Hoops Tonight - Suns-Lakers Reaction: LeBron James & LA survive Kevin Durant & Phoenix, Giannis & Lillard lead Milwaukee BLOW OUT vs. New York

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restrictions apply. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. Terms at sportsbook dot DraftKings dot com slash Basketball terms. All right, welcome to hoops Tonight here at the volume. Happy Tuesday, everybody. I hope all of you guys had a great night. In case you missed it earlier, don't forget that we did a breakdown of last night's in season tournament games as well as nix Bucks. Those are two separate videos earlier on the feed tonight.

We're just hitting Suns Lakers. You guys know the joke before we get started. Subscribe to our brand new YouTube channel. I mean a lot to me if you guys would scroll down and hit that subscribe button. Don't forget about our podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason lt so you guys don't miss any show announcements as well as the

film threads that I do every morning. In the last but not least, keep dropping YouTube comments mail bag questions in the YouTube comments so we can hit them later on throughout the week. All right, let's talk some basketball. So highly entertaining game, Lakers beat the Suns one of six to one o three. They are going to Vegas

to play the Pelicans on Thursday. Now Tons of interesting basketball to get into from this game, but unfortunately we have to start with officiating, because there was an atrocious call at the end of this game that robbed the Sons of an opportunity to potentially send the game to overtime. It was one o five one oh three off of I believe a Devin Booker left handed layup on the left side of the rim. Lebron inbounds to Austin Reeves. Austin flops to try to draw a fout, doesn't get

the foul call, loses control of the basketball. In the process, Lebron calls a timeout and it gets granted. It absolutely should not have. It was a terrible call. It stole, in my opinion, an opportunity for the Suns to potentially

send the game to overtime. That said, judging by the half court dynamic, in the simple fact that even if they had scored a layup in that chaos and the Lakers had not been granted a timeout, they still would have had to get a stop on the other end, and then they would have had to beat the Lakers

in overtime. Now, the half court dynamic we saw down the stretch of that game was the Lakers blitzing Kevin Durant and Devin Booker and rotating out of it, and they were having a hell of a time getting any good shots, which has been a consistent problem for them throughout the season, which we're going to talk about. On the other end of the floor, just like in the first two games, Lebron James was relentlessly attacking, use of

Nurkic in pick and roll and getting great shots. In the fourth quarter alone, Anthony Davis missed five layups at the basket. So, like I tend to believe, you play that game from that point with the correct call ten times, Lakers are probably winning it seven or eight times. That said, there's no question that the officials made a huge mistake. It was a It ruined what was a great basketball game. And I understand why Sons fans are upset because you

should have had your shot. You should have had your chance to potentially reverse the fortunes of what was taking place on the court down the stretch and to get that win. It was super unfortunate. Don't know what else to say. That said, this is a thing that happens in basketball games, and you know the Lakers were on the other side of this. Once a year ago, you guys might remember, there's a big game Lakers in Boston against the Celtics, tie game, final possession. Lebron gets downhill.

He is at the rim with his left hand at the rim like a one shot, and Tatum hacks him on the left arm right in front of the official. No call, game goes over time, the Lakers lose. Pat Beverley literally grabbed the camera and held it in front of the official, held in front of the official and is like, what's the deal, dude, Like it was that that clear but here, But here's the thing. Did the Lakers go to win out of it? No? Did they

get anything out of it? No, Because at the end of the day, as a basketball team, I can only think of this from my perspective. I coach high school basketball right now. I played back when I was younger, inside the locker room. The attitude is pretty simple. You got to focus on what you can control. I'm a big believer that focusing on officiating is a loser mentality. You guys, all of you guys who listen to the show, know that I never ever complain about officiating for any

team in a big picture, conspiracy sense. The only time I ever talk about officiating is when it pertains to league wide trends and specific types of fouls that I'd like to see removed from the league. And the main reason why I feel that way is simply because as a basketball team, you if you focus on the officials, it's just a fruitless endeavor. You have to focus on what you can control. You have to try to over forty eight minutes, build in enough margin for air that

you can put up with a bad call. For instance, from the Lakers perspective, I think a lot of Lakers fans feel that Anthony Davis was getting fouled on some of those layups. Now I didn't feel that way. I thought it was kind of playoff style officiating where you just kind of let everything go. And I prefer the game of basketball like that. But that's how who a

lot of Laker fans felt right. And again, the Lakers played well enough that they were able to weather a bunch of Anthony Davis missed layups that may or may not have been fouls because they were the better half court team down the stretch of that game, and they By the way, this is not a trend that this is not any sort of depart like a It's not anything different than the trends we've seen from both teams this season. The Lakers have been an excellent clutch time team.

The Suns have been a horrific fourth quarter team. It's been a consistent issue all year long. So again, it's really unfortunate because that call is going to dominate the TV shows and it's going to dominate a lot of the analysis, and that's unfortunate because there was a lot of really interesting basketball that took place in this game. But that's all I'm gonna say about it. Soun's got They should have had a chance to potentially send that

game to overtime where they could have won. That said, I believe the Lakers would have won regardless of what happened. I thought they outplayed the Suns for the most part. I thought they deserved to win the game. All right,

let's get into some of the basketball stuff. So I want to hit on Lebron James again because this is ridiculous because once again, huge game, single elimination, big time playoff vibes, three other legit superstars in their prime on the floor, and I thought Lebron was the best player. And once again it came down to that chess match in the half court, and Lebron just started attacking use of Nurkicchen pick and roll, getting downhill and finishing at

the rim. Once again, he's just trusting his pull up jump shot in these big moments. He took a big transition three there in the middle of the fourth quarter. He took a mid range pull up jump shot and pick and roll down the stretch and crunch time, And that to me is just such a huge indicator of a trend that was not the case last year, which

is crunch time offense for the Lakers. When Lebron can actually trust his jump shot and just in general is more confident and incapable creating shots, it just makes the Lakers a more dynamic team. That was a specific thing they struggled with a lot last year. I think that's encouraging. But the big thing that stood out to me from Lebron in this game was the job he did defensively at five steals, which is blowing plays up as a lowman.

And again, like we talked about this position archetype all the time, right, that Aaron Gordon archetype with like guys like DeAndre Hunter and ruy Hot Tamura and like and Lori Markenens and a big version of that. Right, there's a bunch of these guys around the league, these big forwards, and we kind of don't remember the stars when we talk about that, and like, like Lebron's the star version

of that. And so as a role player and meaning like within his role of the defense as the low man, he can be really impactful there, and he was excellent on the defensive end in this game. I think in general, he really wants to win this tournament. I think he'd like to be the guy who wins the first NBA Cup.

I think it's good for the NBA Cup because if this NBA Cup is ever going to become what the league wants it to be, what Adam Silver wants it to be, it needs to be something the players really want to win, and Lebron is one of the best competitors of this era. And I think it's great to see guys like him, guys like Giannis who brought it today,

guys like Dame who brought it Tyres Halliburton. You want the establishment superstars of the league to want to win this award, and I think that was a really strong indicator. But just again, I've said to everybody on this show so many times this year that I was not really overly concerned about the Lakers regular season issues because they were down most of their forwards. Hey, look at how much more athletic they look today with all their forwards.

They had twenty something offensive rebounds, right, and they were significantly better defensively. And what did I say? I said. The encouraging thing to me is despite all of that, Lebron looks better than he did at any point last season. I genuinely believe that, And to me, that's a huge indicator of a potential upside for this team in the

big picture. Shout out to Lebron. It's just it's ridiculous now that in December of twenty twenty three, we are still watching him put forward these types of performances with these kinds of stakes Austin Reeves. So I did a male bad question about this the other day and a lot of you know, Austin had some struggles this year, and but by the way he's had some struggles this year, it's really it's really that simple. He's earned some of

the criticism that's been directed to him this year. My stance the entire time has been, for fifty plus games

in all high leverage situations, he was awesome. So let's not overreact to his small sample size of pointless regular season games where he plays poorly at least relative, because the reality is he hasn't been that bad, but poorly relative to what he used to be, And in a situation where the Lakers were down most of their wing athleticism, which made everybody's job a lot harder, and so all I kept saying was just stick with them. And here

we are, once again, big game playoff vibes. Another twenty point game from Austin Reeves hits the dagger pull up three on the right wing. His offensive burst in the third quarter flat out saved them from that Sun's run that damn near took the game over there to start the third quarter. Austin's incredible and like and I just it bums me out, honestly that fans have such a short memory of all the things he's done to contribute to winning to this team in big game situations, and

how that just gets glossed over. It's just we get a little too much on the what have you done for me lately side of things. One last note on the Austin Reeves things thing before we moved on. I've had a lot of people ask Jason, why don't you like D'Angelo Russell? Why are you so insistent on the Lakers trading D'Angelo Russell. It has nothing to do with D'Angelo Russell as a person. I don't dislike him. Even

as a player, I don't dislike him. I would even argue if you had to give the keys to the offense to one player to kind of run the show. In that specific job, Dlo's better than Austin, But in so many other areas of the game, Austin is better. In Austin can do a lot of what DLO does, and so because of that and the long term roster control under the new deal, that he's on, it just makes more sense. And then this is the big problem. Every Lakers fan was frustrated with Darvinham going back to

Torrian Prince down the stretch of this game. And I would tell you, if Austin's your one and Lebron's your four and you're five, there aren't really good answers for that two and three. Like if I had to choose right now, I'd probably go Max Christi and Ruy Hachimura. But like, Ruy's not a great screen navigator, Kd's probably gonna run him off screens, and you're gonna end up in some situations where you're gonna have to switch, which could cause cross matches on the other side that could

cause problems. Not sure that's a great fit. Max is super young, Cam Reddish and Jared Vanderbilt have offensive limitations. Torrian Prince is not a great athlete. All the answers there are limited. And so when you have a situation where Austin, Lebron, and Ad make perfect sense, but the two in the three, it's like, I don't know who do you play? And then we have to leave d Lo on the bench because we can't play him alongside

Austin we Crater defensively and on the glass. Then of Ruy Hatchamura as just another big forward that's kind of more or less the same position as Lebron. He's on the bench. That's the problem. Your five best players are Austin, Dilo, Ruy, Lebron ad to start games and to close games. You can only play three of them. So it has nothing to do with me disliking D'Angelo Russell. It has nothing to do with any sort of like narrative based attack

of D'Angelo Russell. It is a simple matter of roster balance. I believe Austin's better. I know some of you guys disagree. I feel very strongly that Austin's a better player, and I think the playoffs last year clearly demonstrated that, as he was reliably in the rotation. In D'Angelo Russell was very matchup dependent and got played off the floor against Denver. Right,

But I believe Austin's better. So you kind of have to pick one of them, and then you've got non perfect answers for the two and the three, and so in my opinion, it's imperative for the Lakers to convert those two contracts. Ruey and Di Lo. If the right trade materializes for a starter caliber two or three that answers the questions that Max Christi, Cam Reddish, Jared Vanderbilt,

Torrian Prince and Ruy Hachamura can't perfectly answer. It's really that simple to me if you could just even if you could keep Ruey and just turn D'Angelo Russell into a higher level three and d wing, even if you have to attach a pick to him. Now it makes more sense because that person becomes one of your top five players. Right you're trading Dangel Russell one of your

top five players for a different top five player. But now of those top five players, at least four of them are obvious answers to your starting and closing lineups, and it just answers those questions for you. Then the question becomes do you go after something like is Torrium Prince better at the two? Is it Max Christy at the two? Well? What about cam Reddish? You could figure that part out. One question mark is a little easier to deal with than two gaping question marks that you

just don't know what to do with those positions. And like, this game was very revealing to me about the Lakers on two levels. One, within the context of the regular season, it is so important for them to have their high motor athletes. They look so much better with Cam Reddish,

with Jared Vanderbilt, with ruy Hotchramura available. Those guys were not available on that last road trip when they got ran off the floor by the Thunder and they got ran off the floor by the Sixers, those dudes weren't playing. It was a less athletic version of this team. So within the context of the regular season, those guys are super important. But the second piece that became very clear to me tonight is that the Lakers need clear answers to the two and the three, and they don't have that.

There is a roster in here. D'Angelo Russell and Ruyacha Mura cannot play at the end of games, and you're catering to D'Angelo Russell right now by allowing him to start in bringing Austin off the bench. But in the big picture, it doesn't make sense to have that much of your salary cap resources delegated to two players that can't share the floor together. And so that I want to be clear because a lot of people I understand, and this is my fault. I have not done a

good enough job of making this point clear. I do not dislike D'Angelo Russell. I just simply think Austin's better, and that for the sake of this team, if you want this team to reach their ceiling, you need to make sure that as many as much of your top

end talent as possible is playable together. And you hamper yourself when you maintain a roster and balance like this, where now it's like, man, D'Angelo Russell are a damn near twenty million dollar player is sitting on the bench and we're looking for a guy to play the two or the three, and Delo's just not even being considered. Like it's like, no, he's just no, It's just not gonna be de Lo because you need athleticism and defense from those positions because those are the two guys guarding

Kevin Durant and Devin Booker, see what I mean. It's again like it's unfortunate with the way competitive sports work in the sense that like Delo does sort of become a target and it's not fair because Delo's having a great season. I looked it up this morning. Delo has been the second best pick and roll ball handler in the league this year minimum three hundred possessions. Like I said, I genuinely believe like if you had to hand the keys of an offense to some to somebody, Delo is

a better player there for that specific job. But down the stretch of games, it becomes Lebron's team and it's more important to have a great second side creator, who's great off the ball, who's better defensive player. You go with Austin like that. That's that's why Darvinham keeps closing with Austin in those situations. Hopefully that clarifies that a little bit. Last note on the Lakers. Anthony Davis absolutely

magnificent in this game defensively and on the glass. He was murdering the suns on the offensive glass in particular, but another completely inft second half. Offensively, he talked about the missed five layups in the fourth quarter. He was ten for twenty six from the field. I have to look up the numbers when they update, but I bet you he missed ten shots in the restricted area in

this game. And like that to me is the concern is, like ADS, defensive consistency doesn't get nearly enough attention, but his offensive inconsistency, while it gets too much attention, is a real issue in the sense that, like, this game's not even close. The Lakers win by ten to fifteen points, if Anthony Davis can just maintain his baseline level of offensive impactfulness, right, and it's just concerning. That said, I want to do shout out Anthony Davis for the two

clutch free throws at the end of the game. I thought that was huge, especially since he struggled with clutch free throws over the last couple of years as well. But yeah, like encouraging game, really encouraging game for the Lakers on a bunch of levels, outside of that second half run from the Suns and then that weird thing where darvinham took Lebron and Ad out when Kevin Duran and Devin Booker were both on the floor and they promptly went on a five to zero run. Other than that,

I thought they played a consistently pretty great game. That defense is a real problem for a lot of teams, but I think this game once again shined the light on some of the roster and balances this team has to address before the deadline. On the Suns I'm not going to spend too much time on the Suns because on Thursday, Brendan Klean, who is a friend of mine that I met at the Grateful Dead concert in Phoenix last year. He is he is a member of the Lockdown Suns podcast. He is going to come on the

show on Thursday. We are going to do like a forty five minute deep dive on all things Suns. But I do want to hit a couple of specific things. So when Kevin Durant hit that three with five to forty five left, they scored just four points over the final five minutes leading into that final thirty second where

Kadie and Devin Booker, you got a couple buckets. The Suns have been by far the worst fourth quarter t in the league this season, and specifically they've been twenty ninth in offense, and one of the consistent themes we've seen is they are able to get the ball out of Devin Booker and Kevin Durant's hands and rotate out of it without giving up anything too complicated, and in general, I think both Kevin Durant Devin Booker have shown some signs of fatigue at the end of games. Just with

the offensive load they've had to carry. Now the question becomes, Bradley Beal when he comes back into the situation, does that improve your aggregate ball handling and shooting enough for you guys to kind of make up for that issue? And the answer is probably it's gonna help quite a bit. But here's the issue. Once again, you give up twenty one offensive rebounds. And my major concern is not whether or not Phoenix can score the basketball, because I think

they're gonna figure some of this stuff out. It's this when you play a great team that has quality point of attack defenders to make your guys work. So let me just paint a picture for you. Let's pretend that the Lakers don't make a trade just for the sake of argument, and you have to face them in a playoff series. You're gonna get a steady diet of Jared Vanderbilt, Cam Reddish, Max Christy Torrean Prince All on the ball.

At any given moment, Devin Booker and Kevin Durant are going to be facing a big athlete on the ball. Let's say you faced Denver, Aaron Gordon's gonna be on KD. Probably Peyton Watson off the bench, and then it's gonna be contagious call of Pope Pope on Devin Booker with Christian Brown off the bench. So consistent, excellent perimeter defenders

on those two guys all game long. We've seen in a playoff series, specifically in that series, but also we saw a little bit in the Clipper series Devin Booker and Kevin Durant their efficiency can go down a little bit. Devin Booker was red hot for stretches, but he cooled off in a big way in Game five, in Game

six of the Denver series. Right, So, in the event that they encounter a great team and in the West, I'm really only looking for as far as threats to the Suns, I'm really only looking at the Lakers and Nuggets. And when you face those teams and they can consistently make Devin Booker and Kevin Rant work and lessen their impactfulness, can Phoenix then also compete in the physicality areas of the game. That's the question. Can they keep the Lakers off the glass? Can they keep Denver off the glass?

Can they match the defensive intensity of a Lakers team? Can they match the post up efficiency of a Denver team when they're not as impactful offensively as they're capable of against a top tier set of perimeter defenders. That's my major concern because that's the thing is like right now, it's like, if you can get the Suns offense out of whack, they're gonna lose, which has been an issue consistently for them in the fourth quarters throughout the season.

Right Whereas you know with the Lakers, it's like they're smoking every layup and any Davis is no show in the second half. They're having rotation issues in terms of who's gonna play at the two. But they just locked in like crazy and grabbed all the offensive rebounds and dominated the game defensively, and they were able to win in a rock fight, right, And that's the thing with Denver.

You can lessen their efficiency, you can do whatever you want, but at the end of the day, it's like Aaron Gordon, Michael Porter Junior, and Nicole Jokich are just gonna grab a bunch offensive rebounds and finish everything at the rim. When things degrade to rock fights, can the Suns win? That's the question, And I'm really I'm really curious to see if we can see that at some point in the future. I thought this was yet another incredible nd

season tournament game. Obviously the least competitive of the three that we've watched, but it's been everything we could hope for from the same point of like the combination of some playoff level intensity as well as the single elimination format, which is really exciting. That was what was kind of

hanging over this game. I didn't realize it until today, but I guess the teams that lose in these elimination rounds, particularly the quarterfinal rounds, have to play the other loser, if from their conference, in a regular season game essentially, right, And so like the loser of this game had to travel to Boston to play the Celtics, So is it's like a significant penalty, right, Like a Boston's a really tough road game to win, right and so like in a lot of ways, it's kind of like a double loss,

at least from the standpoint of your probability of going into Boston and winning against one of the best teams in the league. Right. And so it carried that intensity from the beginning. I thought Giannis in particular set the tone early with his level of effort, got a couple of early offensive rebounds. He was just cooking in transition. Julius Randall, I thought did a decent job on him

in the half court. The Knicks in general did a good job walling up in the half court, but in those transition sets, and especially off of the defense, which we're going to talk a lot about here in a minute, because I thought Brook Lopez in particular was the kind of key factor in some of the defensive the offensive struggles that the Knicks were having. But Giannis was just

applying that incessant pressure getting downhill in transition. And the Dame had this amazing stretch at the end of the second quarter, literally with two and a half minutes lif left before halftime, he scored thirteen points. He started picking on Julius Randall and pick and roll bring him up into ball screens. First one, Bobby Port has said it. Randall was sitting too far back. Hits a pull up three while Quinton Grimes is kind of like caught on

his left side trying not to foul. Right very next possession, Julius Randall shows hi. Dame splits it, he gets tripped, gets the foul line, makes two free throws. Then he hits a step back three on Jylen Brunston, just that classic Dame left hand kind of in and out dribble step back. That was point number eight. Then he gets downhill on Julius Randall and pick and roll again and gets all the way to the rim and draws a foul.

That's ten. And then he hits another step back three on Julius Randall in pick and roll once again coming off that ball screening, drawing Julius out to the three point line, and this time he hit him with the right handed in and out dribble step back. Those, to me are like the everybody's got, like their kind of thing that they've added to the game of basketball. Obviously, James Harden as a specific step back footwork, but Dame, in my opinion, has the best quick in and out

step back jump shot in the game. He had one of each of them going both ways to get to thirteen points in less than three minutes, sending the Bucks into halftime up by three, and they took over pretty quickly there. In the early third quarter, there was a like kind of a fake dho where Giannis had Dame running off of him and Dame was red hot out of halftime, and so the Gianics just quick turned and faked the dho got all the way to the rim for a layup. Chris Middleton got going in that stretch.

Chris Middleton like, again, we're not seeing the real top bend scoring pop, but he does look more athletic then I saw him look earlier in the season, and I think that's encouraging and I think we'll see some of the scoring pop come in the long run. But I thought like the story of the game because it kind of had a shootout vibe, right, like Julius Randall play We're gonna talk about him in a minute, but played one of the best games I've ever seen him play,

especially in terms of his offensive execution. Obviously, he still has some limitations and Dame was picking on him a lot, as I just mentioned, but it had a shootout vibe, and you know, the announcers on T and T were saying, like, someone's got to take control of this game defensively, and and it ended up being namely Brook Lopez in the second half, particularly in drop coverage at the rim, shutting off the hard driving lanes for Jalen Brunson and Emmanuel

quickly and forcing them into a lot of tough mid range pull up jump shots for Jalen Brunson and those little floaters for Emmanuel quickly, and he was missing and both of them ended up having nightmare games. I thought that was kind of like the swing matchups of the game if I looked at it and that like it's just from the knicks perspective, like you're thinking, how do we get our butts kicked? With how well Randall played, and it was three key matchups. I thought Dame outplayed

Jalen Brunson was just significantly more efficient and impactful. I thought Campaign in those bench lineups, he came right in in that second quarter sort of applying downhill rim pressure and he was hitting floaters, he was driving and kicking the shooters. I thought Campaign just outplayed Emmanual Quickly, you

really struggled. And then lastly Brook Lopez in his overall impact, you know, making threes, driving closeouts, defending in drop cover, I just thought he was much better than Mitchell Robinson. And those three massive swings ended up basically being the difference in this game from an offensive perspective, and I wanted to shout out Brook Lopez because I thought specifically his like because he kind of has this unique ability

to shut the rim off. But all he has to do is kind of take one step forward and go like this, and he can do a lot to bother those mid range shots, which I think is what makes him such a uniquely gifted drop coverage big in the NBA. Super super impressive win from the Milwaukee Bucks. One last note on the Bucks that I wanted to hit. Malik Beasley's having an incredible season, not counting tonight. I just wanted to give you guys some perspective as someone covered

him closely with the Lakers last year. He shot twenty eight percent in spot up situations last year. So one of the things the Lakers did which I disagreed with, is they ran him off a ton of off ball action and specifically was like hunting shots for him off the move, and he didn't shoot particularly well on those shots, and I thought it disrupted his rhythm in his spot up situations and he was nightmarishly bad situations. Well, the Bucks are running him for off screen shots about one

third as frequent as the Lakers are. The vast majority of Malik Beasley's shots are in closeout situations, and so it's allowing him to kind of really settle into rhythm in those situations, and he's knocking him down at a significantly higher rate. Just to give you an idea, again, twenty eight percent for the Lakers last year. Malik Beasley in spot up situation so far for the Bucks this year forty seven percent. And I think it's invigorated him.

You see him, he's doing this like shimmy thing every time as you make it, every time he makes a three. He's a bad defensive player in my opinion, but he's competing on the defensive end, which goes a long way. Your Buck fans know that I am a big believer that that spot in particular is one that the Bucks are gonna have to upgrade at some point before the season. That said, with as well Beasley has been shooting during the regular season, it's been more than adequate for them

to be as dominant as they have been. On the next front, again, don't want to overthink it. I stopped watching this game with about three minutes left to get in here because obviously I'm getting back out there for Lakers' suns. But when I stopped watching and the Bucks were up twenty something. With three minutes left, the Bucks were over sixty percent from the field and over sixty percent from three. They were like twenty two for thirty six from three

or something like that. Now, obviously, you guys know, I believe process leads into results. In general, I thought at the point of attack they really struggled. There was really no stretch of the game where they contained the ball well except for the brief stretches there in the first half where I thought Julius Randall did a decent job on Giannis, but just in general, like sometimes you got to tip the cat, like Damian Lillar got going with his pull up jump shots. Really tough to beat him

when he's doing that. Yannis hit a three at one point in the second half. They just shot really, really well. And sometimes you're gonna go into an environment like that and it's just gonna be like a buzz saw. And if there was a point of encouragement there, it's how good Julius Randall looked. He's a guy that rushes things a lot, doesn't see the floor well, usually tends to overpenetrate, and this was as under control and methodical as I've seen him look offensively at any point in the NBA.

I thought that was encouraging. You know, Jalen Brunson's like the one guy I don't worry about on this team. So like it's one of those things. You get a bad Julian Jalen bruntonnight, you get a bad Emanual Quickly night,

and that ends up swinging things offensively. It turns into this like cascading effect where now the Bucks are getting out in transition and you can't set your defense and you know now there now they're just playing more energetically, so they're getting to the offensive glass and it just it just kind of cascades from there. And so I think, what me watching this game, this was more good Bucks than bad Nicks in my opinion. So sometimes you just

got to tip the cap. But highly entertaining. First game of the n Season tournament tonight. Remaining schedule for this week. Tomorrow, we're off completely. I'm gonna be going on a Buddies podcast who covers the Thunder. So I'm doing a Thunder podcast tomorrow, but it's not with the volume. Thursday Sunsday, gonna just be working with Brennan from Lockdown Suns all sun stuff. Then on Friday, we're bringing the Nerds guys.

On a Thursday night, we're covering the semi finals, so that's what Pacers, Bucks and Lakers Pelicans covering those games on Thursday night. Then on Friday we have the Nerd Sash guys coming out. We're gonna bunce around the league. That's the schedule for the rest of this week. Oh yeah, and then Saturday night for the championship. So that's all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys. I will see you on Thursday. For a lot of Sun stocks. The volume