Hoops Tonight - Steve Nash firing won't fix Kyrie & Nets, Warriors lose third straight, 76ers back?

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in West Virginia. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by Fan Duel here at the volume. Happy Tuesday, everybody. I hope all of you guys are having a great week. Week. We are live on AMP, and don't forget for those of you guys who are listening on the podcast feed or on YouTube that the first place that you guys can get this analysis is on AMP. If you have any trouble tracking down our page, I have the link I tweeted out before every show. You can find it

on my Twitter feed. So today we're gonna have three topics. We're gonna be covering the Steve Nash firing, which is obviously the biggest story of the day. After the Brooklyn Nets lost again today because big shock, it turns out the coach is the least of their problems. The Golden State Warriors lost their third consecutive game, a tough one,

a tough come from behind. When for my mean to lead the Warriors to their third consecutive loss, We're gonna break We're gonna break that game down and talk about some of their issues with their bench cropping up again. And then the Philadelphia seventies six Ers, a team that I was very high on to start the season, started one and four but have won three consecutive games. So I wanted to kind of zoom in on some of the specific ways that they've been playing better basketball. So

let's start with Nash. Um. I did a video earlier today, and in the video, I talked about how um the Nets were thirty in rebounding in the league and twenty nine and defense, and they were actually a pretty damn good offensive team, and that even though Nash may not have been the right coach for that particular team, it wasn't necessarily the issue. He wasn't the reason they were struggling.

They were struggling because they weren't defending, and they weren't boxing out, and they weren't crashing from the wing, and they weren't securing rebounds. They beat Indiana the other night, and they outrebounded Indiana and they held them to an offensive rebound offensive rating under one oh five. So they got stops, they secured rebounds, and they want a basketball game.

And then verse Chicago tonight, they got out rebounded by seven, gave up eleven offensive rebounds, gave up twenty four points in the first seven minutes of the fourth quarter, and blew another game at home to the Chicago Bulls. Because again, their issue is not leadership. It is the players on the floor and they're willing their willingness to compete physically. It kind of reminds me a lot of the Frank Vogel situation last year with the Lakers, and uh, there's

there's some parallels there. They had a really successful season in in that season they won the title. Frank Vogel seemed like an ideal coach for that particular team. The Brooklyn Nets came literally an inch away from making the Conference Finals, probably would have beat the Hawks and made it to the NBA Finals, and probably would have beat the Phoenix Suns and won the title. That's how good that team was and how close they came to the

ultimate goal. And during that season, people weren't complaining about Steve Nash. She seemed fine managing the personalities. They were doing a lot of switching. Things were kind of working for that group. But then what happens, and this happens around the league, Like we're gonna talk about a bunch of different coaches today, We're talking about Frank, talking about Steve Nash. We're gonna talk a little bit about Doc

Rivers later. I am okay with the fact that the Brooklyn Nets fired Steve Nash and are looking for a different coach. I would be okay if the Philadelphia seventy sixers decided to move on from Doc Rivers at some point, and I supported the Lakers firing Frank Vogel. I just also was aware in all of those situations that that

wasn't necessarily the only issue. I think. I think there are specific types of players that do really well with one coach for a very long time, but they're unique personalities. Are guys like Steph Curry right, one of the most coachable stars in NBA history, or Tim Duncan with Greg Popovitch. But for a lot of stars, they have big egos, they don't really necessarily think they need a coach if

you give them truth serum and ask them. And in a lot of cases, they view those guys as as much as obstacles or equal partners as they do as a leader in a lot of those cases. And I think whenever you have a person like that in that type of position and they are constantly being hard on you and holding you accountable and doing those things, it can burn you out. And I don't think that's unique to NBA players, think that can happen to anybody, just

like us in our jobs. If you get to a point where you have the same boss for a long time, you become hyper focused on their quirks, and you become really like almost oblivious to the things that they do well because just over the years you've learned to kind of hyper focus on the things you don't like about them.

I think that's normal, and so I think it's okay every once in a while, especially in professional basketball, when you're dealing with these types of egos to bring in a different voice into the locker room, and it works. Like guess what, Like Darvin Hamm has come in with the Lakers and Lebron James and Anthony Davis have rebod into the defensive end of the floor, and they've even got some historically defenders to defend a lot better and

they're looking fine defensively. But it turns out the coach wasn't the problem because they're owing five. The problem was the Lakers traded away Kyle Kuzma, Contavious Cabbo Pope and lost Alex Crusoe in the ensuing salary crunch, and now they don't have enough talent around their two stars and

so they're losing basketball games. They dealt with a issue, which is their players weren't invested in Darvin Hamm any excuse me in Frank Vogel anymore, But it didn't clear up the issue, which was upper management and ownership in their inability to set the basketball team up for success. It's a similar kind of thing going on with Brooklyn, Like is Steve Nash the ideal coach for the Nets?

I don't even know, because you can't even tell whether or not a coach's schematic approach is smart unless the players are competing and this next team simply was not competed in the on the last or on the defensive end of the floor. There that that that issue wasn't

gonna go away when they made that shift. You know, let's say so, for instance, Ema Udoka is the name that's been thrown out, and we're gonna talk a little bit more about him in a minute, but Email Udoka is famous for being a guy that demands a lot of his players and brings a certain amount of toughness, right, that was what he did with the Boston Celtics last year.

But at the end of the day, if he comes in and he asks them to do the same things that Steve Nash asked them to do and they do it for Email Judoka after not doing it for Steve Nash, then yeah, it's a smart move. But at the end of the day, it's on the players, it's not on the coach. At the end of the day, the the the core problems have to be solved, you know. Um like if like for instance, Kyrie Irving has been it hasn't been in related it hasn't been related to player

availability this year. It hasn't been him up in leaving the team the way that he did in the past, But in this particular season, he's going with more off court drama this time, this time tweeting out, you know, controversial movies for instance, and getting into back and forth arguments with reporters after games. And it's one of those things where like, that's kind of what comes with the Kyrie experience, and that that's what brings me back to

Joe Sigh at the end of all of this. If you guys remember this summer, I did a um, I did a video. It was shortly after I got back from my Alaska trip where I was like, hey, like, I think this is still headed towards a trade. I think it'll probably be Jalen Brown, It'll probably be the Celtics. I think this has headed towards a trade. And then the very next day, Kevin Kevin, it was reported had recommitted to the team in the long run, and I

was completely flabbergasted. I couldn't believe it. And the main reason why is I just didn't understand why Joe Sigh, an owner of a basketball team, seeing what the Kadie and Kyrie experience had been like for three years, like the two of them, you know, like Kyrie choosing not to go to the bubble. Katie may or may not have been ready to play at that point. He decided not to come back to the bubble. I think he was like fourteen months post Achilles surgery at that time,

maybe fifteen months something along those lines. But they just decided not to play, which at the time, in the in a vacuum, you were like, Okay, I get it, maybe they don't want to go to the bubble. But then you go into the next season and you know, both guys miss bunch of time with injury. You come close, but it doesn't work out. The following season, Kyrie Irving is dealing with the uh, the vaccination thing. He actually in season he straight up left the team twice without

even telling Steve Nash. They're all these things that were going wrong and a whole lot of a lack of basketball success to make it all worth it. And so when we were looking at this summer, and you could have flipped Kyrie Irving to the Lakers for two first round picks, and you could have flipped Kevin Durant to the Boston Celtics for Jalen Brown, who, by the way, has looked amazing this year, and more draft compensation you

and then maybe you a flip, Ben Simmons. You had the opportunity to push that reset button and to put an eye towards the future, to um to build a basketball team with a more likable identity, more of a team that competes. You know, I always talked about the difference between loving basketball and hating losing and how they manifest. Got teams that hate to lose, they compete physically on every single possession. Teams that love basketball, you know, they can have a lot of fun, they can have good

offensive nights. But if you don't have that other piece, which is the hatred of losing, you're gonna struggle to win basketball games. And after all of that, I just thought he'd hit that eject button. And when he decided to bring everybody back and say, hey, let's go at this thing again, I was stunned. So then we come into this season and the Nets start by losing all these games and Kyrie Irving's bringing the drama, and you're sitting there and you're thinking maybe now he'll do it.

Maybe now this is the time where he'll finally hit that eject button, trade everybody and rebuild. And that's where the email Udoka thing is so interesting to me. When email Judoka with we we don't even know what happened with him in Boston, which is a whole other wrinkle here. I was joking with my producers earlier today and uh and one of them said like, hey, like, how how does this go down in the press conference? Like do you ask Emay what happened? Does he just say no comment?

Does that lead to a whole bunch of other issues, Like it's a really awkward situation. Josiah would rather do that to bring in the guy that would allegedly fix this group and their toughness and their physicality. He went that direction rather than blowing things up. He would rather try to flex seal the bottom of his boat that has a giant hole in it rather than just get

rid of the boat. The only thing in all of this that is worth salvaging is Kevin rand I wouldn't want to have anything to do with Kyrie Irving at this point unless you're desperate for talent. A team like the Lakers who literally can't afford to turn away good basketball players, or you know, with Ben Simmons, obviously his back has led him to have health issues. Over the course of the season. He hasn't looked quite what he what you would hope for from him defensively, especially in

the last couple of games. So that's, you know, not necessarily something you want to build around. Nick Claxton is fine, right, Joe Harris has had head ton of health issues. There's nobody there that you're married to. And Kevin Durant's obviously still the franchise cornerstone that you want, but that particular franchise cornerstone is clearly unhappy and you're incapable of putting around him a real contender of a team. Yeah, they have a puncher's chance, but they don't have a real

contending team. If you end up in a playoff series against Milwaukee, you're picking Milwaukee. If you end up in a playoff series against Boston, you're picking Boston in both

of those matchups. So I just was truly, truly stunned that Joside continues to head down this path in bringing in email Udoka, with all the controversy surrounding him tells me that you would rather have more headache to try to salvage this clearly unsalvageable situation, then just take the obvious out here, and if you do, you're gonna immediately come back with a ton of assets and be set up to rebuild for the future. They had an out and they decided not to take it, and that was

really really confusing to me. As we look forward, if the Nets go on a run, it won't be because they brought in a different coach. It'll be because the guys in that locker room finally bought back in. It'll be because Kyrie Irving, you know, focused on what was happening on the basketball court. It will be because Kevin Durant played like a two way superstar. It'll be because the other players around them start competing in all of

the effort, energy and focus parts of the game. So, you know, I in a vacuum, I don't have any issue with firing Steve Nash, just like I had no issue with firing Frank Vogel, just like I wouldn't have an issue if the Sixers fired Doc Rivers. But make no mistake, that's only one small step in the long journey that it takes to fix the problem that those two teams in particular have. Al Right, So I wanted to talk about the Warriors for a little bit. They've

lost the tough one there um against Miami. That's their third consecutive lost, third in the last four days. All the Warriors starters were positive in this game, which lends to the whole thing that I got into and yesterday's show, for those of you guys who listened to that, you know, I talked a lot about James Wiseman in particular, and and we're going to talk about how his fit is still an issue, and I still believe that it is, but I think he's kind of becoming a scapegoat in

a lot of ways for Golden State. And if you remember in yesterday's show, I talked about how I'm more certain about the bench lineup as a whole, This line up that they've been rolling out the last couple of games where Jordan pool Tie, Jerome Moses Moody, Jamichael Green, and James Wiseman. It's the totality of that lineup, in my opinion, that's causing them problems. The lack of good rotation level NBA players playoff level rotation NBA players in

their bench lineup, that is giving them problems. And that is exactly what happened again tonight, And there was a really interesting kind of shift from Steve Kerr in the second half that I thought demonstrated this. So, for instance, in yesterday's show, I said specifically that Stephen Draymond had only played eleven possessions with James Wiseman all season, so even though he's been a disaster and he's been a

huge net negative. I I can't remember exactly what the numbers were from yesterday, but it was like a hundred something minutes and he was almost minus fifties. So the Warriors are getting destroyed with Wiseman on the floor, but he had almost never played with Stephan Draymond. He had only amounted to eleven possession so far this season with

those two. And so I was I I had been talking, actually I was texting with a couple of different Warriors fans today, including someone who covers the team, talking about like, why don't they stagger it better? Why don't they try to have more overlap between the starting lineup and the bench lineup instead of doing it like line shifts, sending out this limited team that's obviously going to struggle, and

and and Kurt tried that in the second half. So in the first half tonight he ran James Wiseman with with Jordan pool t I drew him Moses Moody to Michael Green. They got destroyed. But in the second half they actually subbed Wiseman in early with about seven and a half minutes left in the third quarter, Ryan him with Stephan Draymond, and he had a good shift. There's

a four minute shift where he was plus two. He had a couple of buckets, including a really nice alley oop on his first play, and then Wiseman checked out with three and a half minutes left in the third quarter. In Moody or excuse me, uh, Kevin Looney ran with the bench group. So it is that same group Jordan pool Tie, Jerome, Moses Moody and uh and Jamichael Green with Kavan Looney instead of James Wiseman, and they still struggled.

They went minus five and when Stephan dre checked back in the game, it was only a three point lead instead of an eight point lead, which kind of lends creedence to what I was talking about yesterday, which is, look, is Wiseman a bad fit. Yes, we talked about that yesterday.

He's more of like a traditional rim running big who can have some success in drop coverage, but he struggles with physicality, and specifically with the Warriors, you need bigs that can screen really, really well and that are really good at making reads because his vertical spacing is not as valuable in a Warrior system that the spacing is inverted.

They don't need that spacing around the rim. It's already there in the form of the fact that there's nobody down there because they're running five outsets and all of your actions of Jordan Pool, Steph Curry, and Clay Thompson flying around on the perimeter. Wiseman's vertical spacing just isn't as valuable for this team. The fit issues with Wiseman

are real. He's a young big in the n b A, and young bigs are just gonna take a while to learn how to be really good, and right now he's not going to be a super functional piece with this team. That is true, But the larger issue with the Warriors right now is the rest of that lineup. That's Jordan's pool. A bad defender in this league. Ty Jerome a below

average defender in this league. Moses Moody, he might one day be a good defender in this league, but right now they're putting him through the fire having him guard the other team's quickest perimeter player every night, and he's struggling. And then Ja Michael Green has been good. He's knocking down shots, he's battling on the glass, he's playing with physicality. There's a lot of good that he does. But he's

not a quick player. He's not containing ball handlers. And so when you put four week perimeter defenders and in one non defensive player of the year type of big with if this is not Anthony Davis, you're putting out there James Wiseman might one day be a great defensive big, he's not there yet. Kevon Looney is a solid defensive big and he does well with the great Warriors lineups with great perimeter defenders, but he's not Anthony Davis. He's not going to clean up every single mess that the

perimeter players make. And so I think in this case, like yes, is the do the Warriors have a Wiseman issue, yeah, and that needs to be dealt with. But the larger issue is they don't have They need like one or two more really solid NBA veteran role players that can come in off the bench and make those bench lineups more successful, because again, you gotta think about the way it's gonna work in the playoffs. Right now, Draymond Green is on a minute restriction. Right now, Clay Thompson's on

a minute restriction. So there's gonna be more overlap between the bench lineups and the starting lineup. You won't have as many minutes from guys like Ty Jerome to Michael Green, Moses Movie, so on and so forth, but you still need some minutes from players in those particul sular roles, and right now, those guys aren't good enough. And so having again, I told you guys this last year, Gary Payton the second, when he was on the floor in the playoffs, the Warriors were positive. When he was off

the floor in the playoffs, the Warriors were negative. They've always needed those really good bench defensive players to come in, just like Andre Guadala did for all of those years. And I think we've as we've zoomed out from this championship run, it's become more apparent that guys like Otto Porter Jr. And Gary Payton the second we're really really important, and part of the issue here is just young players and then generally taking a while to learn how to

do this stuff. Every single one of you guys who's listening, who's a little bit older. If you play in men's leagues, or if you play pickup games, you've all seen the games, or you're playing against the seventeen nineteen year old kids who are super talented, but they don't really know how to win basketball games, and you beat them despite not having as much talent, just because you've been playing for a lot longer and you just kind of are more

familiar with how to do the little things that win games. Obviously, at the NBA level it's a much more dramatic version of that because those guys have also been playing basketball for a very long time, but it's a similar concept, and even anything up up to those that age range of basketball players, they just don't quite have the understanding

of how important the little things are. Whereas the veterans, the guys that are twenty to thirty five, they understand that their placed in the league, particularly role players, they understand that they're playing the league depends on their willingness to do those things. They've been on rosters where they didn't get minutes because they weren't good at those things. They've been on rosters where they got a huge role because they were great at those particular things, and so

that's become their identity. The guys like Gary Payton the second, he's only in the league because he's one of the best defensive guards. He was out of the league for a while. He clawed his way back into the league because he leaned heavily into those specific things. That's the the the gap in understanding between young players and older players, which is why it's why guys like Lebron have always wanted older veteran players on his roster, even sometimes to

his own detriment. There's a there's a reason why that type of player brings a lot of value. So what's the way you look forward from here? Maybe Moses Moody figures it out in time, Maybe James Wiseman figures it

out in time, but it's somewhat unlikely. It's somewhat unlikely that at their age in a huge playoff series against the Denver Nuggets or the l A Clippers, or whoever it might be that they run into in the Western Conference, it's far more likely that those guys aren't ready and and and that's just gonna be a bet that Joe Lacob is gonna have to make. He's gonna have to bet either on those guys making those improvements or looking at the reality the situation, which is your starting lineup

is still crushing everybody, like literally crushing everybody. Before tonight's game, they were like a hundred and twenty seven offensive rating in a one defensive rating. Tonight that got even better or was more or less the same level of dominance. But you're falling off a cliff when you go to your bench. So you can either bank on that improving over the course of the season, or you can invest in this particular group. And it's gonna be a tough decision.

And I'm really curious to see which direction they start to go. All right, before we get out of here and talk about the sixers for a minute. So they started one in four, but like I said, they had some fixable problems. If you remember, they were second in

half court second and half court offense. In that first five game stretch, I went over some metrics like Tyrese Maxie was having the highest scoring season of his career on the high and also on like fifty eight percentury shooting or whatever it was, and Tobias Harris was having his first year with the Sixers shooting over from three. James Harden has had a lot of really good games, Joel Embiad has still been every bit as productive as

usually is. Everyone's great offensively, and the team is scoring really, really well, but they were getting destroyed on the defensive

end of the floor, particularly in transition. They were the worst transition defense in the league by a mile, and specifically, one of the things that was causing those problems was Joel em beat and what when he misses shots around the rim trying to draw a foul, He'll flop and flail and complain to the refs and not run back on defense, which, for the record, is a problem that the vast majority of scoring bigs in the league have, including Anthony Davis for the Lakers, who probably would be

your early season defensive Player of the Year candidate if he didn't have so many bad transition defense UH games mixed in at that point, and he might still be, but that's his big weakness. A lot of biggs, particularly ones that take a lot of shots around the rim, difficult shots. They they struggle running up and down the floor, and it's been killing the Sixers and there's a lot

of metrics that kind of show that. So since the one in four start, they beat Toronto, they beat Chicago, beat Washington, and beat missed two of those games in that three game span. According to Cleaning the Glass, the UH Sixers were twelve in transition defense instead as a result in that game. In that span, they've only given up a hundred and five point eight points per one hunter possessions, which ranks third in defense among every team

over their last three games. Overall on this season, the Sixers are twenty nine point one points per one h possessions better in transition defense with them beat off the floor. According to Cleaning the Glass, they're just quicker and they do better in that open floor game. It's not really all that complicated. If you have an amazing offense, which the Sixers do, and you also defend, you're gonna win basketball games. Early in the season, they weren't defending in

large part in transition. In the last three games, they've been defending especially well in transition compared to the way they usually do, and they're winning basketball games. They're getting great offensive production, right Like Tyrie Smax he was great against Toronto UM and beat himself, was great against Chicago. James Harden had a seventeen assist game against Washington the other night. But that's not the issue. The issue was never the offensive end of the floor. They just needed

to clean up the details. And if you guys remember, I did a whole thing on Doc Rivers, and again, like, if the Sixers decide to let's say that this three game stretches an anomaly and then they go back down and have a bunch of issues, I would understand moving on from Doc Rivers. He's not personally my favorite coach anyway, as it pertains to just how stubborn he is and how slow he is to adjust in a playoff environment.

But if they if the Sixers decided to move on from Doc, I would understand that and support that because this particular group up until this three game stretch wasn't really tuned into what he's been asking them to do on the defensive end of the floor. So at the end of the day, though, like we talked about, the same thing with Brooklyn, same thing with the Lakers. The reason why the Lakers are defending better under Darvin Ham is the players are defending better. They're just playing harder.

Some of its scheme, most of it is effort. The Nets aren't going to improve defensively until those guys start actually doing the work. In the same thing goes for the Sixers. They've done the work for three games and they've won three games as a result. At the end of the day, the players do have to do the work. You're just paying attention to whether or not those players are bought into their head coach. But a lot of basketball left. But the Sixers look winning cures everything they were.

They lost a game to San Antonio the other night or last weekend, I think, and it looked like the guy was falling. But then you go out and you win a couple of basketball games, everything looks fine. The Lakers are gonna play the Pelicans at home tomorrow night. If they beat the Pelicans, and I don't feel great about it right now, but if they beat the Pelicans, you can take a deep breath and go, Okay, we've figured some stuff out where the one of the best

defenses in the league. Now we're winning games. Brooklyn. If you just play defense in the fourth quarter and you get a better shooting performance out of Kyrie Irving, you beat the Chicago Bulls tonight, you're on a two game winning streak. Things start to look better. There's all. It's never too late to change the way you're playing. If you especially these super talented teams, if you start playing well,

you'll start winning games. But at the end of the day, the players are the ones that have to do the work, all right. That is all I have for tonight. The plan for tomorrow is we'll be doing a show like this on AMP right after the Celtics Cavaliers rematch, which I'm very excited for, in the early slate, and then tomorrow night Pelicans Lakers will be going live on YouTube right after the final buzzer of that game. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys support and I will see

you tomorrow. The volume