Hoops Tonight - Top 5 NBA Takeaways: How Celtics won, what cost Mavericks & Lakers

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you guys are having a great week so far. So we were supposed to get to this show last week, but then the JJ Redick News kind of pushed it off for a couple of days, and then obviously at the beginning of this week, I wanted to get to some drafts to just so it had a couple of days before the draft actually happened, which is very soon, as you guys know. So we are finally going to get around to our five biggest takeaways from this NBA postseason. This is a podcast that we do every single year

right after the playoffs. It is a basketball tactics focus podcast, and the goal of it is, to put it simply, we are trying to learn as much about the game

in the long run. We are all students of the game of basketball, right, so, like we want to learn from what happened in this playoff run as well as what has happened in recent playoff runs, put all that information into like a basketball worldview that helps us understand And obviously, predictions are a fool's errand no one ever predicts everything correctly, but we do want to try to

do better, right. It is a it is a It is something that we strive to do even though we know we're gonna fail, right Like, we're gonna fail, We're gonna get wrong picks, we're gonna misread series. But we want to try as as hard as we can to

learn and understand the game at a higher level. And so we have two months of dat, yeah, two months of new data from these fifteen playoff series that we just watched, and we're going to try to sort through that to find the five biggest takeaways to help us understand NBA basketball at a higher level as we move into future seasons. You guys know the drill. Before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so

you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLT so you guys don't miss you announcements. Sont forget about a podcast feed wherever you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight, and then keep dropping mail bag questions in the YouTube comments. I know we bumped the mail bag for the JJ Redick News, so I owe you guys one. We're going to get to that at the end of this week so that it can run over the weekend. So keep dropping mailbag questions

in those YouTube comments. In the last min at least before we get started, I want to talk to you guys about game time. An amazing ticket buying experience. Had a great experience with them earlier this year when I went to McHale Center to watch the University of Arizona men's basketball team. It's kind of the last minute thing. Got a great seat, got a great deal, knew exactly what I was getting before I showed up to the arena. It was just an awesome experience. I want you guys

to check it out. And yeah, there's not any professional basketball anymore for us to watch, but we've got Major League Baseball, We've got concerts, we've got comedy shows. I'm going to see Debt and Company at the Sphere the week of the week of Summer League. There's also a USA Basketball showcase against Canada that week that you can get tickets to. There are plenty of the events between

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tickets with game Time. Download the Game Time app, Create an account, use code hoops for twenty dollars off your first purchase. Terms apply again. Create an account, and redeem code Hoops. That's Hoops for twenty dollars off your first purchase. Download game time today, last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. All right, let's talk some basketball. So in terms of picks, this is actually kind of a funny playoff run. So we had fifteen series, right, we picked ten of them correctly.

The blind spots were Minnesota and New York. So all five series that I picked incorrectly either involved the Knicks or the Timberwolves. I picked the Timberwolves to lose to the Suns based on their regular season record. Also some game plan stuff with Frank Vogel that I thought would work against Minnesota could not have been more wrong. That was a sweep. I picked the Timberwolves to lose to Denver.

That was one of the most bizarre series I can ever remember seeing, between Minnesota going up two to ozho on the road and then getting their ass kicked at home twice, and then Denver winning Game five and then blowout Game six, Denver being up twenty in the second half of Game seven, Minnesota coming back to win with that crazy run. That was a wild series. But I picked against the Timberwolves in that one and then I picked for the Timberwolves against the Mavericks, and then they

ended up getting their ass kicked. So Timberwolves were a major blind spot for me this year. And then the Knicks. I picked against the Knicks and the Sixers series because I thought Tyres Max and Joel Embiid would just kind of present a two layers of top tier shot creation against one, and I just thought in the half court it'd be too much of an advantage. But the Knicks

more than made up for it with their toughness. And then Jalen Brunson just reached a level in this playoff run that I didn't think he was capable of, to be honest, and he just proved me wrong in a lot of ways. And then I picked the Knicks to beat the Pacers. Obviously there were some injuries there, but I did think that was funny looking back out of the I picked ten out of the fifteen series corrected.

All five of the incorrect picks were involved with the same two teams, So that goes to show you that that was Those were major blind spots for me, and I got to try to learn from those that we can avoid those mistakes in the future. So without any further ado, let's get to the five biggest things that I learned in this postseason run. Number one, regular season

success doesn't protect you from a bad matchup. So, for instance, the Bucks were a better team than the Pacers all year long, but even extend into the regular season, they could not handle Indiana's perimeter speed on both ends of the floor, just their ability to move quicker, cover more ground, beat people to spots on offense, beat people off the dribble on when the Bucks were on defense. It was just an incessant mismatch and overall speed on the floor.

Milwaukee could never contain the ball in the half court Oran transition. It was a problem for them that they never solved. And so yeah, obviously there were injuries involved, but that manifested even before Jannis's injury in the regular season when the Bucks just consistently struggled with that Indiana

Pacers team. I think the Nuggets were a better basketball team overall top to bottom than Minnesota, but Minnesota had the ability to back pressure Jamal Murray in ball screens in the size to fatigue Jokic and play him into a bad defensive series, and they couldn't keep Anthony Edwards in front off the dribble. In retrospect, looking back at that Bruce Brown piece that they let go over the summer, that would have been a guy that could have swung

that series back in favor of Denver. Something to keep in mind as we see teams that let go of important role players after winning a title. We saw the Bucks after twenty twenty one they let go of PJ. Tucker that they end up losing in the second round the next year. Obviously, injuries played a role, right We even see just decline from specific players from the Warriors, they look like a different team. The Lakers throw out their entire championship roster two years later they end up

falling apart. Like a lot of times, we underrate the contributions of important role players, and Bruce Brown was the one player on Denver that could have athletically at least given Anthony Edwards a tougher job to beat off the dribble and in terms of just matching some of his physicality.

I also think Jamal Murray's injury was something that I thought was interesting there in the sense that I talked about during the regular season, I would have been surprised if Denver didn't win the type as long as all five of their starters were healthy, and as it turned out, Jamal Murray with his calf that ankle injury that Ecatavious call Well Pope suffered in Game five against the Lakers where he was starting to get he ended up having to go back to the locker room in that game.

They just got a little banged up, a little fatigued, and it ended up being an issue. But during the regular season, I thought the Nuggets were a better basketball team than Minnesota. The big thing that people forget too is when Jamal Murray was healthy, the Nuggets won at over a sixty one win pace, So like they were a team on Boston's tier when they were actually healthy and whole. It was when Jamal Murray was out that they you know, kind of hovered around five hundred and

it put them into a predicament in the standings. But the Nuggets were a traditional top tier contender that ran into a Tier two contender, But because it was a bad matchup, they ended up losing. And we're going to get into some of the matchup stuff later, But like the Timberwolves were a better team than the Mavericks all year long, but the MAVs couldn't protect the rim, and Looke was too big for all of Minnesota's excuse me, the MAVs could protect the rim. So like, Anthony Edwards

driving against Yusuf Nurkic, no match up there. Anthony Edwards driving against Nicola Jokic, no problem there, right, Anthony Edwards driving with Daniel Gafford and Derek Lively under the rim, totally different situation. His RIM attempts and efficiency cratered in

that series. It was a huge problem, right, So like, even though the Timberwolves were a better team than the Mavericks all year long, the MAVs could keep Anthony Edwards away from the rim, and Luca was too big for Jane McDaniels, and he was too big for Anthony Edwards, and he was too big for everybody, and it rendered the strength of Minnesota's defense, their perimeter core. It rendered it effectively useless, and that became a problem that Minnesota

couldn't overcome. So like, regular season success just does not protect you from a bad matchup. The last example that I wanted to give was the Mavericks defense. Maverick's defense was really good in the first three rounds. They had one eleven defensive rating, but they fell apart in the finals. And everyone's going to point to the offensive rating because Boston only was at I think like one to sixteen offensive rating or something like that. But it wasn't about

the aggregate offensive rating. It was moments in time where Dallas literally could not get stops. In the first half of Game one, Boston had a one to thirty four offensive rating as they built that massive deficit, which effectively

was the game. In Game two, there was a sixteen minute span between the second and third quarters, sixteen minutes so a little over a quarter where Boston scored forty four points on Dallas's defense went from a one point game to a thirteen point game in sixteen minutes because their defense completely fell apart. In Game three, it was a seven point game with three minutes left in the third quarter. Boston scores nineteen points over the next four minutes and they're up by twenty one. It was an

onslot where Dallas's defense cracked right. In Game four, Boston had a one forty six offensive rating in the first half, so just time and time again, that defense for Dallas, which was a strength in specific matchups. As soon as they ran into Boston, a team that could truly space them out, drive and kick at every single position, all of a sudden, Dallas's defense looked like it wasn't up to the challenge. And so that's the key here. That's

the first major lesson matchup resiliency matters. To win four rounds and again to hoist Hilario O'Brien, you need to win four rounds, not three, not two. You have to win four. In order to win four rounds, you will likely have to beat different types of teams led by different types of stars. Minnesota was able to guard Devin Booker and Kevin Durant extremely well, and Bradley Beal. They were able to guard Jamal Murray extremely well. They could

not guard Luka Doncics. So like again, it's about beating different types of teams. It's about being able to contend with different types of stars. That is, look at Denver last year having Aaron Gordon to guard every big forward along the way. Aaron Gordon can guard Lebron who's big and strong like Jaden McDaniels, is a better defender than Aaron Gordon. He's capable of guarding more types of guys,

but Aaron Gordon is good at guarding big forwards. So that specific matchup gave Denver a defensive strength for the types of players they had to go through. KD no problem, Lebron James, no problem, Jimmy Butler, no problem, right, Jaden McDaniels on Luca big fucking problem. Right. And so that's where that matchup resiliency matters. Number two, the team that is the most matchup resilient is always a team that is at or near the top of the standings. This

was a fascinating stat that I pulled. Those of you guys who listened to the Cowhard Show after the finals will remember this one all righttually. I think this was from the Yovann Bouhash Show. In the last thirteen years, twelve of the NBA champions had one of the four best records in the league, twelve out of thirteen times top four in the standings. The one exception was the twenty twenty one Milwaukee Bucks, who, if I remember correctly,

Brook Lopez missed a huge chunk of that season. They were consistently a top of the standings team in the years surrounding that year, and that was that weird COVID season where all those replacement players were playing. It was just a weird season, right, So you can kind of throw that one out. NBA history tells us, Modern NBA history tells us, if you want to actually hoist Hilario O'Brien, then you need to be one of the four best records in the league over the course of the eighty

two right now. Why is that? Because we do see teams get close right over the course of eighty two. Is when you establish habits, It's when you demonstrate your attention to detail. Habits and attention to detail are what carry you in a when you find yourself in a big game and it's game five of the series and it's eighty five, eighty five, with five minutes left, and everyone's nervous, no one's shooting. Well, it's a rock fight.

What are we gonna do? Generally speaking, the team that is really sharp with their habits, that shows great attention to detail, they're gonna make fewer mistakes and execute better over the final five minutes and give themselves a better chance to win. That is why it's one of the top four seeds that always wins. It's not just talent. Talent is a big part of it. And that's what

I have next on the notes, reflection of talent. Super talented teams will just find the way to win games and therefore will be at the top of the standings. But it is both. It is a demonstration of your talent and it is a demonstration of your attention to detail and the time you've spent establishing habits that will carry you when you get into adverse situations in the

NBA postseason. So we know from number one, you gotta be able to beat different types matchups, right like that, Like teams lose to lesser teams than the standings all the time because of a bad matchup. That said, the team that is most matchup resilient is always at the top. Now I say in the top four, meaning sometimes those guys get exposed, but the team that actually holds the

trophies going to be one of those teams. What that means is next year, when there's a team that is the seventh best record in the league or the ninth best record in the league, and we're like, this team can win the title. Probably not, though NBA history tells us probably not right. And again like that, that to me is a consistent piece. It's like I'm a I'm a Lakers fan. You guys know I have bias there. Right, There's a reason why I never put them in that

top tier of contenders. And the reason was simple. NBA history tells us, you gotta be one of those teams. You it is always Oh, the one Laker team that won under Lebron James started twenty four and three was the number one seed in the Western Conference. That's not a coincidence. That is a reflection of one how talented that team was and two how seriously they approached the

regular season from day one. So I do think that at some point in the next ten years, we'll see a team that's outside of the top four that sneaks in and wins a championship. It'll probably happen just like the Bucks did in twenty twenty one. Right, But that is exceedingly rare. And so when we're talking about these things, when it comes time to rank contenders at the end of the year or in the middle of the year, chances are the team that hoists the trophy will be in that Top four.

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A good NBA shot, a good basketball shot begins with a paint touch, begins with the ability to get the ball in the paint in some way, shape or form, and that is a prerequisite. So what I mean by that is when we see teams that struggle to generate rim pressure, something to keep in mind when we get into later playoff rounds and how resilient their offense can be. Right, how do you generate rim pressure? As I mentioned, there's a bunch of different ways. One beating people off the dribble.

This is the most basic version of it, right, This is what Boston does most of the time. They Boston generates rim pressure in other ways too, like they'll slip out of actions into the short roll area and just throw the ball over the top. They'll post up sometimes Boston does it different ways. But the main way that Boston generates room pressure is just you can't keep Jason Tatum in front off the dribble. You can't keep Jalen Brown in front off the dribble. Neither is like you're

gonna see Drew Holliday beat people off the dribble. You're gonna see Derek White beat people off the dribble. They generate space and they beat people off the dribble. That is the foundational starting point of Boston's offense. Once they beat someone off the dribble, that's when they start playing advantage basketball, which we've talked about at length on this show. But that first step is the important part. If you can't get that first bit of dribble penetration, then Boston's

offense can struggle. Right If you can't get that first slip of a ball screen that gets that paint touch, that's where everything starts. Like when remember when Boston had that really rough stretch of offense spanning the second and third quarters of Game one in the Finals. There was a stretch there for like four minutes where they literally didn't get a single paint touch. That is the foundational

piece of quality. NBA shots got to get the ball in the paint, So beating people off the dribble, roll gravity and pick and roll right. So like Dallas, for instance, their rim pressure wasn't Luca or Kyrie toasting people off the dribble on straight line drives. It was methodically working downhill with this vertical space or this rim threat barreling down the lane that if you didn't tag, he was

get dunking everything. And if you did tag, that was where they got the quality perimeter attempts in the skip passed to the corner. Right, So roll gravity and pick and roll is another way to generate rim pressure that extends beyond traditional pick and roll two to slipping. So like when Luca would get blitzed, if you could throw the ball to Derek Lively and Derek Liively's barreling down the lane, that's rim pressure in a different way. Right three,

cutting along the baseline. So this is like like I talked about earlier. If Derek Glively's barreling down the lane and you have that opening for a guy to cut along the baseline, if it's an athlete that can dunk everything, that is rim pressure. Aaron Gordon does that for the Nuggets, Ruby Hachimura and on an Ad all three of them do that for the Lakers. Right, Like, rolling and cutting are important ways to generate rim pressure in similar ways

to what dribble penetration does. And then lastly, attacking the offensive glass. This was what the New York Knicks did for rim pressure. Jalen Brunson wasn't toasting people off the dribble. They pressured the rim with relentless crashing from the perimeter, mainly by their guards but also from their bigs to dominate on the offensive glass. That was how they pressured

the rim. Right, But all of those different methods, dribble penetration, roll gravity, cutting gravity, offensive glass crashing, all of those have counters that defenses can use to minimize. Right. So, for instance, like Minnesota was really good at beating people off the dribble, but as soon as they packed the paint with rim protection, it rendered that useless and suddenly Minnesota had a big problem. Right, Dallas, they had the

advantage of roll gravity for their rim pressure. Sure well, Boston puts Jason Tatum onto their center and Al Horford switching screens that involved Derek Jones Jr. Suddenly that role gravity is completely mitigated. Dallas can't generate rim pressure. Their offense falls apart. Right. So, as much as rim pressure is valuable, it's important to be able to do it in a resilient way against different kinds of defense. How do you handle beating people off the dribble by packing

the paint. How do you handle roll gravity, switching ball screens, how do you handle cutting along the baseline. In order for cuts to be open, you have to have that initial advantage. So as long as you shut off the dribble and shut off the pick and roll, those cuts aren't even open anymore. As far as the offensive glas goes, it's much harder to defensive rebound when you're in rotation. So if you're containing the ball and you're containing the role,

offensive rebounds are that much harder to get right. So it's not just rim pressure, it's resilient pressure. So, for instance, Dallas was good at generating rim pressure on the roll, but bad on the dribble, and so when the role was shut down, they had no other way to generate rim pressure right offense falls apart. Minnesota great at driving, but no additional kinds of rim pressure. Their roller Rudy Gobert is one of the worst role men in the league.

Has stone hands, struggles to make layups. If it's not a wide open dunk, he's not getting it right. Also, Minnesota's passers are not great at actually making the lob pass when it's available, and so basically the role gravity piece is missing for Minnesota, right, And so when one gets shut off, everything gets shut off. Right. So what's fascinating to me about Boston is they had resilient rim pressure.

If you put an excellent perimeter defender on Jason Tatum and you made his life a living hell, someone else was beating somebody off the dribble, try packing the paint against Boston. It's not gonna work. They're too good at shooting, right. So like when we see a dribble drive team with a dribble drive guard, if they're gonna win four rounds, they're probably gonna need to space the floor really well, meaning they're gonna need to have a lot of shooting

around them. Right. If they're a pick and roll team and they generate their rim pressure through the role, they better have a counter. So, for instance, one of the things that I was kind of disappointed in is I did not think Luca did enough work in the post against Boston. That is a great counter, and I should have listed that as one of the ways you can generate rim pressure. Posting up is a way to generate rim pressure. And that's the thing like when teams switch

ball screens against Lebron and ad. What do they do They spam Lebron and AD post ups as a counter to that. Right, So, like again, having multiple ways to generate rim pressure so that you can do so against multiple types of defenses that ultimately will lead to consist high quality shots. Right. So the last piece of this is creating space. If you can create space that allows you to maintain rim pressure. How can you create space two ways shooting and spacing the floor with ball and

player movement. Right, start was shooting. The last three champions were all elite shooting teams Boston elite shooters at all eight rotation spots. That was how they generated spacing. Denver, it was kind of inverted, but because Aaron Gordon was running along the baseline and he's not a good spacer. But because Jokic could operate away from the basket, that created a spot for Aaron Gordon to operate along the baseline. And then all four other starting spots were elite shooters

when they won the title. Jokic was an elite shooter, Jamal Murray was an elite shooter. Michael Porter Junior was an elite shooter. Kentavious Callwell Pope was an elite shooter, so like they had elite shooting at the other four spots and a perfect spot on the floor that was vacant for Aaron Gordon to operate. That was where they generated their spacing Golden State. Kevon Looney and Raymond Green were dribble handoff guys, so like they didn't need to shoot.

They were primarily operating as fulcrums in the offense. But every other player could shoot. They shot thirty eight percent from three as a team in that playoff run. Lots of guys for them stepped up and knocked down shots, and so the ability to shoot the basketball is a prerequisite nowadays. The last three champions were all really good shooting teams. The second piece of it spacing the floor with ball in player movement. So this was the rub

on Dallas, right. They ran the occasional action, but for the most part it was a brute force. Here's a guard screen at the start of the possession to get a switch for Luca. Now we're going to run a ball screen. They did some things like they clear the side. Occasionally, they'd occasionally run a stack pick and roll or a double drag or something like that. They ran occasional action. But for the most part, it was very heliocentric, very

brute force, very methodical, very predictable. Right, and they they made themselves easy to guard in Boston shut them down. The last three teams to win the title were all teams that either had excellent ball or player movement. How did Boston win ball movement? Right? Beating someone off the dribble, trusting the pass, the ball's popping around, this guy's driving, that guy's driving, this guy's driving, that guy's driving. We're getting a great shot out of it. Right. How did

Denver win awesome player movement? Right? They're a quintessential five out offense. How did Golden State win awesome player movement?

much as possible. Number four offensive organization matters. This is something that I was late to the party on and It's something that I had a little bit too close mind of an opinion on before the last couple of seasons, and something that just covering the NBA very closely helped me learn. I used to be Those of you guys who have listened to the show for a while will remember this. I used to believe. I used to be

a believer in brute force offense. And part of that is because I grew up watching Lebron James, the one guy in NBA history who's been able to like dominate games in a very heliocentric type of manner. Although I think it's overstated how heliocentric he was compared to some of the guys that do it now. But Lebron was a guy who could slowly dribble the ball off the floor and call for a ball screen and it just somehow was resilient through four rounds of the playoffs consistently right,

Like it worked for him in a way. But I mean, like, Lebron is probably the most gifted athlete to ever play in the NBA, if not the most gifted athlete to ever play a sport, so like he's the accept that proves the rule right, But like when it comes to brute force offense. It worked in NBA history with overly dominant physical presences, right, But for the most part, in order to be a functional offense through multiple rounds, through multiple matchups, with real resiliency, you do have to be

more complicated in your offensive approach. This is something again I was late to the party, but to me, the Dallas series just hammered it home Luca in terms of the heliocentric guy, no one's doing it better than Luca right now, and strictly on the offensive end, he was doing it at a level pretty close to what prime Lebron did, right, Like, that's how good Luca was. And Boston shut their offense down. Guys, it wasn't they were down a little bit. They were down like twenty percent

from where they were in the regular season. Their offense completely cratered against Boston because they were too rudimentary. There wasn't enough complication in their approach. They made themselves easy to guard. And even the guy that might be the best player in the world, I think he's probably closer

to second. But a guy who's a bona fide top tier superstar was rendered relatively ineffective regardless of what his box score numbers were, their offense didn't function, and that, to me was like the final nail in the coffin for that archaic belief that I had. I think you need to have legitimate ball in player movement to win in the modern NBA. And so I broke this down into four parts, I should say, three parts with an

overarching take. First of all, you gotta run action to start possessions, Like at the very least, you need to be diligent when you get the ball up the floor in the early phase of the clock to run something that is more complex than just a ball screen with a space floor. To me, what I'm looking at here for the most part is things like three man action.

So let's just take horn sets for example. If you at least start the possession with three guys involved, a ball handler and two additional screeners, and maybe it's a screen the screener, maybe it's a double drag, maybe it's just something complicated at the start of the possession, it will make it harder for the base defense to run their base defensive scheme. Right, They're going to get into some confusing situations because there's three people involved. In that

initial action rather than two. And like again, there are going to be possessions where you run two man game early in sets. Right, if you push in transition and the transition defense gets back and you swing it back out to the perimeter and you flow into a ball screen. I'm not saying that you're not going to have possessions like that that are in the flow. Of course you are.

But I think every NBA team should be striving to have a higher percentage of their offense, a higher percentage of their possessions that begin with something more complicated, just something simple like like think of, for example, like Horn's chest, the play that the Lakers used to run for Lebron to or still run for Lebron to get a jump shot. Right, So Anthony Davis, just imagine I'm the ball handler. I'm standing at the top of the key, extended out close

to half court. Right, I've got Anthony Davis on the left elbow extended up to up to three point line, and I have Lebron at the right elbow extended up to the three point line. I dribble off of Lebron on a ball screen, and then Lebron comes off of a d and a flare screen, you skip the ball to Lebron over there. From there, if he's not open, Lebron can catch and flow into a dribble hand off with the guy coming out of the corner. And now

we can run five out motion right. But at the very least at the start of the possession, we're gonna make them defend something complicated, right, And the idea is, let's say that's Austin Reeves that's on the ball. If Austin Reeves comes off of Lebron at that right elbow, if Lebron's man shows at all, then Lebron already has separation as he comes off that second screen. If Lebron's man doesn't show, and Lebron sets a good screen, Austin

Reeves is going downhill in the basket. He has to show, right. But once he shows, now as Lebron comes off the screen from Ad, now AD's man has to show. If he doesn't, then Lebron gets a wide open catch and shoot three. And he got a lot of wide open catch and shoot threes out of that set this year. Is a big part of They ran it a lot because Lebron was shooting catching shoot three, so well, right, So if Lebron's man doesn't show, Austin's going to the rim.

If he does when Lebron comes off Ad, now AD's man has to make a decision. If AD's man shows and Austin's man is chasing him and Lebron's man showed on Austin, now AD's wide open on the roll. Right, it gets much more complicated even from the standpoint of switching. There are ways that that gets complicated. Okay, Austin's man switches on to Lebron on Lebron's man switches on to Austin. Then AD's man switches on to Lebron. Blah blah blah blah.

That gets complicated. And now that opens things up for switches, bot switches slips, Like what if Lebron ran like he was gonna go off AD and then just suddenly cut down to the basket. They fuck up the switch. Now he's wide open on the slip like that sort of three man action is just so much harder to guard than a two man action. A two man action, it's like, are we switching cool? Are we icing cool? Are we in drop? Are we in deep drop? Or am I blitzing?

Am I hedging, whatever it is. It's just so much easier to manage in a two man get in a two man game than it is in a three man game. If you just run up the floor and run stack, pick and roll, meaning like you set up a ball screen, but you have as Lebron's coming off of Ad, you have Austin backscreen for AD's man. It's the same sort of thing. There's if Austin's man shows to stop Ad on the roll, then Austin's gonna be wide open for

three at the top of the key, right. If he doesn't, then AD's gonna be wide open on the lot or Lebron's gonna be able to go all the way to the rim for layup because Austin just backscreened their rim protector. Right. Like those are again, I'm not sitting here acting like they're the magic elixer. Like if you run three man action, you're just gonna get a wide open look every single time. It just makes it harder. It makes it easier for

you as the offense to get the defense in rotation. Again, if Lebron, let's imagine the horns chest set like I just described, which again is just Austin dribbles off Lebron. Lebron comes off of flare from Ad at the top of the key. If Lebron catches there on the wing and he's not wide open, chances are the defenders closing out at him. If he's closing out at him, Lebron can flow into a dribble handoff. And now that next action gets complicated because Lebron's defender is out of position.

All it is is like think of it as like trying to crack the defense the defenses, right, you crack it at first, so it breaks on the next action. And those are the phases, right, There's all these phases to offense. Right, there's the push and transition. Right. Then there's early offense, which is like semi transition. So if like you push in transition and you don't get a dunk,

usually teams will have basic transition principles for early offense. Right, Like early things, you run in the first few seconds of the clock. Right, In the event that that doesn't work, you either run into five out flow or you go run a set right, depending on how much time is left on the clock. Right, but let's say a guy makes a free throw. Guy makes a free throw. You're walking up the floor. The first step is run an action. Run that three man action somewhere some sort of set

to at least crack the defense. Then you go into your five out flow. Five out flow is just playing basketball off of whatever the initial advantage is. So, for instance, if Lebron in Horn's chest catches on the left wing and he dribbles into a dribble hand off with let's call it Ruey Hatchramura coming out of the left corner, there would be a second guard, so let's call it D'Angelo Russell or hypothetical third guard or second guard that the Lakers trade for. Okay, so let's just say pretend

it's to John Taymury. Okay, Lebron go flows into the dribble handoff, hands it to de Jonte Murray. As Dejontay Murray comes out, Anthony Davis is sliding over to set the second ball screen right, and it's just you're flowing in basic five out principles, which are basically just dribble handoffs and ball screens that flow into one another, and whoever's in that opposite corner, whoever catches the kickout pass.

If he's not open for three. If he's not open to drive a close out, he can flow into another action. You run your initial set, and then you run five out motion until you get some sort of compromising of the defense, meaning they're actually in a straight up closeout situation. Then you play driving kick basketball. Right, there's a phase to it, and what I'm saying here is too many teams skip that first phase, which is running an action at the start of the possession, and when you skip that,

you just make life harder for you. If I'm Lebron James and I'm just running a dribble handoff with de Jontay Murray out of the left corner in a set ded defense situation, it is very unlikely to end in something successful. But if I run that dribble handoff as it flows out of a three man action on the top of the key, it's much more likely that there'll be They'll just be more disheveled on that side of the floor, which will create opportunities to extend the advantage there.

And then you just keep running it until you get a close out, and from there you play drive and kick. It's just it's to me, it's really this symbol. It's about being resilient to defensive adjustments. If you run brute force, slow down, spread, spread, pick and roll, spread, post up,

whatever it is you're gonna do. If you run that stuff, a specific matchup like a defender who's good at guarding your star could cause problems an adjustment like switching matchups like okay, we're gonna have a forward guard your center. That can screw things up. But as soon as you turn your offense into a blender with lots of ball and player movement, it just makes you more resilient to

those defense of adjustments. And so one of the biggest lessons that I've learned this year, and it's been a lesson that I've been slowly learning over the last few years, is like, it doesn't matter how good your star is, you need to run complicated, organized offense to try to make these defenses work harder. NBA defenses have I know, it's hard to imagine, just with the way scoring has gone over the last few years, but most of that has to do with three point shooting. NBA defenses are

profoundly sophisticated. They're profoundly sophisticated, and they're profoundly athletic. Everyone's so fast, everyone can cover so much ground in rotation. The game plans are getting more and more complex in a good way, like they're figuring out how to slow down these modern offenses. You have to be one step ahead of them, and the only way you're going to be one step ahead of them is if you mess

up their execution. It's one thing to have a game plan in place, it's another thing to actually do it. And it's easier to defend a two man action than a three man action. It's easy to defend a two man action against a set defense than a two man action when the defense is disheveled, and so everything is about making those diligent steps early in possessions to break down the defense and make things easier for you. Lastly,

number five defensive versatility. It doesn't matter if you have a good base scheme if you can't handle a team that takes you out of your base scheme. So Dallas, they were a load up the strong side like pack the paint type of defense didn't matter against Boston when they could spread them out. Right. Minnesota was a drop coverage team with Rudy Gobert Right with excellent perimeter defenders,

they wanted to stay home off the ball. That didn't work because of specific personnel issue is that they had involving Luka Doncic right, just being too big for them. Their Their defense didn't just fail against Dallas, it failed miserably, right, something silly like Miles Turner hitting pick and pop threes and the issues that presented for Milwaukee and for New York and even for Boston early in the series. Right, they ended up having to put Jason Tatum on him

and and have Pascal Siakam be guarded by Al Horford. Right. So like, it's one thing for your defense to succeed against against a specific type of matchup or in your base scheme, but you need to be able to guard in different ways. What do you need to be able to guard in different ways? You need you need to have all five players on the floor be at least decent at guarding in space. This is where they're I want to draw attention to the difference between Luka Doncicic

and Steph Curry. Steph Curry is a weaker defender, right. He is just a little bit small, right, and he's he's bigger than people think, but he's he's a little bit small, right, and teams are gonna target them. That's just smart. Often going after Luca is in a sign of disrespect. It's just being smart. If you're not, if you don't get extra points for attacking the other team's best defender, you need to find the weak link and

attack it for the sake of your offense. Right. But from there, there's a baseline level of competence you need in order for the team to still function defensively around you. Steph Curry understood. If I do my job, if I hedge and recover, I can protect myself from switches when I get in switches. If I just slide my feet and contain and force into tough contested jump shots, maybe they go in, but at least it's lower percentage. Right, Like,

Steph has lost some of those battles. Lonnie Walker hitting jumpers in his face in the twenty twenty three season, right, that was a big swing factor in Game four, Kyrie Irving hitting the step back jumper over Steph in the twenty sixteen finals. He's lost some of those battles, but statistically speaking, if Steph can at least force them into a tough pull up jump shot. He's done his job.

Where Luca became a problem was he was straight up completely incapable of doing anything against Boston spread out defense. He's getting toasted off the dribble like literally no resistance, just getting beat in rotation, was constantly lost in getting caught in no man's land where he's not contesting shots or running to the next guy on the defensive glass.

Part of this was fatigue, but he kept getting beat to loose balls like he was so bad on defense that it became the way that Boston blew the series open. Those runs, those big defensive runs that I talked about, many of them involved Luka Doncic. There were two runs that I specifically mentioned. I think it was Game five in Game two where they were runs that spanned the half where Boston was straight up attacking Luca every single possession down the floor. And so again, it's not about

having five excellent perimeter defenders. You have to have it five that are at least decent at guarding in space so that you can construct a team defense around them. That is what I'm hoping for from Luca next year, just another level of competency when it comes to guarding in space. I know he can be a weak side defender. I know that he can make plays when they've loaded up kind of off the ball, when he's focusing more on defensive playmaking. But that's not what it's going to

be like when you have to win four rounds. When you have to win four rounds, you're going to face at least one, if not multiple teams that can truly space you out and force you to guard in open ground. And it's just harder that way. Right, ground coverage in rotation. This was a big piece that Sam Bessini was talking about when we did the pod during the finals and we talked about the different things that we have learned from this postseason run, and this is something I think

he's right on about. When you get in rotation, your ability to make those shots tougher matters. That's where your overall foot speed in length matters. This is something where Boston was great. I'll give you guys an example. Do you remember in the Pacers series, I did a film session where I showed up play where Jalen Brown was guarding Aaron Nesmith on the right wing and he dug way down into the lane down almost to the nail

and help. And when he was down there, the Pacers threw a swing pass to aaron Ne Smith on the right wing where Jalen Brown was like on the ball, and he recovered out and blocked aaron NEI Smith and then saved the ball off of aaron Ei Smith's slag out of bounds. That's ground coverage. That's being two places at once, having a low man that can contest pick and roll at the rim while also contesting the weak

side corner on the skip pass. That's what Giannis used to do for the Milwaukee Bucks defense when they were at their best a couple years ago. These are all elements of ground coverage. The overall foot speed and length of your team will give you more defensive resilience when you end up in trouble. It also helps you with defensive rebounding, which is a vital part of defense. Four. The big, strong, athletic forward continues to be the most

valuable defense archetype. This was Jason Tatum this year for the Boston Celtics. This was Aaron Gordon last year for the This is Aaron Gordon last year for the Denver Nuggets.

I even think Andrew Wiggins kind of fell into this role a little bit with the Warriors, although with them they've just Draymond Green does a lot of this as well, and we saw dre On Green switch out and guard Jaylen Brown for parts of the early portion of the NBA Finals, right, But having that big, strong, athletic forward is just a must. And I'm not talking about the perimeter three. I'm not talking about like the Jada McDaniel's archetype.

I'm talking about the big forard. This is Lebron James, This is Ruya Chamura, this is Aaron Gordon, this is Jason Tatum. These are guys like six ' nine or taller, and like with real bulk to them, those are very extremely valuable. One, they can guard centers, allowing for your rim protector to then focus on a poor shooting wing. This was something we saw in the Boston series that I think we're going to see a ton of over the course of the next few years in the NBA.

You're going to see teams put their big forward on limited off defensive centers that are rim runners, and then rim protectors will be put on guys that struggle to shoot above the break. Threes because from there they can row them off and present all sorts of issues locking down the paint. Right. That's a specific matchup strategy that you can only employ if you have a forward who's big enough to guard a center. They're vitally important on

the defensive glass. These are the guys when the big guy is to be pulled out to the level of the screen and there's a pull up jump shot. He's the one big body on the back line who can high point the basketball. So they're vitally important there, and they are most well equipped to guard the best players in the league. If I was listing the best players in the league after Jokic, it's a bunch of big forwards. It's Luca, it's Giannis, it's Tatum, it's Anthony Davis, it's

Lebron James, it's Kawhi Leonard. It's gonna be Palo Bancaro here in a couple of years. Like the best players are big forwards, and so you need a big forward that can guard the other team's big forward, otherwise they're going to bully you. This is a position because Karl Anthony Towns is basically a center. This is the position where Minnesota struggled. They did not have a big forward that was good enough offensively. Kyle Anderson did a decent job,

but he has his offensive issues. They didn't have a forward it was big enough to guard Luca but also be a plus offensive player. It's a personnel weakness for them. But again, that specific archetype is vitally important. So all of this amounts to one thing. You need to have

multiple effective half court defensive looks. You need a quality drop coverage look, preferably with a big forward that can guard on the perimeter and a rim protector so that you can tinker with matchups like we just talked about, like Boston did to Dallas. It allows you to deal with pick and roll without getting into rotation. So this is your defending ball screens two on two look. You have to have this look, just a basic drop coverage look.

Imagine what Minnesota does a lot with Rudy Gobert, or they try to stay home off the ball defend the action two on two. You need an aggressive look look. This is like a high drop or a blitz something where you bring your rim protector out to the ball screen and you have to tag on the weak side This is defending ball screens three on two, you have

to have this look. This requires rotation. This means as you're aggressive on the ball to get the ball out of Luca's hands or whoever the primary ball handler is. When the ball does get moved, you have to be able to quickly spread out and react in rotation. So you need a deep drop. You need an aggressive look. You need a switching look. Switching is what allows you to shut off pick and roll and to stagnate the component. Right. Some teams will look to matchup hunt in those situations.

That's where you need the five guys on the perimeter that can at least do a competent job guarding in space. Right. So in order to have a switching look, you need to have those that like kind of aggregate perimeter defense right to go through them all. To have a drop coverage look, you need a rim protector that can really protect the rim.

zone look. This is a rhythm disruptor. It's something that you just throw into the game to just kind of jank things up when you need to change the speed teams on a run, they're on a twelve zero run. You throw a zone look. It might get a by you two or three possessions before they figure it out, where you get some quality defensive stops and you can run out the other way. And again, if you understand that you need to be four quality opponents in increasing

levels of difficulty, you're gonna need these types of looks. Right, So, insummation before we get out of here for the day, what will next year's champion look like? From what we learned, they'll most likely be in the top four of the standings. They'll most likely be led by a bona fide top tier superstar. Again, Boston was the exception, and I continue

that exception in the next pending personnel moves. We don't know what's gonna happen over the next couple of weeks, but Boston as of right now is my favorite to win next year. As for my optimism surrounding Denver, It has nothing to do with oh, Boston won the trophy this year. It's a basketball thing for me watching Boston pick Dallas apart in space. I know Denver won the two regular season matchups, but they were close. I worry

about Denver's ability to guard in space as well. I lean slightly towards Boston now in that matchup, in a way where I lean slightly towards Denver before watching this playoff run. So again, I'm not just trying to default to the champion. It's a basketball thing. Boston showed me something with the way that they punished Dallas, and I think that they would cause similar problems for Denver in a series. It'd be much closer. I think that'd be a six or seven game series, and I would not

be surprised if Denver won. But like Boston is my favorite for next year as of right now. Pending personnel moves right and we haven't even talked about Cruso yet. We'll hit that at a later date. But NBA history tells us Yo Kitchen twenty twenty three, Steph in twenty twenty two, Johannis in twenty twenty one, Lebron in twenty twenty Kawhi and twenty nineteen, Katie and Steph twenty eighteen, KT and Steph twenty seventeen. You have Lebron in twenty sixteen,

you have Steph in twenty fifteen. Like, generally speaking, you need a top tier star to win the title. Boston is the one exception because they have five thirty million dollar players. That's the one thing that makes them different in this regard. But NBA history, what we've learned tells us top four in the standings most likely led by a bona fide top tier superstar. Excellent spacing by virtue

of shooting and ball and player movement. The last three champs, Boston, Denver, and Golden State were all great spacing teams by virtue of shooting and ball and player movement. You need to have multiple elite defensive looks, and you need to have matchup versatility, which to me means fewer weaknesses. The more weaknesses you have, the more likely you are to run into a team that can exploit those weaknesses and beat you. So that's again we've gone for fifty three minutes at

this point. That to me is just like a really like I know, that was kind of like an overwhelming amount of information. But that to me was like kind of my synopsis of this postseason run in what I've learned, Like that, those are the kinds of things that I'm going to try to refer back to as we're looking through a team's next season. If I see a team that is intriguing, but they can't win enough games in the regular season to be in the top four, chances

are they're not winning the title. Right. If we see a team that looks really good in their base scheme, but when they get teams that take them out of their base scheme, they struggle, that's something that probably will get them beat when they get to the postseason. Huge weaknesses, that's probably a thing that will get you beat when you get into the postseason, right, So like, let's just try to kind of keep these things in mind as

we get into next season. All right, guys, That is all I have for today is always as sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show. We are going to be back on Thursday mornings break down the rest rounded the NBA Draft and any trades that took place. I'll see you guys then the volume