Reaction to Giannis / Bucks rumors + TRADE IDEAS to Lakers, Spurs, Knicks, Hawks

Reaction to Giannis / Bucks rumors + TRADE IDEAS to Lakers, Spurs, Knicks, Hawks

All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the volume. Happy Thursday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having an incredible week. We have a jam-packed show for you guys today. Off the top, we got news yesterday that Jiannis and Tennoo and the Bucks are potentially looking towards the future for both sides. Going to have a little bit of a takeaway from the Pistons game last night as well as my thoughts on the Giannis trade saga and what that might potentially look like. some of the potential issues that could happen, especially if Giannis ends up going somewhere like in the Western Conference. After that, the Dallas Mavericks got their third consecutive win against the Miami Heat yesterday, fueled by the return of Anthony Davis and an awakening of their offense. A lot of interesting stuff that I want to get into, some internal development, too, with Ryan Mhard finding a role, as well as Cooper Flag finding success as a short-range shotmaker. After that, the tail end of the show today, the San Antonio Spurs won their seventh time in nine games without Victor Webbyama on the road on the tail end of a backto back in Orlando against the Magic. Kind of a bizarre sequence late in the game, but I want to dig into what has been driving that success for the San Antonio Spurs. 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. Jackson’s 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 last but not least, if you want to get questions into our mailbags, we have our uh uh first mailbag in a couple weeks coming uh tomorrow. So, if you want to get questions in there, go to our full episodes on YouTube, write in the comments, mailbag colon, write your question. We’ll get to them on Fridays throughout the rest of the season. Also, playback. We’re back on our playback streams tonight um with the Lakers on the road in Toronto against the Raptors. Should be an interesting one because Luca Donuch is going to be out for personal reasons. So, an opportunity to see LeBron James uh get an opportunity to have the ball in his hands more as he tries to find his rhythm. So, come hang out again. Playback.tv, excuse me. Yeah, playback do uh playback.tv/hoops tonight is where we’ll be tonight at 4:30 p.m. Pacific time. All right, let’s talk some basketball. So, the Bucks actually got a really nice win last night at home against the Detroit Pistons. Giannis went down with a calf injury early and the Pistons jumped them. They went up 18 in the first quarter, but they just battled back. Ryan Rollins was great again. Kevin Porter Jr. has been awesome since he came back and they found themselves down by five with two minutes left and ended up stealing that game. Kevin Porter Jr. made a beautiful off-hand skip pass driving down the right lane line to AJ Green in the left corner who ended up hitting a catch and shoot three there. Then on the other end of the floor, Ryan Rollins made a beautiful defensive play in a zone look that they had. He was kind of like sitting down fronting Jaylen Duran at the top of the key. Uh making it so that he could defend against the ball screen there and any sort of high post entry. And he was kind of squatting down and then when the skip pass was made, he just jumped up and elevated with those long arms and got the steal. He ended up going down to the other end and missing a layup. But on the play, he engaged Jaylen Duran at the rim, which opened up a little area around the basket for Jericho Sims to make the first of his two massive rebounding plays at the end of this game. Cleans up the Rollins miss gets an and one. So the three from AJ Green and the and one from uh Jericho Sims ends up putting the Bucks up by one. And then down on the other end of the floor, the Bucks got three straight stops to win the game. The first was Ryan Rollins uh getting some great ball pressure on Kate Cunningham and forcing him into a turnover. He lost control of the ball, ended up going way into the back court, turned it over. After that was a miss, Carris Levert three off the left wing where Jericho Sims got his second big rebound. Him and Bobby Poris combined for a great box out on Jaylen Duran. We all know how good of an offensive rebounder he is. And Jericho just jumped up and grabbed that rebound. Big play. And then the third one was Ryan Rollins one-on-one against Cade at the top of the key. Forced him into a really tough step back three that he airballed and the Bucks ended up getting a win. Very nice win actually. But unfortunately, we’re not going to be focusing on this version of the Bucks as much in that game from last night, but more about the news that Giannis and the Bucks are looking towards the future for both sides. Now, one thing I want to be clear about up front, I actually do think things have been a little better than they’ve looked on the surface. If you look at the record for the Bucks, they’ve been a game over 500 with Giannis in the lineup. The Giannis, Ryan Rollins, AJ Green trio in 629 possessions this year has a plus 10 net rating. They’ve had some really nice wins. There’s like a dynamic with Rollins and Green and their two-way ability to Ryan run some action, knock down, catch and shoot threes, but really guard AJ Green and really uh AJ Green really guard and knock down threes and then Giannis obviously with his rim pressure. But ultimately, the league is just too talented and this team just doesn’t have much of a shot. And most of that success that they’ve had this season has come from the herculean efforts of Giannis, shooting a career-high 64% from the field and 44% from three. So ultimately, it is in the best interests of both parties to move on. You want Giannis to go somewhere he can really compete. He’s in some rare company in that top tier of superstars with him, Joic, Shay, and Luca. And all four of those dudes are playing insanely high level basketball this year. But the other three guys are all surrounded by substantially more talent than Giannis is surrounded by right now in Milwaukee. And for the Bucks to capitalize on the highest amount of value that Giannis has as a trade piece, it’s kind of right now or never in a lot of ways as he enters into this phase of his career getting closer to his mid30s. And the Bucks do have some exciting pieces. Like I know some Bucks fans don’t like Ryan Rollins, but I think he’s a real player. I I think he’s going to be an awesome two-way guard in this league for a long time. I’m surprised that there’s even debate surrounding that. I think Rollins is awesome. They might even be able to flip some of these other older vets into something at this point like a Miles Turner or a Bobby Portoris. They’ve got some exciting other young players. I think AJ Green is one of the better role player guards in the in the league if he can be the fifth best player in your lineup. And one of the things too that’s beneficial to Milwaukee here is Shams has reported that Giannis is pretty open-minded about where he’s willing to end up. So there’s no demand, right? There’s no like a send me to the Knicks or send me to the Lakers. And as we look at those two teams, like the Knicks just can’t really put together too much of a package for him. They blew most of their draft capital in the male Bridges move. And if I’m the Bucks, I have no interest in taking Carl Anthony Towns back, right? So, like I don’t see the Knicks as too much of a threat here. The Lakers can actually put together a decent package thanks to the rise of Austin Reeves, who I think has been clearly one of the 15 best players in the league to start this season. It’s not to say he’s going to stay there, but he’s certainly encroached in on that like top 20, top 25 range and is one of the higher level offensive players in the league. He’s been one of the best pick and roll players in the league this year and he’s really wellrounded in the margins. like he’s not like the Zack Lavine types that are going to lose shooters and miss box outs, you know, 12 times a game and end up hurting his team and undercutting his offensive success. Like Austin’s a really good player, but ultimately the Lakers can only include one first round pick and some swaps. So, you know, and that first round pick would be tied to a team led by Luca and in this scenario, Giannis as well. So, it’s unlikely to be a high lottery pick. So, yeah, I think Austin would be a really nice piece. I actually think Austin would fit really well alongside Ryan Rollins since Ryan’s such a good athlete, but you know, it just doesn’t seem like it’s possible with the types of other draft packages attached to young players, good young players that other teams around the league could offer. And Brian Winhor said as much yesterday. He basically said Giannis would have to demand the Lakers in order to get the Lakers. And as we mentioned earlier, it appears Giannis is not making those sorts of demands. Also, kind of like side note, I don’t love the Luca Giannis fit as much as some other people do. To be clear, I’m not dumb. Like, I take it in a heartbeat just for the talent play. He’d obviously make the Lakers better, but I always when I’m looking at superstar duos, I always get a little bit nervous when they can be guarded by similar defenders. Who would you put on Luca, a big athletic, strong forward that can kind of handle his size and physicality? Who would you put on Giannis? A big athletic strong forward who can kind of handle his size and physicality, which means it would likely end in a lot of switching when those two would run twoman game together. And when you run superstars together and they can’t play twoman game, then it just becomes a more difficult dynamic to make them fit. To be clear, Luca and Giannis would find a way to win a lot of games. I just don’t love that fit as naturally as I like some other fits that I’ve looked at around the league. I like teams I like duos where they’re being guarded by different types of defenders so that they’re unlikely to switch or if they do they’re giving themselves up a compromising advantage, right? So that opens the field up and there are a lot of interesting options. San Antonio is one of the obvious ones. They could include one of their blue chippers like they could include a Steph Castle or a Dylan Harper and a bunch of draft compensation. They’ve got picks that they can include. That’s going to beat the hell out of any offer from the Lakers or from the Knicks, right? Giannis and Wemby would be frightening together. I also love them as a counter to what Oklahoma City does. Those two guys would be able to basically completely shut off the rim to OKC, which turns them into almost entirely a jump shooting team. And San Antonio, even if they made that sort of deal, would still have enough size and athleticism at the guard spot to at least make life tougher on Sheay if the jumper was all that he had available to him. I think it would be a a really a really interesting kind of like styles make fights type of matchup to see a Webby Giannis le team versus Oklahoma City. But ultimately, I think it’d be really bad for the league if Giannis went to the West. All three of the other top tier superstars in the NBA are already in the West. So yeah, speaking strictly about basketball, I’d love to see Giannis in San Antonio. I think it’d be so much fun and and Oklahoma City San Antonio playoff series would be a movie. I just I just think it’s in the best interest of the NBA for him to stay in the East somewhere. You don’t want a situation where you have all four of your top tier contenders, Oklahoma City, Houston, Denver, and San Antonio all in one conference. I I don’t think that’s necessarily good for the league. Atlanta was a team I brought up this summer. I’ve talked about how I view Trey and Giannis as a much better basketball fit than Dame Giannis because Trey is so much better as a passer, specifically as a lob passer and as a pocket passer. So, I think the two of them would be much much better, much more dynamic on offense than a Dame and Giannis type of duo. The tricky thing here is that Jaylen Johnson has to be a centerpiece in that type of deal. like they have the first round picks to give up, but if they’re going to compete with some of these other offers that are going to be on the table, they’d have to include a blue chip piece, right? Like if if a deal with the Lakers is giving you Austin Ree, if a deal with San Antonio is giving you a Steph Castle or Dylan Harper, if a deal with Orlando is giving you someone like Palonero or something like that, like you’re getting an awesome player and draft picks or draft pick in the case of the Lakers if you make one of those types of deals. So, if you’re going to get in on this action as Atlanta, you got to include Jaylen Johnson. And Jaylen Johnson’s averaging 23 points, 10 rebounds, and seven assists on 64% true shooting this year. Looks to be a legit budding star and has been those numbers don’t even do justice to how good he’s been in the last couple of weeks. So, it’s just extremely high risk, high reward for a team like Atlanta. Like there’s a version where you do that deal as the Hawks and Trey and Giannis surrounded by a bunch of highlevel role players just wrecks the Eastern Conference and suddenly you’re in the NBA finals, right? But there’s also a version of that story where Trey Young gets hurt. You got hurt already this year and maybe he gets hurt again. you lose in the first round or you make the finals but you end up getting beaten badly by Oklahoma City and suddenly you have like an aging Giannis and Trey and your fans are all pissed off because Jaylen Johnson is hanging 30 point triple doubles in a Milwaukee Bucks jersey right so it’s just like a really high risk high reward decision for Atlanta now because it’s different with Jaylen Johnson it was easier when Jaylen Johnson was a little bit more of an unknown commodity like he was this summer coming off of an injury. Orlando is a really interesting talent play. They have a bunch of massive salaries, so they could get there pretty quickly in a variety of different ways. I wonder if they’d be willing to include Paulo in a deal like that. They play the same position. And with Paulo, like he’s a star that’s shown potential to be awesome, but also potential to be disappointing as his kind of like floor game and and uh like playmaking ability can leave a lot to be desired. and he just settles for so many of these like tough mid-range jumpers that he just doesn’t make at a super high clip. But there’s also a version of that where Paulo could be awesome. Like I think if I’m Milwaukee, I’d be like, you know, that’s a legit blue chip type of talent to get back. And he’s still technically on his rookie contract, although he’s got an extension that kicks in next season. Uh but then you look at it, if you’re Orlando and you’re like, okay, you’re led by Giannis and France. They’d have some similar issues with spacing and shooting, but if I’m a Magic uh if I’m in the Magic front office or if I am a Magic fan, don’t overthink it. Like, Giannis is way better at basketball than Paulo on both ends of the floor. There’s real twoman game potential. Not necessarily with Fron. That fit would be clunky. Same kind of dynamic we were talking about with Luca, right? Like you’re guarding both of those guys with big strong forwards. You’re likely going to be doing switching there. But there is real twoman game potential with Giannis and Desmond Bane. We’ve seen a lot of different actions that the Bucks run with Giannis inverted with him on the ball with like AJ Green coming to screen and getting out of it. Or if you have Giannis screening for a Desmond Bane, there’s a lot of different potential there for Giannis in the pocket or for Desmond to easily get downhill as teams are hesitant to offer help there, right? So, like I think even though it’d still be a little bit clunky on offense, there’s there’s still plenty of upside there with Giannis. And and then on the defensive end, you think Orlando’s defense is good. Now, go ahead and add in Giannis like as as a uh as a backline weapon and helpside and as a defensive rebounder. Like, they’d be frighteningly good on defense. They’d win ugly. A lot of their games would be ugly, but they’d win a lot of games. and overnight uh even if they did include a Paulo, they’d overnight become the prohibitive favorite in the Eastern Conference. So overall, if I was speaking purely about basketball and what I want to see, I’d say San Antonio. They’re just such a fun option to compete with Oklahoma City, and they present a hilarious basketball problem for most teams with him and WBY together. But if I had to pick my overall preferred option, I’d say Orlando just because of my desire to keep Giannis in the East so that the league has more balance. I’d rather have a legit top tier contender coming out of the East and, you know, one of those contenders coming out of the West so we have a great NBA finals than four top tier contenders to all be out in the Western Conference. Cuz ultimately, Giannis is that good. wherever he goes, he’s going to be on a top tier contender, especially if these teams we mentioned that actually have the ability to compete after the trade. We’ll keep digging into Giannis stuff as we get more information about what teams are making offers and we’ll start to talk about the fit and what it might look like as we get more information on that front. Today’s show is brought to you by our new presenting sponsor, Hard Rock Bet. Big news. Hard Rock Bet is now live in Michigan. Sign up today and place your first $5 sports bet. If it wins, you get $150 in bonus bets on top of your winnings. And if you’re into more casino games, new customers can get up to $1,000 back in casino bonus if you’re not up money after your first 24 hours playing slots. Win money or get a casino bonus back. Plus, you get 200 bonus spins, winnings paid in cash. Want to see what everyone else is betting on tonight? Top picks or parlays across any sport? 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Because I’m just so sick of the exact same damn thing happening every year where he comes into camp overweight, seemingly by design if you listen to him explain it. But then NBA basketball’s hard and especially hard when you’re carrying extra weight. So he would inevitably end up getting some sort of wear and tear injury that knocks him out for a while. And that happened again this season. And every season kind of becomes a race for AD. Like can he get in shape before his body breaks down? And he did the same thing in Los Angeles seemingly every year. And for the record, there were years where that worked out like 2023. similarly got injured in the middle, but he managed to get in shape and maintain his body enough to finish the playoff run. And he had a really nice playoff run where he went to the Western Conference Finals before getting his butt kicked by Joic. But 2024, and I I think part of this was he played so deep into the summer with the Western Conference Finals, his shorter off season. Came into 2024 and played 76 games. And when he made it to the Denver series in the first round, he was awesome in the Denver series. very different than how he played in the uh in the 2023 series. Like he was pretty much bar forbar right there with Joic in that 2024 first round series. And so AD is very much a rhythm player. He needs to be healthy and stay on the court for a long time so that he’s in shape so that he can flash his upside. And that the the flip side of that dynamic when he loses control of his conditioning and starts to suffer nagging injuries because his body can’t hold up. That’s where it can be, you know, frustrating in the other direction. And we’ve seen, you know, obviously the the worst side of that spectrum since he went to Dallas. But every time you actually see healthy on the floor, Anthony Davis, his talent is undeniable. And the crazy thing for Mavs fans, I would say, is like I still don’t think he’s close to full rhythm right now. He’s still a bit slowooted. You saw in the Miami game last night, he had a couple of jumpers that he airballed that were like two or three feet short of the rim. That’s a lift and conditioning thing that will eventually come around. But even this version of AD that’s still working his way into shape is an allNBA level contributor on both ends of the floor. And it was really fun, especially in the in the Denver and Miami games to watch the different ways that AD dominated. Like against Denver for instance, like Jokic straight up did not want to post him up. You know, that’s where AD carrying some extra weight probably helps him. That ended up being a big problem for Denver down the stretch of that game because Jamal Murray wasn’t able to finish the game. So, the Mavs were able to force a bunch of jump shots from guys like Cam Johnson and Spencer Spencer Jones late in the game. And Joic wasn’t going into the post against AD at all. And so AD was able to defend more like traditional twoman game sequences where he’s dropping towards the basket. Got some really good contests at the rim. He had a huge one late in the game where he forced Bruce Brown into a miss right at the basket. And then on offense, he like killed Joic in that game in a bunch of ways. Joic was giving him space for jump shots. And he ended up making five jump shots in that game, either spotting up or facing up in ISO. And he killed Joic on the offensive glass whenever Joic helped on drives. He had three putbacks where like Joic would step over to help and Joic or AD would just come in from behind and like dunk it in on a putback. The exact opposite of that dynamic is how he dominated the Miami Heat in there uh on the defensive end in that particular game last night. Like that dance that I’m talking about that like where Joic is like, “Okay, do I help on this drive but then give AD the offensive rebound, that is a critical dance that bigs make in drop coverage situations and in help situations when they’re just helping at the basket. So a lot in the Miami game because there’s fewer ball screens, right? But do you go for the block and potentially leave your assignment free for an offensive rebound or do you stay back and let the ball handler get a shot off so that you can secure the defensive rebound? And one of the tricky things with driving layups is it’s not variance in the way that jump shooting is. Jump shooting it’s like, okay, this guy is going to get the shot up and it’s going to go in some percentage of the time, right? And the contest is going to make a mild difference. Like, you know, some open shooters might shoot 45% when they’re wide open and 38% when they’re guarded or 38% when they’re wide open and 32% when they’re guarded, right? Like there’s a little bit of a difference between contest and no contest when it comes to jump shooting. Layups are very different, right? Like if a guy beats you clean off the dribble and goes right to the front of the rim, he’s making the layup every time. Like call it 95% of the time he’s going to make the layup. But if you have a guy on your hip and it’s a contested layup, that percentage plummets down to like 5050 at best for most NBA players. So like a contest on a layup is way more uh uh is way more likely to cause a dramatic shift in the shot result. So that’s the dance that the big guys have to make. Do I need to go over and help because he’s going to make the layup or is he highly likely to miss anyway and I’m actually better used as a rebounder here staying back. That’s the dance that Joic was botching in the Denver game where AD kept getting dunks over the top of him against Miami. AD had a ton of similar reads to make. Like Miami doesn’t run very many ball screens, although it’s worth mentioning they ran a little bit more than usual against Dallas trying to attack their bigs. But he found themselves in a he found himself in a lot of situations where Heat players were driving at him and he had to make a decision. And the Mavs defenders all night were doing a great job staying attached to the basketball. One of the subplots at the end of that game was Naji Marshall who was doing a great job on Tyler Harrow and Tyler hero I should say and Tyler kind of didn’t want the basketball in his hands late in that game because of the job that Naji Marshall was doing. And AD is just so good at that particular dance. He’s one of the best that I’ve seen at that specific dynamic of when to help versus when to stay home. And he had 16 defensive rebounds in that game. And many of them were sequences where he made really smart defensive reads at the rim to not go for a block because he saw that his perimeter defenders were chesting up with a drive and probably going to force into some misses. Right. Then on the offensive end against Miami, AD dominated in a very different way. Hey, like he only had 17 points, but he was consistently drawing second defenders in the post. And this was a game, you know, an AD can be a little tricky handling double teams. It’s been an inconsistent thing for him in his life. But that last night in particular, I thought he did a great job posting on that left block, especially down the stretch, and making that skip pass, particularly to the opposite wing. And then the Mavs were able to get into their drive and kick from it. And they got some really good looks out of that. And Miami actually ended actually ended up letting him work one-on-one on a key possession late and he just turned over his right shoulder over Tyler Herro, hit that little bank shot. So like different kind of dominance from Anthony Davis. And I know it’s been a rough year for Mavs fans and it’s not much consolation to see Anthony Davis playing well uh with this few wins coming, you know, to this point in the season. But it’s just a casual reminder that Anthony Davis is a bonafide star. like in back-to-back games, he outplayed Nicole Joic and Bameabio. There’s not many players in the league that can do that. He’s still one of the best defensive players in the league, and he’s still a very good offensive weapon in his own way. Uh but of course, Anthony Davis is not the only reason that the Mavs are on a three-game win streak. They also have a 119 offensive rating in their last three games. They’re scoring the ball better than they have all season, and that’s helping them close these games out. There are three players in particular that I want to shout out here. And first is Cooper Flag, who’s riding his first consistent stretch of high level offensive play as a pro. In fact, he’s the youngest player in NBA history to log three consecutive 20point games. And it’s being driven by two things. Cutting down on his three-point attempts and driving the hell out of the basketball as a result of that. And then the second piece of it is focusing on shorter range shotmaking. When it comes to his jump shot, the drives have been super impressive. He’s attacking downhill out of spot ups with like these quick jab steps or quick rip through moves and he’s beating his man consistently. It’s a way that he’s spacing the floor without necessarily hitting threes as his three-point attempts have gone about half his season average over the course of the last three games. And in each case, he just kind of gets that shoulder into you and he can finish with his left hand and his right hand and he’s just a force to be reckoned with as an athlete going downhill. Too big, too skilled, and too mobile. And then with the short range shotmaking, it’s about minimizing variance, right? finding an easier shot for him to make that takes advantage of his size. Kade Cooper is shooting only 28% on jump shots outside of 17 feet this year, 28% on mid-rangers outside of 17 ft, and 28% from three. But he’s shooting 46% inside of 17 ft. And that’s fueled by this recent run. He’s eight out of 11 in this threeame span on jump shots inside of 17 ft. It’s a much easier shot for him that he can get to there and he’s hitting it at a high clip. And it’s not just jump shooting either. Like he’s been hitting these little short bank shots and these little floaters. And you guys know how big of a fan I am of short range shotmaking cuz I think it just can be so much more reliable night toight than distance shot making. And in late game situations, it can be a reliable thing to go to. Last thing with Cooper, I think the rise of Ryan Nemhard has simplified his role a bit. He’s constantly looking to attack now off of the catch when he gets a chance either in a spot-up situation and in action. He’s attacking really hard. And I think a big part of that is because he doesn’t have as much ball handling responsibility that he’s had at other points in the season. So he doesn’t have to pay so much attention to like making reads and managing the flow of the game. He’s just in attack mode right now and it’s working really well for him. Secondly is the affforment affformentioned rise of Ryan Nemhard. just the spitting image of his brother as a highle pick and roll player hitting little drop coverage shots in the mid-range, beating bigs and forwards and switches with nasty dribble combinations into mid-rangers. In the Denver game, he hit a couple of super tough layups on hard drives to the basket. Some impressive rim finishing from him. And then the passing ability is real. Just making those reads in action, hing hitting the pocket and pick and roll, making that skip pass. He had this pass to Klay Thompson in the corner in the Miami game where he was kind of way up at the top and Clay was open in the corner and he hit him with the pass right in the top of his shooting pocket so that Klay was able to catch into like a no dip that like classic Clay no dip three that he hit. It was a big shot in that game, too. I’ve talked a lot over the years about how your value as a basketball player is unique to your basketball team and what they need. And this team has needed a ball handler that can both score and make reads. I thought it would be DLO, but it just hasn’t worked out with DLO this season. Although to his credit, DLO actually had a nice game against Miami yesterday. Hit some big shots. They tried Brandon Williams for a while. That was more bad than good. Ryan has done the best job filling that role and it’s been a big part of this offensive explosion from this team. He’s had 43 points and 23 assists in his last two games with only one turnover and only six missed shots. That’s pretty remarkable stuff. And the play play type data is super impressive. He’s now up to 68 pick and rolls this year, including passes. 83 points generated, 1.22 points per possession. That’s excellent. Big part of that is his own personal shooting. He’s shooting 15 for 20 in pick and roll as the ball handler. uh 13 for 18 from two and two for two from three. And then he’s beating switches. He’s had 17 ISOs this season including passes, 18 points generated on 10 shot attempts. He’s made four and drew a foul on one. So he’s scored on half of his own shot attempts in ISO. Then he’s generated a couple of buckets on kickouts and one on a drop a drop off. So he’s been good in ISO as well. And then lastly, Klay Thompson. Uh the beef with John Marant appears to have awakened a competitive side in Clay that is leading to some vintage basketball from him. And since the start of that Memphis game, so six game sample size, 17 points per game from Clay, 48% on nine three-point attempts per game, hitting a lot of big shots, too. and he’s just becoming an all too important release valve for this Maverick’s offense in terms of kickouts because he can take and make contested catch and shoot threes as well as the wideopen ones. It’s not too late for Dallas to work their way in the mix here. They’re only one and a half games back in the nine seed, three and a half games back of Golden State in the eight seed. And this is not fake basketball. This is a legit top five defense that added a legit two-way superstar in Anthony Davis that is capable of outplaying some of the best players in the league at his position. And you have two blossoming young players in Ryan Nehard and Cooper Flag with some really good role players around him too, by the way. And like PJ Washington, he turned his ankle about a week ago. Him and Derek Lively are out right now. Like they’re going to be, you know, a very talented basketball team when they’re healthy. Kind of like we expected coming into the season. They just needed a ball handler to pop and they needed Cooper to find his footing. And that’s what’s happening with Ryan and Cooper right now. And just a tiny little bit of light in the darkness for Mavs fans. And the play of Anthony Davis is super encouraging regardless of what happens because he’s either going to help you in a Mavs jersey or he’s going to massively inflate his trade value and help you build around Cooper for the future. All right, before we get out of here today, briefly on the Spurs. The Spurs won their seventh time in nine games without Wemby last night. a crazy game against the Magic. They controlled it throughout for the most part until things got weird late. Fron didn’t take a three all night and then hit a big one, a pull up on the right wing and then Jeremy Shan Shan ends up missing two free throws and then Fron gets fouled on a three and makes all three of them and suddenly the game is tied. But Dear Fox ended up drawing a foul on a drive on Jonathan Isaac. Kind of got into his body. It was kind of a weird play. I ended up getting challenged and upheld, but it was blocked clean up top, which made it a little bit tricky, but there was some body contact down low uh before the shot attempt that ended up getting upheld. So, De’Arren Fox goes down and makes both free throws. Orlando runs a really nice inbound sequence where France Vagner gets like an inside seal, beautiful entry pass, gets a wideopen layup, but Luke Cornett makes this unbelievable defensive rotation off of like pretty far on the right wing. just comes flying in and swats it out of bounds and the Spurs end up getting a huge win. And Darren Fox was amazing again and he continues to be the story. Again, ultimately why they’re winning, why they’re seven and two in the span is they have a 119.4 offensive rating and they’re winning these games because De’Arren Fox is consistently compromising the defense off the top. 27 points and seven assists per game on 49% from the field and 41% from three in this span. Eight free throw attempts per game, too, getting defenders out of position and getting to the line. And it’s just that steady, you know, I kind of bought in with Darren Fox with this after that playoff series. Was it in 2023 against the Warriors where they were the two seed, I think. Um I can’t remember. I think it was the two seed. Yeah. And um they might have been the three seed. I think it was a 6-3 series. whatever it was, the Kings had the homecourt advantage and the Warriors ended up beating them because Steph Curry goes for 50 in game seven. But the two kind of things that stood out to me on the Kings front in that series were like Darren Fox and Malik Monk as well, but let’s focus on Dear Fox here. Darren Fox could like legitimately break down defenses. To me, that’s like the fundamental part of every great offense. It’s one of the big things that I’m concerned about as a Laker fan going into tonight in Toronto. I just like their chances a lot better if we have Luca as a guy that can break the defense at the start, right? Do you have something that one of your players can do that’s extremely difficult to manage defensively that is going to cause them to either collapse or put two on the ball? Anything that could generate easier openings for your team, right? And for me with Dear Fox, it’s that combination, that balance of his legit dribble penetration, like he’s just getting by guys whenever he wants to, but also counterbalancing it with the jump shooting. That’s going to be what draws the attention that unlocks an underrated part of Dear Fox’s game. We talked a little bit about this the other day in the in the power rankings show, but Dear Fox is sneaky one of the better like crosscourt kickout passers in the league, which is getting them into their drive and kick. And then just a bunch of these other young players are playing well like Devin Vel is shooting 44% on six three-point attempts per game during the span. Straight up won the Denver Nuggets game with his uh aggressive catch and shoot shooting. Kell Johnson has been a monster attacking the basket. He’s averaging 16 points per game on 61% from the field. Dylan Harper has been playing really well. It’s good to see him back. He had a big drive in the Memphis game out of the right corner. It just kind of looked like one of those like one of those plays that you look at when you’re looking at a young player and his star potential. You look at like specific types of plays where he looks kind of unguardable. And he had this play out of the right corner where he ripped through to his left hand, got that tiny bit of an angle, and then like kind of hooked the dude with his right elbow and got in for that left-handed layup. And it’s like, oh, like that’s going to be physically difficult for any defender in the league to deal with. that could be a foundational trait that could turn Dylan Harper into a superstar one day and that’s the potential that he has, right? But like you just have this De’arren Fox breaking the defense at the point of attack, all their young guards and wings playing well. Luke Cornett’s back and playing super well. This is just a really good basketball team and they’re way better than I gave them credit for in the preseason. I talked about this a little bit in the power rankings episode and we’re going to get into it in more detail when we do my predictions episode where we kind of go back over some of the predictions I made this off season, but you know, in addition to the Clippers one that we were talking about yesterday, this was one that I was flat out wrong about. I was talking about how I didn’t think the Spurs had enough good basketball players, like really good two-way basketball players to compete nightly in the Western Conference with some of the other super talented rosters that were up in the league. And I was just wrong about that. They have a lot of guys who are playing uh some of the best basketball of their careers. Darren Fox has literally been playing some of the best basketball of his career during this stretch. Devin Vel has been a revelation in this recent stretch. Kellen Johnson kind of looked like a guy who was going to be the odd man out in recent seasons. He’s been incredible this year. Dylan Harper right away as a rookie being a legit contributor. Luke Cornett as a bonafide rotation piece at the center position. This is just a really good basketball team. And as far as the Giannis thing goes, again, like I said it off the top, like as a basketball fan, I really want to see Giannis in San Antonio. Uh, but then for the health of the league, I think it’s best if he stays out east. But if you’re San Antonio, who cares about all that? I think they should make the push for Giannis. They have a couple of salaries that they could make it work with and the draft picks. Giannis and WBY would be a frightening duo together. You could still maintain the level of role player talent around them you need to be successful. I think they should certainly try for Giannis. Maybe they don’t get him. Uh, but I think they should certainly make that attempt. All right, guys. That’s all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. Don’t forget playback tonight at 4:30 p.m. Pacific time uh for Lakers at Raptors. Tomorrow morning, we’ll have a little bit of game reaction as well as a mailbag. And then Friday night, once again, Lakers Celtics at 400 PM Pacific time on playback. Again, I appreciate you guys and I will see you later tonight.

Jason reacts to the latest in the Giannis Antetokounmpo and Milwaukee Bucks trade saga and gives options on trades to five potential teams: the Los Angeles Lakers, San Antonio Spurs, New York Knicks, Atlanta Hawks, and Orlando Magic. Then he breaks down the Dallas Mavericks beating the Miami Heat thanks to a continued rise from Cooper Flagg, Ryan Nembhard’s emergence, and Anthony Davis returning to form. Finally, he discusses De’Aaron Fox and Dylan Harper leading the San Antonio Spurs to another win without Victor Wembanyama.

All lines provided by @hardrockbet

2:00 – Bucks / Pistons reaction
4:05 – Giannis trade situation
16:47 – Mavericks win again
30:44 – Spurs win without Wemby

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