Hoops Tonight - Why Steph Curry & Warriors are struggling, Kyrie & Nets drama, Lakers finally win

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in West Virginia. All right, Welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by Fan Duel here at the volume. Happy Halloween, everybody. I hope you guys had some fun over the weekend and or tonight, depending on how your schedule all worked out. We have a ton of basketball to get to today. The Golden State Warriors lost back to back games in Charlotte in Detroit over the weekend. We're gonna get into

specifically Detroit. I'm gonna dive into some of their young players as well, because I had so much fun watching them this morning. They have some of my favorite young players in the league. The Cleveland Cavaliers have been one of the most impressive teams to start this season. They beat the Knicks yesterday to get up to five and one, but they also had a super impressive road win in

Boston that we're gonna cover. We'll also be covering them again this Wednesday live on AMP after they have their rematch with the Celtics. The Los Angeles Lakers finally won a basketball game at home against the Denver Nuggets a

lot to get into there. And then last but not least, the Brooklyn Nets are experiencing more drama that I hope then I think they could have hoped for at this point in the season with Kyrie Irving re I don't know, renewing his yearly shenanigans, which are always a lot harder to handle when you're losing basketball games than when you're winning. Um, you guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channel so you don't miss any

more of our videos. Follow me in on Twitter at Underscore Jason lt s you guys don't miss any show announcements. That's also where I put footage breakdowns because of some of the limitations we have on YouTube. And then, last but not least, for whatever reason, you miss one of these shows and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish, you can find them wherever you get your podcasts. Under Hoops tonight. So Golden State dropping games in Charlotte

Detroit obviously not a good thing. Detroit and Charlotte are two pretty bad basketball teams. Some of its poor shooting. Obviously, I'm sure Warriors fans have been thinking about that a lot. Uh. Steph was seven for twenty seven from three over the weekend. That's an anomaly. Andrew Wiggins was another guy who had a nightmare shooting weekend. He was eighty eight from the field. But don't let that distract from the reality, which is that the Warriors problems are on the defensive end and

primarily with their bench. So I wanted to kind of dive into those two concepts a little bit. So, first of all, these are two average offenses in Detroit and Charlotte, and in the two games, the Golden State Warriors had a defensive rating of almost a hundred and twenty, meaning they were giving up almost a hundred and twenty points

per one hundred possessions. Regardless of what you think factors might be working against you in any sort of road trip, or a guy being out of the lineup like Clay Thompson missing, you know, or Dante deve di Vincenzo being out of the game. Regardless of how you feel about any of those things. You should be able to go into Detroit and get stops as the Golden State Warriors.

And you should be able to go into the Charlotte to Charlotte, especially Charlotte because they don't have the level of offensive talent that Detroit has, and you should be able to get stops. You know, I was listening to the Warriors broadcast that Pistons game this morning, and you know, you keep hearing they're just flummixed and that I can't

believe that he made that shot. Like these guys are playing, that they've lost five straight games, how is it that they're this they're having the night of their life and and and it's so easy as a fan, and I get that. I know, I too, am a fan. I We're all fans in one way or another, whether it's

a specific players or specific teams. And when you're a fan, you jump to rationalizations like this this explains why this happened, or that explains why it happened, and a lot of times we do that ignoring obvious evidence that something more serious is taking place. Um, you're right, Detroit is not very good. They're not a very good basketball team, but they are super talented. Charlotte is not a very good

basketball team, but they have some talent. And it's not about being good in a vacuum, because of course the Warriors are good in a vacuum. You have to be good against the basketball players you're playing that night, and if you don't bring it on that night, you'll get beat. This is what I meant when I was saying unforgiving league. I had somebody in the comments say, Jason unforgiving league, tim because I've dropped it like three times in the last week. But I've been saying that for a reason.

It's something I've been preaching all summer. The league is deeper with talent than it's ever been, but that still means that there's gonna be good teams, mediocre teams, and bad teams. Because your team isn't about the talent, it's relative to the other teams around the league. A bad team now might have been a good team ten years ago based on the talent, but that doesn't matter. It

only matters within this season. The truth of the matter is that if you know, Steph slides his feet and gets a stop on the final possession against Dennis Smith Jr. You get a win in Charlotte. But Dennis Smith Jr. Is a pretty damn athletic quick guard, a guard that in this league kind of seems like a bad guard, right, But he's a freak athlete that can dribble. He's been knocking down more pull up jump shots this year than

he has in years past. He's a guy that if you don't slide your feet, he's gonna be to the basket and make a layup. And that sent the game to overtime where they lost. You know, if you leave your feet jumping at a Saedique Bay pump fake the way that Jordan Pool did, you know in the second half against Detroit, like he's gonna go to the basket and get a layup because side Bay is a big, strong,

athletic wing and a damn good basketball player. He doesn't care that it says Detroit Pistons on the front of his Jersey or that his team lost five straight games. He's a good basketball player and if you don't bring effort, you're gonna lose. And in this particular game, there was just a whole lot of sloppiness from the Warriors. There's a play where Jade and Ivy with a live dribble, just brought the ball up the floor and transition and nobody picked him up. So guess what he did. He

elevated above the rim and dunked it. I watched Jade and I be in summer League. He's my second favorite player in this entire class. He's damn good. He's a damn good basketball player, and if you don't play him with respectable effort, you're gonna lose games. And then Kate. You know Kate Cunningham, and he's becoming one of my favorite young players in the league too. He was getting downhill too easily and pick and roll. And he's a big, strong wing that has a very high level passing field.

He's got these big hands. You can palm the basketball and throw these cross court passes and and swing like slingshot passes and things along those lines. And if you let him get downhill and force your help to come in. He's gonna hit open shooters on the other side of the court all day long. And if you don't box out, you'll get beat on the offensive glass by two really athletic teams like the Detroit Pistons and the Charlotte Hornets, and the Warriors gave up twenty seven offensive rebounds in

these two games. The Warriors now are down to t in the NBA in rebounding percentage, So they're twenty three and deep pens and twenty seven and rebounding percentage. They're they're how in terms of a title defense, that's not a good start. If you can't defend and you can't get rebounds, even against bad teams, then you're not good enough to be able to win at the highest levels. Now, let's zoom out a little bit, because it's not like Steph and Clay and Draymond and Andrew Wiggins all forgot

how to play basketball. That's not what happened. The problem is with their bench um. According to Cleaning the Glass, when Steph Curry, Clay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, Draymond Green, and Kevan Luny are on the floor, this is their starting lineup they are whooping everyone's ass. They have a hundred and twenty seven offensive rating, which is outstanding, in a one hundred defensive rating, which is outstanding. So the silver lining for Warriors fans to cling to is like, our

core five guys are excellent. The problem is that they're getting destroyed almost everywhere else. Six of their top eight lineups in terms of total minutes played without Stephen Draymond on the floor are getting out scored, and most of them are getting badly outscored. They just fall apart when those guys go to the bench, and there's you know, some of it is weak perimeter defense, and we'll talk more about this in a minute, but the big glaring one that's been standing out to me in the last

few games is James Wiseman. He's getting absolutely destroyed in his minutes, or at least the team is. And yes, some of it is like, yeah, he's playing with Moses Moody guarding really good perimeter players, and Moses is not quite ready for that yet. Jordan Pool is having a really bad defensive season to start. Dear Jonathan Cominga who is better defensive player than Moses Moody, I thought, and

he hasn't been defending well to start this season. But the reality is is in a hundred and two minutes with James Wiseman on the floor, their minus forty eight. That's destructive. That's really really bad. The most frequently used James Wiseman line up right now is Jordan Pool with Dante DiVincenzo, Jonathan Comingo, jam Michael Green and James Wiseman.

That's the most used, like the most minutes, most possessions line up with James Wiseman on the floor, they have an offensive rating of fifty nine points per one hun possessions and a defensive rating of a hundred and eleven. They're getting outscored by fifty two points per one hund possessions in the most frequently used James Wiseman lineup. And again like it's I want to blame the weak perimeter defense,

but it's not just that. You know, even with Steph Clay, Andrew Wiggins and Draymond on the floor with James Wiseman, dave a minus eighty two net rating in eleven possessions. Again, small sample size, but they got absolutely destroyed in that particular lineup. The reality is is that's it's kind of a clunky fit. First of all, he's a big guy

who's learning how to play the game. And he as we've said throughout the season, he's really good at some things already, Like he's got he's a legit vertical spacer, although he can fumble the basketball sometimes. He had a pretty a bad missed lob in the second half against Detroit that was kind of a big momentum play because they ran out the other way and got side. Bay hit a three on the left wing and it was

like a five point swing um. But he's pretty good vertical spacer right and like he uh, if he catches with an advantage around the ram, he'll finish. I think he's I think he's shooting like in the restricted area this year, which is fine. You know, defensively, when he's around the rim and guys are coming at him, his length can be a problem, which is good when he's in drop coverage. You know, he makes some good reads from time to time, and his length can be a problem.

But he's really struggling with physicality and it hurts the Warriors in particular on to two spots on the floor on offense. It's so important to be a really good screener as a big and Golden State's offense and Draymond Green and Kevan Luniar are excellent screeners. But but James Wiseman is the biggest weakness that he has right now is physicality struggles in the physical battles of the game.

And if you don't set big, physical screens, then you're not getting as much separation for the Golden State guards coming off those actions. And then it just it's like a missing cog in the engine and then everything stops working right. And then on the defensive end, it's like like Isaiah Stewart was just bullying James Wiseman, especially on the offensive glass, and and that's a problem. And so when I really look at it, like what James Wiseman does as a big in this league is less valuable

to Golden State than it is to other teams. His vertical spacing, even though it's a unique touch on this roster, is less valuable for Golden State because vertical spacing matters more when the paint is clogged and you need an escape route to throw the ball up towards the rim.

Golden States spacing is inverted. They're spacing around the rim is always good because they have all these guys and Steph Clay and and Jordan Poole flying off of these screens, and Andrew Wiggins shoots the balls so well that for the most part, their spacing is inverted. The congestion for the Warriors is on the perimeter, and so vertical spacing

brings less value. What they actually need out of that position is a guy who can screen really really well, and that is a really smart decision maker that's hitting guys cutting out of the week side corner things along those lines. They want you to succeed in four on three settings. And so part of me feels bad for Wiseman because he's a young player that's learning how to play the game. He's played something crazy like fifty five

NBA games or something. I don't quote me on that, but he's played less than a hundred NBA games before that. He didn't really play much at Memphis, Like the dude hasn't had much of an opportunity to learn how to play the game, and he's learning to play in a system or his specific archetype is kind of less valuable. You have to almost play a different style. They just basically run a lot of high pick and roll with

with Jordan Pool when he's out there. And so at the end of the day, like like, it'll be a really interesting decision for the for the Warriors brass to make because you know when we're looking like, yes, Clay Thompson's gonna come back. He didn't play on Sunday, He's gonna come back. That's gonna alleviate some of your bench concerns. Andrea Gudala eventually, especially as we get deeper in the season,

will start being used a little bit more frequently. He's a better perimeter defender than a Moses Moody or someone along those lines. There there will be some reinforcements, there'll be a candidate for buy out players as we get past the deadline. All that's true, but one of two

things needs to happen. They either need these young guys to get better to the point where they're dependable playoff rotation players, or they need to consider flipping them for players who will be And that's gonna be a tough decision because right now, Moses Moody is making progress and might be that guy. Jonathan Cominga is definitely not ready like he's just not ready and he will not be ready this year. And James Wiseman is very very far

away from becoming a positive player on this team. So the question is is it do you bank on that, on the fact that Wiseman will eventually figure that stuff out during this season, or do you do something like take Wiseman and Kaminga or maybe Wiseman, Kominga and Moody in combine them and try to get something back that can actually contribute within this season. And again, it's early, there's a lot of basketball left, and it's possible that

these guys do make monumental improvements. That's just the risk. Right now, You're a dominant starting lineup and everyone else is killing you, and you lost Otto Porter Jr. And Gary Payton, the second two players that were very productive for you in these roles. Gary Payton the second in particular, the Warriors were positive with him on the court in

the playoffs and negative without him. And so it's very important as the Warriors go to their bench to have an additional really good perimeter to ender that can operate in the short role and that can knock down the occasional corner three, and that does smart is a smart basketball player that doesn't make mistakes that can hurt your team, and it's it's gonna be an interesting conundrum for them.

I did want to shout out Jordan Pool. Holy cow, did he have an explosive second half in that Pistons game. He had like a transition three on the right wing and then a steel that led to another transition three on the right wing, and then he hit another transition three on the left wing on a pass from Steph and then he started barbecuing Boy and Bogdanovich in isolation at the top of the key. Hit a disgusting step

back move there. He's got a mile to go defensively, obviously, but while everyone else was struggling offensively this weekend, uh, Jordan Pool was really really impressive and that that's he's been a huge bright spot here early in the season in my opinion. Well, tough one tomorrow in Miami for the Warriors to get back on track, um and we'll be covering that game on amp right after the final buzzer.

So Detroit. I was really impressed just in general by how good they were getting downhill towards the rim with all of their young players that they have. Cede Bay is kind of like your classic mismatch attacking forward. Not quite as skilled as some of the other ones around the league, but he is huge and there were a lot of plays where he just ripped through to the basket and guys were just shedding off of him as

he was getting to the rim. Kate Cunningham is really good at leveraging his body to get the defender on his back side as he's coming through on pick and roll. We talked about earlier how good he is at making those cross court passes and things along those lines, those high level reads. He had another transition pass two to Killing and Hayes like cutting out of the backside corner that I didn't even see as I was watching. I

didn't even see Killing in there. That's always to me like one of the UH indicators of a high level passers. If us the fans, as we're watching, we can see the basic reads. We can see strong side help and an easy kick out. We can see, you know, a drop off past to the dunker spot when the big

guy steps up. Those are normal things, but like it's hard unless you're on a rewatch when you're watching all the things moving to see the higher level reads like skips to the weak side corner and things that you might not see, and kids all over that stuff. Jade and Ivy Uh is still, in my opinion, one of the hardest guards in the league, keeping front, which is insane for how young he is. Um. You can see

that attacking closeouts and in transition. Um. And then both Isaiah Stewart and Jalen During are just monsters on the offensive class They the two combined for eight offensive rebounds against Golden State. This is one of the most exciting young cores in basketball. And they just extended boy and Magdanovitch for two additional years. So you've got a veteran president of PREV presidents that can shoot the basketball, defend the bigger wings, although he's not quick enough to defend

quicker players. But I like that move for them. There's no reason to uh. Um, you know, as long as you can afford him for the next couple of years. It's not like you're gonna be big players in the free agent market. So I like to move Detroit. It's gonna be fun to watch. I enjoyed watching that game and Um again, it's like it's just the story of the NBA these days. What you what you anticipate to be an easy game just isn't an easy game anymore. So let's move on to the Calves. So, the Calves

beat the Nix yesterday to get to five and one. So, uh, the game I actually watched. I did not watch the Knicks game. I watched the Celtics game from a couple of nights prior, epic back and forth game, and ot uh. Celtics should have won that game, but the kind of classic Celtics did at the end with some poor decision

making down the stretch and crunch time in and ot um. Also, you just kind of handed to the Calves like Donovan Mitchell and Carris LeVert just time and time again made gigantic shots like tough off the dribble pull up jump shots in that game. But the two of them have been making them all season long. They are fit in offense to start the year third in defense, second in

net rating. What's really interesting about him being third in defense is if I ask you what the Calves would be great at defensively, you would say, oh, well, they got Jared Allen and Evan Mobley. They're going to shut down the paint, but that it could not be further

from the truth. They are eighteen and opponent paint points allowed per one possessions and opponents are shooting six against them in the paint, which is bottom ten excuse me, in the restricted area, which is bottom ten in the league. The reason why their defense is so good is they are not allowing teams to get off three point shots. They are allowing the fewest three point attempts in the league at just twenty eight point three per one possessions.

Team teams are shooting right around just just under thirty six on those shots, which is pretty normal. Um. You can also see it on tape. They just they pressure the ball, which is what you expect from a team that has great back line help. They're chasing guys off the line. They're not over helping. They're willing to allow a guy to challenge a player that's on his hip at the rim rather than sending help that you don't need to send. And then there This is a huge

part of it. Both Jared Allen and Mobile are good at defending on the perimeter, but the biggest driving force. Without a doubt of their early season success because Darius Garland went down in the first game against Toronto with like a scratch to the eye or something, and we haven't seen him since. But Donovan Mitchell has just been otherworldly good. He's playing the best basketball of his career

and it's not particularly close. I was listening to the Celtics broadcast for this particular game and they were one of the announcers said that they noticed that pep in Donovan Mitchell's step since he came to Cleveland, and I'm not surprised. I mean, there was kind of like a negative energy lingering around that Utah team for a while and just getting that change of scenery. Um, you know, I think I think Rudy Gobert can grate on people

a little bit. He's with younger, probably more energetic people that it's just he just looks happy. And and obviously, with Darius Garland being out, the whole your turn, my turn thing has just been almost thrown out of the window, and he kind of has like a really natural given take with Carris Laverte already and dude, you could you could just you could just see it in his in his in the way he plays his uh. Um, He's still one of the most athletic guards in the league.

He had a disgusting blowby on Marcus Smart in the fourth quarter of that game where he kind of like, uh. The announcers called it an overhand crossover, and I thought it was interesting that he called that because I've always thought of that as just like more of a body crossover. You're not just you're not actually doing anything to sway the defender with the ball. What it is is your body is pointed to the right and then you're literally

turning your body to the left. And it's one of the biggest things that I teach young players when I coach skills from my high school team is it's not about what you do with the basketball with the move, it's what you do with your body. If you can sell with your body that you're going one direction and then change direction while protecting the basketball from getting swiped at, you will get by the defender. It's not about doing

some big sweeping crossover. You can just push the ball out to your left as long as you sell that you're going right, and you'll beat someone off the dribble. And on this play, Donovan Mitchell did that to Marcus Smart. He buckled and he went all the way to the rim and dunked it. He had another one in overtime um where he hit Malcolm Broggden with a hard right to left move. I think he went through his legs on this one, but Malcolm Brogden literally got just utterly toasted.

Didn't even get a hand on him as he went all the way to the room for the layup. He's just, He's just He's a really unique combination of freaky downhill athleticism to get to the rim and one of the best pull up jump shooters in the league. I talked to you guys about this over the summer. One of the biggest reasons why I was excited for Cleveland is is he has the offensive skill set that translates to the postseason, and he is one of the most successful

postseason scorers of the last few years. He's just been so bad defensively in the Utah Jazz were so bad and so disappointing that we kind of just look at him as out of sight or out of mind. But I want to say he was like on like eleven three point eleven pull up three point attempts per game or something crazy like that over the last few post seasons. He's just a knockdown, pull up shooter that can get to the rim, and that that that combination just makes

him incredibly difficult to guard. He's averaging thirty two, five and seven this season so far on sixty true shooting career highs and points and efficiency at this point obviously early career high and assists as well at seven per game. He's shooting forty six percent on eleven pull up jumpers per game, including fifty three percent on pull up threes. Just absolutely insane shot making. And he's been better defensively

than he was in Utah. I haven't seen enough to just be like, oh, he's seen the light, because I've only seen like three or four of the Cavs games this year, But in the games that I've watched, he's been impressive. Um, he's been one of the most impressive players in the league to start the season. So you have to you have to tip the cap to Kobe Altman and the Calves for a really smart move over

the summer. Carris Lavert has also been a lot better than I expected that I called him the odd man out to start the season, and who knows maybe he still will be the odd man out when Darius Garland comes back. But I could not have been more wrong about how he fits, at least with this iteration of the calves. His shotmaking has been all over the place. He's basically hitting everything from deep and nothing else. He's shooting fift on pull up threes so far this season.

He had a massive step back three I think it was over Jalen Brown and overtime that basically amounted to be the game winner. Um the Celtics went down and tied, and they had kind of a bad possession where it was a little stagnant and Caris Lavert just hit like a pound dribble between his legs into his step back and he knocked it down. But the most impressive thing to me from Carris Lavert has been his playmaking out of high pick and roll. It's kind of similar to

what we were talking about Kate Cunningham. You know, he's not a the downhill, you know, speedy threat that Donovan Mitchell is. It's kind of a really interesting different type of attack to the Donovan Mitchell attack because Carris LeVert is moving in slow motion a lot of the time. He's trying to get you pinned on his on on his back side, he's a lot more willing to shoot

in the mid range. And even though both guys are averaging seven assists per game, it's uncharacteristics for Donovan Mitchell. You know, Carris LeVert has always had a little bit of that, you know, uh, pick you apart type of game and high pick and roll. And he's getting high usage because of Darius Garland being out, and he's producing in that specific role at a career high seven assist

per game right now, this early in the season. And then I think he's been again, I need to see more, but I think he's been pretty damn solid defensively, and I thought he was really impressive defensively in the games that I watched. Um, the rim defense for the Calves should improve, Like I said, even though they defended the three point line really well, just having Mobile and Allen out there, I do think that will kind of trend

back in their direction. Darius Garland will bring a different dynamic to the offense, but it will also take something away defensively, so that'll be an interesting kind of dynamic when he comes back. Obviously, that kind of throws off the give and take between LeVert and Mitchell and kind of shift some rolls around. So they got some they

got some stuff that they'll have to figure out. But overall, they've been one of the most impressive teams to start the season and we're gonna be covering them again on Wednesday when they host the Calves live on AMP after the final buzzer of that game, but I definitely wanted to spend some time shouting out the Calves this morning. So the Lakers finally not to win at home against Denver, I did a TikTok uh for for Carson. He's the guy here at the volume that helps with our TikTok

and he also helps out on this show. You guys, you guys know him, And he was like, Hey, can you send me a video three things that you think would fix the Los Angeles Lakers, And I said, you know, obviously a targeted management, like they need to do something with Russ. But then the other two things I said were they needed to um actually have Lebron James and Anthony Davis played to their capability, meaning Lebron like a top five player, a d like a top ten player.

And then I said they needed to knock down some him ter jump shots, because if you're shooting blow, you're just not gonna be able to be competitive in the n b A. And yeah, they I never expected to the Lakers to be a good um three point shooting team this year. They just don't have the roster for that. But they certainly are better than what they were. And so two of those three were rectified essentially in that Denver Nuggets game. And what do you know, they want

a basketball game? They shot forty three from three. Big part of that was shot quality. Uh, they only had thirty attempts, but only one, according to NBA dot Com, was tracked as either tightly contested or very tightly contested.

So they just took smarter threes um. And then also some of that's just positive regression again, like they're not a good shooting team, but they were nowhere near as bad as they looked, and so it was inevitable that they were going to have some good shooting games, and they happen to have one, going thirteen for thirty against the Nuggets. And then Anthony Davis, like, okay, Anthony Davis

got soundly outplayed by Nicola Yoki up in Denver. I did a whole video talking about how is transition defense in particular A destroyed the Lakers in that particular game, And I was very critical of Anthony Davis. And you know, again, like when when it comes to the criticism of players, everything is like relative to what your talent level is, and you know, it's it's kind of like an expectations

versus results type of thing. Like you know what frustrates me about Anthony Davis is he should be one of the top five basketball players in the world. That's how talented he is. He's, you know, obviously constructed like Rudy Gobert defensively, but he's got the shooting touch. He's demonstrated over the course of his career stretches of outstanding shooting touch. He can dribble the basketball. The dude is an unbelievable freak talent, and I've seen what it looks like when

he's dialed in on both ends of the floor. I saw it in he was so damn impressive. I used I was joking about this in a in a group chat the other day. He was so damn impressive in the season that when he would have a bad first half. I would tweet out like, oh, big second half incoming, because a D was like that was his rough game, Like a rough a D game would be he'd have a bad first half and then he'd come out in

the second half and destroy everybody. The dude was a night in, night out monster that killed everybody that was in his path. He became one of my favorite players. He I ranked him as the fourth best player in the world. After that season. He was a monster, and then he just lost it. Some of it was injuries, a lot of it is him coming into the season out of shape. A lot of it is he put on too much muscle and he's too heavy. Now, I mean, look this back spasm thing that's been acting up for

a while. The reality is is like that's just part of the Anthony Davis experience. Now, you can't just blame bad luck. You're he's stiff as a board because he's incredibly overweight in terms of just too much muscle mass for what he needs for the position. And guess what happens a lot when you get stiff and lack of mobility because you over build, your back gets tight. And that's what he's dealing with now and like it's I

have all that. There's just a lot of reasons for all Laker fans or Anthony Davis fans to be frustrated with the way that he's played over the years, the last couple of years. And you know what, he went out with his bad back, with the same lack of mobility that he's had over the last couple of years, and he soundly outplayed Yoki last night, soundly outplayed him,

completely erased that transition stuff, sprinting back. Instead of having thirty five fast break points like they did in the game in Denver, they only had nine, did a great job in isolation defense. Even the shots that Yokis made in that game were immensely difficult because Anthony Davis was draped all over him. Anthony Davis was making his jump shot, particularly his two point jump shot, and then on the other end of the floor, Yokich can't shoot anymore, which

we're gonna get to. That's a whole other thing. But a d was ignoring Yokis and dropping back into the paint to contain things and shut down a out of Denver stuff. He was the better player in that game. Now Yokis is a better player overall. Do I expect Anthony Davis to outplay Yokis every single night. No, not

until he gets back to form. But if he can play like a top ten player and outplay Nicola Yokich in a random game like this, when he plays up to that level where he's an all World defensive player that also has the ability to make big time offensive plays.

He hit back to back isolation jumpers over Nicola Yokichen crunch time in this game, a nasty fade away over his left shoulder into the lane, and then a one of those easy breezy jab step pull up jump shots on the left wing, and then he had a huge offensive rebound put back on a missed Lebron jump shot in crunch time. When he's making superstar offensive plays and he's the all world defender that he is, he's a top ten player. When he plays like a top ten player,

the Lakers are a better team. Big shock. You know. That's that's why I've been trying to hold him to that standard. I know that's what he's capable. Love. He's capable of being a top ten player in this league. He hasn't been for this entire season up till last night, and for the most part over the course of the previous two years. If he plays to that standard, a lot of the Lakers problems go from being big problems to being smaller problems. That's why it was so important

for him to get up to that level. And then, you know, Lebron, he had a rough night, particularly in the first half, really struggled to finish around the ram, had some sloppy turnovers. But he came out and was excellent in the second half, and he had a bunch of tough isolation jumpers. He made some huge plays at

the end of the game. There's a play where Yokich had Anthony Davis kind of pinned under the rim and got an offensive rebound and was holding it in his right hand and Lebron just came flying in and snatched it out of his hand, dribbled the ball up the floor and hit a transition three. It was a five point swing essentially because Yokis probably gets fouled there or makes a layup. It's a five point swing. That was

a huge impact play in this game. And then there was another play where he got switched on to Yokich and he denied Yokich the post entry the entire possession just by fronting him, and when he did, the Nuggets kind of passed it around the perimeter for a while, didn't know what to do and Michael Porter Jr. Ended up jacking up a bad three at the top of the key and it was a huge stop in the game. And what's funny is like, like, uh, like Lebron, That's

that's all you're asking for from Lebron. Top five players are going to have bad games, They're going to have bad halves. That happens, but more often than not, they bring their a game and when they do have a rough half, they usually come out in the second half and they make big place And in this particular game, when Lebron was a little bit uneven, they happened to get a great Russell westper performance that helped kind of

bolster that. But it was funny. There was a moment in the first half or Lebron um I want to say it was either a turnover. I think it was a turnover. He turned the ball over in transition, I believe um and they went down the other way and

there was a foul. I think Aaron Gordon got foul or something, and he was sitting and he kind of had his head down and the camera was right on his face, and he just kind of shook his head and then he went back to the game, and it was right before I think it was right before the

end of the first half. I remember sitting there thinking, like, he's the one guy that I don't worry about freaking uh uh, don't worry about figuring it out, like Anthony Davis, who knows last night it might be an anomaly or he might play like that the rest of the season. I literally have no idea. I have no idea what to make of what that performance was last night, if that's the usual thing for him moving forward, or if

it was an anomaly. But with Lebron, he will figure out a way to be one of the five best players in the world this year. His body is still moving well enough. It's mainly like sloppiness that's been undercutting him to this point. And most importantly, he's wired that way. He is the psychotic competitor that does not get complacent. He sees what's happening around him on the team, and

he knows he hasn't been good enough. I expect him to get I expect over the course the next few weeks for Lebron to steadily improve into eventually he looked like a sure fire top five player in the league. So we gotta shout out Russ. Russ had one of one of his very good games, not just a good game, a very good game from Russ, and like I said, it helps kind of balance out some of Lebron's uneven performance a couple of things. He had good games last year.

This is not incredibly unheard of, um in the way these good games for Russ look are a lot like what you saw last night, which is bad Russ plays, just with more good Russ plays, like he missed four more layups in that game. He's now shooting under in the restricted area for the season, which is insane. He

had three more turnovers. He had a bad missed box out in the second half on Bruce Brown that led to a three point shot at he um Bruce Barron went up and grabbed the rebound of kicked a te Thinkentavious called up Pope in the right corner and he

made a three. Bad Russ plays are every night, but at the differences in this particular game, he had all of his great russ plays working and as a result, the balance skipped heavily in the favor of him impacting winning he was punishing the smaller Denver guards, particularly Jamal Murray,

just had no chance against him in the UH. I believe it was in the first half, hitting Nasty really low between the legs, cross over to his right where he got Like again, when you're trying to beat a person off the dribble, one of the best ways to do that is to get lower than them because there's inevitably going to be some contact as you're trying to go around their shoulder, and then from there it's just a challenge of leverage, and you're gonna have better leverage

if you're lower to the ground and your legs are bent and you can power up through that contact. Then if you're up higher and the defender is lower than you, he can push you off of your line. And he got super low and got past Jamal Murray's shoulder and finished with the right hand layup, kind of talk some ship to Jamal in his face, and then the game

ceiling one same thing. Just put his head down and went right around Jamal Murray to the right then, he's gonna be having nightmares about that because you could tell it bothered Jim Ball when Russ was talking shit at his expense. I don't blame him. Russ has been one of the worst players in the league over the last couple of years, so if he talks trash to you,

can I assume that would be kind of frustrating. Um, But yeah, like like that's always gonna be one of Russ's strengths, as him being a huge, strong guard that has the ability to overpower smaller guards around the league.

He had four offensive rebounds in this game, including a massive offensive rebound in the fourth quarter where Matt Ryan kind of drove to the baseline and air ball to short jump shot and Russ came flying in from the other side and grab the rebound and like pitched it back out to Matt Ryan in the corner and he knocked down a three. UM. He had to high level

Russ playmaking that we've grown accustomed to over the years. Specifically, there was one where he drove along the left wing to the baseline and made a ridiculous cross court pass to Austin Reeves in the right corner at the last second. Like he was in the air for like a second before he did this, Denver completely collapsed, kicked out to Austin, Austin pump fake and went to the ram and got an and one. This was during a seventeen oh run from the Lakers, which I'm pretty sure for the most

part was just Russ and Anthony Davis. A massive winning effort from Russ in this game. And then he was good defensively, held up well and closeouts. He had a big block on Michael Porter Jr. Under the rim late in the game. Overall, he's just been Uh. In this particular game, he was just a force of positive energy and uh. And that's what a good Russ game is going to look like. And again, like I do I like Russ on this team? No? Do I dislike him

as a person? No, to have I been frustrated rooting for him over the last couple of years, Yes, because he's a very frustrating basketball player to root for, But there is no personal beef here. And I will always point out when he plays well, um off the bench is definitely the best way to use him because he gets to be more aggressive when he has the basketball.

But the reality is is his good nights like the one last night are way too inconsistent to bank on, So as Laker fans, I hope you don't get your hopes up that that's what it's gonna look like every night, because it's just not going to And at the end of the day, they're better off flipping Russ for players that have more night tonight impact on winning, zooming out a little bit from the Lakers their second in defense in the entire league right now, and a D just

played his best game, and Lebron, like I said earlier, is the last guy worry about figuring things out. So if a D can kind of translate this into more consistent success, if Lebron continues to improve offensively over the course of the next couple of weeks and their defense holds up the way it has through a very tough schedule,

this team is gonna start ripping off some wins. I just think the biggest thing that I'd watch out for his health, because if Anthony Davis is back has to requires him to miss one or two games every week, they they'll lose those games because without him they just don't have enough talent. And then obviously, in terms of continuity, just not having enough UMU, the continuity in lineups from night tonight. A couple of quick notes on the Nuggets.

They're down to defense now. The influx of Michael Porter Jr. And Jamal Murray was always going to limit them defensively. We talked about this a lot this summer, but I said that they would be the number one offense in the league, and they just simply haven't been. They've been fifteenth in offense. And there's a couple of big reasons for that. Jamal Murray in particular, has a ways to go to get back to what he was. Although he

was hitting some wild shots um against the Lakers. In this game, he had a late shot clock one against Anthony Davis on the left wing where like Pump faked and Anthony Davis was draped all over him and he like leaned into the right and made it a couple of nasty stepped backs to uh. So those are good signs. But his scoring, he's he's averaging right around like, I think, four teen points per game, and you'd like to see him over twenty. Aaron Gordon hasn't shot the ball well,

that's not helping. And then their bench is just really, really bad. DeAndre Jordan's is, in my opinion, like probably the worst NBA player that gets rotation minutes in the NBA. I've thought that when he was on the Lakers, thought that when he was on the Sixers. Think that now, um, this particular game, because Bones Highland was out, they were running like it was funny. There was a late game I want to say it was either late third or early fourth. I wanted I think it was late third

where the nets are. The Nuggets had a half court possession where the Lakers run to run and Bruce Brown like came off of a high ball screen from DeAndre Jordan's and just pulled up and shot a pull up off the dribble three early in the shot clock that he missed. And I remember thinking, like, why in the world is Bruce Brown taking that shot? And then I looked around at the lineup and it was like, uh, DeAndre Jordans, Devon Reid, Jeff Green, Christian Braun and and

and Bruce Brown. I'm like, Oh, that's why. It's because they literally don't have anybody in that lineup that can create their own shot. But Bones Highland was out in that particular game. But a big part of why their bench scoring hasn't been good all season is Bones Highland. His efficiency has fallen off of a cliff this year, despite him shooting from three. I had the Nuggets down at eight in my power rankings because even though there

was there's a ton of optimism surrounding the Nuggets. They killed everybody when they made Aaron Gordon trade two years ago before Jamal Murray came back, so there was a lot like, oh, they'll just come back and just start killing everybody again. But the truth is, is there a team that has great strengths and great flaws, which is true for a lot of the teams around the league

right now, but for Denver in particular. There they got worse defensively and their offense hasn't been good enough to make up for it, and they've got to figure that out. And then the last part here, and this is something

I was on over the course of last year. So if you guys remember I talked about how yoki Is perimeter shooting was concerning to me, and over the course of the last chunk of the season and into the postseason, his inability to knock down a pick and pop three point shot was causing some problems for Denver's offense because the big man could sit back into the lane in those situations, and I thought it was like a legitimate regression.

I was like, this is a huge sample size spanning over months and months, and this dude's just not making any shots. Something's up. But then I talked to somebody who covers the Nuggets and and he told me that, uh, he had a wrist issue. And a lot of you Laker fans probably are immediately like I remember this excuse

because Anthony Davis said something similar over the course the summer. Well, whatever risk issue was there last season is gone, and Yogi has missed one of his last thirteen or excuse me, he's made one of his last thirteen three point attempts, and Anthony Davis just completely ignored him when he was that far away from the rim and sagged back and he was unable to make him pay. And it was a big part of why Denver had some stretches of ugly offense in this game. Um, so Denver has got

a lot to work it out too. As we're zooming out here. I mean, like the Clippers have been really bad to start the season. The Nets have been really bad to start the season, the Sixers have been really bad to start the season, and the Warriors have been really bad to start the season relative to their expectations.

Those are four of my top six teams in the power rankings, the only and and the Celtics I think they have I'm going off the top of my head here, but I think they might have three losses at this point. So when I'm zooming out here, like got like really, the Bucks are the only one of the top tier teams that is really excelling right now, and their offense isn't uh their uh um offense isn't as good as it needs to be because they're missing all their spot

up shooters. So like, there is no perfect team right now, and so I'm really curious to see if there is a team out there that decides to go all in or make some sort of more aggressive trade, because the truth is is there's just a whole lot of a whole lot of uh uh mid level basketball going on around the league right now. All Right, We've been going for a while, so I'm gonna get out of here pretty quick. The uh A couple of notes on the Nets I was stunned when they decided to bring everyone back.

If you remember we I there was literally two videos one day apart. One was on a Monday, one was on her Tuesday. One was on Monday. I was like, uh, Katie's gonna get traded. There's no way they decided to

move forward with this group. And it was after everything that happened with like Joe sigh and and uh, you know, and talking about wanting Steve Nash out, and then like Tuesday morning, the Kevin Durant report came that he's going to be returning to the team, like in his recommitted and I and I came out that day and I was stunned. I was stunned. And I had a lot of people in the comments like, you were so confident that that was gonna happen. You were wrong, bo By.

I'm gonna be wrong all the time. Anytime you make predictions, you're gonna be wrong. But I was really stunned, And there was a reason why I came out so strong with that take on that Monday. I could not figure out because like I believe in Kevin Durant as a foundational piece for a franchise. I believe in Kyrie Irving's capability. I believe in the fit that they have naturally with Ben Simmons, they you know, obviously said Curry has been out, t J. Warren has been out. They have more talent

that's not available yet. But I had them as a if things go right, contender, but I did not have them as a top tier contender, and there was a big gap between those And specifically, I just was looking at that situation and I'm thinking Katie doesn't like the GM or the coach. Kyrie Irving is is literally a disaster for a basketball team to deal with every single season, with all the draw that he brings. And they're not talented enough to be a top tier contender. So like,

what's the point? Like, you need everything to go right in order for you to win a title, and chances are things won't go right. And so I was I came out strongly thinking there's no way, and then they decided to bring everybody back. And if you guys, remember what did I say at that point? I said, they are very talented and so if they win games, this will all be fine. But if you remember, I said, if they start losing games, the wounds from this summer

will come back to the surface. And that's literally what's happened. They're sitting at one in five, and all of a sudden, when a team that's not playing hard, like not grabbing rebounds and not defending, you start to think, oh, they're not bought into their coach. Well, the best player said he didn't want that coach. That's something that you're gonna start thinking about. Kyrie Irving I said, oh, well, he's gonna buy back in and try to earn that contract

extension this summer. And he has on the court been available, which is a lot more than you could say over the last two seasons. But now we have all this drama with all the anti Semitic stuff that he's been promoting and and him having back back and forth with Nique fredell uh Nick fredell In in the postgame presser. That stuff is a lot easier to deal with when you're five and one than it is when you're one

in five. And as these losses start to pile up, and that last one against the Pacers was really, really, really embarrassing, the reality is is all of these things are gonna start to bubble to the surface. Are they bought into the coach? You know Ben Simmons and his mental health, is that going to be an issue? Kyrie Irving and his shenanigans. You know, all of that stuff starts to bubble to the surface, and I honestly don't

know what ends up happening here. I really thought they'd want to move on from this group over the summer, and they did not. They wanted to continue to push forward. I see k D as a foundational m v P piece, but nothing else around this to me, is worth this everything else, And you don't have the means with which to turn the surrounding pieces into players that compliment k D well enough to win a title. And he's getting older. So like, at the end of the day, like you

really only have two options. You can cross your fingers and just hope this all works out, and they suddenly start playing defense, and they suddenly start grabbing rebounds, and Seth Curry and T. J. Warren come in and and and just kind of give them an influx of talent and everything is fine. Or you can sell the farm. And I'm really curious to see which direction they end up going. Um My guests as they stick it out for a little while longer until Seth Curry and t J.

Warren get into the offense. But right now, like man, this could not have gone worse to start the season. They've lost some winnable games in this chunk, all right, So that's all I have for today. Here's the plan for the rest of this week. Tomorrow night, we're going live UM after the final buzzer if I believe Golden State Miami. That's gonna be on AMP. So you're gonna want to go to my Twitter feed and find the AMPLE links so you can download that AMP uh at

that app and listen to the show there. If you miss that for whatever reason, it will be redistributed on YouTube later in the evening. Then Wednesday AMP after the early morning or the early evening game Cavs Celtics, and then live on YouTube after the Lakers game on Wednesday night, which I believe is against the Pelicans. Thursday night we're live on AMP after Warriors Magic, and then Friday we're just doing a normal YouTube film breakdown sometime during the day.

So that's our schedule for this week. As always, I appreciate your guys support and I will see you tomorrow s s the volume