Hoops Tonight - Top 10 NBA Contenders: LeBron James & Lakers surging, are Thunder too young?

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Warriors Lakers. Remember final buzzer Warriors Lakers live on YouTube tonight. But because of that, quickly this morning, we're just gonna hit the next two teams in my contender rankings. If you guys remember yesterday we did ten, nine and eight. Ten was a little bit of cheating. We did Heat Warriors as like our establishment kind of situation there, and then at nine we had the Minnesota Timberwolves, and at eight we had the Milwaukee Bucks hitting seven and six. Today,

you guys are the Joe four we get started. Subscribe to our brand new YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Don't forget about a podcast feed wherever get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful of the LEVA rating and a review on that front. Follow me on Twitter, underscore jsnlts you guys, don't miss show announcements, as well as the film threads

that I do from time to time. And the last but not least, keep dropping mailback questions and the YouTube comments. We're gonna hit some mail bags later on in the week. All right, let's talk some basketball. So number seven and again, I have to throw this obligatory note out there because

this happens every single year I've done this. This is my third playoff run that I'm getting ready to cover with the volume, and my fourth since I've had a daily podcast, And this is the most common bit of pushback that I get. I don't re act super strongly to regular season standings.

top of my list. I'm never going to bump teams like that down for teams that had less impressive seasons in the standings. That said pretty much everything beneath that tier. Any team that doesn't check those three boxes again, like veteran superstar, veteran, consistent veteran presences in the rotation, and dominates the regular season. Outside of that specific archetype, everything

else to me is kind of scrunched together. And I'm looking at your personnel, I'm looking at your strengths and weaknesses. I'm looking at how you would favor in specific matchups, and so yes, number seven, I have a team that has dominated the regular season this year, the Oklahoma City Thunder. They are fifty three and twenty five, currently the three seed in the Western Conference, although only one game back of first and still within striking distance there for the season.

They are fourth in offense and sixth in defense. Their strengths their starting lineup has just an enormous amount of offensive skill. Shake Gildas Alexander has been one of the best primary initiators in the league this year. These are his numbers on Synergy for play types including passes in the three primary individual creation play types. Pick and roll

including passes one point one five points per possession that's literally awesome. Isolation one point one to three points per possession including passes, that's literally awesome. One point two zero points per post up including passes all three categories. Is in the eighty f fourth percentile or better for volumes, so he's been one of the very best versatile shot creators in the league this year. Jalen Williams one of my favorite young players in the league. He's also been

a very good individual creator. He himself is at one point one zero points per pick and roll including passes. It's also at zero point nine to six points per ISO, which is pretty solid. He's only posted up four times all season, although he's had a point per possession there

as well. He's converting spot up possessions as the second side guy at one point two to one points per possession, which is insane, and he's been the second best pull up shooter in basketball this season minimum three hundred attempts. Although there's been some jockeying around, CJ. McCollum has actually left everybody. He's now in first place. Jalen Williams is in second, James Harden is now in third place. He's also an incredible downhill athletic force, a guy that can

bring some real matchup issues to the equation. Chet Holmgren is the ideal spacing big. He's shooting forty one percent on unguarded catch and shoot jumpers this year. Really unlocks a lot of this stuff in their five out offense. It's also been one of the best rolemen in the league this year. There are eleven players that have logged at least two hundred role man possessions. Chet is converting those at one point twenty seven points per possession, which

ranks third on that list. Lou Dort shoots forty five percent on unguarded catch and shoot jumpers. Giddy is the one guy that kind of has some offensive weakness, especially off the ball, in that group, but he's shooting a lot better than he used to. Since the All Star Break, he's shooting forty percent on catch and shoot threes. Forty percent. That's really damn good. That's what's at one point two points per shot. That's that's a really good result for them.

And then he's also a really good second side creator, especially when one of Shay or Jalen go to the bench. He's a seventy eighth percentile pick and role player including passes. The Oklaoma City Thunder have the second best half court offense in basketball according to Cleaning the Glass, the fourth most productive transition offense, which takes us to their defensive strength. This is an aggressive, playmaking defense. They use their speed,

they are in passing lanes. They are constantly ford aggressive to try to force turnovers and to get out in transition. They force sixteen turnovers per game, which is the most in the NBA, A big feeder for that transition attack that we talked about. They are the only team in the NBA this year that scores at least twenty points per game off of turnovers. So this is a very fast, very skilled offense, a playmaking defense that loves to get

out in transition. I do not think they're gonna have any issues scoring the basketball when they get into the postseason. Their weaknesses, though, all of that aggression in the passing lanes on defense gives quality three point looks, especially the teams that can be calm with good ball handling and make quality reads to beat that aggression. They give up the eighth most threes in the league this year in terms of three point attempts per game. They are also

a truly bad defensive rebounding team. They have the second worst defensive rebounding percentage in the NBA. They allow an offensive rebound on more than three thirty percent of their opponent's misses, and when they get into clutch situations when the scores within five with at least with less than five minutes left, that number rises to almost forty percent of opponents misses that are getting turned into offensive rebounds.

They are also really reliant on jump shooting they have they're the fourth most frequent jump shooting team in the NBA in terms of couwnty jump shots they take her one hundred possessions. They are super young and inexperienced. Every single one of the eight players who have logged over one thousand minutes for them this year is twenty five or younger. Four of those guys, including three starters, are

twenty two or younger. Now, what a lot of people are gonna say is what about the twenty twelve Thunder And what they don't realize is the core was young there, but they had a lot of veteran role players in the rotation. They had three vets in their top eight, including Kendrick Perkins, Tablo Cephalosha and Nick Collison. And then at the deadline they added a thirty seven year old Derek Fisher who played in every single playoff game for them.

tons and tons of foot speed. Lou Dort is actually, in my opinion, in that top tier of perimeter defenders in the NBA. He just has an incredibly low center of gravity, and he could beat people to spots and force them to shoot over the top. He's really good at disrupting the shooting pocket to force missus against pull

up shooters. I think that's gonna be really valuable in the Western Conference playoff run when you have to go through guys like Lebron, James Paul, George Kawhi, Leonard, Kevin Durant. You get the point, Just lots of forwards that you have to contend with out there. Lou Dort is a great option there. But outside of lou Dort and Jalen Williams, Shay's kind of thin, Josh Gitty's kind of thin, chet Holmgren is kind of thin.

the twenty twenty two Warriors. And again, every time we run into that specific predicament, I always remind people Steph Curry is the exception that makes the rule. He's the one guy who was so damn skilled that he could lift up a physically limited roster to the point where they were able to succeed the way that they did. And even then, that team was really long and athletic on the perimeter and had a ton of veteran presences in the lineup, very very different than this Oklahoma City

thunder team. NBA history tells us, when you are young and when you are small, you're probably not going to win. That's what NBA history tells us. They are going to run consistently into matchups that look to attack their thinner wings, their thinner front line. I think, I think that foul trouble is going to be a significant issue for them in that front court. It's one of the things I have for their specific playoff path, like, is what does Oklahoma City need to do to make it all the

way to the Promised Land. One Shane needs to play like a superstar in the playoffs. That's a big test. There are a lot of players who have dominated NBA regular seasons and have gotten to the postseason and it hasn't translated. There's a long list of players on that list. I expect Shae to succeed in that in that test. I think Shae's versatility in that he doesn't do the same thing every time, he's a lot more unpredictable, and

the fact that he competes on the defensive end. I think those two things are going to maintain Shay's impact when he gets into the postseason. But he's a little heliocentric in the sense that he can attack and from the same spots on the floor with the same type of dribble combinations time and time again. And I do think some perimeter defenders could figure some stuff out over the course of the series to better anticipate his changes of pace and direction and try to cut him off.

That's just the challenge. By the way, I'm not saying this is not like a Oshay has a weakness. What I'm saying is every single playoff a kind of test challenges every player's strengths and weaknesses. That's literally what the playoffs do they are the grand revealer of what you are as a basketball player.

Like I talked about earlier, They're the fourth most frequent jump shooting team in the NBA, so very reliant on jump shot results, So they're gonna have to shoot the ball well. Chet has to avoid foul trouble, which I think is gonna be a big deal in some of their bigger matchups that they'll run into. They just have to find a way to hold up physically. Really exciting young team, a team that I'm a huge believer in in the long term. But this is just a simple

matter of NBA history. This to me, is a young team that is dominating in the regular season at this phase. Now they have to go through the playoff lumps. That's the process. Dominate regular season, take playoff lumps, get over the top. That's how it works. There's never been a team that's been able to skip those steps. That's not how it works. There's never been a team that was able to go dominate the regular season as a young team, walk into the playoffs and kill everybody and win. That

just doesn't happen. There's always lumps along the way. This is Oklahoma City's first first attempt at that process.

defensive minded team. They were seventh in defensive rating, eighth in defensive rebounding percentage, and twenty second in offense. Right, then we go into this terrible n season tournament malaise after they hoist the trophy. They just they played like shit for a month.

They are outscoring teams, and they're not defending very well, and they are not rebounding very well. So even in the two separate stretches where they were a good team this year, they were good in very different ways. I am choosing to look at them as the later version is the offensive minded version that can't defend, rather than

the defensive minded version that couldn't score. Just because we've just for one, it's a much larger sample size, it's more than half the season, and that more or less is the personnel direction that they've gone to as Vanderbilt obviously has been hurt and it's been a lot more Ruby Hotcha Murrow, who is a better offensive player than

he is a defensive player. So they're straits. They have one of the best two way front courts you could ever hope to have in a playoff run twenty six and fourteen, in playoff games that both Lebron James and Anthony Davis were able to finish healthy. There were two games against the Phoenix Suns, specifically Game four and Game five, that where Anthony Davis was unable to finish the game

because of his groin injury. But in the games where Anthony Davis and Lebron were both able to finish twenty six and fourteen, they're six to one in playoff series that Lebron James and Anthony Davis were both able to finish healthy.

the ball relatively easy in most matchups. They have an inside out attack all year long. They've been a great paint offense, third in points in the paint per one hundred possessions for the season, second in points in the paint per one hundred possessions since January seventh. They are second in three point percentage since January seventh. It's very

catch and shoot heavy attack. They only take twenty pull up jumpers a game, which is the ninth fewest in the NBA, but they take a bunch of catch and shoot jump shots, and they have a sixty one percent effective field goal percentage on catch and shoot jumpers since January seventh, which is the second best mark in the league.

Their starting lineup is rebounding well, thankfully, so like that defensive rebounding percentage, it's mainly the non starting lineups. The Ruey Lebron Anthony Davis frontcourt is rebounding well. Every other lineup is getting smashed on the glass, which points me to the simple solution for the Lakers. I say simple because it's easy to do, but it's difficult in execution, and that is they're going to have to scale up the minutes.

non ad minutes that have been crushed. So if you're looking for a way to talk yourself into a better Laker defense when you get to the postseason, it's hey. For basically a third of the season when Anthony Davis has been on the floor, we've been good defensively. We scale up ads minutes should be fine, right, But again, like I talked about earlier, as you scale minutes up, effort level tends to dip a little bit with it.

Another small sample size silver lining in the Lakers last eleven games, they are sixth in defensive rating and seventh in defensive rebounding. Some good teams in that stretch to the seventy six Ers, the Pacers, the Bucks, the Pacers, the Cavs, and the Timberwolves all in that span, but there have been five bad teams in that span as well, and it's just way too small of a sample size. So I don't see that as enough to convince me that the Lakers are going to be a good defense.

I need to se something from them when we get

into that first round to believe that that's something that they can do.

the Lakers the Clippers. If you guys remember, the Clippers were the last team to like really confine, like confound the Laker offense. The Lakers have had games where they haven't scored as well since January seventh, but it's usually like they didn't shoot well or something along those lines, or Lebron had a bad night, something along those lines. The Clippers game, in particular, was a night where I saw the Laker offense literally stall out, and the reason

why was the Clippers switch. And while Austin Reeves and D'Angelo Russell are really good offensive players, while Anthony Davis and Ruey Hat Tramura are really good offensive players, the problem specifically is Lebron is really the only guy in that lineup that can consistently and effectively break down a switching defense. That's a concern. Anthony Davis not a very good one on one player anymore. Austin Reeves not like straight up against a good defender in one on one situations.

That's not really his game. He's a ball screen player, right, he can make plays in one on one, but not at a super super high level. D'Angelo Russell, same sort of thing. Ruey Hachimura literally needs a mismatch now. That'll be something that they'll attempts to do in those matchups. They will attempt to get smaller players on RUI, get smaller players on AD, get smaller players on Lebron. But in practice, when they've run against a lot of switching

this year, their offense has stalled out. If you guys remember in that Clippers game, the only reason they broke it open in the fourth cour was Lebron started picking on Daniel Tice and was making his pull up three point shot and then everything kind of fell apart from there for the Clippers. But that's why I think in terms of matchups, that's gonna be something that I think the Lakers are gonna run into some issues with When they run into switching defenses.

their success when they get to the postseason. So again, like I viewed them as a classic strengths and weaknesses team, all these teams in this tier, by the way, and I had a lot of Minnesota fans complaining at me yesterday, like how can you have Minnesota all the way down at nine? I want to be clear. One two is you guys can guess who that's gonna be. But three, four, five, six, seven, and eight and nine are all this close. You could easily talk me into Minnesota being better than the team

I have in third. You can also talk me into the team that third being at nine. They're all this close. So if you're looking at this as like Jason thinks the Lakers are way better than the Timberwolves, that's not what I'm saying. I view the Lakers as a slightly bigger playoff threat than the Timberwolves because of some of my long standing beliefs in the way that the NBA playoffs tend to play out. That's all this is. So we're splitting hairs in a lot of different ways Laker's path.

What do they need to do to win the title? First of all, Lebron James and Anthony Davis need to play like it's twenty twenty again. That means Lebron in ad consistently hitting jump shots over the top. Lebron's held up his end of the bargain for the most part there this season, but Anthony Davis has not shot the ball well for the most part this year. Specifically with Lebron, that's a big part of them beating switching defenses. He's

gonna have to hit shots over the top. Jared Vanderbilt, I think, has to come back to give them any sort of real chance against some of the better offensive teams in the West. Vanderbilt is the only guy on the Lakers roster that can incredibly guard Luka Doncic. He's gonna be the only guy on the Lakers roster that cancredibly guard Jamal Murray.

same point of health. I mean like Lebron and Ad are just gonna have to do a lot, and it's very possible that their bodies break down before they get to that point.

appreciate you guys for supporting the show. I'll see you guys tonight after the final buzzer of Warriors Lakers Live on YouTube. The volume