Hoops Tonight - USA-Germany Reaction: LeBron ERUPTS in 4th, Team USA survives another scare

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Slash baseball. All right, welcome to hoops tonight here at the Volume. Happy Monday, everybody, but all of you guys had a great weekend. We had unexpected great basketball on Saturday as the team from South today and gave Team USA a hell of a battle and we ended up with the Lebron James game winner. And then Germany likewise takes a fourth quarter lead against USA today and once again Lebron James down the stretch eleven points in the

final four minutes. I want to talk a little bit about Lebron and how him kind of rising to the top of the USA pile is super interesting and what that means and what makes it interesting. I want to talk about why this team has struggled a little bit, because I think there are some misconceptions about Foeba basketball and how tough these games actually are. But I think we can all agree they shouldn't be in you know, clutch time slugfest every single night either, So they're clearly

underachieving a little bit. So we're gonna talk a little bit about what's going on with Team USA. After that, I have three big questions I want to hit. I want to talk a little bit more about Lebron in the big picture. I want to talk about Joel Embiid in his interview and some of those weird questions or

weird answers that he gave. And then at the end, I got in a little trouble on Twitter the other day for saying that I thought that twenty twenty Lakers would beat the twenty twenty four Celtics in a series. So I want to dive into that. That's going to be a little segment we have where we go over three fake questions. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on

Twitter at underscore json lt. Don't forget about our podcast feed. Remember it'd be really helpful if you guys leave a rating in a review on that front and then keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments. We are going to do a mail bag later this week as we kill some time heading into the Olympics. And the last but not least, before we get started, I want to talk to you guys about game Time. Game Time has come through super clutch for me a couple times recently

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feed tomorrow morning at seven am Pacific Standard time. I'm gonna tweet out another reminder of it tonight, but it was really fun for my first time ever interviewing an NBA player. Heimahak has also just had a very productive Summer league, as he got named second Team All Summer League, dove into a bunch of stuff with the USA Select Team, his time with the Miami Heat, his development as a post score. I thought it was really interesting. I'm excited for you guys to see that that's gonna be on

the feeds tomorrow morning at seven am. And again, thank you guys for your patience on that front. So why why is it such a big deal that in these big moments on Team USA that Lebron James seems to be the guy that is most comfortable taking things over and bringing the team home. And the reason why simple these are really high pressure moments, Like any loss for this team is a disaster. Imagine the news cycle this morning on all your favorite shows if South Sudan had

won on Saturday. Imagine the news cycle tomorrow if they had barely escaped South Sudan on Saturday and then somehow blown well, I mean, they were trailing in the fourth quarter against Germany today, Like what if they had lost that game? Imagine the new cycle tomorrow. I like, for as far as the Lebron stuff goes, I have a lot of guys who listen to this show who are not Lebron fans, who are dislike Lebron. It's not not

a huge shock. He's a very polarizing player, right, But there are a lot of you, I know that had Lebron gotten blocked on that right handed layup against South Sudan, or if he had settled for a pull up jump shot and missed it, you know, damn well, the kind of things you would have been saying. Right, these are high pressure moments. There's a lot to lose here. Obviously, they're not in the actual elimination games, and that will add another layer to things when they get to that point.

But these are really high pressure moments, and Lebron is taking a personal responsibility in that situation. To be responsible for the outcome in high pressure moments on a basketball team, it requires a huge amount of confidence in your ability to grab the reins and take that personal responsibility in the outcome. And again we know what Lebron's abilities are. He's bigger and stronger and faster than the majority of players in the world, which is insane at his age,

but it's the truth. I think this game against Germany was an excellent kind of showcase for Lebron's footwork. I always talk about the idea of a score getting to their spots right, and to get to your spots, there are multiple elements there. There's a floor vision piece. You got to be going at the right times when the spacing on the floor actually dictates that there's an opportunity for you to get to a spot on the floor. So there's like a basketball like Q element of it.

You also have to pass yourself into those opportunities. As a primary ball handler, there is a massive brain and IQ element to it. The second piece of it is skill. You got to have the ball control to get to where you are where you're trying to get to while having enough control over the basketball to then get to a shot, whether it's a fade away over your right shoulder, a fade away over your left shoulder, or a float or a hook shot, or whatever it might be. There's a skill element.

you go to that spot. So, for instance, if you waste energy with a negative step, if you waste energy by having to hop instead of getting to a one to two because you're uncomfortable getting your foot to that spot, if you can drop step towards the baseline but you only can shoot and you don't have a step through, then an athlete can beat you to that spot and put you into some trouble. There is a footwork piece to getting from point A to point B as well.

How many times did you see in that fourth quarter run from Lebron where he would get into the lane and then pump, bake and wait for dudes around him to get out of position and then pivot without traveling and get to an easy spot underneath the basket for him to then unleash his size and strength for that little right handed bank shot. Right, Like, all of those elements are important for a player to get to their spots.

There are a lot of guys in the league that are incredibly skilled, that have every dribble combination in the book and every pull up jump shot in the book, but they don't see the floor well enough to know when to go to their spots, or they don't pass the ball well enough to keep the help defense home, or maybe they don't have the footwork to get to that spot. There are a lot of guys that have all of the footwork and have all of the vision, but don't have the scoring ability.

two games. So in the South Sudan game, for instance, right around the start of the second half, things were

getting a little ugly as they came out. They want a little run, but then so they pushed it right back up to sixteen and it looked like there was going to be some trouble, and Lebron actually kind of took over the offense for the majority of that second half, and he was kind of playing in that role that I talked about a lot after the Serbia game, which is like at the top of the key while there's

off ball action happening around him. It's kind of like functioning similarly to the way that Draymond Green functions within the Golden State offense, except for Lebron's obviously a much higher level offensive player. But he was hitting a lot of back cuts and like getting into the lane and making drop off passes, kicks to shooters, hitting steph as he was running off of off ball action. He was kind of just functioning as the hub. Hit a couple of bit pull up threes, during that stretch as well.

But then on the game winner, he just unleashed his superpowered again. That was crazy again after JT Thor at that step back three in the right corner, Sudan was up with twenty seconds left. If Lebron misses that shot, they lose the game. If Lebron settles for a jumper there and misses it, they lose the game. There was some real pressure there, and what was cool was like

Lebron just went to old reliable. He went to that like hesitation har dribble to the left, clear out with that off arm to get separation, and then he's a big Lebron has a great left hand, but he's big right hand on the left side of the rim because he turns his back and he kind of like uses his back as a shield to prevent the player from coming over the top, and then he'll extend with that right hand and finish at the rim. Huge huge play.

The late run against Germany a big part of it too, Like he ramped up as an athlete down the stretch of that game. He was kind of in chill mode for the middle portion of that Germany game. He had three huge defensive rebounds down the stretch where he just beat everybody to the back basketball right in between his cut off of the Joel Embid layup and the full court post up where he got the layup. The back to back layups he had right in between those two plays.

He made the first layup, a lefty layup that sent him into the cameras he turned around and sprinted the floor and got a steel in transition as he beat everybody to a passing lane. Like he can scale up as an athlete when he needs to in these moments. Is he gonna do that for an eighty two game season. No, But in these singular moments, he can still elevate his game to a level that most people on the planet

can't get to. And then again, like that, a Joel Embiid was posting on the right block, Lebron's man digged down. As soon as he dug down, Lebron just cut in that slot and beat nice pass and bead had a Embiad was getting getting torched on defense, but he had

a much better offensive game in this particular game. Embiad also had a huge block at the rim that led to the Anthony Edwards dunk, which sneaky crazy move was that left to right cross over the transition that was super smooth, but Lebron cutting off the slot on the mbid post up. Then right after he gets the transition steal, he gives up the basketball and runs up the right side of the floor again doing your job. Like you got the steal, you're out of position to be the

ball handler. Give it to the ball handler. Sprint up the wing. He gets inside position on his defenders, stays a little bit too much high and above him on his left shoulder side. Lebron catches, dribbles into the post, goes through him and Schroeder at the rim, and gets the layup. There was the right wing three. Daniel Tice was guarding Lebron and was digging way down into the lane. Most of these teams don't have guys that can guard Lebron, and so what they've been doing is just playing way

off of him and daring him to shoot. But as we know, Lebron just had the best jump shooting season of his career. So Lebron hung out on that right wing, knocked down the huge three to put him up four, and then the late game possession. It was kind of a fascinating sequence because one of Germany's wings was on Steph and Schroeder was on Lebron, and Schroeder did not want to get switched off of Lebron. Steph was trying to screen him so that he could get so that

he could get a slower defender on Lebron. And I get it, like Schroeder's quicker and can kind of hang out with Lebron laterally, but Lebron's just so much bigger than him, and Schroeder, for whatever reason, would not concede the switch. He stayed, fought through the screen, stayed with Lebron. Lebron just turned his back and like bullied him from the three point line, did that hardcore spin move towards the baseline, pump fake, then step through. Beautiful footwork. I

clipped that play. I mean, you don't have to look at my feet. You can find it anywhere on social media right now, but beautiful footwork from Lebron to get it done. That was fun to watch. The crazy thing is he's clearly been the best player on this team. Now is he the best guy for an eighty two game regular season? Like, is Lebron going to be able to bring it as an athlete from early October to mid June the way these other guys can. No, obviously not.

But if he gets to a playoff series, if he gets to a situation where it's a small sample size and everything is on the line and he is healthy, yeah, there's that Jokic tier. Jokic, Luca Jannis. I'm not sure Lebron can reach that level in those situations anymore, but everybody that's below that tier in a big spot, he's better than all those guys. And this is the latest

example of that. Don't let the incompetence of Genie bust and the Lakers distract you from the fact that Lebron has been playing at a top five level late into his thirties. Don't don't let the issues that the Purple and Gold have been having, which are extensive and go well beyond things that Lebron James is doing, Don't let that distract you from the level of basketball that he's playing.

Like it's insane that on a team that has all these guys that are in their twenties, in their early thirties, in their primes, that he is the guy that is able to meet this occasion and take control of the way that he has been. It's a testament to his greatness. It's a testament to the respect that these guys have for him, that they trust him, and he's not failing. It's not like he's hijacking the reins and failing. He's taking control and getting it done, getting it down resoundingly.

It's insane. As a Lebron fan watching him with this team USA has been one of the cooler experiences rooting for him that I've had over the years. But let's talk about TMSA as a whole for a little bit. So what's going on with TMOSA. It's not a concern to me that they aren't beating teams by thirty. This is not the FOBA of nineteen ninety two. These are really good basketball teams, and this showcase cycle has been

mostly really good teams. Serbia really good team, Germany really good team, Canada really good team, and Australia is tough and Sausudan. Their odds to win the gold medal improved ten times after that game because everyone saw like, oh, they might actually be the most athletic team in the tournament. They're super long, they play super hard, they've got a couple of really good guards, and they can play like

these are real basketball teams. These are go if you were to go watch FOBA in nineteen ninety two, it's an entirely different level of competition. So like thinking that they're just gonna rip through everybody the way the Dream Team did, that's not going to happen. That said, should they be in real crunch time as frequently as they have been against these teams, No, So I think we can all agree that the team is underachieving to a certain extent. That goes without saying, But I think it

primarily has to do with lineup construction. So, for instance, the starters in particular are really struggling to defensive rebound and to guard the ball. Like at the point of attack, Well, you have to run drop coverage because Joel Embiid can't guard on the perimeter. So you have a big man that forces you to chase over the top of screens.

In a lineup with Devin Booker, who's an average athlete and not a guy who's known getting over screens, Lebron who's almost forty, and Steph who's almost thirty seven, that's what you have out there with the big that reques fires you to chase over at the top of the screen. That should be a switching unit, and you need Anthony Davis at center in order to do what you need to do to be a switching a switching unit. With that group, right, you're struggling to defensive rebound, but you're

playing a three guard lineup. Not only three guards, but two of those guards are Steph who turns thirty seven next season, and Devin Booker, who's a mediocre athlete, and Lebron who's forty, and Joel Embiid, who is slow footed and out of shape. Of course, you can't rebound. That lineup is not a good rebounding lineup. If you put Anthony Davis in for Joel Embiid, you instantly become way faster and way longer, and you can start doing the switching that you need to make that unit work defensively.

If you put Kevin Durant when he's healthy, in for Devin Booker, you immediately become a much better defensive rebounding team. And guess what, Kevin Durant struggles to chase over screen. So that needs to be a switching group. So literally, just Katie Healthy in for Devin Booker Ady and for Joel Embiid solves the majority of the issues for that lineup. They instantly become way better rebounding, They instantly become faster, and they instantly become a switching group, which is what

they need to be to function defensively. Anyway, the bench groups are really struggling to execute offense. In the half court, They've been awesome defensively, The Bam Tatum ad front court has been insane defensively. Anthony Edwards has done his fair share of shot making, but overall in the half court they're just a little clunky. Well, Embiid is an offensive firepower machine. He's a hub that you can throw in there.

Adding Joel Embiid to that group should really help. And Embiid is slow footed, but that lineup would have Anthony Edwards, Jason Tatum, and bam Adebayo all really athletic. It can help hide the foot speed issues that you have, especially if you end up moving Devin Booker into that group right which I'm assuming he'd go into that spot and then probably Derek White would fall out of the lineup, or if it ends up being Derek White, who knows,

But that group makes more sense offense. You've got these tunnel vision guys and aunt Joel Embiid, but let him play to tunnel vision basketball. Let them play your turn, my turn basketball in that unit. Oh, you need to run drop with Joel Embiid, well, Anthony Edwards and Jason Tatum and Bamba, they're just way more athletic. That's a

group that is more equipped to run drop. You have Derek White in with your bench group right now, and Derek White are both substantially better athletes than Stephan Devin Booker, so it makes sense within that group. So again, like I think, just a couple of lineup tweaks will put this team right back on the right track. And here's

the thing. We gotta be honest with ourselves here. It's very possible that Steve Kerr is under a directive from Team USA to make sure that Embiid is starting very well, maybe the reason why Embide is on this team for all we know, I haven't heard anything specific about that, but I mean, I put it like this, I believe Steve Kerr sees what we're seeing, and I think he's way too smart of a basketball mine to not know it, I would imagine he knows, which makes me think that

there might be some sort of directive, a big giveaway there is. Today, in the final minutes in crunch time, Anthony Davis ended up getting in that five spot, which I thought was interesting as an indicator of Steve's like

true belief system there. But if it is the case that embiid has a guaranteed starting spot and Kirk can't bump him and they have to continue these janky ass lineup groupings for the majority of these games, then this team is vulnerable, no question, because the current lineup groupings are funky and redundant, and they underachieve, And so yeah, I think they're a lot closer to being more dominant than we think just by making a couple of simple tweaks.

It's weird to me that it's taken this long, but I would imagine there are some extraneous circumstances that are kind of influencing that in terms of the basketball politics at play.

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very simple. MJ's case is dominance. There was no player that was close to as good as him for so long, and they won so frequently in that window there in the nineties, that just the gap between him and the rest of the league. It almost looks like an outlier data point, right, And so that would be MJ's case dominance. Lebron's case is longevity. Lebron's case is, hey, you're there's thirty nbagms and you get to pick from every player

in NBA history, like their whole careers. You get them from the day they're drafted to the day they hang them up. And this is just first pick, so it's not in the context of another team you have to draft a team around that guy. Who do you take? You take Lebron because with Lebron, I'm getting twenty two

years of top five level play. Maybe if you're being picky and you're saying, like, oh, the twenty twenty three year he was kind of rough, and his rookie year he was kind of rough, and he was you know, injured in the twenty nineteen season. Okay, so nineteen seasons, nineteen seasons of top five play. That's insane at a certain point. By having that, I just give my team a really good chance to win a lot of championships because I have that level of consistent greatness at the top.

Now am I ready to swap my pick? Because right now I do have MJ as the goat. I want to wait until after the Olympics before I make that

sort of stand. But if Lebron continues to lead this team the way that he has and in the real elimination games again lifts this team avera over the top, that to me would be such a strong indicator that he's the best American player in the year twenty twenty four at age thirty nine years old, which is such an insane accomplishment that you're piggybacking on what was already insane two years ago. And so at that point I would have no choice, I think, but to acknowledge that.

But again, I'm gonna wait until after the Olympics. But I used to be pretty pretty you know, entrenched on that MJ one Lebron two stance, and I'm starting to soften a little bit on that, just because this is getting ridiculous. Guys, Jason, what do you make of Joel

Embiid's comments recently to the New York Times. So those of you guys who didn't see this, and I'm sure most of you did, but Joel Embiid had some comments about this isn't the same team that it looks to be on paper, and Lebron's not as good as he used to be, and Steph isn't as good as he used to be here, and he specifically said that this team doesn't have a talent advantage, which I think is ridiculous, like the score is notwithstanding, I think TAMSA does have

a substantial talent advantage. Is it anywhere near as why does it wasn in nineteen ninety two? Obviously not. The global teams have gotten way better. We talked about that earlier. But I do think this team USA team is more talented. And so that comment is just strange because it's under selling your teammates to try to like out of like, to try to like. It's like a weird kind of like pressure deflecting type of comment that to me is silly.

Like this team should win, it's a disaster. If they don't, they absolutely have a huge talent advantage. The second piece of it was in Beat said that he thought he could potentially have been the goat had he not been injured. And here's the thing. Yeah maybe, but like I've we've all been there. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like I haven't tried to make an excuse in my life.

I've had bad days at the gym where I'm in the car on the way home and I'm like, I'm dealing with XYZ and this is why I'm not playing well. Like the hell, Like, I get busy with work sometimes and I just don't get to go to the gym a lot. And then I'll go to the gym and I won't be as good as I usually and I'll be like, ah, I hate being this busy because I don't get to work on my game as much as

I want to. Here's what I've discovered, and I guarantee you you guys have all discovered the same thing in your journeys. People don't care about excuses. They never have When you're at the gym and you're busting someone's ass and he says something about, oh, my legs are sore. Oh I'm dealing with this injury. You don't give a fuck, Like, no, no one cares about excuses, and that's that's why it's such a loser mentality, Like that's the thing. It's like, yeah,

maybe you were the goat. Maybe these injuries have derailed a potentially all time great type of career. But the reality is is time and time again, you get to those spots and you can't come through. And I guarantee you, as you're getting pull up threes put in your face by Jason Tatum in Game seven, or as you're that was just the deeve end of the floor as you look scared to make a post move against Al Horford, no one's sitting there going like that guy could have

been the goat, but he just had some injuries. No, they're going, what the hell's wrong with Joel Embiid. People don't care about excuses, and that's the thing. Excuses are real. There are real reasons why things go the way that they go. Absolutely there are factors that can affect your performance. But expecting, like putting that energy into the public serves

no purpose. You know what I'd like to hear. I'd like to hear nothing as Joel Embiid privately goes, I have unfulfilled potential, and this is the year that I get it all taken care of. I come in in crazy good shape and I figure it all out and I kick everyone's ass. If you're that type of talent, show us the world will rally around you as soon as you do. But like, yeah, putting that energy out there in that in the public that like, oh, like what if this? What if that? Nobody cares? Nobody cares.

They never have if you go about life expecting to get pats on the back in support for what's going on, that's causing you problems. Like people don't care. They just don't. They only care about themselves and their family and advancing their own interests. That's the only thing people care about. I know it's kind of nihilistic, but it's just what

I think is what I think to be the truth. Jason, you said on Twitter the other day that you think the twenty twenty Lakers would beat the twenty twenty four Celtics in a series. Can you explain why? So? I tweeted this out the other day and I didn't think it was that big of a deal. And then everyone freaked out. But I want to kind of get into some of the specifics here because I don't think it's

as crazy as people are making it sound. First of all, the twenty twenty Lakers were also a dominant basketball team. The twenty twenty four Celtics were more dominant on paper. For sure, they won more games, they had a larger net rating, But there's context there. Playing in a historically weak Eastern Conference. The Western Conference won the vast majority of games and had to head matchups against the East.

This last year's going to inflate net rating statistics. It just is you're playing more lesser teams in the Eastern Conference. That's going to inflate your advanced metrics. That's going to make things a little bit easier, right. But even though the Celtics were more dominant on paper than the twenty twenty Lakers, the twenty twenty Lakers were also insanely dominant. Here are some basic stats to express that for you. The twenty twenty Lakers started twenty four and three guys

twenty four and three. They won twenty four of their first twenty seven games they won before the stoppage when the when COVID shut down the season they were winning at a sixty four win pace. Guess how many games the Celtics won sixty four and the Lakers did it in a substantially tougher conference. In this playoff run, the Celtics had a plus fifteen net rating in their sixteen wins, meaning they won by an average of fifteen points per

one hundred possessions. The Lakers were plus twelve. That's also super dominant. So like, the idea that there is like this chasm between these two champions and what they accompt within their seasons is silly as far as like their playoff runs. Like, do I think that the Celtics played a tougher team in the NBA Finals? Absolutely, that Dallas Mavericks team was a tougher team than the banged up Miami Heat team that the Lakers played in twenty twenty.

But if you stack up all the teams, Dame and CJ McCollum in round one, James Harden at the peak of his powers in Russell Westbrook in the second round, Nikole Jokic and Jamal Murray, the same team that beat that Clippers team that everyone swore was the best team in the league like Lebron and the Lakers executed those guys put him out of there in five. So like I believe the Lakers played tougher teams overall in that

playoff run, not that it matters. All I care about is the twenty twenty Lakers on a basketball court for a seven game series against the twenty twenty four Celtics. Who's gonna win. I've got the two best players in the series. Anthony Davis was a better basketball player in the twenty twenty playoffs than either of Jaylen Brown or Jason Tatum. He just was. Lebron James was the best basketball player alive in twenty twenty. Those are the two

best players in the series. Okay, let's talk about matchups. What is Boston's biggest advantage that can space you out in drive and kick you to death? Well, what is the closing five for that Los Angeles Lakers team. Alex Crusoe elite perimeter defender with size, KCP elite perimeter defender with size, Danny Green very good perimeter defender with size. Lebron James, who in twenty twenty was still one of the best defensive players in the league, and that was

one of his best defensive seasons. It was better than all of his seasons in Cleveland, and Anthony Davis, who was the best defensive player alive. That team is constructed to guard the Boston Celtics, all big, mobile perimeter defenders and a super versatile front line. And then on the other end of the floor. Yes, Boston was an elite perimeter defense team, but Lebron James and Anthony Davis are

matchup nightmares for them. On the front line. Anthony Davis would have given Chris hop Sportzincis fits on the low block, especially in that twenty twenty season. Lebron James, there's not a guy on the Celtics that could have guarded him in twenty twenty. So like in my opinion, I've got the best players in this series. In terms of the

x'es and o's, the Lakers match up extremely well. I just think that that twenty twenty Lakers team is the best basketball team that I've seen since the twenty eighteen Warriors with Kevin Durant and Steph Curry. I've said that consistently. We got to get a little bit into the basketball today. I understand. I expect you guys to disagree. If you're a Celtics fan, lay it out in the comments. You guys know I read the comments. Jason, Here's why you're wrong.

Xyz basketball basketball basketball. If you just tell me, oh, they were the most dominant team this season, I don't care about that. There's not a metric that the Celtics did this year that is substantially more impressive than what the twenty twenty Lakers did. So like, if you have a basketball case, I want to hear it. Let's get into it, let's debate a little bit. But I believe the twenty twenty Lakers would beat the twenty twenty four Celtics in a playoff series. All right, guys, that is

all I have for today. As always, to sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show. I again, we have the Himahakas interview coming up tomorrow, and then I'm gonna end up recording a mail bag later this week. I will see you guys then.