Hoops Tonight - The secret to Team USA winning Olympic gold + Caitlin Clark vs. Angel Reese

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Slash baseball. All right, welcome to hoops tonight here at the Volume. Happy Tuesday, everybody. Oh all, if you guys are having a great week so far, I got a jam packshow for you today. We're going to talk some USA basketball off the top. I have three different segments that I want to get into surrounding Team USA, how they stack up compared to some of the other great Team usas in history, like nineteen ninety two, two thousand

and eight, twenty twelve. I want to talk about their lineup construction, some of the things that I expect them to look like, both in building groups of five for their starters and for their bench groups, different looks they'll use for different matchups. I want to talk a little bit about the schematics of how this team should work, So we're gonna dive into some of the x's and o's in that segment, and then in the third segment, I want to talk about the odds of who's gonna

win the gold medal. I want to look at some of these other teams like France and Serbia and Canada and if any of these teams have the ability to actually beat Team USA. Tmusa right now is a substantial favorite, So we're going to dive into that in the third segment, and then at the end of the show, I want to talk a little bit about the WNBA Rookie of

the Year race. There's been a just a crazy stretch of games from Angel Reese, who just set the record, stole the record from from Kandas Parker set the record for most double double consecutively by a rookie in the history of the WNBA. She's starting to get some Rookie of the Year buzz, but according to DraftKings, Caitlyn Clark is still minus five hundred to win the award. Is on one hell of a stretch herself, averaging over eleven

assists per game in her last five games. So I want to talk a little bit about the WNBA Rookie of the Year race, why I think Caitlyn Clark is still the clear front runner at this point, and I want to talk a little bit about the different archetypes of basketball players and how they impact teams, and why the role that Kitlyn Clark is filling is the toughest role to replicate anywhere else on the roster, and why

that is a differentiator for her in that race. You guys are the job before we started to subscribe to the Hoops to Night YouTube channel, so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JCNLTS. You guys don't miss announcements, don't forget about

podcast feed wherever you get your podcast on her Hoops Tonight and they keep dropping mailback questions in those YouTube comments, and we keep hitting them throughout the rest of the summer and the last but not least, before we get started, I want to talk to you guys about game time. It's baseball season right now, and this is the best time of year to get out gets to a baseball park and watch your favorite team play. I grew up watching baseball. That was what we did when I was

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code Hoops for twenty dollars off your first purchase. Terms apply again created account, Redeem code Hoops. That's Hops for twenty dollars off. Download game time today, last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. All right, let's talk some basketball. So, first of all, with Team USA, the basketball fan in me is absolutely loving all this training camp content. Just like watching that reel of on Instagram of all the guys walking off the bus and it's like, oh shit,

there's Steph, other's KD. Oh there's Lebron. Oh yeah, I forgot Kawhi Leonards on this team too. Oh yeah, Devin Booker, Oh, and it's Joel And like it's just one after the other. It's like, oh, there's Anthony Edwards. He was the best player on the team last summer. Like it's just there's

so much incredible talent on this team. Part of the thing that makes it interesting is Steph, KD and Lebron are the old guys, right, They're like kind of like what Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were on the nineteen ninety two Dream Team. The difference is is like at that point in time, Magic was still really good, but Larry was starting to fall apart physically, Steph, KD, and Lebron are all still playing at an extremely high level. I think they're all still top ten players in the league.

Steph struggled a little bit at the tail end of last season, but I think there were some mitigating factors there, and I think he's gonna have a big bounce back year. I will most likely have all three of them in my top ten after the end of the summer. So those guys are all still playing well enough, but then you are adding them to all these in their prime stars, guys like Joel Embiid, Anthony Davis, Booker Kawhi Leonard, Jason Tatum,

Anthony Edwards and so it is. It's just gonna be so much fun, and as basketball fans, we couldn't hope for a better summer appetizer before we head into next season. So, as I mentioned before, there are three major questions that I have about this team. Where does it stack up with other USA teams? Who should start other lineup questions? And can anybody beat this team? Let's start with where

does this team stack up? Now? In terms of talent, It's hard for me to put this team ahead of the ninety two team, the eight or the twenty twelve

team because of the top tier talent. So, for instance, in nineteen ninety two, Michael Jordan was far and away the best player in the world played for Team USA. Every single player on first Team All NBA that year made Team USA. Four of the five players on second Team All NBA made Team USA. So nine of the top ten players in the world at that point in time we're playing for Team USA. It's hard to match

that in terms of top end talent. In two thousand and eight, Kobe and Lebron were the two best players in the world. I thought Kobe was the best player at that point. I thought Lebron was the second best player. They both played on that Olympic team. In twenty twelve, Lebron James and Kevin Durant were the two best players in the world. Lebron is clearly number one, kd was number two, but they were both on that team in

this particular stretch of time in basketball history. Right now, in the year twenty twenty four, there are three players that are in the top tier of players in the world in my opinion. Nikole Jokic, Luka Doncic, Giannis, and Tennekombo. None of those guys play for Team USA. Joel Embiid has that type of talent, but as we know, he's never really been able to put it together for a

full season, including the playoffs, so they don't. This Team USA doesn't have that like true world altering top tier talent that some of the other teams in the past did, but they have so many guys immediately below that tier. And most importantly, I actually do think this team will rival the other Team USA teams in dominance because of

the fact that they compliment each other so well. This to me, mate this team is interesting because they don't have one of the top three players in the world, but they have a very very well fitting basketball team, and I think that that's going to be an interesting concept for us to dive into a little bit further,

which I'm going to do in the next segments. But yeah, in terms of talent, just sheer top to bottom talent, I think you got to put this one in fourth place behind those other three teams just simply because Nikol Jokis is best player in the world. Luka, Doncic, and and Giannis are right there behind him. I don't think anybody on this roster has a claim to be in that group. Who should start slash? Who is their best five? So let's think about it from the perspective of filling responsibilities.

I always talk about like looking at basketball teams as filling five men having to feel responsibilities on both ends of the floor. That is how a team either becomes more than the sum of its parts or less than the sum of its parts. How well they compliment each other. Too many redundancies in one area, not enough in another area, that team will underachieve. Really good balance across the board, that team has the potential to overachieve. Right, So let's

look at it from the perspective of filling responsibilities. Who is the best skill guard on the team? Skill guard, this is the guy that's gonna initiate offense. Usually he's gonna run the first action, the first trip up the floor. The guy that is going to be usually your most skilled player, your best pass or your best shooter, that sort of thing. Right, it's Steph Curry, no question. He starts at the point. There's no debate. Steph is your guy at the one. Right, who's the best athlete guard

on the team. Remember, as I structured teams, I kind of look at it from like, I want a skill guard, I want an athlete guard. I want like a perimeter based forward, I want an interior forward, and then I want a versatile big man. Right, So if Steph is our skill guard, who are we looking at at the two? It's probably Anthony Edwards right in terms of the best athlete guard, But he has some specific weaknesses that I think make him a poor fit with the starters. One,

he's not great at navigating screens yet. So like I look at him, if you were to run some sort of drop coverage put him on the opposing guard, I think he would do better at TSA because he'd devote more resources there because and I do think a lot of it is just conserving energy for ant, but I don't love that fit. And then in terms of the fit alongside other stars, he's still a little bit inconsistent at making quick and smart reads in five out, so I don't think he's a great fit with the starters.

Devin Booker I view as another skill guard, so he's redundant with Steph on the defensive end of the floor. Stephan Devin Booker would be fine on offense, but I don't want two guards that I ideally don't want guarding the other team's best guard. That would be an issue. Right. Drew Holliday can do that, but he's not good enough to start over some of these superstar players, right. Tyrese

Alliburton is neither good enough nor a complimentary fit. He's also redundant with Steph and so that's it for the guards. So if Anthony Edwards is not a great fit, Tyres Alliburton's not a great fit, Drew's not good enough, Devin Booker is not a great fit with the starters, then we got to look at the forwards. And if we look at the forwards Lebron, James, Kevin Durant, Kwhi, Leonard, and Jason Tatum, this is where Jason Tatum becomes a

really natural fit for me. Jason Tatum is the most mobile on the perimeter player of all of those forwards. Like those other guys might be like Lebron and Kawhi might be a little bit more physically imposing, Katie's got more length, but Tatum has the best combination of like length and actual foot speed to contend on the perimeter, but he also has the strength and size to guard bigger forwards and centers, and so you can ask him to chase and apply back pressure, you could ask him

to switch in a switching scheme. And for the record, and this is where I think it's important for us to get to this. The one weakness on this roster is perimeter foot speed. If there's a vulnerability in their defense, it's too quick guards quickness on the perimeter, right. So I actually view this as more of a switching team. I think that's primarily what they're going to do with

their main groups. Now to mention Eric Spolster and Steve Kerr, two coaches that philosophically have a lot of belief in switching as a defensive scheme, I think it's the best fit for this roster. I think it's the natural fit with the coaching staff. That's what I expect them to do. They really only have one guy on the entire roster who is a high level point of attack, chase over screens type of guy, and that's True Holliday, who I don't expect to play a ton with this group. So

I look at this as a switching scheme. So if it's a switching scheme. Jason Tatum I think is a really natural fit at the two because he's quick enough to guard some quicker players. You won't ask him to navigate a bunch of screens because he'll be switching, but he can also switch onto bigger players. So to me, Jason Tatum is that kind of like shoe in fit at the two. He's also the most natural offensive fit

alongside the other stars. We talked about Tatum whether or not he'd be a good fit read and reacting with five other or with four other stars. Tatum's great at that stuff. The rub on Tatum is if he's the one star on the floor, is he aggressive enough and effective enough to be an off engine. That's legitimate criticism, But we literally watched him be just this perfect cog and a system in Boston with lesser stars around him. But he was surrounded by a bunch of really high

level players. He is a quick decision maker, He is a ball mover. He doesn't hijack the offense. He didn't even hijack the offense with the Celtics, let alone in a team like this with all of these stars. He had a rough pull up shooting season, but he's an excellent catch and shoot guy. He shot forty five percent on catch and shoot jumpers this season, including regular season in the playoffs one point three to six points per shot.

Even when he shot poorly in the postseason, he still got to one point per shot on catch and shoot jumpers. That is his most reliable form of jump shooting. That is a natural fit. Tatum gets wide open catch and shoot looks. I feel like they're gonna go in. So he is a beautiful plug and fit at the two because in a switching scheme, he can guard up and down. He has the most perimater quickness, and he's a natural fit alongside stars on the offensive end of the floor.

Tatum's versatil he is a huge value I think on this particular team. So now that we have our skill guard and we have our athlete guard that's being replaced by an athlete forward and Tatum because of fit, who's the best perimeter forward on the team. Probably KD. Right brings a ton of skill, brings length, He's super easy to plug and play with other stars. He's probably the best plug and play star ever. Right, But as we know,

KD is probably going to miss at least. I think he's probably gonna miss that scrimmage against Canada on Wednesday, which sucks because I'm gonna be there and I would love to have excuse me to have seen KD with those guys. But I expect he'll be back for the Olympics. Apparently this cap strain is something he had before, and I just don't think he would have showed up if he didn't plan on playing. So my guess is he'll be back. But in the short term, I think Kawhi

Leonard is the fit in that spot. You plug Kawhi Leonard in at the three, But in the long run, I think Kevin Durant is your three. Who is the best big forward on the team. It's Lebron and like that might have been more clunky as a fit early in his career when he wasn't as good of a jump shooter, but he's become an excellent catch and shoot guy, and especially in the last year with the Lakers with

their shift to five out. But they started to do this last year where Lebron is operating as a screener a bunch, but this year with the Lakers in their five out system, Lebron became a devastating screen and roll guy. He shot sixty one percent on his own shot attempts field goal percentage on overall one hundred reps this year. As a role man for the Lakers in their five out offense. We know how he can operate as a

passer in that role as well. I think Lebron is going to be a guy that actually slots really well into that five out system as basically a screener. And I think with his combination of size and strength on the defensive glass and defensively in general, I just think he's the perfect fit there at that four right and it just is going to add to that physical profile that frontline. He's still one of the best combinations of size and strength in the NBA, even at over forty

years of age. Who is the starting center? I guess Lebron is actually turning forty next year. I think he's still thirty nine at this point. Who is the starting center? To be clear, I do think that Embiid is a better basketball player than Anthony Davis. I think he's a much better offensive engine, which brings more value to a basketball team. It's a similar concept to what we're going to be talking about with Caitlin Clark and Angel Raese here in a minute. So I do think that Embiid

is a better player than Anthony Davis. But this is not an NBA team. This is an Olympic team. It's not about how you can lift up other role players. It's about how you can compliment other stars we talked earlier. If you guys remember about how I see this as a switching team, Embiid cannot defend on the perimeter in

the same stratosphere as Anthony Davis. Anthony Davis is the combination of elite rim protector, elite defensive rebounder, elite pick and roll defender, and elite switching perimeter defender that makes him the ideal fit in a switching scheme next to other big forwards like KD, like Lebron, Jason Tatum, etc. So I view Anthony Davis as a really really natural fit within this switching scheme on the defensive end of

the flour. On the offensive end of the flour, em beads post up and face up attack would actually be a rhythm disruptor for the rest of this team. You don't want to have Steph and Kadie and all of them just standing on the perimeter while a Embiid starts unleashing his jab step pump, fake game, trying to draw fouls. Right Like, It's just it's gonna be kind of clunky, right. Ad would just function basically as a screener and a

roller as a vertical spacing threat. I think he's a more natural fit on the offensive end too, again, and Beads a better player, but fitting alongside this team, Anthony Davis is the better fit. I do prefer Embiid for specific matchups, like when they play France. France is gonna play Victor Wen, Migyama and Rudy Gobert. They're gonna be a nightmare in the paint. Embid's three point shooting will

probably be valuable in that matchup. Against Serbia, who they scrimmage next week, and they play in the first Olympic game in late July. You need someone who can guard Yokich and Embiid is the best equipped player in the world for that. So Embiid I think should start certain games and will play more than Ad in certain games.

But I think Ad is the best fit in the starting group to make that five play better basketball With that F five with Steph, Jason Tatum, KD Lebron and Ad, you have four proven great shooters, a screening fulcrum in Ad who's one of the best vertical spacers in the world, a second screener in Lebron if you need him. And then you have a switching look with four big forwards

who can all guard up and down positions. And Steph Curry who you can ask to hedge and recover or just ask him to press up on the jump shot, knowing you have an absurd amount of length behind him. You're going six nine six ten six ' nine seven foot with that, With that front line, that's a lot of help defense behind Steph to make his job easier. And then as far as some bench groups like I love the fit of Devin Booker with Anthony Edwards, that's

your skill guard athlete guard combo. Right, you can go small with Drew Holliday out there and Kawhi Leonard at the four with Joel Embiid, you can go bigger with Kawhi at the three. With bam at Aebaio next to Joel Embid, you have a bunch of different looks. I

like in those bench groups two with Embiid. Embiid will actually need to be more aggressive offensively in those groups, So it's just a better fit for him to be able to come in the game and be Joel Embiid, whereas if he came into the game and was Joel Embiid with the starters, I just think it would be clunky. As far as schematically, like we talked about, I think you will see a lot of switching. I wouldn't hedge

and recover with Steph. I would just have him guard and then basically just tell him to press up on jump shots and know that he has backside help behind him, and just ask him to rotate on the offensive end of the floor. I expect them to run five out. I haven't seen enough footage from practice to know what they're running yet, but I would have just assumed they're running five out, and with that, it's just lots of ball and player movement. Get the defense and rotation, trust

each other. Katie can attack close out, Steph can attack close outs, Tatum can attack close outs, Lebron can attack close outs. Ad is just always going to be there ready to finish all of these other guys. Can slot in and fill that role. Devin Booker can come onto the floor and provide some of what Steph brings to the table and can do the same. Kawhi can do

the same. That to me, there's gonna be a good amount of scheme consistency from group to group, and you're gonna be able to put different types of lineups together that compliment each other. And that's the beauty of this roster and that's why I think they're gonna be very dominant. Who can beat this team? Final question starts from the standpoint of what are their weaknesses? And I don't think

this team has any offensive weaknesses at all. They have plenty of ways to get the defense into rotation, they have plenty of ways to finish plays. They have guys that can take over the game. They have guys that can bully inside. They have a lead, pull up shooters, they can play driving kick like. I think they're fine on the offensive end of the four. Defensively, the one issue because they have a big center, they have a rim protecting center. They have tons of forwards like, they

have tons of length like. The one thing is they just don't have a ton of foot speed on the perimeter in general, and again it's worth mentioning they have more than enough length to make up for it, but they could be vulnerable to some really quick guards. So with that, let's take a look at the Vegas op So these are according to DraftKings, USA is currently favored at minus three ninety. It's pretty substantial favor. Not nothing insane,

but pretty substantial. Canada is the second favorite at plus nine hundred. But I don't like the matchup because they they're two main offensive threats. Shake Gibs Alexander Jamal Murray are pull up shooters, and the US has a ton of length to bother pull up shooters like. They're not overly quick guys. We know Shay can beat people off the dribble, but he's not lightning quick. There's not a ton of lightning quickness on that team. It's a pull

up shooting team. Length is the best counter for pull up shooting. They're also undersized on the front line and lack rim protection. That feels like a disaster against a frontline of Lebron James and Anthony Davis, Lebron James and Joel Embiid and and just even just with the inverted spacing that Steph Curry provides, right, So I don't really view that them as a substantial threat. France plus one thousand as the third favorite. They have Wemby and Rudy Gobert,

Nick Batoum at the three. That's a lot of length. Their backcourt is most gonna be Frank Mila Keina and Evan Fournier, right, Like that's they're gonna be a pain in the ass to score against in the paint, for sure, But how do you counter a team that has a

lot of length under the basket? Perimeter shooting team USA just has a ton of it, Like lebron kd Steph and Jason Tatum are all really comfortable shooting, not just shooting, but shooting from deep, so like that's not gonna be They're all comfortable above the break, so like that's not

an issue. I even think USA could go centerless against them because they're frontline, like go bears a non threat offensively, and Wemby's kind of thin, so you could even supplement that with more shooting and just be like we're not gonna go AD, We're gonna go Lebron at center. You know, Tatum at the four, KD at the five, at KD at the three, and we'll go Booker and Steph, and now we just have tons of shooting on the floor. Good luck, Steph, Devin Booker, KD lebron and and Jason Tatum.

Just good luck. You know, like no amount of length at the rim is going to cause that to be a problem, right and so like, again, France has some issues that they present, but I I just I think I think the USA team presents more issues to France. Serbia. They have Nicola Jokich. Serbia right now is plus thirteen hundred. They're the fourth favorite to win the win the gold medal on DraftKings. They have Jokic, but TOSA has Joel Embiid, who is literally the best human in the world at

guarding Nikola Jokic. So like that's another thing that USA has a counter for not to mention all the issues that USA that the TMOSA could present for Serbia on the perimeter right now, Again, single elimination is always a variable. Anything could happen when a team goes hot or cold, as we know, but I think USA is pretty resilient to that, and I think they're gonna be really hard to beat even in a single elimination a setup. I expect them to win convincingly throughout the tournament, and I

think they're gonna win the gold. I would be really really surprised if they didn't. This is not a team that I think presents some of the vulnerabilities that other team usas that haven't brought all their players have presented, and most importantly, I think they're gonna be really fun to watch. I am going to be at the scrimmage against Canada Wednesday. I will be live tweeting through the

whole thing. I'll send some videos out on my Twitter feed as well, so make sure you guys follow me at underscore JSNLT on Twitter.

single time. And then you can take those patterns directly into the draft simulator and make your mock draft feel like the real thing. When your real draft comes around, you're gonna be ready and the draft assistant will be there for you to give you live pick by pick insights and expert recommendations of who to draft and when to draft them. You can see all of this and more at fantasypros dot com slash volume today.

right back at her. She goes for the first triple double ever by a WNBA rookie in a really fun game against the New York Liberty took over that game late too. They were down six with like what three and a half minutes left, and she had a driving and one bank shot on the right side of the floor to bring it to three. Then she had a transition kick ahead pass for a wide open three that tied the game. Like Kaitlyn was just unbelievable in that game is they got a huge win against the New

York Liberty. And so now we have this debate, right and there's a lot of people saying Angel reachin Rookie of the Year, a lot of people saying Kaitlyn Clark. But Vegas, or more specifically DraftKings sees it as very much Kitlyn Clark's race to lose. She on DraftKings right now is minus five hundred to win Rookie of the Year and Angel Reese's plus three hundred. It's a pretty massive gap. It's not unclosable. But what that means is if the season ended today, there would be no debate.

Caitlin Clark would be Rookie of the Year. And I agree, I think Caitlin Clark is clearly the Rookie of the Year at this point. And this is where we have to get into the difference between roles. And again there's gonna be a lot of talk about counting stats, especially because Angel Reese is putting up some incredibly dominant box score numbers. Right, like Angel Reese is dominating games as an athlete, She's a super disruptive defender, just putting up

crazy block steal counts every single game. She's a wrecking ball on the glass on both ends of the floor. Even her rim finishing is trending up, which was one of the biggest rubs on her early on in the year. Right. Like as mentioned earlier, you can just count on her to give you, you know, in the mid teens and points in mid teens and rebounds every single night, right, And there's a ton of value that comes from them.

But what Kaitlyn Clark is doing is she's functioning as an offensive engine, which is a very different type of role, and the box score numbers show it. For the record, in their last five games, the Indiana Fever are averaging thirty made field goals per Gamely, Clark is either scoring or assisting sixteen of those thirty made field goals every single game, So either her putting the ball in the basket or passing to the person who put the ball in the basket more than half their offense in the

last couple of weeks. But that doesn't even come close to capturing the real impact of Caitlin Clark in this offense because her main goal, the main thing she's doing, and the reason why the Indiana offense has turned around and they've started winning. They've won eight of their last thirteen games. The reason this has turned around is she is primarily focusing on getting the defense in rotation. They're using her a lot in off ball movement as a decoy.

They're doing a lot of really fun stuff to get help her beat ball pressure, where like teams are picking her up full court and forcing her into some turnovers.

Now she's like doing a lot of given gho stuff right around half court, where like she'll make a quick move against the ball pressure and then throw the ball up to like, you know, Aliah Boston at half court, and then she'll quick cut off of it and get a dribble hand off and get downhill and then she'll spin and go right back into a ball screen the

other way there. She's putting teams in the blender early on, and it's generating all of these short role opportunities for Leah Boston and Melissa Smith and they're benefiting off of it. Rolling to the rim when teams are tagging them. The Caitlyn's making the kickout passes in general between hockey assists and just getting the defense and rotation then capitalizing on the chaos. The box score has her accounting for more

than half of the offense. In reality, it's like two thirds to almost seventy five percent of the offense from Indiana that is being generated off of attention that Caitlyn Clark is drawing. And this is where I want to get back to what I was talking about earlier when we were talking about Joel and beat an Ante Davis. If you're building a basketball team, the hardest thing to

replicate is who's the generator of your offense. That is why Joel Embiid is a better basketball player than Anthony Davis. AD is a better fit with USA Basketball because they just need these specific role player things. Ad is the guy that goes out there and puts up you know, twenty six and seventeen all the time, right. But as we're looking at Joel Embiid, he's the guy that can be the fulkrum of a high level offense. Anthony Davis

has not demonstrated that with defense. You can address that as a team with lineup construction and attention to detail within your scheme with rebounding, you can address that with lineup construction. Just put more size and athleticism on the floor, even with angels finishing around the rim, which is of value.

Look at all of the quality rim attempts that Melissa Smith and Aliyah Boston are getting because of Caitlin Clark consistently bringing their defender up to the level of the screen that can be made up four through what Caitlyn

Clark brings to the table. So again, like all of the stuff that Andel Reese is doing is incredibly valuable and incredibly important, but it is incredibly difficult to replicate what Caitlin Clark is doing for the Indiana Pacers the Indiana Fever, what she is doing as a rookie in THEWNBA is putting an entire offense on her shoulders and consistently generating quality shots and the offen The results have been amazing. They have the sixth best offensive. This is

a crazy stat. So in their first nine games they

went one in eight. They were the second worst offense in the league, in large part because they were just using Caitlin like a normal player. Right around thirteen games ago, they started actually using Caitlin the way they needed to, which is using her as an offensive engine, using her as Steve Nash crossed with Steph Curry, and as a result,

their offense has taken off. Since June first, eight and five, they've climbed all the way up to the seventh seed and they have the sixth best off offensive rating in the league in that span, So they went from the second worst offense in the league to a top half offense in the league. By leaning into Caitlyn Clark as their offensive engine, She's putting teams in the blender. Everyone is benefiting from it. And again that doesn't have anything

to do with Angel Rees. It's not that she's not doing enough, so to speak, any other year she'd be worthy of Rookie of the Year. But this is an all time great WNBA prospect in Caitlin Clark, who's playing some special basketball in doing the most important thing that an NBA team or a basketball team can get out of an offensive player, which is just consistently generating quality shots.

I think she deserves to win the award. And again it's not over if Angel Rees, you know, continues to put up seventeen and fourteen every night and Kaitlyn Clark tails off hard or gets hurt like yeah, then Angel Reese will jump in and get that. That's why she's at plus three hundred, which is a reasonable number. But Kitlin Clark is the is the favorite for a reason. She is the more valuable basketball player. It is easier to build a good basketball team around her skill set

and what she brings to the table. It is the most valuable type of player in the league. That's why when I look at the NBA, who are the two best players right now, Nikole jokicch and Luka Doncic. Why offensive engines all the things that Jason Tatum and Anthony Davis and the better athletes bring to the table, they can be replaced by role players in a way that

what an offensive engine cannot do. And that's why I have Caitlin Clark as the Rookie of the Year at this point, all right, guys, this all I have for today. We are going to be unless there's some big news. If there's some big news, I'll obviously be reacting, but otherwise at this point, plan on Thursday morning, when when I give you, guys an instant reaction to the Tmusa scrimmage against Canada. I will see you guys, then, the volume