Thunder-Lakers Reaction: OKC has 70 win potential + Jokic & Nuggets dominate, Steph leads Warriors W

Thunder-Lakers Reaction: OKC has 70 win potential + Jokic & Nuggets dominate, Steph leads Warriors W

All right, welcome to hoops tonight here at the volume heavy Thursday everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week so far. Got a jam-packed show for you guys today. We’re going to be hanging out west. I have three games I want to hit on as the Oklahoma City Thunder incredibly impressive two-day set. Just absolutely beating the [ __ ] out of the Warriors and the Lakers. I want to dig into some numbers there that are super exciting for Thunder fans. Thunder fans. I want to talk a little bit about the specific reason why I thought the Lakers struggled so much last night later on in the show. Uh Nicole Joic a double nickel 55 against the Los Angeles Clippers. Just absolutely fried beats the Zubots as well as Brook Lopez was hitting a ton of threes. I want to get into a bunch of stuff from that game on the perspective of both teams. And then at the tail end of the show, the Golden State Warriors got a very nice bounceback win on the road in San Antonio. Draymond Green did number one-on-one as a defender against Victor Webbyama. Steph Curry breaks out at with a 30 uh 31 point second half as the Warriors get a big win there. I want to dive into some stuff from both of those teams in that game as well. There was also a lot of Eastern Conference hoops last night. I didn’t get a chance to get to those games this morning because I ran out of time, but I would like to get to them in tomorrow’s show. We have a very light slate tonight. So, if you have any questions regarding last night’s Eastern Conference games, drop them in the YouTube comments in this show and we will get to them in tomorrow morning’s mailbag. You guys know the drill. Before we get started, subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don’t miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at_jasonlt so you guys don’t miss show announcements. Don’t forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It’s also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jax is doing incredible work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok. Make sure you guys follow us there for more content throughout the season. And then last but not least, if you want to get mailbag questions in, again, tomorrow is our mailbag. This is your last episode to get questions in before tomorrow’s mailbag. Again, just go into the YouTube comments, write mailbag with a colon, write your question on the full episode on YouTube, and we’ll get to those in our Friday mailbags throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let’s talk some basketball. So, in a stunning repeat of what happened the previous night against Golden State, the Thunder defense just completely dismantled a Western Conference contender. This time on national television and this time against a Lakers halfcourt offense led by Austin Reeves and Luca Donuch that had been one of the very best in the league to start this season. They uh the Lakers that going into the night I think they were second or third right right in that range in overall half court offensive rating. Even after last night they’re still I believe sixth in half court offensive rating. That was one of the best half court offenses in the league. And the Thunder just belt to ass just completely shut them down. Uh the Lakers posted a stunning 0.78 points per halfcourt offensive possession. just ridiculous defensive performance from the Thunder. I was worried about how well Case Wallace would hold up on Luca because he’s giving up so much size. This is something we talked about in yesterday’s show and we talked about at the beginning of the stream on playback after losing him a few times on the opening possessions. I thought he was just fine in that matchup the rest of the game. I thought all of Oklahoma City’s defenders did a fantastic job pressuring Luca on his way up the floor. But then as Luca would get downhill and as he’d get into that scoring zone in that like, you know, 18 to 12 ft kind of range, short range around the elbows or so, as soon as he’d get into that area, they’d disconnect and they’d get their hands off. So then when Luca would go with those kind of janky gathers to try to get up into his mid-range jump shot, he they were keeping him off the foul line for the most part. They forced him into a lot of kind of just awkward shot attempts where it seemed like Luca was more fixated with trying to draw a foul than just playing basketball. And it worked. They held him to just seven for 20 from the field. Early in the game, I thought OKC did a wonderful job of pressuring Luca in their blitzes. Got a bunch of deflections and forced him into four turnovers in his first shift. They did an awesome job on Luca. No problems there. And then they basically just completely neutralized Austin. And I thought they won that battle from the opening tip. You could tell in Austin’s first shift. We were watching it on playback with Anthony Irwin and just right away you could tell there was a lack of aggression. He gets like a little ball screen and Hartinstein’s pretty far back in a drop. And this is a guy in Austin who’s been torching teams all year by attacking, attacking, attacking, getting into bodies, drawing fouls, getting all the way to the rim for finishes. and Austin like settled for like a pretty tough drifting drop coverage three on one of his first attacks when there was a nice big runway in front of him with plenty of opportunity to get ahead of steam towards the basket and he just didn’t want to. I thought that the psychological side of it for Austin, he just didn’t have the right approach coming into the game and then over the course of the game when Austin looked to attack, he just couldn’t get anything going. He was just 4 for12 with five turnovers in this game. And you know, I saw a lot of negativity surrounding Austin after the game. And like to be very clear, like I don’t think it necessarily has anything to do with whether or not Austin is good enough to justify a max contract or whether or not he’s good enough to be Luca’s number two. To me, like, set that aside for a second. It’s more just if you’re going to have any shot to beat Oklahoma City, you need Austin to be better. So, if Austin can’t be better than that against Oklahoma City, you’re dead on arrival. I think he can be better than that, but he certainly wasn’t last night. The Thunder defense took two guys who had essentially been frying everyone else in the league and just completely shut them down. Combined 11 for 32 from the field for Austin and Luca. Generally kept them off the foul line relative to the amount of grifting they were trying. Nine turnovers in a Laker offense that has been one of the best half court offenses in the league could not score in the half court. I think we all might still be underrating this Thunder defense, if that’s even possible. I came up with a couple of basic stats this morning to demonstrate this to you guys. So, according to cleaning the glass, the Thunder have played 329 non-garbage time possessions with Shay Gildas Alexander off the floor. 329 possessions. That’s like more than three games worth of possessions. Three 48 minute games. With all that time with Shay off the floor, they are outscoring teams by 21 points per 100 possessions plus 21 net non-garbage time. No Shay. They are whooping teams asses without their best player on the floor. And it’s because in those possessions they are logging a 91 defensive rating. That is off the charts good. They blew that game open last night. Like when Shay left the game, they were up double figures. I think they were up like 12. They blew that game open in the early second quarter last night with Shay off the floor just with defense just blowing up Laker offensive possessions. Alex Caruso’s ripping uh Austin Reeves at half court. They’re running down hitting threes, getting easy baskets on cuts. AJ Mitchell was torching the Lakers just coming off a simple twoman game and hitting Hartinstein in the pocket. The Thunder annihilated the Lakers. in like a five minute stretch to start the second quarter and blew the game open because they are so damn good on defense. And the crazy thing is is it doesn’t seem to have any sort of connection to who’s on the floor. You take Chad off the floor for instance, and Chad, by the way, I mean, I’m not trying to undersell Chad. You watch Chad, he is the anchor for this defense. He’s unfreaking believable on defense. He was amazing in each of the last two games. But even if you take Chad off the floor, so no Chad, no Shay, no JDub, so none of their three best players, they have a plus 24 net rating in 158 non-garbage time possessions because of how elite they are on defense. You take Dort off, they’re great on defense. Even if you take Alex Caruso off the floor and Alex Caruso the the on numbers with Alex Caruso on the floor with their defense are like completely outrageous. You take Caruso off the floor, they have a 106.5 defensive rating, which isn’t transcendently great like it is when Alex is on the floor, but that’s still a 93rd percentile defense. This preaches organizational excellence from the top down with Sam Prey targeting high motor, high IQ, athletic defensive players that can also play in Mark Dagnel’s system all the way down to Mark Dagnel and just the standards that he’s implementing, the expectations, the attention to detail, the level of focus, energy, and intensity that he breathes into that team from the top guy all the way down to the 15th man to the example that Shay Gil Alexander sets. He’s getting deep posted by Rui Hachimura in a transition play and he’s fighting his ass off to scrap over the top and poking the ball away on the post entry, getting deflections, defending on the ball. Everyone from the top down is completely bought into this Thunder basketball identity. And so regardless of who’s on the floor, they look the same. They they look the same. It is a consistency down the entire organization. They’re chewing teams up and spitting them out with this defense. And then you bring in the fact that they have a perennial MVP candidate and Shay Gildas Alexander that’s going to drop an efficient 30 every single night. Or the fact that Chad Homegrren this year is averaging 19 points per game on 72% true shooting. drilling pick and pop threes, drilling spacing threes along the left wing, putting the ball on the floor and scoring in the short range with little right shoulder fadeaways or left shoulder fadeaways. The dunker spot work that he does. He catches everything and dunks everything when he uh is left open underneath the basket, even if he’s outside the lane line. It it’s JDub’s coming back to this. AJ Mitchell is blossoming into the next great Thunder role player. as a team, they’re growing as processors and just their read and react sequences. I was talking with an OKC fan on playback last night. Shout out Will. And we were talking about this, but like they’re fun to watch now. There were times in the past where it was like, okay, we grind grind things down in defense and then it’s a lot of Shay one-on-one and the ball doesn’t move really well. There’s a lot of breaking threes. They move the ball really well now. They have great player movement. the cutting, the movement, the the the variety, and the way that they look to attack. I’ve really enjoyed watching them this year. And if you look at their schedule, they’re about to win their next six games for sure. And then after that, you know, obviously every game on the schedule, you could argue they’re going to be favored. This team is about to be 18-1. That would mean they’d only need to go 52 and 11 to get to 70 wins. That’s less than a 68 win pace and they won 68 games last year. So all they have to do is essentially maintain the pace they had last year and they’re going to win 71 games right now. At this point, I think it’s roughly a coin flip that they’re going to get to 70 and they have a good chance to make a make a run at the all-time record, the 73 wins record. Because if you have that flexibility to be that good, regardless of who’s on the floor, if you’re consistently chewing up and spitting out teams with your defense, even with two of your top three perimeter defenders out of the lineup, two of your top four perimeter defenders and JDub and Lud Dort out of the lineup, if you’re still getting stops with Chad Homegrren off the floor, if you’re still able to run up the score and blow teams out when your MVP level ball handler is on the bench, The the last time we saw anything like this was the KD Steph Warriors and that had two of the top three players in the world. Two of the top 12 players of all time. It had one of the very best defensive players of this era if not the best in Draymond Green. Klay Thompson who was the second best shooter in the world in an elite perimeter defender. A guy who was capable of going for 37 points in a quarter. And Andre Guidala arguably the best wing defender of his era. certainly in the top two or three and a beautiful connective fit with that Warriors offense. It was like this greatest roster ever assembled and OKC is chewing up and spitting out teams at that level right now with guys out of the lineup. I just I just couldn’t be more impressed with the Thunder and the way they’ve looked to start this season. On the Lakers front, there’s going to be a tendency over the next couple of days to focus on the roster and its limitations. And I don’t want to pretend those limitations don’t exist. The Lakers did look unathletic last night. DeAndre Aton really seemed to struggle with just the level of intensity and physicality underneath the basket. You know, if Ruy wasn’t getting a wide open three, he seemed to be struggling to score. He put the ball on the floor in the mid-range a little bit and was struggling to get off there. Like there’s there’s certain things where they looked a little athletically overmatched last night. But I always start with the Stars. Everything for me trickles down from that idea. of exactly what I said about uh Stephen Curry in the Tuesday night game. If you guys remember, Steph couldn’t break down Oklahoma City’s defense last night. Luca Donuch couldn’t break down Oklahoma City’s defense, and neither could Austin. Luca was drawing two to the ball, but he wasn’t beating the blitz with the right pass. He had a couple of buckets that he got out of it, but there were a lot of turnovers. And there were several sequences where he made like the wrong read. Like, oh, the guy’s wide open in the corner and he’s actually guarded on the wing, but I’m going to throw it to the wing where now it’s got to be a second pass to the corner. And so now Shay can make the rotation to Jake Laravia. He’s no longer open. The blitz worked or a deflection or a pass that didn’t quite get into the right spot. And it’s not 100% Luca’s fault. There were some plays where guys were there were several sequences where I thought instead of short rolling, guys were rolling too hard to the rim. And now all of a sudden you’re just making for some really difficult passing angles. I don’t want to pretend like it was all Luca’s fault. But the bottom line is when Luca was in single coverage or drop coverage situations, he was unable to score. When he got two to the ball, he was unable to compromise the defense with the right read. Going to Austin, same exact concept. unable to score when he had scoring opportunities, unable to consistently generate quality advantage opportunities when he would pass the ball. From there, I don’t expect anybody in the league to just thrive in any sort of matchup against an elite basketball team if you can’t set them up with advantages. In other words, I don’t care if that was Herb Jones at the three, Aaron Gordon at the four, and Jared Allen at the five. just three excellent above average starters as role players, two-way guys at that pos at those positions next to Austin and Luca. They’re still getting their ass kicked last night. If Austin and Luca can’t compromise Oklahoma City’s defense, I think it’s important to separate those issues. Yes. Do the Lakers have an athleticism shortcoming? Absolutely. Is is LeBron going to be able to help? Yeah, to some extent. Is it going to be enough? Probably not. They’re probably still going to need some sort of assistance in athleticism in two-way play at some point down closer to the trade deadline through the flipping of contracts like Maxi Kleba and Gabe Vincent and things along those lines. Like, yeah, that that’s a conversation we can have, but it they’re dead on arrival. If Austin and Luca can’t generate quality shots, if LeBron can’t help them generate quality shots against the Thunder. We talk about this all the time. It’s about advantage creation. If you establish easy opportunities for your role players because of how good your stars are, they’re probably going to thrive. If you don’t generate quality opportunities for them because you’re not setting them up with great advantages, they’re probably going to look limited. And that’s what it came down to for me last night. Austin and Luca weren’t breaking the Thunder defense at the point of attack, which was shortening all those windows, all those driving lanes, all those closeouts. Every little opportunity was just tight and congested. And so, of course, they really struggled against an elite defense when they weren’t being gift wrapped advantages, which is the job of Austin and Luca. So, I just think it’s I think you’re going to see a lot of talk about the Lakers roster over the course of the last over the course of the next couple of days before they play again. I think that’s kind of missing the point of what happened last night. If Austin and Luca go in there and they drop 60 on 65% true shooting and they don’t turn the basketball over and OKC starts reacting to them and they make the kick out passes and the reads that get guys quality opportunities, I think Ruie has a better game. I think Eightton has a better game. I think Jakeia has a better game. I think all of them have better games. I think those things are connected. And I just think I I think last night was mostly about OKC just destroying the Laker offensive initiators. One last note on the Lakers before we move on. Luca Donic in his last five games has taken 88 jump shots and he’s gotten just 64 points, just 0.73 points per shot. It’s been something that kind of started to show in that Miami Heat game and it’s been pretty consistent down the line over the course of the last week and a half. If Luca is not making jump shots, it kind of takes him down from that like I’m in the conversation with the very best player in the world like Jokic to I’m just another guy in that top tier. And that that to me is kind of like a a differentiator between the levels that Luca can reach. And he just hasn’t been shooting the jump shot super well as of late. Obviously small sample size. It was a small sample size when he was shooting amazing to start the year. It’s a small sample size when he’s shooting terribly right now. Ultimately, what level this team can get to is going to have a lot to do with what does Luca’s large sample jump shooting look like. Is he going to be able to consistently knock down those short jump shots, especially when they get into big playoff moments? Just something to keep an eye on as we get further into the season. Today’s show is brought to you by our new presenting sponsor, Hard Rock Bet. We’ve entered into our favorite time of the year. Between the NBA and college hoops, there’s basketball on every night, and every night is a shot to score a major bucket on Hard Rock Bet, your home for hoops action all season long. If you haven’t tried your first bet on Hard Rock Bet yet, there’s still time for you to get $150 in bonus bets if you win. Just place a $5 bet. And if it hits, you get not only your winnings, but $150 in extra bonus bets. And if you’re not sure what to place your first bet on, check out the Hard Rock Bet Stats Hub. It’s loaded with trends, streaks, and stats to help guide your picks. Numbers don’t lie, and neither does the data in there. Check out the stats hub now. Get the edge and bet with confidence. The Hard Rock Bet Sportsbook app is the only legal sports book for whenever you’re in Florida. And it’s also live in Arizona, Ohio, New Jersey, Indiana, Tennessee, Virginia, Illinois, and Colorado. Coming soon to more states, too. Plus, Hard Rock Bet offers new promos every single day. So, whenever you’re listening, just open the app and check out what you’ve got any day of the week. Download the Hard Rock Bet app and make your first deposit. Nuggets Clippers did not look great early for the Nuggets last night. Cam Johnson left the game with some kind of like arm shoulder injury in his shooting arm. So, let’s hope that’s not too serious. Christian Brown sprained his ankle. Jamal Murray was having a rough shooting night. The Denver defense was rough to start the game, but Nicole Joic kept them in the game by just absolutely frying the Clippers center rotation. He got a lot of one-on-one opportunities against Zubots. And Zubots again is like in theory one of the better Joic defenders in the league as a guy that can kind of match his size and mobility and IQ. Uh, and he just cooked him. Just absolutely cooked him last night. Then Brook Lope Brook Lopez came in. He cooked him too. He torched both of them in pick and pops and spacing situations. He hit five out of six threes last night. He’s up to 39% on the season. That was a big part of what kept them in the game early. He ended up hitting a big three in the second half, too, that capped off a run that put him up by 14. But he had 33 points in the first half alone to keep the Nuggets afloat while things were coming apart a little bit. And then in the second half, David Adelman starts Tim Hardaway Jr. and Spencer Jones in the Cam Johnson and Christian Brown spots. And as a group, they locked in on defense and they started to get a bunch of stops. They started to get out in transition. Yokas Joic got a couple easy transition buckets. Tim Hardaway hit a couple of threes with that unit. You know, watching him with the starting group was super interesting to me because I think there’s this like kind of uh there’s this concept that can feed on itself with catch and shoot shooting when you’re being aggressive. So like Joic is hunting Tim Hardaway Jr. with kickout passes because he knows Tim wants to shoot. He knows Tim will shoot and Tim’s knocking down shots. And I think it’s like, you know, we’ll see what this Cam Johnson injury ends up being and how long he ends up being out. I’m hoping it’s not something serious going on uh with his shoulder. But again, when you look at Michael Porter Jr. and what his fit was like with this team. He was so aggressive off the catch that it was kind of self-feeding in the sense that as he would make shots, guys would hunt him more that would lead to more opportunities, which was why Michael Porter Jr. was the kind of guy that on any given night could go for 25 30 points and just kind of was a ceiling razor for that Denver offense. There’s been a bad combination with Cam of like not super aggressive off the catch but also not making shots. And I just thought it was interesting seeing Tim with the starters in that second half uh like that first shift in the second half because it’s a reminder that like this stuff will feed on itself. Like I watched Joic hunting Tim because he knows he wants to shoot and he knows he’s going to knock the shot down. And that both of those areas are kind of tilting in the wrong direction for Cam. And I just want to see when Cam comes back. That’s what Michael Porter Jr. was doing. That’s what Tim Hardaway Jr. is doing. Be super aggressive off the catch. That will then allow the team to start hunting you more which will then help you get an even better rhythm where then we can start seeing Cam go for 20 25 points in a night and be that ceiling raising player that we know he’s capable of being. So Joic ends up hitting a three at the top of the key that makes it what 90 to 56 or 90 to 76 if I remember correctly. That kind of blew it open and that Denver never really looked back from there. Joic finished the game with 55 points, 12 rebounds and six assists. And again, that’s one of the best Joic defenders in the league last night that uh that Joic just looked completely comfortable against. Made him look hopeless. Jokic in the post. I want to zoom in on this concept for a minute. When Joic shoots out of the post this season, he is 34 for 44 from the field. That’s 77%. We often talk about his short range touch, right? Like the big difference between Joic and a lot of the other elite scorers in NBA history is he’s not a guy that’s going to get to a mid-ranger that he makes half the time or a three that he’s going to make 40% of the time. He’s going to get to something closer to the basket and he’s going to hit it twothirds of the time. That’s been the calling card for Joic. Mid60s on floaters and hooks at his absolute peak high 60s right around 70%. Right. Well, how about the mid70s? Yokic has started this season 28 for 38 on floaters and hooks. That’s 74% from the field on those shots. He’s 64% on mid-range jumpers. That’s crazy. 81% on layups. That’s crazy. He’s somehow even more deadly as a short-range shot maker than he used to be. And it’s turning the Jokic post up into far and away the most dependable play in the entire game of basketball right now. When you factor in all Joic postups, so this is shot attempts, turnovers, passing sequences out of his postups. Anytime you throw the ball to Joic in the post, according to Synergy, the Nuggets have a 62% chance of putting points on the board in that possession. just shy of twothirds of the time that you dump the ball down to Joic in the post, you’re scoring on that possession. And in terms of large sample efficiency, how about a 131 offensive rating on possessions where you post Nicole Joic up? Pretty insane. Last six games for Joic. He’s averaging 36 points, 12 rebounds, and 11 assists. 74% from the field, 56% from three, 86% from the line. This is the best offensive basketball player ever playing the best basketball of his career and in a field where Giannis has been unbelievable and Luca obviously before last night has been unbelievable and Shael just Alexander has been unbelievable and Victor Wimbeyama has been unbelievable. Joic still just looks like he’s better than all those guys. He’s just playing unbelievable basketball right now. 3612 and 11 over his last six games on 7456 splits. It’s unbelievable stuff on the Clippers situation. I don’t want to spend too long here because they’re kind of drifting out of relevance at this point in the NBA. Although that we’ll see if they end up making some trades um that end up affecting other teams. Um, you know, I understood the thought process behind going after, you know, when you make the trade, the Norman Pal trade, right? And it brings back Jon Collins. There was an important order of operations that they were going with there. There’s an athletic dynamic when you have a really big athletic forward who plays hard, which is what John Collins is. He’s like a high motor athlete at the forward position. And you layer that alongside real size and rebounding physicality at the center position with Zubots, right? We we see this elsewhere in the league. A perfect example of it is literally like what Nicole Joic and Aaron Gordon represent together, right? We’ve seen, you know, crazy versions of it defensively with like Giannis and Brooke back in the heyday of the Milwaukee Bucks, right? But when you have that like big athletic forward next to the big bruising center and that athletic forward’s job is just to be this like kind of wrecking ball on the margins. There’s like a there’s a an athletic dynamic, a physicality dynamic that they were trying to bring to the table by making the John Collins trade. And that has worked for the record. Like John Collins has looked like he helps this basketball team in some real ways. The problem is is you end up sending Norman Powell out in the process, right? And I understood the thought process of like, okay, well, what if you bring in Bradley Beal? Can Bradley Beal when he’s healthy be a rough approximation of what Norman Powell was? In theory, yes. It was a high-risk play, right? If if uh Bradley Beal ends up coming in and looking good and John Collins comes in and fills that very specific need, okay, we’re cooking with grease, right? Cooking with gas, whatever the expression is, right? you’re in good shape there. But you get the terrible combination of Bradley being both bad when he’s on the court and now injured and he was injured on and off throughout the stretch before he ended up injuring his hip. Right. So you get basically nothing out of Bradley Beal. It gets exacerbated by the fact that James Harden comes into camp in a little less good a shape than he was last year. Gets exacerbated by the fact that Kawhi Leonard ends up getting hurt. it gets exacerbated by the fact that Chris Paul ends up coming in and not playing super well to start the season and now things are going south. And like again, there’s a lot of like discussion surrounding, okay, should the Clippers have kept Norman Powell. Well, if you keep Norman Powell, you got to pay him. If you got to pay him now, you’re tying up your cap longer term. If you tie up your cap longer term, you’re kind of more committed to this core. I think the Clippers more or less were looking at this season as somewhat of a last harrah. Anyway, there’s no reason to like really invest long-term into this particular group. They wanted to retain flexibility. So, if you sign Bradley Beal to a discounted contract, it just theoretically is a more flexible type of move than signing Norman Pal. So, like on the one hand, it’s easy to just be like, well, they let Norman Powell walk. That was a bad idea. Now they’re not as good. Well, it’s like, were they going to win the title? Probably not. they were just a second tier contender anyway. Everyone seemed to be aware of that. So, making the move to tie up your cap longterm to give yourself a better shot when you’re still not a top tier contender, I I like I’m not going to judge the Clippers for making that move. That said, a, you know, we talk a lot about how when you’re looking at your spectrum of potential outcomes as a team, there’s like things that need to happen on the good side for you to reach your goals and then there’s things that could go the other way to lead you being bad. So, for instance, like with the Thunder, if you look at all the injuries that they’ve had in order for them to be successful, you needed Shay to be better than he was last year. He has been. You needed Chad to take an offensive leap. He has. You needed one of your deeper bench ball handlers to kind of pop on offense. You have AJ Mitchell has popped, right? You needed to maintain the defensive identity from last year. Even though you’re in a defending champion campaign where usually effort can wayne a little bit, they’ve been amazing on defense to start the season. So, all of these little swing factors have gone in the positive direction and you’re getting a Thunder team that’s going to be 18-1 in a week and a half, right? Similarly with the Clippers, what would you have needed for things to go right for them? You would have needed Bradley Beal to stay healthy and to be, you know, 70% of what Norman Powell was? You needed Kawhi Leonard to stay healthy and play at at least a second tier superstar level. You needed James Harden to come into camp just like he did last year and set the tone from the start of the season as an advantage creator. You needed Chris Paul to come in and be what he was last year, one of the best pick and roll players in the NBA. You needed all of these things to go your direction. and instead they all went the opposite direction. You know, you see a team, what are the the Clippers now? Like three and eight. They’re having a brutal start to the season. And whenever you see stuff like that, you can’t blame one thing. It’s all the things. James not quite as good. Kawhi Herd again. Norman Pal’s gone having a career year down in Miami. Bradley Beal’s injured again and when he was healthy, he wasn’t playing well. Like all those things go the opposite direction. Now you’re looking at a three and eight Clippers team. So like I think it’s way too early in the season to just bail on things. You want to see how it goes. Maybe Kawhi Leonard comes back and things get better. Maybe they’re able to make a trade at some point for a higher level offensive player to kind of help anchor things. There’s a version of this story where they can write the ship. But if we get another month into this and they’re 10 and 20, that’s where you need to start having more complicated conversations about capitalizing on the assets that you have in order to set up your next phase of Clippers basketball and they don’t know their pick. I was reading a thing this morning, OKC has their swap for the next two years. That is that could get pretty uh that could get uh pretty brutal for the entire NBA if the Clippers end up going south. and OKC ends up capitalizing on it. All right, Warriors Spurs. One small bright spot from a rough night for me last night as a basketball fan as I watched my Lakers get completely and utterly dismantled. I did go on a rant yesterday about how I thought the Warriors were better than they’ve looked to this point and I predicted that they would go into San Antonio and win. I think they’re going to beat San Antonio tonight even though they were on the tail end of a backtoback and that ended up being one of the few things I was right about last night. I just thought they had a light workload against Oklahoma City because of the blowout, right? You didn’t have big minute totals for anybody. I thought it was a really tough game for Steph to come back like going from um you know being out with that upper respiratory illness which can affect your conditioning so much. Stepping into that Oklahoma City blender is just a really tough game. But he builded a little bit of built a little bit of rhythm, got his win. He looked like he was in awesome rhythm last night. As far as backtobacks go on the road, it was a short flight, right? Like you’re just going from Oklahoma City to San Antonio. And then I thought the Golden State defense was a good matchup for the Spurs. I thought they were I thought they were built well for it. They’ve got the types of physical defenders to guard WBY. And they’ve got the coach and Steve Kerr that’s going to be able to see any sort of opportunities to double team and cause the same problems that WMBB’s had in the past. Now, it looked different than I expected because I thought the Warriors would double WBY more and they did on occasion when he would get a smaller defender on a switch. They were doubling. Basically, every time he put the ball on the floor and Draymond wasn’t on him, they were sending a double team. But they essentially let Draymond stick him one-on-one. And Draymond did a number on him in this game. And it’s like it’s all relative because like Wemby’s insanely talented and he had 31,5 and 10 in this game. caught a little bit of a rhythm late in the game in on Draymond when the game was already out of reach and hit a couple jump shots over the top of him, but uh for the most part he was capitalizing on the opportunities when he got Draymond off of him. Whether Draymond was on the bench and Jimmy was the primary defender or chaos situations like offball situations when Draymond was in help or uh you know transition, that sort of thing. He found his way to score, but in his one-on- ones, I think he missed his first seven shots with Draymond guarding him one-on-one. In the second half in particular, you could see him even in single coverage against Draymond, looked not comfortable putting the ball on the floor and kind of just passing the ball out of those one-on- ones. So, just a wonderful job from Draymond Green, who’s arguably the best defensive player of this era and still to this day is one of the most impactful defensive players in the league. I thought did a wonderful job on Victor Webbeyama last night. And then Steph Curry just exploded in the second half. 31 points on 13 shots just in the second half. Got a couple of clean looks against WBY in deeper drop coverages where ball ball screens. They ran like a little double screen at the top where WBY was sagging way back like almost around the elbow. Easy breezy little pullup three for Steph Curry. He found a one-on-one matchup that he really liked. He liked Julian Champagne one-on-one and he was giving him a bunch of work. Every time he got him, whether it was a transition cross match or through a screening action, he just was like, “Get out of my way. I’m just going to attack Julian Champagne one-on-one.” Little bit of a bigger, slower wing compared to some of the other guards. So, all he had to do is really get into his body and then step back and then he was able to get a good amount of separation. He was beating Wem in switches just by driving past him, generated shots passing out of that. drew a foul on him by driving past him and then doing the textbook kind of like jump backwards type of play to draw the foul on WBY. He got loose in the chaos of transition and offensive rebounds. Gary Payeyton was awesome in this game uh on the offensive end as like a cutter and as a screener little release valve underneath the basket. Also did a bunch of damage on the offensive glass. He had a sequence late in the game where he got backto-back offensive rebounds that both led to Steph Curry threes. Missed the first one but made the second one in that left corner. Steph just did a ton of damage in the chaos of the game in the second half as well. Just looked like he was in a much better rhythm than he was in against OKC and he finished with 46 points, five rebounds, five assists, just one turnover. Got to the foul line 16 times. Really nice game from Steph Curry. I thought Jimmy Butler was excellent in this game. Kind of started with a rescue possession. He hit like a contested catch and shoot three along the right wing when the shot clock was running down. But he hit so many big threes in the second half. The Spurs were basically daring him to shoot, sagging way off. He had a big one in crunch time along the left wing as well. Uh the usual kind of little bits of shot creation when Steph was off the floor once again drawing fouls by getting into the teeth of the defense and taking weird driving angles and getting defenders out of position. Moses Moody deserves a ton of credit for the damage he did in the first half of this game that helped keep them attached when the Warriors got off to a little bit of a rough start. Again, we mentioned Gary Payeyton and the the job he did on offense in the second half. Just a really nice bounceback win for the Warriors. I did want to talk briefly about this uh Jonathan Kaminga stuff. So, after the Thunder game, I thought this was kind of lame, but there was a lot of passive aggressive comments being made by the Warriors veterans uh that seemed to be targeted towards the younger players. specifically. No one was named by name, but it was pretty clear they were hinting at guys like Jonathan Kaminga and Brandon Pajki in particular. And I thought it was kind of lame because it was like you got your ass kicked against Oklahoma City because all of you played poorly like and Steph in particular had a bad game against OKC. And no shame in that. OK OKC just did the same thing to Luca and Austin. Oklahoma City is a transcendently great defense. They did the same thing to Kevin Durant earlier in the season. They are a huge pain in the ass. It’s not about Oklahoma City. I just thought, let me just let me rephrase it like this. Okay, so you don’t want to play Kamingo with the starters. You don’t think he’s a good fit. You think your lineup construction makes more sense to bring him off the bench in a smaller role. You want to go with a guy like Will Richard in the starting lineup or Moses Moody in the starting lineup. You want guys that are more natural fits in the Golden State system. That’s fine. Just say that. just say, “Hey, you know, we tried the Kamingoa with the starters thing to start the season.” You know, he had his moments, had some reads that he made that he wasn’t making in years past. A little bit more refined in some of his attacks, but ultimately now that we’re a few weeks into this thing, now that we’re almost a month into this thing, we think he’s better coming off of the bench, we’re going to transition into that role. Just say that. Like, do I think Kaminga has been very good in the last week and a half or so? No. Do I think he’s starting to regress a little bit in some key areas? Yes. But like passive aggressively essentially blaming him for the situation that the team is in is ridiculous. You toasted off a game against the Pacers because your stars were [ __ ] off. Like Steph was brutal at the end of that game. You lost a couple more games cuz Steph got sick. That happens. The situ You blew a game against Milwaukee where Giannis didn’t play. like you you like take some personal responsibility. Like again I I’m you know me I’ve never been a huge fan of the Kaminga fit. I think again he showed some positive strides to start the season. I have been an advocate generally for trading him over the course of the last couple of years. So, I’m not disagreeing with you in principle about the idea of the way the team should be run in terms of the rotation, but like I I did think it was kind of lame for them to take those like pretty passive aggressive stances in the press conferences after Oklahoma City. And again, you want to give them some competitive leeway. Again, it’s a thunder ass kicking, right? No one’s happy after an ass kicking. And when you’re grouchy, you might say some things you might not otherwise say. But I just thought it was like, hey, like you guys got your ass kicked. It wasn’t Jonathan Kaminga’s fault. Like, yeah, he had a few turnovers in that game. He made a few bad decisions. Jonathan Kaminga is not the reason you got your ass kicked by the Thunder. I thought it was just kind of a a little bit ridiculous to target those guys the way that they did. And I know they denied it. And I know Draymond was going after Kevin O’Connor yesterday and, you know, basically saying that he wasn’t talking about those guys, but that’s just, if you’ve learned anything as an adult, deny, deny, deny is literally just the approach that everyone takes with any sort of accusation of any kind. I still remain bullish on the Warriors. Really nice bounceback win. We’re going to be covering them on playback on Friday night for round two of that uh of that Spurs Warriors matchup. Uh I just again I’m just I’ve just I just don’t think there’s any need for the the postgame stuff that we saw on on Tuesday night. On the Spurs front, I loved how WBY found opportunities to score when he got free of Draymond. There’s this idea that some young basketball players have where it’s like, I’ve got to demonstrate that I can beat this guy. And it’s like, no one’s giving you bonus points for scoring against the other team’s best defender. That’s just playing stupid basketball. When you get guarded by one of the best defensive players of all time, your goal should be get him off of me. Like, find a way to not have to score against Draymond. and he did throughout the game. Little guard screens that would get him switched onto a guard where he’d get a quick opportunity to attack or a quick opportunity to draw a double team and pass out of it. Getting Draymond’s screen and he you could see a lot of that in the second half like using screens on Draymond so that as the ball handler could get into some over-the-top shots off of the dribble, transition chaos, offensive rebound chaos, all those opportunities. find your dozen times a game where you can get that dude off of you and be aggressive and that’s how you end up with 315 and 10 despite struggling with the individual matchup of Draymond Green. So I was I was really impressed by WBY there. He and Darren Fox have to take better care of the ball though. One of the things that we’re seeing early on with the Fox WBY pairing is in ball screens teams are defending them threeon two consistently. Warriors did it a bunch last night and so those corner skips are open and Darren Fox is sneaky good at that. The Spurs generated two like completely butt naked corner threes off of WBY Fox two-man game uh where you know Fox kind of got downhill man comes over finds that little passing angle and makes that swing out to the corner. They’re going to get a lot of really good shots out of the De’ar Fox ball screen situation both with WBY off the ball and with WBY as the screener. that that’s going to work. But the turnovers killed them. There were se there were a couple of bizarre turnovers from De’ar Fox in this game. He had a lob in this game that was like maybe like seven or eight feet too high. Some swing passes and crosscourt passes from all from those two and from Steph Castle. Steph Castle had a bad one in the second half that he turned over to Steph. There’s there’s a certain amount of like ball security stuff with San Antonio right now that’s starting to come to the forefront that they got to work through uh in order to get to where they want to go. All right, guys. That’s all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. Again, we will be back tomorrow morning for our mailbag. And I want to touch on some of those Eastern Conference games from last night. So, drop your questions regarding those games and anything else. Anything is fair game in the YouTube comments. We’ll have our mailbag tomorrow and then again tomorrow night on playback for Warrior Spurs. I will see you guys then.

Jason reacts to the Oklahoma City Thunder dominating the Los Angeles Lakers behind an impressive day from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and a defense that stopped Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves. He discusses the Lakers’ struggles in the context of OKC and why getting LeBron James back might not be enough. Then he breaks down Nikola Jokic getting 55 points in a Denver Nuggets victory over the Los Angeles Clippers and Steph Curry leading the Golden State Warriors to a bounce-back win over Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs.

All lines provided by @hardrockbet

Timeline
0:00 – Start
2:00 – OKC dominates Lakers
20:01 – Nikola Jokic 55 point game
32:39 – Warriors bounce back

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