HoopsTonight - Klay Thompson leads Warriors, how Anthony Davis is key for LeBron James & Lakers

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dot net in West Virginia. All right, Welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by Vanduel here at the volume. Happy Monday, everybody. I hope all of you guys had an incredible weekend. Got a lot of basketball to get into because we haven't talked since Friday. During the day, we're gonna break down six different games from the weekend today. The Warriors getting back on track with a couple of wins, including a road win for the first time this season in Houston.

Denver won a big game on the road in Dallas without Nickel Yoki or Jamal Murray's We're gonna get into that one. Uh. Kyrie Irving came back for the Brooklyn Nets yesterday who gotta win against the Memphis Grizzlies. Toronto and Atlanta had a wild overtime game that have one of the craziest final sequences that I've seen in a long time. So we're gonna talk about that one. Uh Joel em beat in Jana Santenna, Cumpo had a hell of a battle that Joel em beat ended up way ing.

And the last, but not least, the Los Angeles Lakers on a three game winning streak. Yes, I cannot believe it, but that is the case. They beat the San Antonio s first, beat the crap out of the San Antonio Spurs last night, and I can't remember the last time they had to blowout victory like that. So we're gonna get into some Lakers as well. 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 on Twitter at underscore Jason Lts. You guys don't miss any show announcements, and last but not least, for whatever reason, you guys 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 and lastly two thousand two, two thousand twenty two. When it comes to the economy, those are some scary years. Dot Com crash, housing crash and the roller coaster we're

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right now? That's net Suite dot Com slash Jason one last time net Suite dot Com slash Jason also really quickly, just so you guys know the schedule this week because of the holiday, it's gonna be a little funky um today obviously recovering the games from Friday through Sunday. Tomorrow morning early League in the day, I'm gonna hit on a couple of games from tonight because tonight's slate is very interesting, and then we have one last show this

week Tuesday night. We're still deciding whether or not we're gonna go after the Sixers NETS game with Ben Simmons returning to Philly or the Lakers um playing in Phoenix, I believe against the Suns with hopefully Lebron James returning. So I'm not sure which of those two games will go after. But we'll do a YouTube live tomorrow night

as well. So two additional shows this week, and then we're taking the rest of the holiday off, so no show Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday before we get into next week. Alright, on that note, let's talk some basketball So Clay finally got going against the Rockets last night forty one points and coincidental, not a coincidence, because

he got some good looks to start the game. He got a wide open layup in transition for his first shot attempt, and then his second shot attempt, he was on the right wing and Kevin Porter Jr. Gambled into a passing lane and missed the ball, so he had

a wide open three, which he ended up making. Then on the left side of the floor, he curled over the top of the screen and cut back door and got a left handed layup, and then he got another wide open corner three and transition because he was running the floor and there was some attention thrown towards Steph Once he saw those go through the basket, everything was going for him and he had a really like vintage Clay Thompson type of game, finishing at the rim and

then aggressively making the tougher shots as the game went along. Because what was you know, what should be especially encouraging to Warriors fans in this game is even though Clay came out made a bunch of shots at the beginning of the game, he also went cold for a little while, missed a couple of layups around the rim, got blocked once, missed one of those like patented wonder well pull ups early second half, or he got right to that you know, right elbow and was wide open and left it long.

But when that little cold spell came, he kept shooting. He was still confident, and he ended up making a bunch of big shots at the end of the game, including two huge threes that I thought ice the game. His lift has been good all year, and we talked about how his shot quality was pretty good in terms of the types of looks that he was getting over

the course of the game that he was just missing. Yes, he had some stretches of bad shots selection, but he's Clay Thompson and he's accustomed to playing a certain way, and the good version of Clay Thompson, the one all you Warriors fans are accustomed to, also has bad shot selection. They just go in because he's Clay Thompson. It's the audacity and the confidence that he has in his shots.

So it was always a delicate balance. You wanted him to get on track with some easier shots, but you also have to understand that that's his shot Diet just inherently has a lot of difficult shots kind of mixed in there. So I have I have a feeling this will be the kind of game that kind of gets him going from a confident standpoint and we should be seeing some more consistent clay production moving forward. Steph current career high is sixteen and assists, and he had fifteen

last night. The last time he had sixteen assists in a game was back in two thousand and fourteen when Mark Jackson had him basically running everything with the ball in his hands. And you can kind of tell last night he had the ball in his hands a lot, a lot of ball screens, a lot of being aggressive in semi transition. Those are the situations where Steph ends

up having the ball in his hands. That's why, like remember when I would talk about, you know, the top tier playmakers, and I'd say, like, it's Luca, it's Lebron, it's Yokich, and it's Chris Paul. Those are like your top tier on ball playmakers. But I always put Steph up in that group, not because of what he does on the ball in but in and of itself, but

the combination of the two. He is a very good on ball playmaker, but he also is a off ball playmaker who cares if it's me driving into three bodies and kicking out to an open shooter, versus if I'm running off of a couple of screens and dragging multiple defenders while somebody else makes a pass to somebody else for a layup. It's the same type of playmaker, or it's a different type, but it's the same effect of playmaking.

And we we kind of get distracted from what Steph can do with the ball sometimes because we get so

hyper focused on what he does without the ball. But he's also very good passing the basketball when he has it in his hands, and in this particular game is a lot of hunting clay, which is part of being a great playmaker, knowing what guys in a rhythm, what guys not feeding guys to help them get into rhythm, and then continuing to feed them when they're in a rhythm because they have the hot hand and they can carry you through stretches of the game. The Warriors are

quietly getting back on track. So since that winless road trip, which was a complete disaster, they go own five. Since that trip, there five and two in their next seven games. Seventh in offense, seventh in defense, third and net rating. That's really good. Clay Thompson is twenty points per game on from three in this seven game stretch. That's really good.

Andrew Wiggins twenty points per game on from three, Jordan Pool fourteen points per game on from three, and then obviously Steph Curry playing some of the best basketball of his career this seven game span, thirty four points per game on from the field, from three and from the

free throw line. Quick shout out for the Rockets. Jabari Smith Jr. I watched him play in Summer League, and it was kind of a struggle for him there because he can't dribble, and that inevitably when you get to the NBA level, when when you're playing against athletes that can get up into your airspace and that are gonna be able to bother your jump shot a little bit more, you need to create more separation than you did at

the college level. And he doesn't dribble very well, so I anticipated kind of a slower initial phase of his career. But he's got so much good that he can lean on right now that already makes him a productive NBA player that it's not gonna be as much of a growing pain as you might anticipate, and it's helping Houston in a lot of ways. I love his quick high release, shoots it above his head confidently, elevates quickly, doesn't need a ton of space when he's spotting up to get

a good look. He also had a couple of mid range pull ups in this game. One against a zone defense. He caught the ball in the middle floor, kind of fumbled it, but then he caught it and just rose up over his left shoulder knocked a shot down. It's so important against the zone to have a guy that's in the middle of the floor that can knock down

a jump shot. And then he had another one coming off the right wing where Steph was on him and he attacked the clothes out towards the middle and hit a too dribble pull up, which is a nice little bit of growth in his game. Inside his seventeen feet is where his jumper has been most accurate this year. He's shooting fift on those short range jump shots out to seventeen feet. He's struggling when he gets out of there,

but he's already a great defensive player. He kind of his ultimate ceiling reminds me a lot of Richard Lewis. Just a huge wing with a high release that can aggressively shoot, shoot over the top of smaller defenders. And he's a much better defender than Richard Lewis. Will be a much better defender than Richard Lewis ever was. So that's kind of the ceiling that we're looking at there. He just needs to keep working on that handle and that jumper. So Denver beats Dallas last night. Really bad

loss for Dallas. They have a bunch of bad losses this year, but that was the thing for them last year too. They have a tendency to play down into the competition. I think it stems from Luca and just his overall personality. Um, there was no Jamal Murray or Nicola Yo Kitchen this game for Denver, which is what makes it such a bad loss. Bones Highland absolutely torch them.

I I love that in this particular game he made an attempt to get to the basket first to find his rhythm before started going to his pull up jump shot, because like so many guys that have a great pull up jump shot, it's it's it's kind of like a it's a blessing and a curse because when you're tall and you can shoot a pull up jump shot, either off of the step back or off of rhythm dribbles and things like that, you have a tendency to feel like in any situation that you can get to it.

So you're dribbling the ball, you're looking at a defensive player and you're thinking, I can hit this dribble combo and go to a step back and I can make it thirty of the time, right, And so you end up settling for it because it's the easy way out when the reality is that you need to show some willingness to beat people to the basket to buy that defender, you know, to lead that defender into being a little bit more on their heels, which gives you a little

bit more space so that when you go to those step back moves you have more separation. They're higher quality shots, and then all your percentages skyrocket. And there were a couple of light clock possessions where the ball ended up in bones Highland's hands in the first quarter of this game, where you know you're waiting for him just to go to his patented step back, and instead he just made a hard dribble move and went to the rim and got it, got himself going there. Then he got to

his pull up jumper later in the game. He's sneaky having a very good pick and roll season after a rough start. Bones Island has run a hundred and seventy one pick and rolls this year that have led to a hundred and eighty one points including passes, which is in the seventy four percentile. I think bones Highlands pick

and roll success is built on three factors. Everything's built out of that high hesitation dribble where he's kind of like sitting up high, and then he can always go into his next dribble or he can rise up into the shot. It's like a daisy chains all the moves together, which makes him unpredictable. He's also very good at using retreat dribbles right after coming over the screen, so a lot of guys will just go downhill every single time.

Bones usually will use the screen, make a little bit of a downhill move, but then retreat dribble like a step back dribble, and then he sits in that high hesitation and he waits for the defender to make a move. If the defender keeps going over the screen and he gets tons of separation, he'll go up into the shot. If the defender lunges out at him, he'll come back further to the basket, or he'll uh, you know, he'll come out of the high hesitation, push ahead and go

towards the basket. If the screen defender is too high, he'll come out of the high hesitation and throw the pocket pass. Everything is built out of coming off that screen, quick retreat, dribble, wait to see what the defense does, and then make a play. And then he can shoot the ball extremely well off the dribble, which is the foundational skill that forces that defender to lunge out at him, opening everything else up, or to bring the screen defender

up higher. He's shooting forty six on pull up threes this year. Obviously it sounds great on the surface, but it's even better than that because he's shooting on many of those way behind the line. And what's nice about bones Island's ability to shoot way behind the line is it just spaces the floor in those actions way further out, buying you more room to make decisions and to get ahead of steam going towards the basket. I'll give an example.

There's a game against the Spurs a few games ago where Bones Highland is working on the left wing and I can't remember who it was. He was guarding the action for the Spurs, but their screen defender came all the way up. So Bones has got a guy on his right hand who's trying to funnel him to the left, and the Spurs screen defenders already out towards almost the

three point line. And what he did is he just backed up further away from the basket's almost like thirty five ft, which suddenly, at that point the Spurs screen descent defenders stayed back towards the three point line. That way Bones could get ahead of steam coming off of the ball screen. He turned the corner around the screen defender and he end up working around the base line through a lefty hook pass, got the Spurs into rotation and they ended up getting a basket out of it.

But I was sitting there thinking like for most guys, if they dribbled it further away from the basket, that the defenders would just sit back. The actual on ball defender would just sit back and he wouldn't be able to get an advantage. But Bones Island is so damn good at making like seven thirty ft thirty like even sometimes thirty two three ft pull up jump shots that the guys always just coming out on him, which is giving him that ability to get downhill again picking rolls

really impressive for a young guard in this league. Um on the other end of the floor, in this particular game with Denver winning on the road against Dallas, it was a clinic in how to blitz ball screens and recover. So if you look at the but if you look at the box score, Luca only took only took sixteen shots, only scored twenty two points. But if you watch the game, he got blitzed on almost every single ball screen. And then Denver was doing a really nice job of taking

away the easy passes. So they'd come up to guard the role man, the guy in the roll out of the corner, and then they take away that first pass. And so basically there were only two options that were open. He could make the skip pass if he could get if you can actually get the ball there, but most

cases they actually apply ball pressure. And when they'd apply ball pressure, Luca would not be able to make the skip pass, and the guy at the top of the key would have to like retreat out like v cut out to forty ft from the rim for Luca just to get an escape pass away. Now your advantage is gone and it's a successful double team. All game long,

Dallas was struggling. There were plays in there. Or Luca would like use a nice escape dribble to you know, as he's coming off the screen cover like ten ft aground, So even though the screen defenders on him, he's got a couple of seconds before the on ball defender recovers to his backside and he could actually elevate and throw that skip pass across the court or in that process forced another defender to find another opening. He did hit

the role man a few times. He did make some plays out of that, but for the most part, Denver rendered that Luca high pick and roll useless because of them just being able to trap apply enough ball pressure to take away the skip pass. In all the passes that Luca was making were more just getting rid of the basketball rather than making the defense pay. And you know, honestly, like to lucas credit, I thought he played it pretty

well in this game. The role players just missed a lot of shots and a lot of reads in there four on three actions. It's tough to handle the scheme like that in general in the regular season because you have to be so sharp on the back side. But they have personnel to be better than they have been as of late, and Dallas is having a lot of offensive issues right now. They're twenty one in offensive rating in their last ten games Memphis Brooklyn, So Brooklyn wins

one fifteen. Jared Jackson, Junior John Moran, and Desmond Bain were all out. But I still thought this was a pretty significant challenge for Brooklyn because Memphis is so physically strong down the roster, and for all the length and athleticism Brooklyn has, they're very thin and they can be pushed around. So I thought this would be a tough

game and it wasn't a lot of ways. They gave up thirteen offensive rebounds, they got bullied in the paint, but they still want and just like with the Warriors, sneaky, you know, we look at the schedule, you can think you can become become pessimistic pretty quickly, but if you look at their recent schedule, they're six and nine in their last nine games, or excuse me, six and three in their last nine games. They have the fourth best defense in the league during that span. Remember how bad

they were to start the year. They were the worst defense in the league for the first half of this chunk of games, and then all of a sudden, they're the fourth best defense in the league. That's not on Steve Nash. I I just I never bought that as an excuse. Those dudes just weren't playing hard to start the season. Now they are now Again, Like I said, not Steve Nash's fault, but players tune coaches out. You get a different voice in there. Suddenly they're listening, Suddenly

they're bought in. It works. That's why, even though sometimes the coaches can be a scapegoat, firing, sometimes it's just the best way to shuffle things up and get a new voice in there, get guys to play hard. Like like it or not. Even though it was not Steve Nash's fault, the firing triggered the team playing hard. As messed up as that is, it's just the reality of the situation. They're also twelfth in offense in their last nine games, which is pretty solid, especially since Kyrie has

been out for most of that. UM third and net rating overall twenty three and rebounding, which is not good, but it's a hell of a lot better than it was to start the season. If you remember, I think they were second to last in the league in the first couple of weeks. Kyrie looked out of shape, but he made a lot of good moves that like that.

That's the dead giveaway for guys out of shape. When you're making the nice moves, you're seeing the floor and you're hitting the gaps and you're getting to your spots, but you're just not getting the lift to knock down shots. There are several plays where he made the right reads, made the right dribble combination to get through the traffic, and then just like left a layup short on the rim or missed a pull up jump shot. Things along those lines. That's to be expected. Overall, I thought he

looked fine though physically. Um Kadi another quiet great night, seven and seven on six teen shots. He's having a quiet great season. Check out some of these numbers. Um A hundred forty eight points on a hundred five pick and rolls, which is in the ninety one percentile, a hundred forty one points one ISOs which is in the eighty five percentile, and eight eight points on seventy seven post ups which is in percentI all that includes passing with with the access, with the data that I have

access to him. Always gonna be looking at with passing because that's just the way the game actually works, U Ben Simmons. He makes his return to Philly tomorrow, we will be covering that game either after the Lakers game or immediately after that game. Another big game twenty two points last night. He's averaging sixteen points, nine rebounds, and five assists on eighty five percent shooting in his last three games. So a little bit of a sign of

life on the Ben Simmons front. Good variety to some self created stuff. In this game. He had two straight up post ups in the first half where he went to right handed hook shots that he made. He had a fake dribble handoff where he went to the basket and finished with his left hand um attacking the Raymond transition.

That the that self created stuff as like gold for the nets, you know, especially with what they're what they were hoping for from Ben Simmons when they first made the trade, and then he was really effective again in the short role and in the dunker spot, just quick finishing around the rim off of the attention that Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant dictate. Interestingly enough, again in this game, Ben Simmons finished just about every shot with his right hand.

Uh koc Kevin. Kevin O'Connor works for the Ringer has this theory that he's been going with for a couple of years now that Ben Simmons is actually right handed and that he just shoots left handed for some stupid reason and that he has no business doing that. And I'll admit at first I was super skeptical, and I've been super skeptical of that just because, like it just defies you know, it just defies logic that he wouldn't have made that switch if he actually was right hand dominant.

But I'm starting to drink the kool aid a little bit. Chaos might be onto something. This dude shoots everything with his right hand, and his form is so much more natural with his right hand. His left handed crossfires across his face, but with his right hand he's in line the way that you're supposed to be um. So yeah, maybe maybe that is what it is. But Ben Simmons a little sign of life, some good basketball from him and the Nets overall it playing some good basketball. We'll

see if it lasts. I'm skeptical about this team once some you know, controversy or some adversity hits them. But we will see what happens. Toronto Atlanta. I'm not gonna talk about this total game because I just turned it on at the very end when it was live. Uh tough loss for Toronto. Scotti barn smoked an easy lay up out of the dunker spot right before the end

of regulation. Should have dunked it, instead went to the backboard and slapped the backboard and tried to make a lay up and shot it over the rim and then they ended up losing in ot. The reason why I added this game to the list because it's it's hard to evaluate Toronto Toronto right now. They're super banged up there that they've had guys in and out of the lineup and uh um, and it's just hard to learn

about teams when they're playing like that. But like, this was a classic Nick Nurse game because it's twenty o Ganna Nobi gets valid, he goes to the line, he makes both free throws. After he makes the free throw, there's just under four seconds left. This is a set play type of situation. So in this situation at two, coming off of a made free throw, you can bet that Atlanta has called a set that they have prepped for.

All these coaches have end of game scenarios. This is a play we run with you know, less than twenty four seconds left, you know, in a full court situation. This is a play we run with less than ten seconds left in the full court situation. This is a play that we run with less than five seconds left in a full court situation. This is a play we run when there's one second left and we have to heave it up the court and quit, catch and shoot like they have like time in time and situation uh

time and score, like situational plays. For all these situations, Atlanta has a call in same thing goes for the defensive end of the floor. Nick Nurse has a call in, Okay, this is the way we'regarding. Typically in a situation like that, you're staying back past half court. No one fouls, and your job is to contain the basketball and just force them to take a shot over the top, and you live with the results because you don't want to give

up something easy. If they're gonna beat you, you want them to beat you with them making a tough shot over a contest. Instead, what happens, Nick Nurse has four Raptors in the back court pressing the basketball and Lanta gets the ball in past pass. All of a sudden, Trey Young is breaking along the right side of the floor in a two on one situation. The one raptor in the back court has to step up easy love and A J. Griffin catches and lays the ball in the basket to win the game. I was I was

completely stunned watching the players showed my wife. My wife actually has a basketball background as well as she played in college and and her and I were just dying that this that was what the head coach of the Toronto Raptors asked them to do in a situation tie game with less than four seconds left. Any other coach in the NBA, and you might you might apply a little bit of ball pressure, but it's usually not gonna be until after they crossed half court. Everything you're supposed

to contain in front. The one thing you can't do is give up a wide open layup at the basket. It was truly baffling, And this is kind of a Nick Nurse thing. He over coaches. He always wants to over help, he always wants to overdig, he always wants to over gamble. And I get it to a certain extent because Toronto can't score in the half court according to Cleaning the Glass, their twenty ninth and half court offense, so he wants to get out and transition as much

as possible. But the reality is is it's hurting their half court defense too because of that aggression. They're giving up a lot of open shots. Like they have the longest and most athletic roster in the NBA, they should be able to leave guys in an island and one on one and do well with teams trying to shoot over the top of them. But what will happen is some guy will drive to the basket. Scotty Barnes will be with him, sliding along, and he might have an

opportunity to go to the rim. But Scott He's gonna challenge him. It's gonna be something incredibly diff cold, finish and instead, like another Raptor will help out of the strong side. It's an easy kickout to wide open three. That's why they're twenty six. And half court defense despite being the longest and most excuse me, and half court defense despite being the longest and most athletic roster in

the NBA. I get it, Like, you should try to manufacture as much transition basketball as you can because you struggle is going to half court. So push the ball with pace, makes or misses, push the ball up the wings, try to attack the rim with your size and athleticism, even if there is some congestion in transition. I support all of that. In hell, like dig into the passing lanes and trust your trust, your athleticism to be able

to close out. But the overhelping and the over digging has to stop because it's hurting this team in a lot of different ways. And there again, like that's just in the flow of the game Situationally, I literally cannot fathom why Nick Nurse had four Raptors in the back court with less than four seconds left of a tie game. You know, it was one of the more puzzling things that I've seen in a long time. Nick Nurse is an amazing basketball coach. He just has his quirks and

his cork right now is he's an overhelped guy. He's overly aggressive, all right, Milwaukee Philly, this was a fun game, I believe, on Friday night, and beating Janice from the start. We're just trying to send messages to each other, just you know. Janice has been kind of floating through the early parts of games a lot this year, just doing dribble handoffs and trying to get his teammates open looks. He was putting his head down and trying to score every damn time to start the game. So was Joe

l Embiid. You know. Joel Embiad ended up having this like crazy block on Janice where he like threw the ball into the ground. Had this like really intense vive but the game was very back and forth. Tyres Maxie ended up hurting his foot and going down, and it was a really impressive win for Philly without James Harden with Tyres Maxie going down to close this game out, and it was a lot of just amazing Joel Embiid and some puzzling decision making from Drew Holiday in Jhannae.

So it was tied at and from there it was all decision making and shot making that to term in the outcome. So at Um and Bead catches on the short roll and Drew Holiday's guarding Shake Milton. Shake Milton's on the left wing, and Drew Holiday just leaves Shake Milton and just lunges kind of halfheartedly to try to take the ball away from mb doesn't even come close. Now he's way out of the play. Drew Holidays like at the right wing. Now Shake Milton relocates to the

left corner. This is how wide open he was, and Bead had time multiple seconds to identify that Shake Milton was open, then throw him a pass that was a terrible pass way too high. Shake Milton had to jump up and high point it, and Shake had so much time that he was able to high point it, come down, get his feet set, and then patiently rise up and

knocked down the shot. So a really bad gamble from from Drew Holiday ended up getting a wide open shot for Shake Milton that he made very next possession, Janice goes down and post up. P J. Tucker knocks him over. Joel Embiad has to come down. As a result, the ball gets worked around in rotation and like three or four closeouts later, Drew Holiday gets a wide open shot on the left wing. He misses it. Okay, Maker miss league. It's a one possession game. Still. They go down the

other end. They get a stop on Shake Milton and pick and roll and then Janice comes down and just Jack's up at three. He was sixteen seconds left and he had just checked into the game like two possessions prior, and he left it way short, which is a typical thing that happens when you come in and shoot cold and the Sixers uh can't secure the rebound. They go uh, they get an offensive rebound, they get it back and Grayson Allen has to take There's only like seven seconds

on the shot. Like Grayson Allen takes like a tough pull back three and misses it. And then from there and Be just took the game over the shot making. So it's still one tw one on nine, excuse me one. And it was on the short roll and Be catching Brook Lopez is back pedaling and he does that patented hesitation pull up jump shot right before the right below

the free throw line knocks it down. They go down, Drew Holiday gets called for an illegal screen, and then uh and be just a ridiculous step back jumps over Brook Lopez at the left elbow in the game's over. So basically, yeah, there's a little bit of shot making in there. Shake Milton makes the open three, Drew Holiday misses the open three. But then from there it was a combination of Joel embiad playing like an m VP, making too tough off the dribble jump shots, and Janis

and Drew Holiday making three mistakes. Drew Holiday bad gamble to try to take away that Joe or to try to double team Joel Embiat leads to a wide open three. Drew Holiday sets an illegal screen and on the play he wasn't really even helping you, Honese. He was like kind of moving in like trying to uh to just uh to mess up p J Tucker at the foul and get called for an illegal screen and then uh and then Johanna Santana Coopo taking the three was sixteen

seconds on the shot clock. It's just bad decision making, So kudos them. Beat. That's how you win a game against a really damn good Bucks team. Down your two best guards just execution at the end of the game, not doing stupid stuff, and your best player doing what best players have to do, which is knocked down big shots at the end of the game. Joel Embiat his perimeter shooting continues to be really impressive inside of seventeen

feet on jump shots. This year, he's thirty two for sixty, which is great in between seventeen feet in the three point line, so long twos, he's nine for fourteen. Can't make anything outside the three point line really, but he's making everything inside of the three point line, which is making up for some of his passing limitations and where

he's getting a lot of his scoring right now. And again the ability to go to that at the end of games, to shoot over the top of the defense the way he did over Brook Lopez is a big weapon. He's got a midfoot sprain right now though, that's gonna keep him out for the next two games, so hopefully he gets well soon. Alright, last, but not least before we get out of here today, Spurs Lakers eighties wrecking ball tour continues. His last three games yeah thirty again

last night. His last three games thirty five, seventeen and two sixty two field goals on the foul line at eleven attempts. That's a big indicator for a D when he's starting to get his shooting touchback, because he shoots well from the foul line, and he made a couple of pull up jump shots in this game as well, three stocks per game. Remember that's blocks and steals come mind.

And he's twenty three for twenty nine in the restricted area, which is to be expected, but similar to Joel Embid with a D, it's so important for him to be able to make that perimeter jump shot because if you can't pass over a congested defense, you need to be able to shoot over a congested defense. And in this three game stretch, he's fourteen for between the restricted area and the three point line. So in all that short the midrange stuff, he's making about half of his shots

right now, which is really solid. And then obviously he's been Defensive Player of the Year type of impact on the defensive end of the floor. Lebron I think, is going to come back on Tuesday against the Suns, and you know, I I've been I've been hard on those two all season. I used to say about Lebron and a d before this year, before the rust here, I used to say, like, if you get a good game out of your role players, you're beating the crap out

of the other team. If you get an okay game out of your role players, you're winning by ten fifteen points. If you get a bad game out of your role players, the Lakers might still barely win. That's how good the Lebron James Anthony Davis pairing used to be. But it was because Anthony Davison Lebron were two of the top five players in the world, and they played like it almost every night, and as a result, regardless of what they got from the role players, they were able to

win a lot of games. Anthony Davis playing well, playing up to his potential, fixes a whole lot of problems for the Lakers. Like guess what, this is his first time getting three thirty point games in a row since guests when since the season when he won the title and was a top five player in the world. They went three and oh against bad teams. Yes, but they were losing to bad teams last year with Anthony Davis

and Russell Westbrook. Now they've beat three of them in a row because Anthony Davis is playing like a top five, top ten player. They like. We can talk about the proofery all we want, and we will, and they're legit problems. The Lakers still need to make a trade and we'll get into that, I'm sure plenty over the course of the rest of the season if they continue to play well. But so many of their problems we would be fixed by Anthony Davis playing like top ten, top five player

in Lebron James playing like the top five player. Anthony Davis has played like a top five player three nights in a row and the Lakers are three and oh, now that works against the bad teams. You're gonna play Phoenix on Tuesday. In order to beat the great teams, you will need Anthony Davis and Lebron at that level. So a d is holding up his end of the bargain, and it's time for Lebron to do the same on

both ends of the floor. And he needs to do it by continuing to feed Anthony Davis, keeping him featured in the offense. Now, some of that is a little like like a lot of I've seen, of course, the usual you know, kind of nefarious characters on Twitter, saying things like, oh, they're three notes since you know, if they've won three games in a row without Lebron, it's because Anthony Davis is getting the basketball. That's just um.

Lebron is not to blame for the Lakers struggles in the sense that you know, a a D finally is getting a going now when he's out, a D is just playing better. It's really that simple. Lebron James consistently looks for a D. He has gone away from him when a D has not had his head in the game, and when a D has struggled. Now, does Lebron need to feed him more to continue this going? Absolutely, But I don't see those two I don't see those two

priorities cross wise with each other. I don't think Lebron coming back affects Anthony Davis's ability to get thirty five and seventeen. He's absolutely capable of doing that. We saw him do it in We know he can. What happened is is Anthony Davis massively regressed for two damn seasons, and Lebron James lost some of his confidence in him and went away from him a little bit. If a D is playing like this, Lebron is going to continue

to feed him. Now what do I expect. The reality is a Lebron's a rhythm player, and he's old, and he's out of shape, and he hasn't been able to stay on the court consistently this season. So as a result, I expect him to go into Phoenix and struggle. Michail Bridges is one of the best perimeter defenders in the entire league, and Lebron is going to be out of rhythm and out of shape. So I wouldn't expect much

from Lebron for about a week. But if Anthony Davis can continue to play this way, and Lebron can stay on the floor and get in shape and he can meet Anthony Davis on that level, you'll see the Lakers start to cook a little bit. Austin Reeves season high twenty one points. He's getting a lot of pick and roll touches now that Lebron's out, and he's been great, and it's a couple of different things. He's one of the best pastors on the team, and then he's improved

mightily as a shooter. He's having a season right now. He's running fifty pick and rolls this year that have led to forty five points, which is in the sixty percentile, so a little bit above average, which is not bad for his first real volume with that type of action at the NBA level. And then last laker I wanted to shout out was Lonnie Walker at fourteen points again again last night. He's averaging sixteen and a half points on fifty eight percent TRU shooting, which is re league good.

He's running forty four pick and rolls this year for forty eight points, which is in the which is in the eight second percentile. I did a whole video on this on Twitter, a breakdown with annotations and voiceovers you can find on my Twitter feed Underscore Jason lt. Yeah. In it, I went over all the different ways that he's succeeding in pick and roll. He's willing to get downhill and he's got the athleticism to succeed when he

does that. Because he does that, he engages the screen defender, actually gets him involved in the play, which is what opens up the playmaking. And then from there he makes the right reads and he has a good amount of shot making. He's making enough little pull up fifteen footers and pull up threes like that to generate some points eighty second percentile again on not terrible volume for a pick and roll player. Good. You know, I was critical

of the Lonnie Walker signing. Now I this disaster has been a complete This summer has been a complete disaster for Rob Polinka. But there have been a couple of small wins in there. Lonnie Walker on the mid level exception, that was a solid signing. I think Troy Brown Jr. Has been pretty good out overall. The vision of the Roster family to make a rush trade that all I think undercuts a great deal of that success. But the Lonnie Walker signing I was wrong about, and I have

to I have to eat some crow. I thought that he was a little too undersized to use the mid level exception on. But he's been better defensively than he was in San Antonio and better offensively than he was in San Antonio. So Rob Blincoln made a bet on a young former lottery player too to exceed expectations when he came in the door, and he did, and we have to give him credit for that. All Right, That's all I have for today. You guys know the drill.

Tomorrow morning we'll have a quick short breakdown on tonight's games, and then tomorrow night we'll have one last live show, and then we're off through the holiday. As always, I sincerely appreciate your support and I will see you next time. The volume