect or open up opportunities for offensive rebounds. I thought. I thought Jamal Murray was fantastic. You saw Michael Porter Junior cause a lot of problems for the smaller Laker guards, and this is gonna be a big thing.

I think we'll be I think we will almost certainly see Ruey Hotcha Mura start in game two, and that just kind of makes a lot of the matchups make more sense now you're putting Lebron James on Michael Porter Junior. Austin Reeves there there was a play in the corner. He had a couple of plays early in the game where I just didn't think he was doing a very good job. And we'll talk about that when we get

a little bit further down with the Laker defense. But there was a play in the left corner first half might have been second half, but Austin saw the pivot coming got into the shooting pocket. Michael Porter Junior actually hesitated,

like legit hesitated because he thought Austin was there. But Austin pulled his hands back because he didn't want to commit a foul and Michael Porter so he's there, He's literally there, and Michael Porter Junior just goes, dude, I'm bigger than you and you can't bother me when I take the shot. Just rose up over the top. Austin did a really nice job of getting a face contest with his left hand and went into the bottom of the basket. Like that's a matchup problem for the Lakers

in this series. They cannot play the three guard lineup when the Nuggets have their starters on the floor, They're just too big at the three four five, and they can shoot over the top. With Lebron James there, you actually have a much better chance of getting some stops in that situation. So again, like I thought, Contavio's called Pope played a fantastic game. Jeff Green hit a monster three in the in the corner as the Lakers were making their run. Bruce Brown did a really nice job

with his transition push pushes. Did a nice job of attacking the point of attack when the Lakers were not getting matched up in transition. There was a play where no one guarded him. He just barreled down the lane and made a layup. There's a play where Jared Vanderbilt's

picking him up full court for whatever reason. Even though Bruce is probably one of the worst shooters on the Nugget, I think he's shooting in the twenty percent from three in this postseason run beats Jaredvan built off the dribble and just rose down a one handed dunk. It was a extremely impressive performance from the Nuggets down the roster. I thought it was kind of an outclassing in a lot of ways there I did. Obviously, they had a lot of issues on the defensive end. We'll get to

that here in just a minute. I want to talk a little bit about the Lakers defensive scheme and some stuff that they did tweak in the game. But I thought it was a bad game plan that spotted Denver a lot of advantages early in the game. So I tweeted this out during the early second quarter, if I remember correctly, but one of the big, big things that I thought was killing the Laker defense in the half court. Like again, as we look at transition, that's just effort.

You know, it's really hard to judge scheme when guys just aren't playing hard. I posted a video of the Lakers jogging back in transition as Aaron Gordon just drove down the middle of the lane and drew a foul because Anthony Davis was jogging and no one was set. And now, the Lakers have been a bad transition defense all season, but they are capable of much better transition defense efforts. You saw that a lot in Game six

against the Warriors. It is an effort and focus thing for them, and they just didn't bring a very good effort. I thought in this particular game, first time in a game one, that they didn't bring a good effort in this postseason. So I wouldn't be surprised if the Denver elevation had a little bit of an effect on them,

But that definitely was a part of the problem. But as I zoom in on the half court stuff, which is where you're actually gonna learn things, because there's no adjustment to transition defense other than run back, get matched up communicate to each other, have good floor balance, all the stuff that they teach you from the lowest levels of basketball. There's no real adjustment there. It's just better execution. This was not just a gameplay and issue for the Lakers.

This was a game plan and execution issue for the Lakers. But the guard I thought, as I looked at the half court possessions, the number one thing that I thought was causing the Lakers problems defensively was their screen navigation from the guards. Now, this can be a strength of the Lakers at times. They tend to struggle with dribble penetration from really quick guards, but they tend to have success in Darvin Ham's scheme, fighting over the top, applying

back pressure. Denis Schruder had a fantastic series last series doing that. Austin Reeves did some pretty good work on Steph Curry, Daniel Russell actually did a decent job on Klay Thompson. They're actually capable of a lot better than they did. But some of it was game plan as well. I thought that it was readily apparent that Darvin Ham was asking the Laker guards to duck underpicks. Now again, what that means think of it like this. So do you remember in the Warriors series when I talked about

shooting the gap. So when a shooter is breaking open, a shooter has a form that he goes to, a tried and true muscle memory. And when he gets into those situations, once he starts his muscle memory, it's over. There's nothing you can do to really bother them. From there. It's make or miss. Yeah, you can contest the shot, but these dudes have been shooting contested jumpers their entire life. They're not bothered by a hand in the face. They're

bothered by disruption down low. They're bothered by messing with their footwork, disrupting something in the early phase of their energy transfer before they get to the top of the shot. So an off ball situation is when you shoot gaps. So if you try to go underneath a pick and beat a shooter to a spot, it doesn't matter if you get there in time to contest, because they are now running footwork, running over the top of the screen

and rising up. They're running footwork that they've been practicing every day since they were little kids, and so they're gonna knock that shot down. Whereas if you chase over the top of the screen, you have an opportunity to disrupt their base. I thought that was a really poor strategies, more in a dribble handoff situation in this matchup with Denver.

With Golden State, it was more off ball screens, but in this particular matchup, it was very much about off the dribble, like dribble handoffs from Nikola Jokic, where you're ducking under Nikola Jokic and you're allowing Jamal Murray to get into pretty comfortable shots. You're allowing Katav's Callbo Pope Michael Porter Jr. To get into pretty comfortable shots. Now, in the early phase of the third quarter, if I remember correctly, Dennis Schroeder got started getting cooked by Jamal

Murray in a bunch of those situations. He seemed to communicate something to Darvin Ham about it, and by the end of the game they were chasing over the top of the pick again. They made the adjustment, and that's great, but I thought there was a really poor game plan from the start of this game that spotted the Nuggets an eighteen point lead in the first half. Now, it wasn't all that I thought most of that gap was transition.

As a matter of fact, I think the I believe the Nuggets had a seventeen to six fast break point advantage in the first half, so an eleven point advantage there. That's obviously where you're getting the larger margin. But the rest of that margin I thought was some defensive game plan stuff. I also thought they did way too much double teaming of Jokis. And this is where, like, again, I understand the concept of like, hey, Anthony Davis, as good as he is, is not gonna be able to

just stonewall stop Nikol Jokic every single time. I get that, But if your game plan is to double team, then why waste Anthony Davis on the ball. That's where it makes sense to do it the way they did it down the stretch, where it's like have Ruy Haschimura battling his ass off on the guy because you're gonna be sending all this help from Anthony Davis on the back liner,

from guards digging down from the perimeter. That's where you have an opportunity to use Anthony Davis appropriately, but to have him stonewalling Nikola Jokic and double teaming so Jokic can just throw easy kickout passes to KCP on the wing for three or to somebody else cutting to the basket.

I didn't necessarily agree with that strategy. If Anthony Davis is gonna guard Nikola Jokic, I think you have to stick with him on an island with just a little bit of like shell drill stuff, Like guys just kind of stunting, but in a position where they feel comfortable and confident closing out to the shooters. Now, late game adjustment, Darvin Ham puts Ruey Hotchi Mura on Nikola Jokic, puts Anthony Davis on Jeff Green and Aaron Gordon at the

end of the game, and they do have some success. Now, one of the things that I thought was really helping the Lakers in that situation is Jokic was trying to beat Ruy Hatchra Mura by getting past him instead of trying to shoot over the top. I think as we look forward in this series, you're gonna see Darvin Ham start with that. I think Ruy's gonna start on Nikola Jokic,

Anthony Davis on Aaron Gordon to begin game too. But Jokic is too smart of a player, and he's so damn efficient with those little short push shots and runners in the lane. I think his adjustment to that in that coverage is he's going to start not trying to go through Ruey hatcha Mura, but just get to comfortable spots that he likes around the semi circle for those short, little push shots and turn around jumpers in the lane that Ruy's not going to be able to come close

to bothering the way that Anthony Davis does. Now what I would do if I was guarding Nikola Jokic, I would mix coverages frequently. I would keep Anthony Davis on him a good amount of the time in single coverage, and I would try Ruey with Anthony Davis on the back line, especially if Anthony Davis is ever in any sort of foul trouble. But also don't just try Ruey. That needs to be a little bit of Lebron James too.

I'd love to see Lebron James switching on to Nikola Jokic and applying some similar pressure to try to bait him into tougher shots that he doesn't normally get right. So, again, I think that it was a good adjustment from Darvin, But it's not the it's not the last thing they're gonna need to do, and they're gonna need to do more to mix things up to make nikola Jokic uncomfortable over the course of this series. And again, Nikoliokich is too smart. He's gonna find a way to solve that

specific coverage at some point. Now, let's look over the other side of the ball, because the Denver Nuggets have a lot of adjustments that they need to make as well. Silver Lining for the Lakers if you're looking at looking back from this game is you really really didn't even come remotely close to matching Denver's effort and intensity, especially in the first three quarters, but you consistently looked comfortable

on offense in spite of that. Anthony Davis, despite struggling a little bit in his post up in ISO's I thought he looked really comfortable in the short role. Hit a couple of jump shots, a lot of comfortable stuff there. Ruey Hatcha Mura had a lot of success attacking some of the smaller Denver Nuggets guards and post ups. And Lebron James just continuing from Game six at the top of the key picking on defenders that he believes he has an advantage against. Now, what did I tell you

guys in the series preview? I told you that they're gonna do similar to what they did with Lonnie Walker on Steph Curry in game four of the last round. They're gonna run quick ghost screens, and Flair had that shooter quick set his feet on the left wing, and as Jamal Murray is lingering on Lebron waiting for Aaron Gordon to recover, that's when he can throw those behind the back passes are over the top feeds to a

wide open shooter. And Austin Reeves really made the Nuggets pay in the second half of this game with those week side threes. So the adjustment there for the Nuggets is to put Jamal Murray the defender Lebron feels most comfortable attacking, like he had some success against Gordon, he had some success against KCP, had some success against Michael Porter,

but he had the most success against Jamal Murray. So what you need to do is tuck Jamal Murray on a shooter that is not a good movement shooter because that specific jumper that Austin Reeves is hitting is a very difficult jump shot. You're running to your side and having to set your feet on the move to get that shot off before the contest can come from the sides. Right,

the guy the obvious decision there is Dennis Schroeder. Dennis Schroeder has a very slow release, and he can knock down threes when he's given a lot of time, but he is very much not a movement shooter. He is not a guy who's going to consistently knock down jumpers sliding to his left. He is a standstill shooter. But D'Angelo Russell and Austin Grieves I believe could have some

success in pick and pop shooting. So again, one of the adjustments I expect from Denver going into Game two is to see more of that hedging and recovering, but trying to tuck Jamal Murray away onto Dennis Schroder instead. That forces Lebron to call up Contavious Callwell Pope instead, which is still a matchup that he's gonna have some success attacking, but probably not as much as he does

against Jamal Murray. But I thought overall, the Laker offense was fantastic, even in that first half, there was some turnovers and effort things. They were definitely shell shocked under that Denver effort. But even in that first half, I thought the Lakers got great looks and I feel good about them being able to score over the course of

this series. As a matter of fact, as we kind of zoom out from this, it's really the really is like the Nuggets win, and a win is a win, right, Like I said this a lot over the course of the last series, Like, it doesn't matter if the Suns were within three points in Game two late. A win is a win is a win. It doesn't matter if the Warriors eraced a fourteen point deficit in the fourth quarter of Game one, D'Angel Russell scored and then they didn't score the rest of the game. The Lakers won.

A win is a win is a win. So the Nuggets are up one h But as we go to Game two, both teams are gonna have to go to the drawing board a lot with their defensive scheme, especially Denver, because I think the Lakers found a few things that work well in this game defensively, the Nuggets are gonna have their hands full. But again, to me, again, I you're gonna talk a lot about scheme, and you guys know,

I love to talk about those things. And we'll talk about pick and roll coverages, and we'll talk about how to post up double teams, and we'll talk about ghost screens on Lebron mismatch hunting. But at the end of the day, like what matters most in these environments is

how well do your damn stars play? And in game one, if you're ranking the players in this game, you're probably going Nikola jokicch one, and you're probably going maybe Anthony Davis too, but maybe Jamal Murray and then Lebron, And I would argue it's kind of Jokic on a level by himself and then Murray, Lebron ad all on that second tier. Simply put, the Nuggets dominated the superstar matchup in this game, and then down the roster the role

players played better. So that's what it comes down to in my opinion, Like, at the end of the day, no matter what happens schematically, Lebron, James and Anthony Davis have to find a way to flip the dynamic of who the best player in the series is. Round one goes to Jokic, a lot of basketball left. One last thing I was gonna say had a lot of Nuggets fans and I mentioned today being like, is it time to call Nikola Jokich the best player in the world.

Two things. First of all, this is just my opinion on stuff. You're welcome to say Nikola Joakis is the best player in the world, and if you do so, I'm not even gonna say you're wrong. I'm just gonna say that I don't think of it that way. For me, I have rules. For me, You're not called the best player in the world unless you have a Larry O'Brien trophy at home, and you were one of the and you played at a superstar level in pursuit of that Larry O'Brian trophy. So for me, I'm not gonna give

Nikola Jokic that credit until he wins the title. Now there's a flip side to that. Once Nikola Jokic wins the title, he has a stranglehold on that and I'm not gonna bump him off for some random guy who's playing well in the regular season three four years in a row. Right, So if we find ourselves in the Western Conference finals next year and it's you know, Dallas advances and Luka Doncic looks incredible, and everyone's on Twitter saying Luca the best player in the world, But Yokic

is the defending Finals MVP. I'm gonna be the same guy sitting in this chair saying, Nope, Jokic has the trophy, Luca does not. I'm not interested in considering him at that level until he gets the trophy. But again, that's just the way that I look at it. So I love Yokic's game. I'm a huge believer in what he does. Let's let him do it first and once he once he does it, I'm gonna advocate for him. But I have my own little process, so do all of you

guys and my show. I'm just gonna talk about the way I think about these kinds of things, all right. So a couple game plan things. I am going to be going again tomorrow night after Game one of the Eastern Conference Finals. I also will be doing, probably for just the Western Conference Finals, doing some daily film sessions. So keep an eye probably on the morning of each game, similar to what we did in the Lakers Warrior series. You're gonna get another fifteen minutes or so of just

what I learned watching the film. So tomorrow night game one of the Eastern Conference Finals, and then the following morning little film session from game one, and then again after game two on Thursday night. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys. Now I'll see you tomorrow. The volume