Hoops Tonight - Steph Curry’s return to MVP form, Warriors dominate Heat, Toronto Raptors hot star

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in West Virginia. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by FanDuel here at the volume. Happy Friday, everybody, congrats on making it to the weekend where you're going to be covering the Golden State Warriors and they're convincing when

over the Miami Heat yesterday. We're also going to kind of briefly touch on the Miami Heat, and then the team that most people in the comments last night wanted us to do a little bit of a deep dive into this morning was the Toronto Raptors, and so we'll be doing a dive into them on both ends of the ball and their start to this season. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channels so 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. That's also where I put all of the NBA footage stuff since we have some limitations in our ability to use it on YouTube. And then, last but not least, and for whatever reason, you guys miss one of these shows and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish them, you can find them wherever you get your podcasts. Under Hoops Tonight,

all right, let's talk some basketball. So goodwin for the Warriors. Got back on track. Defense still isn't quite where it needs to be, but they're making progress. They had a hundred and eight defensive rating last night against Miami. In particular, I'm not super thrilled about that in terms of the rest of the league that now they're down to so I'm sure Steve Kerr is going to really be harping on that. But things are clicking so well on the offensive end of the floor that there's still a lot

to be excited about. And here's the thing, Miami's just a pain in the ass. They're never gonna quit. They're super well coached. They're gonna find ways to make you feel uncomfortable. Jimmy Butler is always a threat to have a big game, especially in a in a moment that appears like a high pressure situation, like a road game

nationally televised this time on NBA TV. I suppose but in Golden State against the defending champions, Like, Jimmy's just going to play well in a game like that, and he did, and he made a lot of timely shots to keep this game close. Um, you also happen to catch one of those random games that's it's like I swear, it's like one out of every ten games you get. Bamata Bio just super confident scoring the basketball because like

Bamata Bio actually has like a really nice short range game. Obviously, he's not a stretch big, he's not going to consistently make you pay from the three point line, but he has one of the best like short jumpers that you see in the league, like little five foot jumpers, seven foot jumpers, ten foot jumpers. He actually hit a couple of longer ones in this game as well. But when he really gets comfortable and confident with that shot, he's

really difficult to guard. Because he's a free athlete, Guys are accustomed to giving him space. He just elevates over the top and can knock those shots down. You guys probably remember Game six in Boston last year when the heat kept that series going and sent it to seven. Been a similar type of vibe where it was like it was almost like unrecognizable the level of aggression you were seeing from Bam. So a lot of that kind of led to Miami having a relatively successful offensive night

against Golden State. That said, they got absolutely obliterated on the other end of the floor. I think Golden State had about a hundred and twenty six offensive rating in this game. It was actually way closer than it should have been. Golden States shot much better from the field, they shot much better from three. They completely pulverized them on the glass fifty thirty one UM. Specifically, James Wiseman, uh Kavan Luny and Draymond Green did an awesome job

on the offensive glass. They combined for seven offensive rebounds. Andrew Wiggins to like There are so many times where you're watching and and you don't even see him, and he'll just come flying in out of nowhere to grab contested offensive rebounds over the top. Those plays feel like big momentum plays in a basketball game too. The Warriors also one points in the paint forty to thirty four. This was a destructive dominant performance that was kept close

because of turnovers um. You know, this is something that's happened time to time over the years with the Warriors. They just can be a little fast and loose with their offense. Miami two, I mean they're the I think they're you know, I think they're organizationally every bit as smart as Golden State is. They just don't have the talent. And they did a really nice job of mixing up man coverages and zone. They a lot of zone in

this particular game. Jimmy Butler, baym at a Bio and Kyle Lowry in particular, are really good at kind of camping just outside of a passing lane and bating you into thinking that a pass or a swing pass or a skip pass or something like that is open when it's not. And then they'll jump into that gap and and force a turnover. That is one of their specific strengths, and they I tell you, Steph and Draymond in particular, there were several times where they were just making simple

swing passes that someone would jump the passing. There was one in the third quarter where Draymond Green was bringing the ball up the right side and before he even got to half court, I think it was Moses Moody running along the left wing and he's just like, I'll try this skip ahead pass and Jimmy Butler jumped it, or like Steph Curry like dribbling at the top of the key, you know, trying to figure out which way he's gonna attack the zone, and Clay Thompson is on

the wing and he just throws it to Klay Thompson and Jimmy Butler jumps it and gets a steal. Like a lot of just sloppiness and and some of that too, is just the way Miami plays there towards the top of the league and steals again this year just like they were last year. They're they're they're always going to be good in in those areas of the game, and they took advantage of some sloppiness for Golden State and

kept the game close. They had sixteen steals in this game, but at the end of the day, Um, they were obliterated in every single other facet of the game. So even though it occasionally got close, it never really truly felt it felt like Golden State was threatened and and so again, like you're never gonna, like I said, with these defense details, these changes never happen overnight. You're not going to go from being an average defense to a great defense in one night. You have to build habits,

build continuity, build connective tissue. You're training younger defensive players like James Wiseman and Moses Moody to take significant roles. You know you've you've got because of injuries, You've got some unusual guys in the lineup in terms of the rotation. Um. Obviously, when Clay Thompson and Draymond Green have their minutes restrictions lifted, you're gonna have a little bit less of those guys anyway. So I do think over time you're gonna see Golden

States defensive rating tick up. But I'm sure that Kerr is not super pleased at this point. Um, Clay Thompson finally got going in that second half. He made four or three some big ones too to stop Miami runs. That probably felt good for him after, you know, after the ejection with Devin Booker, there was a lot of talk, a lot of slander directed towards Clay, a lot of stuff like, oh, if Devin Booker switched places with him in his career, the Warriors would be even better, and

all this kind of stuff. And I think that stuff is completely loaded. Um, there's just so much that you have to get into there. And I think that Clay Thompson's resume is unassailable. He's played so well in so many huge playoff games, and he's a tent just many many times the defensive player that Devin Booker is, I think I think that's kind of disrespectful. So it probably felt good for Klay Thompson to finally get going in that second half and make some big plays in a

Warrior win. Um. But I wanted to spend some time on Steph. You know, I talked a lot a lot about Steff over the course of the summer, so in the early part of the season, I was kind of focusing on some of the other parts of the roster. But the truth is He's been one of the most impressive guys in the league to start the season. Among the guys that I had towards the top of my player rankings, Janice, Luca, and Steph are the ones that

are impressing me the most. Tatum's putting up big scoring numbers, and I had him at sixth I believe in my player rankings just kind of a homage to what he did in his playoff run. But Tatum's kind of abandoning playmaking so far in this season, and that is deeply concerning to me because that's such a huge part of

why I had him as high as I did. I think he's only averaging like three and a half assists per game, which just goes to show you that he's kind of got his head in the wrong place compared to what his idealized peak version of himself is. So even though he's putting up the numbers, I don't put him in that conversation. Uh, Katie is putting up scoring numbers, but he's not good enough in the details right now,

and his team is suffering for it. Specifically, Luca, Steph, and Janice are picking up exactly where they left off at the end of last season and playing dominant basketball. Stephen is playing with the confidence of a champion. You know, a guy that just clearly got the monkey off his back last year. Not that he had a real monkey. It was just like he had three titles. The first two everyone pointed to k D and then the first

one or the last two, everyone pointed to Katie. And then the first one everyone said he got lucky because of injuries. And so this one was like the the unassailable, like you can't you can't undercut this one. This one's for real, and you could tell that confident this is is coming, uh, coming out of his pores. Literally, he's

just he's just he's just exuding that every game. And he struggled most of last season, if you guys remember in the regular season, so to see him playing really well in the regular season this year is a good sign. He's averaging thirty one, six and six on sixty six percent true shooting. Now remember in that two thousand sixteen unanimous m VP campaign he had a sixty seven percent true shooting percentage, it was averaging thirty So he's basically scoring at a higher rate and at about the same

efficiency as his unanimous MVP season. He's shooting fifty percent on six point four pull up threes per game. That's outrageous. He's shooting fort on ten point two above the break threes per game. That's completely insane. He's shooting fortent on seven mid to short range attempts per game. So that's the mid range, and then everything in the paint that's outside of the restricted area that's really really good. And then this is the wild part. And you saw this

on display last night against Miami. Steph is looking extremely explosive going to the rim, like as explosive as he's looked ever in his career. And he's shooting eight in the restricted area on almost two makes per game. Now, if you guys remember over the summer, we talked a lot about this. At the guard position, I want over six and at the on the at the wing of your big wing, I want that over se steps at

which is just out of control. Um. This is also the first time in his career that he's averaged at least six assists with less than three turnovers per game. He's showing complete offensive mastery on that end of the floor, and it almost like reminds me of Lebron in two thousand eighteen where I remember, you know, Lebron was always very good, but like in the Miami years, there still was like a little bit of like the production was there, but like you could tell like he didn't he didn't

have that overwhelming confidence. And then two thousand sixteen, two thousand and seventeen, the production reached these insane levels, but it's still just didn't quite feel like the the the overwhelming confidence. And then there was two thousand eighteen and it was like every game you watched Lebron, it was like it just felt like he could get to wherever he wanted, get to whatever shot he wanted. It was

complete offensive mastery for him. And I feel like Steps entering into that phase of his career right now, and it's it's similar because it was about the same age. I think Lebron in two thousand eighteen was like thirty three thirty four, and at this point Step is thirty four, so it's a similar age. You know, it's like mid thirties.

You still have a good chunk of your athleticism, like of your peak athleticism with the basketball i Q that comes from years and years and years of experience, and then your skill set is as polished as it's ever going to be. And then yeah, when you get into your late thirties, the physical stuff kind of tails off and then you'll start to see some decline. But but like, man, he's this might be. This might be the best that Stever,

that's Steph Stever, That's staff will ever be. This is this appears like his peak, kind of similar to the two thousand eighteen season for Lebron. So kudos a staff, great start to the season. Um, you know, it's gonna be an interesting season for the Warriors because they're gonna have some downsides as they work through their through their rotation, um, trying to build those young guys into usable playoff pieces, and it's gonna be a journey. But they're still gonna

be a pain in the ass. And I wouldn't want to see him in a playoff series. Uh, Miami, they're down to two and four now, they still can't score the basketball. There twenty third in offense outside of Jimmy Butler. They aren't getting consistent production really out of anyone on the roster. Tyler Harrow in particular is not shooting the ball well to start the year. But the biggest concern is their defense has fallen off of a cliff. Last year they were fourth and defense overall fifth in the

half court according to Cleaning the Glass. This year, their half court defense is down to fifteen. Now. I will say that their schedule has played a big role in this. They've had a really tough schedule to start the year. They had Chicago, Boston, Toronto twice, then Portland's do they actually beat convincingly in Golden State, So the schedule has played a role in this. But their defense is not as good as it was last year. This was a

concern for us after they lost p J. Tucker. They're legitimately very thin in the front court and nowhere near as physical as they were last year. The big concern is with the loss of p J. Tucker, they're getting absolutely demolished on the glass. Like we talked about last night, Golden State outrebounded them fifty to thirty one, there twenty seven in rebounding percentage. Overall, they're just too small and on athletic on the perimeter, and they don't have enough

size on the interior to make up for it. Their aggregate size of most of their good lineups is just not big enough. And look, I get that they were one shot away from the finals last year, and so it can be easy to say like we're this close, you know, But the reality is is is this team needs to make a move. In my opinion, they just simply don't have the pieces and and and I think they or estimated how much p J. Tucker was valuable to them. Look, I I won't I won't ever count

out Eric Spoelstra. That would be foolish. I won't ever count out Jimmy Butler. Those guys terrify me in a playoff environment. But right now, this looks like a team that fundamentally doesn't have the requisite physicality defensively and on the glass to compete in an NBA playoff environment. So I'd be pretty concerned if I was a Miami Heat fan at this point. So last night I asked you guys, because we have been talking a lot of Warriors and

Lakers lately. Um, you know, and for those of you guys that have been watching the shows, like look in our in our thumbnails and in our descriptions, we're gonna mention Warriors and Lakers. That's just good business. And we're gonna mention them at the top of the show. Usually that's just good businesses. At the end of the day, we're not doing this for fun. I don't work all these hours for fun. We do this because it's our job.

And and uh, the reality is is I do want to have as much of a wide range and coverage of the league as I can. And they were probably like four videos or so that I did since the start of the season where if you get past that opening segment, I am doing dies into all of these other games where one of the videos we covered seven games, another video we covered five games. So just keep looking in the latter half of the videos, that's where you're gonna see the analysis of some of the other teams

around the league. But last night I ask you guys, what you what team? Um, you guys wanted to hear me talk about and the and the team that got most frequently mentioned in the comments was the Toronto Raptors. So we're gonna do a little deep dive in Toronto right now. So last after they beat Philly on Wednesday, they moved up to three and two. Uh, they have Philly again tonight. We'll see how that goes um there in offense twelve and defense eleventh and net rating a

lot of good on the offensive end so far. Uh, Pascal Siakam has been incredible nine and eight to start the season. He's playing with the confidence that I've never

seen from him. In that Sixers game on Wednesday, he was like, it was kind of cool to see him talking shipped to p J Tucker and you could tell p J. Tucker was kind of daring him to shoot, and he stuck one and then like ran down the floor and basically like you could tell p J. Tucker said something along the lines of like I'm gonna leave you open all night, something along those lines, and then p J or Pascal Siakam was like, okay, bet, let's

see how this goes for you. And the rest of that first quarter he lit p J. Tucker on fire with three points shots and every time down the floor was letting him know about it. He is shooting on five pull up mid range jumpers per game in in combination with shooting thirty six percent from three overall. So that was one of their biggest issues last year against the Sixers, which we'll talk about when we get to

that point. But Pascal Siakam becoming a confident jump shooter would go a long way towards helping this team in a playoff environment. Um offensively, but we're all that's your biggest bright spot right now on offense is how good PJ Tucker? Excuse me, how good Pascal Siakam looks. One concern the pull up three isn't quite there yet, and that's gonna be a big one for him, I think, over the course of his career. But overall, he's playing like an all the NB all NBA player on both

ends and that's exciting. Gary Trent Jr. Is averaging twenty The biggest thing that would concern me offensively right now is as a team, they're shooting like absolutely lights out from three to a completely unrealistic extent. And I'm sure most of you Raptors fans probably would agree with me

watching these games. So check this out. Chris Boucher, Delano, Benton, Fred VanVleet, Malick Hi Flynn, and Scottie Barnes are all shooting over fifty percent on catching shoot threes over Gary Trent Jr. O g Andnobi and Pascal Siakam are all shooting over on catching shoot threes. That's not sustainable. It just simply isn't not. The best teams in the league are going to have the best shooting teams in the league are going to have that level of shooting from

the role players. Here's why that concerns me. They're already, according to Cleaning the Glass, twenty four and half court offense. So yeah, they're fifteenth in offense overall, but they're being carried by the fact that their third in transition efficiency. They run the floor really well, which is gonna be a strength of theirs, and we'll talk about how they might be able to weaponize that here in a second.

But they are twenty four in half court offense right now with that super hot shooting, and like think of it, like this last year against Toronto in that playoff series, they shot thirty four percent on catching shoot threes in that series when they were wide open, meaning defenders at least six ft away, they shot thirty five percent. And this year they're shooting forty six percent as a team on catching shoot three So where's the real Are they

getting better? Sure? Like Sam's form looks like looks really solid and confident. Scottie Barnes looks like he's made improvements over the summer as a shooter, So they're gonna shoot better than they did against Toronto last year. Excuse me, against uh Philly last year, I kept saying Toronto. Those numbers I was quoting was against Philadelphia in that first round series. They were thirty on catching shoot threes on wide open threes. But they're gonna be better than that

because of natural improvement of players. But they're not gonna shoot forty six per cent on catching shoot threes. So with them already struggling to score in the half court, when the shooting numbers normalize, that could be an issue. The reality is this is a physically imposing team that has gone all in on these huge wings and there's a lot of pluses that come with that, but they're relatively low and offensive skill compared to the rest of

the league. They do run some pick and rolls with guys like Gary Trent Jr. And Fred VanVleet, but most of their offense it's just Scottie Barnes, Pascal Siakam and O g n and Obi picking a matchup that they like and trying to bully their way to the rim, and I typically like that kind of offense, that brute force type of offense, because it translates really well to

the postseason. But I usually like that when it's more skilled, like when it's coming for a guy like Luca or Kawhile Ord or Lebron Lebron James, where it's that physical bullyball mixed with a really high end offensive skill set. And right now, outside of Pascal Siakam, it's a lot of overwhelming physical talent that doesn't come with the requisite offensive skill to be a team that scores in a

half court easily. That that was that was why I wanted them to go after Donovan Mitchell this summer as some of you got, as some of you Raptors fans remember, or after Kevin Durant. I mean, look, there's a lot in the in the future to be excited about. You know, o g is improving over the years, Pascal is improving. You know, Scottie barn is one of my favorite young players in the league. He looks way better. He's going to continue to get way better. Maybe in three or

four years. This all pans out great. You look like a top tier contender and everything's fine, but there's also a universe here where, by the time Scottie Barnes gets to the point where he's ready to be the focal point of a championship team, where you lose some of this talent elsewhere on the roster and then suddenly you're not good enough. That was the delicate balance you had over the course of this summer as it pertained to

the trade trade market. It was do you kind of go in on this talent that you have that's clearly missing that offensive centerpiece, or do you be patient and hope that everyone kind of pans out. And they're going the patient route. But here we are in their twenty four and half court offense, despite shooting the damn laces off the basketball, and that can be concerning bright spot. Their third in transition offense, first in fast breakpoints scored

per game. That's bolstering their offensive rating quite a bit. Their first in steals per one possessions kind of reminds me. You know, the Lakers that won the title. They were a bad half court offense, but they were a good offense because of what they did in transition, and all season long everyone said, well, what if they can slow him down. If you can slow down the Lakers and keep them in the half court, you're gonna beat them.

And then guess what. They got a bunch of steals and stops and got out in transition against Portland, and then they got a bunch of steel and stops and got out in transition against Houston. And then they got a bunch of deals and got out in transition against port against Denver, and then they got a bunch of stops and steals and got out in transition against Miami. So at the end of the day, if Toronto can play to their style, which is get stops, get out

and run, then they'll be fine. But if teams managed to keep them in the half court, they're gonna have hard time winning. It's just the reality, strangely enough, you know, and I talked to I did a whole video on this in the preseason on Toronto, so you can find it if you dig far back into my Twitter feed. Um, but they're still overhelping too much for what their talent

really demands. Defensively, their twenty four and half court defense despite having all that length and athleticism, and a huge part of it is they've got all these defensive pieces that you can leave on an island and force offensive players to take difficult shots. But too often, and this has always been a Nick Nurse thing. He's he's a

load up the side kind of coach. He's a if you're you know, if you're off ball, you're damn near on the mid line every single time, like there's always like five defensive players on one side of the court, if the balls on the left wing. He is just an over help coach with the personnel that doesn't require that much help. And as a result, they're giving up too many points in the half court for the amount of talent that they have. So I mean kind of

zooming out. And again this is all early. All these like characterizations I do with these teams, keep in mind that it's early. A lot can change over the course of the next couple of weeks. Philly could beat Toronto tonight and go on a run, and then everything I said about DC Rivers could be irrelevant, you know, So

like they're everything can change quickly. The Lakers have one of the best defenses in the league, so they're owing four, but if they start shooting better and they keep getting stops, they might just start kicking the ship out of everybody, like you never know what's gonna happen. I had a lot of people go like, oh, Jason, you had this team at you know, you had the Lakers at in your power rankings and they're owing four. You had Philly at whatever fifth in your power rankings and they're one

and four. Whatever it is. It's guys, it's early. I'm ever going to completely change my outlook of the season based on four or five games, but we do learn things. What have we learned about the Lakers. They're damn good defensive team. What did I predict this summer? I predicted that they would be a top five defense. They've been a top five defense. Okay. Their offense is shooting historically bad.

Literally no team in NBA history has shot worse than the Lakers through four games on a minimum of eighty attempts. I think Tom Haverstroe tweeted that out yesterday. That's not going to sustain. They're gonna shoot better when they do. If they keep getting stops, they're gonna be a better basketball team. Me putting them at thirteen is not that crazy. Philly still has a ton of talent. They have the second best offensive, uh half court offense in the league

right now. If they figure out some things in their transition defense and in their half court defense, they're gonna start beating teams. Like It's just the reality. So in general, I can't stand when people get all like in your face about predictions. I won't take victory lapse on predictions because I know predictions are a crap shoot. I'm gonna

be right some times, I'm gonna be wrong sometimes. If it was easy to make predictions, we'd all be in Vegas making a ton of money betting on games and outcomes, which we all are not doing. We're all we're all just having fun with it on fan duel. So that's just the reality of it. Um. I What I'm gonna do, though, is over the course of the season, try to learn lessons watching the film. As we learn lessons, we make adjustments. And you'll notice I haven't done a power rankings yet

since the start of the season. I'll probably give it another week, probably next Friday, and we'll touch based on some power rankings, and then you know what, We'll give it another couple of weeks and then we'll touch based on some power rankings, But you gotta give these teams time to play some basketball. Like Brooklyn's heading into a week stretch of their schedule. They have five pretty inferior imponent opponents coming up. They could undo a lot of

damage to their metrics during that span. The Lakers are still in a tough stretch, but they're gonna head into an easier stretch after that. You know, Toronto has been shooting super well. We'll see what happens when they stopped making shots. Miami, uh has played you know, Chicago, Boston, Toronto twice, Portland and Golden State. Like they they're due to have some easier games. So at the end of the day, everyone kind of has like it's too small

sample size to make sweeping declarations. We just learned what we can from teams, and like I've learned through watching that Miami is too small. That's just the thing. They're They're actually too small. They're not gonna suddenly have no no issues with size once they enter a weaker phase of their schedule. You know, like you're gonna see that the Lakers don't shoot the ball well enough. Yeah, they

should shoot better than they have been. But I predicted before the season, they would be the worst shooting team in the n b A not this bad, but I predict that they would be bad. That's a personnel weakness. They're going to have to address it at some point. But hey, here we are, what ten days into the regular season, We've learned quite a bit. I'm having fun. We're gonna take this weekend off and I will be

back on Monday afternoon covering the weekend's games. I hope you guys all have a fun Halloween, and I will see you after the weekend. The volume