Hoops Tonight - Steph Curry & Warriors dominate Kings, Suns beat Clippers, 76ers push Nets to brink

back to win that one. So we're gonna go ahead and get started before that game is finished. And then we're gonna touch on the Warriors since avoiding the three to zero deficit that would have been a death sentence

for them and a convincing win. And then the Brooklyn Nets that we're up five late on Philly and Tyrese Maxey stole the game away from them, So we're gonna get into that a little bit of the ejection related shenanigans in that game, as well as I have some thoughts on Joel embiid and is incessant flopping which is driving me and saying, you guys know the drill before

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Download game Time today, last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. All right, let's talk some basketball. So you know, I talked about this a little bit after Game two, but I said, you know, sometimes it's less about schematics. It's fun to sit here and be like, oh, what if we do this or make this magical adjustment, it'll just completely change this entire series. And don't get me along wrong. There are adjustments that take place in series, and some

of them can be monumentally important, you know. For instance, like the Warriors consistently slotting Andrea Gudala into the starting lineup in the middle of a series against Lebron James because Lebron was having so much success against Harrison Barnes. He was building his rhythm early in games and killing them throughout. But by starting on Dre Goudalad just made Lebron work harder earlier in the games and had an impact on his efficiency. There are adjustments that will swing series.

A specific pick and roll coverage, a specific defensive matchup where one individual defenders giving guy giving a guy problems that the other defenders on the team haven't done. So, for instance, Davion Mitchell and the job that he's done on Steph Curry in this series. Thought it was super interesting that Mike Brown didn't play him a ton tonight, But more often than not, it's less about schematics and

more about just doing better. Steve Kerr in his interview after the third quarter, he basically said, look like we knew we just had to take better care of the basketball and rebound better on both ends of the floor, and that's what we did. Like, there's no magic cure other than just do your job better. And I've talked a lot about this, particularly in this series, as the dynamic of perimeter defense. You it's not so much about you know, finding the right guy here or there, but

everybody as a team has to do a better job. Yeah, ideally you have Gary Payton on one of Deer and Fox from Malik Monk and you have Harrison Barnes on the other and you have Draymond Green on the back line. Ideally that's what you'd have. You'd be able to contain those guys better, right, But today it was no Gary Payton, no Draymond Green, and they had their best defensive game of the series as a team, just swarming all over the floor, helping each other, making extra efforts, going out

of their area to try to make plays. All around as a team, they just did better. And sometimes it's more about that than it is about any sort of schematic thing about rebounding and taking care of the basketball was the story of the game. Just like Steve Kerr talked about, Kevon Looney led the way six offensive rebounds in the first half of a must win playoff game when you are the only real center who's available on the roster. That is unbelievable. Clutch performance from Kevon Looney.

Dante DiVincenzo was amazing off the bench. Every starter had at least five rebounds, you know. And then Steph Curry. It's so easy to be like, oh Steph Curry, great game, thirty six points. I thought he was so laser focused

and locked in every single possession of this game. I was texting with some of our production staff during the third quarter about how so I love the way that different types are different, Like I love the way that the different ways that savage competitors manifest themselves in personality types.

You know, you have guys that are like like Lebron James, that are very boisterous and love the attention and kind of come off as as you know Prima Donna likes sometimes and a lot of times people target that as a negative with him, when like, the persona is the persona, but that dude is a savage competitor. He works harder than most players in the league, and he does the little things to win basketball games better than most players

in the league. Like, it doesn't matter if if you're the Kobe Bryant like jerk asshole mentality, or if you're the Michael Jordan jerk asshole mentality, or if you're the super nice guy and Steph Curry, or if you're the super kind of like you know, a performative type of guy like Lebron is is underneath it all, if you have that unbelievable competitive instinct, that's what drives these guys. It's I always talk about it as like a hatred

of losing more than a love of basketball. A love of basketball is a is a monumentally important part of being a great basketball player. But you also have to hate losing because the actual things that go into winning games are not necessarily fun. The way that offensive skill set, just polishing your offensive skill set and working on your game, that that is fun. It's fun polishing those things. What's not fun is cracking down on the defensive rebounds when

one of your teammates is boxing out. What's not fun is sprinting back in transition and putting your body on the line when someone's barreling at you at full speed.

That what's not Like Like Steph Curry, Like that's your leader of your team, an undersized guy who doesn't have the best physical tools in the world, and he's coming down on drivers from behind and snatching the ball from behind them and scream into the crowd like he was a warrior ready for this game, and his impact on winning went well beyond the thirty six points that he had in this game. Now, one of the stories that you're gonna see and a lot of people were talking

about it on Twitter. I noticed, but there's gonna be conversations about are the Warriors better without Draymond? And we do this all the time for whatever reason, and every time I get annoyed by how silly it is. The Warriors were fourteen points better per one Hunter possessions with Draymond Green on the floor this season versus off the floor. They were eleven points better per one Hunter possessions last year in the postseason when Draymond was on the floor

versus off the floor. You're not going into Sacramento and beating the Kings without Draymond Green. You need Draymond Green. That said, the Warriors are capable of winning without him, especially at home. And ironically, this game didn't really go the way I expected. I expected the Warriors to win Game three and Game four. I was still confident that they would win Game three after the Draymond Green suspension.

I was still confident they would win Game three after Gary Payton news, which was bizarre today that he missed the game with an illness, which is super unfortunate under the circumstances. I just here's the thing. As bad as the Warriors have been on the road this year, they've been just as good at home. They've looked like the

championship winning Warriors at home. And you know, this is a consistent theme in the NBA, especially in the playoffs, but role players in particular generally tend to perform better at home than they do on the road. Dante DiVincenzo wasn't super impactful down in Sacramento. He had a monster night tonight, particularly as an athlete, just making plays all over the floor. Kevon Looney winning battles here in Golden State that he was competing in in Sacramento, but not

winning to the same extent. Like guys just played better at home. And this Warriors team in particular has always fed off of their crowd and managed to pull games out, especially against good teams. This year at home when they've needed it, they got to win without Draymond. But guess what you need Draymond. And you know, one of the most encouraging things for the Warriors in the series, and one of the biggest reasons why I have not picked Sacramento to win at any point, even when they were

up too oh, even when the suspension came down. The reason why I stuck with the Warriors is my pick, and again, the series is not over. I could still very well be wrong when it's all said and done. But one of the big reasons why I stuck with my pick with the Warriors is the specific dynamic that was killing the Warriors in Sacramento. Struggling in transition that can be cleaned up, struggling on the glass that can be cleaned up. The dribble penetration from Deer and Fox

and from a leak Monk was the biggest problem. But they had kind of figured it out in Game two and they were starting to have some success, and I actually believe they would have won Game two had Draymond not been suspended. They were gonna go back or ejected, I should say, they were gonna go back to this core lineup, the one that I expect them to go

down with when the Chips are down. Should Game three be close, should or Game or be close, excuse me, in game five when they're in Sacramento, I expect them to go down with this lineup. But Steph Curry with Klay Thompson, with Andrew Wiggins and Gary Payton, and with Draymond at the five. That is the lineup that I expect them to go down with in Sacramento. That way, they can match up straight across with Gary Payton and

Andrew Wiggins on Malik Monk and Darren Fox. That lineup in Sacramento on the road, despite losing both games, was a plus five net rating in just under forty possessions against small sample size, but that's typical after just two games. But that grouping has been winning their minutes kind of convincingly in Sacramento, and that's what I expect them to

go down with again. With playoff series, it's less about like how you're winning and whether or not you can continue to win that battle of tugger war over the course of the series. The Kings are gonna win games a certain way. The Warriors are gonna win games a certain way. You've seen that in that series. How do the Warriors win in Sacramento. They need to take the specific thing that Sacramento does so well, just dribble penetration from their guards, and they need to rain that in.

They have the pieces to do so. On the other side of things, for Sacramento, they do not have the pieces to handle. Steph Curry, there is no version of this story where they control Steph Curry, they have not been able to handle him in any of the three games of this series, whereas the Warriors have demonstrated some stretches where they've been able to lock down defensively and get a lot of stops. So honestly, I felt like if Sacramento wanted to win this series, this was the

game they had to win. And they did it, and it went different than I expected. Like I said, and I bet it'd be all offense. I thought Steph Clay and Jordan Poole would like combine for like eighty points. Clay and Jordan Poole kind of struggled in this game. I mean, Clay made some shots at the end, but for the most part, Jordan Poole and Clay Thompson did not play well. They won this game on the defensive

end of the floor and on the glass. They only shot forty percent from the field in this convincing win at home. They just barely played well enough on off but in a crazy high pace game they managed to get enough stops. I think this series is going back to Sacramento tied it too, and I think Game five will be one of the most important games of the series I disagreed with I talked about this earlier, but I disagreed with Mike Brown going away from Davion Mitchell.

He played like I think, I want to say, like seventeen minutes in this game. Obviously, he can't stop Steph, but he can make Steph work hard, and I think one of the best pathways to victory in this series for Sacramento is to try to fatigue Steph, particularly with a lot of ball pressure from Davion Mitchell, to make him work hard. You saw, particularly in Game two, the game they played Davion the most minutes, you saw Steph start to leave some jumper short at the end of

the game, despite getting some pretty good looks. I think that's a big kind of adjustment that I'd expect Sacramento to make. I think that he I think that Mike Brown sensed that the game was getting off the rails a little bit, and it almost seemed like he stuck with Keegan Murray and Kevin Hrder because those guys haven't shot well and he knew the game was a loss, and I think he left him out just try to kind of try to get their rhythm in time for

Game four. But I don't think it's gonna matter. I think both Gary Payton and Draymond are coming back in Game four. I think the Warriors are gonna come out and put together another impressive double digit win, and I think we'll head into Game five from there. All right. Moving on to Clipper Son. So when we started the show, they were up thirteen in the fourth quarter, I'm pretty

sure they ended up closing the deal. From there. Russell Westbrook and Norman Palill put up a valiant fight, but they just couldn't bother KD enough without Kawhi out there, and then Devin Booker just lit them on fire in this particular game. I wanted to talk about the Kawhi Leonard injury for a second because I find this to

be kind of bizarre. I'll be really curious to see in the postgame quotes from guys like TYLERU and Russell Westbrook whether or not this was something that they were made aware of in the time leading up to the games. Kawhi has had a tendency to just kind of surprise people with his injury status, which has been the strange. You know, you know where we go from here with Kawhi. You could not possibly have approached this season with more caution as it pertains to wear and tear. And I

get that from a certain perspective. I've I've and I've said this for years, but I kind of disagree with that strategy. I'm a big believer in conditioning your body. Get your body used to taking on heavy mileage. That doesn't mean you drive it into the ground. I don't even think it's necessarily out out of line to say, hey, like sit out back to backs like that to me makes some sense, especially for guys like Kawhi that have

had injury history. But I do believe that when you do play, when you are healthy, you should play, and you should play significant minutes. Why because this is a two month grind where you're playing basically every other night, and if you want to win the trophy, you gotta win sixteen playoff games and you're probably gonna lose another eight or nine. More So, like, this is a hefty chunk of basketball where you to play thirty eight to forty minutes a night of really high effort and intensity

two way basketball. You have to condition yourself for that. But regardless of what it was, this strategy didn't work this strategy of resting him all season long, he broke down in two games to playoff basketball. And again when I say, I don't know where this where it goes from here? I genuinely don't like. How do how do you change your approach from here? Like? Are you gonna go super cautious again next year under the same circumstances down two to one in a series? Is he's gonna like?

Does Kawi seem like the kind of guy who's gonna push to come back in Game four to attempt to rest control of this series that you know, honestly, even if Kawhi outplays KD may not be enough to win, and to do it on a bum leg and potentially do further damage. Let's say you win this series, is your knee ready for a second round series against you know, battling with Aaron Gordon, a bunch of games against the Nuggets?

I don't this is I Look, I know there's gonna be a lot of people that are gonna go at Kawhi during this stretch. I want to be clear. I don't think Kauai is too good at basketball to not love basketball. He just it's impossible to be as skilled as he is and to work as ard as he has worked on his skill set, if you don't love the game. So I know he loves the game, and I know he wants to play, but for whatever reason, he just has been super super cautious, and even that

hasn't worked. So I'll be I don't know, like like it's it's hard to even imagine what next season will look like for Kawhi under these circumstances, and right now, I'd be surprised if he came back to play at all in this postseason, And who knows, maybe he comes back in game four and everything's fine. But I just don't understand why he wouldn't have played tonight under those circumstances,

especially in a one to one series super bizarre. I was so impressed by him in this playoff series too, So it's just a bummer that I don't like this Kawhi. This was a series I had marked as a sweep obviously super wrong, and this was a series that I thought would be relatively boring. This has been one of my favorite series to watch, especially those first two games, this battle between Devin Booker and Russ and Kawhi and KD has been super entertaining, and it feels like we're

getting robbed of that and that bumms me out. Moving on to Sixers Nets really quick, Tyres Masey flat out stole this game. The Nets were up five with I think just under two minutes left, and they run like a double pick and roll action and they duck under the pick or run into the pick. Tyres gets a good look, sticks a three, brings it back to two.

They go down to the other end. They're swinging the ball around the perimeter and Tyre's Maxy just rips the ball away from Royce O'Neil, races all the way down to the other end and lays it in. We're tied. They go down, they get a stop and Tyres Maxy just walks down and takes that hard pound dreable between your legs, which is like my favorite step back three move.

That particular move that threw the legs hard to the right is a really good move to sell a drive because it's one of the best ways to protect the basketball when you're driving to the right is to stick your leg out and dribble between your legs and it gets you nice and low to beat a guy in that leverage battle as you're trying to go to the right, so a lot of defenders are going to take a backward step on that hard pound dribble between the legs,

and it's a really natural step back. With a good bass, You're not having to cover a ton of ground, got plenty of separation, rose up, stuck the jump shot, and then Joel Embiid with the clutch block at the end and the Sixers go up three to zero. I finally appear to have picked a sweep. Right. We'll see they got to close out game four, but I expect them to a couple of specific things that I want to

complain about here, the officiating thing. And you say what you want about officiating and decision making, there's one thing that is, no matter what the case, is unacceptable, and that's inconsistency. If you're going to eject Draymond Green from a game because he kicks another player, and then literally two nights later, you're going to not eject a similar like a star player when he also kicks another player when in both cases they were provoked, and I would

argue Sabonus provoked Draymond Moore, he grabbed his ankle. Nick Clason just kind of stepped over Joel Embiid. Now, it's an aggressive taunting type of play, and I would have not ejected either of them for the record, but that inconsistency is the problem. Yeah, the suspension, it has been made clear by the league, had more to do with Draymond's historyonics after the play, and Colin laid that out for me last night, and I actually agree with him. Now,

that makes sense to me. I've bummed as a basketball fan that he wasn't able to play tonight, but it made sense to me. But the ejection itself, there's no consistency there, and that's the problem. And then later in the game, a playoff game, in the fourth quarter of a game the Nets can win, Nick Claxton dunks on Joel Embiid and taunts him a little bit and gets ejected, mind you, on a second technical, and again like it's so easy to be like, hey, Nick Claxton, you should

have known better. You already had a technical. Not a smart move. I get that, But stop interfering in basketball games, unless as an official, unless you have a really damn good reason too. You are not the star of the show. The players are we want to see Joel Embiid beat the Nets at full strength with Nick Claxton on the floor. We want to see the Kings beat the Warriors at full strength with Draymond Green on the floor. You're interfering

with the television product. And again I get it. If it's obvious, you know, dude cold cox a dude, Yeah, eject him. James Harden got ejected in this game for an inadvertent off arm to a guy in the crotch that would like inadvertent. Like the inconsistency on this stuff. The main character syndrome from officials is driving me insane.

And I've been talking about this all season. It's one of the most underdiscussed and undercovered problems with the NBA right now is the role of officials and them not understanding that their job is to facilitate good basketball games and nothing else. There's no other role they play. Help us watch the basketball players, not you the basketball players. All right, I'm off by soapbox. I'll I have one last soapbox to get on this Joel Embiid flopping thing.

You know, I was really impressed with Joel Ebid in the second half of the season. That he attacked all the stars in the league. As much as I would have voted Giannis for MVP, I accept the fact that Joel Embiid is a deserving MVP winner. I've been really impressed by his skill development and everything he's doing at the foul line and the way that that's made him like borderline unguardable. I've been vouching for this Philly team

season as a real championship threat. I was the guy who said that I expected James Harden to have a big bounce back year, and he's been much better than he was last year. I'm a bit I've been trying so hard to jump on this Philly bandwagon, and Joel Embiid makes himself so unlikable with this crap. There was a play where Joel Embiid, what is he like two hundred and seventy pounds on a like on a light little body check on an entry pass like splayed out

on the ground and I can't remember. I think it was Royce O'Neill. It might have been Nick Clackston think it was Royce O'Neil, though bumps him and he's just looking down at him, like, dude, what are you doing man. First of all, it's embarrassing. Second of all, is dangerous. He tore up his knee, teams his teammates knee last year doing it. Third, it's objectively bad for the television product. Fourth,

the officials have no idea how to handle it. More often than not, they reward him and fit That actually doesn't help him win basketball games, because if he played with physical aggression and actually held his ground, dudes would bounce off of him and he'd actually still get foul calls, if not more foul calls, and he'd be more efficient. So like, I can't get on the Joel embiid, you know, I can't get on that bandwagon until he cuts that

shit out. It's like it's just it's just objectively unlikable. Tomorrow is my wife's thirtieth birthday and we're celebrating with this. Whole trip has been kind of centered around her, but we're going to celebrate Tomorrow night, So we're taking that night completely off. But I'll be covering tomorrow night's games on Saturday morning, and then we're gonna be going live on AMP on Saturday night after Lakers Grizzlies to break down all of the Saturday Slate. As always, I appreciate

you guys. We've had a crazy successful week and I appreciate you guys rocking with the show and I will see you guys on Saturday morning. The volume