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jurisdiction void in Ontario. See dkang dot co slash football for eligibility terms and responsible gambling resources. Bonus bets expire seven days after issuance. Eligibility and deposit restrictions apply. All right, welcome to tonight. You're at the Volume. Happy Thursday, everybody. I hope all of you guys are having a great week so far. We are live on AMPS. If you're watching on YouTube or listening on the podcast feeds, don't forget the A is the very first place that you
guys can get these shows. We are continuing our top twenty five players the last twenty five years today with number three Kobe Bryant. And then I've got a mail back question at the end of the show for you guys as well. You guys are the Joe before we get started. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channels you don't
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and then potentially into the future as well. Bear with me today. I'm dealing with a little bit of whatever the hell it is I caught at the end of last week, and my voice is a rex, So bear with me through that. In the last, but not least, the start of NBA basketball, we're about what like seven weeks away from that, but there's no shortage of events to attend now. All summer long, we've been talking about baseball and concerts and comedy shows, but now we have
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Five time NBA champion, best player on two championship team, second best player on three championship teams, eleven time first Team All NBA, fifteen time All NBA overall. That actually is tied with Kareem abdul Jabbar and Tim Dunk for the second most All NBA selections of all time. He actually has one more First Team All NBA selection than both of those guys, So I guess you could say Kobe is the second best All NBA winner of all time.
He also is twelve time All Defense, won the Scoring Championship in two thousand and six, and two thousand and seven. And if you look at just the window of this list, so our twenty five year window from nineteen ninety nine to twenty twenty three, he is the second leading scorer overall over that time, behind Lebron James with thirty one thousand, eight hundred and eighty four points in that span. So Kobe's claim to fame, there's two big ones I want
to hit on. First of all, I think Kobe's the thing that he'll be remembered for, like his unique kind of trait is. I think that he was the very best shot maker in the history of the NBA. So where I want to start with that is what is shot making? So to me, there are like two different types of offense in the NBA. Right, there's offense in the flow, and then there's offense as a result of
shot making. Right, offense in the flow or shots that your offense is designed to generate, like your actual sets are designed to generate, right or just by virtue of playing basketball, you're hoping to get these types of shots. These are your wide open catch and shoot threes or wide open catch and shoot mid range jump shots for your bigs. These are your driving layups to the basket, either off of one driving kick or potentially multiple driving
kick situations. Drive and drop off to the big man in the posts or in the dunker spots so we can go up and dunk. Those are your like buckets that you get in the flow of your offense. Right. Offense from shot making is more about what the defense is trying to force. Right, So, like the defense's goal is to take away all of those things and to force you to make tougher shots within the margins. Right,
these are your shots on the move. Right, these are your shots over contests and so shots on the move I look at more like your guys flying off of screens. Right, this is your Kyle korver Ray, Aalen type of situation. Even Kobe did a little bit of this, especially from
the mid range. You'd come off of a pin down and then rise up from the free throw line extended or something along those lines, you know, And maybe if you're fast enough over the top of a screen and pick and roll, like as a ball handler, you can get a floater that's in the mid range, or you can get a pull up fifteen foot or that's uncontested. If you have a good enough handle and you set your man up well enough and you get over the top of the screen and you get to a spot
that to me is like movement shooting. But then there's like shots over contests, right. These are like your isolation and post move shots where the defender's in front of you and he's doing his best to slide his feet and contest and you're trying to rise up over the top of the defender and knock down that tougher shot. These are like everything that we've talked about in terms of footwork and dribble combinations and energy transfer and all that stuff that we've talked about on the show that
involves the ability to get a shit off over elite defense. Now, this is an incredibly important part of the game of basketball that we talk a lot about on this show. Why do you guys think shot making is so valuable? Because in theory, right, if you run your offense right, you're gonna get some easier shots, right. But why is shot making so valuable? Because when you do get to the later rounds of the NBA playoffs, especially against the best defenses in the league, they're gonna take away all
that stuff they scout you relentlessly. So they get in front of your sets, they scout your stars, and so they identify their tendencies and they like to take away the things that they are best at. Right, they have higher level defensive personnel just strictly from the standpoint of talent.
When you get to the later point, later points of the NBA playoffs, it's more talented defensive players, better athletes, right, and so it's just really hard to get those easy, wide open catch and shoot threes, catch and shoot fifteen footers driving layups and dunks out of the dunker spot than ever to get when you get to the later phases of the NBA playoffs, that is where shot making
comes to the surface. That is where having a guy that can fly off of a screen and elevate and knock down a shot off the catch is super valuable. That is where having a guy that can knock down a floater or a pull up jump shot in pick and roll is valuable. That is where having a guy that can get to a matchup and get to a shot in isolation or in a post up situation is immensely valuable, especially when we get to Kobe's era, Because in Kobe's era, we weren't We didn't have the type
of spacing that we have today. There are two bigs on the floor for just about every team. You had your traditional power forward, probably somebody in the two hundred and sixty two hundred and seventy pounds six y ten area that was clogging things up on the inside. The pace was slow, the game was stuck in the half court. I've shared these stats with you guys before, but the three point shooting is monumentally different now than it was
in that era. In twenty ten, the Orlando Magic led the NBA with ten point three men aid three point shots per game ten point three. All thirty NBA teams this year made more than ten point three threes per game. So it's an entirely different era that we're living in now. This shot making stuff that I'm talking about is much more valuable, especially in that particular era. So that's kind of a little breakdown of what shot making is now.
What made Kobe the best shot maker of all time? Now, there's a bunch of little details I want to get into, but it all starts fundamentally with Kobe's obsessive work ethic. This was the thing that he's probably most remembered for. Right Like, if you get any NBA player who played during his era down into a podcast and talking with some hosts, and the host asked him, like, Hey, tell me a Kobe Bryant story. What are you probably gonna get?
You're probably gonna get something along the lines of like, oh yeah, tm USA in two thousand and eight, Like I couldn't believe it. We were getting back from, you know, going out and like Kobe was literally on his way to the gym, you know. Or it's like it'll be some story about after a game he was mad that he didn't shoot well, and so he he went out
on the court and made a thousand shots. Like there's just dozens and dozens of stories that we've all heard over the course of the last decade about Kobe's obsessive work ethic. The reason why that matters is, like I've told you guys so many times on this show. When I see improvements from players, especially young players in ball handling and shooting and footwork, I always talk about how
it's incremental improvement. Like you're if you're a college player right now and you're freshman or sophomore, and you shot, you know, thirty four percent on catch and shoot threes last year. If you want to bump that up from thirty four to thirty five percent next year, thirty six, thirty seven percent next year, you literally have to make thousands and thousands and thousands of shots to see that tiny,
tiny improvement. It is a very incremental thing. And so when I look at Kobe Bryant, who I believe was the most skilled player of his era, the player that had the best footwork of any guard in the league, the guy who had the best touch of any guard in the league, had different spots on the floor. He didn't get that by accident. He got that through obsessive work ethic and so as a result of that, he
built out this incredibly well rounded skill set. Right, So I want to I want to use one specific example, because we could talk like Kobe's shot making, it was so incredibly diverse, his face up, off the dribble shot making, his coming off of screen shot making, his post up shot making. But I want to focus on the post for justin just a quick minute as an example. So
let's look at a left block post up. So Kobe Bryant catches the ball ten to twelve feet away from the basket on the left block extended, and he's got his back to the basket. That's a classic kind of back arched look that you saw from Kobe over the years, kind of same sort of thing that he stole from MJ. Right, that's at least a flair. I actually think Kobe and
MJ are very different. They have some similarities, but like MJ had a quicker release, he was more poppy, vertical, like Kobe was legitimately a better shot maker, like tough, tough, over the top shot maker than MJ. Like, I kind of find them to be different in a lot of different ways. MJ was a better athlete and it was like more dynamic getting to the rim and stuff like that. So they're very different in my opinion, even though Kobe in many ways tried to replicate him. Right, But let's
imagine that left block post up. Okay, So Kobe's going to drop a left handed dribble and back you down to try to generate a little bit of separation, right, But as he comes out of that pound dribble, he's going to hold the ball in a left handed high hesitation from there he can literally go either way. And this is the important detail. Kobe's go to move is going to be that right shoulder fade right that shot that he comes back over that right shoulder shoot the
fade away towards the basket. They hit a million game winners like that in his career, right. But the key is it's not just the go to move, it's an equal counter move from the same situation. You have to have the counter move because that's what keeps the defense honest. Kobe was just as good with the left shoulder fade out of that high hesitation as he was with the
right shoulder fade. So he could sit in that left handed high hesitation out of the post up and he could pivot that way into a left shoulder fade, or he could pivot this way into a right shoulder fade, and so because of that, the defender is guessing. I'll give you guys an example. Lebron James, my favorite player, second best player of all time, a better player than
Kobe Bryant. But with Lebron, he has a very good right shoulder fade shooting over his right shoulder out of the post, but he has a bad left shoulder fade, and what happens is is defenders sit on his right shoulder fade, and so Lebron's right shoulder fade isn't as impactful as it should be or as it could be because defenders can sit on it, they can lean on that shoulder, and they can attack the shooting pocket expecting that shot to come. So Lebron has to take these little,
like really dramatic drifting fade aways over his right shoulder. Right. Kobe understood the fundamental basketball principle when it comes to scoring and shot making that every single move has to have an e equal and opposite counter move. If you have that equal and opposite counter move, then you always can make a read base on the defender. That's what allowed Kobe to when he would do that back down dribble if the defender was overplaying his right shoulder. Okay, fine,
I'm going to the left shoulder. That's a shot I can make just as well as I do that right shoulder fade. And look, I'm just using the post up as an example, but you see this from just about
every spot on the floor. Like among guards, there wasn't anybody you had a better left handed hook or a left handed floater in the league, because he could get into that he could dribble into the lane and spin back over that right shoulder on a dribble drive and go to a left handed floater or a left handed hook.
How many guards could do that in the NBA. And what's important about that is a lot of times when you're spinning over that right shoulder, you need to use this right arm to shield off the defender to create extra space. And again, like, I look at it, and it's the work ethic that juts out to me because it's like, do you understand how hard you have to work to build from the ground up a left handed hook as a right handed dominant player, especially as a guard, Like,
think about how crazy that is. Kobe probably only took maybe a dozen left handed hooks per season. But Kobe wanted to make that shot not just so that he could have that in his pocket, but so that it could keep defenders honest for his go to moves. That balance was something I think Kobe had mastered, and that's what I think made him the most skilled player in the late two thousands and the most gifted shot maker of all time. Now, a lot of people are going
to talk about efficiency. I'm gonna save that for later because I have an important kind of context I want to provide as it pertains to Kobe's efficiency. So kobe second claim to fame. I think Kobe is arguably the most obsessively competitive basketball player to ever touch a basketball court. He wanted to win so badly that he was willing to do all of the things that his peers weren't willing to. Kobe was a high volume ISO and post
scoring guard. If you look at his peers around the league, guys like Vince Carter and Alan Iverson and Ray Allen and t Mack and Gilbert Arnis and those guys, none of them gave a shit about playing defense. All those guys that just listed, none of them managed to log even one all defense selection. Kobe made twelve. Kobe made twelve all defense teams. He was obsessed with finding ways
to impact winning even when his shot wasn't falling. You guys might remember Game seven of the twenty ten NBA Finals where Kobe goes six for twenty four from the field. That stat gets thrown around all the time. Do you guys remember, by any chance, that Kobe had fifteen rebounds in that game. Do you guys remember by any chance that Kobe got to the foul line fifteen times in
that game? Do you guys remember by any chance that Kobe was guarding Rayjon Rondo, or rather not guarding him and roaming around the floor and wrecking havoc on the Boston offense, which only managed seventy nine points in that game. Kobe was so obsessed with winning. His competitiveness drove him to the point where he was willing to do what his peers were not, And I don't think it's a coincidence that that led to as much winning as you
saw in his career. There were downsides to his competitiveness, right, Like it caused him to be tough on his teammates, kind of like Michael Jordan was. It caused him to play hero ball sometimes. There were some shots that Kobe took that he probably shouldn't have. But it also has him going down as the third best perimeter player in NBA history in my opinion, behind mj and Michael Jordan, and coming down as the third best player overall over
the course of the last twenty five years. So like, I don't think those are I don't think that's a coincidence. I think it's directly tied to his overall competitiveness. All Right, Kobe's crowning achievement. Now, Kobe accomplished a ton in his career. I want to briefly kind of touch on that early stretch because they're one of the most common talking points he'll hear, is like, oh, like, you know, Kobe wasn't that good with the first three peat? You know, like
she was riding shacks co tails. And now here's the thing. Was Kobe the best player in the league on that first repeat? No? Was Kobe as good as Shaq No was? Like, was Kobe as good as he eventually became. No, But he was deeply impactful and made several huge plays on the way to the Lakers winning those three championships. I want I want to zoom in on the year, the two thousand playoff run to demonstrate this example. Now, Kobe
was twenty one years old in this particular season. He only averaged twenty one points per game in that playoff run, and that is frequently pointed to as like Kobe's coat tail riding championship. Right, I want to look at the two thousand Western Conference Finals at first against the Portland Trail Blazers. It's Game three, the series is tied at one. The game is tied at ninety one with less than a minute left. Scottie Pippen is in a post up and he tries to throw a pass to the weakside corner,
and he turns it over. Kobe gets the ball one years old, Western Conference Finals, series tied at one, not even the best player on his team. Dribbles the ball up the floor and says, I got this. Goes on the right wing. Portland throws a double team at him. Rather than forcing a stupid shot, He identifies Ron Harper in the left corner wide open, elevates over the top, throws a rope two handed pass to Ron Harper in
the corner, who knocks down the shot. It was basically the game winner, game winning play in the Western Conference Finals from Kobe Bryant over a double team as a twenty one year old in the year two thousand, Game seven. They're down by fifteen points early in the fourth quarter. Looks like this series is over. Kobe scores nine points in the quarter, including in the basically when the game was in the balance seventy nine to seventy nine with
less than two minutes left. Kobe drives hard to the rim off of a kickout from Shaq and the post draws a foul. Gets to the line, makes both free throws. Then she'd g gets fouled. A Rashid Wallace gets fouled on the other side of the court. He misses both free throws, but still Lakers by two. This game is still hanging in the balance. Kobe goes down, isolates Scottie Pippen, hits him with this like nasty in and out dribble, and knocks down a pull up jump shot. Now they're
up by four. Scotty Pippen goes down and misses a three on the left wing. Kobe gets it back and just buckles Scottie Pippen with his right to left crossover, literally like he's out of the frame, and he goes downhill and again, rather than forcing up something stupid, throws a perfect lob pass to Shaquille O'Neil, who dunks it. Now they're up six. Now the series is over and the Lakers are going to the NBA Finals. Does that sound like coat tail riding to you? It doesn't. That's
revisionist history. That's looking at box scores and acting like Kobe wasn't making championship level plays. He was. We're not even done. Game four of the NBA Finals. Shack fouls out in ot on, a loose ball, foul along the baseline, A bad foul. Nowby's in there by himself. He scores eight points in overtime to carry them to the win. Anyway, this ridiculous pound dribble between the legs, step back jump shot over Reggie Miller. Another off the dribble, pull up
jump shot over Mark Jackson. Then up by one with I think there's like ten seconds left ish and only like four seconds on the shot clock. He gets an offensive rebound put back, doesn't have the ball, stays invested in the play, gets good position under the basket. I think he got position on Reggie Miller if I remember correctly. Just elevates over the top of him and grabs the ball and guides it into the basket. Puts him up three with a few seconds left. That literally changed the
entire NBA Finals. Flakers up two games to one. Shack fouls out. Kobe doesn't make those plays. It's two to two series looks completely different. But no, twenty one year old Kobe Bryant took the damn game over. Now, I'm not gonna go through every single Oneobe's playoff moments because it would literally take forever. But that was the first title in his three pet at twenty one years old.
That's not tagging along that is that is one of the game's all time greatest players finding a way to help his team win on his way to his first of his five NBA championships. Now, the next two titles much more in line with what we expect from Kobe Bryant. Right twenty eight, seven and five. In those two playoff runs on fifty five percent true shooting, No one's saying shit about those two right now. After that, there was an extended draft of playoff success, right, they didn't win
an O three. That was the season where Shaq got surgery at the start of the season, didn't win an O four. Basically the story of those two years Shack got fat. That's that's basically the story. Like Shack, I believe he was up to like three hundred and ninety five pounds at that point. I think he's personally admitted that. So he was big at that point. But then Shaq leaves and things don't go well. Kobe doesn't win a
single playoff series for three years. Then Shaq wins a title in O six with the Heat and kind of like we talked about was Steph yesterday, Now a narrative starts to form. Right, Kobe's a ballhawk. He can't win without Shack. Right, we get the trade request on local Los Angeles radio, right like, it gets ugly there for a minute. Then power Gasol comes in and they end up losing to Boston. They get kind of back into relevance, but they lose to Boston. Right, So things were not great.
But this is where Kobe's crowning achievement came in. And I'm gonna start it with the two thousand and eight Olympics on the redeemed team before he won his two titles with the Lakers. You gotta remember when the shit hit the fan against Spain. There was a lot of young players on that team, Young Dwayne Wade, young Lebron James right, young Carmelo Anthony the like. In that situation when everybody had sweaty palms and was wondering what the
hell to do? Kobe stepped up and clearly asserted himself as the best basketball player alive in secuted the Spain national team. That was like that first kind of step into that crowning achievement, and then he follows that up with back to back titles with the Lakers in two thousand and nine and twenty ten. In those playoff runs, averages thirty points, six rebounds, and six assists on fifty five percent true shooting, and wins the first two finals
MVPs of his career. It went from all of the question marks surrounding Shack's departure and everything about Kobe and whether or not he was a winning player to you could not deny it. He was the best player in the world. Now, there was a debate at the time, was it Lebron or Kobe? Lebron or Kobe? Right, And that was the Orlando Magic ruin to the Lebron Kobe Finals. And to be clear, I think the Lakers would have beat that Calves team one. That Calves team had a
lot of shortcomings, but Lebron wasn't ready. Lebron wasn't ready yet. I mean, the twenty eleven series tells you all you need to know about that. That debate is interesting to me because, like it reminds me a lot of Yannis Lebron circa twenty twenty, where everyone's like, oh my god, Yannis the best player in the world. Look at this,
He's kicking everybody's ass. And don't get me wrong, I think Giannis was the best regular season player potentially, although I think Lebron deserved to win MVP that you're in a very good season, but like Jiannis was a very very good regular season player that was at Lebron's level, But then you got into the playoffs and Lebron's just clearly way better than him because with his age and his experience and having been through all those playoff wars
and having grounded out his skill set a little bit more feeling the pain and suffering of loss. I talk to you guys about that a lot. The pain and suffering of loss is the carrot that drives a competitor to that next level, and in that playoff run, Lebron
clearly demonstrated he was the better player. That's kind of the way I feel about Kobe in that era with Lebron, Like Lebron wins back to back MVP's two sixty plus win seasons with the Kaz probably the best regular season player in the league, but like Kobe was the guy that was most confident on the biggest stages and knew how to win high leverage basketball games. That's what led him to lead TSA in two thousand and eight, and that's what led him to get the job done in
two thousand and nine and in twenty ten. If I'm like breaking down your best player in the world eras right, you got like MJ in the nineties, right, and then you got like Shack from nineteen ninety nine to two thousand and two, Duncan from like two thousand and three to two thousand and seven, and then it's Kobe from two thousand and eight to twenty eleven or so until
Lebron took over in twenty twelve. Once twenty twelve came, Lebron had experienced enough pain from loss that he addressed a lot of his big weaknesses that were exposed in the Dallas Maverick series. And then suddenly from twenty twelve to twenty twenty, Lebron took over as like that definitive best player in the world. But I thought Kobe had that title there in the late two thousands. I thought he was better than Lebron in that period. Now, what is the biggest what if of Kobe's career? What if
Kobe had played in the modern era? Talked a little bit about this a few days ago or a week ago or so. But Kobe is a victim, in my opinion, of the modern day obsession with efficiency. We draw lines, we compare apples to apples eras here, when really the eras could not be more different, Like I broke down earlier, but it even goes deeper than that. The scoring, like the shot selection. The guys are taking more threes, guys are getting easier shots. In the spacing of the game.
There's more pace, which pushes up the volume of scoring to a certain degree. Right, There are a lot of things that influence that, but here's this is the best case for the fact that if Kobe played today, he'd be far more efficient than he was in the late two thousands. In the twenty thirteen season on a janky as Lakers team with dwy Howard and Pagasol Steve Nashen out of the lineup, you guys, remember he average twenty
seven six and six, it was a fifty. He shot fifty point four percent in effective field goal percentage, which was the highest mark of his career, his entire career. So literally he was peaking in terms of his efficiency in twenty thirteen, right before he got hurt. As the
league was changing. He was like thirty four. So like obviously, like he wasn't close to the athlete he was when he was younger, and so again like that to me is the dead giveaway, like Kobe was, like many players from that era, like Carmelo Anthony, right, like Alan Iverson, Like even if you look at Lebron James's efficiency in the era, it's lower everybody that played in the late two thousands and in the mid two thousands and early
two thousands. It was an ISO heavy league with very poor spacing, very slow pace, and guys just had to take a lot of really tough shots. Now, I want you, guys to envision Kobe Bryant playing in the Devin Booker
role with the Phoenix Suns over the last few years. Okay, I want you to imagine a really good pick and roll threat with good hands like DeAndre Ayden, outstanding backside shooting with Mikhale Bridges and Cam Johnson and Chris paul As like this guy that could you could throw the ball to and he could take possessions off so that you don't have to do it too much over the course of a game and fatigue and then just spamming high pick and roll in Spain pick and roll like
Devin Booker does. You don't think Kobe Bryant is going to have a sixty two percent true shooting percentage in that situation. Of course he is. He was like the best pull up jump shooter in the league when he was playing. He was literally the most skilled player in the league when he was playing. If you picked him up and you dropped him off on the twenty twenty two Sons in the regular season, he's averaging thirty two thirty three points per game. He's shooting sixty two sixty
three percent in true shooting percentage. He's lighting these guys up. He is, So don't compare apples to oranges. Don't compare a completely different game of basketball from fifteen years ago to what these guys have today. It's not the same. And I think that that I think when we talk because I think Kobe's the third best perimeter player of all time, behind Lebron and MJ. I've talked about this, right most. A lot of people have Kobe. My guy Carson has him further back at guys have him closer
to ten. A lot some people have him like twelve thirteen. I'm like, are you kidding me? Twelve time All Defense, eleven time first Team All NBA most skilled player in the league, five time NBA champion, victim of some of the like Literally, I think people saw James Harden scoring totals, intro shooting percentages and just decided Kobe was overrated. It's
the dumbest thing. I really don't understand. But yeah, that's the biggest one if of Kobe's career, in my opinion, is what if he had played in the modern era? All right? Only one? Only time for one male back question today? This is from Ali At least, if I'm interpreting the YouTube handle correctly, I believe your name is Ali. Having started watching the NBA for the past two to three years, Why don't most teams use zone defense in
the playoffs like Miami did? And why did Miami use it sparingly like Spo didn't even use it all the time, Like, I know the personnel and coaching have to be immaculate to pull it off, and I get reserving it for the surprise element, But even still, having seen how effectively the Heat deployed it against the Bucks and Celtics, I don't get why Miami or other teams are who I am sure have better personnel than Miami can't seem to
want to employ it. Very good question. I find this one very interesting because this is kind of like a tactical thing with the game of basketball. So there's a very specific reason, in my opinion, why teams don't use zone more frequently in the NBA. Zone has baked in
weaknesses in a man demand's scheme. When the personnel run it correctly, there are no holes, right, Like, let's just talk about a drop coverage scheme where you defend pick and roll two on two with typical week side help, where guys have a foot in the paint, but they're in a position where they can rotate out. Okay, In that situation, if the guard chases over the top of the screen properly and stays attached, the offensive guard has
no choice but to continue to go downhill. If he continues to go downhill, he going to run into the center who's in drop coverage, and the roleman's rolling directly
into it. Right, even if you talk about like specific openings, like let's say it's a pick and pop play where the big man's in drop coverage and the guy stays attached over the top, and now the pass to the to the big man popping to the top of the key is open in theory, if the defender on the weak side rotates to the top to the shooter, the big man can rotate out and you're matched up again. Right, The man demand principles, when executed properly, don't have openings.
When you see guys score or make shots against man defense, it's either they made a contested shot or someone didn't do their job. There's a breakdown. Zone defense is entirely different.
There are literally gaps in it like it is because of the nature of the zone when teams run overload sets, or they run high low, or they run ball screens at the top like there are automatic baked in openings in zone defense, and so as a result for that of that, when you run zone defense in large doses against professional basketball players, they will solve it, they will consistently get great shots and they will beat you. That's why zone defense in the NBA is best used in
very small bursts because it's a rhythm disruptor. Because in a small sample size, an NBA offense is gonna be like, oh shit, they're running zone. The first time they see it. They might not identify its zone until there's ten seconds on the shot clock, and then they don't have time to run anything and someone jacks up a bad shot.
Then they go down again and they have to remember what their zone offense was, which in the NBA regular season, they don't practice, so like they're like then their head, they're like, okay, we need yeah, you know, ad go to the high post or no, no, go to the baseline. We'll have Lebron play the high post. Blah blah blah. And then and then they start doing it, but they
it just it's yank because they haven't practiced it. But then if you run it seven possessions in a row and there's a timeout mixed in there, they drop their set really quick. They run in a few times. They're professional basketball players. They're gonna find those baked in holes and they're gonna exploit them. It's not just holes in the defense's holes in rebounding by virtue of five players
guarding spots on the floor versus guarding players. When offensive players move around, rebounding matchups get confused, and so usually someone's going to miss a box out and you'll give up an offensive rebound. The zone defenses are inherently flawed, and that's why they are best used as rhythm disruptors. And the only reason it made sense for Miami to use and any sort of sample size is the fact that Denver was barbecuing their man and man defense so
badly that they had no choice but to try something different. Right. But yeah, so that's very good question from Ali. We have two more players this week and then we're going to get into twenty season previews starting next week. Don't forget to drop mailback questions in the YouTube comments. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys, and I will see you tomorrow. The volume