The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Celtics Dominate 76ers, Lakers Get Back On Track, Plus A Mailbag

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

Jason Timpf breaks down Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics dominant win over Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kyle Kuzma jump starting the Milwaukee Bucks in a comeback win over Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers, LeBron James leading the Los Angeles Lakers to a win over the Portland Trail Blazers, and answers NBA mailbag questions about Luka Doncic, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and more. Timeline: 4:15 - Start 6:00 - Celtics dominate 76ers 25:00 - Bucks beat Clippers 33:00 - Lakers get back on track 55:00 - Mailbag #Volume #Herd Follow Jason Timpf on social: https://twitter.com/_JasonLT https://www.instagram.com/jtimpf15/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey guys, it's us. The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas.

We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it. But, you know, tired and sick. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.

you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the ice. Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The story I've told myself can then shape my behavior, and that can lead me to sabotage the possibility of connection. This Mental Health Awareness Month, tune into the podcast Deeply Well with Debbie Brown. If you've been searching for a soft place to land while doing the work to become whole, this podcast is for you to hear more. Listen to Deeply Well with Debbie Brown from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, it's Edwin Castro, also known as Castro 1021.

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Hope all of you guys had a great week on a jam-pack show for you tonight. We're going to be starting with the Boston Celtics, who really beat up the Philadelphia 76ers last night. I want to zoom in on their versatility. After that, the Milwaukee Bucks came back from down 13 in the fourth quarter to the LA Clippers last night. Kyle Kuzma was amazing on defense. Janice looked incredible before sitting out the rest of the game on his minutes restriction. Really want to dive into Kyle Kuzma in the force multiplier that he can be for that group.

Then in our third segment, we're going to talk some Lakers who got a big win against the Blazers to get back on track last night. LeBron James drops 40 points. I want to zoom in on the concept of their defense. the number one defense in the league since January 15th, a 17 game sample. I want to just zoom into that in what it means for the Lakers and what it means specifically within the context of Luca. And then lastly, like we always do on Fridays, our mailbag questions. Remember, if you guys want to get mailbag questions, drop them in our YouTube comments.

Just put mailbag with a colon, write your question, and we'll get to it on Fridays throughout the rest of the season. You guys know the joke 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 underscore Jason LT 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. We also have brand new social media feeds, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Make sure you guys follow us there for more content throughout the season.

And last but not least, like I mentioned off the top, keep dropping mailbag questions and those YouTube comments for our Friday mailbags throughout the rest of the year. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Celtics beat the shit out of the Sixers last night. Really controlled that one from start to finish. And the Sixers with Embed, with Maxi, with Paul George, all healthy in the lineup, who continue to look extremely mediocre. We talked about that last week, so I'm not going to get into that today.

But what fascinated me was the way that Boston dominated that game. This is a team that only averages 33 ball screens per game. It's bottom 10 in the league. Several reasons for that. Part of that is a lot of their perimeter players are similar size and style. So you'll see a lot of switching against the Boston Celtics. They also have pick and pop bigs. And one of the easiest ways to confront a pick and pop,

which is always open into traditional coverage, is to switch. And the Celtics also just in terms of their talent level, their team that has a lot of guys that can punish mismatches. So they're more or less a mismatch hunting type of offense. But last night, they ran 42 ball screens against the Philadelphia 76ers. And I thought there was a very specific reason why.

Philly has a severe roster weakness, specifically at the center position in terms of foot speed, the ability to cover ground and change direction on the perimeter. Whether it's Embed, who's been brutally bad as of late on the perimeter, or Gershon Yabuselli or Andre Drummond, whoever it is, they're just extremely slow-footed at that position.

So Boston specifically for that match, up changed the way they played and started spamming ball screens instead of hunting smaller perimeter players and by the way they had smaller players that they could attack right there's tyrese maxi out there that you can consistently look to hunt there are smaller skinnier players but they just went the route of trying to hunt the philly bigs in space and it was barbecue chicken over and over and over again and bead would either be way too far back and in his drop coverage. That's a weird thing with Embed, like, I don't know if it's like a Nick Nurse mixing up coverages thing or if he just decides possession by possession,

whether or not he feels like getting up to the level. But sometimes he's way far back in a drop and guys are hitting pull up jumpers over the top. Sometimes he's running up to the level, but they'll just pop Horford or Porzingis out to the three point line or they'll just attack Joel Embed in space or a big one in Bede's been really struggling with is rejected screens where like guys will get ready to go off a ball screen and Embed will overcommit to one side of the screen. And so then when the ball handler crosses back over away from the screen, it's just all this daylight going downhill. In the first half, when the Celtics scored 72 points, they got 1.55 points per ball screen. That's insane. In 22 reps in the first half, one over one and a half

points per possession, including passes in ball screens, just an insane level of efficiency. And the Sixers really got ran off the floor. And it got me thinking about this concept of versatility. In order to win the title, you have to win four completely different playoff series against four completely different teams, right? Like, you might face a dominant rim protector in more of a traditional scheme in one round. Think about a team like Milwaukee. Milwaukee is going to present a challenge. We're going to talk about them later, where they got Janice and Kyle Kuzma flying around in Helpside and Brooks just sitting under the rim waiting for everybody. It's a specific type of challenge, right?

But then you might face a team that does a lot more switching in a different round. Think about a team like the Miami Heat, who with all of their big, rangy athletes, especially now that Wiggins is in the picture, they can switch a lot of action. Bametabio, one of the best bigs in the league at switching ball screens, right? Cleveland this year has done a lot of switching because Jared Allen can guard on the perimeter. Evan Mowbly can guard on the perimeter. It's a very different type of challenge going against the Cleveland Cavaliers, right? And then on the other end of the floor, like the East has a lot of elite guards, right? Guys like Jalen Brunson, Damian Lillard, Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland

with the Cavs. But then you'll also face these teams that have more dynamic like big wings, right? teams like the Pistons with Kate Cunningham or Janus and Tenacumpo who was just bludgeoning the clippers last night or Pascal Seyakum who's been one of the more efficient matchup attackers in the league this year. Palo Boncaro when he's healthy in rhythm. Franz Wagner when he's healthy in rhythm. Even looking at the center position, again, the Sixers aren't a threat this year, but on any given season, you could run into an issue where it's like, oh, what if you have to face some combination of one or two of Yokic, Anthony Davis, or Joel Embedd, right? Alperin-Shangoon, the Victor Wenbanyama types of the league.

I say types. He's the one and only of his kind. But you get the point. These like big unicorn bigs that can cause problems, right? You might face speed in one round and size in the next, a team that tests your ability to defensive rebound like the Detroit Pistons or a team that tries to run you off the floor in transition like the Indiana at Pacers. Contrary to what

Draymond Green says, and so many of our former NBA players that are content to shit on the league, there are a bunch of teams in the NBA who play different styles. There's a lot of uniqueness as you go from team to team around the league. The ability to survive

those wild shifts in style from round to round is a big part of what makes an NBA champion. Sometimes, you're just so strong with your base setup that no team's able to that happens from time to time. The team I look at as an example of that is the Denver Nuggets in 2023. They had slight variations, right? They would have stretches of games or specific

matchups where they'd bring Yokic up to the level and then they'd have other matchups where they'd sit Yokic deeper in a drop and offer less low man help from Aaron Gordon. But for the most part, it was traditional coverages. And on offense, it was, they just run the same thing, just about every single time. There were some differences like the Miami Heat series. It's like, oh, we're going to spam Aaron Gordon post-ups, right? Like there were a handful of different things that they would do differently. But that team, it was more like just we have this completely unsolvable problem that is Nicole Yokic and good luck solving it. But there are different types of champions over the year where it comes down more to versatility. The Bucks being able to play Janus at center or at the four, the

Lakers being able to play Anthony Davis at center or at the four teams playing through heavy ball screen attack one night switching towards more of a post-up style attack a different night. There's a lot of versatility in the champions as we look back through NBA history. And that's what I like about this Celtics team. There are a lot of teams out there that struggle against switching defenses, but that will thrive against traditional ball screen coverage. We're going to talk Lakers later. Luca will help them with their switching,

but LeBron and Austin have a vulnerability to ball pressure and switching. But then you look at them in the first half against Portland, when Donovan Klingan and Robert Williams are sitting in drop coverages all game. LeBron and Austin are picking them apart, right? Like they thrive on baked-in, dribble penetration, but when you force them to do it over and over and over again

against the set defender in front, they can have some problems, right? The Celtics are very well equipped to handle both. they have a reputation for being one of the best switch attacking defenses in the offenses in the league not just because jason tatum can attack smaller players not just because jalen brown can attack smaller players not just because they can pick on bigs in space but also because of their spacing be also also because of their ability to use seals like you'll see jason tatum screen for derrick white but screen the backside of the defender and create that little passing

angle over the top and derrick white floats it to him suddenly you have a four on three. They do a lot of work attacking, switching successfully. But then as we saw last night, you go up against a drop coverage team, a team that's running a lot more traditional coverages, either the big at the level or sitting back in a drop. In that sort of situation, if you don't score the basketball in those ball screens, if you don't score the basketball with the big popping, then you allow Embed to park his ass underneath the basket. And when Embed is parked underneath the basket. He can be a problem.

And there are a lot of teams that struggle against those kinds of coverages, right? The Celtics literally just changed the way they play and annihilated the Sixers picking on their bigs in those traditional coverages. There are a lot of teams out there who have a base defensive scheme that works, but it doesn't work against other teams, right? Famous example of this is the jazz in 2021. want. You could sit Rudy Gobert underneath the basket. Everything's great. You start spacing them out with five out spacing. Suddenly it's like, oh, like Donovan Mitchell is struggling to guard the ball.

Mike Conley's struggling to guard the ball. Boyan McDonovic is struggling to guard the ball. And Gobert's not there to clean things up. And a Clippers team just come without Kawhi Leonard, just completely picks apart a Utah Jazz defense that was dominant throughout the entire regular season. I'm a little worried about that with the Lakers this year. We're going to talk about it in a little bit. I'm concerned about them being able to handle certain matchups with their defense, even though their base scheme has been defending well, and I expect to continue to defend well, right? How do you have defensive versatility? Well, can you match teams with size. Yeah, the Celtics can. They can play two big looks with Horford and Porzingis on the floor. Can the Celtics go small and switch everything? Yeah,

they had looks last year with Horford at center, where they did a lot of damage to teams, just by doing a lot of switching. They have bigs that can guard on the perimeter. They have perimeter players that can guard bigs. That was the big thing that unlocked the Celtics defensive scheme in the postseason last year was we're going to put Jason Tatum on the opponent's center and we're going to put Jalen Brown on the opponent's best perimeter player. And we're just going to switch ball screens.

And now all of a sudden your pick and roll attack doesn't work. And oh, by the way, where's Porzingis at? He's guarding your weakest above the break three point shooter and just waiting for everybody at the rim, just making a complete mess of things. That's the versatility that Boston has on the defensive end of the floor. Drew Holliday spent a bunch of time guarding Joel and Bede last night. One of my biggest issues with the way that the game of basketball is analyzed around the league is we hyper focus on like what a team's net rating is or how good their offense is in a large sample or how good their defense is in a large sample. And I don't want to sit here and pretend like there aren't

value in those things, there are. And I think they're important in terms of indicators of a team's level of commitment on the night and night out process of the regular season. If you're a serious basketball team, you need to be winning your winning your games by a lot of points and it needs to manifest in something like net rating, right? Like if you're not dominating in those areas, then you're probably just not sharp enough in general to get where you want to go. But once you get into a playoff series, those metrics don't mean shit. It becomes can you score? Can you score, against this particular team. Can you get stops against this particular team?

I was watching Janus last night. He was showcasing this like ridiculous spin move. We're going to talk about it here in a little bit. And like two one like fadeaways over the top was just bludgeoning the clippers in the paint in that early fourth quarter stretch, which really sparked a run. And it doesn't really matter how good your defense is if you can't guard Janice. that's what I'm concerned about with the Lakers with the Nuggets, right? It doesn't really matter if their switching scheme can bend but not break and get a lot of stops

if like Nicola Yokic can just get a layup every single time he wants. That's why we have to look at this deeper than just reading net ratings and reading the standings to tell us who the best playoff threats are. The Celtics have great metrics too. Top five in both offense and defense right now. they're sixth and defensive rebounding, but they also have the ability to shape shift from matchup to matchup, and that's what makes them such a difficult team to contend with.

I thought it was really interesting the way they just spanned ball screens to beat the Sixers last night when that's not really their play style on most nights. Who's scoring big in the NBA this season? You are with all the new ways to get in on the action at Draft King Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NBA. From Monster Slams to Dishing the Rock to cleaning the gloves, Get behind your favorite players and the prop bets you can make on Draft Kings, the home of NBA player props. Ready to place your first bet? Try betting on something simple, like picking how many points your favorite player will have.

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and resort in Kansas. 21 plus age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario, bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkng.c.c.com slash B ball. Hey, it's us to Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, new?

Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey, Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide. of podcasts throughout there.

But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers.

This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, Hey, Jonas. and then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas,

and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.

Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and Head, writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter.

Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jared Adano. You might know me as that loud guy who yells out help on the internet. Help! Somebody! Please!

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known to man. If I'm calling you, even if you're on your phone, let it ring twice. One ring is too scary. Oh, cream of chicken. Hey, cream. Cream and chicken soup.

This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrite as part of the Mike Coutura Podcast Network available on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The story I've told myself about love or relationships can then shape my behavior, and that can lead me to sabotage the possibility of connection. This Mental Health Awareness Month, tune into the podcast deeply well with Debbie Brown and explore the journey of healing, self-discovery, and returning to yourself. We explore higher consciousness, emotional well-being, and the practices that help you find clarity, peace, and self-mastery in a world that can feel overwhelming. The world is becoming lonelier.

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on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Moving on to Clippers' Bucks. So the Bucks were trailing by 13 in the early fourth quarter, and Yannis just completely takes over the game. They try to get some stops by running a two three zone with Jericho Sims in the middle of the floor. And Clippers got a couple of buckets out of it, but it didn't, a nice job of just kind of stagnating and changing the flow of the game. And on the other end of the floor, Janus was just torching Ben Simmons, torching Nicholas Batum.

He was using this spin move over and over again last night, disguised it really well too. He had a fun one against Nick Batum, where he catches the ball on the left, kind of like elbow extended area there in the middle of the, of that left. of the floor. And he's facing up in the, the clippers are basically zoned up on him. So they're in both driving lanes. Kawhi Leonard's kind of doing the little defensive three second dance where he's hopping in and out of the key, trying to make sure that he's ready to rotate. They're rotating on the high side. And Janus just kind of waits for a second to kind of read the floor. And then he does a beautiful job of disguising a post up, making it look like he was about to go kind of into a traditional slowdown postup where he turns his back.

into that high hesitation dribble and then just immediately spun off of it. It like disguised it like he was going to go for a slow methodical post up and then just immediately spun off of it, went right around Nick Batum, Kauai had no chance. He was not even close to being there in time. He's right at the basket. It just reminds everybody that like when you're dealing with one of those true upper tier guys, this is one of the reasons why I've been excited about Luca Donchich when it comes to the Lakers, right?

there are a handful of guys in the league. Nicola Yokic, Shea Gildes-Alexander, Janice, and Tenacompo, Luca Donchich. I think Jason Tatum has kind of entered into this group where it's like, there's really nothing you can do. There's no player that stops them. There's no scheme that stops them. They are world beaters.

And when you have one of those guys, you present a problem to the opponent that becomes very difficult to solve. It's one of the big things that we've underrated. when we've talked about the Bucks in recent years, where we think about them as a broken roster. And look, here's the thing. They're not the best roster in the league. We all know that.

But there's an important context to their last two playoff exits. Janus didn't play. When Janus played even on a limited Bucks roster in 2022, because of the Chris Middleton injury, it was just Drew Holiday, a bunch of role players in Janus, and he still pushed the Celtics to seven games. because guess what? When you get into a playoff series, it's over and over and over and over again that he's coming downhill at you. And I remember early in that series, it's like Horford would wall

him up. You know, like you'd, uh, you'd have guys sliding their feet and absorbing contact. Grant Williams played some good minutes on Janus in that series. But then what happened? After like the 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th time that he comes at you, he starts to just get through you. And there's literally nothing you can do about it. And he pushed that series to seven games when it had no business going to seven games. And that's where the optimism comes. That's why have the bucks looked mediocre at times this year? Yeah, you shouldn't write off Janus. Have the nuggets looked mediocre at times this year? Yeah, you shouldn't write off Yokic. Have the Lakers looked like they have some obvious roster flaws with their new build, especially at the center position. Yeah, but you probably

shouldn't write off Luca Donchich and LeBron James playing the way that he's playing. And as I was watching that last night, it just goes to show you. Like, Janus is kind of flying under the radar this year because of all the excitement around Shea, all the excitement around Yokic. He's still one of those guys, one of those guys that presents a truly unsolvable problem for opponents. When Yanis sat out of the game, though, something really interesting happened. It kind of goes out of the game in that mid-fourth quarter stretch on a minute's restriction, obviously coming back from his injury.

And the Bucks won the game with defense. And everybody was guarding. Dame had a really nice steal where they were running a ball screen with Zubach and Hardin and Hardin through a bounce pass to Zubach on the roll. And Dame dug down off of Amir coffee and got a steel that ended up leading to a runout and one for Kyle Kuzma. Brooke Lopez blocked Kauai at the rim because Kuzma flattened out the drive. I talk a lot about flattening out drives. When you flatten out drives, it gives your helpers more time to rotate. And when Brooke has time to kind of read things on the back line, he can be devastating there.

He had another block on another sweeping drive across the middle of the floor. He had three blocks in the fourth quarter. Kyle Kuzma took a charge tagging Avica Zubach on a roll. They were guarding. AJ Green, Stonewalled Kauai Leonard a few times. Kyle Kuzma had multiple stops on the ball against Kauai Leonard and James Hardin,

either forcing them into bad shots. He forced James Hardin into a three out of the right corner that was like a foot and a half over the back of the rim. He stonewalled Kauai Leonard into passing the basketball because he's got the length to bother that pull-up jump shot. Kuzma looks like a Swiss Army knife. I've seen him take charges. I've seen him battle and beat in the post and front the post.

I've seen him guard guards. I've seen him guard wings. He's grabbing a ton of defensive rebounds. He is a force multiplier for this defense. And I was especially excited to see him in the context of playing alongside Janus. Because again, that's what makes this work. When you're talking about, when you're talking about traditional switching schemes, it becomes about how many good defenders do you have on the floor.

But when it comes to these more like traditional pick and roll schemes, where you have Brooke waiting at the basket, where you have Brooke coming up to the level sometimes, it becomes more about off ball defense. It becomes more about how athletic are you on the back line. How well can you protect the rim and disrupt things when the ball gets past Brooke Lopez against types of players that are going to pull them out to the level?

And like, yes, Chris Middleton brought a lot of ball handling to this team, which, by the way, like, Kyle Kuzma's done some of that. He had a big, one of the biggest clutch plays in this game. It's 104, 104, Kuzma attacks downhill with the ball, forces Zubach to switch on him, swings a skip past the Tori and Prince. Amir coffee ends up switched on Brooke Lopez because Kyle Kuzma got downhill so hard, he forced Zubach to switch, got Brooke a one-on-one in the post against Amir Koppi. he just bullied him right under the basket for an and one.

They ended up leading the rest of the game from that point. You know, I'd already loved the early returns from the Kyle Kuzma trade. He made it immediately clear within the first few games that he was planning on playing winning basketball. Now adding Janus to this mix gives this team crazy potential. And I have my eye on them as a team that could potentially jump considerably higher up my contender rankings after I see them with Janus and Kuzma. together more. It's a physicality thing. It's a size thing. It's a protecting the rim and rebounding thing. It's a maybe you just can't handle Janus on Tentacumpo on the other end of the floor kind of thing. That makes me so excited about them in the big picture. And then Dame,

I mean, like Dame, we, Dame, when he was in the first round last year with Chris Middleton, had to carry such a massive offensive load. Within the context of this sort of build, when they get to the postseason, when Janus is playing the way he's playing. when you have this type of defense, Dame is a really dangerous second option. Has this remarkable ability to get to the foul line on three-point shots. He drew two fouls on three-point shots in the fourth quarter, hit another big step-back three off the left wing,

just manufacturing points. That is another force multiplier within the context of what this team is capable of on the offensive end of the floor. All right, moving on to Lakers Blazers. this game looked so similar to me to the set of games that we saw between when AD got hurt in the Sixers game and when Luca joined the team. Think about like when they beat the Knicks, like in the Clippers and that kind of phase of the of the season. The Lakers defense has just been so good lately. Again, they're number one in the entire NBA in defensive rating since January 15th.

That's a 17 game sample or roughly 21% of the game. the season. Oh, well, Anthony Davis was in there for some of those games. You're right. He was in there for seven of those games in the 10 games since they're second in defensive rating. Now, we'll get deeper into what that means later because like, do I think they're a top tier defense in this league? No. But the point is they are guarding to the effect that they're guarding better than everyone in the NBA over the course the last six weeks or so. They've just done a much, much better job of executing JJ Reddick's one through five switching scheme. We'll talk about that when we get into their defense.

And then on offense, LeBron and Austin have just been in such a great group. There have been clunky moments, especially as Luca has been in the picture and they're trying to work that new partnership out. But LeBron in this 13 and 4 stretch, 27 points, 8 rebounds, 9 assists on 63% true shooting. That is MVP level production from a 40-year-old in a winning context with massive gain against good teams. Austin Reeves in this 13 and 4 stretch, 21 points, four rebounds, seven assists,

63% true shooting. That's insane. 48 points, 12 rebounds and 16 assists on 63% true shooting from LeBron and Austin over this 17 game span. This game kind of had an interesting flow and that's how it also kind of mimicked some of these other games recently when AD's been out, but Luke has also been out where like they start the game. there's a lot of ball pressure. That's like the book on the Lakers. You want to ball pressure Austin and LeBron and try to wear them out. That's by the way, one of the big reasons why I think Luca is so important to this team. He is impervious to that sort of thing. But in the early part of this game, it's a lot of ball pressure, but the Blazers were running a lot of drop coverage with Donovan Klingin and Robert Williams, where they're either they're coming up, but they're not that high up at the level, but they're sitting back waiting for the ball handler coming off of the screen. And LeBron and Austin just absolutely towards.

it getting all the way to the rim. LeBron in particular had some really impressive finishes in traffic through Klingon. LeBron, by the way, in this 17-game span is shooting 82% in the restricted area. So how's that for the old man? He's one of only six players in the league in that span that's making at least 3.5 shots in the restricted area on at least 80% and it's all centers. And then LeBron. The short to mid-range shot making both Austin and LeBron were great with that.

And then again, when you show a willingness to either attack downhill or to score and pick and roll, something happens with the screen defender. The ball screen defender starts to engage the ball handler more. As soon as you start to engage the ball handler more, that's when the role man gets open. Jackson A's and Trey Jameson had 15 points in this game. A lot of spoon-fed baskets right around the rim off of action that Austin and LeBron were running. But again, every team has a game plan for the game. the Lakers. Lots of ball pressure. You wear them down. And then usually over the course of the game,

there's more switching and then more aggressive ball coverage is where the big's coming up to the level. And what ends up happening is LeBron and Austin start to get tired. And when they get tired, they get sloppy, particularly as passers. Those two guys finished with 17 turnovers. The team finished with a season high 24 turnovers. And so many of them were like pick sixes. And this is the weird part about that game. LeBron and Austin were brilliant, but they both undercut a lot of their success with these really sloppy turnovers

that literally led to run out layups and dunks. Again, they had 31 points off of turnovers in this game. The Blazers did. Denny Avdia in particular, it was amazing in this game, did a ton of damage in those, like, kind of pick, run out, like pick six type of types of sequences.

But that allowed the Blazers to kind of slowly and methodically work their way into the game. But LeBron James, once again, just like he did against the Hornets the night before, goes absolutely berserk in the early fourth quarter shift. Hitting threes against Jeremy Grant, who was going underneath picks. And LeBron's just shooting the ball too well these days for you to go under picks. He made Jeremy Grant pay with two threes that way, hit another one of those drop covered shots against Donovan Klingin, like got Jeremy Grant in jail and then hit like a little like 12-footer along the left lane line. He hit this crazy driving floater on Tumani Camaro.

Was a really impressive defensive player all season, but was doing a lot of damage to the Lakers last night. Hit this driving floater on Tumani Camaro. All of a sudden, the Lakers are up by nine. But then the rest of the way, the Blazers just double teamed LeBron. And there were a couple more ugly turnovers, a couple more runouts. It kept things kind of close. But when you double team LeBron, he's just going to pick you apart. They got good looks down the stretch. Austin Reeves hit a big three on the right wing off of a LeBron double that more or less kind of like, ice to the game, so to speak. And then Austin Reeves, a couple of big stops. Got a stop on Scoot Henderson driving off of the left wing, got another stop in the post

against Jeremy Grant. I've been telling everybody forever, like Austin will have his bad games where he looks bad on defense, especially in like random regular season games against mediocre teams. But when LeBron needs, or when Austin needs to guard, he guards. Austin slides his feet. He absorbs contact. He's excellent at attacking the basketball. Both of those stops against Scoot Henderson and Jeremy Grant, he just attacked the basketball. He got Scoot Henderson up high. He got Jeremy Grant down low. Austin can guard.

And he got a couple of huge stops down the stretch of that game. Before we get into the Lakers defense, I just want to shout out a couple of Blazers. I was really impressed with Tumani Kamara again. He has just a really unique combination of like size and strength, but also long arms and lots of mobility laterally. He had five steals in this game was causing a lot of problems. Denny Avdia, not just the transition runouts off of steel. but he brings a good amount of downhill force.

He had this off foot dunk against LeBron driving a close out off the top of the key where he literally made LeBron look like he was stuck in the mud. LeBron's been guarding for a couple of months now. It's not as easy to do as you might think. And he just counters that downhill force with a nice jump shot. It can be somewhat inconsistent. He's better off the dribble than he is off the catch. That means he's kind of like a rhythm player.

It makes me think like in the big picture he's kind of more of a second side creator, a guy who should run more action. Robert Williams, his length and mobility was a problem all night. They had two blocks and two steals. The Blazers are fun. They have a nice group of useful role players. It's just Anthony Simons and Jeremy Grant leave a lot to be desired as ball handlers. They went four for 25 from the field.

And that's just really hard to overcome for anybody. But I want to focus on the Lakers defense for a bit. Again, their number one in defensive rating since January 15th. A large chunk of the season here where they've been playing great defense. they've really settled into a base scheme that works for them. They either switch everything or switch almost everything depending on the matchup. So like last night, for instance, they're not worried about getting picked apart in ball screens by Portland.

Their ball handlers aren't good enough at scoring or playmaking to do that. So they had Dorian, Finney Smith, some of their perimeter players gave Vincent, chasing over the top of screens while Klingin and Robert Williams rolled and it allowed them to stay attached to their pull-up shooters and bait Shaden Sharp and bait and Fernie Simons into these like tough rear-view contested pull-up threes

coming off of screens and it worked. It baited them into a bunch of them. They took 17 pull-up jumpers last night, made six of them. But then you'll see in other matchups where they're more concerned about ball screens. They'll switch with their fives as well. And then they do, they switch everything when they go to their small ball groups, right?

when there's no center on the floor. But their switching scheme has worked so, so much better in the last couple of months because the Lakers are actually doing the things that they need to do to make that scheme work. To JJ's credit, even when those guys weren't executing it, he stuck with it, he believed in it, and now he's reaping the rewards. We've talked about this on the show before, but there are several key things that you need to do in order for a switching scheme to work. First, you need your off-ball defenders to be prepared to jump out immediately,

when there is a screen to avoid that interchange gap. We talked about that yesterday with Miles Bridges. You got to switch right away. You can't have a gap between the switch because that's when a decent player can rise up and knock down a jump shot. There's an example early in the game where you can see there's a couple of Portland screeners

up at the top of the key. The Lakers players are glued up on the backside, ready to jump out whenever that screen comes so that that interchange gap isn't there. Secondly, you need your weaker defenders to battle. If you're switching, they're going to go, hey, let's attack Austin Reeves. Hey, let's attack Luca Donchish. Austin, you got to compete in those situations.

Austin, last night, huge stops down the stretch against Scoot Henderson against Jeremy Grant. Third, you need to shrink the floor around them by gaping driving lanes. You'll see possessions where the Lakers have two guys on either side of the ball, arms out in the driving lane, close enough where they feel like they can. can close out, shrinking the floor. The Scoot Henderson drive against Austin Reeves. If you look, there's a lake run either side of Austin in the gap, making it like a narrow lane for Scoot Henderson to try to drive through.

And so he doesn't really try to go around Austin. He tries to go through Austin. And Austin takes one good slide to the left, absorbs that contact, and attacks the basketball and ties Scoot Henderson up. If you don't have those gaps there, excuse me, if you don't have those defenders gaping there and they're out of the way. you have a wider lane, that is what allows Scoot Henderson to really get to mixing Austin up. And once he starts mixing Austin up, that's where he has more of a speed advantage that he can

take advantage of, right? Fourth, you need to have a plan for dribble penetration. Which way, if I'm going to get beat off the dribble, which way do I want to funnel the guy where I have more help? There was a big stop late in this game that LeBron James had on Anthony Simons. And here's things. Simons is faster than LeBron, especially at age 40, right? So like LeBron is probably going to give up at least some dribble penetration on that play. Now, his job, again, is to flatten out the drive. And he did. But watch that play. LeBron. He knows Rui Hachamura is gaping off of Jeremy Grant. And he knows Austin Reeves is sitting right at the left block or the right block. Excuse me. So with Austin on the right block and Rui gaping off of that right corner, LeBron knows my best help is if I funnel him towards the sideline. So if you look at LeBron, look at his stance.

His right foot is high. His left foot is back. He's in position to slide with Anthony Simons, but he is forcing him towards his right hand. So what happens? LeBron knows the drive is going right. The drive happens to the right. LeBron slides with him. Both him and Austin end up attacking the basketball and they force it out of bounds.

That's a plan. that's going to be big when you have Luca. When Luca's in this picture and he does start getting attacked, you need to have a plan for what he's going to do. That doesn't mean Luca allows dribble penetration. I heard that a lot from Mavericks fans. Like, oh, Luca's job was to let guys drive past him into rim protection. No, it's not.

Your job is to contain the ball as best as you can. But in the absence of the ability to actually literally contain the ball, you need to force him in one direction where you have a plan to hand. it. And then fifth, you have to gang rebound. When you switch, you're likely going to have smaller players battling bigs underneath the rim. You have to come flying in from the perimeter to help that smaller player in those situations. They've been doing a good job of that. In the 10 games since Anthony Davis left the team, they were 13th in defensive rebounding. That's not bad at all for a team that's been playing a lot of small ball over that stretch. Now the question is,

how good is this defense really, especially in the context of Luca Donchich. To be clear, even without Luca on the floor, even if we just remove Luca from the equation, this is obviously not a number one level defense. A lot of this is February basketball. There have been good wins in there. They've played really good defense against some good teams. They defended the clippers really well. They defended the Knicks really well.

They defended the Pacers well. but a lot of bad offenses were in there too. Games against Utah, games against Charlotte, games against Portland, games against Washington. Those are going to, the Warriors' offenses struggled a lot this year.

Those are games that are going to influence your defensive rating a certain amount, right? You add 30 plus minutes of Luca Donchich into the picture, and yeah, your defensive talent goes down a level. So I don't think this is going to be some top five dominant defense. I'm not here today saying, Lakers number one defense,

they're going to say number one defense, they're going to win with defense. I don't think that's going to be the case. But they don't need to be that type of dominant defense. This team absolutely needs to be a dominant top two or top three level offense. And I do think that's a real possibility for them with the talent level that they have on that end of the floor. With LeBron playing at the level he's playing at, with Luca playing at the level he's capable of playing at, they can present an unsolvable problem to teams.

But if they're a top two or top three level offense, they don't need to be a dominant defense. They just need to be good enough. I've talked about this a lot in the context of like Denver in 2023. Somewhere in that like 10 to 15 range of defense is good enough when you have peak unguardability on the offensive end of the four. And I absolutely think the Lakers can get to that point. I think the Lakers can be a slightly above average defense with Luca in the picture.

They've been getting too many stops now for a while. I'm seeing so many people just writing the Lakers defense off. And who knows, maybe Luca gets in the picture and they actually can't guard. Maybe everything falls apart. But it's all conjecture at this point. There's too many good defenders in the lineup. We talked about how Austin's a better defender than people think. Gabe's a good defender.

Doreen Phine Smith's a good defender. LeBron for months now has been a good defender. Jared Vanderbilt when he's right is a great defender. They have good defenders in this lineup. They're going to get some stops. I absolutely think they can get into that slightly above average range of defense. I like the switching scheme as like a way for them to essentially bend but not break, shut down screening actions, try to bait teams into running a lot of inefficient ISOs and post-ups,

giving up some points but keeping teams in check enough for their offense to be a differentiator. My worries center around specific matchups like I've been talking about. Like we talked about earlier with Boston and the realities of playoff series. Like I do worry about Boston truly spacing them out to where they can't gap, to where they can't help. And it becomes a problem. I can see a team like Denver where it's like they just can't keep Yokic off of the offensive glass.

And even if they double team him and force teams into misses, he just waddles his way underneath the basket and starts shoving guys off and gets offensive rebounds and putbacks. I can see that being a problem. But I think in the big picture, they're going to get a lot more stops than people think. I don't view them as a top tier contender, even if they're at their peak,

simply because of the fact that they're going to have severe matchup weaknesses. But if they get their defense into that, you know, slightly above average range, and they get their offense where they're capable of at the top tier in this league, I absolutely think they can enter into that second tier in the league

with teams like Denver, with teams like Cleveland. I absolutely think that's in their potential. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, huge news?

We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to a... We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts throughout there. But this one's extra special.

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We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel. Help an

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mailbag first question hey jason i'm from basil love the show learned a lot for me the last two years and i usually agree with most of your takes i'm always impressed by your knowledge of the game and how well you break the plays down and analyze that luka is my favorite player since allan iverson and i've learned to appreciate lebron which was hard at first because i'm an mj guy however i don't see a world where the lakers will be able to take the beating and win multiple playoff series without a reliable center. It's just too much to ask. Luca has really disappointed me as a defender recently and has shown some decline in his lateral movement to the point of becoming a liability at the point of attack, even though he's an okay

post defender and a good rebounder. I can easily see teams like Minnesota, Denver, Golden State, and others putting Luca and Austin in ball screens and attacking them without any rim protection in the backline to make up for it. What kind of scheme can they use to avoid being put in rotation all the time? I used to hate the Lakers, but now I find myself rooting for them because of Luca, I just want to have some hope that they won't be embarrassed in a playoff series for their lack of defense.

Again, it's a bend but not break kind of concept. I like the idea of switching within the context of this roster. And again, it's not about letting Austin and Luca get run through a million ball screens. You don't want them running through screens. You want them switching. And then when they end up on the ball, there are things you can do. Like you can scram guys out of mismatches. That was something they tried to do against Charlotte.

They just botched a rotation at the back. You can gap and shrink those driving lanes and make it so it's hard. for them to attack. You can tell them to play off and try to bait the guy they're guarding into taking pull-up jump shots. And if they're playing off and there's guys in the gaps, it's like, are you going to drive into three bodies or are you going to take a pull-up three, right? And maybe if you bait an opponent into taking a bunch of pull-up jump shots while your offense is executing the crap out of them on the other end of the floor, that can go a long way towards that base scheme type of, that base type of scheme working. I'm not worried about the center position really

outside of the Yokic matchup. And even then, like, Yokic used to eat. Anthony Davis up. So like, I don't see how that really makes much of a difference. Within the context of LeBron and in Luca, it's vertical spacing really that you need from that position. And Jackson does a good job of that. I think Jackson's been really good since the Anthony Davis trade. What you hit on, which I am actually worried about, is the ability to take a beating. Like you talked about, I do think they can double and rotate and get a certain amount of stops against Nicole Yokic. I do think that they can switch and contain and get a certain amount of stops against other teams. But the question is, can they do it over and over and over again for two weeks against a team like Denver for four

playoff rounds against a bunch of different kinds of teams? And they do have a thin rotation. They have like seven guys that I really trust, right? It's like LeBron Luca Austin, Dorian Finney Smith, Rui, Gabe, and who am I missing? And Vando, right? And then like even Vando, it's a question mark Jackson Hayes. There's some question marks there. So like you get an injury there. Doy and Phiney Smith goes down. That's catastrophic. You can't overcome that. Jackson Hayes goes down. Now you're playing Jared Vanderbilt or Alex Lenn or Christian Coloco or Trey Jemison at the center. That's not something you can overcome. Like there are a few guys now in their lineup that are like absolutely vitally important in terms of if they get injured, you're in big trouble. And so that's where my

major concerns lie is like I worry about Yokic just wearing them down over a playoff series and just destroying them on the offensive glass. I worry about them getting spaced out by teams like Boston. And then I worry about them breaking down. If you're going to play small ball, you need guys like LeBron to rebound really well. That's just really exhausting for him to have to do a lot. Feels like Tatum's been shooting the ball a lot better this year, but he's still only shooting 36% from three as he takes a lot of tough pull-ups that drags his efficiency down.

I've seen arguments that even so is tough pull-up is still critical to opening up room for the whole offense. Do you agree with that view on a shot diet? Yes, he has hurt his efficiency by taking a lot of really tough shots. But there's two things that's helped overcome it, in my opinion. First of all, he's shooting better off the dribble. He's up over a point per shot off the dribble. That's the key one.

It's becoming a situation, especially in ISO, where like it used to be, it's like, oh, just bait Tatum and to take in a tough step back and he'll probably miss most of them. And like now that's a battle he's winning more often than not. I think that will especially become valuable when he gets into the postseason and late clock shot making increases in value exponentially

compared to the regular season. That's why we call him playoff shots, right? The second piece of it with Tatum is just his overall command of games. He has gotten so good at identifying the flow of each game, what each game actually like demands from Tatum in any specific situation and adapting his skill set to fit whatever that demand is. And that's why like, again, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier in terms of evaluating teams based on ratings.

I don't necessarily look at the box score as an indicator of how good Jason Tatum is at basketball. He's been a 25, 10, 10, and 5 guy for as long as we can remember. It's about the impact. It's about how he does it within the context of each individual basketball game. Jason, why doesn't Tatum get more love as a future face of the league? Not that the conversation really matters much anyway, but he never gets brought up. American grown, 26-year-old champion, top five guy whose jersey sales have been top three to five and is quite polarizing. Just seems like he doesn't get any love compared to other guys.

Not sure if it's an anti-Seltics bias or what the national media's reason is. Love the show. Would love your insight. I straight up cannot even begin to care or ever. be concerned with who the face of the NBA is. It hasn't meant anything in my entire time that I've been a fan of this game. I've never even like felt like there was a single face of the NBA. Even through the LeBron era, it felt like LeBron and Kobe, then LeBron and KD, then LeBron and Steph. Like, it never felt, to me, the marketability of the stars of the league is a big picture concept

that centers around the entire set of stars and how marketable all of them are. Now, I do think that there's a conversation to be had about the fact that there just aren't as many very popular young American players as years past. And some of that has been Zion not taking care of his body. Some of that has been John Morant in his off-court antics getting himself into trouble.

And you're right, like their aunt and Tatum kind of seem like the only two guys in a lot of ways. Tatum, the reason why he doesn't get as much buzz in terms of his personality is he's got a very muted personality. Jason Tatum is a pretty chill guy who doesn't talk a ton of shit, who doesn't act super, you know, he's not very performative in the media. He kind of just takes care of business and goes home. And so like, yeah, Jason Tatum doesn't have the sort of like big picture reputation that some of these other players have. But that has more to do with him than anything to do with the league. Frankly, he shouldn't care.

I don't care. I don't talk to many people who care. It's one of those things that I see it on ESPN. I see it on Twitter people arguing about it occasionally. But like, I can't think of any reason why we even waste time talking about who the face of the league is. It doesn't mean anything to me, to be, to be frank. Hey, I love the content you put out and the breakdown you do on the game of basketball. Just a question about regular season dominance and whether it's an overall plus or not.

As a Thunder fan, I believe they are clearly the best team in the league this year. The Celtics have proven it in the playoffs, but clearly don't care about the regular season as much. I've heard you talk about how attacking the regular season every day and building up good habits is a strong indicator for a contender. So I question why you see the Thunder with 10 losses and a dominant regular season as inflated and why the Celtics was 16 losses and disinterested as title favorites. Clearly the Thunder are building the foundation of good habits and have done it while significantly injured. So I believe they deserve the top spot in the contender rankings. what you consider to be the Celtics being disinterested

is top five in offense, top five in defense, sixth and defensive rebounding. So like the way I look at Boston is a very good regular season team that has punted some games, but in the aggregate has been really fucking good still in the concept of the regular season, in the context of the regular season, I should say.

And then as I talked about in the opening segment involving the Celtics, I look at everything within the context of matchup to match up, how versatile is a team, how capable are they of winning four playoff rounds. To me, the regular season performance is more of just like a mandatory minimum. If you're not one of the top 10 records in the NBA,

if you're not consistently every single night providing a certain baseline average performance on either end of the floor that's keeping you sharp as a basketball team, I'm pretty much going to disqualify you as a contender in a lot of ways in terms of being a serious contender. But once you're in that group, to me now it's like you kind of have to parse out things. Because guess what? I talked about this the other day. Every single player in the core eight rotation for the Thunder is 26 or younger. You look at the core rotation for the Celtics and it's a lot of older guys.

Jason Tatum's 26. A lot of the other guys are older. They've got guys in their 30s. They're not going to be as athletically engaged night in, night out, as Oklahoma City is going to be. You get into a series, let's pretend it's the NBA finals. Do you think the fact that the Thunder played harder in December and January is going to matter to the Boston Celtics when they're in TD Garden and they're playing super hard because they have an opportunity to win the trophy? Now all of a sudden it comes down to parsing out the details. I still get concerned about, and we're going to talk about this.

I might as well skip ahead to it if I can find the question, the one about OKC, here it is. Hey, Jason, love the show. And you're the truth when it comes to Hoops Breakdown. You spoke on how OKC's defense is the ultimate calling card and them having a rating way above everyone else is in the league. It reminds me of the same discourse around the Celtics in 2022 when they went to the finals. What similarities do you notice between the Celtics in 2022 and the OKC defense now? Celtics unfortunately lost in the finals, but is the defensive rating a full indicator that OKC will get to the finals this year?

And would you take the C's 2002 defense or the OKC defense this year as the best defenses you've seen in the current era? They are similar in a lot of ways, right? Because like that C's team with Robert Williams had like a rim protection version, but then with Horford at center, they had like more of a switching type of version. Same sort of thing with the Thunder. They have these small groups where they're doing a ton of switching, but then they also have the ability to use Chet. at the basket, right? There's like a kind of similar vibe there. Both teams, one games with their

defense, but had issues from time to time on the offense, which we'll get to in a minute. I think I would personally take the C's defense just because they were bigger on the perimeter. Oklahoma City has a lot of guys in the like six four, six five range. The Celtics were putting out lineups where you would have, you know, Derek White and Marcus Smart, but you'd have Jason Tatum, you'd have Jalen Brown in addition to their bigs on the floors. They just had a little bit more size, a little bit more strength that I think presented teams with more problems on the defensive end of the four. Now, as far as OKC in their specific calling card, the thing that I think they do that revolutionizes the game in their own way is aggression, aggression and rotation. When you are aggressive

on the ball, when you're trapping ball screens, when you're gaping and overhelping and really throwing a lot of resources in the direction of the ball. You create weak side two on once, meaning situations where you have a shooter in the corner, shooter on the wing with one guy there and the thunder are just so good at quickly disengaging from their aggressive coverage and recovering out to the perimeter. That's like their main thing that they do extremely well. But the offensive side of the floor, it's very similar to what we saw with Boston over the years in the sense that like if you remember in that game, if you guys remember in that game against or that series against the Bucks in 2022, they repeatedly time and time again kept

challenging Brooke Lopez right at the rim instead of taking easy kickout passes. When I look back at the Maverick series last year, same sort of thing. Jalen Williams in particular doing a lot of like trying to finish through Daniel Gafford or Derek lively at the basket. And it's just that's a really low percentage shot. You need to be making those extra kickout passes. There is a thing that happened with the Celtics where they learned between 2020. in 2024 to be more deliberate with their shot selection, to get the great shot instead of the

good shot. And that is what pushed them over the top. And I still maintain that's the main barrier between the thunder and where they want to get and where they are now. It's that offensive process piece. Inevitably, they're going to run into some great defense that makes them super uncomfortable. And they're going to have to really break a defense down. This is actually a perfect tee up into our second to last question. We have two more. What happened to all the that everyone, including you, had of the Celtics when it comes to offensive execution against an elite defense. They had no real opposition in the East last year. Dallas was their best match about West because of how bad Luca was defensively, basically granting them an assured advantage every possession. Did everyone already forget the last five years of basketball? I've seen way too many occasions where Tatum and Brown just settled for contested jumpers when things get tight.

Also, similar to your concerns for Yokit shooting last year, are you not concerned about Brown in Holiday? They're shooting 32 and 33% from three. that's a legitimate concern. The Celtics aren't shooting particularly well. Those guys are going to have to shoot better if they want to have more margin for error when they get to the postseason. I think that's legitimate. However, Jason Tatum's 26 years old.

When you say like, oh, the last five years of basketball, you want us to factor in Tatum when he was 21 when we're talking about what they can do, I think there's this misconception that when I talk about any concept, whether it's boxing out, containing the ball, making good decisions, running back in transition defense, that it means you do it every single time. Every team, even the Thunder, even the Celtics, even the Cavs will make bad decisions on offense, miss boxouts, not get back in transition defense, just in general make execution errors.

Everyone makes execution errors. It's about a ratio. How frequently are you making those execution errors? Yes, Tatum still takes bad shots. Yes, Jalen Brown still takes bad shots. Yes, the Celtics have stretches where their offense looks bad. It is much fewer and much further between than it used to be. And I'd actually argue the Celtics have been particularly great this year

at identifying when they're losing control of things and re-centering themselves on offense and making those execution, making those better decisions on offense that get them back on track. kind of felt like the opposite in years past, where they would play good basketball and then they would lose sight of it and especially when things got hard, they would revert to bad habits.

It feels like the opposite of that now. I don't think the Celtics are impervious. I think they could lose in the east. I think they could lose in the West. I'm not sitting here and viewing them as like the 2017 Warriors or anything like that, but I think they deserve more credit for their offensive development

over the course of the last few years. All right, last question. Hey, Jason, love the show. Thank you for taking the time to help educate us that didn't play basketball at high level. It's great to get your perspective and it's only fitting. My question is best suited for a player like yourself. When I'm watching Luca, the last few games with L.A., it doesn't look like he's just playing bad basketball.

It looks like he's broken mentally. It's crazy as fans were programmed to be upset with players when they leave their teams. But when organizations trade players, it's just business. Because of this, I don't think most people realize how big of an impact this has on an athlete. Watching Luca has bad play the last year, games that seems psychological. Doesn't look like he's even having fun, and I don't think he's going to play any meaningful basketball again until he rediscovers his love for the game.

To be clear, I don't think this will be a prolonged thing. I do think he'll get back on track, but I'm curious if you as a player could take us through your thoughts. Do you agree with me, or do you think his poor play is more of a lack of team chemistry? Thanks again. Love the show. I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I don't think Lucas's mentality or his mental state with all of this chaos over the course the last few weeks isn't affecting him.

of course it's affecting him. I just think it's affecting him more when he's off the court. You know, basketball is for guys like this, too, like they love the game so much. I would argue that for a guy like Luca, this is when he's having the most fun. It's one of those things where it's like when you're going back to a different house

or a different apartment than you usually go back to and friends that you had in your old home are not there anymore and you're building new friendships, but everything's still kind of in a place. legling stage. Like, I'm sure he has a lot of moments where he's struggling a bit outside of the Lakers facility, but basketball is the happy place for most of these guys. I think it's mostly chemistry. One of the things that made things hard for Luca is the Lakers played awesome in the stretch before he showed up. After the trade, he'd like sat there and watched as LeBron and Austin

played awesome and beat good teams. Luca has come into a his situation with a team playing great. Hell, he just sat out last night and they played great again. So, like, it's one of those things for Luca where I think he's reading the situation and he's trying really hard not to step on everyone's toes. That's the natural thing that happens every time you add a high volume ball handler to a team that already had ball handling. Everyone's going to start looking at each other and it's like, is it your turn? Is it my turn? I really could feel that at the tail end of the Charlotte game where it's like, Luca's in a terrible rhythm and is playing port. LeBron clearly has it going.

So like Luca's like trying to feed LeBron more because LeBron's got it going. But at the same time like the Lakers need Luca to get going in order to get to where they want to go. That stuff is all going to take time. And what will end up happening is different phases of the game will take on different fields. They will come out the gates. My guess is early on in games with the starters. They'll start leaning on Luca more. but then as different guys check in and out of the lineup,

different guys will become more aggressive. LeBron will check out in the middle of the first quarter. Austin will start to be more aggressive, right? Luca will check out. LeBron will come in for the late first quarter group. That's when LeBron will really turn it on. We've seen a lot in recent weeks how in the early fourth quarter, LeBron is like, this is my time to like really just fire every bullet I've gotten my gun

to get us as much of a lead as I can so that Luca can, so that Luca can come in and close the deal. There will be flows to these games. And you feel it out, like there will be games where it's like, hey, Lou Dorts on Luca, he's doing a good job. LeBron's got Jalen Williams. Like, we should probably play through LeBron more. There will be other games where it's like they've got guys for Luke for Austin,

but they don't have guys for Luca and LeBron or vice versa. And they're going to kind of jerry rig it from game to game. But right now it's a lot of, you can tell it's a couple different things. Luca's obviously very big and out of shape. that's going to take time. Lucas jump shot is completely broke right now. That won't be the case in the big picture. He's going to get it going. He's shooting a lot of really flat jump shots that are either way off the back room or way short. Like that's just his jumper's way up. That's going to take time

to figure out. He's out a rhythm as well. But he's also trying to figure out those chemistry things. It's going to take time. It's interesting as I look at the Lakers, even with the ugly basketball that they've played with Luca so far, I've already seen enough to know that I think they're going to be a great offense. I'm just not worried about that at all whatsoever. As soon as Luca gets it going, I think they're going to take off on offense. The questions are going to be centered around whether or not they can get enough stops

in particular matchups to win multiple playoff rounds. All right, guys, that is all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We're going to be taking this weekend off. We'll be back on Monday. We will see you guys then. Hey guys, it's us. The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe.

I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it, but, you know, tired and sick.

Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite, unhumored me with Robert Smigel and Friends. me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform?

We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The story I told myself can then shape my behavior, and that can lead me to sabotage the possibility of connection. This Mental Health Awareness Month, tune into the podcast Deeply Well with Debbie Brown

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