The volume.
Hi, everybody, welcome in Jason Timpf Hoops Tonight, Great podcast. A part of the volume. He and I go live immediately after games, and I just I really love what Jason does, the way he breaks it down former college basketball player. We're going to dive into a couple of topics. First of all, the emergence of the physicality of foreign born players like Jokic. He is such a complete package offensively, There's almost nothing like him in the league over the
last decade. He doesn't really have off nights because he does so many things well thirty twenty and ten. I've said before, I think Denver's the better team. I don't think Denver has to do anything to win. They can just kind of play their game and win. I think Miami has to play with great urgency and energy and shoot well to win. I mean, Denver's played poorly once in their last eight or nine games and they lost.
And even though they lost at home, they were leading by what was at eight points going into the fourth, So I thought you saw Denver not only steal home court advantage back, but what you're seeing with Denver is a lot of the things they do. They do consistently well, and a lot of their advantages are physical in terms of size and length. And Miami's got to play a certain way to win in this series, and they didn't do it tonight, and they're wearing down Jimmy Butler. Jimmy
Butler looked tired tonight. So let's bring on Jason Timp of the volume. Do you have some home projects you need to get done, whether you own the house or you rent it in your apartment, your condo, or your town home. Angie's List is now the Angi app for all your projects at home, whether you're moving, installing something, or cleaning something. They have a network of pros that you can rely on. They've been rated and reviewed by
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Colin, what did you think was the story of this particular game?
There are certain things that even if you don't play well, that you'll win. And one of them is length. Denver's just long points in the paint, sixty four to thirty two, Denver rebounding fifty seven to thirty two. Now, when you combine their length with their effort, it's just those are staggering numbers. It's that Denver's really long. Remember, Lakers got a little bit of a break. Steven Adams, Brandon Clark were out against Memphis. Smaller team. Warriors up next, kept
Looney off and off the floor, smaller team. How small, how big the Lakers looked in the first two series, and how small they looked against Denver? Denver Jokich is Not only does is Yokich big, but he plays long because you know, he shoots the ball above his head, so his game is very much shoulders up, you know. And when he dribbles the ball, unlike a lot of big men, he turns on you, so he puts that big butt and that hip in you, so he gives you no shot to take it away like most bigs.
As you know you played, college basketball, coaches preach it, don't put the ball on the floor. Doesn't He never puts it on the floor, usually within six feet. If he does put it on the floor, it's perimeter and he turns, so when he gets that ball low, it's all up top, it's all up here, and it's just they don't have an answer for it. So when you combine their length with their effort on the glass, their effort and intensity, this is why they were a number
one seed, Like it was almost tonight. Methodical, Like if you watch Altitude TV and Denver and you watch them, you know, seventy games a year, you saw this against bad teams where it's like they just control the interior. They play good enough defense. It's a length mismatch. Jokich is overwhelming. That's what they were most of the year when we didn't watch. You know, when you play a d or when you play Bam out of Bayou, or you play the best coaches, you know, the numbers all
come down. But if you if you start looking at Yokics throughout the course of the season, this was very much a Denver game, dominating the paint, dominating the borge. Jokics, great Murray, played reasonable defense. It felt methodical. It was just a methodical hammer away. You got the same point told almost every quarter. Twenty six, twenty nine, twenty nine. It is really good teams make it look methodical, like this is what we do. When the Patriots were dominating,
it was like, oh, that wasn't a special effort. They didn't fumble good on third down. You look up and they've got thirty two points. They went thirty two to twenty, and you're like, yeah, that was just what it was. Workingman like Denver is a handful.
The problem with size is it's there every single night. There's no version of this where they show up to the game and they're shorter in Game four. It's funny. I had a lot of Laker fans over the course of the season ask me like, Hey, what makes this team different from the twenty twenty Lakers, And I'd say, it's the total of the size. It's not just Anthony Davis and Lebron James in the front line. It's also
Dwight Howard. You know, it's not just Anthony Davis and it's it's Alex Caruso, this big, strong, six to six wing. It's Kentavious Cabbo Pope, It's Kyle Kuzma. They're huge down the roster. In the predicament that that puts you in on both in the store. Danny Green was another guy that was huge on that team. It's six foot six, two hundred something pounds. Denver's got that type of size on the roster. It's not just the Nikola Jokiz problem. It's Aaron Gordon at six ten. It's Michael Porter Junior
at six ' ten. It's Kentavious Cabbo Pope at sixty five, Christian Brown at six foot six, freaky athletic, just causing all sorts of problems in dribble penetration situations. He's incredibly difficult to screen. Even Jamal Murray is big compared to many of the smaller point guards that we have in this league, and that just leans on you and it wears on you. I thought, you know, Miami, you played
a really clean first two games in Denver. As a matter of fact, I think they only got out rebounded by eight or nine total in the first two games combined. It was like the Hoover and Broke tonight. It was like all of a sudden, all of a sudden, all of a sudden, all of that effort and focus and energy just broke under the unrelenting size that Denver presents
and the way he broke down Jokic. I was literally watching that last night or tonight, and I'm just gonna this is the way I'm going to pitch this to you because I'm really curious to hear your opinion. If I told you that I thought Nikola Jokic was the most unstoppable offensive player since Shack, how would you respond to that. I'm not saying I'm saying that yet because I'm not sure, But how would you respond if I told you that?
Well, tonight thirty twenty ten. So does rebounding count? Do assists count? Well? If they do, he is, He's there's so much of his game. You know, we talked about this. He doesn't have the power of Shack. He doesn't have this the singular shot of Kareem. He's not as good a defender as Kareem. He's not as forceful as like a chemer, as quick, but the fact that he can take you outside the passing is Walton. The shooting is
kind of unheard of. By the way in the playoffs, his touch, he's just you know, when when you know they're different players. But I said that the other night. I remember when Larry Bird came into the league and Sports Illustrated. I read a story in Sports Illustrated about him, Jack McCollum, the great writer, And I went back about five or ten years ago and I looked up the early Larry Bird stories in Sports Illustrated, and they were describing him like Larry Bird, like we've never seen anything
like this now. Then then Lebron comes in and he's like Larry Bird, you know, doubled, Like he's faster, bigger, stronger and can do stuff and handle the ball like like Jokish is a combinat a lot of this. A lot of great players are unique. Jokic is a combination of a lot of different people, and he takes the best of Walton, you know, the way he holds the ball over his head, his vision. His body is like Luca. It's blocky. It's a lot of shoulders, a lot of hips.
It's hard to get you know. Charles Barkley was much smaller than people realized. He was like six to four and a half, but he was blocky, he was thick, he got he got leverage on you, Like, who do you put on Jokic? Like it's just a it's a lot of problems. And I think, you know, I don't think there's there's not a real there's not a real duplicate. Like he just does multiple things really well. Like Jimmy
Butler is a terrific player. He felt small tonight. He felt kind of irrelevant in the second half, Like irrelevant. Jokic is never irrelevant because he has so many layers to what he does. You know, it's Lebron, Like I said, I could tell when Lebron was getting old because I would sometimes lose him on the floor. Is easy in in Lebron's plot prime like twelve years, like you'd turn the game on. He was everything on ball, off ball, passing.
Jokic is It's just he doesn't really have what you would call off nights because he does so many things well.
If I had to break it down, I'd say it comes down to four things. His overwhelming size. Two, he's a master of leverage, and those are those little spin moves and those chicken wings that you were talking about. It's like half of the battle with strength is your strength is irrelevant if you don't have your feet planted on the ground right, like if you're off balance. It's
a simple concept. If I had you stand with your feet next to each other and I pushed on your shoulder, You're going to be much more likely to fall over than if you're in an athletic stance and you're squatting a little bit right, and Jokic uses his fakes to get you to lean one way or another. And then as soon as you lean that way, he's he's hitting that way, and your momentum is carrying that way, and so now he's by you. And so the combination of
the strength with the leverage. And then the third thing is unbelievable touch. There's just nobody in the league that is more accurate within ten feet of the rim with pushots and hook shots than Nikola Jokic. And then the fourth ultimate kind of piece that ties it all together is the same thing that kills Joel Embiid and Anthony Davis every single year in the playoffs, and that's his playmaking. If you send multiple defenders, he's going to make the
right play every single time. Those four things combined, to me, I actually do think he's got a case. There's a couple other names that come to mind. Steph Curry last year had that type of unstoppable offensive playoff Run twenty eighteen, Lebron felt kind of inevitable in a lot of like it literally felt like nobody could stop him from doing
what he wanted to do. But like, this is his first trip to the NBA Finals, He's twenty eight years old, and he's already putting himself into some elite company with what he's doing offensively. I thought he was much better defensively tonight to protecting the rim. Miami struggled to finish round the rim a lot. As a team, they were way better. There were a couple really smart adjustments I saw from Mike Malone too, so we talked about in our last show. There were two things that Miami did
to bother Denver's offense. It was get Jimmy Butler on Jamal Murray and guard the Murray Yokich two man game two on two so that they didn't get open shots for KCP and Michael Porter Junior on the week side. And then it was the zone defense. Well, they started running a lot of early screens in the offense to get Jimmy off of Jamal Murray before they ran their actions. That was a big part of how Jamal Murray got going.
I thought that was really smart. They moved Jokic out of the high post in the zone and actually put him down in the short corner. They were able to get some stuff there, and they were just started driving
the zone too. In his zone defense, everyone's in charge of a space, but it's still one on one in your like, it's still if I'm dribbling on the left wing and there's a guy in the corner, guy in the court, like I have a guy in front of me, So if I beat that guy, I'm going to engage a different defender, which is going to generate an opening.
And they were actually back to back layps that Denver got off of just Christian Brown just ripping through and getting into the teeth of the zone and drawing multiple defenders, so that I thought they had a lot of really smart adjustments. Do you. I do think Denver's better when they're at their best. But obviously you predicted a split going into this two game set in Miami. I still think Game four is going to be a total toss up. You has your view on the series changed at all after tonight?
No, I just I kind of felt like it would be too two heading to Denver and then Denver would win too straight. I think Miami has a way to win, which is they've got to play with incredible urgency and they've got to hit threes. Denver doesn't really have to do anything. I mean, even the game they lost, outside of the first four or five minutes, I thought they were the better team until about eight minutes ago in the fourth, I thought they outplayed him. I feel like
Denver doesn't have to really do anything. Miami has to play a certain way, and they often do. But tonight's a great example where Denver matched their urgency and it just didn't. It felt lobsided. I mean, Christian Brown's an interesting player, the Kansas rookie. First of all, he plays like he hasn't played much like he's so really He's got such great energy, he can tell you that, such fresh legs. But I thought he bothered on a couple
of possessions. He bothered Jimmy Butler. He matched Butler's energy, and he's a kid that doesn't take the pump fit. You know. Butler just lives just constantly pump faking you. And Christian Brown, like a well coached bill Sell player, just didn't buy any of them and He's quick and he's twitchy, and it's like, I wonder if when you know, the coaching staff Malone looks at that. I wonder if they think, you know, he's a little bit of a fly in the ointment for Butler, where he's about the
same size. He's really twitchy. You know, Butler's played a lot of minutes. This kid is I mean, he is just like he's like a kid, an eight year old on candy. He's going one thousand miles an hour, and he really stays centered. He doesn't buy into Butler's pump fakes. You can put him on Jimmy sporadically and it's like it's a little bit of a matchup. I mean, Jimmy's obviously a much better player, but when I watched him tonight, I'm like, oh, his energy is something. He's an interesting matchup.
And I think that goes back to something else. I noticed. Jimmy plays with such intensity it burns hot, and he he looked a little, you know, gassed, He looked a little he looked tired. And you know, you go to Denver, you go open the mountains, you come back and it just takes all a lot. And he's playing big minutes. So I think he'll come back play better, and I think it'll be to your point, I think it'll be
very close. But Denver's rebounding and points in the paint edge like it'll change a little, but it's not going away. It's kind of who they are, it's how they're constructed.
Yeah, by one hundred percent agree. I do think Jimmy Butler has shown over the years, especially in the last couple of years, like he I think Jimmy hits check points in basketball games where he identifies if there's an opportunity for him to dig deeper into his reservoir. And you saw that just in the last round, for instance, Jimmy in games five, six or four, five and six was a shell of himself, but then in Game seven he came out absolutely gangbusters from the jump, you know.
Yes.
And then last year in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Celtics, he was amazing down the stretch of the series in Game six, in Game seven, but he had two digit nights. He had a six point game in an eight point game in the middle of that series. So Jimmy has a tendency to be like, oh, like this isn't the one we're getting. He's and he's a very high IQ player, and I think he kind of read the writing on the wall. That was Denver's best punch,
and that was inevitable. Like I was talking with our colleague live the other day and like we like she was talking about Jimmy Butler and what she expected in Game three, and I said, I don't really expect a ton from Game three, more in Game four. And one of the reasons was Denver had won seven games in a row, Like they had won seven games in a row again, and that included wins against Kevin Durant and Devin Booker and Lebron James and Anthony Davis, like they
were due for a clunker. And when when we finished in our Game two show, and I woke up the next morning and I watched the film, it really was one of Denver's worst defensive performances from the postseason. Every one of them was saying it in the postgame presser. It was inevitable that they were going to come out and throw just a great punch tonight. And Jimmy is the kind of smart guy that will kind of post through that and understand that it's he's going to live
to fight another day, so to speak. I actually I had a topic that was presented on Twitter this morning that really got me interested and I was curious your opinion. So some of the ratings came out, and the ratings in this particular finals have been pretty good, not quite where they were last year, but pretty good, and which is encouraging to me. But you had mentioned this on your show the other day, which I thought was super interesting.
You said, the top four players that you think are on the top tier in the league are Yannis, Jokic, Luca, and I think Steph was your fourth, and STEP's getting there just totally.
They're not perfect players, but they are literally universally unique on the planet.
They're unique, exactly and so and Steph obviously is thirty five years old, and who knows if Golden State can retool around him in time.
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So realistically, a couple of years from now, it's gonna be Luca Jokicic in Jannis's league, and those are all foreign players. And so my question for you is do you think it's bad for the league and what do you think it says about American players in the way that they are developed here in the States.
Well, most of the foreign players are big Yannis Embiid Jokic, It's a lot of really highly skilled bigs. Most of our highly skilled players are wings, and we've almost de emphasized bigs in our game right our players are are. It's just it's the reality of what has happened. I don't think it's bad for the league because I think we love basketball. I think we all played it in high school. You know, hockey is very international. Most of us didn't have a skating rink within an hour of
our house. So I think basketball is always going to be fine. It's a story league. I don't think. I don't think Denver will ever be a fascinating team. I don't think Milwaukee's fascinating. But you know, the league is always broadcast Jason about six teams. They put their arms around six teams. If your champion's not fascinating, the Lakers will be Boston not winning. Is the jah Morant story? Is Phoenix now Durant is. I think there's enough really
interesting stories. Your champion doesn't have to be enthralling. I think a lot Warriors will be. I think they've got a couple of punches left. I think there's enough interesting storylines around the league. Embad's interesting. You know, Jannis is likable, Jokich is kind of a nonverbal It's okay. I think the league's in a really good space. I think it's a hard league to judge on ratings alone because their YouTube numbers and streaming numbers and social media followings are
much greater than football and a lot of stances. They are much more popular on like the IG and on TikTok so. I think the league's in a really good space. And I also think increasingly we know, I mean I've seen more Victor Wembin Yama. You know, we now see international players like it's a real thing. Now you get games broadcast. So I don't I think it's in a really good space. I think I think the sport in America that it's going to always have problems is hockey.
We don't play it. It's not terribly diverse. There are just communities where it's not. It's just not a thing. It's very international. Whereas basketball, we do follow their minor league system college basketball to a degree, not to the level of college football, but we all watch college basketball March madness. We don't watch college hockey. You know, when you when your minor league system is irrelevant your feeder system, it hurts. So I think football and basketball are in
a good space. I think the tradition of baseball, though it trends old, is fine. Baseball the advantage baseball has. It's good in the right markets Atlanta, New York, Houston, LA, San Francisco, big cities because no salary cap, the big city's can afford it. So it's driven by Philadelphia, New York, LA, Houston, Atlanta. You know it works. But I think basketball is fine, and I think the game. I think the players have never been more skilled. The game remains creative and artistic.
It's embraceable. There's big players, there's small players, there's flashy players, there's flawed players. It's fun. It's a fun like. I I like it more now than I ever have. I do think sometimes I think I like the layering of it. I like Joki Jokic. Denver is a two point team, Miami's a three. I like these kind of old school basketball teams that have length and get points in the paint. Denver is a very old school I like that.
Yeah, I'm in lockstep with you on this one. I think it's I don't think it hurts the game at all whatsoever. As a matter of fact, I think the best evidence of this is just the way that Americans react to these foreign players, Like what happened in Philly. They were all like, get Ben Simmons out of here, we like Himbiid, you know, And it's because Ben Simmons
had all these qualities that didn't resonate with them. And then Joel Embiid was this freaky competitive kid who was super coordinated because he grew up playing soccer, and they just gravitated towards that guy. Denver fans are rallying around lo Jokic like you wouldn't believe. Obviously, Luka Doncic has been you know, I would argue his hype and support has actually superseded what he's actually accomplished so far to
this point, you know. And so I don't think it hurts the game at all as far as it goes with the American players. I do think there's an interesting dynamic that takes place, and I think it's a product of how quickly overseas we get players into professional basketball compared to the way it is here in the States. And again, I just remember this from my own experience, and this was really starting when I was first coming
up in college. But there's an emphasis in America some of the more flashy elements of basketball, like you know, the high and you mentioned social media engagement, and you're right, basketball is consumed in a large in a large capacity through social media here in the US. And what does well on social media dunks, you know, crazy highlight, you know, sixteen dribble combinations into oh look at this crazy move that Kyrie Irving did, and those things are an important
part of basketball. But let me tell you this, some of the best athletes I ever saw were in junior college. You know, like, like guys that can dunk don't necessarily succeed in the NBA, and meanwhile overseas, Like, I think one of the things that's been beneficial is what do you I don't think it's a coincidence that all three of those guys are huge, like in play a physical brand of basketball. You talked a lot about Jokic and his game of leverage. Luca does the same thing as
a perimeter player. Like to a t he's just getting you to move an inch and then he's pushing you off of your spot in that inch to get to where he wants to go to get an easier shot closer to the basket. I think a big part of that has come from playing against grown ass men from the time they turn sixteen years old and it being all about winning from the time they turn sixteen years old. And I do think that we will see a resurgence. I think you'll see more bigs come out of the
United States. I think you'll see coaches in AAU basketball and all of them respond and kind of change their approach a little bit. But like we're in this situation where it's like, Okay, who's the next American star? Okay, is it John Moritt? Is it Zion Williamson? Is it Anthony Edwards? Like those guys feel miles behind the dudes we just mentioned well.
And also sometimes with our players, maturity is an issue, right, whereas sometimes the international players. And this is true when I go overseas. I just came from Iceland for a week. When I visit a country, I'm more polite. I'm a visitor. It's not my soil, you know. I think these foreign born players come into America, they're very adult, very respectful. Basketball is their life. They're focused, they don't get sidetracked.
Zion is sidetracked, John Morant sidetracked. They're much more comfortable here. I think it's a real thing, Like how do you act anybody listening to us, when you go overseas, it's different, you act different. You're a visitor. And I think I was told this year's ago by a general manager that a foreign born player is less likely to leave. He's very grateful for the opportunity to go to Milwaukee. Milwaukee is his Lakers. Milwaukee is much better than his international team.
He's treated like the arenas bigger, the players are better, the TV's better, the crowds are bigger. So he doesn't look at it as a step down. That is his Lakers, that's his Yankees. And so I think the foreign born players come in here with very conscientious, very grateful. And I'm not saying, you know, jaws not grateful, but I we're all a little different at home. You know, we're all a little different when we're comfortable. And I think these players come in and they are ready to go.
They see this as a one time opportunity. They're not going to be given a FOURD of the opportunity two or three. You know, a lot of these international players don't get the big shoe deal, you know, right, Like they're not on ig So like the basketball is their focus, it's their income, it's their revenue, and I think you see it on the court. And I also think for years and years we talked about how soft international players were, and they heard it, and you hear something over and over,
you're not this, You're not this. I think over the last ten years, they have increasingly gotten much more physical. Because the Tony Kukoach story was legendary where Michael and Scottie Pippen bullied him and picked on him. Well, that story got told over there for ten years and like it. So these international guys sharpen their elbows when they come over here. They're ready to play. You can see even the way Luca plays in Jokic, it's a very elbow
angle initiate contact game. It's they come in a little heavier. It's almost like it's purposeful weight. They play with a lot of knees up and angles, and I think that's part of the physical game that they want to They want to, Hey, they don't want to be pushed around. Kuk Coach was a great player. He got pushed around in this league and that stuff made its way back. So I like, I love watching international players.
Oh agree, and you're you're absolutely Like. Giannis uses his off arm like crazy, that chicken wing when he's driving by people. He's got a nasty streak. Uh, Luca's got a big time nasty streak. That dude's talking shit on every single possession. Joel Embiid is literally like scoring buckets on you and your home arena and then taunting you in front of your stands like these dudes all are nasty,
physical players. I am really curious to see how American basketball responds over the next few decades.
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