The volume. I am so excited. We are less than a month away from going to the Sphere to see Dead End Company. I'm actually seeing three shows in a row if you haven't seen them yet. Even if it's not the Dead the Sphere is like an incredible concert venue experience. You guys got to get over there and check it out. Which is why I want to give the sponsor of today's video, Seek Geek a huge shout out. With over twenty eight million downloads, see Geek is the number one rated ticketing app. There are more than seventy thousand events listed on sea Geek, including concerts, sports, festivals, and more. Right now you can get tickets to the NBA and NHL playoffs, which are right around the corner, and again, the Major League Baseball season is not far behind. I love using sea Geek. It's super easy to use tons of tickets. You can see all the different amazing deals they have right now for the Dead In Company shows going on at the Sphere. See Geek has your back. Each ticket is rated on a scale of one to tense. You know if you're getting a good deal, so look for the green dots. That's what you're looking for. Green means good, red means bad when it comes to the deal. Plus, every ticket is backed by their buyer guarantee. And you know what I came through it for you guys. You can use code Hoops ten that's Hops one zero for ten percent off your next set of tickets at sea Geek. That's ten percent off any tickets with promo code Hoops ten that's Hops one zero. Make sure you click the link in the description to download the app and have the code automatically added to your account so you can use it later. Thank you, see geek. All right, welcome to Hoops to night here at the volume heavy Tuesday. Everybody. Hope all of you guys had a great weekend. It is good to be back at a nice little break there. Hopefu all of you guys enjoyed the tournament. My last ski day of the year. We get lucky because we had incredible conditions. On Sunday, A skied over twenty thousand vertical feet, which is the most I've done in the day this season. And then the temperature spiked by twelve degrees the next day and all the snow was ruined, so we got incredibly lucky. I was looking around at all the different mountains around the country and ski season I think is officially over at this point, but it was another great season. It's good to be back though. We had a lot of interesting basketball. We're gonna be hitting on three teams today. A team that's ice cold, the Los Angeles Lakers, who have dropped seven of their last ten. After that, we're going to talk about two teams that are red hot, the Suns, you have won five out of six, and the Pacers, who have won seven out of eight. I believe got another big win last night against the Minnesota Timberwolve. So a couple of hot teams and a cold team that we'll get out of here for the day. You guys know the joke before we get started. To subscribe to the Hoops and I YouTube channels you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLT so you guys don't misshow announcements. Some forget about a podcast feed wherever you get your podcast on our Hoops tonight, so it's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. We also have brand new social media fees on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, where our guy Jackson is creating some excellent content for us throughout the rest of the year. Make sure you guys follow us there in the last but not LEAs, keep dry up in mailbag questions. I'm recording a mail bag tomorrow, so we're gonna be taking questions from this episode as well as some of the episodes from last week. Make sure you guys drop your questions in the comments for that. All right, let's talk some basketball. So first of all, little disclaimer before we go any further here. I find this phase of the season late March early April to be the phase of the NBA season that has the most noise. There are a few phases like this, Like there's a phase like this that's kind of in late December early January too, but this I think is probably the worst of those phases where you're just gonna get some wild oscillations and effort from teams. For instance, Minnesota last night when I watched them against the Pacers, that was one of the worst games I've seen Minnesota play all season. They're one of the best transition defenses in the league, and they straight up we're not running back on defense to start that game. There's a lot of that kind of stuff based on a couple of different factors. Right like, you get to the trade deadline, and that usually is a phase where a lot of teams hit the gas, whether it's because they have new players or it's because they realize they're not gonna get new players and they have to kind of commit to what they have and try to make a run. And usually from that phase, from right after the deadline, right after the All Star Break flowing into the first phase of March, it's a lot of really high quality basketball where teams are hitting the gas, teams are really pushing it. Once we get to this late March phase, this is the phase where a lot of teams let their foot off the gas. In general, at various points, they're really other than the teams that are playing in the play in bracket area, the teams that are at real risk of entering into the play in tournament. Those are the teams that are still going absolutely crazy this time of year. But a lot of teams are letting their foot off the gas. A lot of teams are losing some of that steam from the All Star break, and you're gonna get a lot of really weird results, and so in general, I'm not going to overreact to anything around this time of year. That said, there are still lessons that can be learned. One of the things that I've talked about a lot is the idea that when a team struggles in any sort of basketball game, it usually is a combination of two factors. It's one the lack of urgency and force that's causing them to struggle to inflict their strengths right, They're not pushing their strengths to the forefront, so as their strengths fade back, the weaknesses that have always been there before. Every team, I think every team in this league has weaknesses, even the Celtics and the thunder the weaknesses that are there. When those strengths start to recede, they start to come to the forefront. And a lot of people can kind of hyper focus on those things and view them as like a death sentence, and I look at it more like these are just the flaws of the basketball team that are important to understand, that are important to focus on and try to rectify if you're in that locker room. But at the same time, a lot can be fixed just by bringing those strengths back to the forefront. So in short, we can learn stuff in March, but I don't find it to be in late March, I should say, but I don't find it to be the end all be all when we're evaluating these teams. And on that front, let's start talking about one of the two teams that's in my top tier of contenders right now, in the Lakers and the Cavs, that are struggling at this phase in the season. I want to talk about the Lakers. After the Magic game last night, JJ spent a good time amount of time talking about how good the Magic are, and I'm glad he did because that's kind of what happens in a lot of these situations, Like the NBA has damn near twenty really good teams, and so if on any given night you go in to Rhode Arena and you don't play your best basketball, you can get beat by anybody. Right, Like, we're gonna talk a little bit about these struggles. The Magic I think have a lot more firepower, so to speak. But the Bulls just went in and beat Denver last night. They've won seven out of nine. I think they're a feisty, young team. In the NBA, if you don't play good basketball, you get punished. That's just the way it is with the depth of talent that there is. And the magic has been they've been flying under the radar this year mostly because of injuries, and even when they've been healthy, they've just been kind of out of rhythm. But they present some real matchup problems for teams with these two really big forwards that are excellent at going through you and over the top of you, which is kind of something that you can't handle. Like Palo has a certain ability to get to his spots and get certain shots that nobody can really stop him. It's just a question of whether or not he makes them. Same thing goes for Frands. Like when Franz drives down that right lane line and he just elevates over the top and shoots that floating bank shop, your defense is just hope he misses. That's what you do, because he's just that big and strong and he's got that high release point on that little floating hook and you kind of just sit there and cross your fingers and hope he misses. And again, like we've talked about, the magic, the rub with them is they're the worst jump shooting team in the league by a mile. It's not even close, and it's true, but reputation doesn't mean shit once they toss the ball up in the air at center court to start a basketball game. The Magic have had more than a few hot shooting games lately. In their last nine games, they've gotten well over a point per jump shot in six of them. In those games, they're five to one. In the three of those nine games that they shot below one point per jump shot, they went zero to three. The Cavs gave them a bunch of open catch and shoot looks too. They made them, and they lost. So did the Bucks. They made them, and they lost. So did the Lakers. They made them and they lost. The Magic. When they're making jump shots, especially at home, riding all that energy, with their size and athleticism, they're a really difficult team to beat. And to make matters worse, the Lakers just aren't playing good basketball right now again, three and seven in their last ten. They're bottom ten in both defense and rebounding in that span. That said, I'm not really worried about it. They were decimated by injuries for the majority of the early phase of that stretch, Like, if you're down your entire starting front core, it's gonna be hard for you to win games. It's gonna be hard for you to defend and rebound, right, That's gonna be difficult for anybody to imagine to manage. And then the way they've responded to that is changing the way they play a little bit, trying to outscore teams, really leaning in on the offense of Luca and Austin. Well, that was probably the right strategy to try to float things in that stretch of games. But now they've got everybody back, and these last two games, it's been difficult for them to recapture that same identity, that same momentum that they had before. And again, when your first two games with the full squad are against a red hot Bulls team that's kind of beating everybody right now, and also is a bad matchup for the Lakers, which we'll get into in a minute, and then a magic team at home that, like we talked about, is really difficult to beat when they're making jump shots. So yeah, like if the Lakers and their first two games back with Lebron James are gonna be playing at a level well below what they're capable of. I think they're gonna get beat against good NBA teams that are playing good basketball. The point is is, I'm not going a bail on a team because of a short term trend when the team has been excellent in the long term. It's like the exact same thing I talked about when we were talking about the Calves. Their struggles in that three game losing streak are just examples of their weaknesses. That's examples of what it will look like if they do lose. And by the way, almost everybody loses twenty nine to the thirty teams will lose a playoff, will either lose before the playoffs or lose a playoff series this year, and so when they lose, it's usually those weaknesses that rise to the surface. But most of it comes down to the Calves just weren't leveraging their strengths the way they normally do in those games. The Lakers right now are struggling on both ends of the floor. We know they can defend they did it for two months. Just because they didn't do it for two games against a mediocre team and a decent team doesn't mean that that two months didn't happen. I believe Luka Dancis, Lebron James and Austin Reeves and Ruya Tamura and Jackson As are gonna be able to score the basketball. So I'm not gonna overreact to them struggling to score in a little stretch of games here in this late March stretch. Now, again, like I said, the weaknesses were on display, there is value in looking at what happened in those games. I thought the second half of the Chicago Bulls game was a great example of what we saw against Boston. And one of the things that I've feared with this particular build, which is their defense is predicated on swarming and helping and rotating off of non shooters or shooters that JJ Reddick is comfortable with giving up shots to. By the way, all the good defenses in the league do that to a certain extent, but in that sort of situation and by the way, they're gonna be able to do that against most teams. They're gonna be able to do that against Denver. I think they're gonna be able to do it against Okac too. There's gonna be three or four guys that they're gonna be like, we'll live with this guy taking a moderately contested catch and shoot three in a tough playoff game when the game's super physical and everyone's stressed and there's tons of pressure. Right, I think they feel the same way. They're gonna feel that way about any of those Western Conference teams that they face. But Boston showed when they really space the floor, it's like, oh shit, Austin's trying to guard that guy Tatum le Brown in space and they can't help. Luca's trying to guard this guy in space and they can't help. Now, all of a sudden, those personnel limitations at the point of attack defensively are brought to the surface. And one of the things I thought was fascinating is the Bulls just shot the basketball really well in that second half. Kobe White, Modus buzzellis knocking down those shots off of skips and swing passes. And so what ended up happening is it presented a conundrum where it's like, Okay, we're guarding Luca or Luca's guarding Josh Gitty in the right corner, and we're used to gapping off of guys that were comfortable with shooting so here's Lebron gapping into the driving lane on Luca's right hand side. Well, there's just a basic swing passed from Josh Gitty to Modus Buzzellis and he knocks down the three. Oh, you're running a drop coverage with Jackson Hayes and you're bringing over a low man. Help. We're just gonna whip the ball across the course. There's Modus Buzelis again, he's knocking down a three. Oh, you're uh. You have a guard switched on to Nikola Vusevich underneath the basket, and so you've got a guy kind of bracketing him on both sides as they're trying to battle a size mismatch. Oh, they skip the ball across the court. There's Kobe White. There's another three, And what ends up happening is, all of a sudden, everyone gets tentative, and now everyone doesn't want to help, and so now they're kind of staying closer to home. Now, all of a sudden, it's Luka Doncic on a cleared side against Kobe White, and Kobe White just beats him off the dribble and he gets baseline and gets an easy too. Why because the help isn't there. The help isn't there because they've been shot into this spacing. And you look on the floor and it's like Josh Gitty's been making threes. He had two more massive ones in crunch time to end the Nuggets game last night. You look at all these sequences and it's somebody run in action and it's like there's Boozellis in the corner and there's Kobe White on the wing. It's like, who's helping. You don't want to help in those situations. Oh, you know Jackson lingered in the paint on a transition push ahead and there's Vusovich in the left corner. Well, Vusovich can shoot. He knocked down the three. And so again, like while we like, the Lakers are gonna play the Bulls again on Thursday, and in that game, they might leverage their strengths and win because their strengths are undeniably stronger than Chicago's strengths. Chicago's playing really good basketball and they'll be at home, so they might win that game. The Lakers aren't playing super well, but the Lakers are capable of winning that game by leveraging their strength. That doesn't mean the weaknesses aren't there, and so that's why I view it as a value in the sense that, like if they end up in a matchup with a team like ok See and Oka See shoots the ball well, which again, as we've talked about, is the big swing factor for oka See, will they shoot the ball well. If they shoot the ball well and start really space seeing the Lakers out, they can have some issues because they've struggled with those quicker guards that can get dribble penetration, and SHA's probably the best in the world at it. Boston. That's the one team in the top tier of contenders that I look at as a really, really tough matchup for the Lakers for them to handle because of their ability to force them to guard in space versus guarding in the swarming kind of help and recover defense that they use with JJ Reddick, It's worth at least keeping an eye on those things like defending in space, dealing with overwhelming size. You saw quite a few examples in the Magic Game of Orlando just going through and over the top of the Lakers attacking a switching defense. This has been something I've consistently talked about when the Lakers play teams that have to run drop coverage, they're gonna score a million points. Lucas too good at it, But when they face these teams that can switch and force them to attack matchups, the Lakers are still currently struggling with that. Now, they should have the personnel. Theoretically, Austin, Lebron, and Luca would be excellent switch beaters. They should be able to eventually figure that out, but since the Luca trade in a relatively large sample, we haven't seen them figure that out yet. That is a weakness as of now. I'm still counting that as a weakness. Now, if before the end of the season they demonstrate the ability to handle switching defenses better, that'll be something that reflects their personnel and it's something we can account for. But right now it looks like a struggle. They look a little out of rhythm. As you bring Lebron back into the mix, there's still a lot of weird possessions with the starting group, where like I feel like they should just be playing through Luca more in those sequences. But you gotta try to reincorporate Lebron. You gotta find a way to keep Austin in the rhythm in this stretch. Ruyacha Mura coming off the bench as he works back from this injury, you can tell he's struggling to find where his shots are coming from and when he should be aggressive. There's just a lot of stuff that they're still working out. And again, I am of the belief that the two games with Lebron back are the aberration of what this team is capable of, in that the two months where they kicked everyone's ass and they won what fourteen straight games against teams that are five hundred are better. That to me is more of a reflection of what this team is capable of. But they're in a little bit of a funk right now. Let's see if they can figure that out over the course of the next couple of weeks. 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 DraftKings 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. 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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 DKNG dot co slash Audio all Right's talk about the Suns got a really fun win against the Milwaukee Bucks last night. Devin Booker wins the game on a pull up jump shot going towards his right around the right elbow area. KDE had just hit a three that put them up before Brook Lopez got fouled and went to the line and tied it and they drew up to play for KD, but Kyle Kuzma stunted off of the inbounder and got into that passing lane and actually forced the Suns to go a different direction. And what was kind of funny about it is, you know, Devin Booker has always talked about how he feels best shooting on his move towards the right hand right because he can really jump in that left right footwork and elevate and knock that shot down. And he actually got the crazy thing is he got two fantastic looks on similar plays earlier in the fourth quarter, ball screens around the you know, top of the wing, top of the key right wing area extended out to like thirty feet good ball screens from Nick So and just getting down to that right hand side, and he just missed them. But they were both threes. And one of the things that has been kind of weird with Book this year is he's been deadly from the mid range, but he's been struggling from threes. Fifty one percent on all two point jump shots, but he's thirty four point five percent on threes. And on the game winner, he just took an extra dribble and an extra side step to get a little bit closer to the basket into that mid range area where he's been more deadly, and he knocked it down. KD was fantastic all night. He had thirty eight. He's had eighty in the last two games. He's thirteen for eighteen from three in that span. And you could tell it feels good for him because he's hunting that shot. I thought the shot that he hit against Kuzma, the one that actually put the Suns up by one it's kind of a funky break rhythm shot. It didn't look like the kind of shot that you typically see KD take with a ton of fluidity. But on the pullback dribble, he realized that he was right at the three point line, and like, he just knows that he's got that three point shot that release dialed in, and so rather than trying to hunt a different type of shot that had a little bit more fluidity to it, He's just like, I got my space. I like this shot. I just made one on the left wing a few minutes earlier. I'm going to rise up and knock this down. And he did an unbelievable game from KD. Ryan Dunn had twelve. He was great in the fourth quarter, operating off of the attention that Kevin Durant and Devin Booker were getting. Book had a beautiful two on the ball sequence where he dropped it to Nick Richards short roll four on three, and Ryan Dunn just cut right out of the right corner and got a dunk. He had a huge above the break three that he hit on the left wing. On another sequence where they helped off of him to defend a ball screen three on two, he by the way, is in double figures six games in a row now, which has been a huge part because this is the five and one stretch for the Suns. This has been coinciding with Ryan Dunn scoring the basketball better fourteen points and six rebounds per game in that span, thirty five percent from three, which isn't the best percentage in the world, but the volume is up there. He's over six three point attempts per game in that span. It was a fun game though, too. They survived this hallacious late game run from Yannis, who was just on one for whatever reason. He ripped through Ryan Dunn and Nick Richards for baskets right at the rim a few times he just calmly stepped into a game tying pull up three in crunch time. He had this crazy defensive possession down the stretch where he like locked up Kdie and then like switched on to Devin Booker and like locked up Devin Booker like Janni's just even without Dame just threw a hell of a punch in that game, and the Suns managed to overcome it. So the question is, how are things coming together for the Suns right now? Again five and one In this last six game stretch and some impressive wins. They got that big win against the Calves as well as this win against the Bucks. They have a one Well, here's the thing. Let's just make it very simple to start. They're competing on the margins when they weren't earlier in the season. They have a one to twelve defensive rating in the span. That's solid. They're fifth in defensive rebounding in the span. That's very good. They're winning the points off of turnovers. Battle. If you defend and you rebound, and you don't hemorrhage points by making mistakes and giving the team pick sixes going the other way, you're gonna give yourself a chance to win. And then when you add to that that Kevin Durant and Devin Booker are playing super well, you're gonna win some basketball games. Katie's a just on a crazy run. It's fifty four percent from three on over seven attempts per game in the six game span. It's insane. Him and Devin Booker are combining for an efficient fifty one points per game between the two of them. You're seeing them put defenses in a bind. In the same way that I've talked a lot about this year in terms of compromising the defense at the point of attack by putting two on the ball. They consistently are drawing these blitzes and at the level coverages that are creating these advantages. And again they still make their mistakes, they still throw the ball away too much. Kevin Porter Junior had this like wild run as an off ball defender in the fourth quarter where he jumped passing lanes three times. Firs steals where they're just like a second late, a little bit too telegraphed, and then a little bit too much of like a looping, loose pass that was easy to jump, and so again there's stuff for them to tighten up. But they're doing the job of getting the defense in rotation consistently, and then they have a pattern. They know how they want to play, like OsO is getting more of like the defense minutes like and he ended up actually closing the final few possessions of this game. But you know they trust Nick Richards Moore as a roleman, but like OsO can do that as well. They have their kind of sequencing lined up where they have Ryan done cutting or spacing out of those lowman help situations to try to find the right spot for him to make the defense pay and Grayson Allen's out there doing his job, and it all just kind of has come together for them with the types of lineups that they want to close these games with. And again, when the Suns have been at their best this year, they've been a dominant clutch team. When they've been at their best this year, it's just been something they've struggled to maintain. Colin Gillespie has given them like a version of Tys Jones that the start like that is starting games, that makes fewer mistakes and like Tias Jones had another back cut that he gave up to aj Green in this game where I just like couldn't believe that he wasn't paying attention. There's a lot of those kinds of like off ball mistakes and just little decision making quirks with Tyas that undercut some of his success. And they've just kind of found a little bit of a groove here. And again, what I've talked about so much this year with these teams that are in the kind of middle to lower tier in the Western Conference is there's a lack of belief that is manifesting a lot in ugly basketball for long stretches. But then what happens is is they'll put a few games together where they play really good basketball, like, oh, here's a two week stretch where we're defending and rebounding and like, oh shit, we went five and one, right, But it's one of those things where, like as I've talked about, that happens for all of those teams, whether it's the Sacramento Kings, whether it's the San Antonio Spurs before Wemby got hurt, whether it's the Minnesota Timberwolves, these teams that are in that kind of lower echelon of the Western Conference, it's like, catch them in any two week span and you can talk yourself into them winning the conference. But watch them any other phase of the season and they kind of let go of that rope. And so again that's going to be the key. What I look for for is like a prerequisite for any legitimate top tier championship contender is put together a long, extended stretch where you're kicking everybody's ass where for months on end, you are proving that you are committed to the work that is necessary to get to where you want to be as a basketball team. They've done it for two weeks. The key is sustaining I believe in the ability of that group to be better than they have been. This partnership that they have now where it's like you can put OsO Igadaro with Ryan Dunn and Kevin Durant all on the floor at the same time. That's a hell of a lot of versatile length and athleticism on the front line. They can't be good on the defensive end. Can they be good enough to win the title? Obviously not? But can they be good enough to be a respectable Western Conference playoff team? Yes, they can, and that's gonna be. Really the question is whether or not they want to finish the season with that identity as they try to build towards next season, And like, look at it, it's like, oh, Ryan Ryan Dunn as a rookie is just ripped off a six game stretch where he's been fourteen points per game, knocking down threes at a decent rate and defending his ass off. What if he takes a leap next year? What if you hit on one or two veteran minimum signings. What if a couple of things change in terms of the culture of the franchise and suddenly you have a more dead serious basketball team next year. But it starts with building that identity now in finishing the season with it, win or lose in the postseason, and that's gonna be the thing I'm keeping an eye on. Here's a six game stretch to them defending and rebounding. Let's check in on them in another six games and let's see if it's something that they're long term committed to. All right, let's move on to the Pacers. I thought last night's game against the Wolves was a pretty thorough ass kicking. If you look at the box score, things were pretty even across the board in a bunch of specific areas, but there were three areas, or excuse me, two areas where things were very different. Both teams took thirty five threes, but the Pacers shot eleven percent better on those threes, and then the Wolves had five more turnovers and allowed fifteen points off of those turnovers. Those were the two big swing factors that sent this game in Indiana's favor. But there were some very specific reasons why those two dynamics went that way, and I think it's worth they're digging into a little bit. So let's start with this. Why did Indie shoot eleven percent better from three and No, my answer is not going to be shooting luck. It's because they generated better threes. More specifically, Indiana generated eleven more catch and shoot threes. Both teams took thirty five more of Indiana's were catching shoot threes thirty to nineteen. Of those thirty catch and shoot threes, seventeen were unguarded, compared to just six unguarded threes generated from Minnesota. This is one of the big ways that the difference between Anthony Edwards and Tyrese Haliburton's play styles were on display last night, and that ant has different strengths and had a shit game. The Wolves as a team had a shit game. I'm less focused on that right now. I want to focus on specifically what allows the Pacers to generate open threes the way that they do. Tyrese is a relentless advantage hunter. Early in the game, the Wolves didn't seem too interested in running. They're a good transition defense normally, but they weren't in that first quarter. Tyrese identified it. Just kept pushing the ball up the floor with kick ahead passes. The Pacers got a bunch of open threes as a result out of that. Out of those sorts of push aheads identifying actions, Tyrese is so good at this. Finds like the two or three different actions that the team doesn't want to switch, meaning there's baked in advantage, whether it's through putting two on the ball or drop coverage where he can get downhill so he can get baked in dribble penetration. It allows him these openings that he's relentlessly going to hit. And there were a lot of those actions. They obviously weren't switching the Turner pick and pop, so they went to that a bunch. They got a bunch of advantages from Turner at the top of the key. Turner just didn't shoot the ball super well in this game. He had three wide open threes, went one for three on him. He was one for five from three. Overall, the Wolves were being I don't know if these were boxed switches or if it was the game plan. And again like the Wolves were just off all night. But the screening actions that brought Mike Conley into the screen or Anthony Edwards or Julius Randall, like they'd either put two on the ball or they just botched the switch entirely, and Siakam and Nie Smith and Nemhard were like slipping out of the screens and getting clean catches the out near the three point line, even just like simple passes where Minnesota would make an unforced error, and there were plenty of them these in this game. Like okay, like Rudy go Bear in a transition sequence, is gonna play the basket and forget about Miles Turner trailing. Well, we're just gonna pitch it back to him and he's gonna get a wide open three. Like oh, like, adren Emhard's standing in the right corner unguarded because Minnesota's just not matched up, and so Tyrese isn't gonna run action or do something. He just like threw a skip pass and adren Emhard drove the clothes out that forced Gobert to help. Miles Turner just teed up right in front of the rim. They dropped it off and the boom, a little easy floating shot right in front of the rim for Miles Turner. That's literally just a defensive breakdown that Minnesota made and Tyree's just identified it. Just threw a simple skip pass and got an easy two points out of it. Like all that stuff I talked about early in the game in terms of like transition, kick aheads those are the exact same sort of thing. Like his basketball brain is just programmed to be like open man, throw it every single time. But he also has such great court awareness that he's aware of that sort of stuff every single time that it happens. One of the big things that stood out to me last night, but it's something that I've always loved about Tyrese's game, is just the way that he plays at full speed as much as possible, Like Tyrese knows that one of his weaknesses is that he doesn't have like an elite first step, Meaning if he's like heads up with an elite defensive player, he's going to struggle to get separation. It's like that king of the court concept that I've talked about a lot. Right. If I take two players and I put them in a one on one situation on the wing, and the defender is just squared up ready to go, it's so much harder to score. But if I put that defender on the midline and I give him the ball and I say, you got to pitch him the ball and close out. It's gonna be a lot harder for him to get a stop because you can use his momentum against him. His momentum is coming at you too hard. Any sort of dribble move either way or a pump fake, you're gonna get him to overcommit and you're gonna be able to go around closes out too short. You can rise up and shoot. You can as he's sprinting. If he's overplaying one angle, you can use that momentum against him to try to get an advantage going the other way. Well, there's kind of like an inverse of that concept with a running start. I found this really fascinating. So we can all agree that it's harder to score when you're all squared up. It's harder for the defender if he has to sprint at you. But now imagine a different scenario where the defender is standing still and the offensive players sprinting at him. Imagine the defensive players sitting in his stance right at the top of the key, and I'm starting at half court and I get going downhill at you, and I hit a move as I'm getting into your area a little bit it's going to be so much harder for you to manage that because my body's already moving at full speed and you've got to come from a complete stop to beat me to a spot. It's extremely difficult to do. And again, like Tyrese knows that he doesn't have this elite start quickness to just beat people off the dribble super easily, so he plays from a running start as much as possible. Semi transition is a place where you'll see this a lot. Again, This to me is like in the process of a transition possession converting to half court, so everyone's kind of running back. Everyone's not really set, but you do have all ten players in the front court, and like Tyresee will just take a ball screen from like thirty feet from the basket before the defense is really set. But it's because he's running like he's got the ball, he's got the alet, he's running up the floor, and Turner will just come up and set like a brush ball screen like thirty thirty five feet from the basket while Tyresee is going full speed. This allows him to consistently get downhill in those ball screen actions. Even in the half court, like he'll use retreat dribbles, like he'll run the ball screen, but he won't like what he has and so he'll retreat out to half court and then he'll get a running start again as he starts to come downhill at you. He had a big one for a step back three that he hit over nas Red in the late third quarter of this game. Same type of play, like retreat, dribble out attack again. He wants to get that head of steam because once he gets going, that neutralizes his weakness, which is that first step quickness, and it accentuates his strengths, which is like he's pretty damn fast, great ball handler, good shooter, guy that can make all the passing reads that you need to make in those situations. He'll run a lot of give and go action. It's like, oh, Jada McDaniels is ball pressuring me here, nakaile Alexander Walker's ball pressuring me, like thirty seven thirty eight feet from the basket. I don't like my advantage right now, we're trying to run a double drag. Well, instead of me trying to dribble through all this ball pressure, he'll just pitch it to Miles Turner and then sprint into a dh O. Steph has done this over the years a lot as a counter to ball pressure, same sort of thing. He can get from point A to point B faster without the basketball, so he'll give it up and he'll sprint there and then he'll catch All of a sudden, he's going downhill. He had to play like that in the second half. Double drag ball pressure pitches it to Turner. By the time he catches it, he's free and clear running downhill and easy breezy bank shot off the glass when the drop coverage defender wasn't there. He's trying to make sure that he's consistently playing at a running start, where he's most difficult to deal with. Ironically, though, he actually put this game away as a score. He got a wide open three off of an offensive rebound in the early third quarter that he made along the left wing. Then he hit three super tough threes that blew the lead open to twenty. All of them were running start action. He had one that was one of those semi transition ball screens I was talking about. Got a ball screen. Go Bear was the one in the drop and he was coming so hard at him downhill Gobart was in his retreat and then Tyres just stepped back to the right wing and because he had that running start, go Bear couldn't recover. Knocks down the pull up three. The nas Red play we talked about, that was one of those retreat dribble sequences where he pulled the ball back out to half court to get his momentum going again to play against He hit this ridiculous three again against Anthony Edwards where there's a DHO with Siakam and you can literally see watch Tyres on this play. He's on the right wing and as Pascal goes to do the dhow you can see Tyree's gallop take like a galloping step back towards half court so that he can go into the DHO with speed. And when he gets the dhho, he takes a hard dribble towards the left and he snatches it back behind the back and you can literally see Anthony Edwards break off towards that left handed dribble. Tyree's gets plenty of separation and he just eases into a pull up three there at the top of the key. That one put them up by twenty again. It's just understanding these basic basketball advantage sequences in understanding that he can get those advantages faster and more frequently when he plays with the running start. It puts the primary focus on his strengths, which is that he's fast and that he can dribble, shoot and pass, and it takes the focus off of his weaknesses. Both of the pacers. I wanted to shout out Miles Turner. He didn't shoot the ball super well in this game, but I thought his rim protection was super valuable. It's a great matchup for him because of go Bear Like he can really hawk the rim, and he just did that. He did a great job. If he had four blocks, he for several misses around the rim obi top and he came in the game and immediately hit a movement three out of the right corner. There was a a I can't remember which team's broadcast I was watching because I had the volume off, but they had like the sideline camera angle like down on the floor of him running into that movement three out of the right corner, and just beautiful footwork. You can see him plant that left foot, swing that right foot around, gets straight up and down out of a run and just calmly rises up and knocks down the shot. I always find it fascinating when really good athletes start to blossom as shooters, because the toughest part about shooting is actually getting open when you're a good shooter, and the athletes are the ones that can use their tools to actually get good looks and situations that a lot of lesser athletes can't. He ended up hitting six threes in this game. The last one he hit on TJ McConnell's kickout was another example of him like quickly resetting his base under duress and rising up and getting good lift and knocking down a shot. He was awesome in this one. And then I just want to shout out the team's defense. They forced the Wolves into seventeen turnovers, mostly just by making things difficult out front, like denying swing passes at the top of the key, denying entry passes to the high post. They prayed on Minnesota's just sloppy personality in that game and forced him to throw the ball away a bunch. I talked about the gap in the open threes right like I have the numbers right here was the Pacers generated seventeen unguarded threes in Minnesota generated six. A big part of that was just their closeouts. It wasn't just ty Reese's shot creation like on Minnesota's end of the floor. The Pacers were just better and quicker at erasing the openings that showed up as soon as they opened up. Pacers have won seven out of eight, third in defense and third in defensive rebounding over that span, which is kind of a hilarious trend for a team that has struggled mightily in those two areas during the Tyreese Halliburton era. This has been a team that has struggled to defend and rebound for the most part in this era. But they're doing it right now and it's not hard to figure out. They have that combination of perimeter athleticism. They got two really good perimeter defenders and them Hard and Nie Smith, and they've got rim protection that's going to give you a pretty high baseline. Now. It's worth mentioning the teams they've played in that span, aside from Milwaukee, have allowed Miles Turner to stay at the rim, which has helped them to anchor their defense set in that side of things. But they're competing on that end of the floor. I think We're headed for a Pacers Bucks first round series again, which would be a ton of fun on the Minnesota front. I just thought they played like shit. I thought Aunt settled for a lot of tough shots and didn't make them. Dante was forcing a lot of tough threes too. He's playing like he was Steph Curry. You could actually see some weird body language stuff from some of the other Wolves during some of those shots. Their defense was abysmal right out of the gates, one of the best transition defenses in the league, and they just weren't running the floor again, and they gave up eleven possessions in transition in the first quarter alone. They only gave up thirteen points because Indy just happened to miss some open looks. But they were really bad there. They were not getting matched up a bunch. They gave up wide open shots to Obi top And and Aaronee Smith on plays where they just didn't get matched up in the half court, unnecessary overhelp situations where they're giving up easy close out opportunities by just not paying attention. I just didn't think it was a very sharp game from them at all, and I think it follows falls under that category I was talking about earlier in terms of late March basketball, and I'm just not gonna overreact to late March basketball with anybody. All Right, guys, it's all have for today. As always, a sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We're gonna be back tomorrow covering the jam packed Tuesday Night Slate. We're also going live on Wednesday night after the final buzzer of Celtic Suns, so I will see you guys then. What's up guys? As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting hoops 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.