The volume When it comes to college basketball in March Mania, one thing is for sure. Nothing's for sure. Upsets, buzzer beaters, Cinderella is advancing top seeds, going home early. It's all gonna happen. Bet the unexpected, every upset, every day with Draft Kings Sportsbook. With live betting, exclusive content, promos, and parlays, Draft Kings is the ultimate college basketball destination for March. Ready to make your first bet, check out the matchups, and pick a team to win. It's that simple. I'm a big arizon A Wildcats fan, born and raised here in Tucson, Arizona. I'm a little skeptical about them on the offensive end of the floor, but they looked really good on defense again last night against Kansas, so I'll probably be betting on them this time around. First time. Here's something special just for you new Draft Kings customers. Bet five dollars to get two hundred dollars in bonus bets. Instantly bet the unexpected with Draft Kings Sportsbook. Download the Draft Kings Sportsbook app and use code hoops. That's hops, that's code hoops for new customers to get two hundred dollars in bonus bets when you bet just five bucks only on DraftKings. The Crown is yours. Gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler in New York call eight seven seven eight hope and why, or text hope and why to four six seven, three six nine and Connecticut help was available for problem gambling call eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG dot org. Please play responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino and Resort in Kansas twenty one plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario New customers only. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKG dot co. Slash Audio. Welcome to the Best of Hoops Tonight, featuring my top takes from recent shows. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Warriors dropped a game a couple of nights ago against the Nuggets at home without Jamal Murray and without Nicole Jokich playing for the Nuggets. And to be clear, my thoughts coming out of that game were, or this is march in the NBA. You're gonna see this quite a bit in this time of year, because it's like a funky phase where half the league already knows exactly what they are and are in some variation of cruise control where you don't know what you're getting any given night because they're either saving legs for the playoffs or they're just not feeling that level of intensity. And even for the teams that made big deals at the trade deadline, the newness is starting to fade. It's been over a month and this is just kind of like this a lull that you're gonna see, and you're gonna see some weird results. Denver, in particular, it has been a total shit show. Like they get smashed by the Thunder, but then they beat the Thunder, then they get smashed by the Wolves, then they nearly lose to the Lakers missing four starters. Then they do actually lose to the Washington Wizards at home, just to go into Golden State without Murray and jokicen beat the Warriors who were red hot. It doesn't make any sense. That team is just bizarre. You're gonna see a lot of general or a lot of weird results in general this time of year, like the Pacers without four starters just went into Minnesota and beat the Wolves at full strength. The Wizards also went into Detroit and beat a Pistons team at full strength a few days before they're winning Denver. Although it's worth mentioning that the Wizards have some real stuff to start getting excited about, with their young talent flashing some real two way potential, guys like Galaxar really shooting the ball well from three, defending really well, Bilakula Bali Kishan, George bub Carrington. They've got a bunch of guys that are popping for them. But the point is is that it's March, and so there's a certain amount of weird result that you're going to see in there. And Steve Kerrin formed us that Steph really just needs a night off and that he's been dealing with some back sorenice, and so the Warriors needed to beat the Bucks last night without Steph Curry. And so conventional wisdom would tell you you go into that game thinking you're gonna win with defense, right, take Steph out of the equation. You're gonna put a probably a better defender than Steph into that rotation spot. Obviously, you lose the world on the offensive end of the floor. But if you just defend extremely well, you give yourself a chance. And that's exactly what the Warriors did. They held the Bucks to just ninety two points. They had two separate seventeen point quarters that they held them to. They responded to two separate Bucks runs with defensive runs. There was a late third quarter run where it was really the only phase of the game where the Milwaukee offense was in like really really cooking. Dame had the pick and pop with brook Lopez going and Brooke was hitting threes. They had some two man game with Damon Giannis where they were passing well out of it. Giannis was drawing double teams in the post and passing well out of it. He made a nice pass to brook Lopez, who sealed the low man and got an easy layup. They were skipping the ball to Kyle Kuzma, who hit three after three, after three. It was just the one phase in the game where Milwaukee's offense just looked like it was getting easy stuff. And so they go on this run and they go up seventy six to seventy and then promptly the Warriors put the clamps on him and hold them scoreless for three straight minutes, and they regained control. And then something similar happened in the fourth quarter. The Bucks go on another run, this time Giannis's on the bench, Dame is doing a lot of cooking and ball screens. They cut the lead down to three, but the Warriors hold them completely scoreless over the final four minutes of the game as they pull away and win by eleven. And so it was their defense that was able to completely strangle the Bucks at these stretches that allowed them in the limited offensive production they were getting under the circumstances to have enough to win that game. I want to start by digging into the concept of being in two places at once on defense. This is really the superpower that Draymond Green has used to become one of the best defenders that the league has seen over the last decade. Right, we think of defense two reductively. Sometimes a lot of times we'll think of it like can I guard my man and can he guard his man? Do we have five guys that are all like elite defenders that can defend on an island and keep defenses out of rotation and keep their defense out of rotation, and so on and so forth, and there's a certain amount of that where you do need guys that can hold up one on one. Draymond got a huge one on one stopping against Gianness late in the game where he forced him into kind of a drifting, floating hook shot that he missed off the rim. But most of the best defenses that you'll see in the history of the league are centered around a concept that involves actually being aggressive on the ball, meaning like putting two defenders on the ball or overhelping, putting guys into situation to make stars play in a crowd, but then those openings disappearing really quickly through excellent rotations and setting up the floor in a way where you have a plan for whatever it is that you're dealing with from the opposing star. And like again, like this is think about Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City's best defense in the league. They're not just out there letting all their guys play one on one on defense. That defense is predicated on aggressive coverages leaving openings that quickly disappear as you rotate out of it with your speed. I thought the Warriors executed this concept to perfection in this game. I thought it all started with Draymond, who did an incredible job on Yanis all game, but especially in ball screens, where he was consistently able to get up to the level to defend the ball, but to get back in time to handle Giannis on the roll. We saw play early in the game where he got a block on Giannis where he was like kind of trailing the play a little bit and he jumped and squared up in mid air to get a piece of the ball on the way down to force some miss. He had a huge one late in the game when the ball screens were getting pushed a little bit further out towards half court. Really good ball pressure from Gary Payton. They were pushing the ball screens out further to half court and those rotations were more in like the short roll area and Draymond Green once again showing up to the level. He lets Giannis get past him, but he sprints back and by the time Giannis actually caught it, Draymond had him squared up again and then he was able to play one on one defense and force Draymond into a tough fight away. Quentin Post, who had some issues defensively in this game, had a big one late where he showed on a ball screen Broke Lopez slipped out of it. He was slipping towards like the top of the key area and Post just sprinted back it, got back in front of Brook kept him out of rotation, forced him into a tough fade away jump shot that he missed. So again that concept the ability to be on the ball to force a star ball handler to get rid of it, but then also the ability to recover in rotation to where the opening is gone. That is the concept that makes an elite defense reach that level. Is their ability to make you constantly feel like you're playing in a crowd while never actually conceding the openings that lead to the wide open shots that'll cook you in this sort of situation. And then in those one on ones with Yannis, Draymond is one of the few defenders in the entire NBA that has the strength and the quickness to force Jiannis into actually taking over the top shots. We talked about this concept in the Thunder Game. If you remember with Isaiah Hartenstein with Jannis, there's a specific amount of like you need to have the strength so that when Yanna sees the small openings, he can't just blow through your shoulder. But you also have to have the mobility to get to a spot so that Jannis actually has to make a move right. Once you have the ability to slide your feet and hold that strength on that shoulder, you can flatten drives out with Giannis. Once you start flattening drives out with Giannis, it turns into drifting, tougher contested layups. It turns into the hooks and the floaters that like he can't make, and he's gotten better at them. But over the years, even with that improvement, he's still getting less than a point per shot. He's still missing almost sixty percent of his hooks and his floaters and things like that. That big iso stop ed late big possession. Janis against Draymond on the left elbow extended area. Jannis makes an aggressive move towards the right. Draymond slides his feet, absorbs the contact, flattens out the drive, forces him into that tough little hook in the lane that he leaves short off the front of the rim. And again, like we've talked about how Isaiah Hartenstein held Jannis to his worst shooting game of the season, he held jannest to forty seven percent from the field. Well, I should say Hartenstein and the Thunder held Yannis to forty seven percent from the field, which was his worst shooting night of the season. Well, Draymond Green and the Warriors just held him to thirty one percent from the field, sixteen percent lower from the field than he has against anybody else in the NBA this season. Just a casual reminder that Draymond Green is still very much one of the very best defensive players in the NBA. The Suns are not a good matchup for the Lakers in a bunch of different ways. They The big fundamental thing that makes it really difficult for the Suns to guard this version of this Lakers team is they don't feel comfortable switching with their fives with their centers. That puts you in a really tough spot dealing with Luka Doncic in pick and roll. We've talked about this a while. JJ Reddick has mentioned it in the postgame presser, like running drop coverage against Luka Doncic is death. And I look at that as like, you know, drop coverage can mean a lot of different things, but basically all that means is anytime you're chasing Luca over the top of the screen and the big man is waiting on the other side, either up at the level and what they call a high drop or further back and what they call a deep drop. That sort of coverage makes for these really easy reads for Luca that he's been immediately great at in a Lakers jersey. What's been interesting is like they've struggled a little bit against switching for a lot of different reasons. Luca wasn't in shape for a lot of those tough switching teams that they faced earlier in that stretch, and as a team, they haven't shot the three ball well in large part because they're playing super super hard on the defensive end of the floor and adjusting to the new types of three point looks that they're getting as part of the Luka Doncic offense. And so their offense, even in the wins, has sputtered at times against teams that can switch with their five man. But again with this Phoenix Suns team with Nick Richards, with Mason Plumley, they're just not doing a lot of switching with the five men, and so that just allows Luca to play read and react basketball with baked, durable penetration. And we've got over this a million times, but it's a simple set of reeds. If the lowman and the screen defender stay back, Luca gets to just work his way into the lane until he can take a little floater off the glass. If the big steps up, it creates a simple read behind it with the lowman. If the lowman steps over and tags the roller, he's skipping it to the weak side. If he doesn't tag the roller, then he can hit the hit Jackson Hayes runnerneath the basket. That was the big thing that Phoenix kept messing up in this game. They were running a good mix of high and low drop and a lot of high drop early in the game, and they weren't tagging Jackson Hayes. And part of this is, like I've been talking a lot about how the Suns lately look to me like a team that is basically quit trying to be the best basketball team they can be, in large part because they know that their best isn't good enough to beat the best teams in the league. And so there were a lot of weak side possessions with Bradley Beale, Devin Booker, and KD all three of them where they just didn't bother to tag Jackson Hayes, or some really sloppy tags. I saw both Devin Booker and Bradley Beal have tags where they just kind of like ran up to Jackson. So what you're supposed to do on a tag if they come up to the level of the screen and Jackson Hayes is rolling hard to the rim, your jobs, the low man is to literally get between the rollman and the rim and hit him so that he can't throw the lob up to the basket. He has to post and usually some teams will counter that by posting there or by skipping the ball to the weak side. Right, You've got to literally put your body on the line as a small against a rolling big. It's a hard job, and the Sons just weren't really interested in doing it last night, and so you'd see them kind of like run over to Jackson and like put their hands on him, but they're not really doing anything to make him feel uncomfortable, and he's just catching and finishing. Here's an easy little stat to demonstrate that for you. He had nineteen points. Jackson Hayes nineteen points in this game, seventeen of which were on cuts and rolls. He has had nineteen points twice so far with Luca. He had nineteen points one time total in the entirety of the rest of his Lakers ten years. And that goes to show you the benefit of Jackson Hayes in the system. I have been talking a lot about this concept lately, but the idea of your value as a basketball player is kind of unique to the system that you're in, Right Like, there are guys that are deeply valuable in a certain system that would be less valuable in another system. Whether it's like Aaron Gordon in Orlando as like a swing forward star type of player looks really underqualified for that job, but you put him in Denver where he can operate on the back line because their center kind of inverts their spacing, all of a sudden, he becomes immensely valuable in that type of role. Right Like, everybody's value is unique to their individual system, and Jackson Hayes, specifically, when Luka Doncic is on the Lakers, is immensely valuable because Luca is one of the best passers in the league at making team pay by hitting a vertical spacer. And I mean there were a lot of issues that have gone wrong for the Lakers in the four game losing streak, most of which have come down to injuries. I mean, you're down, You're you're starting front court. Literally, if you're down Lebron, Ruey and Jackson, it's such a difficult thing to overcome. But it's funny to say Jackson Hayes is so valuable because it felt so different in previous iterations of the Lakers, But on this version of the Lakers, Jackson Hayes is incredibly valuable to this offense because he is the guy that allows them to function in four out one in spacing. I've talked a lot about this concept when you're when you're running a lot of motion, ball flowing side to side, everyone's involved in the action. It's like a five out spacing concept. Right. You got ball handlers on the wings, guys in the corner, and then a big man at the top of the key whos functioning is like this, passing folkrum, screening folkrum out at the top of the key. This Lakers team is very much going back to the old version of their offense, way back when they were the West Conference Finals team in twenty twenty three where it's like we're spreading the floor running pick and roll like it's a lot of that sort of thing. And in those situations you don't want five out spacing because in five out spacing, when the gaps on the perimeter shrink to get pretty small and it gets harder to drive as defenders are able to gap into driving lanes and stuff like that. And so the way you prefer to set up your spacing when you're more of a matchup attacking, spread, pick and roll type of team is four out one in spacing, and once your shooters in the corner, you got a shooter on the wing, and you're basically occupying either the dunker spot with a dunker or a screen and roll threat where the roller is occupying that spot when he rolls to the basket. And so guys like Jemison, guys like Jared Vanderbuilt, even Christian KloCo he botched two lobs last night in the first half, where it's just the easy dunks that he's struggling to make because he's got a little bit of an issue catching and finishing. Sometimes you can see just how incredibly valuable Jackson Hayes is to the Lakers as a vertical spacer in this verse of the team. They did a lot of damage on that Sun's back line in this game, and after in the early third quarter, they generated yet another easy lob dunk for Jackson Hayes, kind of like a behind the back lob, a ridiculous pass from Luca, and from that point forward, the Sun's basically just decided to blitz him and double team him all over the floor, and so the Lakers were able to play with an advantage and they were able to stiff arm the Suns. The rest of the way. The Suns fought back. They've been resilient. This has been a consistent theme for the Suns in the last month, is like they'll get off to an ugly start and then rather than get humiliated, they'll like suddenly start competing really hard towards the end of the game. And it's the U Lakers fans are familiar with this concept from last year. It's the fake comeback concept, right, because that Laker team used to have a very similar personality last year. But KD had seventeen points in the second half and they kind of battled a little bit, but they never got any closer than eight the rest of the way, How do you perceive Steph Curry's two finals that he won eight that he won with Kevin Durant on the roster. Seems to me the larger NBA fan base and analysts write them off because Steph didn't win finals MVP, although he played at an extremely high level. How did they factor into his legacy? In your view, this is a super complex and loaded question. I don't think anybody cares necessarily that he didn't win finals MVP. I've seen like some lowbrow stuff, like just like trolls kind of focusing on that sort of thing. I do think that there's some reality to the basic fact that every NBA championship has a different level of resonance with people. This goes like, let's just go back through through recent NBA history, Like there's not a lot of people that are profoundly moved by the twenty twenty four Celtics, who have five players who catch over thirty million dollars a year on the open market, beating the and the injury ravage Pacers and the injury ravaged Calves along the way to winning a title against a good Western Conference team, but a team, a Western Conference team that nobody thought was the best Western Conference team last year. Like that title still a title. They're not gonna get a lot of casual fans that are like, oh, my goodness, this is the most impressive thing anyone's ever done. Same sort of thing goes with the Denver Nuggets. If you look through like they were considered one of the better teams in the league, but they faced a lot of like semi limited teams along the way, and then they didn't have to face the team out of the Eastern Conference that everybody feared, which was the Boston Celtics or the Milwaukee Bucks. And so it has a certain amount of like just a little bit of a weird kind of like public perception of that title twenty twenty two, when Steph Curry beat that Celtics team and that team didn't have a secondary star, Like, of all of the championships Steph won, that is by far the most resident That is the championship that when you look back, like, that's the one that's unassailable. That's the one that even the people that don't like Steph that much are like, holy shit, that was crazy, Like down two to one on the road in Boston, hitting all those crazy, insane shots he did to drop a forty piece to win the title, Like that was crazy, right, Like even I could say the same thing in reverse about Lebron, Like Lebron's twenty twenty title when he won with Anthony Davis, that title is the least resonant of the four that Lebron won. If you go back to twenty sixteen, that was Lebron's title. That was similar to the Steph one in twenty twenty three, where it's like that's unassailable, you can't shit on that. That is the accomplishment, that is the defining moment of Lebron's career. That twenty twenty title is still championship. It still counts in the leisure but it's not the one that's going to resonate for the length of time that we talked about Lebron James the way that twenty sixteen title does, or the twenty thirteen when they're down three to two in the finals and they have to go to seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals and the NBA Finals, those resonate differently with Steph. As you look back to the twenty seventeen finals here's the simplest way that I could put it to you, guys. In twenty seventeen, before the season, and in twenty eighteen before the season, the Warriors were so favored over the field that before the season started, so in early October, the sports books had them as a negative odds favorite to win the title, meaning if you bet a dollar in October for the Warriors to win the title, you were gonna win less than a dollar. That is how clearly more talented that team was than anyone else in the league. Doesn't mean they're not champions, doesn't mean those titles don't count, but yeah, like think about what think about a bet you've placed recently on DraftKings where you receive negative odds, and like, think about how you expected that team to win, or you expected that player to hit those points, rebounds, assists, score a touchdown, whatever it was, you expected it with the negative odds. That's how everyone felt about those Warriors teams before we even started playing basketball. So at a certain point, I do think it's worth at least acknowledging that those titles carry a different level of weight in the court of public opinion, But it doesn't change the fact that at the time, I still believed Steph was one of the greatest players in NBA history, who was more than good enough to be the best player in a championship team, thus a champion and should be respected as such. So on and so forth for KD. Like to me, I didn't need to see KD go to the Warriors in twenty seventeen to know that he could be a champion. He was playing with Russell Westbrook, who was like, you know, like a kind of a hectic basketball player that made a lot of big mistakes in big spots, and his team didn't have a lot of offensive talent around him, was very big, bruising type team. I'm not trying to say that, you know, KD doesn't share some blame for the failures of the Thunder beforehand. But I knew in twenty fourteen that KD was good enough to be a champion and thus a championship level player. He just hadn't done it yet, And so like, that's the thing. It shouldn't take us seeing Steph in twenty twenty four or twenty twenty two winning a title against long odds for us to acknowledge that he's a champion. It shouldn't take Lebron winning a title in twenty sixteen against long odds for us to acknowledge that he's a champion, type of that type of all time great. But it's just kind of unfortunately the way that it works in the court of public opinion. To put it simply, just like anytime you watch anybody do everything or anything, the degree of difficulty matters and how impressed you are. I watched John Mayer once at the Sphere play an entire two shows missing his index finger on his fretting hand, and that was far more impressive than anything I've ever seen him do because of the degree of difflty it is. It is just a natural part of the way that we process information. So yeah, like to me, they were champions championships to me, they you know, kind of add to the story of Steph Curry's career. But like when someone asks me to explain to them, tell me about Steph Curry twenty years from now, Tell me about Steph Curry, tell me about why he was as good as he was, tell me about his greatest accomplishments. I'm probably not going to talk a ton about twenty seventeen in twenty eighteen because there there was very little in the way of adversity in those seasons. Like I've said this before on the record, everyone says, oh, if Chris Paul didn't get hurt, they might have lost in twenty eighteen. I don't feel that way. I think that the Warriors and must win games in Game six and Game seven would have got it done. I think that lineup that Steph kd Klay Thompson at the peak of his powers, Draymond Green, best defensive player in the league, Andre Gudala is still good and mobile at that point. That was the best five man lineup that has ever been constructed on a normal basketball team, not counting like All Star teams or Team USA. And so that certainly is going to play a role in their ability to win a championship. Next question, why can't the Mavericks just stop? It's embarrassing talking about the Patrick Dumont interview that was released the other day. So the Patrick Dumont interview, you guys saw that when he gave that long spiel. There's a bunch of really problematic stuff in that interview. There's one where he was like, yeah, I have you running the MAVs as like a family operation. It's something I do with my wife and kids. Immediately, I'm like, boom, you're setting yourself up for failure because it's like like that, I've seen this. This happens a lot more in the NBA than you think. This is why it's so ridiculous that everyone's hyper critical of Lebron forgetting his kid a end of the bench spot on the Los Angeles Lakers. Is like, there are many franchises around the league that are rampant with nepotism, like rampant with it. There are front offices that I won't get into it, but there are multiple front offices where it's like a known commodity around the league that they let incompetent people make decisions because they're related to the owners. Like it is a problem around the entire league. But when I saw that from Patrick Demona, I was like, dude, like, you're not supposed to say the quiet part out loud, Like I let my wife and kids and my mother in law make these big picture decisions about our basketball team. That's just foolishness. Let basketball experts who have dedicated their life to understanding the game of basketball make your basketball decisions. If you're not interested in doing that, you're not a serious team. The second piece of it was that long drawn out expression of why they traded Luca. And there wasn't a ton of substance offered in there, but one of the big things that he kept harping on was the idea that they weren't close. You know, we felt like we weren't close in the finals, and then we get into the regular season and all these other teams are better and blah blah, blah blah. And the part that bothered me about that is, you guys, remember how I was talking about the Mavericks in the early part of the season. I viewed them as the most talented roster in the Western Conference overall when Luca was healthy, Like when I looked at that roster as a roster that can cause some serious problems. When Luca was healthy, they were competitive all year without Luca. And so it's one of those things where like any take he had, as it pertains to oh, the rest of the league got better. You added Klay Thompson, you added Naji Marshall, you brought in a bunch of ball handling, You addressed some specific problems that you had last year. PJ. Washington was shooting better on above the break threes after being terrible on him last year in the postseason, like a lot of specific things were tilting towards this is gonna work when Luca comes back, and so like, here's the thing, there is no case for trading Luca the way they did. So what these people need to do is get the hell out of the media and just go. If you have some ulterior motive, whether it's moving the team to a different city or maybe you just hate Luca as a personal beef, whatever the issue is, stop talking about it. Because when you talk about it, you guys just sound like imbeciles, every single one of you. There's no good take. There's no rationale that holds up for shipping off a twenty five year old prospect who's already one of the greatest players in the history of the league in that span of his career and who continued to trend forward. It was completely acidine. There's no way around it. And honestly, I just feel really bad for MAVs fans, and I'm with you, guys, why can't the Mavericks just stop? I agree they need to just stop. What's done is done. Stop the media tour. You don't sound savvy explaining to everybody how you run your team and why you got rid of Luca. You look like an imbecile the volume so, guys, as always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.

The volume When it comes to college basketball in March Mania, one thing is for sure. Nothing's for sure. Upsets, buzzer beaters, Cinderella is advancing top seeds, going home early. It's all gonna happen. Bet the unexpected, every upset, every day with Draft Kings Sportsbook. With live betting, exclusive content, promos, and parlays, Draft Kings is the ultimate college basketball destination for March. Ready to make your first bet, check out the matchups, and pick a team to win. It's that simple. I'm a big arizon A Wildcats fan, born and raised here in Tucson, Arizona. I'm a little skeptical about them on the offensive end of the floor, but they looked really good on defense again last night against Kansas, so I'll probably be betting on them this time around. First time. Here's something special just for you new Draft Kings customers. Bet five dollars to get two hundred dollars in bonus bets. Instantly bet the unexpected with Draft Kings Sportsbook. Download the Draft Kings Sportsbook app and use code hoops. That's hops, that's code hoops for new customers to get two hundred dollars in bonus bets when you bet just five bucks only on DraftKings. The Crown is yours. Gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler in New York call eight seven seven eight hope and why, or text hope and why to four six seven, three six nine and Connecticut help was available for problem gambling call eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG dot org. Please play responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino and Resort in Kansas twenty one plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario New customers only. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKG dot co. Slash Audio. Welcome to the Best of Hoops Tonight, featuring my top takes from recent shows. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Warriors dropped a game a couple of nights ago against the Nuggets at home without Jamal Murray and without Nicole Jokich playing for the Nuggets. And to be clear, my thoughts coming out of that game were, or this is march in the NBA. You're gonna see this quite a bit in this time of year, because it's like a funky phase where half the league already knows exactly what they are and are in some variation of cruise control where you don't know what you're getting any given night because they're either saving legs for the playoffs or they're just not feeling that level of intensity. And even for the teams that made big deals at the trade deadline, the newness is starting to fade. It's been over a month and this is just kind of like this a lull that you're gonna see, and you're gonna see some weird results. Denver, in particular, it has been a total shit show. Like they get smashed by the Thunder, but then they beat the Thunder, then they get smashed by the Wolves, then they nearly lose to the Lakers missing four starters. Then they do actually lose to the Washington Wizards at home, just to go into Golden State without Murray and jokicen beat the Warriors who were red hot. It doesn't make any sense. That team is just bizarre. You're gonna see a lot of general or a lot of weird results in general this time of year, like the Pacers without four starters just went into Minnesota and beat the Wolves at full strength. The Wizards also went into Detroit and beat a Pistons team at full strength a few days before they're winning Denver. Although it's worth mentioning that the Wizards have some real stuff to start getting excited about, with their young talent flashing some real two way potential, guys like Galaxar really shooting the ball well from three, defending really well, Bilakula Bali Kishan, George bub Carrington. They've got a bunch of guys that are popping for them. But the point is is that it's March, and so there's a certain amount of weird result that you're going to see in there. And Steve Kerrin formed us that Steph really just needs a night off and that he's been dealing with some back sorenice, and so the Warriors needed to beat the Bucks last night without Steph Curry. And so conventional wisdom would tell you you go into that game thinking you're gonna win with defense, right, take Steph out of the equation. You're gonna put a probably a better defender than Steph into that rotation spot. Obviously, you lose the world on the offensive end of the floor. But if you just defend extremely well, you give yourself a chance. And that's exactly what the Warriors did. They held the Bucks to just ninety two points. They had two separate seventeen point quarters that they held them to. They responded to two separate Bucks runs with defensive runs. There was a late third quarter run where it was really the only phase of the game where the Milwaukee offense was in like really really cooking. Dame had the pick and pop with brook Lopez going and Brooke was hitting threes. They had some two man game with Damon Giannis where they were passing well out of it. Giannis was drawing double teams in the post and passing well out of it. He made a nice pass to brook Lopez, who sealed the low man and got an easy layup. They were skipping the ball to Kyle Kuzma, who hit three after three, after three. It was just the one phase in the game where Milwaukee's offense just looked like it was getting easy stuff. And so they go on this run and they go up seventy six to seventy and then promptly the Warriors put the clamps on him and hold them scoreless for three straight minutes, and they regained control. And then something similar happened in the fourth quarter. The Bucks go on another run, this time Giannis's on the bench, Dame is doing a lot of cooking and ball screens. They cut the lead down to three, but the Warriors hold them completely scoreless over the final four minutes of the game as they pull away and win by eleven. And so it was their defense that was able to completely strangle the Bucks at these stretches that allowed them in the limited offensive production they were getting under the circumstances to have enough to win that game. I want to start by digging into the concept of being in two places at once on defense. This is really the superpower that Draymond Green has used to become one of the best defenders that the league has seen over the last decade. Right, we think of defense two reductively. Sometimes a lot of times we'll think of it like can I guard my man and can he guard his man? Do we have five guys that are all like elite defenders that can defend on an island and keep defenses out of rotation and keep their defense out of rotation, and so on and so forth, and there's a certain amount of that where you do need guys that can hold up one on one. Draymond got a huge one on one stopping against Gianness late in the game where he forced him into kind of a drifting, floating hook shot that he missed off the rim. But most of the best defenses that you'll see in the history of the league are centered around a concept that involves actually being aggressive on the ball, meaning like putting two defenders on the ball or overhelping, putting guys into situation to make stars play in a crowd, but then those openings disappearing really quickly through excellent rotations and setting up the floor in a way where you have a plan for whatever it is that you're dealing with from the opposing star. And like again, like this is think about Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City's best defense in the league. They're not just out there letting all their guys play one on one on defense. That defense is predicated on aggressive coverages leaving openings that quickly disappear as you rotate out of it with your speed. I thought the Warriors executed this concept to perfection in this game. I thought it all started with Draymond, who did an incredible job on Yanis all game, but especially in ball screens, where he was consistently able to get up to the level to defend the ball, but to get back in time to handle Giannis on the roll. We saw play early in the game where he got a block on Giannis where he was like kind of trailing the play a little bit and he jumped and squared up in mid air to get a piece of the ball on the way down to force some miss. He had a huge one late in the game when the ball screens were getting pushed a little bit further out towards half court. Really good ball pressure from Gary Payton. They were pushing the ball screens out further to half court and those rotations were more in like the short roll area and Draymond Green once again showing up to the level. He lets Giannis get past him, but he sprints back and by the time Giannis actually caught it, Draymond had him squared up again and then he was able to play one on one defense and force Draymond into a tough fight away. Quentin Post, who had some issues defensively in this game, had a big one late where he showed on a ball screen Broke Lopez slipped out of it. He was slipping towards like the top of the key area and Post just sprinted back it, got back in front of Brook kept him out of rotation, forced him into a tough fade away jump shot that he missed. So again that concept the ability to be on the ball to force a star ball handler to get rid of it, but then also the ability to recover in rotation to where the opening is gone. That is the concept that makes an elite defense reach that level. Is their ability to make you constantly feel like you're playing in a crowd while never actually conceding the openings that lead to the wide open shots that'll cook you in this sort of situation. And then in those one on ones with Yannis, Draymond is one of the few defenders in the entire NBA that has the strength and the quickness to force Jiannis into actually taking over the top shots. We talked about this concept in the Thunder Game. If you remember with Isaiah Hartenstein with Jannis, there's a specific amount of like you need to have the strength so that when Yanna sees the small openings, he can't just blow through your shoulder. But you also have to have the mobility to get to a spot so that Jannis actually has to make a move right. Once you have the ability to slide your feet and hold that strength on that shoulder, you can flatten drives out with Giannis. Once you start flattening drives out with Giannis, it turns into drifting, tougher contested layups. It turns into the hooks and the floaters that like he can't make, and he's gotten better at them. But over the years, even with that improvement, he's still getting less than a point per shot. He's still missing almost sixty percent of his hooks and his floaters and things like that. That big iso stop ed late big possession. Janis against Draymond on the left elbow extended area. Jannis makes an aggressive move towards the right. Draymond slides his feet, absorbs the contact, flattens out the drive, forces him into that tough little hook in the lane that he leaves short off the front of the rim. And again, like we've talked about how Isaiah Hartenstein held Jannis to his worst shooting game of the season, he held jannest to forty seven percent from the field. Well, I should say Hartenstein and the Thunder held Yannis to forty seven percent from the field, which was his worst shooting night of the season. Well, Draymond Green and the Warriors just held him to thirty one percent from the field, sixteen percent lower from the field than he has against anybody else in the NBA this season. Just a casual reminder that Draymond Green is still very much one of the very best defensive players in the NBA. The Suns are not a good matchup for the Lakers in a bunch of different ways. They The big fundamental thing that makes it really difficult for the Suns to guard this version of this Lakers team is they don't feel comfortable switching with their fives with their centers. That puts you in a really tough spot dealing with Luka Doncic in pick and roll. We've talked about this a while. JJ Reddick has mentioned it in the postgame presser, like running drop coverage against Luka Doncic is death. And I look at that as like, you know, drop coverage can mean a lot of different things, but basically all that means is anytime you're chasing Luca over the top of the screen and the big man is waiting on the other side, either up at the level and what they call a high drop or further back and what they call a deep drop. That sort of coverage makes for these really easy reads for Luca that he's been immediately great at in a Lakers jersey. What's been interesting is like they've struggled a little bit against switching for a lot of different reasons. Luca wasn't in shape for a lot of those tough switching teams that they faced earlier in that stretch, and as a team, they haven't shot the three ball well in large part because they're playing super super hard on the defensive end of the floor and adjusting to the new types of three point looks that they're getting as part of the Luka Doncic offense. And so their offense, even in the wins, has sputtered at times against teams that can switch with their five man. But again with this Phoenix Suns team with Nick Richards, with Mason Plumley, they're just not doing a lot of switching with the five men, and so that just allows Luca to play read and react basketball with baked, durable penetration. And we've got over this a million times, but it's a simple set of reeds. If the lowman and the screen defender stay back, Luca gets to just work his way into the lane until he can take a little floater off the glass. If the big steps up, it creates a simple read behind it with the lowman. If the lowman steps over and tags the roller, he's skipping it to the weak side. If he doesn't tag the roller, then he can hit the hit Jackson Hayes runnerneath the basket. That was the big thing that Phoenix kept messing up in this game. They were running a good mix of high and low drop and a lot of high drop early in the game, and they weren't tagging Jackson Hayes. And part of this is, like I've been talking a lot about how the Suns lately look to me like a team that is basically quit trying to be the best basketball team they can be, in large part because they know that their best isn't good enough to beat the best teams in the league. And so there were a lot of weak side possessions with Bradley Beale, Devin Booker, and KD all three of them where they just didn't bother to tag Jackson Hayes, or some really sloppy tags. I saw both Devin Booker and Bradley Beal have tags where they just kind of like ran up to Jackson. So what you're supposed to do on a tag if they come up to the level of the screen and Jackson Hayes is rolling hard to the rim, your jobs, the low man is to literally get between the rollman and the rim and hit him so that he can't throw the lob up to the basket. He has to post and usually some teams will counter that by posting there or by skipping the ball to the weak side. Right, You've got to literally put your body on the line as a small against a rolling big. It's a hard job, and the Sons just weren't really interested in doing it last night, and so you'd see them kind of like run over to Jackson and like put their hands on him, but they're not really doing anything to make him feel uncomfortable, and he's just catching and finishing. Here's an easy little stat to demonstrate that for you. He had nineteen points. Jackson Hayes nineteen points in this game, seventeen of which were on cuts and rolls. He has had nineteen points twice so far with Luca. He had nineteen points one time total in the entirety of the rest of his Lakers ten years. And that goes to show you the benefit of Jackson Hayes in the system. I have been talking a lot about this concept lately, but the idea of your value as a basketball player is kind of unique to the system that you're in, Right Like, there are guys that are deeply valuable in a certain system that would be less valuable in another system. Whether it's like Aaron Gordon in Orlando as like a swing forward star type of player looks really underqualified for that job, but you put him in Denver where he can operate on the back line because their center kind of inverts their spacing, all of a sudden, he becomes immensely valuable in that type of role. Right Like, everybody's value is unique to their individual system, and Jackson Hayes, specifically, when Luka Doncic is on the Lakers, is immensely valuable because Luca is one of the best passers in the league at making team pay by hitting a vertical spacer. And I mean there were a lot of issues that have gone wrong for the Lakers in the four game losing streak, most of which have come down to injuries. I mean, you're down, You're you're starting front court. Literally, if you're down Lebron, Ruey and Jackson, it's such a difficult thing to overcome. But it's funny to say Jackson Hayes is so valuable because it felt so different in previous iterations of the Lakers, But on this version of the Lakers, Jackson Hayes is incredibly valuable to this offense because he is the guy that allows them to function in four out one in spacing. I've talked a lot about this concept when you're when you're running a lot of motion, ball flowing side to side, everyone's involved in the action. It's like a five out spacing concept. Right. You got ball handlers on the wings, guys in the corner, and then a big man at the top of the key whos functioning is like this, passing folkrum, screening folkrum out at the top of the key. This Lakers team is very much going back to the old version of their offense, way back when they were the West Conference Finals team in twenty twenty three where it's like we're spreading the floor running pick and roll like it's a lot of that sort of thing. And in those situations you don't want five out spacing because in five out spacing, when the gaps on the perimeter shrink to get pretty small and it gets harder to drive as defenders are able to gap into driving lanes and stuff like that. And so the way you prefer to set up your spacing when you're more of a matchup attacking, spread, pick and roll type of team is four out one in spacing, and once your shooters in the corner, you got a shooter on the wing, and you're basically occupying either the dunker spot with a dunker or a screen and roll threat where the roller is occupying that spot when he rolls to the basket. And so guys like Jemison, guys like Jared Vanderbuilt, even Christian KloCo he botched two lobs last night in the first half, where it's just the easy dunks that he's struggling to make because he's got a little bit of an issue catching and finishing. Sometimes you can see just how incredibly valuable Jackson Hayes is to the Lakers as a vertical spacer in this verse of the team. They did a lot of damage on that Sun's back line in this game, and after in the early third quarter, they generated yet another easy lob dunk for Jackson Hayes, kind of like a behind the back lob, a ridiculous pass from Luca, and from that point forward, the Sun's basically just decided to blitz him and double team him all over the floor, and so the Lakers were able to play with an advantage and they were able to stiff arm the Suns. The rest of the way. The Suns fought back. They've been resilient. This has been a consistent theme for the Suns in the last month, is like they'll get off to an ugly start and then rather than get humiliated, they'll like suddenly start competing really hard towards the end of the game. And it's the U Lakers fans are familiar with this concept from last year. It's the fake comeback concept, right, because that Laker team used to have a very similar personality last year. But KD had seventeen points in the second half and they kind of battled a little bit, but they never got any closer than eight the rest of the way, How do you perceive Steph Curry's two finals that he won eight that he won with Kevin Durant on the roster. Seems to me the larger NBA fan base and analysts write them off because Steph didn't win finals MVP, although he played at an extremely high level. How did they factor into his legacy? In your view, this is a super complex and loaded question. I don't think anybody cares necessarily that he didn't win finals MVP. I've seen like some lowbrow stuff, like just like trolls kind of focusing on that sort of thing. I do think that there's some reality to the basic fact that every NBA championship has a different level of resonance with people. This goes like, let's just go back through through recent NBA history, Like there's not a lot of people that are profoundly moved by the twenty twenty four Celtics, who have five players who catch over thirty million dollars a year on the open market, beating the and the injury ravage Pacers and the injury ravaged Calves along the way to winning a title against a good Western Conference team, but a team, a Western Conference team that nobody thought was the best Western Conference team last year. Like that title still a title. They're not gonna get a lot of casual fans that are like, oh, my goodness, this is the most impressive thing anyone's ever done. Same sort of thing goes with the Denver Nuggets. If you look through like they were considered one of the better teams in the league, but they faced a lot of like semi limited teams along the way, and then they didn't have to face the team out of the Eastern Conference that everybody feared, which was the Boston Celtics or the Milwaukee Bucks. And so it has a certain amount of like just a little bit of a weird kind of like public perception of that title twenty twenty two, when Steph Curry beat that Celtics team and that team didn't have a secondary star, Like, of all of the championships Steph won, that is by far the most resident That is the championship that when you look back, like, that's the one that's unassailable. That's the one that even the people that don't like Steph that much are like, holy shit, that was crazy, Like down two to one on the road in Boston, hitting all those crazy, insane shots he did to drop a forty piece to win the title, Like that was crazy, right, Like even I could say the same thing in reverse about Lebron, Like Lebron's twenty twenty title when he won with Anthony Davis, that title is the least resonant of the four that Lebron won. If you go back to twenty sixteen, that was Lebron's title. That was similar to the Steph one in twenty twenty three, where it's like that's unassailable, you can't shit on that. That is the accomplishment, that is the defining moment of Lebron's career. That twenty twenty title is still championship. It still counts in the leisure but it's not the one that's going to resonate for the length of time that we talked about Lebron James the way that twenty sixteen title does, or the twenty thirteen when they're down three to two in the finals and they have to go to seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals and the NBA Finals, those resonate differently with Steph. As you look back to the twenty seventeen finals here's the simplest way that I could put it to you, guys. In twenty seventeen, before the season, and in twenty eighteen before the season, the Warriors were so favored over the field that before the season started, so in early October, the sports books had them as a negative odds favorite to win the title, meaning if you bet a dollar in October for the Warriors to win the title, you were gonna win less than a dollar. That is how clearly more talented that team was than anyone else in the league. Doesn't mean they're not champions, doesn't mean those titles don't count, but yeah, like think about what think about a bet you've placed recently on DraftKings where you receive negative odds, and like, think about how you expected that team to win, or you expected that player to hit those points, rebounds, assists, score a touchdown, whatever it was, you expected it with the negative odds. That's how everyone felt about those Warriors teams before we even started playing basketball. So at a certain point, I do think it's worth at least acknowledging that those titles carry a different level of weight in the court of public opinion, But it doesn't change the fact that at the time, I still believed Steph was one of the greatest players in NBA history, who was more than good enough to be the best player in a championship team, thus a champion and should be respected as such. So on and so forth for KD. Like to me, I didn't need to see KD go to the Warriors in twenty seventeen to know that he could be a champion. He was playing with Russell Westbrook, who was like, you know, like a kind of a hectic basketball player that made a lot of big mistakes in big spots, and his team didn't have a lot of offensive talent around him, was very big, bruising type team. I'm not trying to say that, you know, KD doesn't share some blame for the failures of the Thunder beforehand. But I knew in twenty fourteen that KD was good enough to be a champion and thus a championship level player. He just hadn't done it yet, And so like, that's the thing. It shouldn't take us seeing Steph in twenty twenty four or twenty twenty two winning a title against long odds for us to acknowledge that he's a champion. It shouldn't take Lebron winning a title in twenty sixteen against long odds for us to acknowledge that he's a champion, type of that type of all time great. But it's just kind of unfortunately the way that it works in the court of public opinion. To put it simply, just like anytime you watch anybody do everything or anything, the degree of difficulty matters and how impressed you are. I watched John Mayer once at the Sphere play an entire two shows missing his index finger on his fretting hand, and that was far more impressive than anything I've ever seen him do because of the degree of difflty it is. It is just a natural part of the way that we process information. So yeah, like to me, they were champions championships to me, they you know, kind of add to the story of Steph Curry's career. But like when someone asks me to explain to them, tell me about Steph Curry twenty years from now, Tell me about Steph Curry, tell me about why he was as good as he was, tell me about his greatest accomplishments. I'm probably not going to talk a ton about twenty seventeen in twenty eighteen because there there was very little in the way of adversity in those seasons. Like I've said this before on the record, everyone says, oh, if Chris Paul didn't get hurt, they might have lost in twenty eighteen. I don't feel that way. I think that the Warriors and must win games in Game six and Game seven would have got it done. I think that lineup that Steph kd Klay Thompson at the peak of his powers, Draymond Green, best defensive player in the league, Andre Gudala is still good and mobile at that point. That was the best five man lineup that has ever been constructed on a normal basketball team, not counting like All Star teams or Team USA. And so that certainly is going to play a role in their ability to win a championship. Next question, why can't the Mavericks just stop? It's embarrassing talking about the Patrick Dumont interview that was released the other day. So the Patrick Dumont interview, you guys saw that when he gave that long spiel. There's a bunch of really problematic stuff in that interview. There's one where he was like, yeah, I have you running the MAVs as like a family operation. It's something I do with my wife and kids. Immediately, I'm like, boom, you're setting yourself up for failure because it's like like that, I've seen this. This happens a lot more in the NBA than you think. This is why it's so ridiculous that everyone's hyper critical of Lebron forgetting his kid a end of the bench spot on the Los Angeles Lakers. Is like, there are many franchises around the league that are rampant with nepotism, like rampant with it. There are front offices that I won't get into it, but there are multiple front offices where it's like a known commodity around the league that they let incompetent people make decisions because they're related to the owners. Like it is a problem around the entire league. But when I saw that from Patrick Demona, I was like, dude, like, you're not supposed to say the quiet part out loud, Like I let my wife and kids and my mother in law make these big picture decisions about our basketball team. That's just foolishness. Let basketball experts who have dedicated their life to understanding the game of basketball make your basketball decisions. If you're not interested in doing that, you're not a serious team. The second piece of it was that long drawn out expression of why they traded Luca. And there wasn't a ton of substance offered in there, but one of the big things that he kept harping on was the idea that they weren't close. You know, we felt like we weren't close in the finals, and then we get into the regular season and all these other teams are better and blah blah, blah blah. And the part that bothered me about that is, you guys, remember how I was talking about the Mavericks in the early part of the season. I viewed them as the most talented roster in the Western Conference overall when Luca was healthy, Like when I looked at that roster as a roster that can cause some serious problems. When Luca was healthy, they were competitive all year without Luca. And so it's one of those things where like any take he had, as it pertains to oh, the rest of the league got better. You added Klay Thompson, you added Naji Marshall, you brought in a bunch of ball handling, You addressed some specific problems that you had last year. PJ. Washington was shooting better on above the break threes after being terrible on him last year in the postseason, like a lot of specific things were tilting towards this is gonna work when Luca comes back, and so like, here's the thing, there is no case for trading Luca the way they did. So what these people need to do is get the hell out of the media and just go. If you have some ulterior motive, whether it's moving the team to a different city or maybe you just hate Luca as a personal beef, whatever the issue is, stop talking about it. Because when you talk about it, you guys just sound like imbeciles, every single one of you. There's no good take. There's no rationale that holds up for shipping off a twenty five year old prospect who's already one of the greatest players in the history of the league in that span of his career and who continued to trend forward. It was completely acidine. There's no way around it. And honestly, I just feel really bad for MAVs fans, and I'm with you, guys, why can't the Mavericks just stop? I agree they need to just stop. What's done is done. Stop the media tour. You don't sound savvy explaining to everybody how you run your team and why you got rid of Luca. You look like an imbecile the volume so, guys, as always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.