NBA Week 1 Reaction: Spurs' Wemby top 2? + 76ers' VJ Edgecombe EXPLOSION, Clippers embarrassed

shows over the last few nights. But I'm very excited to kind of bounce around and get to the stuff that we haven't talked about yet. We do have a handful of questions related to some of our regular teams that we cover often on the show. But we're gonna be breaking down three games from Wednesday Night Slate. We're gonna hit Raptors, Hawks, We're gonna hit Clippers, Jazz, We're

gonna hit six Ers, Celtics. I've got questions from some other teams around the league, some big picture basketball kind of philosophy questions, all sorts of interesting stuff from you guys in today's mail bag. You guys are the joke before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops and I YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos, follow me on Twitter and underscore jcnlts. You guys don't miss how announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever

you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating in a review on that front. Jackson's doing great work on our social media feeds Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us there. Then, the last but not least, keep dropping mail bag questions in the YouTube comments again in our full episodes. Right, mail bag, colon, write your question. We're going to get to them mostly on Fridays, but about

once a week throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So first question, shout out to Harry weston the question that allowed us to get to all of these games. Out of the other games on opening night, who surprised you the most? I think Charlotte and Toronto could have sneaky good seasons and VJ Edgecomb looks like the future in Philly. Also, what happened in Utah, I would argue Veja was the biggest surprise from that

Wednesday Night Slate. But I thought that this question was a great opportunity for us to just quickly bounce through a couple of game reactions. I caught up on Raptors, Hawks, Clippers, Jazz, and six or Celtics this morning. I'm just gonna go ahead and give you guys my takeaways on all three of those games. So, first of all, I haven't had the chance to watch Charlotte yet, although I caught them

in preseason. I thought they looked good in preseason. I'm generally not as high on Charlotte as some of my peers are, just because I think they're kind of generally unserious and they have a very injury prone set of core players. But we will get to the Charlotte Hornets at some point in time down the line. Starting with Raptors Hawks, I thought Toronto's size, length, and athleticism in

their starting lineup popped off the screen right away. When you have Brandon Ingram and Scottie Barnes, who are, in addition to being two really big forwards, Barnes brings a strength and power element, Ingram brings a length element. Ingram's more of an over the top shooter. Barnes is more of a rim pressuring type of player, but both of them are pretty high level playmakers for the forward position. Yaka Pertl obviously a big, strong center, kind of an

underrated player in my opinion, and then RJ. Barrett obviously one of the more athletic kind of two three swingmen out there at two through five. They're just very physically imposing, and they came out with super impressive defensive intensity right from the jump, and they it just was a carryover from what we saw from the tail end of last season. If you guys remember, they ran the floor insanely well in transition, kind of flipping the script on what Atlanta

typically likes to do. Toronto had forty three transition points in this game. They had an offensive rating over one forty on their transition possessions. Just a combination of really poor Atlanta transition defense, which we'll get to in a minute, and just how athletically imposing they can be when they're running the floor and brandon ingram right out. The gates came out super aggressive, scoring off of off ball action and on ball action, just curling around screens and getting

into the middle of the floor. His scoring polish was immediately apparent. I think he going to make life a lot easier for them on that end, especially when they get into crunch time, which obviously they did not experience in this particular game. I thought RJ. Barrett was fantastic. He hit some much needed threes early in the game to space the floor, did a great job pressure in

the rim. He obviously played really really good defense as well, and the Raptors just went into Atlanta and smacked them. They had seven guys in double figures. Grady Dick had twenty off the bench. He hit a bunch of jumpers from all sorts of ranges all over the floor. They were just six for twenty five from three and yet they logged a one twenty two offensive rating. And it was a combination to two things. Obviously, the transition pushes. When you have over forty transition points in a game,

that's a pretty unusual number to see there. That's a big way to boost your offensive rating. And then the second piece of it is when they got in the half court, they had a lot of really impressive ball in player movement. They got in and out of actions quickly. They ran a lot of actions on every possession, and one of the things that stood out to me is they do have more playmaking talent than you would think, like for all the limits in terms of shooting talent.

We've seen this before with teams like the Golden State Warriors. Now they weaponize shooting in the form of Steph and Buddy Heeled now and Klay Thompson. In the past they weaponized shooting to create that initial advantage, but from there they tend to have less shooting than most teams, but they just break you down with really crisp decision making and movement right and obviously for Toronto, they don't have the thread of the shooting, so it'll be harder for

them to break down elite defenses. But one of the things I thought they did really well was they just passed and moved in and out of their actions well and got a lot of really good looks at the rim they had. I don't have the number directly in front of me. They had a million points in the paint in this game. That was a huge part of how they controlled the offensive end of the floor. In

this game, they had assists on two thirds of their baskets. Again, anything over sixty five percent and assist percentage to me, is really strong. They started up over that to start the season. Again, they can't shoot the ball, but they have real strengths. They're big, they're athletic, they're great at defense, they run the floor and transition well, and when they get in the half court, they have really nice playmaking talent. It's a good recipe for winning basketball games, even if

they're shooting will provide issues in certain matchups. Again, Atlanta was pretty disappointing, which we'll get into. I wasn't all bad for Atlanta. Jalen Johnson really impressed me with his passing ability. He lacks that perimeter polish like the jumper still isn't there. There's like some tight spaceball handling stuff where he can still have some issues. But he pressures the rim well, both in transition and in the half

court when he looks to drive. And then he's just got really natural feel for seeing the floor and seeing the openings that are generated when he pressures the rim. And I was impressed by a lot of his playmaking, especially in the first half of that game. He kept them in the game despite Toronto out playing them basically

in every other matchup. To start, But I was pretty disappointed in Atlanta for a group that has so many great athletes and some guys with some good defensive reputations, right with Dyson Daniels and Nakil Alexander Walker, I thought they were just super sloppy guarding the act that Toronto was running in the half court, Like they botched switches constantly in this game, and you want to credit the Raptors for their movement, for their passing, and again, like

you do that kind of stuff, it has the potential to lead to defense making mistakes. But I thought Atlanta looked like a team that has not been approaching the defensive end with much focus through training camp. I was definitely disappointed there. And then their transition defense was flat out abysmal, which is super strange for such an athletic team.

They need to be a good transition defense. Nikhil Alexander Walker seems to have taken his new role in Atlanta as like a high volume ball handling role, which I think is a misallocation of what he does well. I think he's at his best when he's guarding the ball and then playing with an advantage taking catch and shoot threes and using more of his ball handling ability, driving closeouts and playing when the defense is already compromised rather

than attacking out front. Now he's going to have to do a certain amount of that because Atlanta's not as heavy on ball handling as Minnesota was. But I did think that his shot selection was a little questionable in this game. Atlanta just got out played from the jump. So not a good start from the Hawks. They need to have a better showing a night two Clippers Jazz. This is one of the strangest opening night performances that I've ever seen. I have a ton of respect for

the Clippers organization. I think they have one of the best coaches in the league. I think they have a well run front office that has a good feel for how to build a modern NBA team, and I think this roster in particular is built for regular season success. But holy shit, did they come out flat and in the opening minutes. I primarily blame Kawhi, Leonard In Viza

Zubats for the initial run that Utah went on. Utah was basically just running Lori Markinen and off of like downscreens from Walker, Kessler and Kawhi and Zoo just defended it super poorly. Kawhi was applying little to no pressure physicality on market In in his lock and trail. He was getting caught on screens and not getting out to him when he was shooting. When market In would curl, he was just kind of lazily jogging behind. And then Zoo like was just essentially not helping Kawhi on either

side of the action. Wasn't showing up high when Marketing would come off the screen, wasn't helping when Marketing would curl, but then also leaving Walker Kessler open because Kesler ended up hitting two threes early in the game, which shout out to Walker Kessler. I know in the game plan, you're kind of gonna let him take that, right, but like, if you're not gonna help on the curls in on the at the level stuff, then you've got it. You can't also just leave him wide open. You're basically just

floating around out there. And so Kawhi and Zoo came out super flat defending those actions early, and Marketing and

Kessler torched them. They take an early double digit lead, and then once the bench group started to work their way into the game, it turnovers became a massive problem for the Clips, like use of Nurkic comes in and just starts pressuring the high post entry on Zubats and Brook Lopez and forces a couple of turnovers right away that led into runouts, and the Clippers had like a half dozen of these super bizarre unforced turnovers where like you're just throwing the ball right to the other team

or just throwing it out of bounds because the guy you're throwing it to is not paying attention. Just they literally looked like they were asleep. And it was crazy because the next thing you knew, it was the early third quarter and Tyler's calling a time out because the Clippers are down by thirty seven on the road in Utah. Like it was just bizarre, and Tyler took the blame. And I'm sure the Clippers will bounce back with a win tonight, but it was pretty crazy. I'm not gonna lie.

They definitely did not look ready for the start of the season. I do want to credit Utah like they came out and played great basketball. They have a very

good front court with Kessler and market In. Those are talented guys when they're healthy and on the floor, and they you know, just a casual reminder that even with bad teams in the NBA, there's a lot of talent out there, and if you come out and you bring a lack of daisical effort, I don't know that you can get away with it anymore night to night in

the regular season. I mean I rooted for the Lakers in a game that they lost to the Jazz last year, Like this is a bottom feeder that puts some really high level basketball players on the floor. I thought Keante George was great all night. Bryce Senseibah came in and torched them from three. Hit a couple big ones in the late third quarter or late second quarter. Excuse me, that helps kind of blow the game open. Really nice debut for the Utah Jazz, high energy performance to kick

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to Tyrese Maxi. I've always loved the idea of like hyper athletic guys alongside skill guards in the backcourt, so like essentially the Polish finesse type of guard, even though Tyrese I think brings insane speed to the table obviously, but that's why he's able to go for forty right, he has the skill piece, and then off of him, I want an athlete that can rebound, defend, and can

score with an advantage. And the key kind of storyline in the game defensively was that Boston was roaming off of VJ edge comb all night and then in his on ball reps they were going under his picks. Boston essentially dared VJ to beat them all night long, and VJ just did. He got six unguarded catch and shoot threes and made three of them. He hit two off

the dribble jump shots versus passive coverages. I thought he did a wonderful job of slashing in the half court when he had a chance, Like there was a play where Peyton Pritchard was nail helping off of I think it was Tyrese on the right wing and Peyton Pritchard digs down into nail help Vj's just standing on the left wing. This was early in the game. Talk about

those baked in driving lanes all the time. Right when there's nail help, he's closing out on one of your shoulders, all you have to do is rip the other direction and you kind of have guaranteed dribble penetration right swing past to VJ. He just ripped left immediately on the catch, got a dunk. He in a transition push, ended up catching Xavier Tillman in a cross match and the sixers of space the floor nasty left or right crossover, went up and dunked it because he got there so fast

at Boston's help, was not able to step over. He had some super dynamic transition plays. He got a ridiculous lob in the second half that was thrown way behind him in traffic where he took off off his right foot, caught it with two hands and dunked it from almost behind his head. In the first half, one of the

plays that really got me excited for his potential. He had this nasty full speed euro step where he kind of like attacks and semi transition, gets a little bit of a downhill, gets some momentum going downhill, and Jalen Brown steps up to help at the rim and at full speed, he like plants his right foot in Euros back to the left for like a lefty soft finish

off the glass. Just a ridiculously athletic play. And even on the shots he missed, I thought he got great separation, like he was able to just get to these like really nice lift and rhythm, little mid range pull ups that he just happened to miss because right now he's still not quite that polished, and that stuff will come

in time. And so that's why VJ to me feels very safe as a bet to be an All Star in this league, because if he can stay healthy, the reports about his character and his work ethic are great, and he's just a transcendently athletic guard. And so what an exciting backcourt partner for Tyrese Maxey, who was amazing in this game. His pull up three was dialed in. He ended up hitting three in a row in the second half that closed a double digit Celtics lead, and

all three of them were nasty. He had like three or four ridiculous like hard drive to the right into a pullback, durable quick step back three, or he was moving super fast but if you like froze it like trimmed out the move before he's straight up and down on the pull up jump shot. Just a really impressive display footwork and athleticism. He ended up going for forty in this game, and then they just have all these

forwards who just play hard off of them. Obviously, Kelly, Youubray, we all know he's been in that starting lineup for a little while now. He hit the biggest shot of the night, a little action off the right side where that Sam Howser made a poor defensive decision. He helped off the strong side corner when it was pretty unnecessary,

and so it was a little easy kickouts. One of those things were in the moment you're like, okay, Kelly had been off from three for most of the game, but at the same time, you stick to your defensive principles. Like Quentin Grimes was already wide open at the top of the key on this play, in large part because

his man was already helping. So it was just kind of like an unnecessary overhelp from Sam Hauser, And that pass back across your body to the top of the key to Grimes is a much tougher pass to make than like a little five foot shovel pass to a wide open man in the corner. Kelly Ubre hits that shot. It effectively amounted to the game winner because they were down two when he hit that shot. But I was

also really impressed by Dominic Barlow and Jabari Walker. The two of them both just kind of crashing and cutting and running constantly and just wrecking havoc at the rim just by being big athletes off of the attention that was garnered by their guards. Honestly, the only disappointing thing if you were a seventy six ers fan was that

Joel Embiid looked like an absolute shell of himself. Like Jackson and I were joking before we started recording, like I don't think he made a single move towards the best in that entire game. Every time he caught it was just kind of like a face up jumper. You had Jalen Brown in a post up and like just spun over his left shoulder for a super difficult fade away. You could tell the lift isn't there. The left shoulder

fade away. As a classic example, that's one of the toughest shots in basketball for a right handed player because you have to pivot and like square up in mid air and he just didn't get close to enough lift and so he kind of just flung it up there and it didn't really have much of a chance to go in. He had some plays in help side it. He has a couple plays, like he had a block in transition in the second half where you're like, whoa,

that was kind of like a throwback little play. But like for the most part, he didn't really seem very vertical or mobile around the basket and help on defense. He just kind of looked he looked like his knees are shot. But let's hope that he's just working his way back and then he can continue to get better as the season progressive. It made me happy to see him out there playing, but it was definitely disappointing to see just the level of physical aggression that he had.

But what a fun backcourt to root for. Now you have Quinn Grimes too, Like obviously he was there last year, but do you have Quentin Grimes and Jared McCain as well, Like you have four really good guards. Grimes had a huge three late off the left wing, kind of a contested one when they really needed it. Jared mccaina obviously will be back eventually when his thumb gets better. It's fun team for Sixers fans. I would imagine that the edgecomb stuff had to have been the antidote to the

Joe El embiid frustrations on the Celtics front. They got stagnant late. They started spamming Jalen Brown Jalen Brown high post ups and he hit one of them, but there were some misses in there, and it just kind of got stagnant and they got away from some of the

stuff they were doing earlier in the game. They did control the majority of the game, though in large part because they do have a lot of talented perimeter players like Derek White, Peyton Pritchard, Jalen Brown, and Anthony Simons all had moments in the game where they had big stretches on offense where they put some points up and kind of got into a little bit of a flow. Anfrony applied some more rim pressure than he did in preseason.

He had a big semi transition dunk where he crossed his man up and went up off his right foot and dunked it with two hands. Yeah, the only thing that really stood out to me, They just struggled to guard in large part because their front courd is just so limited, and that's a fast sixers team, and so when you don't have rim protection behind them, it just puts your guards in a really tough spot. And man,

that center rotation looked brutals. Zavi or Tillman missed several threes that looked like they had no chance to go in. Right at the end of the game late off of a miss from Jalen Brown, he had a point blank range, little kind of touch floater hook thing that was like three feet from the basket that he left short. That was a huge miss. In crunch time. Luca Garza couldn't hit a shot. Nimi Kuita was probably the best guy that we saw last night. He put up a decent

stat line. Sits on Wednesday put up a decent stat line, but it was just jarring to see that core juxtaposed with what we saw last year from the Celtics from the center position. All right, let's start getting into our mail back questions. Jason, I understand you're a Lakers fan and also a Lebron fan, but I believe that you've too much stock into the stardom of Luca and have

them ranked too high on your championship contenders list. To me, at most, they should be closer to the bottom of the puncher's chance tier, behind teams like the Knicks, Clippers, t Wolves, and Warriors. Those teams, while they had their flaws, are better constructed than the Lakers, And to me, it's foolish to be blinded by a potential all time great

season by LUCA turning into a deep playoff run. In the parody era of the NBA, I've yet to mention Lebron, who is forty year old star and can be a star on offense on any given night, but defensively he can be picked on when not going against star power against power style offensive players, and can be caught ball watching at times. And I feel like that, combined with your other two best players in Luca and Reeves not being plus defenders, as a recipe for another first round exit.

So there's an interesting point you're making, which I want to get into in a minute. I do disagree with some of the specifics, like Lebron was one of the best ISO defenders in the league last year and had a stretch really for like two thirds of the season where he was an all defense level player. He got off to a rough start to the year, but like to me, Lebron when he's healthy in this actually in a role like this alongside Luca where he doesn't have to do as much offensively, I think he's one of

the most important defensive players on the Lakers. To be honest with you, I thought you saw the absence of him in a big way against the Warriors. He is a huge part of their ability to kind of like troll the back line off of Golden State's actions. And he's just one of the most attentive defenders and better communicators on the team. I mean, he was second team All NBA last year. I don't know what it is. Like,

I get it he has sciatica. He's out to start the year, But like, he just had two seasons where he played seventy games and made the All NBA team twice. I somehow he's still underrated. I don't know how that keeps happening. But like I'm I don't think the Lakers have a Lebron problem. Let's just put it that way. That said, like I do agree with you that I'm the Lakers I'm lower on than when I originally did my Contenders video. So to be one hundred percent transparent,

we recorded our contender rankings in early October. I want to say it was like on October second, Okay, so it was before I had seen them play any basketball. It was based on the fact that the Lakers won fifty games last year and they were the three seed, and looking at the improved version of the Lakers with like Luka Doncic being in better shape and them essentially adding three rotation level players for nothing and only losing Dorian Finney Smith, who by the way, I think Dorian

has been very important over the years. But like again, this was a team that couldn't even play a center against Minnesota. They get a guy like DeAndre and who's very flawed but at least can play the position. You hit a guy like Marcus Smart, who's a big upgrade over someone like Jordan Goodwin, for example. Like that was what that was my rationale when I originally put that together. But I did a recording with the Nerd Sesh guys

a couple weeks after that. It was like mid mid October, like October fifteenth or sixteenth or so, where I had seen them play in preseason a few times, and I was pretty underwhelmed, and I talked about how I was gonna put a couple teams ahead of them, and right now I agree. Like so I originally my contender rankings, if you remember, I had Denver, Oklahoma City, Cleveland, Minnesota. Then I the Lakers at five after what I've seen from preseason in camp, and by the way, this list

is constantly in a shift throughout the season. My preliminary rankings in like early October, those are essentially on paper rankings, but on paper means nothing when you throw the ball up in the air and we're on the hardwood and we're playing basketball, right So, like, we have a bunch more data. Now, we have training camps from all these teams, We have a handful of regular season games. The two teams I would clearly put above them now are Houston

and Golden State. I think I'm inclined to put Golden State at that five spot, potentially even that four spot above Minnesota. I kind of have Minnesota, Golden State in Houston kind of vying and competing for that next spot behind Denver and Oklahoma City at this point. Again, that could change in a few weeks, but that's just where I'm at right now. But it's a long season and I expect a lot to change over the course of

the year. The Lakers are playing bad basketball right now, but they have a lot that they can clean up, and they have a bona fide top tier superstar at the top at like the peak of his powers, and Lebron James will eventu return to this team. I think it's certainly possible that he ends up getting traded or something or bought out or something like that, but I still think it's far more likely than not that he

plays basketball for the Lakers until he retires. And so at some point late October or excuse me, late November early December, he's gonna return to this team, and he immediately addresses a lot of their biggest concerns in terms of just like size and physicality and basketball IQ and defensive communication on the back line and all that kind of stuff. So like they're gonna have some The Lakers are gonna have something to say at some point. I have no idea what level they'll be able to reach.

Right now, they look pretty mediocre and unathletic, so I'm dropping them to seventh, behind Houston and Golden State, as well as the original four teams that I named Denver, Oklahoma City, Cleveland, Minnesota. After that point, like, I'm just not super high on the Knicks. I know they won their first game. I'm keeping an open mind with the new coaching staff. I want to see what they've got.

But like, to me, the Knicks, if you literally just remove four wins against the Celtics in the second round, were incredibly underwhelming all season law last year. It's gonna take a lot for me to kind of turn around my opinion on the Knicks. And then the Clippers literally went into Utah and got their asses beat. I'm like, I'm not about to jump onto to the Clippers bandwagon two day of all days, Like, the Lakers have looked disappointing, but so have the Clippers so well. We'll continue to

kind of evaluate that over time. Like if two weeks from now we're gonna do power rankings, I'm gonna talk about contender rankings when I make changes as we kind of work our way through the season. But yeah, like in early October, October second I had the Lakers at five, I'm dropping them to seven at this point, with Houston and Golden State moving above them, is there a world in which Jonathan Cammingham matures to a point where he

doesn't get traded off the Warriors? Also, simply calling Steph the greatest shooter of all time doesn't do his greatness justice. He is one of the greatest scorers and greatest players period. I completely agree to me. Steph is the fifth greatest perimeter player of all time, just behind Michael Jordan, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, and Magic Johnson. I agree with you that kind of like, like defining his game as just elite shooting is a huge, you know, like disservice to what

he's accomplished in this league. I think he's the best off ball mover in the history of the league. He's one of the most conditioned athletes in the league. I mean, the dude has put in a ton of work in his body. Do you guys remember when he hit that I just watching the highlight again this morning. He had like a thirty seven footer last night to tie the

game at one twenty. Like it was literally a thirty seven footer off of a ball screen, and you know he runs over He kind of like signals to call the time out to the Denver bench and then he runs over and he just flexes, and you're like, holy shit, Like Steph is jacked. Like he has clearly worked a ton on his body, which is, by the way, has helped him to become a better, more useful defender, and has helped him to handle off ball contact and just

in general get open easier. And as the league has become more physical, like I saw a bunch of times on Opening Night where he's like throwing win moves on Gabe Vincent and getting open because he's just so damned strong. Now he's legitimately much stronger than a guy like Gabe Vincent, right, So, like he's putting a ton of work there. He's a very good passer. This is a guy who does a

lot of his work off the ball. But if they ran like twenty eighteen Rockets offense or twenty nineteen Rockets offense where they just spam Steph high pick and rolls spread with shooting, I think Steph could get up around eight to nine assists per game easily. I think he's a high level passer in that regard, And then I think he's one of the best competitors of his era. Like, this is a guy that is, you know, wired in a way that drives him to a different extent than

many of the players in this league. So I agree with you that kind of synthesizing him down to just a great shooter doesn't do him justice. To your question about Johnathan Kaminga, I absolutely think there's a world in which Jonathan Kminga matures to a point where he doesn't get traded off the Warriors. I mean, anybody who's close

to the Warriors will tell you that. Even though there's a lot of people in their basketball operations that have been skeptical about him in his fit, Joe Lakub loves the guy, Like Joe Lakub is obsessed with Jonathan Kaminga and wants to keep him. And so if Jonathan Kaminga plays well enough over the course of the next three months or so, I think it's more likely than not that he doesn't get traded. I'm a big believer and let's not overreact to one game or two games under

any circumstances. We talked about this after the Lakers game, Like both the Lakers and Denver are big, slow teams. When you're big and slow and you've got Steph Curry, you're gonna cut him to pieces in a lot of ways. I've talked at length about how Steph in particular causes massive problems for Denver's pick and roll defense because Jokich is slow and he can just get to his spots whenever he wants to. That's not me trying to pour

cold water on the Warriors. It just means I want to see them against some different types of matchups, Like when you're playing against really and athletic perimeter defenses, the job changes and suddenly those reads become like instead of having like this big of a window to make a read, it's more like this big of a window to make or read. Like everything just gets a little bit faster. Everything just gets a little bit more difficult to read

and to process. And so those are the kinds of games where we're gonna see a different challenge for Jonathan kaminga right. But what we've seen early in the season is he's knocking down his catch and shoot threes, which is absolutely crucial. He's making good reads in the offense. He's being aggressive, but not too aggressive, like he's he's not completely shelving Jonathan kaminga the scorer, but he is kind of refining it and being picky about when he's

when he's going, and he's playing great defense. I thought he was a monster defensively down the stretch against Denver so like, and he got cooked by Luca, but Luca's Luca right, so like overall, like he's off to a great start. But the Warriors have played two teams that kind of like slot nicely into their into their advance. And I'm not saying this retroactively. I said last year after the first time the Lakers played the Warriors with Luka Doncic, I was like, Oh, the Warriors are too

fast for them. This is a bad matchup for the Lakers. I even said before the playoffs, I was like, if the Lakers met the Warriors in a playoff series, I'd be inclined to pick the Warriors. That was after they played in the regular season and they I think they went into La and beat them with Luca Lebron in Austin, right. And then I've said before the season at length that the kinds of teams that can upset Denver are teams that have really high level pick and roll players and

that have speed. And I mentioned like Luca against Denver, and I mentioned Steph against Denver in particular. Those are just matchups that I think are favorable for Golden State. That's the strength. Like I think Denver is the championship favorite.

So if you match up well against Denver, that's a huge feather in your cap if your goal is to win a championship, Like that means that Like let's say that Denver meets Oklahoma City in the second round for some reason, and they eliminate Oklahoma City and then Golden State faces Denver in the conference finals all of a sudden, like there's like a very significant window for Golden State to slip through there and win a title. Now, Golden State did provide some issues for Oklahoma City last year.

We talked about this in our Oka see like who can beat Oklahoma City series, And like I think Jimmy and Horford and Draymond are just such high IQ defenders that they can cause some problems for Oklahoma City's offense. But what I specifically worry about the Oklahoma City matchup for Golden State is just they have all that speed, and that's the kind of thing that I think could be a very different type of challenge for a Golden State team that does lack offensive firepower once you get

off of steph. So I'm just curious to see it. Like, the Warriors have aced every test so far, but there are more tests down the line, and as long as Jonathan Minga keeps performing well in those tests, He's going to be a Warrior at the end of the season, and he very well might be a Warrior long term. Next question, you mentioned last season's Lakers team handling the Warriors better due to Anthony Davis being able to roam, slash protect the rim, allowing the perimeter defenders to overplay

the three point line. Looking towards the season, which playoff teams would give Golden State the most trouble and conversely teams who Golden State fans should hope to be a match up in May. So again, this is just really quick follow up to what we were just talking about. I think the teams in particular that worry me for Golden State are really fast and athletic perimeter teams that

are also high IQs. So like, for instance, one of the things that always worried me about Minnesota is Minnesota has a lot of guys that, despite being good defenders, can lose their attentiveness off ball and they can lose track of guys like Steph. This was something that happened in the regular season in Minnesota Golden State matchups, and it was why Golden State I think, in a lot of ways presented problems for Minnesota when they were healthy.

Last year. That series was kind of like a coin flip to me if both teams were healthy, But Golden State presents a lot of problems with them because Minnesota struggles to track off ball shooters. But specifically Oklahoma City is a team that I have my eye on. Oklahoma City provides that combination of high IQ speed that's not going to lose track of Steph and they're not gonna botch as many switches as other teams, and they have rim protection and Chet Holmgren to roam around the basket.

They're gonna present some problems. Another team I think is the Clippers. They have some really high level perimeter defenders in Chris Doun and Derek Jones Junior that can chase Steph around while also having high IQ off ball defenders and some rim protection with Zoo. We saw that in the late regular season game last year. So there are teams that I think present a different challenge for Golden State, and I am just curious to see what they look

like when they run into those teams. But I do think Golden State matches up well with a team like the Lakers. I do think Golden State matches up really well with a team like Denver and then Minnesota just

because of their lack of off ball attentiveness. Do you think there's a chance the Spurs don't have to trade to in the Chip next season or in any other or in other words, what is the lowest limit that has to happen for the Spurs to not just be one of the contenders, but to really see that it could happen like Oklahoma City in Game one last season, in game one of the regular season, that was when Oklahoma City went into Denver and kick Denver's ass. If

you guys remember, So, here's the thing. I'm gonna say, the same thing that I was talking about with Golden State. It's very encouraging for showing for the Spurs. You don't even have dearon Fox and yet all your young guards play pretty well. Your defense just utterly demolishes Dallas. Victor women Yama is hoop and his ass off, Steph Castle's throwing lobs in transition, and damn near getting a twenty

point triple double. There's a lot of upside with what you saw from that one particular matchup, but it was a team that I think was a good matchup for san Antonio, right, Like Dallas is super light on shooting and ball handling that allows Victor women Yama to roam the paint really well right on the other end of

the floor. Like we talked about that night, I think Victor can kind of cook any bigger player in the league because they're all too big to be able to move with him, but they're all not big enough to actually bother him because he's so damn tall. So, like, I think there'll be different challenges with San Antonio, Like Oklahoma City's a classic example where they're going to be smaller, quicker up underneath you, and it's going to be a

lot more about processing and shooting. And you know, this is a San Antonio team that's light on shooting, right, So I think, like it's ridiculous to overreact to one game against a heavily flawed Dallas Mavericks roster. But we'll

just continue to watch them and see how they develop. Yes, if Steph Castle and Devin Vessel and Dylan Harper and all these guys just blossom and Deer and Fox is a big bounce back season that's closer to two years ago rather than last year, then yeah, they might not need to make a trade, and they might be able to just kind of naturally improve internally and make a run for the championship at some point in the next

couple of years. But I think it's more likely than not that over the course of this season, their limitations and shooting and just youthful inconsistency lead them to want to bring veteran shooting in and just a little bit more of like a solid, kind of like higher floor option at some of their position groups. Now, the thing is is Victor is messing up timeline stuff, because Victor very well might be just a legitimate top tier superstar this year. It seems likely at this point after what

we saw on opening night. And so if Victor is going to be that guy, all of a sudden, you're in your championship window now and so it kind of changes your calculus when you're building the team. So it's just something to keep an eye on. We're gonna go quick through these last ones here. How do you unlock BAM's offense? If you're spo I think Bam kind of is what he is at this point as an offensive player. He is a guy that struggles to make anything that's

not a dunk and like that. Just yes, he's improved as like a standstill three point shooter, but he's not a really high level jump shooter by any stretch of the imagination. He struggles with hooks, he struggles with floaters, he struggles with layups, damn. Similar to Anthony Davis, although Ad has done a lot better in terms of his short range shot making, like his hooks and his floaters, but similar like Bam to an even greater extent, just has never added the offensive polish necessary to be a

super high level offensive player. To me, he kind of is what he is at this point. He's a five out big. He's a guy that can play on the perimeter as a screener, dribble handoff, guy that makes good decisions with the basketball, sets good screens, and rolls hard to the rim and he's good at hitting backcutters like that, to me is just kind of his destiny as an NBA player at this point. What kind of season do you think Klay Thompson is about to have. It feels

like he is completely faded out of media discussions. Well, ye, he's not the same player used to be. I don't think Clay is going to be a super prominent player in NBA media discussions because Clay is now at this point, you know, not one of the ten or fifteen best

two guards in the league anymore. So one of the things that's going to be tricky with Clay is he's the one dead serious shooter on the team and so he's going to be accounted for in the in the game plan, Like opponents are going to put their most attentive, best lock and trail defender on Clay and they're going to count for a mall game and just dare everyone

else to shoot. He's not a guy that's going to put the ball on the floor and create offense for himself at this point, and the lack of playmaking talent on the roster is leading him to be like, even when he does get left open, whether it's transition chaos or offensive rebound chaos, Like they don't always get the ball to him, So I just don't really see him as a guy that's gonna have too much of an

impact at this phase in his career. Hi, Jason, my brother and I watch basketball like junkies and have had this hypothesis that the game is evolving at a rate where the skill level will soon turn basketball into a punish league. Essentially, I believe that the majority of the smallest defensive laps is like a bad head or a slow rotation, will be the most important margins for successful teams. I wanted your thoughts on that. I love the show

and your team's contra to the game. I love much love from Brooklyn, So first of all, thanks for supporting

the show and for the kind words. What you're talking about is something that I'm a huge believer in the idea of, essentially, like capitalizing on the small advantages that occur in actions, whether it's like you said, like a guy hedges for too long and the guy who slips out of its wide open at the three point line, or this team is slow in rotation, so if we just move the ball around we're going to get open shots.

I think it's a little bit more complicated in the sense that like those kinds of advantages happen on almost every possession somewhere. It's a lot of it has to do with playmaking talent. Like you talk about punish as in punishing mistakes. In order to punish mistakes, you need two things. You need a high IQ player with the ball that will find that mistake and hit the pass

it hit the opening. And then you need too, a guy that's actually going to make the defense pay in that opening, whether it's hitting a catch and shoot shot, racking a close out and getting all the way to the rim, or racking a close out getting to the middle of the floor and make the next read in that chain. Essentially, it's going to be about reading and reacting. It's a copycat league. There's going to be a lot of basketball operations professionals and coaching professionals that are going

to look at teams like Indiana. We talked about how last night, I think Indiana, irrespective of talent, plays the best basketball in the NBA because of all the things that you specifically are mentioning. So all these entities around the league are going to watch that and they're going to go like, we need to do this. Why do you think you're hearing every every fucking team in training camp? We want to run more. We want to run more.

We want to know why, because running works, and so they want to be better basketball teams, and so they know that that's a way to improve their basketball team. And so essentially everyone's going to start hunting these things. More transition pushes more action in the half court, which is going to generate those kinds of small defensive lapses

like you're talking about. From there, it's going to be reading and reacting and play finishing, hitting those gaps with passes, making the right decision against the advantage, and then finishing the play by hitting shots. Can you see Jaden McDaniel's turn into a number two for Ant? No? I don't really see that in his future. I see him as being a guy that can do some weak side scoring forward stuff, you know, hitting threes, driving closeouts, doing damage

on the glass when he's being ignored. I don't see him as a legitimate number two. The kind of player that I keep coming back to for Ant is like a skill guard. I know it'll never happen. But like Austin Reeves is an example of a player that I

think would be a beautiful fit alongside Anthony Edwards. Kind of like a skill, finesse guard that's good at getting to the foul line, that has like high level mid range scoring chops that just in general is like a finesse like offensive engine type of player off of ANT. Like that's the kind of guy that I look at as like a legit number two off of Ant, a skill guard alongside Ant's like bulky athleticism in rim pressure. Right. But I really like Jayden. I think he looks great.

I think the jump shot is real. I just think once you start talking about number two's, I think they just need to be a little bit more refined in terms of their offensive skill four more quick ones. As you continue to get more and more success in the niche of basketball content analysis, will there ever be a time where you take your talents to covering the NFL as well? I have your post notifications on for X and I love your football takes when you have them.

Keep up the great work. So I love the NFL. I've loved it since I was a kid. The long and short of it, is is that like every year right about now, when the NBA regular season starts, it's really hard for me to just give it the attention. Right Like, there was a game on last night. I was working, so I wasn't gonna watch it, right, And same thing goes for Sunday. There are times where like, you know, it's Sunday and it's like, Okay, I want

to sit down and watch. But then it'll be like, well, there were some games on the Friday night and Saturday night slate that I need to get caught up on, and so I'll just get my laptop out and I'll just start watching film. And you know, it kind of takes me back to the the kind of like that like cliche that Lebron uses. It's that keep the main thing the main thing, Like I don't want to sit there and start talking about the NFL if I haven't

put in the necessary work. What I like, what allows me to cover the game the way that I do is that I put an enormous amount of work into watching NBA games and learning about how the NBA works on both ends of the floor and talking to smart NBA people. And so it's one of those things where I don't want to like take resources from that department and dedicate them to the NFL and have my NBA work suffer. And so is there a version of this

in the future where maybe I'm doing it. I'm not going to say never, but in the short term, I think it's far more likely than not that I just stay in my wheelhouse and cover the NBA. With the Bucks shooting so many threes, I feel like we, I'm a fan of, lead the team and lead the NBA in three point attempts and we can come out of the East. Do you see the vision? I did not see Milwaukee versus Washington. That was one of the games that I did not watch the first through the first

few games. But we saw this last season towards the end the year Steady died of Jannis on the ball, a lot of guard screens surrounding him with a ton of shooting, and Yanni's just kind of playing driving kick, like get to the basket and finish, draw fout or

spray out to a shooter. Right as far as leaning into three point attempts, like again, like when you're not good compared to the best teams in the league, you want to apply as much variance as possible, right, So it makes sense for the Bucks to be a team that takes a lot of threes and that gives up a lot of threes because essentially, if they protect the rim and they force the other team to shoot, they

might go cold. And if you shoot a ton of threes, you might get hot, and you're gonna win on the nights when you get hot from three and the other team doesn't. But ultimately it comes down to quality. I don't believe in inflating your three point attempts just for the sake of inflating your three point attempts. A bad three point shot isn't worth three points, it's worth zero points. You want to generate the highest available shot quality in

any situation. A lot of it will be game plan dependent too, depending on how your opponent is guarding things. But if the Bucks end up generating a ton of threes with shooting off of Giannis, I think it's a smart approach to increase variance to give them more of an upset threat. Big fan of the show and have learned a ton about the game from your channel, So thank you for what you do. Thank you for the

kind words and for the sport. My question is simple, do you think it's insane to think that Wemby genuinely might be the best player live right now? And what would need to happen for that to be the consensus in your opinion? Thanks again. This kind of takes me to like the Kobe Lebron debate in the late two thousands.

If you guys, remember, it's very possible that we're looking at this thing in like three weeks and Wemby's averaging thirty five, fourteen and six with like five blocks or of some insane shit like that, and then all of us are like, oh my gosh, this one to be the best player in the league. Similarly, Lebron in the late two thousands was just a wrecking ball is winning sixty games with weak rosters and putting up absurd stat

lines and crazy highlights every single night. But like when it came to slow down playoff basketball against the best teams in the league, Kobe still better than him. In the late two thousands, no surprise, Lebron was in his early to mid twenties. Kobe was in his early thirties and was more refined at that point, and he had a lot more experience, right, But like the becoming the best player in the NBA, becoming the best player in

the world is a playoff game. It is very much about solving the puzzle of four elite opponents in two months, having to beat them four times out of seven, when all the game planning is geared around your weaknesses. So it's one of those things where like, there's nothing Wemby could do in the regular season that would convince me

that he's the best player in the world. That is an honor that I personally wouldn't consider him for unless he was doing it in the playoffs and you know, carrying his team to like it's not even so much like he has to win the title necessarily, although that is the ultimate kind of like, you know, signal that you've arrived on that front. But to me, it's more just like him thriving in the playoffs and being a dominant player off player, and like not experiencing a drop

off from regular season production to playoff production. When he can tie those two things together, which obviously we haven't even seen that yet, that's when I would start to consider him to be the best player alive. Last question, Jason, I enjoy your content, keep up the good work. Fist bump. I want to ask as a thunderfan, I'm starting to

worry about Chet. Obviously, we want him to stay healthy and be careful for those bumps he's absorbing, but we're also worried about how his offensive skill will only show in flashes while other times he just can become a non factor, especially in the clutch. What do you think you should be working on to stay more consistent? So

I get triggered with this kind of thing. I feel like it's really hard for big lanky dudes that aren't super polished, like Kevin Durant for example, to be ball handlers in like physical late game environments, especially like I think it's one thing when you're big and strong like Jokic or Lebron or Luca, when you have like real strength, you can thrive in that physicality and get to your

spot still. But like a lot of the thinner players, especially when they're not super polished, they can get kind of dislodged and beat up a little bit in those situations. And so I don't really ever see Chet as being like the guy that you're just gonna run the offense through and crunch time, not unless he becomes a dramatically better jump shooter, which he just hasn't been to this point in his career. But I'm still super high on Chet. Like I think he's still one of the most underrated

defensive players in the league. He's a huge part of what they did defensively in last year's playoff run. I do want to see him improve as a catch and shoot jump shooter, Like he's got to start beating nail help with those above the break threes off of the right and left wing. But like, yeah, I think I'm

not gonna say I've learned this lesson with Shay. I don't want to put a ceiling on anybody, so I don't want to sit here and pretend is though Chet is incapable of becoming a guy that can become a high usage player in crunch time, But right now he's too thin and two and lacks the polish necessary to be that kind of guy outside of spurts, especially early

in games and in regular season context. But the main thing for me is, like if he gets to the point where he's like a forty percent knockdown, you know, above the break three point shooter when he's open, that'll be plenty. Offensively, that's all. That's all the thunderneath from him.

He does enough damages a cutter along the baseline and as an offensive rebounder, and with what he does defensively, and he can provide little pops of scoring throughout the game off the dribble, obviously inconsistently, but he can do that. To me, the main like kind of barrier between where he is right now and like making the thunder unbeatable is like he's got to get to the point where he can hit forty percent of his unguarded catch and shoot threes above the break. All right, guys, it's all

have for today. As always, a sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. But he will be back on Monday. Enjoy your weekend. Lots of basketball to get into when we get some Monday, I would see you guys then