Hoops Tonight - GAME 4 REACTION: Dosunmu & Wolves up 3-1 vs Jokic & Nuggets + Brunson & Knicks beat McCollum & Hawks

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Speaker 1: The volume.
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Speaker 2: All right, we'll go to Hoops tonight. You're at the volume. Happy Saturday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having an incredible start here weekend night number eight of the NBA Playoffs. Can you guys believe we've already made it that far. It's like you get into it and then every night something else crazy happens, and so it just starts to fly by so incredibly fast. We are more than a week into this thing. We're gonna be breaking down all four of tonight's games from the perspective of both teams that at the tail end of the show, Jackson's gonna come on. We're gonna take some questions from the chats. If you guys have questions from any of the series, drop them in the chat. We'll get to them at the tail end of the show. You guys have the Joe before we started. Subscribe to the Hoops and I YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. We are on the road tow one hundred and fifty thousand subs, so it'd mean a lot to me if you guys would take a second to scroll down and hit that subscribe button. If you're all ready to subscribed if you could like this video as well as sign up for post notifications. That helps us a lot. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the injuries are piling up. Dante DiVincenzo is reported toward his achilles tonight on that famous negative step that has claimed so many players over the course of the last couple of years. Really bizarre trend too. All four guys who tore their achilles in the last two playffruns were the number zero just obviously coincidence, which is a truly bizarre coincidence. The first time, or the first thing that I do every time I see one of these season ending injuries is I look at the guy's contract, because I always get worried that it'll happen in a time where it could like threaten the player's longevity in the league. And fortunately Dante has another year on his deal and then I'll give him a chance to rehab. And my guess is that some team, some very smart team, given what we know about achilles recovery and the improvements that they've made with the surgery, and how good some of these players have looked coming back, my guess is some smart team will end up signing Dante on a a mid level exception or something like that after next year, and he'll have an opportunity to prove what he can do. Maybe with Minnesota. We'll see Minnesota would be smart to keep him. I just think he's a really good player, but it felt really bad seeing him go down tonight, and I'm hoping that he's able to make a quick recovery like some of his peers have made. And then Anthony Edwards on kind of a bizarre rim contest where Cam Johnson went strong and went out with his left hand and Aunt got a great contest on the shot and Cam made a crazy layup but ended up falling and hyper extending his knee. We do not know any of the details on that looked gnarly Ant was very very ginger walking off the floor. Those kinds of things can be weird. Sometimes they're you know, Tory acl sometimes their knee spraying in the guys back in two weeks, so it's really difficult to tell what that situation is. Looking like, it was the different knee than the knee that he was having the runner's knee issue with, so hopefully it's something mild and it gives him a chance to give both of his knees a break. So hopefully we get some positive news from Anthony Edwards tomorrow. But like we lost Jaylen Williams to a hamstring strain and Viker roman Yama had a concussion. Thankfully, both of those guys should be back at some point. But like Aaron Gordon's hanging on for dear life, we had a bunch of players not even make it to the postseason, and Manuel quickly he was ruled out after a setback for the rest of the first round. He was obviously a very important part of any chance Toronto might have had in the first round. I guess they're still alive, but like their chances to upset Cleveland, are diminished with him being out of the lineup. Obviously, Luca Doncic and Austin Reeves didn't even make it to the playoffs, and it's just a casual reminder that there's an unfortunate reality with how the playoffs go. It's about who survives as much as it's about who plays the best basketball. I hate that it is that way. It feels like it's become more that way as the league has become so fast and with all the movement, the stress that it puts on bodies, it just seems like bodies aren't holding up. And it just you know, you get into this and you start having fun and all the nights are great, and all of a sudden you realize the reality that this is just a really difficult sport on the human body, and guys are just not holding up. And we're gonna dig into it a little bit too. I think the league is taking a shift towards physicality that I'm gonna talk more about here in a minute that I think is also exacerbating this issue, and it's something that the league might have to consider in the future with the way that they officiate games. But Minnesota, we talked about this all season Minnesota, no matter how bad they looked, I just wasn't gonna fall for it again, because, yes, in that first year, the year that they went to the conference finals against Dallas, they had this excellent regular season and during that regular season they flashed their defensive upside a lot, and it manifested in their playoff run. Obviously, they did very similarly to what they're doing to Denver. I'd actually argue they're doing a more significant amount of damage to Denver's Denver's offense in this series, but then the following season they kind of had this up and down season where they were flipping the switch and not really showing their athletic upside, and I foolishly fell for and I picked the Lakers to beat them in the first round. And then all of a sudden, you got into that series, and you know, the Lakers, because they ran so much spread pick and roll, they weren't as vulnerable to some of like the straight up decomposing that Denver did tonight, but they just weren't very efficient and it caused their offense to sall out. And then on the other end of the floor, they got athletically mauled by Minnesota, similarly to what Denver's dealing with going to the rim. And so all season long this year, when Minnesota continued to be a team that didn't really seem to care much about the regular season, I just said, I wasn't going to buy into the fact that they were this mediocre regular season team. I just have seen it too many times where they ratchet up that athleticism and it becomes literally overwhelming to teams. And that's why as we went into the series, even as good as Denver has looked, and I viewed Denver as a more substantial championship contender. I talked about Denver as having the best supporting cast that Nikola Jokic has ever had. I talked about Nikole Yokis being the best player in the world, although that is very much in flux right now, and even then, I gave Minnesota a forty five percent chance to win the series, and now it's tilting above that even with the injuries. Potentially because of this dynamic, Denver can't figure out how to even run their offense against these guys. Minnesota and Oklahoma City are the only teams I can think of in the league that quite literally decompose teams before you even get into the basketball chess match. You talk about the basketball chess match, and it's like, who's guarding who? How are we guarding these actions? What are the plays that we can run that get us a good shot? What are the things like we talked about after Game three are game Yeah. After Game three, I talked about how those cleared side inverted ball screens were the actions that I really liked that Denver was running. That I thought they could get to more in Game four. That doesn't matter. If you can't get the ball across half court, that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you can post up Case on Wallace, or if you can attack, you know, shake Gildas Alexander in switches or whatever, whatever it is that you think you can do, doesn't matter if you can't get the ball across across half court. There is a test you have to pass when you play Oklahoma City that you're not even gonna get into any of the fun stuff. Like Phoenix finally passed that test today and we're gonna talk about it later. They finally got the ball into the half court, ran their offense, and it became suddenly this fascinating chess match about like, oh, like Dylan Brooks kind of has a little bit of a one on one man advantage against chet Holmgrin, and now we're getting the ball into the pocket, We're getting some more open threes on the weak side and all this kind of stuff. And that was fascinating. But you can't get there until you figure out how to actually get into your stuff. In multiple times in this series, Minnesota does the same thing to you. I loved the way Tim Legler broke it down on the broadcast talking about how nothing was conceded. What does he mean by that? A lot of teams think of defense as like guarding specific actions. Minnesota and Oklahoma City are like, screw that, We're trying to turn you over before you get to your action. How many times did Denver turn the basketball over before they even got to half court in the second half of this game? And like that dynamic makes it so that Minnesota is able to win basketball games with margin before it even gets to certain personnel strengths and weaknesses for them when it comes to the half court chess match. And again, I can't think of another team that brings that level of intensity at the point of attack, just bringing the ball across the floor, dribble handoffs, high post entries, like you're just trying to throw the ball to Jokic, and you can't throw the ball to Jokis because Rudy Gobert is draped over his back trying to swap the ball away. You're just trying to run a dribble handoff out at half court and they're blitzing the dribble handoff forty five feet from the rim. Nothing is conceded, as Tim Legler said, and Denver once again in that second half, completely decomposed a guy that I have said is the greatest offensive player of all time, with the greatest amount of talent he's had around him. Forty four point forty two points in the second half, forty two points, couldn't bring the ball across half court, failed to score twenty five points in three of the four quarters. That's the type of damage that Minnesota can do to you. It's actually, like, really caused me to think a lot about modern NBA team building, because I've seen a lot of teams struggle with this over the course of the last couple of postseasons. I was watching the film for the Sun's Thunder game, and on the very first possession, Devin Booker's trying to bring the ball at the floor, blu Dort's pressuring him. He gets rid of it and he goes to get it back, and so he's kind of like ceiling lou Dort around forty feet from the rim, and he gets a pass back. I think it was from Igadar, but I can't remember off the top of my head, and lou Dort like just bumps into Booker with his shoulder and fouls the shit out of Devin Booker. Out at half court, try just trying to catch the ball and Devin Booker almost falls into the back court and it wasn't called because that's just the way the league is officiating right now. And there have been these things in NBA history. Everyone talks about the hand check, as you always hear the old heads talk about that. Well, in two thousand and three, that got rid of the hand check. So all these players now must be pussies because we were playing with hand checking and these guys are just running around free. And that's literally never been the case. If you dig into the NBA rule book history, it was in like the late seventies that the actual rule of using your hands to impede progress was actually brought into the lexicon. But what has actually happened throughout NBA history is there has been a natural ebb and flow between the league being more physical and it being less physical, and being more physical and being less physical, and it's the same exact dynamic. Teams start to score a lot, everyone freaks out about the scoring, and so the refs start to allow more physicality and then it starts to tilt the other way, and then inevitably you have, oh shit, this is actually getting kind of ugly. Can we do something so that this isn't so damn ugly? And then it tilts back the other way, and like, what was the conversation in the last few seasons, Oh, NBA scoring is out of control, there's too many three point attempts, the statistical inflation, and so what did we see? What was it two years ago after the All Star Break? Either two years ago, one year ago. All these years are starting to run together for me, but a couple of years ago, all of a sudden, you see a dramatic increase in physicality posts All Star Break. This like clear shift in the way the league was being officiated. That's coming from the top down as part of that pendulum back and forth between physical and non physical, and it feels very much like we are entering into one of those eras where the game is more physical, and all of a sudden, these teams that are built around slight, finesse oriented players look completely overwhelmed, and all of a sudden, it's teams that have speed and ball handling that can handle pressure in size and strength. Positionally are the teams that look like they can handle it. And I like Denver straight up is one of the greatest offensive teams of our era of basketball, and they cannot score against these guys. Nikola Jokic still can't score on Rudy Gobert. It is crazy. And we're gonna talk about Yokich in a second, because I blame him for most of this, because he should be the one guy who's impervious to this, and arguably he's been the worst. And we'll talk more about Jokic in a second. But like as we look at team building, as we look at the contending picture, as we look at teams that we expect to survive as they go deeper into the postseason, it's more about It's more about the war of attrition than ever. Like having a guy like Iyo Desunmu that can just step in and drop forty because one of your guards got hurt. That's a huge asset. Aj Mitchell couldn't make shit tonight, But just having a guy that could step in and do that because one of their guards got hurt, that's massive. The Pistons don't have another one of those guys and they're staring down the barrel of a two to one deficit in the first round. I just again, I just find this very fascinating. It's become more about depth and size and strength and athleticism, your ability to survive the physical onslaught of the NBA Playoffs, the ability to survive the best and most physical defenses, and you have to do it for seven games. Denver looked pretty good against Oklahoma City in terms of handling the pressure until they pissed all over themselves in the late first quarter of Game seven, and then none of it mattered. And it's really changed my kind of belief system and starting to really cause me to reevaluate the way I see team building in the top teams in the NBA. But credit to Minnesota because they have consistently shown the ability to flip this switch. And they are the only team other than Oklahoma City that I've seen that can reach this level of disruption with what they can do to elite offenses on the other end of the floor and then on the offensive. And we talked about it after Game one, like shout out to iotasuonmu he obviously brings this incredible transition attack. I actually have found the units with him and Bones Highland on the floor all season post trade deadline obviously to be some of the more entertaining units that I've watched, because they defend and they run, and they're just really fun attacking the basket. And the two of them just have like a swagger and an energy that they play with that is infectious and just makes for a great television product. But one of the things I talked about after Game one was, like Denver's going under on these IoT assume you picking rolls, and like, I get it, you want to try to keep him out of the lane as much as you can. But like this dude, like was damn near fifty percent on pull up threes this season in a pretty large sample, And boy did he burn Denver tonight. And like again, like the dude had two assists. There's got to be an effort from Denver and Denver. I thought, really, for two and a half quarters there did a pretty good job of bringing force, containing the ball better, making more efforts at the rim, actually playing pretty damn good basketball in this matchup two and a half quarters. And then they let go of the rope, and I didn't think they did enough to shrink the floor and to keep bodies in front of iotasummu, and so they got burned over the top, they got burned in the lane. Constantly. Io goes for forty three points in this game, just an unbelievable game. Thirteen for seventeen from the field, twelve trips to the foul line, five for four from three. Denver's in trouble. The series isn't over. I expect Denver to win big in game in Game five at home, and I think if they win Game six, they'll probably win Game seven. I think without Anthony Edwards presumably he's out for the rest of the series. Without Anthony Edwards, without Dante DiVincenzo, I don't think they're gonna be able to score enough in Denver to win. We'll see. I've been wrong before, but Game six is the real one. Last year they rolled up in Game six. Again, it wasn't an elimination game, but they got their ass beat. That buzz saw, the same buzz saw you saw in the last quarter and a half tonight is waiting for Denver in Game six, even if they extend in Game five, and I'm not sure if they're gonna survive it. I said before the series, fifty five to forty five Denver. I'm like leaning more towards fifty to fifty. But again, I think Denver will win their home games. So it really comes down to Game six. I just think it's gonna be hard for Minnesota to win in Denver without their starting back court. But in Game six, you gotta feel like Minnesota has a fifty percent chance to win that game with how good their defense is, with how much Denver's decomposed, having the guards that can provide just enough offense. I was talking with Jackson before the broadcast, like Io seems to have a little bit more downhill burst than Ant did, just simply because he was healthy. Ant seemed really hesitant to hit the jets. He did, but it just seemed like he did it when he had to, not because he wanted to. Io's got real downhill burst that he's bringing to the equation. So, like, if you're a Timberwolves fan, you gotta feel really, really good about your chances to advance at this point. This is where I have to talk about Jokic though. The only chance they have to win this series, I think they'll win again. Game five but the only chance they have to win Game six on the road in Minnesota. Jamal is physically overwhelmed. Cam Johnson's physically overwhelmed. 're Shan Brown's one of your best athletes, He's physically overwhelmed. He's a transition guy that can't score in transition in this series. Aaron Gordon looks cooked. Had absolutely no lyft on his jump shot or around the rim tonight, only played twenty three minutes. Anyway, there's one guy who can save you. There's one guy who can bring the ball up the floor against this pressure, who can get you into your offense and generate quality shots. And it's Nikole Jokic, the three time MVP, the guy who I said was the best offensive player I've ever seen, and who has been far from that in this series. The concerning thing is he has not just played poorly. Every star has a range of outcomes, right Like I've seen Shae against Okac struggle to get to the rim and become basically a pull up shooter and his impact dips a little bit. I've seen Shaye have bad defensive games. Luka Donjiic It's like usually turnover and he doesn't have a step back three going. You know Lebron James in his prime, Like the shot making over the top isn't there, but the other stuff is still there, you know, Steph Like he'll run around screens and his gravity will generate a bunch of shots, but he'll go two for eleven from three. Every star has a floor, but they've usually the superstars, the guys that are of the ilk that I'm talking about, they have enough that they bring to the table every night that they still are positively impactful in a big way even at their worst, even for jokicch Like usually with Yokich, it's like six or seven turnovers and like his pick and pop three is not going, and so he goes fifty percent from the field instead of sixty eight percent from the field. That's usually what it looks like for Yokich. Forget about the scale, forget about the spectrum. Jokich has fallen completely off the bottom of the spectrum in this series. He was terrible in that second half. There was a play where you could tell Minnesota is literally causing him to lose his composure and rush things in a way that this was literally the most composed basketball player in the league for the last five years. This was the guy you couldn't speed up. This was the guy that always was a step ahead of what the defense was trying to do. And he's like stumbling forward and rifling a full court pass over Christian Brown's head when he's barely being pressured because he's losing his composure under the circumstances. We are now four games into this thing, and Jokic hasn't just failed to meet the best player in the world standard. He has been downright bad, borderline harmful on both ends of the floor. And the only shot they have to roll up into Minnesota in Game six god willingly survive Game five is Nikola. Jokich has to be the guy that brings it up, that gets them into their stuff, that settles the team down, and that generates quality shots. I'm sorry, but you guys know I'm a big Jamal Murray fan. I said before the season he was better than James Harden. I said he's a top twenty five player. Caught a bunch of shit for it. I feel like I was proven right. Jamal Murray is not athletic enough to handle Minnesota when they ratcheted up like that. Jokich is the one guy that has the combination of size, strength, foot work and ball handling to be able to survive this. He has failed his job and it's a big part of why Minnesota has a three to one lead in the series. And the only shot Denver has is for him to flip that dynamic. And if you're a Spurs fan, you gotta be feeling pretty good right now because Denver was the team that presented a lot of problems to you. And again, like now, they have to win three games in a row against the team that they straight up can't score on right now in order for them to even advance to play you in the second round. 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One of the big reasons why basketball is so fascinating, One of the most most compelling things about in the NBA playoffs is that series dynamic right series basketball, a series can turn on a dime when a team figure something out. And after three games, New York's trailing two to one, Jalen Brunson's having trouble finding matchups that he likes attacking in the half court. He's having trouble even just getting on to ce J McCollum for favorable matchups. He's really struggling scoring over in Yikakong, who hasn't been able to figure out Dyson Daniels or Nikaile Alexander Walker. The Knicks hadn't established really any other action that was working for them. And on the other end, of the floor. The Hawks were having success with a bunch of different actions involving Jalen Johnson and Jonathan Kminga and CJ McCollum hunting guys, and it just was looking bad and Atlanta was even starting to turn New York over there in game three. But in Game four, the Knicks completely flipped the dynamic on both ends and now fundamentally the series is different. Starting on defense. Just increased pressure. That's the kind of thing that, like so much of this is just the natural ebb and flow of series when you have urgency and intensity switched towards a team that's desperate, but like they up their pressure and they start getting up into the guards. But the big difference was they just straight up sagged off and dared Atlanta's non shooters to shoot, and Jonathan Kaminga, Jalen Johnson, and Dyson Daniels, the three most finnicky shooters for Atlanta, went one for thirteen from three. We actually just talked about this with Kaminga after Game three, just strictly speaking, like every playoff game is kind of its own entity and requires a different thing from you, and Kaminga has shown the ability in the series to plug all these different holes. But the one thing he hasn't had to do yet is take six threes, and New York made him do it tonight and he missed all six of them. And that's the kind of thing that when it comes to consistency in the NBA, is vitally important. If this lineup where Jonathan Kaminga and Jalen Johnson are gonna be able to play next to each other, one of them is going to have to become a reliable three point shooter. I think Johnson was one for five on his attempts that ended up fundamentally altering the way Atlanta felt in terms of their confidence on offense. Even if Nikil Alexander Walker got something going, New York started scoring in transition the other way. They didn't get out in transition a ton, but they were extremely efficient when they did. And then in the half court, New York just changed the way they played and they had far and away their most diverse offensive attack they've had in the entire series. Galen Brunson off operated off the ball a ton, setting setting off ball screens and getting into spot up position as the Knicks were attacking from the other side. Of the floor. Kat went back to just dominating the a Congua matchup with like face ups and post ups, a lot of stuff out of Cats and night Cat was just brilliant. Cat's been one of the most impressive players in the series. For the Knicks, they were running ball screens with og and Andob and mckail bridges. Mckel bridges finally got some stuff going in this game downhill towards the rim, the NIXT bench started to get a lot going with their guards. Like you just saw a far more diverse attack from the Knicks. And we talked about this all the time. This is not the first time we've had this conversation with the Knicks. They have a lot of aggregate talent. What does that mean, Like, they got a lot of dudes who can dribble, a lot of dudes who can run a ball screen, a lot of dudes who can shoot, a lot of dudes who can get to the rim. So when you run Brunson ball, you get diminishing returns. And that has consistently been the story with this next team. And one of the best things about this next team this season was Brunson was operating a lot as a driving kick guy early in the clock and they were generating a ton of spot up opportunities. But over the course of this series there was regression back into leaning onto Jalen Brunson a ton and you really saw that in the numbers. Jalen had had been averaging around seventeen shot attempts out of pick and rolls in ISOs through the first three games. That was down to twelve in this game. He had four spot up attempts. In the entire series before tonight combined, he had six spot up attempts.
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Speaker 3: Tonight.
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Speaker 2: They had a lot of success using him as an off ball screen or they kept spamming this action where Kat was operating with the ball up top and they have Ognnobe kind of on the wing, and then Brunson would set a backscreen for him, and it's one of those things Wherever's guarding Brunson is like really hesitant to help. That's a weapon you can use to get other people open, and so ognnob just kept getting open on the backscreen because they didn't want to switch it. These are ways that you can keep Brunson's skill involved in the offense without necessarily having to put him on the ball and become redundant and predictable right, and you just saw a flow in, a speed and a confidence to the Knicks offense and the half court that just looked very different than what we saw in the first three games of the series. The Knicks offense has always been at their best when they run off missus and turnovers, which they did tonight, when they play advantage basketball off of the advantages they create and transition, and when they get everybody involved on the ball, when OG's running ball of screens, when mchalees running ball screens, when Cat is operating as a folkrum at the top of the key for off ball action. It wasn't just Jalen Brunson. They got Jordan Clarkson on like a backscreen slip at the top of the key. Ogn and o we got a dunk on a play where Kat was working with the ball at the top and Dyson Daniels through a random double team and hit Og cutting back door for a dunk. There was just so much more variety, which prevents the repetitiveness of doing the same thing every time. When you repeat yourself, you become easy to guard. When it's like, oh, all we have to do is hedge and recover. With CJ, you get a lot of reps at it. You get better when it's like, oh, I just need a congu to show high or switch or whatever it is that you're doing. There's a repetition to it. That becomes predictable. It becomes very easy for the defense to find a rhythm figure out how to guard you. But by keeping the variety, by coming at you a different way every time down the floor, you avoid that dynamic. I mean this game wasn't even close. You could like feel a psychological shift towards New York as they captured that flow that they have at various points over the last few years on offense and as they reached their defensive ceiling on the other end of the floor. Now series isn't over. There's lots of clean up for Atlanta. They were really sloppy with the basketball in this one. I think they had nineteen turnovers. Their transition defense was a bad a lot of not spritting back, not getting matched up. Their off ball defense was really poor. Like that off ball action like that should be cleaned up. That's something you should be able to clean up. Just a simple backscreen action with Jalen Brunson and Ogan Andobi. The other off ball mistakes we talked about, like the Dyson Daniels gambles, like the losing Jordan Clarkson on that slip toward the rim, Like there's a lot of stuff that they can clean up in their off ball defense. Guys are gonna have to hit threes, and you know, I don't know if Dyson Daniels the one that I would believe in there, Like I think I would take my chances on that kaminga Jalen Johnson lineup and just pray that one of them can get going and start making some shots so things can flip. The series isn't over, but the advantage that Atlanta had gained through their crunch time offense and their crunch time defense in Game two and three is now gone, and home court advantage is now shifted back towards the Knicks because the Knicks were able to hit a certain level by tweaking some things on both ends of the floor. And that's just what's so fun about series basketball, and for you Hawks fans out there, like the Knicks also have a habit of like doing this and then going back to Brunson ball sometimes, so like they have a hard time sustaining some of the things that they like to do as well. So the series isn't over, but this was a huge swing back towards New York's favor. In Game four, Detroit Orlando a truly wild game that in many ways is mimick the rest of the series. Orlando very clearly has the advantage in the half court over any sort of large sample. They have more guys that can create shot in action. They have more talent and off ball scoring, more reliable shooters, the ability of Jalen Suggs and Desmond baine to routinely burn Detroit for helping in situations. This morning's game was super important in the kind of like advantage that Orlando had for most of the night. And then on the other end of the floor, Orlando just has a really strong formula for how to guard Detroit's offense. And it all starts with Wendell Carter Junior. And to be clear, it's a team effort. Like several Magic players got wins Onkate Cunningham and switches like Desmond Baines stripped him in the right corner, Anthony Black stripped him out by half court Franz Wagner was the primary most of the night, and he had a lot of really good reps obviously just by virtue of him being on and most of the night. Pala Moncaro had some good reps, like a lot of magic players had good reps on Cade. But Wendell Carter Junior is the fulk crum of it all because he's the guy that could accomplish all three of these things. One he could run a solid drop coverage against the k Dura pick and roll. Two he could switch on to Cad in pick and roll, and three he could guard Jalen Duran in his one on ones as well. That functionally breaks Detroit's offense in a series like this, and it's them on the same exact thing with both guys, with both Cad and Jalen Duran the size and strength to where there's no ability to bully. Like Detroit's attack is predicated on bully ball, and you can't bully Wendell Carter Jr. Not on rolls, not on drives, on box outs. He just is physically up to the challenge. And then the second piece of it is just his natural ability to anticipate and take good angles to beat the spots and absorb that contact in the chest. He shut down so many Kate Cunningham drives tonight, and usually you'd think like, oh, Cade should be able to beat him off the dribble, but he was able to give enough of a good contest on his pull up. He gave up a pull up three early in the game, but he did a good enough job on the pull up three where Kate felt like he had to drive and he was beating him to spots and he was keeping him in front with that physical strength, and he was like stripping him and forcing him into bad turnovers as he's trying to pass out of it. He just did a great job defending Cad and Switches had some good drop reps and in the drop reps like controlling Jalen Duran on the roll but also keeping Kate in front and not letting him get all the way to the rim and also helping to secure the defensive rebound. And then on Jalen Duran again, everyone's been begging for Jalen Duran to be the guy that could be that secondary scorer, and again it's the same thing. He's just big enough that Jalen can't bully him. He hasn't been efficient enough shooting over the top. He's done a good job like disrupting his base, like bumping him in a way so that Jalen isn't really balanced when he's trying to shoot over the top. And as a result, like you combine that with the job that the other perimeter guys are doing, and they're they're overall like gang rebounding and game gang help and recover sequences. Like now you have an eight seed that's up to to one in the series. But the crazy thing is we talked about another die nic after Game two, and that's that Detroit's best chance to win the series is by ratcheting things up on defense in a way that causes the Orlando to decompose because they're just not a great like IQ execution team. And that happened again in the tail end of this one. Orlando's up seventeen, and the exact same thing happens. They strangle Orlando's offense for a little while, start forcing bad shots and turnovers, and then on the other end of the floor, Kate cutting in and Tobias Harris got hot and they go on this crazy streak late in the game and they end up actually taking a lead, like Kate ends up hitting a pull up three and a ball screen. Tobias Harris sends up hitting the three, relocating towards the left wing. Tobias ends up drawing a foul in the lane, and it was Kate I think that drew the foul. And all of a sudden, the Pistons are up by one and you're like, holy shit, this thing, this thing is going the other way. And then Franz Wagner literally bailed the Orlando Magic out and it wasn't like some sort of dynamic offense like what he was running in Game four. He had a tough life late clock stepped back two over Kate Cunningham, and he hit a deep three off the catch on the left wing that's pretty heavily contested, and right after that Caid cooled off and Orlando escaped. And like, that's why I like, even though Orlando's up to one and I'm sticking with my pick still. I said fifty five to forty five Orlando after Game two, and that's exactly how I feel right now. I still lean fifty five to forty five Orlando. I still think Detroit has a great chance to win this series, and you got to be looking at the Knicks in the sense that, like all it takes is you win Game four and you recapture all the momentum as you head home for a three game series where two of them are in your building. The reason why, even though Orlando's up to one and a lot of those half court dynamics I've been talking about have been kind of fleshed out over three games, but the reason why I only give Orlando a very slight edge is Orlando can just go straight up brain dead against this team on both ends of the floor, but mainly with their offense against Detroit's defense, they can stop moving the ball, they can get really sloppy and start turning it over. That's where all of a sudden, the emphasis on their weak pull up shooting becomes an issue. And then on the other end of the floor, Like we're gonna talk about the Orlando matchups in a second, but like there's Kate Cunningham's a bad off ball defender that will like lose Tobias Harrison big spots. I hate the way Orlando's configured with Jalen Suggs in the lowman spot. We'll talk about that in a minute. But like Orlando can like really fall apart. That's twice in this series where like when they've fallen apart, they have like completely fallen apart, and all of a sudden, Detroit just goes on these dramatic runs and that can literally cost you a series. But the reason why I still stick with the Orlando fifty five to forty five is Kate Cunningham, as the only guy who can really sustain any sort of offense in this series, is having a hard time sustaining it. Over the very large sample. This defensive look is just really hard. They're big on the ball, they're big in help, they're big at the rice him and Caid has had runs where he looks really effective for three, four five possessions in a row, but then you see the fatigue come in and he starts not getting all the way to the rim and he starts missing shots. And that happened again after his run at the end of this game, and it's happened at various points throughout the series to this point. So like that's just the reality of them not having an Io de Sunmu, who, by the way, I literally talked about right after the deal was the guy they should have gone after, and because they don't have that luxury, Like I don't think Jalen Duran's gonna figure it out. And I know they're all saying the right things and they're trying to pump him up, but like that's not to say he can't have a game where he hits some shots. But I don't think, you know, Detroit's gotta win three games. I don't think. I don't think Jalen Duran's gonna go out there and drop twenty plus in each of those three games. Like I think you might do it once, but like I don't think offense is coming from anywhere. And so it's this weird dynamic of like can Orlando hang onto the rope long enough to where the large sample goes in their favor no matter how hot Cad gets for brief stretches, or is Orlando gonna decompose in the key moments of the series, Because like guys I always talk about this series, is are always way closer than they look. Franz misses those two jump shots, I believe Detroit wins that game today. Then they're up to one and they probably win the series, it's not over, but like, that's how close these things come, and all it takes is one of those Orlando could do the exact same thing in Game four and control things for forty two minutes and then lose control over the last six. Now it's two to two going to Detroit, they could get blown out in Game five and they probably lose the series. That is how fragile these things are. And like of all the teams in the first round, because you know, everyone wants to say Houston is like the team that makes all the mistakes and that you don't trust in terms of their execution, Houston's got real roster problems. They don't have a point guard, they don't have a lot of dudes who can dribble. Orlando like does. They're not anywhere near as polished as Cleveland, Boston, New York. But like, Orlando's got dudes, and they are so they can go so brain dead on both ends of the floor that it's actually like, to me, the most frustrating team out of any first round team in terms of their ability to execute their game plan on both ends relative to their talent. I talked about in the film session what was really bothering me was I do not like the idea of Jalen Suggs on the back line. And I get it, like Franz did a good job on Cade tonight or this morning, and to be clear, that was a part of why things went the way that they did. And I'm not necessarily saying you need to put sugs on Kate, but I do not like the idea of Palo Boncaro having to navigate Tobias Harris's off ball movement. He's been getting burned on cuts and relocations all series long, including that huge one to the left wing for Tobias. And then there's just too many reps where Jalen Sugs as the low man and he's that final line of defense at the rim, which I just think is a poor way to deploy him when he's a primary point of attack defender and you're asking him to do a job that he never does. And so look, if you want to keep Franz on the ball because of the job he did tonight, swap Polo in in Jalen and like, yeah, you're right, Tobias might go to the post a few times, but the few times he goes to the post and does succeed against Jalen is going to be less than the total number of times that Tobias keeps breaking free because Poolo ends up turning his back to him as he can't watch man in ball. At the same time, Polo for his lack of attentiveness, at least he can be big by the rim, and that's an adjustment that I think Orlando's gonna need to make to increase their chances to win the series. And frankly, I just don't think Jamal Mosley's gonna do it. I think they're literally looking out there like this guy's kind of that tall, this guy's kind of that tall. So this guy's kind of that tall, that guy's kind of that tall, and it's like, I just don't think that that makes a lot of sense to me. When Asar Thompson is operating in the dunker spot primarily, and the best thing you can do is put somebody big there. I mean, hell, put Wendo Carter Junior there. I mean, I wouldn't do that because he's been doing such a good job on the two man game. But the point is somebody big on a sar, then have somebody who's actually better at tracking a perimeter player out on Tobias Harris. When I saw the easy, easy two man game that Detroit got going down the stretch and then Tobias get wide open on the left wing, I was like, Oh my God, like Orlando's gonna watch this just with a couple of matchups. But series not over. Still give a slight edge to Orlando. It's really going to just come down to will Orlando decomposing big spots or will k be able to sustain his shot creation in big spots. All right, lastly, before we get to the mail bag, Okay see Phoenix, Okay, see Phoenix. I thought this was Phoenix's best offensive game in the series by a mile, and we talked about this in the open so I won't spend too much time here. But they finally passed the OKC ball pressure test, like they actually got the ball up the floor and got into their offense, and they actually ended up winning the points off turnovers battle in this game. They only turned it over eleven times. They scored effectively on Okaysee's turnovers. There's some ugly ones like Alex Crusoe stripp Jalen Green out at half court once, but for the most part, they were able to get the ball at the four, and they were able to get into their offense and they got pretty good looks. They got the ball into Igdaro in the pocket quite a bit in this one. They skipped the ball against Okaysee's help and generated a lot of threes. Like They generated twenty nine catch and shoot threes in this game, which is by far the most that they've generated in the series. They didn't make enough of them, they only shot thirty five percent on them, but the process was much better, and especially in that third quarter run. I just thought there were a lot of really good looks on skips that they missed, especially guys like Royce O'Neil and Grayson Allen. Dylan Brooks, I thought, did a great job attacking Chet home in one on one. Kind of an interesting example of how like matchups work in one on ones, because as good as Chet is in terms of his length and his mobility and his ability to contest, Dylan was just able to get into his body and bump him off and to get into little short fades. And Dylan continues to just be a really impressive shot maker, and you combine that with his strength advantage, he was able to score the ball pretty effectively, but none of it mattered because Okay, sees defense got enough wins. I thought they got a lot of really good contests at the rim in uh like chet Jwill and Isaiah Hartenstein. All three of them had like big plays at the rim where they just went up with verticality and either block shots or just four smiths. They had six blocks. As a team, they held the Phoenix to just thirty points in the paint. I thought their contestant rotation were great and like kind of rushing Phoenix into a poor shooting game. And then Shacobs Alexander had one of the most efficient scoring games for a guard in the history of the NBA Playoffs. He has calling Gillespie on him for his primary matchup, which is just a disaster. He's bigger, faster, and stronger than him and obviously too skilled for the matchup. And there were a bunch of these hilarious possessions where he would just kind of like slowly dribble to his right and then just kind of give calling a little push and then elevate and just shoot that little left shoulder fade away off of the step back. He mixed in some obviously beautiful ones, like a couple of crazy left handed finishes in traffic. Did a ton of damage and transition in this game, and then ice the game with the disgusting right shoulder fade over Dylan Brooks from like twenty feet away, which is like a really difficult shot. That's a shot that you typically see in that like twelve to sixteen foot range, and he hit one from like twenty twenty two feet over Dylan Brooks. That was nasty. He finished with forty two points on just eighteen shots. He was fifteen for eighteen from the field. Phoenix sent a variety of doubles at him in this game, like some in ball screens of the Gadaro where they were just kind of blitzer or hard hedge, and a lot of like doubles on his drives from like one pass away where he'd like drive left and did someone meet him at the nail or meet him shortly after he kind of took off on his drives, and he just solved it all with quality drop offs and kickouts and all the key spots when guys would slip out his screens or he'd hit shooters when he would face help on his drives, and he had eight assists to just three turnovers in this game, which I thought was impressive considering the level of pressure that he was facing. One of the big reasons why I'm down on Denver's chances against OKAC should they even make it to that point, which seems pretty unlikely at this point. But one of the reasons why I'm down on Denver's chances is like, I don't think you can beat okayc by like protecting the rim with multiple bodies anymore. That used to be the thing that you've showed against Okay see that had success, Like Oh, we're gonna zone them, or we're gonna hard gap, or we're just gonna put a bunch of bodies in the way, and they just move the ball so well now as a team, and Shay has evolved so much in terms of his floor game and his ability to manage the forty eight, that they just generate really quality catch and shoots, really quality lob attempts in the vertical spacing window, and all of a sudden, these janky defenses and zones just don't work on them anymore. Is why, Like, over the course of the season, I kept gravitating more towards like Minnesota and San Antonio as upset threats, and Minnesota's is entirely too banged up. Now, I thought they needed to be completely healthy and have Anthony Edwards in like full rhythm to really have a shot. But this is why San Antonio is such an interesting matchup for them, because when you can actually put somebody at the rim that can protect the rim without having to send every body, and you can have athletes around them that can shrink the floor a little bit but not in no way that compromises their ability to close out to the perimeter, then you can actually play them into a pull up shooting game, and Shay's really good at that, but it's not going to be as efficient when they're getting all the way to the rim and the really high quality kickout rereads that they can get right. So it's kind of interesting because, like I just obviously, with Mark Williams out of the lineup and you've got a very young common Mala watch out there, there's just not the same type of rim protection that Phoenix had when they were at their best. But like, I just don't think a team with just some scrappy perimeter defenders and a good scheme can cause problems for this OKAC team anymore. I just think they're too gifted at driving the basketball. They're too gifted at moving the basketball and finishing out of those sequences. Shay has been the best player I've watched so far in the first round, and it's not particularly close. There's obviously a dramatic chasm between the level of difficulty that Jokic is facing versus Shay in this first round, but I also just think Shae has played substantially better. And again, we're halfway through the first round, but I think Shay's been the best player I've seen so far. No one's gonna change their rankings based on half of the first round. This is a discussion we have in June and July, right, But like, Shae has a pretty good lead on the field as we finish our first lap. Here last note on Oka. See this shit with Lou Dort and like sticking his leg out and tripping people has to stop. And like I'm so sick of like the main character syndrome that a lot of these OKAC fans have where it's like, oh, you're targeting Lou, but you don't talk about. Dylan Brooks is a player that I have literally talked far more than Lou Dort about how he's a dirty player and how I think it's completely unacceptable your guy does it too, and it's also not okay when he does it, and it's kind of bullshit that he keeps doing it to opposing stars like I, Like I would be legitimately worried if I was Austin Reeves that I'm potentially staring down the barrel of having to be guarded by Lou Dort in a playoff series when I have a contract on the line this summer because the dude legitimately cannot stop doing JANKI shit that could hurt you, And I don't know what the league's got to do about it. I didn't think today's was egregious enough to really justify a response, but if he like does it again, I think at some point the league has to consider stepping in and doing something to stop this guy from doing this, because it is like a legitimate problem that he keeps just sticking his leg out and trying to trip people. It's like straight up dangerous and like again, like guys, when we talk about how it sucks when Shay griffs. It's not just Shay, it's everybody. It has stop acting like it's all about you. When lou Dort does it, it sucks just as bad. When Dylan Brooks does it, it sucks just as bad. When Draymond Green does it. It all sucks. And I think it's okay for us to admit that even though you've got a player that is probably the best player in the world right now, and even though you're probably the best team in the league, and even though you're probably gonna win the championship, and even though you probably of the best GM in the league, and even though you have one of the strongest basketball cultures in the league, it still sucks when shaflops, and it still sucks when loud Dort sticks his leg out on stars. And I feel like that should just be like a like a unanimous opinion. And it kind of is crazy to me the kind of shameless defending of that behavior that I've seen, Like what lou Dort did today sucked. He needs to cut that shit out. It's really that simple. All right, Let's get Jackson up here and let's take some questions from the audience.
00:50:32
Speaker 3: Okay, let's do it. First.
00:50:34
Speaker 1: One is a super chat from the homie Blue Giant, who keeps sending super chats thank you every time the Blue Giants.
00:50:40
Speaker 2: Thanks Blue Giant.
00:50:42
Speaker 1: He asks, should the Lakers intentionally delay the series to give more time to Luca and Austin to recover.
00:50:50
Speaker 2: No, because here's the thing. I think the best thing you can do is, like, I think Austin coming back in game four would be smart because it would just be a really good, like dip your toes in the waters kind of game, and even if he plays poorly and you lose, you get another shot in game five. I think building rhythm would be key. Like Austin logging reps against the Men. Thompson I think would be good for a potential future matchup against Cason Wallace or lou Dort, whoever ends up facing in the OKC series. So I think all of that would be good for him. The other thing too, with the way the series usually go, Yes, you typically see that first weekend of the second round, so one week from today, you typically see like some game sevens from first round series, but you also see game ones from second round series. But then what happens is is then they bake in a bunch of extra time off in the early part of the series to try to line everybody up. So like, I think they're gonna lose their first two games in Oka see anyway, Like I was literally thinking about that today, Like if you had to give a percentage chance that the Lakers steal a game in Okay See, it's infantesmal right. This is the kind of series where you regain more momentum at home if you upset them at all, you regain momentum at home, and then with Austin in better rhythm and in better cardio shape, and with the team in better rhythm, with the new look, with Austin and potentially with Luca back in the fold, then you try to make a run at it in the over the course of game three, four five, and so I think there would be time off, Like I think they play on that Saturday, and they probably have like two days off before game two, and then another two days off before game three is the other series catch up, So like, I don't think there's any real advantage in dragging the series out anything. I would be like wear and tear on Marcus and Lebron that I would have no interest in having those dudes. Those dudes have put their bodies through it in this first round and they could use a break.
00:52:40
Speaker 3: Next super Chat question from Ethan, Thank you Ethan.
00:52:43
Speaker 1: He asked, how does the JUW injury affect okasees championship odds? Aj Mitchell obviously stepped up and whatnot, but cell A big losses, how does that injury affect their championship pots.
00:52:56
Speaker 2: I think that the only player that would dramatically alter Oksey's championship odds would be if they lost Chet other than Shay. Obviously it should set Shay aside. The other thing too, it's a Grade one and I think they would probably Like guys, when I even talk about the idea of the Lakers upsetting the Thunder, it's very theoretical. I would put the chances of the Lakers upsetting the Thunder very low, and I'm telling you right now, I'd probably pick the Thunder in five or four games, Like, I don't expect that to be a super competitive series. But the point is, if it's a Grade one injury, that's usually a one to two week thing, and we're at least three weeks away from the conference finals, So I don't think there's gonna be any universe where Jadab doesn't come back unless he has some sort of substantial setback. Now, if Jadub gets hurt during or before, the San Antonio series gets a little tricky because that's the one matchup that's so particularly tough for them. But I think I'd favor them over any Eastern Conference team without Jadub, so like they've got a pretty hefty margin for air. I mean, we're talking about one of the greatest teams in NBA history.
00:54:03
Speaker 3: Here, all right.
00:54:07
Speaker 1: We have a lot of Jokic and Nuggets related questions, obviously, with that being the sort of the main.
00:54:12
Speaker 3: Storyline of the night.
00:54:14
Speaker 1: First question, how many times this is a quote from the question not for me, how many times does Jokic have to underperform in the playoffs before we stop defaulting to him as the best player in the world. He sort of touched on this a little bit. Obviously, we need the rest of the playoffs from a real to have a real, true big picture conversation, but it hasn't been pretty through a few games here.
00:54:32
Speaker 2: Let's be very clear, uh, I think if Jokic loses in this series, Shay will become the unanimous best player in the world. No one will have a case. I mean, even if Shae were to lose to san Antonio. Actually, I take that back. San Antonio is the one tricky thing Wenby. If he were to beat okay See in the conference final, I think would take it. Would you agree?
00:55:02
Speaker 1: I would say there's three possible outcomes at the end of if we're like really playing out Sga being the most likely and obvious path to the best player in the world per the Jokic struggles. If the Spurs when the title in Wemby looks amazing, he would have a legitimate case. And I would say the like one percent Jokic scenario at this point is like if he plays amazing, pushes it to game seven, has like a forty twenty and fifteen game, but they still lose the game in game seven.
00:55:27
Speaker 3: If if he looks unbelievable over.
00:55:29
Speaker 1: The next three games of the series but they still lose, I would say, there's like maybe a chance that he sort of holds on to it a little bit, but it's a low, low chance.
00:55:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense to me, And like I would, I would argue, if Shae wins the title, he'll be unanimous agreed. But if Wemby wins the title, I think you'll still have some holdouts that'll be like, oh, it's just the matchup. He couldn't space the floor too.
00:55:52
Speaker 1: Early and on the one still, like I think and all that would be like it's very reasonable.
00:55:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like, honestly, like the interesting thing about that too, is like the as you look forward for the matchup for these two teams in the history, in the in the future kind of like three to five year window here, the Shaver's Wenby debate is going to be the main debate, and like it kind of uniquely favors Wenby in the sense that Wemby also matches up well with Shae and that because of the way his team is constructed as like a drive and kick team, So like it's there. I would argue that there's gonna be some sort of like gray area surrounding that debate because of the matchup regardless, because Shay is so uniquely gifted. But like, if he can't get to the rim vers this team because of Wemby, it kind of defeats the purpose. I I want one bright side from tonight. Is like it's looking more and more likely that we're going to get our Shae versus Wemby Conference finals showdown, and that has a chance to be one of the most entertaining and like impactful NBA series ever because I would argue if the Spurs win, Okaysee's screwed because Dylan and Staph are gonna get better. Wemby's gonna get better. Okay, so he's gonna have to start Penny pinsion like, okay See has to get this one. They have to get this one.
00:57:16
Speaker 1: Another Jokic related question, there's a lot of do you want to walk back.
00:57:20
Speaker 3: Your Jokic goat offensive player takes?
00:57:23
Speaker 1: You know, Stephen Lebron never struggled like this type of I mean, I don't think that's necessarily even true, But.
00:57:29
Speaker 3: The question is do you want to walk back that that take it off?
00:57:31
Speaker 2: So I will not walk back that take until this offseason. That is a that is a off season retrospective. But as I said after Game three, one of the thoughts that is entered into my mind is less so what Jokic does offensively, because what's what's happening to Yokic right now is bizarre, Like he is decomposing in a way that is very different than any other version of Yokic we've seen, even last year. I agree, and I hate doing the thing where we erase all of his accomplishments because of what happened, Like the dude won three MVPs. Like I know everyone wants to bring up the fifty win team thing. The thing that always bothers me about the fifty win team thing is like one the dude literally never played with an All Star and All NBA player before the season, so it's not like he was out there with Anthony Davis next to him or Kobe Bryant next to him. Okay, And like most of the time in NBA history, it's like Jaylen Brown and Jason Tatum, Lebron James and Anthony Davis, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. Like for the most part in NBA history, it's these like Star Layden teams that win the title. Jokic won the title with neither an All Star nor an All NBA player next to him, And it was like he ripped through Anthony Davis like he wasn't there. He ripped through Bam at a Bio like he wasn't there. So like people undercutting that championship run I think are remarkably lain. That said, the thing that has really crept into my mind is, I think some of the discussions surrounding how this team is not very accomplished is legitimate. Have you seen some of the discussion Jackson about how like the stars of today are failing to even come close to the standard of accomplishment of the stars of yesterday. Have you seen some of that stuff? So like, for instance, just like just on its face, like Giannis has one title and a lot of early exits, Jokic has one title and a lot of early exits. Sure, Stephen Lebron have eight titles, you know, Like, so like there, that is a legitimate discussion to have. Now, a lot of that has to do with the parody and the amount of talent in the league and the new CBA and just how difficult it is to maintain talent. That's an important part of this. But the other thing that stood out to me is that discussion we had earlier, which is the way the league has shifted towards athletic physicality and Nikola Jokicic's teams are built around like what was the best version a Yokich team? It was like everybody on the fore could shoot. Everybody on the floor is the super skilled offensive player, so that he could play out of these doubles and have a lot of success. I have been applying in my personal kind of like a counting machine. Internally, I have been applying more credit to Steph lately for his ability to score the basketball and generate quality offense with defensive laden groups. But it is also a theoretical because these Jokic teams, we haven't actually seen a Yokic team built around defense before. Now what will be fascinating in the coming years is if they make that adjustment in their team building and we might get to see that. And I'd argue they probably should, But like, I'm not gonna make any sort of big picture proclamations until this summer. But all I can tell you is I have been thinking a lot about how maybe I've undervalued Steph as an offensive player, specifically because of his ability to facilitate defensive leading groups.
01:01:04
Speaker 1: Yep, that all makes sense to I think in terms of the accomplishments of the current Stars conversation, specifically the titles stuff, I think it's going to be really hard to have in the moment conversation like about that kind of stuff with any sort of definitiveness until we get to zoom out five years from now, ten years from now, and see how long this period of no the only single title teams goes on for like maybe the Thunder end of this year, and maybe the Thunder win four out of six and we can have some dynasty and some SGA crazy conversations, but until someone wins too, and until more than a team out, and frankly, to be honest, until someone other than the Thunder when wins too because they're dominant for a lot of reasons that we can we've discussed ad nauseum. Until someone else does, all the stars will only have one. And if all of the stars only have one, then one is as impressive as two before. Maybe maybe not, But like there's the scale is not the same as long as the only teams only keep winning one. As long as that's still happening, the scale is not really applicable the same way as it was to a different era.
01:01:59
Speaker 2: I don't think I totally agree, And the simplest way to put this is, like I'm not undercutting Lebron's eight straight Eastern Conference championships. It's a real accomplishment, of course, But like if I were to pick up same Lebron and drop him into this Western Conference, He's not winning eight Western Conference titles in a row. You know, he might still end up with four titles or three or two, who knows. But like the point is, I definitely know the league's deeper. The question is how much. And honestly, this San Antonio okay see thing is probably gonna be the indicator because if we shift back into it and it's like, oh wait, okay see in San Antonio won the next five titles, right and it looks like the Steph kd era, then what that tells me is, oh, Shay and Wemby were better than these.
01:02:40
Speaker 3: We're better exactly exactly.
01:02:42
Speaker 2: But to your point, if both of them end up with like three total combined between the two of them, then that's a pretty strong sign of the times.
01:02:51
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly.
01:02:52
Speaker 1: That's exactly the point that I'm making. Okay, last question for the night. Do you feel like then the Nuggets, Miss Michael Porter Junior. Obviously the shot making hasn't been there for Cam Johnson, but it certainly seems like there's a sot not that NPJ was, you know, a stopper, but it seems like there's is a little bit of a size element that the Nuggets have been missing with Cam Johnson in there instead of Michael Porter Junior.
01:03:12
Speaker 2: As much as it pains me to say, because one I was a big fan of the Cam Johnson trade and two I'm just a big fan of Cam Johnson me too, but Michael Porter Junior was a huge part of how Denver protected the rim. He just was he. The way that they made Yokic work defensively was they had a three layer rim protection. They had Yokic sometimes in deep drop, but for the most part, they brought him to the level and you had these two six ten dudes behind him that could bring layered rim protection, Aaron Gordon as a low man and Michael Porter coming over as like a secondary rim protector, and Cam had an opportunity, and this series isn't over. Cam had an opportunity to bring a certain amount of like speed, put speed on the perimeter and shot making in ball handling to where he could have made this trade worth it. So far, it hasn't happened. And if you watch a team like Minnesota cut them to pieces. It's hard not to think about how Michael Porter Junior could have helped them protect the room.
01:04:18
Speaker 3: Agreed. I'm a huge Cam Johnson fan.
01:04:20
Speaker 1: I'm not the biggest Michael Porter Junior fan, but it does seem like they're missing something. And I on the defense and then definitely on the offensive end this the shot making stuff with Cam Johnson has been weird.
01:04:30
Speaker 3: Michael Porter Junior I think has a little bit of a Julian champagnee.
01:04:34
Speaker 1: Quality to him of just sort of like blind aggression, which has sometimes hurts even sometimes can be really helpful.
01:04:42
Speaker 3: So it's it's it's it's an interest. It's an odd one.
01:04:43
Speaker 1: I was I was not expecting it to sort of shake out this way, but it's definitely so far, it's hard to argue with it.
01:04:48
Speaker 2: Like, is there any doubt at all that Michael Porter Junior is a more confident player than Cam Johnson. No doubt at all, No doubt at all, And like that matters in situations like this where a lot of dudes are peen on their leg Like it's.
01:04:59
Speaker 1: And I'm not gonna say that Michael Porter Junior might not be a turnover machine in this season.
01:05:03
Speaker 3: In this matchup.
01:05:03
Speaker 1: The guy can't even miss shots, he can't really dribble and sometimes he gets bothered too, Like it's not like an automatic.
01:05:08
Speaker 3: They would be winning this series if they had Michael Porter Junior.
01:05:10
Speaker 1: But the results of the results in Cam Johnson has not been as good as.
01:05:13
Speaker 3: Either of us expected.
01:05:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's really the way to put it is, like does it save them in this series? Maybe not? Probably not, But like, what do you have been better than Cam? It'd be hard not to be, and that that that's really the difference. But but yeah, I will say I I personally and this is the last thing I'll say that we can head out. But like I, if they lose, I would like strongly consider going like the full blown we got to blow this up and make some like roster alterating deals towards bringing athleticism in. I think, all of a sudden, you have to keep Peyton Watson.
01:05:48
Speaker 3: It's the number.
01:05:49
Speaker 1: I was about to say, it's the number one off season priority. I think at this point it's Payton Watson.
01:05:53
Speaker 2: You gotta keep Peyton Watson. I think you have to go out there. What I would probably end up doing is packaging Cam Johnson and some kind of asset, whether it's a draft asset or a young player, and I'd go get a power forward so that I could turn Aaron Gordon into Andre Gudala and be like, I need to have a younger, rim protecting forward next to Jokic, and I need to have Aaron Gordon wrapped in bubble wrap and playing thirty minute, thirty games a year. And basically every year it felt like Golden State would like barely use Andre and then it'd be like Game three of the Finals, here's Andre Gudala, like or some shit like that. Like it was just they just were very good at managing him at the end, and they got a lot of really big, you know, minutes from him in big spots. But again, we'll see, it's not over. I do think Denver is gonna win Game five, and if they come out and play series basketball and handle their shit in Game six, then they're gonna come home from Game seven and they're gonna advance. Like so this isn't over, but holy shit, man, it's looking bleak in Denver. All right, guys, as all we have for tonight night eight in the books, and we got another fun one for you guys. Tomorrow. As always, we appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. Final Buzzer Lakers Rockets tomorrow will be live on YouTube. We'll see you guys, name