Hoops Tonight - Steph Curry & Jordan Poole dominate 76ers-Warriors, AD & Lakers take down Thunder

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dot net in West Virginia. All right, Welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by Fan Duel here at the volume. Happy Saturday, everybody. I hope all of you guys had a great week. Just gonna hit two games from tonight, the huge wins by the Warriors and the Lakers, the Lakers who are now a five hundred basketball team, believe it or not. For those of you guys looking for some stuff around the rest of the league, Yesterday with Carson, we did fifty three minutes on five big questions around the league.

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lowest price guaranteed. All right, let's talk some basketball. So you know, it's funny. Every once in a while in a basketball game, the entire outcome can shift based on one matchup going a certain way. And that's what I thought swung this Warriors game against the seventy six ers. They were down ninety to seventy nine and had literally absolutely no answer for Joel Embid And it wasn't for lack of trying. Loony and Draymond did the best that

they could. But Joel Embid is on a wrecking ball tour and has been on this tour for months now trying to prove to everybody he's the best player in the world. And he's playing like it again. You know, I'm not personally going to recognize that until it takes place in the postseason, But if he plays anything like this in the postseason, it's gonna be a problem, and it pretty soon he might end up being recognized that way.

But they needed The Warriors needed something to give them the push they needed to get to the end of the game to where Steph Curry can close the deal, which he has been doing very well as of late. And in this particular case, it was a combination of Jordan pool his ridiculous ability to drive to the basket, his dribble penetration, in combination with having his three point shot going. You know this from ninety to seventy nine too. When they took the lead in the late fourth quarter,

Jordan Poole sprung most of that run. He had nineteen points in the quarter. Nobody from Philadelphia can keep him in front. It started with a pull up three. It's kind of in transition. Wasn't really a good shot. It was early in the clock. Draymond comes up and sets a screen, he comes off, Paul Reid's there, he's up with his hand up, but Jordan Poole just rises up

and knocks down the three. And one of the concepts I want to spend a good amount of time talking about today is what it means to split a ball screen. So I've talked a lot about in switching defenses about how difficult it is when you switch on to a defender to be or to an offensive player to be ready for what comes next, because your mental focus is on the guy you were guarding and now you're guarding someone else, and it's just a really quick transition, and

it's tough to make those transitions smooth. And so if you think about what it means to split a pick and roll, So if the screen defender, the guy guarding the guy who's setting the ball screen, wants to take away your pull up three, and you're coming off that screen hard and your defender is trapped behind you, there's airspace there. The only way to close that airspace is to get out to above the level of the screen to contest that three. But what is that that's effectively

a close out. What do I talk about all the time on the show, advantage creation. If you can create that initial advantage, you give your lesser offensive players and a player closing out at them as opposed to a static defender, they've got a chance to beat them. And Jordan Pool, even in a static situation, is extremely difficult to keep in front, and he I think he had at least three pick and roll splits down the stretch

of the fourth quarter, if not more. Right after that pull up three same type of ball screen, Paul Read comes way out and Jordan Pool splits it, just pushes the ball out in front. It's effectively like a crossover on the close out and goes up and dunks it with two hands. Then Joel Embiad checks into the game and Jordan Pool runs a ball screen with Jonathan cominga variation of Spain pick and roll. Joel Embiad is sitting in drop coverage. He comes up a little bit higher

to get ready for that Jordan Pool pull up. But as Jordan Pool's coming downhill on the screen, Steph Curry comes up and sets a backscreen on Joel embat Again. We talked about the Spain pick and roll, the shooter doesn't necessarily just have to relocate to the top of the key. He can also screen the screen defender. Again, Spain pick and roll is any pick and roll where you have a shooter underneath the basket that relocates to the top of the key, but he's not relocating just

to shoot. If he has an opportunity to run into that screen defender, he can create an opening. He hits him. Bead Pool comes off clean and makes a nice easy floater off the glass. Then on the next the next bucket that Jordan Pool gets, he kind of comes flying off of offball action along the right side of the floor and Tyres Maxie comes up too close on a catch and shooting fouls him on a three shot foul

and he had made five three so far in that game. Again, a lot of foul drawing is getting defenders out of position. A lot of getting defenders out of position is having them panic chasing you because they're scared you're going to shoot. And the only way you're gonna get that is if you demonstrate the ability to make that shot. I talked about this a lot with Austin Reeves over the last

couple days, everyone's like, oh, foul grifting, foul drifting. Yeah, there's a certain amount of that going on, but a lot of it is Austin Reeves is a fifty forty ninety guy. The shots he takes go in, so defenders are panic chasing him when he finds those little openings. So when he pump fakes, people go forward. Every time, you're gonna draw that foul, as Jordan Poole, when you've made five threes in a way that you won't be able to when you haven't, you demonstrate the ability to

knock the shot down. You generate the panic in the defensive player, draws the foul, gets to the guests of the foul line. Then he starts just relentlessly attacking. George's kneeing Again, It's still a ball screen. It's a guard guard screen most often gonna end in the switch, but it is still a ball screen. George's kneeing, same type of thing. He's got to be out there quickly on the screen to take away that pull up three because

Jordan Pool's got the three point shot going. He kept beating him with that quick left to right cross to split that ball screen to get downhill. On the first one, he splits and he drops it off to Kevon Looney because Joel em beat steps up and contains Jordan Pool at the basket, drops it off to Kevon Looney. Then Jordan Poole does what every Warrior's card does that he

learned from Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. He after he makes the past, he splits to the right corner and when he does, to Bias Harris, who's guarding Klay Thompson, has to abandon Klay Thompson to close out to Jordan Pool in the corner. Cavan Luoney catches and beat a knee and come to him, and he spots Clay Thompson wide open on the right wing, knocks down the first of the two huge threes that he hit in the

late fourth quarter of this game. Then the next possession, Jordan Poole just beats Tyres Maxie in semi transition like Philly's not really set, just does a hard dribble move to the basket. Joel Embiid comes flying over to try to block the shot. Again, what we talk about with rim pressure, one of the many benefits is occupying the rim protector when you occupy the rim protector. What's the fallout from that? The guy that the rim protector's guarding

is available for an offensive rebound. Jordan Poole misses the layup, but Joel Embiads sold out for this one, actually ran into Jordan. I think they both fell over if I remember correctly. And there's Kevon Looney for the easy put back and then he actually what was crazy? He is on the following possession. He in pick and roll, got downhill and Embiid was there waiting for him, and he just challenged him right at the rim and made it.

Every single thing was going for Jordan Poole in this game, the catch and shoot three, the pull up three, in pick and roll, the floater, that his passing ability, his finishing at the rim, his straight isolation driving attack. He was unbelievable in the fourth quarter of this game. I will say that I did think and I want to cut and beat some slack here because it was just a reality of their predicament. James Harden was out, so that inherently just puts an enormous workload on Joel Embiid.

As a result, he was being lazy in his drops, sitting too far back, and I thought that was a big part of why Philly lost. Down the stretch of this game, there were two massive baskets that Clay Thompson and Steph Curry got just taking advantage of Joel Embiid sitting too far back. The first was that ball screen three that Clay Thompson took at the top of the key Joel embiad too far back. And then I think it was when it was one O one, Oh wait, Steph Curry just came over the top of the screen.

Joel Embid way too far back. He made that little fifteen foot floater in the lane. But you know, Jordan Pool played well enough to get it close to where Steph could close it, you know. And it's I want to be clear, like you know, we this show naturally leads to criticism. You know, it's just kind of the nature of what this show is. We talked about basketball and basketball games are one and they are lost, so

inherently there has to be good and bad. But one of the things that I always try to do is point out when a player plays well and point out when the player plays poorly. And we've just like most Warriors fans been very critical of Jordan Poole over the course of the last month, and he struggled a lot. And you know, the thing is, Jordan Pool has a lot of weaknesses, Like he's struggles in the margins of basketball, Like he's gonna miss a lot of box outs. He's

gonna get lost and help defense. He's not gonna get matched up in transition, he's gonna give up driving lanes at the point of attack. But he also has a lot of strengths. And there's one particular strength, a great strength of his his elite skill. The thing he does better than most other NBA players is he is just ridiculously fast, great at changing direction, and can handle the hell out of the basketball. And that drill penetration piece is enough to put a defense in the blender. And again,

matchups determined basketball games. Philly's not a good perimeter defense team. And so that dynamic Jordan Pool and his ability to consisting at dribble penetration allowed Golden State to steal a game when they were getting just completely run over by Joel Embiid tossed around like rag dolls. But like again, when we're talking about Jordan Poole, I just want to

make sure that we cover both sides there. Yes he has some weaknesses, Yes they've come to the surface over the course of this season, especially with the personnel shortcomings that the Warriors have had. But he's also really good at a lot of stuff. Namely, he's one of the best dribble penetrators in the game of basketball. Once he got it close, those staff was able to close the deal. We just talked about that floater heat against embiad and drop.

Very next possession when it was one t Tobias Harris made a couple of massive shots, a pull up shot and pick and roll, and then a nice isolation shot over Draymond Green where he also got foul. I thought, you know, he made plays to keep this thing close late.

But after Harris ties it at one ten, one ten, Steph has this nifty Steve Nash play where he kind of takes this transition pick and roll from Draymond, gets downhill, kind of gets to the left side of the basket, loops around along the baseline behind the backboard, catches him, beats slipping for just a second and slips in that little bank shot from one twelve, one ten, and then the final play the dagger. The Jordan Pool three in the corner was a very similar play to what happened

on the dagger play against Dallas. I talked, I talk a lot about rejecting pick and roll. One of the ways, like one of the ways that you can take advantage of guard defenders and pick and roll, like we always talk about, is get them engaged with the screen. So many pick and roll coverages in the NBA depend on players chasing over the top and applying back pressure, because if you apply back pressure, you will funnel the guard

into your rim protector. The better the job that guard does, the more your rim protector can sag back into the paint. The lesser job your guard does, the higher your big has to come out to help as the ball handlers coming out over the top. So guards are constantly just preached at all the time, especially in the NBA, just about pick and roll coverages and getting over the top of that ball screen. So what happens You're in his screen and roll coverage. You've got him beat behind you.

He's telling you screen right screen, right screen, right. Steph's got the ball in his left hand and he's looking at the ball screen the like he's gonna go to that screen off to the defender's right hand side, And if you watch this play, you will see the Anthony Melton hop to the right above the screen because he's preparing to try to fight over the top to beat Steph to that spot so that him bad doesn't have to come out of his drop and Steph once again,

just like he did to Maxie cleeband the Dallas game quickly rejects the screen. That is when you push back right when you see that guard start to engage with the screen, is the best time to reverse that screen. He reverses it, gets downhill draws Draymond Green's Man Kicks, a Draymond Green drama. Green makes the extra pass to Jordan Pool bucket one fifteen one ten Warriors. Wine step back to back games where he made all the right plays executing down the stretch for the Warriors in high

pick and roll. Defensively, they had no answer for Embead and beat one on a run there in the fourth quarter, right in the middle of the Jordan Pool run that just kept them kind of at arms distance. But there was one brief stretch there where Doc Rivers went with PJ. Tucker and Draymond Green checks in and just completely ignores PJ. Tucker to double team Joel Embeat, and that allowed them to get enough stops because PJ. Tucker just could not make that left corner three, which has been an issue

pretty much since he was in Houston. And they get enough stops. And then when Doc Rivers adjusted and went away from PJ Tucker and Beat actually missed his last two pull up jump shots. One of them was over a double team, but another one was a pretty decent look. So you took him out of his rhythm by doubling the ball away from him, and then he finally missed

a couple of shots. That's why I always get on this with like Steve Kerr and Rik Spoelster about mixing up coverages, Like everything with basketball players is about rhythm and flow, and anything you can do to disrupt that flow gives you a better chance to win. Throwing his own defense. Look, every once in a while that'll throw off someone's rhythm. Double team them three four possessions in

a row and then leave them in single coverage. They'll be like confused that the double's not there, and then they'll look to go to work. But then they haven't shot in a while, so their rhythm is a little bit off. You get a couple of misses. That was enough. They were aggressively just completely ignoring PJ. Tucker and hard doubling Joel Embiid and then Joel Embid couldn't make the shots down the stretch of the game. Really just all classic Golden State execution. Down the stretch of that game,

the three Warriors guards combined for eighty three points. One last Warrior, I wanted to shout out before we move on, Moses Moody. I thought he had a really impressive fourth quarter shift and it started like started with a really impressive corner three. Let's stay really impressive. Just stepped up and knocked down an important corner three on that classic Warrior's action. Steph Curry, like the Sixers bench unit the beginning of the fourth quarter, was blitzing the Steph Curry

picking rolls. Classic Warriors response to that is have Draymond's at the ball screen, blitz Steph. Steph throws that little loopy little drop past to the to the role man. Draymond Green gets downhill, engages the defender out of the weekside corner, kick pass to the corner that Moses Moody made a shot off of that. But I was really impressed with him defensively. I thought he was making all the right rotations, getting to the nice getting to the

right spots. Um. Yeah, it hit a play where he's stone walled Anthony Melton at the rim with verticality, like made a rotation, got outside the charge circle, jumped as hard as high as he could with his arms straight up, got to stop. It was an impressive shift. I think he was plus six in that shift if I remember correctly. That spanned the end of the third in early fourth, if I remember correctly. Really nice win for the Warriors.

That's a third third in a row. They are now one loss back of the four seed thanks to Phoenix dropping some games, and they're heading into an easy stretch of their schedule. These are the three games that I talked about when we went over their schedule earlier this week. They are home for the Timberwolves, Pelicans, and Spurs. They

will be favored in all three. They'll be tough. The Timberwolves are on a I believe a two game winning streak and the Pelicans are on a three game winning streaks, So they're not going to be easy games, but those are games at home that the Warriors are capable of winning if they bring the requisite urgency even without Andrew Wiggins. If they win all three of those games, I believe they will be the four seed when this is all said and done, and Gary Payton is expected back in

their next game. The biggest question looking forward for the Warriors is can Jonathan Cominga and Gary Payton bring you enough to replace what Andrew Wiggins brings to the table.

And I mean not to get all negative here, but like it's gonna be challenging to determine what Golden State's capable of any playoff run without Andrew Wiggins, because, simply put, I thought he was their second best player in last year's playoff run and a huge reason why they won the trophy was the individual defensive job he did on Luca don Chichen, Jason Tatum, as well as him being good for eighteen points a night or whatever it was he was in the playoffs. So, I mean, Comine has

been pretty good. He had a rough shooting night tonight, but he's been pretty good as of late. If he can slide into that and if that role and play well. They have a chance, but it is definitely going to be difficult without Andrew Wiggins, and hopefully this winning streak can provide them enough push to maybe convince him to

come back. Last note on the Sixers before we move on, It was no James Hardens, so you don't want to think too much about it, and that obviously affected them offensively down the stretch of this game when they were doubling Joel Embiid. It just them in their race against Boston that they're now one loss back of that second seed and Boston has the tiebreaker, so that puts them

in a tough spot. And the problem is is if you end up in three, there's a pretty decent chance that you end up playing Miami in the first round. And you know, obviously, looking at this season, it's really easy to be like, oh, well, Philly's better, they'll beat him, right, But Miami beat Philly pretty handily last year. Mind you, Embiid was dealing with that orbital bone fracture. But that's definitely not an easy matchup. And the one way that

that loss particularly hurts is you avoid Miami entirely. If you can get that two seed, and end up in a better position and from a playoff standpoint, But I continue to be completely blown away by how well Joel Embiad's been playing. All right, let's move on to thunder Lakers. Lakers win one, sixteen to one to eleven. Another monster knight from Anthony Davis. He had thirty seven and fourteen

Dennis Schroeder at thirteen points in the fourth quarter. There was a really interesting game plan dynamic going on with both teams, and I thought backfired for both teams. Ironically the Thunder where when Anthony Davis was on the floor, they were running a drop coverage and they were prioritizing the role man, so you know, the defender that was chasing over the top of the screen would kind of like grab ad and slow down his role. And then the dude who's guarding and drop is kind of like

handling a d as he's rolling into the basket. So the guards coming over the top were the ones that had the openings there, and that was a big part of how Dennis Shrewder impacted the game in the fourth quarter, especially down the stretch when a d was out there. He made a couple of massive pull up jump shots in that like semicircle area, they're ten to fifteen feet

away from the rim. But early in the fourth quarter when Anthony Davis was off the floor, one of the things that the Thunder was doing when Winn and Gabriel was out there, they were just switching everything. So the Lakers were running their interchanges and not gaining any advantage because that, like you know, Dennis Shruders got a little bit of ISO ability, Austin's got a little bit of

ISO ability. But those guys are all typically pick and roll guys, like they're at their best and when they can get downhill and make reads and so switching kind of negates that to a certain extent. And you know, Dennis Schroder made three plays there in the early early fourth quarter against Oklahoma City switching, just whilling the ball into the basket. He hit a three, he had a

driving layup. There was one his third bucket that he had there to start the fourth quarter where he just like forced I think he was being guarded by lu Door if I remember correctly, but I can't. I'm not one hundred percent certain beats him to the right is contained is like sidling alongside of him and just throws up like a scoop shot with his right hand that he shot from like four feet off the ground that somehow went it literally just wheeling the ball into the basket.

It's about eight minutes and forty five seconds left. Darvin him calls a really smart time out after the Lakers secure a loose ball. They're up five, I think at that point, and I thought it was a really smart time out in large part because the Lakers were not getting good shots against Oklahoma City switching. It just so happened that Dennis Schroeder had wheeled the ball into the basket three times to start the quarter. They went back to that Anthony Davis lying up there to close the

game and ended up getting enough baskets to win. But you know, Mark Deginald did a good job just kind of mixing things up, like I said, going from switching to drop based on who was on the floor. They randomly went to zone on some possessions after makes and then on Anthony Davis post ups. This was the one place where I thought Mark Deginald messed up. Anthony Davis struggles with pressure in his face, so like if you hard double him to his face side, he panics and

struggles to handle that. Usually just tries to get the ball out to the perimeter, but Oklahoma City was doubling from the base line side, so like they would make the post entry to Anthony Davis on the left block, and you know, Jaylen Williams would be like kind of pressing up on him, and then they'd have like Shay Gil just Alexander or Isaiah Joe or somebody kind of loop around the baseline and try to poke it out

from behind. The problem there was is Anthony Davis was able to attack quickly towards the middle and then attacking quickly pieces a huge part of Anthony Davis getting in the last three halves. I tweeted at halftime of the last game. I tweeted at halftime that Anthony Davis was really struggling with just going quickly to the basket. This was against Phoenix, and if you remember correctly, he had like a like a really bad first half against Phoenix, and I think he had like seven points and seven

rebounds or something. I can't remember exactly, but he dominated had twenty something in the first half or second half against Phoenix, and then he ended up with you know, thirty seven and fourteen tonight, and one of the things he did, I tweeted this out at halftime of that game, is I want to see Anthony Davis go quickly. And we talked, we kind of broke down the benefits of that in that show. Basically, just going quickly before the

defense can really get set to double team you. You're gonna go into traffic, You're gonna have some turnovers, you're gonna have some offensive foul some things are gonna go poorly. But in the aggregate, with all of the rim pressure and the shots you're gonna get and the fouls are gonna draw, it's actually a huge benefit and it neutralizes the double team, which is the most important part. Jannis is one of the best players in the league at

this particular thing. But ever since that first half against Phoenix, Anthony Davis has been amazing. He's averaging damn near twenty points a half since that specific adjustment that he made. And if you watch, just go to NBA dot com and click on the box scores and all the blue

numbers where you can click and see the videos. Watch Anthony Davis's field goal attempts from the second half of the Sun's game on versus the first half of the Sun's game, and you will see a massive difference in his touches with how quickly he goes to attack versus standing and holding and surveying and waiting for that double

team to come. But I did think it was a tactical mistake for Mark Dagenald to double along the baseline side because I thought it allowed Anthony Davis to get comfortable in a way that he doesn't when teams are more aggressive double teaming him in his face. Then on the other end of the floor, the Lakers had a

similar game plan that backfired. They were completely sagging off of jay Lynn Williams, not jay Len Williams, jay Lenn Williams and Lou Dord, just ignoring them and giving them wide open catching shoot threes in large part to keep Anthony Davis in the paint. Right, Like Anthony Davis is

garding Jaylen Williams, keep him in the paint. It allows you to contain one of the best basket attackers in the game and Shake Gildas Alexander, And that was a big part of why they succeeded in slowing down Shake Gildas Alexander. The downside was is the thunder Head an outstanding three point shooting game, and those two guys Lou Dorton Jaylen Williams went six for thirteen from three, and those same two guys went two for eight from three

against the Clippers the night before. So some of that is like bad luck, but it's the reality of professional basketball players. Like if you leave professional basketball players wide open, even the ones that struggle, they're gonna have nights where they go in they because they're working on it too hard. You know, Like you can bet your ass that Lou Dorton Jaylen Williams at every thunder practice or sticking around

after and making one hundred threes. You know, like those guys are putting in the work in preparation for those particular types of shots and they have the ability to knock them down. But I thought Jared Vanderbilt did an outstanding job on shake Gilja Alexander once again, every defensive assignment, with exception to Julius Randall, which was I thought whistle related. I thought Jared Vanderbilts handled every defensive assignment extremely well.

Now he did. It was a team effort. He had Anthony Davis kind of basically just zoning up underneath the basket, which allowed Jared Vanderbilt to apply more ball pressure. But I thought the big part of how Jared Vanderbilt succeeded was contesting those long twos. One of Shay's favorite things to do is kind of hesitate, get the ball into his left hand and take two hard dribbles down to like the semicircle and push you off and take that little short ten twelve foot jump shot. But Jared Vanderbilt

actually does a really nice job contesting that shot. And you know, the final two shots of Shay took in this game, one where he did a blatant push off with his right hand. Jared was upset, he thought he should have got a push off foul, but he perfectly contested it. Shay just made it. You live with the result.

Later on, in a key defensive possession later in the fourth quarter, Shay took a step back three and Jared timed it a little even a little better and was damire high fiving him on his release and gotta stop.

It's like an It's like Jared Vanderbilt has been so considered a big man on offense because of his inability to shoot that a lot of people don't really think of him as a traditional wing, but in terms of his actual mobility, like he's a six nine player with long arms, with very quick feet, who's strong but light on his feet, that can move well, that's your textbook wing defender. And he's he's been handling every single assignment

thrown his way. Five stars. He shada nine for twenty two from the field in this game, and I thought he got a rough whistle, although not as bad as the Julius Randall one from last week. Lonnie Walker twenty points in four three's outstanding rim pressure. He's one of the best things he's done all year. Is just especially in pick and roll, as he just gets downhill, which engages help defenders and good things happen there, you know.

Darvin ham commented after the game, I was finishing my notes and I had the league pass feet up and Darvin Hams presser came on and he talked about how it was just such a profess way to handle that

situation for Lonnie Walker. And it's true because if you really look at it, if you look at the situation, the Laker guard situation has been a crowded mess all year, and it's like, yeah, you sent out Russell Westbrook and you send out Patrick Beverley, but you have brought back Malik Beasley in D'Angelo Russell, two guys that started at one point together, and Austin Reeves just was playing really,

really well and deserved more minutes. And Darvin said, like, you know, sometimes you do everything right and you lose your minutes even though it's not your fault. And that's what happened to Lonnie. But like, what is being a professional mean? Do you sulk or do you stay ready?

And Lonnie clearly has been working his ass off staying ready behind the scenes to be ready in case this happened in D'Angelo Russell, for whatever reason, has been taking a lot of games off for the Lakers with minor injuries, and so opportunity has been there and Lonnie stepped in. And they don't win this game without Lonnie playing, and simple, they do not beat the Thunder unless Lonnie comes in and brings the effort that he brings. The Lakers are

now eleven and six post trade deadline. That is the sixth best record in the league. Over that span. Lebron has played in just three of those seventeen games, and they toasted off the MAVs game with a four point lead late because the two defensive mistakes from Anthony Davis. I think it was actually a five point lead late, and you took a dnp rest loss to Houston, giving up seventy something points in the paint because Anthony Davis

didn't play. So they're eleven and six basically without Lebron, and they'd be thirteen and four if not for a catastrophic couple of mistakes from ad in a game he probably could have played in if he had the permission of the medical staff. They're a good team. They have the second best defense in the league over that span, just a tenth of a point per one hundred possessions behind the Milwaukee Bucks. And they are now five hundred and tied for the seventh seed in the Western Conference.

And I think the seventh seed should be the absolute minimum goal for the Lakers. It's gonna be hard for them to get up above that. I know they're only one loss back from Golden State, but like Golden State's getting into an easier stretch of their schedule, the Suns are getting Kevin Durant back. I think the Thunder. I think the Clippers, if I'm not mistaken, are going into a little bit of an easier stretch of their schedule too.

I'll have to look, but like, yeah, they've got a chance to get six, and they should shoot for that obviously, But you know, getting that seventh seed I think is the most important because then your home for that play in game, and if you win, you'll get to play most likely Memphis in the first round of matchup that I really like for the Lakers because of their interior defense against John Morant. So that seventh seed has got

to be their target. It's not gonna be easy. They have the five of their final eight games are on the road. And the thing is, it's like you look at the schedule and you go, oh, some of these games are easy, Like they're they're playing a home at home against Chicago starting Sunday and Tuesday, I believe. And here's the thing, Like Chicago's yeah, they're below five hundred, They're not a bad team. They got really good players.

Zach Levine, Demarda, Rosen Glavusovitch, Patrick Beverley is going to be coming for revenge in those games again, like the Lakers will be favored, and they should be, but those are not easy games. So they've got to keep their foot on the pedal. They've got to get a couple of these wins after that Chicago home and home. Then you got Minnesota, who's all reinvigorated because Karl Anthony Towns

is back. It's not going to be easy, but if they can get that seven seed, I really like their chances as a team that's got a legit puncher's chance to come out of the Western Conference. Lastly, Oklahoma City, every time I watched them, I'm just blown away just by the sheer amount of good basketball players they have, just the like you know, Jeremiah Robinson Earl comes in in the early fourth quarter and is just big and

athletic and make plays in hitting corner threes. You know, like between Jalen Williams and Shay Gildas, Alexander and Isaiah Joe is just another outstanding shooter that they have. Aaron Wiggins was making plays in that fourth quarter that they they just have a boatload of good basketball players and shed home grins on the way. Shay is rapidly ascending into a top ten player in this league. They've got a million draft picks that they are just an outstanding

position to take a leap next year. And they are every bit as scary in terms of a future ceiling as the Thunder of a decade ago, in my opinion, and it's a good time to be a Thunder fan. All right, guys, that is all I have for tonight. We will have another show this weekend, being released on Sunday afternoon covering the Saturday night games, and then we're going live late on Monday night before we take Tuesday off. As always, I sincerely appreciate your guys to sport and

I'll see you on Sunday afternoon. The volume