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Got a Jampacks show for you tonight. We're gonna be hitting the two games from ESPN. Tonight is the Lakers and of kind of blowing out the Nuggets until the end of the bench guys come in and make it close at the end as the Lakers get a big win against the Denver Nuggets, who sat out Jamal Murray and Nicole Yokitchen this one. We also have our course correction segment that we're gonna do like we do every single week. I want to talk a little bit about Kawhi Leonard. And then the third segment of the show today we're gonna be hitting Kay Cunningham and the second twenty five point triple double of his career against the Miami Heat, capping it off with a buzzer beating, well, I guess not quite a buzzer beater, but a game winner against the Miami Heat off the glass. And then at the tail end of the show, we're gonna try something new tonight. We're gonna have Jackson come on the stream and we're gonna answer some questions from the live mail bag. So you gotta be sub subscribed to the channel, but subscribe to the channel, drop questions in the chat, and we're gonna hit some mail bag questions at the tail end of the show. You guys know the job before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSONLTS, you guys, don't miss show announcements, don't forget a better podcast feed where you get your podcast on our hoops tonight, So also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. We also have brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook where Jackson's been doing great work for us in the video of cutting up some video and adding stuff to that contents. You guys can follow us there and then, last but not least, keep dropping mail bag questions and YouTube comments so we can hit them in our regular mail bags weekly throughout the rest of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So I'm not going to spend too much time on this particular game because I do want to kind of get to the mail bag as this game wasn't particularly interesting with all the guys that were out, But I did think that there were some things that were at least somewhat translatable to what we're going to see when we get into the postseason. If these two teams were to face each other. Now the Nuggets decide to sit Jamal Murray and Nicole Jokich, we don't really have much of a theory or much in the way of reporting on what's going on that front, except for there's a couple of ankle injuries that they're dealing with. I also think that Mike Malone probably just looked at him and was like, we're not playing good basketball right now, and you guys look banged up. So I'd rather have you guys take a little bit of time off and come back and then let's hit this thing hard and try to sharpen up some details before we get into the postseason. But it ended up being the same group that upset Golden State Warriors the other night, trying to win on the road in LA, and it was kind of the same issue that happened when Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic played back in Denver, which is that the Nuggets can't guard the Lakers, And that really is one of the fundamental concepts that I go into any matchup with the Lakers and Nuggets if they were to face each other in the postseason. Like, I also don't know if the Lakers are going to be able to guard the Nuggets, but it feels pretty certain to me at this point that whether it's Jokic coming up to the level in pick and roll scheme, whether it's him dropping back, whether it's the small ball groups that they'll have out there when Jokic is off the floor. There's not a defender on the Nuggets roster that makes Luka Dancych feel uncomfortable one on one. And they're not a great defensive rotation team to be able to clean stuff up on the back end. Like, if you're going to be able to have a strong defensive foundation, you better be good at something. You better be an elite perimeter defense or an elite rim protection defense, or an elite in rotation defense in terms of closing off gaps and being attached and communicating through defensive rotations. And they're just not good at any of those things. And we know that they can be. We've seen them at time in times past be able to put together a coherent defense. But one of the things that concerns me is NBA history tells us that if you practice being a bad defense all season, you're probably going to be a bad defense when it matters. Generally speaking, you fall back on your habits when you run into adversity, and that's why it's so important for you to make a habit out of doing all the right things, because when the shit hits the fan and the chips are down and it's time to play must win basketball, your habits are what carry you in those situations. A lot of the variance is out of your control. But if you're a habitually good defense, if you're a habitually good, attention to detailed type of team, you can make up that ground. And so that would be my main concern. But there's there's just these nuggets, I should say, these nuggets with the nuggets that I see that kind of keep me from getting off the train entirely because it's like, you know that they've been a very good fourth quarter defense this year, which is a strong indicator of them tightening things up when they need to. We've seen Aaron Gordon, Nikola Jokich, Michael Porter, junior Jamal Murray and an athletic, defensive minded guard be able to get stops in the postseason. But again, it's just I look back through NBA history and the teams that kind of cut corners in the regular season and hoist the trophy are the Katie Steph Warriors in like twenty eighteen, or the Shaq Kobe Lakers, or you know, like teams that are overwhelmingly talented and they present that advantage that buys them so much margin for error that they can get away with that sort of play when they get up in those situations. But again, like I, even above and beyond anything having to do with their sharpness, there are clear personnel limitations for them in this specific matchup, and it all comes down to Luka Doncic. There were advantages that the Lakers had in this matchup on offense before Luca. We saw that last year with them just picking apart the Nuggets and pick and roll and ad doing a lot of one on one damage with Jokic. But Mike Malone was able to reconfigure matchups, right, Okay, well, let's put KCP on Lebron, Let's put Aaron Gordon on Anthony Davis, and let's put Nicola Jokich on Ruy Mura. Let's reconfigure the matchups, and they were able to get enough stops to win some key games in that series and overcome the fact that the Lakers had a lead for most of that series. With Luka Doncic, they don't have that same flexibility. The issue that you saw tonight is exacerbated when Lebron and Ruey Hacha Mura come back to the table. It's exacerbated when Nikola Jokic comes back into the equation because it's going to be them with Luka bringing Yokic up to the level over and over and over again and triggering the four on threes, and the other four players on the floor are going to be some combination of Lebron, James Rijachamura, Austin Reeves, Jackson Hayes rolling to the ram, Dorian Finney Smith spotting up in the corner, gave Vincent spotting up in the corner on the wing. They just have the ability to spread the nuggets out and pick them apart for wide open shots. Now where it gets complicated is on the other end of the floor. As we saw in the matchup that they won when they were in Denver, the Lakers did a lot of damage by denying by funneling towards the sideline, doubling from the baseline they did. The denial worked in limiting a lot of Jokic's touches, forcing his touches to be further away from the basket, and then they had a plan for how to handle it with help. Now. The way that Denver countered that is they generated these wide open catch and shoot threes for guys like Aaron Gordon, Russell Westbrook, Christian Brown, and they were hitting. That's, you know, the one big thing that's been screaming off the screen as you watch the Nuggets as a positive over the core. So the last couple of weeks is Aaron Gordon is shooting the living shit out of the basketball. And I love the the I love the bit that Tim Legler was talking about how he went up to Aaron Gordon and specifically discussed, like why are you shooting the ball so well? And Aaron just started talking about how he's just at his home gym, just shooting over and over and over and over and over again. Because like, that's literally what it takes. Guys, your kids out there that are still playing in high school, that are trying to make it into your rotation and a college team or whatever it is. If you think that you're going to be able to make shots without literally taking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of shots every single week, you're never gonna get there. There's no there is no cutting that corner. There's no way to get from point A to point B, with point A being you being a lesser shooter and point B being you being a better shooter without taking hundreds and hundreds of shots. And so what you saw there there was a lot of reps where like Jackson Hayes would end up on Aaron Gordon. And if Jackson Hayes on Aaron Gordon, he has this tendency to want to help in the paint. It's not just Jackson Hayes as a fore man. Gordon's gonna draw defender that gets a lot of low man responsibilities. The low man has an instinctual desire to help at the basket because that's how it works. In the defensive scheme. Aaron Gordon's going to get some wide open looks and him knocking them down at the rate that he's been knocking them down is going to allow Denver to score. And so as I look at the matchup between these two teams in a playoff series, I feel relatively certain that the Lakers are going to be able to consistently generate great shots. I feel like the Lakers have a chance to at least tilt Denver's offense towards shot attempts for certain types of players. The problem is if those guys hit them the way that they've been hitting them, it could end up being a situation where we have one hell of a shootout type of series between these two types of teams. But again, we've only seen one matchup between these two teams at relatively full strength in the game in Denver, and so it's hard for me to take too much from anything that we've seen to this point. But it sure would be fun to watch these two teams play against each other, and I think the shootout part of it would be real. It would be an interesting kind of like who could score more points in terms of this open shot generating contest between the two teams, and just there's not gonna be a whole lot of rock fight sequences where they score ten points in ten minutes or anything along those lines. These two teams are going to be able to score on each other. Lucas shot making continues to make incredible leaps. He had twenty points in the first quarter of this game. One of the biggest things that has me excited about the team's potential, the Lakers potential and the big picture is if you remember when they went on that winning streak shortly after Luca joined the team. In that winning streak, they were not scoring the ball well. In the game against Denver, they scored the ball well because they Denver's defense is terrible and it's a terrible matchup for them because of their ability to skip the ball over the top and generate four on threes. But a lot of teams made the Lakers struggle to score over that stretch with switching, physical ball pressure, blitzing Luca and the Lakers struggling to handle it a little bit. And there are a couple of key things that have started to come to the surface. One Luca's overall shot making, the Luka Doncic that was playing with Lebron James before or he got hurt, the one that went on that massive win streak. That Luka Doncic is not the same guy anymore. He is a red hot scorer right now. The advantage of Lebron being out the way he did he was it gave Luca a ton of repetition for him to round out some of the elements of his skill set and to build his rhythm. Lebron and Rui are going to be coming back to a team that has substantially more offensive firepower. It also gave them the second piece of it is they get a lot more repetition in terms of handling blitzes, something they struggled with early on in the Luca experience. But they're starting to get better and better at That's what makes me so excited about this team. In the big picture, you get Lebron James and Rui back in here. Those are your back line guys. How often tonight did you see the Lakers look unathletic in transition? How often tonight did you see the Lakers give up dribble penetration and struggle to help at the rim? On the back line, their forwards are hot, or at least their starting forwards are out, and so getting Lebron James and Ruy Hachamura basically five hundred pound of big, strong athlete out there is going to go a long way towards cleaning up some of their issues and help side defense and on the glass. And when you're skipping the ball across the court, instead of it being Jared Vanderbilt, instead of it being Jordan good One, instead of it being some of these limited offensive players, it's gonna be Rui, who's been a deadly catch and shoot three point shooter this year. It's gonna be Lebron, who's been a deadly catch and shoot three point shooter this year. Those guys are going to get their opportunities, and as all of this starts to come together, they're going to have a level that they can get to on both ends of the floor that very few teams in this league can get to. And I think that's all very exciting. Again, I want you, guys, we can get a little bit further into this matchup, further into stuff with the Lakers and the Nuggets, but let's do it in the mail bag here. In a little bit, we're going to work through our other couple of segments. Make sure you drop your questions in the chat, then we'll get to them at the tail end of the show. Moving on, Welcome to Course Correction, brought to you by Microsoft. Just like star players and teams navigating performance hurdles, business decision makers today are under immense pressure to get things right. They must rise to the occasion, turning challenges into opportun t unities. Microsoft empowers these visionaries with AI solutions, Simplified Cloud and data management and trustworthy, responsible AI and when you're in the NBA, you have your own hurdles to face. This segment, we explore the challenges faced by teams or star players and how they can turn things around. Whatever challenge you're facing, Microsoft empowers you with the expertise to say bring it on. This week, we're discussing Kawhi Leonard in his latest return to form from injury. Kawi looked fantastic in the win against the Cavs last night. We did a full breakdown of it this morning. You guys can find it a little bit further back on our feed. He had thirty three, seven and four with forced deals. You looked athletic. He was five to six from three. I think he was twelve for nineteen from the field, super efficient. Again, we spend a good amount of time on it this morning, especially talking about how strong his base looks. His legs look strong. He's the dead giveaway for Kawhi being Kawhi as he starts to dislodge dudes from their base, when he makes those aggressive moves into the short to mid range, and then he's the guy that's getting great lyft and easily knocking down jump shots in that short to mid range. I'm just amazed because of how many times we've been in this cycle with Kawhi. From the knee tendon to pathy issue that he have with San Antonio that led to his departure there, the twenty twenty one knee injury that took him out for two seasons, the twenty twenty three knee injury that took him out of the playoffs, the twenty twenty four knee injury that took him out of the playoffs. This is literally the fourth time that he's had season ending injury come into the equation and that he's been able to recover and look like himself now again. For us as fans, and for like the Clippers front office or forever Kawhi ends up playing for for the rest of his career, there are certain realities that have to be factored in in terms of his reliability, but that doesn't change the fact that Kawhi just keeps on coming back. And that's the amazing part to me. Can you imagine how discouraging it would be to ride the roller coaster he's been riding the last seven years, repeatedly working his ass off behind the scenes, to get back in shape, getting there being within stre viking distance of his ultimate goals, only for it all to come crashing down again. Imagine last year in the Dallas series, after what was a Game three, when he came out of the game early, after yet another season of working his ass off to get back into form, they looked like a bona fide championship contender. Remember they lost their first six games or whatever it was with James Harden, and then they just started kicking everybody's ass. For months, we were talking about them as a bona fide top tier championship contender, only for him to break down again and lose. Can you imagine what he was thinking. I wonder how often the idea of retirement has come up for him mentally, and yet here he is again, right back at it, looking like the best player on the floor in a game against the best team in the league. My guess is there are two things that keep driving Kawhi to try again and again in the face of these issues that he's had. One his love for the game of basketball. It's crazy how that'll get you to do anything, like you'll if you love the game, you'll find a way to play at all costs. And then two, the simple fact that it only takes one opportunity, one stretch of things going his way for him to get what he wants, one season of him actually holding up until June for him to have a chance to hoist the trophy again, and if he does, that accomplishment lasts forever. So I think that's what drives him, and I just want to shout out Kwhi Leonard for continually trying to be the best basketball player that he can be despite the horrible injury luck that he's had in the last decade. That's it for this week's course correction. Remember Microsoft's AI solutions empower you to take bold steps and make informed decisions, sparking new ideas to help drive your business forward. With Microsoft as your trusted partner, you can navigate your journey with confidence, finding innovative solutions and reaching new possibilities. Visit Microsoft dot com slash challengers to learn more. We're gonna talk Piston's heat for a little bit and then we'll get into our mailbag. Don't forget keep dropping those questions in the chat, so the Piston's gonna come from behind, winning on the road in Miami k got off to a rough shooting start. I think he was two for his first nine if I remember correctly, but he got going eventually, and he just has a lot of size advantage that he could work against. In this matchup, he hit a couple of these like left shoulder hooks that he hit against Heywood, high Smith and hime Hakes where he just kind of like slowly and methodically backed them down into a range that he felt comfortable hit him one more time to dislodge that base and then just use that momentum to flow into like these easy, breezy left shoulder hooks, And it was just a reminder of how good this guy can be in the big picture as he gets better and better at replicating that easy stuff. Again, that's the thing with younger players. They struggled to replicate what's working, and they struggled to stop doing what's not working. When you become a veteran, a lot of times, like any skill improvement gets undercut by your diminishing athleticism. But what changes is your understanding of the game and the way that you can parse out the things that work really well for you and hyper focus on them and limit the things you struggle with to improve your efficiency. And again, like there's going to be a lot of that kind of stuff with Caid when he's in the heart of his prime, where he's taken some, you know, not necessarily the most skillful shots in the world, like crazy step backs or nifty combinations of dribble, combination of dribble and footwear combinations. But he's going to have a lot of these easy, breezy shots because he's six', eight he's big and, strong and he can get to wherever he wants on the. Floor he did a lot of great work putting defenders in jail in this. Game he had a fun. Work, again whenever we talk about putting defenders in, jail all that is is when you get an angle on a, player whether it's in, transition whether it's in AN, iso whether it's in a posset up, situation whether it's in a pick and, roll whatever it, is when you get the defender onto your hip or your, backside when you slow down and you basically revert post, up meaning you're posting, up but instead of trying to back the dude, down you're leading him forward while trapping him in a position on your body that you feel comfortable, with and you have an open lane in front of, you which forces the defense to make a. Decision he had a fun one in the fourth quarter where he pump faked like four or five times while dudes are just flying around about, him and he hit like a little casual six foot fade away over the. Top he's getting really good at using his size and transition as an opportunity to get that easy. Angle like he'll look up at the rim with the ball in his right hand and he'll just like do that push cross and drop his right shoulder and he'll take an aggressive dribble and then the defender's on his side and he'll get that advantage at like twenty five feet and, then just like he does in a ball, screen he'll just work his way. Downhill no one stops, him he'll go all the way to the front of the. Rim if, not he'll just kind of wait for the defense to. React and again when he gets into those, situations that's where the similarities To luca are like jarring for, me because there's a dynamic that takes place when he gets the defender on his hip er on his, back he slows way the hell. Down he can get painfully slow sometimes on his drive in that sort of position when he's got the defender, pinned AND i say pin painfully for the. Defense dribble penetration makes help defenders make. Decisions him slowing down is what allows those openings to fully. Form while he's going, slow defenders are flying and they're making, decisions and they're fully committing to whatever defensive read they. Make that allows him to allow the play to develop so that he can find the read and make. It and from there he just has his reads down Pat every one of his teammates know where to. Be Tim hardaway And Malik beasley know that If kate throws him the ball and a kick ahead and transition or a kickout in a ball, screen even if the closeout is, there he wants them to shoot. It he's rifling it to them because he knows they're good contested three point. Shooters he wants them to take. It he got a dunk For Jalen duran in the second half when he got blitzed around the right elbow And miami forgot to tag the roller just elevated and rifled pass The dalen during easy dunk it actually might have Been Isaiah. STEWART i can't even remember who's in the game at that. Point he's developing this really fun chemistry With Asar thompson. Too he generated three dunks for him off of cuts in various. SITUATIONS i talked about this concept With Jonathan kaminga a couple of days. Ago but the idea of, runways you, know we always think about help side defense as an opportunity to get a wide open catch and shoot, Three but the same exact thing happens for an athlete in a different way in the form of a runway. Appearing so you can imagine if you're a in the corner and the ball gets skipped to you in your, helper the guy who's guarding you steps into the. Paint you think of it as this wide open catch and shoot. Three but if you read it before the pass and the defender steps, up all of a, sudden there's like twenty five feet of space or twenty two feet of space between you and the corner and the front of the rim with nobody standing, there and that's an opportunity for an athlete to get a running. Start And asar is just finding those runways in two day diferent spots along the baseline when he's in the. Corner but he also got one off Of kid's drive swooping in from behind along the. Wing this is Where kaid's slowing down as an. Advantage he slows down the play, develops everyone kind of coalesces around. HIM A sara finds an opening and just zooms in from. Behind he drops him. Off it doesn't matter if there's congestion in the. PAINT a star sits a freak. Athlete once he gets ahead of steam like, that no one's jumping with, him no one's stopping him there, again he had three dunks tonight on cuts off of k, drives and then of Course kay tops it all off by stealing victory from defeat with a couple of threes down the. Stretch there was a missed three From Elik beasley on the right. Wing Jalen duran just Buries kalel where right under the. Rim and by the Way kalel was rough down the stretch of this, game he didn't really understand what he was doing around the. Rim he gave up that key offensive. Rebound he had another weird play where he tried like a corn test you, know The Luke cornett like jump up and just clap from underneath the. Basket he tried one of those on a post move where he had no chance to block the, shot and thanks to him leaving his, feet he was not in a position to get the defensive, rebound and someone just swooped in right behind him and got the offensive rebound put. Back i'm, like what are you, doing? Dude but the heat look really. Bad we're going to talk about that in a. Minute that's an entirely separate. Issue but, Anyway durren gets the offensive, rebound pitches it out to. Kid he hits the three to put The pistons up. Two Then Tyler harrow ties the, game drawing a foul On Jalen. Durnant and that really is the next step For Jalen duran in his. Development he's got to learn how to defend on the. Perimeter you got switched on to a. Guard your job at that, point depending on the game, plan whatever the coach that tells you. Is you, know if he's an elite jump, shooter let's Say Steph, curry your job is to play up on the jump shot and funnel him in a direction where you have planned. Help if it's a guy that you're less worried about him making a pull up jump, shot then it's about containment and from there you don't need to block the jump. Shot no one's asking you to block the jump. Shot they're asking you to contest the jump. Shot they want you to at least make the guy make it contested. Shot it If Tyler harrow hits a contested seventeen foot or off the, bounce there you kind of have to live with. That leaving your feet trying to block the shot Allowed Tyler harrow to get two free throws which he's going to, make and again that's just the stuff that he's got to work on in his. Development you put your hand, up you live with the results in those situations instead of jumping out of your. Shoes guards are always going to go for fakes against a big man in space because once big dudes start moving one way or the other or leave their, feet they're so big that it's hard for them to change direction and regain control of their. Body once they get you a lunge one way or to leave their, feet that's where the quickness comes in for the guard and they're going right around. You that's why it's about positional, defense staying, disciplined doing what the game plan needs from you in that sort of. Situation he'll get better in. Time he just needs. Reps The it would Do jalen a lot of good to this summer to start showing up to some workouts with some PERIMETER nba players and just ask to guard and be, like, oh you guys are doing. Ones let me hop in and just get reps guarding you guys one on, one because that's the kind of thing that will help him when it comes to defending out on the. Perimeter but, anyway herotize it and Then kate ends up banking in the pull up three Over bam at the. Buzzer really high degree of difficulty, shot but he got it up over the. Contest and, again when you shoot it right there at the top of the, key you can afford to miss. Long you missed, long but went right in off the back of the. Rim they're off the. Backboard kate finished with twenty five twelve and. Eleven it's his ninth triple double this, season his second twenty five point triple double of his. Career pissons are, fun, Man they have so many fun, subplots LIKE i don't really know what to think Of Ron holland yet BECAUSE i don't know what he'll become. Offensively but he had a really fun stretch of this game where he just ball pressured the hell out Of Alec burk's in the second, half and you could see him really becoming a defensive. Weapon sooner than. Later he was plus eleven in twelve. Minutes Malik beasley hasn't just been one of the best three point shooters in the league this. Year he's shown some really impressive scoring, chops like hitting tough shots off of different bits of footwork and ball handling over great, contests doing excellent work off the. Bounce he's shooting thirty eight percent off the dribble jump shots this, year waited for. Threes he's getting over a point per. Shot he's having a wonderful scoring. Season Tobias harris is having a great season and really coming around as a secondary shot creator for them after The Jaden ivy. Injury Asar thompson's in a different role than his. Brother Like, Amen thompson is getting a lot of inverted spacing situations because Of. Shanggoon i've talked about this concept with Like Aaron gordon and Nakolea. Jokic an athlete on the back line has infinitely more value when the big man is playing out around the elbows because that is pulling the rim protector out to guard the big man out around the. Elbows that allows those runways to appear more frequently along the back. LINE a Men thompson is going to have a lot of success feasting off of The shannggoon inverted. Spacing with The Detroit, pistons they don't have that type of inverted, spacing so those opportunities are fewer and further between for us are but you can still see some similar flashes of his vertical spacing ability of the wrecking ball that he can be on defense just like A Men thompson can. Be he ran some ball screen action of his own in the second half of this game With Jalen, dura and he got a good downhill rep against Kalel ware where he caved his chest in and got an easy little left handed layup right at the front of the. Rim, again The pistons are just fun and now they're only one game back Of indiana and the standings for the four seed and potentially home court in the first. Round that, said they do have a very tough remaining. Schedule the remaining schedule opponent combined opponent win percentages over fifty five, Percent SO i think they're probably headed for that sixth seed and a first round series against The, knicks unless obviously some things go. Differently that, said like we've talked about in the, PAST i think The pistons might actually match up better With New york than they do With indiana Or, milwaukee so that that would be a really fun first round. Series AND i guess we'll see when the time. Comes BUT i thought like the most interesting story of that game was just how lifeless The Miami heat. Looked they've lost nine in a, row but that's underselling the. Situation they're just four and sixteen in their last twenty. GAMES i, mean can you remember a worst stretch Under Eric. SPOULSTRA i, can't at least not in these serious years over the last half. Decade the twenty eighth in offense in that, span seventeenth in. Defense and the scary part is when you watch, them they literally look like a team that's let go of the. Rope that's not believing in what they're. Doing that's given up one of the Strangest heat Games i've watched in a long time in terms of, process just Because i'm so used to The heat being the sharp effort and execution team Hashtag heat. Culture they brought out their zone to start the fourth quarter and they immediately gave up a easy driving scoop shot foul On Dennis schroeder Because bam was kind of asleep on his back line and didn't make a. Rotation they gave up a dunk To Tobias harris in crunch. Time it was a three point game with five minutes, left And Tobias harris was just standing on the left wing completely. Unguarded caye just threw in the, ball he drove down the lane and dunked. It you know how bad of a transition defensive possession that. Is for it to be like a semi, transition like we're back on, defense we're not Guarding tobias and no one's helping at the. Rim that's beyond. Sloppy that's Very Unmiami, heat like just to sleep at the. Wheel but, again the offense was WHAT i found super. Bizarre what used to be a sophisticated system of ball in player movement has degraded to what looks like a pickup. GAME a lot of the. Time they have these weird possessions where they just Let Davion mitchell dribble the ball up the court and play like one on one off the, wing like He's John morant trying to initiate, offense LIKE i don't understand. It they have these super ugly bam at a bio possessions where he's just facing up in a triple threat and everyone's just kind of standing, around and then, suddenly with three seconds, left after he's done, nothing he'll either throw some bs up or he'll turn and run a last second dho With Duncan. Robinson a lot of rushed bad shots From Duncan robinson And Tyler. Harrow Tyler harrow shot a floater over a double team that hit the top of the. Backboard in the fourth, Quarter Duncan, robinson with eleven on the shot, clock took a, drifting fading jump shot out of the right corner that missed the basket by several. Feet there's no point in even discussing anything further with this team because they look like they aren't even. Competing most of these Plays i'm discussing took place in a close game in the fourth. Quarter it's just. Bizarre and the scariest thing is there isn't any upside to this. Situation harrow's having the best season of his, career and he looks like he's not good. Enough like IF i ask you who's Better Tyler harrow Or Austin, reeves it's. Close that's not enough to build a franchise. Around if you're waiting on Bam adebio to develop on, offense he's twenty seven years, Old i'm not sure that's ever gonna. Happen Kell aware has some, tools but he's super raw and mistake prone like most young. Players he certainly doesn't look like a franchise altering. Talent and, yeah they have some scrappy role player, dudes but they're useless without the star. TALENT i don't know what saves this. Situation it's definitely bleak times For heat fans for. Sure All, Right so a couple about a month, ago we got a new producer for a, Show Jackson. Staphone he's been doing incredible work for us adding, film you guys are always in the comments telling us how much you desperately want film in the, show And jackson's been fighting the good fight behind the, scenes trying to add film whenever he. Can we're gonna hit about fifteen minutes or so questions from the. Chat jackson is one of my favorite people to talk basketball. With he's gonna come on and help us answer some of these. Questions all, Right, jackson what do we got so?

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Got a Jampacks show for you tonight. We're gonna be hitting the two games from ESPN. Tonight is the Lakers and of kind of blowing out the Nuggets until the end of the bench guys come in and make it close at the end as the Lakers get a big win against the Denver Nuggets, who sat out Jamal Murray and Nicole Yokitchen this one. We also have our course correction segment that we're gonna do like we do every single week. I want to talk a little bit about Kawhi Leonard. And then the third segment of the show today we're gonna be hitting Kay Cunningham and the second twenty five point triple double of his career against the Miami Heat, capping it off with a buzzer beating, well, I guess not quite a buzzer beater, but a game winner against the Miami Heat off the glass. And then at the tail end of the show, we're gonna try something new tonight. We're gonna have Jackson come on the stream and we're gonna answer some questions from the live mail bag. So you gotta be sub subscribed to the channel, but subscribe to the channel, drop questions in the chat, and we're gonna hit some mail bag questions at the tail end of the show. You guys know the job before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSONLTS, you guys, don't miss show announcements, don't forget a better podcast feed where you get your podcast on our hoops tonight, So also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. We also have brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook where Jackson's been doing great work for us in the video of cutting up some video and adding stuff to that contents. You guys can follow us there and then, last but not least, keep dropping mail bag questions and YouTube comments so we can hit them in our regular mail bags weekly throughout the rest of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So I'm not going to spend too much time on this particular game because I do want to kind of get to the mail bag as this game wasn't particularly interesting with all the guys that were out, But I did think that there were some things that were at least somewhat translatable to what we're going to see when we get into the postseason. If these two teams were to face each other. Now the Nuggets decide to sit Jamal Murray and Nicole Jokich, we don't really have much of a theory or much in the way of reporting on what's going on that front, except for there's a couple of ankle injuries that they're dealing with. I also think that Mike Malone probably just looked at him and was like, we're not playing good basketball right now, and you guys look banged up. So I'd rather have you guys take a little bit of time off and come back and then let's hit this thing hard and try to sharpen up some details before we get into the postseason. But it ended up being the same group that upset Golden State Warriors the other night, trying to win on the road in LA, and it was kind of the same issue that happened when Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic played back in Denver, which is that the Nuggets can't guard the Lakers, And that really is one of the fundamental concepts that I go into any matchup with the Lakers and Nuggets if they were to face each other in the postseason. Like, I also don't know if the Lakers are going to be able to guard the Nuggets, but it feels pretty certain to me at this point that whether it's Jokic coming up to the level in pick and roll scheme, whether it's him dropping back, whether it's the small ball groups that they'll have out there when Jokic is off the floor. There's not a defender on the Nuggets roster that makes Luka Dancych feel uncomfortable one on one. And they're not a great defensive rotation team to be able to clean stuff up on the back end. Like, if you're going to be able to have a strong defensive foundation, you better be good at something. You better be an elite perimeter defense or an elite rim protection defense, or an elite in rotation defense in terms of closing off gaps and being attached and communicating through defensive rotations. And they're just not good at any of those things. And we know that they can be. We've seen them at time in times past be able to put together a coherent defense. But one of the things that concerns me is NBA history tells us that if you practice being a bad defense all season, you're probably going to be a bad defense when it matters. Generally speaking, you fall back on your habits when you run into adversity, and that's why it's so important for you to make a habit out of doing all the right things, because when the shit hits the fan and the chips are down and it's time to play must win basketball, your habits are what carry you in those situations. A lot of the variance is out of your control. But if you're a habitually good defense, if you're a habitually good, attention to detailed type of team, you can make up that ground. And so that would be my main concern. But there's there's just these nuggets, I should say, these nuggets with the nuggets that I see that kind of keep me from getting off the train entirely because it's like, you know that they've been a very good fourth quarter defense this year, which is a strong indicator of them tightening things up when they need to. We've seen Aaron Gordon, Nikola Jokich, Michael Porter, junior Jamal Murray and an athletic, defensive minded guard be able to get stops in the postseason. But again, it's just I look back through NBA history and the teams that kind of cut corners in the regular season and hoist the trophy are the Katie Steph Warriors in like twenty eighteen, or the Shaq Kobe Lakers, or you know, like teams that are overwhelmingly talented and they present that advantage that buys them so much margin for error that they can get away with that sort of play when they get up in those situations. But again, like I, even above and beyond anything having to do with their sharpness, there are clear personnel limitations for them in this specific matchup, and it all comes down to Luka Doncic. There were advantages that the Lakers had in this matchup on offense before Luca. We saw that last year with them just picking apart the Nuggets and pick and roll and ad doing a lot of one on one damage with Jokic. But Mike Malone was able to reconfigure matchups, right, Okay, well, let's put KCP on Lebron, Let's put Aaron Gordon on Anthony Davis, and let's put Nicola Jokich on Ruy Mura. Let's reconfigure the matchups, and they were able to get enough stops to win some key games in that series and overcome the fact that the Lakers had a lead for most of that series. With Luka Doncic, they don't have that same flexibility. The issue that you saw tonight is exacerbated when Lebron and Ruey Hacha Mura come back to the table. It's exacerbated when Nikola Jokic comes back into the equation because it's going to be them with Luka bringing Yokic up to the level over and over and over again and triggering the four on threes, and the other four players on the floor are going to be some combination of Lebron, James Rijachamura, Austin Reeves, Jackson Hayes rolling to the ram, Dorian Finney Smith spotting up in the corner, gave Vincent spotting up in the corner on the wing. They just have the ability to spread the nuggets out and pick them apart for wide open shots. Now where it gets complicated is on the other end of the floor. As we saw in the matchup that they won when they were in Denver, the Lakers did a lot of damage by denying by funneling towards the sideline, doubling from the baseline they did. The denial worked in limiting a lot of Jokic's touches, forcing his touches to be further away from the basket, and then they had a plan for how to handle it with help. Now. The way that Denver countered that is they generated these wide open catch and shoot threes for guys like Aaron Gordon, Russell Westbrook, Christian Brown, and they were hitting. That's, you know, the one big thing that's been screaming off the screen as you watch the Nuggets as a positive over the core. So the last couple of weeks is Aaron Gordon is shooting the living shit out of the basketball. And I love the the I love the bit that Tim Legler was talking about how he went up to Aaron Gordon and specifically discussed, like why are you shooting the ball so well? And Aaron just started talking about how he's just at his home gym, just shooting over and over and over and over and over again. Because like, that's literally what it takes. Guys, your kids out there that are still playing in high school, that are trying to make it into your rotation and a college team or whatever it is. If you think that you're going to be able to make shots without literally taking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of shots every single week, you're never gonna get there. There's no there is no cutting that corner. There's no way to get from point A to point B, with point A being you being a lesser shooter and point B being you being a better shooter without taking hundreds and hundreds of shots. And so what you saw there there was a lot of reps where like Jackson Hayes would end up on Aaron Gordon. And if Jackson Hayes on Aaron Gordon, he has this tendency to want to help in the paint. It's not just Jackson Hayes as a fore man. Gordon's gonna draw defender that gets a lot of low man responsibilities. The low man has an instinctual desire to help at the basket because that's how it works. In the defensive scheme. Aaron Gordon's going to get some wide open looks and him knocking them down at the rate that he's been knocking them down is going to allow Denver to score. And so as I look at the matchup between these two teams in a playoff series, I feel relatively certain that the Lakers are going to be able to consistently generate great shots. I feel like the Lakers have a chance to at least tilt Denver's offense towards shot attempts for certain types of players. The problem is if those guys hit them the way that they've been hitting them, it could end up being a situation where we have one hell of a shootout type of series between these two types of teams. But again, we've only seen one matchup between these two teams at relatively full strength in the game in Denver, and so it's hard for me to take too much from anything that we've seen to this point. But it sure would be fun to watch these two teams play against each other, and I think the shootout part of it would be real. It would be an interesting kind of like who could score more points in terms of this open shot generating contest between the two teams, and just there's not gonna be a whole lot of rock fight sequences where they score ten points in ten minutes or anything along those lines. These two teams are going to be able to score on each other. Lucas shot making continues to make incredible leaps. He had twenty points in the first quarter of this game. One of the biggest things that has me excited about the team's potential, the Lakers potential and the big picture is if you remember when they went on that winning streak shortly after Luca joined the team. In that winning streak, they were not scoring the ball well. In the game against Denver, they scored the ball well because they Denver's defense is terrible and it's a terrible matchup for them because of their ability to skip the ball over the top and generate four on threes. But a lot of teams made the Lakers struggle to score over that stretch with switching, physical ball pressure, blitzing Luca and the Lakers struggling to handle it a little bit. And there are a couple of key things that have started to come to the surface. One Luca's overall shot making, the Luka Doncic that was playing with Lebron James before or he got hurt, the one that went on that massive win streak. That Luka Doncic is not the same guy anymore. He is a red hot scorer right now. The advantage of Lebron being out the way he did he was it gave Luca a ton of repetition for him to round out some of the elements of his skill set and to build his rhythm. Lebron and Rui are going to be coming back to a team that has substantially more offensive firepower. It also gave them the second piece of it is they get a lot more repetition in terms of handling blitzes, something they struggled with early on in the Luca experience. But they're starting to get better and better at That's what makes me so excited about this team. In the big picture, you get Lebron James and Rui back in here. Those are your back line guys. How often tonight did you see the Lakers look unathletic in transition? How often tonight did you see the Lakers give up dribble penetration and struggle to help at the rim? On the back line, their forwards are hot, or at least their starting forwards are out, and so getting Lebron James and Ruy Hachamura basically five hundred pound of big, strong athlete out there is going to go a long way towards cleaning up some of their issues and help side defense and on the glass. And when you're skipping the ball across the court, instead of it being Jared Vanderbilt, instead of it being Jordan good One, instead of it being some of these limited offensive players, it's gonna be Rui, who's been a deadly catch and shoot three point shooter this year. It's gonna be Lebron, who's been a deadly catch and shoot three point shooter this year. Those guys are going to get their opportunities, and as all of this starts to come together, they're going to have a level that they can get to on both ends of the floor that very few teams in this league can get to. And I think that's all very exciting. Again, I want you, guys, we can get a little bit further into this matchup, further into stuff with the Lakers and the Nuggets, but let's do it in the mail bag here. In a little bit, we're going to work through our other couple of segments. Make sure you drop your questions in the chat, then we'll get to them at the tail end of the show. Moving on, Welcome to Course Correction, brought to you by Microsoft. Just like star players and teams navigating performance hurdles, business decision makers today are under immense pressure to get things right. They must rise to the occasion, turning challenges into opportun t unities. Microsoft empowers these visionaries with AI solutions, Simplified Cloud and data management and trustworthy, responsible AI and when you're in the NBA, you have your own hurdles to face. This segment, we explore the challenges faced by teams or star players and how they can turn things around. Whatever challenge you're facing, Microsoft empowers you with the expertise to say bring it on. This week, we're discussing Kawhi Leonard in his latest return to form from injury. Kawi looked fantastic in the win against the Cavs last night. We did a full breakdown of it this morning. You guys can find it a little bit further back on our feed. He had thirty three, seven and four with forced deals. You looked athletic. He was five to six from three. I think he was twelve for nineteen from the field, super efficient. Again, we spend a good amount of time on it this morning, especially talking about how strong his base looks. His legs look strong. He's the dead giveaway for Kawhi being Kawhi as he starts to dislodge dudes from their base, when he makes those aggressive moves into the short to mid range, and then he's the guy that's getting great lyft and easily knocking down jump shots in that short to mid range. I'm just amazed because of how many times we've been in this cycle with Kawhi. From the knee tendon to pathy issue that he have with San Antonio that led to his departure there, the twenty twenty one knee injury that took him out for two seasons, the twenty twenty three knee injury that took him out of the playoffs, the twenty twenty four knee injury that took him out of the playoffs. This is literally the fourth time that he's had season ending injury come into the equation and that he's been able to recover and look like himself now again. For us as fans, and for like the Clippers front office or forever Kawhi ends up playing for for the rest of his career, there are certain realities that have to be factored in in terms of his reliability, but that doesn't change the fact that Kawhi just keeps on coming back. And that's the amazing part to me. Can you imagine how discouraging it would be to ride the roller coaster he's been riding the last seven years, repeatedly working his ass off behind the scenes, to get back in shape, getting there being within stre viking distance of his ultimate goals, only for it all to come crashing down again. Imagine last year in the Dallas series, after what was a Game three, when he came out of the game early, after yet another season of working his ass off to get back into form, they looked like a bona fide championship contender. Remember they lost their first six games or whatever it was with James Harden, and then they just started kicking everybody's ass. For months, we were talking about them as a bona fide top tier championship contender, only for him to break down again and lose. Can you imagine what he was thinking. I wonder how often the idea of retirement has come up for him mentally, and yet here he is again, right back at it, looking like the best player on the floor in a game against the best team in the league. My guess is there are two things that keep driving Kawhi to try again and again in the face of these issues that he's had. One his love for the game of basketball. It's crazy how that'll get you to do anything, like you'll if you love the game, you'll find a way to play at all costs. And then two, the simple fact that it only takes one opportunity, one stretch of things going his way for him to get what he wants, one season of him actually holding up until June for him to have a chance to hoist the trophy again, and if he does, that accomplishment lasts forever. So I think that's what drives him, and I just want to shout out Kwhi Leonard for continually trying to be the best basketball player that he can be despite the horrible injury luck that he's had in the last decade. That's it for this week's course correction. Remember Microsoft's AI solutions empower you to take bold steps and make informed decisions, sparking new ideas to help drive your business forward. With Microsoft as your trusted partner, you can navigate your journey with confidence, finding innovative solutions and reaching new possibilities. Visit Microsoft dot com slash challengers to learn more. We're gonna talk Piston's heat for a little bit and then we'll get into our mailbag. Don't forget keep dropping those questions in the chat, so the Piston's gonna come from behind, winning on the road in Miami k got off to a rough shooting start. I think he was two for his first nine if I remember correctly, but he got going eventually, and he just has a lot of size advantage that he could work against. In this matchup, he hit a couple of these like left shoulder hooks that he hit against Heywood, high Smith and hime Hakes where he just kind of like slowly and methodically backed them down into a range that he felt comfortable hit him one more time to dislodge that base and then just use that momentum to flow into like these easy, breezy left shoulder hooks, And it was just a reminder of how good this guy can be in the big picture as he gets better and better at replicating that easy stuff. Again, that's the thing with younger players. They struggled to replicate what's working, and they struggled to stop doing what's not working. When you become a veteran, a lot of times, like any skill improvement gets undercut by your diminishing athleticism. But what changes is your understanding of the game and the way that you can parse out the things that work really well for you and hyper focus on them and limit the things you struggle with to improve your efficiency. And again, like there's going to be a lot of that kind of stuff with Caid when he's in the heart of his prime, where he's taken some, you know, not necessarily the most skillful shots in the world, like crazy step backs or nifty combinations of dribble, combination of dribble and footwear combinations. But he's going to have a lot of these easy, breezy shots because he's six', eight he's big and, strong and he can get to wherever he wants on the. Floor he did a lot of great work putting defenders in jail in this. Game he had a fun. Work, again whenever we talk about putting defenders in, jail all that is is when you get an angle on a, player whether it's in, transition whether it's in AN, iso whether it's in a posset up, situation whether it's in a pick and, roll whatever it, is when you get the defender onto your hip or your, backside when you slow down and you basically revert post, up meaning you're posting, up but instead of trying to back the dude, down you're leading him forward while trapping him in a position on your body that you feel comfortable, with and you have an open lane in front of, you which forces the defense to make a. Decision he had a fun one in the fourth quarter where he pump faked like four or five times while dudes are just flying around about, him and he hit like a little casual six foot fade away over the. Top he's getting really good at using his size and transition as an opportunity to get that easy. Angle like he'll look up at the rim with the ball in his right hand and he'll just like do that push cross and drop his right shoulder and he'll take an aggressive dribble and then the defender's on his side and he'll get that advantage at like twenty five feet and, then just like he does in a ball, screen he'll just work his way. Downhill no one stops, him he'll go all the way to the front of the. Rim if, not he'll just kind of wait for the defense to. React and again when he gets into those, situations that's where the similarities To luca are like jarring for, me because there's a dynamic that takes place when he gets the defender on his hip er on his, back he slows way the hell. Down he can get painfully slow sometimes on his drive in that sort of position when he's got the defender, pinned AND i say pin painfully for the. Defense dribble penetration makes help defenders make. Decisions him slowing down is what allows those openings to fully. Form while he's going, slow defenders are flying and they're making, decisions and they're fully committing to whatever defensive read they. Make that allows him to allow the play to develop so that he can find the read and make. It and from there he just has his reads down Pat every one of his teammates know where to. Be Tim hardaway And Malik beasley know that If kate throws him the ball and a kick ahead and transition or a kickout in a ball, screen even if the closeout is, there he wants them to shoot. It he's rifling it to them because he knows they're good contested three point. Shooters he wants them to take. It he got a dunk For Jalen duran in the second half when he got blitzed around the right elbow And miami forgot to tag the roller just elevated and rifled pass The dalen during easy dunk it actually might have Been Isaiah. STEWART i can't even remember who's in the game at that. Point he's developing this really fun chemistry With Asar thompson. Too he generated three dunks for him off of cuts in various. SITUATIONS i talked about this concept With Jonathan kaminga a couple of days. Ago but the idea of, runways you, know we always think about help side defense as an opportunity to get a wide open catch and shoot, Three but the same exact thing happens for an athlete in a different way in the form of a runway. Appearing so you can imagine if you're a in the corner and the ball gets skipped to you in your, helper the guy who's guarding you steps into the. Paint you think of it as this wide open catch and shoot. Three but if you read it before the pass and the defender steps, up all of a, sudden there's like twenty five feet of space or twenty two feet of space between you and the corner and the front of the rim with nobody standing, there and that's an opportunity for an athlete to get a running. Start And asar is just finding those runways in two day diferent spots along the baseline when he's in the. Corner but he also got one off Of kid's drive swooping in from behind along the. Wing this is Where kaid's slowing down as an. Advantage he slows down the play, develops everyone kind of coalesces around. HIM A sara finds an opening and just zooms in from. Behind he drops him. Off it doesn't matter if there's congestion in the. PAINT a star sits a freak. Athlete once he gets ahead of steam like, that no one's jumping with, him no one's stopping him there, again he had three dunks tonight on cuts off of k, drives and then of Course kay tops it all off by stealing victory from defeat with a couple of threes down the. Stretch there was a missed three From Elik beasley on the right. Wing Jalen duran just Buries kalel where right under the. Rim and by the Way kalel was rough down the stretch of this, game he didn't really understand what he was doing around the. Rim he gave up that key offensive. Rebound he had another weird play where he tried like a corn test you, know The Luke cornett like jump up and just clap from underneath the. Basket he tried one of those on a post move where he had no chance to block the, shot and thanks to him leaving his, feet he was not in a position to get the defensive, rebound and someone just swooped in right behind him and got the offensive rebound put. Back i'm, like what are you, doing? Dude but the heat look really. Bad we're going to talk about that in a. Minute that's an entirely separate. Issue but, Anyway durren gets the offensive, rebound pitches it out to. Kid he hits the three to put The pistons up. Two Then Tyler harrow ties the, game drawing a foul On Jalen. Durnant and that really is the next step For Jalen duran in his. Development he's got to learn how to defend on the. Perimeter you got switched on to a. Guard your job at that, point depending on the game, plan whatever the coach that tells you. Is you, know if he's an elite jump, shooter let's Say Steph, curry your job is to play up on the jump shot and funnel him in a direction where you have planned. Help if it's a guy that you're less worried about him making a pull up jump, shot then it's about containment and from there you don't need to block the jump. Shot no one's asking you to block the jump. Shot they're asking you to contest the jump. Shot they want you to at least make the guy make it contested. Shot it If Tyler harrow hits a contested seventeen foot or off the, bounce there you kind of have to live with. That leaving your feet trying to block the shot Allowed Tyler harrow to get two free throws which he's going to, make and again that's just the stuff that he's got to work on in his. Development you put your hand, up you live with the results in those situations instead of jumping out of your. Shoes guards are always going to go for fakes against a big man in space because once big dudes start moving one way or the other or leave their, feet they're so big that it's hard for them to change direction and regain control of their. Body once they get you a lunge one way or to leave their, feet that's where the quickness comes in for the guard and they're going right around. You that's why it's about positional, defense staying, disciplined doing what the game plan needs from you in that sort of. Situation he'll get better in. Time he just needs. Reps The it would Do jalen a lot of good to this summer to start showing up to some workouts with some PERIMETER nba players and just ask to guard and be, like, oh you guys are doing. Ones let me hop in and just get reps guarding you guys one on, one because that's the kind of thing that will help him when it comes to defending out on the. Perimeter but, anyway herotize it and Then kate ends up banking in the pull up three Over bam at the. Buzzer really high degree of difficulty, shot but he got it up over the. Contest and, again when you shoot it right there at the top of the, key you can afford to miss. Long you missed, long but went right in off the back of the. Rim they're off the. Backboard kate finished with twenty five twelve and. Eleven it's his ninth triple double this, season his second twenty five point triple double of his. Career pissons are, fun, Man they have so many fun, subplots LIKE i don't really know what to think Of Ron holland yet BECAUSE i don't know what he'll become. Offensively but he had a really fun stretch of this game where he just ball pressured the hell out Of Alec burk's in the second, half and you could see him really becoming a defensive. Weapon sooner than. Later he was plus eleven in twelve. Minutes Malik beasley hasn't just been one of the best three point shooters in the league this. Year he's shown some really impressive scoring, chops like hitting tough shots off of different bits of footwork and ball handling over great, contests doing excellent work off the. Bounce he's shooting thirty eight percent off the dribble jump shots this, year waited for. Threes he's getting over a point per. Shot he's having a wonderful scoring. Season Tobias harris is having a great season and really coming around as a secondary shot creator for them after The Jaden ivy. Injury Asar thompson's in a different role than his. Brother Like, Amen thompson is getting a lot of inverted spacing situations because Of. Shanggoon i've talked about this concept with Like Aaron gordon and Nakolea. Jokic an athlete on the back line has infinitely more value when the big man is playing out around the elbows because that is pulling the rim protector out to guard the big man out around the. Elbows that allows those runways to appear more frequently along the back. LINE a Men thompson is going to have a lot of success feasting off of The shannggoon inverted. Spacing with The Detroit, pistons they don't have that type of inverted, spacing so those opportunities are fewer and further between for us are but you can still see some similar flashes of his vertical spacing ability of the wrecking ball that he can be on defense just like A Men thompson can. Be he ran some ball screen action of his own in the second half of this game With Jalen, dura and he got a good downhill rep against Kalel ware where he caved his chest in and got an easy little left handed layup right at the front of the. Rim, again The pistons are just fun and now they're only one game back Of indiana and the standings for the four seed and potentially home court in the first. Round that, said they do have a very tough remaining. Schedule the remaining schedule opponent combined opponent win percentages over fifty five, Percent SO i think they're probably headed for that sixth seed and a first round series against The, knicks unless obviously some things go. Differently that, said like we've talked about in the, PAST i think The pistons might actually match up better With New york than they do With indiana Or, milwaukee so that that would be a really fun first round. Series AND i guess we'll see when the time. Comes BUT i thought like the most interesting story of that game was just how lifeless The Miami heat. Looked they've lost nine in a, row but that's underselling the. Situation they're just four and sixteen in their last twenty. GAMES i, mean can you remember a worst stretch Under Eric. SPOULSTRA i, can't at least not in these serious years over the last half. Decade the twenty eighth in offense in that, span seventeenth in. Defense and the scary part is when you watch, them they literally look like a team that's let go of the. Rope that's not believing in what they're. Doing that's given up one of the Strangest heat Games i've watched in a long time in terms of, process just Because i'm so used to The heat being the sharp effort and execution team Hashtag heat. Culture they brought out their zone to start the fourth quarter and they immediately gave up a easy driving scoop shot foul On Dennis schroeder Because bam was kind of asleep on his back line and didn't make a. Rotation they gave up a dunk To Tobias harris in crunch. Time it was a three point game with five minutes, left And Tobias harris was just standing on the left wing completely. Unguarded caye just threw in the, ball he drove down the lane and dunked. It you know how bad of a transition defensive possession that. Is for it to be like a semi, transition like we're back on, defense we're not Guarding tobias and no one's helping at the. Rim that's beyond. Sloppy that's Very Unmiami, heat like just to sleep at the. Wheel but, again the offense was WHAT i found super. Bizarre what used to be a sophisticated system of ball in player movement has degraded to what looks like a pickup. GAME a lot of the. Time they have these weird possessions where they just Let Davion mitchell dribble the ball up the court and play like one on one off the, wing like He's John morant trying to initiate, offense LIKE i don't understand. It they have these super ugly bam at a bio possessions where he's just facing up in a triple threat and everyone's just kind of standing, around and then, suddenly with three seconds, left after he's done, nothing he'll either throw some bs up or he'll turn and run a last second dho With Duncan. Robinson a lot of rushed bad shots From Duncan robinson And Tyler. Harrow Tyler harrow shot a floater over a double team that hit the top of the. Backboard in the fourth, Quarter Duncan, robinson with eleven on the shot, clock took a, drifting fading jump shot out of the right corner that missed the basket by several. Feet there's no point in even discussing anything further with this team because they look like they aren't even. Competing most of these Plays i'm discussing took place in a close game in the fourth. Quarter it's just. Bizarre and the scariest thing is there isn't any upside to this. Situation harrow's having the best season of his, career and he looks like he's not good. Enough like IF i ask you who's Better Tyler harrow Or Austin, reeves it's. Close that's not enough to build a franchise. Around if you're waiting on Bam adebio to develop on, offense he's twenty seven years, Old i'm not sure that's ever gonna. Happen Kell aware has some, tools but he's super raw and mistake prone like most young. Players he certainly doesn't look like a franchise altering. Talent and, yeah they have some scrappy role player, dudes but they're useless without the star. TALENT i don't know what saves this. Situation it's definitely bleak times For heat fans for. Sure All, Right so a couple about a month, ago we got a new producer for a, Show Jackson. Staphone he's been doing incredible work for us adding, film you guys are always in the comments telling us how much you desperately want film in the, show And jackson's been fighting the good fight behind the, scenes trying to add film whenever he. Can we're gonna hit about fifteen minutes or so questions from the. Chat jackson is one of my favorite people to talk basketball. With he's gonna come on and help us answer some of these. Questions all, Right, jackson what do we got so?

Far what's going?

Far what's going?

On?

On?

Jason thank you for the, warm warm, intro and what's up to the hoops? Tonight, listeners, everyone just keep dropping your questions in the live in the YouTube chat AND i will pick the best. Ones but first it's From. Eric let's see. Here WHILE i think the most most of the recent play and playoff exits are due to, injury how long Can yiannis be largely out of THE nba title picture until he isn't a consensus top three player in the.

Jason thank you for the, warm warm, intro and what's up to the hoops? Tonight, listeners, everyone just keep dropping your questions in the live in the YouTube chat AND i will pick the best. Ones but first it's From. Eric let's see. Here WHILE i think the most most of the recent play and playoff exits are due to, injury how long Can yiannis be largely out of THE nba title picture until he isn't a consensus top three player in the.

WORLD i always have such a hard time with this sort of thing because of what happened With, steph what's currently happening WITH, kd what even happened With lebron early in the, Year and those players aren't even close to the athletic prime That giannis is still. IN i think that playing bad basketball and losing games is super, discouraging AND i think it's starting to wear on him a little. Bit he's not playing. WELL i talked about this in my show this. Morning his three worst field goal percentage games of the entire season took place in the last. Week, so like you can, tell he's starting to kind of get a little frustrated or at least be banged up or missing that extra bit of. Exertion but LIKE i, mean MY i don't know about, You. JACKSON i have a feeling The bucks if they lose in disappointing fashion the, summer that this whole thing's blown, up don't you, Think oh for?

WORLD i always have such a hard time with this sort of thing because of what happened With, steph what's currently happening WITH, kd what even happened With lebron early in the, Year and those players aren't even close to the athletic prime That giannis is still. IN i think that playing bad basketball and losing games is super, discouraging AND i think it's starting to wear on him a little. Bit he's not playing. WELL i talked about this in my show this. Morning his three worst field goal percentage games of the entire season took place in the last. Week, so like you can, tell he's starting to kind of get a little frustrated or at least be banged up or missing that extra bit of. Exertion but LIKE i, mean MY i don't know about, You. JACKSON i have a feeling The bucks if they lose in disappointing fashion the, summer that this whole thing's blown, up don't you, Think oh for?

SURE i mean it didn't feel like they got a fair shake on. There you're one of The dame experience because of the. Injuries but this, year assuming they're, healthy if they don't get past the second, round it's, like what are we doing all this?

SURE i mean it didn't feel like they got a fair shake on. There you're one of The dame experience because of the. Injuries but this, year assuming they're, healthy if they don't get past the second, round it's, like what are we doing all this?

For they can't. Score it's the craziest.

For they can't. Score it's the craziest.

Thing it's insane to Replace Drew holliday With Damian. Lillard the only place you're upgrading is on one side of the, floor, obviously and like by a LOT i THINK i think it's fair to say buy a lot and they still can't score. It they just can't get generate good.

Thing it's insane to Replace Drew holliday With Damian. Lillard the only place you're upgrading is on one side of the, floor, obviously and like by a LOT i THINK i think it's fair to say buy a lot and they still can't score. It they just can't get generate good.

Shots it's busy despite having a lot of shooting. Too like it's it's really strange to, me but LIKE i, mean it's one of those things where LIKE i can't write them off completely because you get in a playoff. Setting we haven't seen Playoff giannis since that second round series against The celtics when he was a literal wrecking ball that like single handedly extended that series to seven. Games and Obviously dame presents the problems that he. Presents the, teams and they do have a lot of three point, shooting and they do have a lot of, size but the they, just to, me they're not LIKE i always talk about like having an elite. Unit they don't have any a unit on either end of the floor THAT i think strikes real fear in.

Shots it's busy despite having a lot of shooting. Too like it's it's really strange to, me but LIKE i, mean it's one of those things where LIKE i can't write them off completely because you get in a playoff. Setting we haven't seen Playoff giannis since that second round series against The celtics when he was a literal wrecking ball that like single handedly extended that series to seven. Games and Obviously dame presents the problems that he. Presents the, teams and they do have a lot of three point, shooting and they do have a lot of, size but the they, just to, me they're not LIKE i always talk about like having an elite. Unit they don't have any a unit on either end of the floor THAT i think strikes real fear in.

Anybody, yeah AND i to your point About. GIANNIS i was talking about this with some other with some friends the other, day like teams that have the capability to win the title this, year AND i think you still have to include The bucks in that list because Of giannis could just turn into a superhero for two months and take them all the way. There but so because of, that it's hard to really write them. Off but they haven't looked very good at.

Anybody, yeah AND i to your point About. GIANNIS i was talking about this with some other with some friends the other, day like teams that have the capability to win the title this, year AND i think you still have to include The bucks in that list because Of giannis could just turn into a superhero for two months and take them all the way. There but so because of, that it's hard to really write them. Off but they haven't looked very good at.

Really much of.

Really much of.

Anything LIKE i, mean they're, good they're, fine they're like a fine basketball, team but they haven't looked elite at.

Anything LIKE i, mean they're, good they're, fine they're like a fine basketball, team but they haven't looked elite at.

Anything they're really, big AND i think that will give them the ability to present some problems that they get a favorable matchup here. There they've weirdly been good against The celtics for the last couple of, years like they've had some big wins, there but, like but, yeah so a lot of that stuff was schedule related To so it's hard for me to. Say here's the. THING nba history tells us that The bucks don't, Win so do with that information what you will, anyway.

Anything they're really, big AND i think that will give them the ability to present some problems that they get a favorable matchup here. There they've weirdly been good against The celtics for the last couple of, years like they've had some big wins, there but, like but, yeah so a lot of that stuff was schedule related To so it's hard for me to. Say here's the. THING nba history tells us that The bucks don't, Win so do with that information what you will, anyway.

All, right all, right next, one because you mentioned The, celtics and BECAUSE i am A celtics, fan will go From, chris do you Think boston's three point obsession will come back to haunt them in the playoffs this?

All, right all, right next, one because you mentioned The, celtics and BECAUSE i am A celtics, fan will go From, chris do you Think boston's three point obsession will come back to haunt them in the playoffs this?

YEAR i literally don't care about three point. VOLUME i care about shot, Quality like that is the only thing that matters to. Me, like if you if you are generating wide open catch and shoot. Threes as The Boston, celtics you're going to win the. Title, like if they generate wide open catch and shoot threes in every, round they're going to. Win to, me if they, lost it would manifest As tatum And brown missing a lot of really tough pull up jump shots and these ugly possessions where they only ask the ball around the perimeter and they take like kind of semi, contested, good not great types of. Threes that's when they get into their cold. Spells is when you have these extended stretches where they're getting good shots that we know The celtics can, make but they're not the kind of shots that they won the title with last. Year the shots they won the title with last year was when they would Beat Luka dancis off the dribble pass. Pass suddenly it's a wide open catch and shoot three off of a paint. Touch that's when they're at their. Best BUT i don't, THINK i, THINK i don't think like them missing a bunch of easy catch and shoot threes is how they.