Steph Curry gets Warriors win over Suns + 76ers-Bulls, Thunder-Clippers, 'Mind the Game' reactions

Philadelphia seventy six Ers. Is the Sixers jump all over them in the first half, scoring seventy five points, but get held to just thirty six in the second half as the Chicago Bulls get a bunch of big stops, holding the Sixers scoreless over the final four minutes, and change end up winning on a Nicola Vucevich corner three out of the right corner. We're gonna be breaking down that game from the perspective of both teams. At the

tail end of the show. We've got the Clippers obviously down Kawhi on the tail end of a back to back but dropping a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder. I want to zoom in in some detail on the second half run from the Thunder in that game, just the absolute avalanche that they closed that game with, and zooming in on some of their depth of offensive talent as Aj Mitchell really closed the deal spamming ball screens

and getting great shots every single time. And then finally before we get out of here today, Steph Curry made a surprise appearance on the Mind the Game podcast with Lebron James and Steve Nash. I listened to it last night, and a lot of really interesting stuff I want to get into from that as well. You guys know the Joe before we started. Subscribe to the Hoops to Night YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore JCNLT so you guys

don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight.

All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Warriors had dropped two in a row to end last week, and they were both pretty bad losses. The one in Milwaukee. It's kind of like a textbook NBA track game, right, Like you're on the road, Milwaukee's without Yannis. That naturally leads to like a natural like shift and effort, where like the main guys for Golden State aren't going to

be as keyed up as they normally would be. And obviously for Milwaukee, the guys down the roster are all getting a lot more opportunity and they're all fired up and they want an opportunity to win. Ryan Rollins ended up having a career night. Right, that sort of thing will happen in the NBA. But the Pacers game that was brutal. A winless Pacers team down a bunch of

guys in Indiana. The Warriors were up by eleven with less than six minutes left, and they just fell victim to that classic Pacers comeback where they just never stopped pressuring, they never stop attacking, hit some big shots late, Steph goes cold down the stretch and the Pacers end up coming back to steal that game. So a rough little stretch to end the week for the Warriors, but they got back on track last night with a nice professional

win versus the Phoenix Suns. I kind of like the natural give and take of the way that Steve Kerr has structured the starting lineup versus the bench units we saw last year Moses Moody and Brandon Pajemski get a lot of minutes with the starters, especially as they would go smaller with Draymond at center right. It was usually Steph with Jimmy and Draymond with pods and Moses Moody

at the two and the three. And one of the things that I kind of like it with this structure where now they're going with two bigs, You've got Kaminga in with the starters, and Quinton Post is starting. Presumably that'll be al Horford at many points during the season.

Right with that lineup, what I like is, like, specifically Quinton Post is more of like a play finisher, right, Like he's going to pop out of ball screens, He's going to keep the ball moving side to side if he gets left open on pick and pops, like he got three wide open pick and pop threes to start

this game. As Mark Williams was really aggressive on the ball and pick and roll and sagging off and help, and Quinton just kept making him pay with pick and pop threes, right or spacing threes like that is a play finishing aspect that he brings. But he's not going to be like super aggressive with questionable shots, right. So it allows like the main guys to kind of play

their game. And then when the bench guys come in with Healed with a Moses Moody, with Brandon Pajemski, those guys are a little bit more aggressive in their read and react. They want to look for their shot, and so those guys when they come in with the bench groups,

they have an opportunity to be really aggressive. And so I'm kind of liking the natural give and take of having the bigger lineup with Kaminga and Quintin poster Al Horford with the starters, and then bringing in all of your super aggressive guys off the bench to come in and not have to worry about necessarily getting the ball to Steph, but just being aggressive and playing their games.

And by the way, that lineup, the lineup with the starters, so Steph, Jimmy Draymond with Jonathan Kamina and Quinton Post is plus twenty eight points net in seventy five possessions to start the year. Now, that same lineup with Horford has been bad so far, but it's a super small sample, only thirty two possessions, and I do believe it will be much better in the long run. But then those bench guys come in, right, they're a little more shoot first, they can be aggressive.

put back. In transition, he hits a three coming off of a pin down from Tray Jackson Davis. He hits another three off the dribble in transition, hits another three off of a skip in transition from Pat Spencer. He just comes in gunning right. I also really liked Tray Jackson Davis with that group. He was just really active yesterday.

But that lineup, the Moses Moody, Brandon Pajemski, Buddy Healed trio, just those three guys on the floor together in forty nine possessions to start the season, a plus forty five net rating. They have been very good to start the year, and now Phoenix ended up cutting it to seven in the early part of the fourth quarter. Devin Booker, who's been fantastic to start the year, was really good in that third quarter. They kind of worked their way back

into the game. But Steph really helps blow it open with a little run there right in the early fourth quarter. He runs off of a weak side screen off the left wing where and we're gonna talk about this a little bit more when we get to that mind the game segment at the tail end of the show, but just textbook Steph gravity come off of a Draymon pinned down on the left side. Draymond slips out of it. Both guys run with Steph. That forces Moody's man to

tag Draymond as he's slipping out of it. Draymond throws a beautiful over the head pass to Moses Moody in the corner. Boom nails a three. Then Steph gets also a guitar on a switch toasts him off the dribble,

gets a driving layup. There was a hilarious play where there's an impromptu double team thrown by Grayson Allen out of the left corner, and so he double teams I think it was Draymond if I remember correctly, and so Buddy he or Moses Brandon Pajemski is wide open on the left wing and he's just staying in there because Grayson Allen double teamed right and Steph Curry's not even ten feet away to Brandon's right or right at the top of the key right.

dare Brandon Pejemski to hit the shot. But it's just hilarious done the last to see a team essentially refuse to make a defensive rotation out of fear of leaving Steph Curry open. And then Moses Moody basically ice the game, putting them up by nineteen by hitting another contested three out of the left corner play where he might have gotten fouled as you've got stripped down in the pocket. Moses Moody hit five threes in the game, that fifth one,

putting them up by nineteen. A nice bounce back win for Golden State after a rough end to last week. They have a brutal early season schedule again. Back to back Tonight in Sacramento, they have a bunch of back to backs here to start the season. Sacramento has been a little bit more feisty in their last couple of games. They went in and beat Milwaukee, hanging one hundred and thirty five on him, and they hung tough with Denver the other night, So it's going to be a challenge.

Zach Lavine's scoring the ball at an extremely high level. Demonis Bonus is finally waking up from his slumber to start the season, so it's going to be a tougher game to It's a tougher game than you would think on the schedule tonight, on the tail end of a back to back in Sacramento. Warriors fans, stay tuned for the tail end of the show. I want to talk a little bit about STEP's appearance on the Mind of the Game podcast because I thought that was super interesting.

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down to a very simple dynamic. To start the game, Chicago got absolutely fried by Tyrese Maxi.

So tail two halves defensively for the Chicago Bulls, and the first quarter, Philly just kind of methodically beat all of Chicago's coverages. In two man game with Max and Embiid, and Embiid was also giving some problems to one on one. So first possession of the game, and be just drives

at Vusovich. Vu gets his left hand kind of in on Embiid's right arm, and you know, Embiid, he's one of the best rifters in the league, so he just immediately throws up like a running jump shot from like eighteen feet away from the basket, gets to the foul line. They go right to maximb two man game, first possession, Vouch is a little too far back. Maxi hits a pull up three. Second possession, Vouch steps up higher to

the level to take away the pull up three. Maxi hits em Bead in the pocket, and Bead hits a little jumper in the short role. Then Vouch tries to switch. So again we're methodically working through the coverages. A lower drop than a higher drop. Now a switch. On the switch, uh, Tyres Maxi just takes vouch out to the perimeter and hits a pull up three right in his face. Then Embiid posts up Vusovic and draws a second defender, hits

Tyres Maxi for a kickout three. Then Embid beats Vucevic on a pick and pop three at the top of the key. Int to make matters worse, they were getting crushed on the margins during that stretch. Philly was getting a bunch of offensive rebounds that were leading to kickout threes. They were turning Chicago over and getting run out layups and dunks.

transition team in the league to start the season. They are averaging thirty six points per game just in transition, which leads to the NBA decent margin two. They're about three points over the second best team another forty five points just last night in transition. In total, over the course of the full forty eight minutes, they also completely flipped the script on the offensive glass. They became the

team that's to get those extra possessions. They had nine offensive rebounds in just the second half, so just a complete and total reversal of just the intensity and all the stuff and the margins that they were struggling with at the beginning of the game. They finally started to have a little bit of success guarding the Embiid Maxi

two man game. They settled on a coverage that they liked, which was basically just bring Vucevic all the way up to the level to get the ball out of Tyrese Maxi's hands, and then they were coming early in help like an early tag and really packing the paint. They prayed on one of the weaknesses from Tyrese Maxi and Joel Embiid, which is they can be a bit shoot first, which isn't the right read when the team's guarding the

action three on two. The read there is to get the ball to the other side of the floor right like on the first possession during that run that started in the middle of the third quarter. They come up to the level, Maxi splits the screen and Josh Gidty's just sitting there waiting as that third defender in help and instead of making the kickout, Maxi just tries to shoot through Giddy at the rim and he smokes the layup.

The very next possession, Joel Embiid slips out of the at the level coverage, Maxi hits him in the pocket. Instead of making the read, he just runs over Trey Jones and commits an offensive foul. Now, Maxi still had a lot to say. He's just been unbelievable to start the year. Kept getting downhill on ball screens and hitting

little floaters and hitting shots. But in the fourth quarter, the Bulls really started to swarm him when he was getting downhill in those ball screens, and Tyree started forcing the issue a little bit, which has been unusual for him. He had a season low five assists and last night's game, and then he finally started to miss some shots as they started to swarm him, especially towards the end of the game. He started settling for some tougher step back

jump shots and he was missing them. Several bulls got key one on one stops against Maxie late where they were gapping forcing him into those pull ups and he was missing them, and they were tough for shots that he was missing down the stretcher. It was a little bit of them getting gassed, which we'll talk about in a minute, and a little bit of the shot difficulty

kind of increasing as the game went along. And Nikola Vusevich, who had struggled mightily against Embid early in the game, got five one on one stops against Joel Embiid just in the second half of the fourth quarter, just in that final minute, final stretch of minutes there at the end of the game, five one on one stops against Embid. He did something that is usually a death sentence with Embiid. He was very aggressive with ball pressure. He was reaching

in and jabbing at the ball. As we know, that usually ends in Joel Embiid going to the foul line right like he catches you with your hand in the cookie jar and he just does those little ripped throughs and gathers where he can get fouls right. But Tavuoch's credit, he was surgical with it. He was jabbing with reaches but quickly getting his hands out before Embiid could do anything about it, and it flustered him. It disrupted his rhythm.

He poked the ball away from him a couple of times, one on like a step through where he's actually going up to take a shot, and right when he brought the ball up into the pocket, Boots just came down and slapped it out of his hands. He poked it away from him from behind on a possession where he kind of reached around from the opposite side. He just dominated that matchup late in the game, and Embiid was missing his jumper as he was just kind of getting flustered.

And then on the other end of the floor, just really high level play from Vussevich and from Josh Giddy like Vooch did a bunch of damage around the room. He killed the Sixers in the second half, rolling out of ball screens and getting offensive rebounds as he would get like inside position on the guard or maybe the just rolling hard on a harder drive and just getting an offensive rebound. He got a big lefty hook in

the fourth quarter over his right shoulder. Josh Giddy was getting his kind of classic big guard drives for floaters and layups and then to win the game, a very

interesting kind of floor setup for Chicago. Instead of going to that two man game using Vouch as the screener, they end up tucking Vouch in the right corner down by one it's one eleven to one ten, and they situate Vouch in the right corner, which basically forces Embiid to make decision right like, if he's gonna help at the basket as a rim protector, you're gonna concede a kickout three to Vouch. And so the action they end up running is they run a ghost screen, so it's

Josh Gitty on the left wing. They have Kevin Herder come up, who's being guarded by VJ Edgecomb, and it works to perfection. Kevin Herder slips out VJ Edgecomb doesn't want to switch. He stays glued up to Kevin Herder, which causes Kelly Ubray, who's guarding Josh Gitty, to open his stance just a little too much to Josh Gitty's

left hand and Josh just hits that gap. Hits that gap as the natural kind of ghost screen opening that happens is that switch doesn't occur and Kelly opens up his stance, drives left, and Bead steps over to help and be got some good pressure on the pass, but Giddy made a really nice, like jumping out of bounds like lefty hook pass to Vucevich in the corner. He nails the corner three. He's been torching teams in spot up situations to start this year. He nails the corner

three that puts Chicago up by two. Quentin Grimes actually got a decent look to win the game coming off of a pin down at the top of the key, but he ended up missing. Now the Bulls are six and one and in sole possession of the top seed in the Eastern Conference is they come back to win that game. This is very much a margin team, to be clear. Like they're fourteenth and half court offense. That's average.

They're eighth and half court defense, that's solid. They're not six and one because they're dominating in half court execution. They dominate in the margins, and they've been good in clutch situations to end games. They dominate the transition game. They have a ten point per game margin on average every single night in transition points they get thirty six Their opponents get twenty six. It's like starting ten to ozero on the scoreboard, just in transition points. They're a

good rebounding team. They do a good job of generating open three point looks. Like they're shooting over forty percent from three to start the season, and that's going to be hard to maintain.

and Nikola Vusovich. The two of them are just a really difficult duo to guard, and they're getting great shots out of ball screens and out of post ups. Josh Giddy continued his absurd start to the season with twenty nine points, fifteen rebounds, and twelve assists last night. He's up to twenty three, ten and nine on the season for his averages on fifty percent from the field, forty two percent from three, seventy five percent from the line.

That's fifty nine percent in true shooting. And then Vuch's torching teams and ball screens and playmaking out of the post and spacing the floor with the shooting. He's averaging nineteen points, twelve rebounds, and four assists to start the year, sixty nine percent true shot shooting, forty eight percent from three on four point four three point attempts per game, doing a ton of damage on spot ups and especially

in transition trailing the play. The spot up situations kind of like what you saw in that final possession is a great example. And then in the post, he's run thirty post ups to start the year, and he's been getting a one to seventeen offensive rating on his post ups including passes. Very much looking like a guy who's in a contract year that wants to get paid one

more time, he's ooping his ass off. He is thirty five years old, so I'm sure that will play a role in those contract negotiations come come into the equation.

But he's playing some great basketball to start this year, and you know, the Bulls are just getting a lot of their success out of playing at an insane pace in transition some really high three high level three point shooting and clutch play right that transition piece, it just requires so much effort on defense and running the floor that when they look flat, like in that first half last night or in the second against the Knicks as another example, it can come apart for them because they're

not an the elite half court team at least to start this season, right, But when they are playing at a high intensity, it's really hard to keep up with them and how fast they run up and down the floor. But the reality is, as we know, teams will start to scout that they'll be prepared for that transition attack. The three point shooting will come down a bit that will put a heavier strain on their half court units on both ends of the floor, and that's when we'll get a better feel for just how good.

them in the first half. I thought Embiid and Maxi just tried to do too much down the stretch and they kind of gassed themselves out, like a basic kind of balance. To explain this to you, guys, those guys took twenty six shots in the second half and the rest of the team took only nineteen in.

They weren't getting the lift they needed on those jump shots, and that's something that can happen when there's not a lot of variety and you're just playing a lot of that one on one, it's seventy five points in the first half and just thirty six points in the second half. I think that was just like a weird kind of like step back for them offensively in terms of their ball movement and like they're driving kick attack compared to

what they were doing earlier in the season. All right, So the thunder in their late game run against the Clippers, the Clippers controlled the first two thirds of that game or so, James Harden was excellent.

the game by nineteen. It got sparked by a couple of those classic like defense to transition sequences, So like Alex Cruz, So they were running this like little cross screen for Zubots to try to get him in the post on the block, and you run the cross screen essentially to either force a switch so Zubots gets a smaller defender to post up, or if you're going to trail, so if that guy like fights over the top of the screen, Zubots now gets deep post position because instead

of having to back that guy down close to the basket, he's already trailing him on his back side, so he just runs over to the block and wherever he stops, as long as he holds his ground, he's going to get a good.

of the time he's on James Harden. Did a really good job on James Harden as well, but on the possessions with Chris Donn, he was doing a lot of stunting off of him and just kind of being a disruptive roamer, and he sparked the run the first play on that sixty one to thirty seven run, he ends up peeling off of Chris Dunn as Zubots breaks open on that little cross screen and he jumps back and ends up deflecting the post entry pass that ends up running out the other way for a Crusoe layup on

the other end of the floor. Then Chet gets in on the action. He gets two great contests, one on a hard end floater where he steps up late, and then another one on a Zubot's offensive rebound attempt as he left Zubots to make the contest. Zoo got the rebound, but he recovered and got a great contest on Zoo and forced another miss case on Wallace pays it off with a big driving layup and trainransition the other way.

So stop turn or turnover, layup, stop layup, classic thunder defensive transition sequences that got the lead down from five to one. And by the way, I want to shout out Chet here because like Zoo won a lot of battles on the glass in that game. I think he had four offensive rebounds, but Chet was battling with him, and as a team they were doing a great job of like gang rebounding in those situations and they won some battles and Chet got some big defensive rebounds during

that third quarter run. Then Shay goes on a little run. He attacks Harden in a guard guard screen. Harden defends it like shit. Shae gets a wide open layup, he gets Batoom in a guard guard screen hits him with a quick dribble combination, hits a step back three over the top. All of a sudden, Oklahoma City's up four. The momentum is shifted. Clippers up five. Now the Thunder

are up four. He attacks Zu Bots in a ball screen, makes a beautiful spin move over his left shoulder and makes a kickout to Aaron Wiggins on the right wing. He hits a three bang right Bogdan Bogdanovich with a quick couple of scissor dribbles right to left, gets to the basket for a layup. The run is starting to gain a ton of momentum. Now right Isaiah Joe comes in and hits a couple of threes, one off the dribble,

one off of a skip pass. Shay hits another pull up three over Malcolm brogged into or over Bogdan Bogdanovitch excuse me to end the third quarter. All of a sudden, the Thunder are up by eight going into the fourth quarter,

and it could have been worse too. Brook Lopez hit a couple of bombs against pretty good contests, one against jay Lynn Williams, who came in and got a great contest on a Brook Lopez three at the top of the key just hit a tough shot and then another one where he pumped fake to get the defender off his feet knock down a shot. Otherwise, the thunder could have been in big time control before we got to the fourth quarter, but in that fourth quarter the thunder

just completely slammed the door shut. Crusoe and Hartenstein combined for like a classic like Steph Curry action, like they looked like Steph Curry and Draymond Green, where Crusoe's cutting along the baseline. Hartenstein gets the ball and just throws like a between the legs pass backwards to Crusoe running out to the corner, and Cruso just running out to his left side right left footwork just rises up and knocks down the three like the spitting image of that

classic Golden State Warriors action. Thunder up by eleven, AJ Mitchell gets a put back chet Holmgren hits a right shoulder fade over the top of Brook. All of a sudden,

it's thunder by fifteen. And then at this point in the middle of the earl ish kind of early third of the fourth quarter, with a thunder up by fifteen, AJ Mitchell came in and just utterly closed the game with excellent pick and roll shot creation over and over and over again, just putting the clippers in the blender, scoring the ball and making great reads as he blows

the game open. Starts with a drop coverage look, he attacks the big gets a left handed layup, so as a result, the very next possession, brook Lopez wants to step out higher, why so that he can stop aj Mitch from getting ahead of Steam going towards the basket. That opens the short roll past to Hartenstein. Hartenstein sees Chet cutting along the baseline, perfect lob dunk that's created by the lefty layup by AJ Mitchell that forced brook Lopez to try to stop his momentum further away from

the basket. Now the thunder are up. By nineteen, he had another one where he comes screaming down the lane in a ball screen and he smokes a layup, but he occupies brook Lopez as the rim protector. That leaves Hartenstein a runway to just come in right behind him and get an offensive rebound put back. We even got a little Chet Isaiah Hartenstein two man game mixed in here where Chet gets the ball screen from hart and Sign and Chet returns the favor with a beautiful little

lobb to Hartenstein over the top. It's just an avalanche. It's like bucket after bucket after bucket. Another aj Mitchell ball screen where Lopez comes high on the at the level coverage that forces James Harden to tag Isaiah Hartenstein on the roll kick back to Chet on the pop extra pass to Aaron Wiggins wide open on the left wing because Harden went to tag the roller wide open three.

action three on two. Now Now it's just about making the reads and it's like easy, little tic tac toe Hartenstein to Chet on the lob dunk, easy to little tic tac toe, toss back to Chet on the pop, extra pass to Wiggins on the left wing, wide open three.

that crazy chaos causing level. And you can handle it for a time, But how many games have we seen like that with the Thunder where it's like teams are hanging with them for like twenty four minutes, maybe for thirty minutes, but then right around that, like mid to late third quarter, it's just that onslot for the Thunder just gets too much. The other team starts to let go of the rope a little bit, and next thing you know, they're up twenty five. It happens all the time.

It happened dozens of times last year. And they're just playing beautiful offense right now, Shay's playing like an MVP. I continue to be blown away by the level of offense that they're getting from their deeper bench. Since JDub has been out like AJ Mitchell was downright surgical and pick and roll down the stretch. As we broke down in detail, you have guys like Aaron Wiggins who are hitting shots and Isaiah Joe since he's come back, has

been a godsend in terms of their spacing. Chet and Isaiah Hartenstein have just such brilliant I low chemistry on their lobs. They read each other in the middle of the floor and on the baseline so well, and they're obviously going to do so much damage to you and transition off of their stops eight to no to start the year looking like an absolute juggernaut. And you know, I was frustrated when I heard that Kawhi was out because the Thunder had played a light schedule last week

and I just wanted to see them challenged. I wanted to get another look at them against a good team. And here's the thing, this is just what the Thunder do. Like they're Superstar and Shaye, he never misses a game. He's one of the most reliable guys in the league. And then as a team they win the war of attrition.

We talked about this in the Lakers segment yesterday. But when I see teams that start to rack up wins when main guys are out of the lineup, it's always evidence for me of depth of talent in strong basketball culture. And there's a clear depth of talent as we're seeing guys like Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins and aj Mitchell slide into bigger offensive roles and chet and Isaiah Hartenstein in their read and react in the middle of the floor, just giving them another level on offense that you didn't

see a couple of years ago. Right like that is the depth of talent the strong basketball culture is the Hey, we're down our second best player, but we're a kick ass defensive team, and we're gonna play this way every single night, every single possession. And you might be able to keep up with it for a little while, but the minute you let go of the rope, we're gonna blow the game open. I mean, they're eight to zero and they've been down their second best player all season.

They've just been looking like the best team in the league by far. To start this campaign, right before we get out of here today, I want to talk about this Steph interview with Lebron. I had several little takeaways. First of all, I want to shout out Lebron because, like you would think in a situation like that, Lebron is just he's very much the center of attention type of personality. To Lebron's credit, I thought he did a good job of backing the hell off and just letting

Steph run the interview like that. Everyone's there to see Steph. This is your podcast. You're gonna have plenty of opportunity to talk in other situations. Lebron just kind of backed off. Steve Nash did a wonderful job just kind of queuing up questions and Lebron like popped in here and then to offer his perspective. But it was very focused on Steph and his upbringing, his basketball development, his basketball philosophies, and honestly, one of the biggest things that stood out

to me, Steph is just a remarkably smart dude. He's a great speaker, He's great at explaining his basketball philosophy. I found it to just be like, very easy to listen to and very easy to understand how he feels about the game. There were so many interesting things that he dug into. I loved when he started talking about his body and the work that he put in behind the scenes to essentially build out all the elements of

strength training to facilitate his style of play. He kept talking about this idea of building the chain, and like I talk about shooting with the concept of energy transfer, right, this idea of like there's a power you push down on the floor with your feet right as you're jumping, but there is a chain of energy that goes all the way from your ankles to your knees, to your hips, to your core, all the way up through your shoulders. That that is the transfer of energy through to the

top of your shot. And any power that you lose in that chain puts extra stress on the top of your shot, and then it gets harder for muscle memory. When the muscle memory can be very easy and light, it's easy to replicate it, right, But when you lose energy up the chain, that's what forces it to be a higher stress shot at the top.

a lot of players lose power. And I just thought it was a really interesting breakdown of the weight room because the weight room is like something that we've talked about this on the show, Like, I think it's one

of the most underrated elements basketball development. Basketball is contact sport, and you're dealing with physicality in every phase, whether you're setting screens, fighting through screens, fighting to get open, driving to the basket and winning that leverage battle and drives, boxing out for rebounds.

In that summer, he dramatically increased his leg strength and he experienced like a six point per game leap in his scoring average literally from like strength from increasing the strength of his base. That is the when you're sprinting full speed and you stop on a dime and rise up. It is all leg strength and footwork that is what allows you to get into your shots. Steph's superpower, right is his jump shot. It's when Steph is open. Ever

since the Davidson days, that shit's going in. And so the battle is how do you get the amount of shots that you need? And actually thought he did an interesting job talking about how like h with Bob Myers coming up to him and being like, hey, like, I think we should get you up to fifteen threes per game, and like Steph's initial reaction was kind of like damn, Like you know how hard it is to get fifteen

threes up in a game? And He's right. The point is is like when you're a shooter and they're guarding you like a shooter, You're not just open fifteen times a game. It's not like, oh, I'm gonna get my eighteen shots, I might as well make fifteen of them threes. No, you gotta get open fifteen times for decent quality three point shots. And that is all in that leg strength, that chain that Steph is talking about the ability to move and then to stop at any point in time

and rise up and shoot. There's other elements to it, right, Like we're gonna talk about the offense in a minute, the ball handling piece, the fluidity of connecting your dribble to your shot. There's obviously a lot more that goes into it. But I just thought all the stuff that Steph was talking about with building the chain physically to be an elite shooter was just a you think of shooting as being like, oh, let's just go shoot a thousand shots a day, and I'm not gonna sit here

and pretend like that's not the case. Like you've got to put in the work behind the scenes. But there is a huge, like body building element to it that I think is under discussed, and I really enjoyed him breaking that down. I loved the bit that he talked about was Steve Kerr's offense, So he essentially talked about that transition from you know, they win fifty games with Mark Jackson summer of twenty fourteen, they end up bringing

in Steve Kerr. And one of the things that Steve Kerr that Stephan said that Steve Kerr said to him when he was kind of holding out the initial offense was the idea of he was like, I just want to make the defense make a ton of decisions on every single possession. And of course, my ears, those of you guys who have listened to the show over the years, you know that's a concept that we talked about all

the time. My ears immediately perked up because I was like, that's super fascinating, because talk about being ahead of your time. This has been something that I've been keyed in a lot over the last years. Twenty fourteen is eleven years ago. Like Steve Kerr was so ahead of the curve with his like basketball philosophy in the idea of generating good shots through essentially making a defense make a ton of

decisions on every single possession. So, for instance, like if you're running, let's just look at the two like most dramatic opposite examples. Right, So we have the Steph Curry Golden State Warriors ball and player movement offense, and then we've got like the Luca don chicch spread pick and

roll offense. Now there's a lot more complications in the Lakers version of it, but if you go back to like, you know, twenty twenty two or twenty twenty four, where it's like a lot of like just spread, pick and roll type of stuff with Luca. It's there's not a lot of decisions being made on the possession right, like the balls getting brought out the floor. It's very brute force.

It's can you guard Luca in this one coverage or in this one on one right, Like there's you know, at the level, there's deeper drop, there's blitz, there's switch, and in each of those four, you're essentially like removing decision making and putting all of it on the job of Luca. To beat that coverage like deeper drop, he's got to go hit mid range jump shots right against that. As the defender gets trapped on a side, he works him into the lane, hits those little floaters right higher

drop or blitz. It's gonna be the short role. You're hitting the guy in the pocket. Now we're playing four on three out of that right the switch.

a three. Steph was like, that's not the same as the exact same shot that comes out of a possession where the balls already switched sides of the floor two or three times. There's a rhythm that from people touching the basketball. There are upsides to getting deeper into the possession and making them guard multiple actions above and beyond the rhythm part. Over the course of that, you present

all of these opportunities for someone to mess up. If Steph runs off of five screens in a possession and you defend the first three really well, you switch them properly, or you stay attached physically and have help on any sort of back cut, and then all of a sudden, on the fourth one, two guys run with Steph. Someone messed up. Now someone's wide open on the slip, and someone's getting a wide open shot. A perfect example last night is Steph running off of that wide pin down

from Draymond. Draymond slips into the open space, then he throws the behind the head pass to Moses Moody in the corner. That's a mistake that comes from the ball and player movement that forces a defense to make so

many decisions on each possession. And when I heard that, I was just like, of course, Steve or was on top of this concept, like way back in the summer of twenty fourteen, he was ahead of the curve, and he took what was already a good team in that Golden State Warriors team, and pushed him up to sixty seven wins by essentially weaponizing the threat of Stephan Clay's shooting through multiple actions on every single possession that forced defenses to make a ton of decisions. And as soon

as somebody messes up, there's your opening. It's it takes an enormous amount of trust, and like Steph talked about it, how it was kind of sloppy at first, and it took them a little while to kind of like figure out what kind of shots they were going to get in the offense and how to you know.

thinking about it as I was watching the show. I just think Steph is so damn cool, and he's so smart, and he's so fun to listen to talk about the game, and he's become you know, I think he's the fifth best perimeter player of all time. He's become literally one of the very best basketball players to ever touch the floor. And it's just kind of funny because I hated his

ass ten years ago. I hated him because obviously I was a younger fan and I was rooting for the for the Lebron led Cleveland Cavaliers, right, and so rooting against him made me hate him. But it's been so funny because like over the course of the last you know, six or seven years, especially as I've started to really learn about the game, as I've studied the NBA and tried to become more familiar with how NBA basketball works, and then obviously just getting distance from from the rivalry.