The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Damian Lillard injury reaction: Bucks down bad, will Giannis get traded this summer?

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Jason reacts to the injury news that Damian Lillard is out indefinitely with a blood clot in his calf and how that could impact the career outlook of Giannis Antetokounmpo with the Milwaukee Bucks. He also goes around the NBA and discusses Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James appearing on the Pat McAfee show, Bronny James overcoming serious adversity, the Oklahoma City Thunder outclassing the Sacramento Kings, and the Houston Rockets staying hot and beating the Atlanta Hawks. Visit microsoft.com/challengers to learn more. Timeline 4:15 - Start 6:00 - Bucks down bad 10:30 - Bron on McAfee 12:30 - Bronny James 25:00 - Thunder dominate Kings 32:30 - Rockets stay hot (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.) #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. 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 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 Acapella 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. I'm Michelle McPhee, and I've been unraveling the strangest criminal alliance I've ever

reported on, a Mormon polygamist and an Armenian businessman. Multi-million dollar house, Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, a billion dollar fraud. But how long can this alliance last? Tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo, and every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline.

And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the moment and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to Sports Slice on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slic Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. When it comes to college basketball in Marchmania, one thing is for sure.

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It's that simple. I'm a big Arizona Wildcats fan, born and raised here in Tucson, Arizona. I'm a little skeptical about them on the offensive end of the floor, but they looked really good on defense again last night against Kansas, so I'll probably be betting on them this time around. First time, here's something special just for you. New Draft Kings customers bet $500 to get $200 in bonus bets.

instantly. Bet the unexpected with Draft King's Sportsbook. Download the Draft King Sportsbook app and use code hoops. That's H-O-O-O-P-S. That's code hoops. For new customers, you get $200 in bonus bets when you bet just five bucks. Only on Draft Kings, the crown is yours. Gambling. Gambling, call 1-800-7-800-Gambler. In New York, call 8778.7-G-G. please play responsibly on behalf of boot hill casino and resort in kansas 21 plus age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction void in ontario new customers only bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance for additional terms and responsible gaming resources see dkng.c.c.c.com slash audio. All right, welcome to hoops tonight here at the volume. Happy Wednesday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week. Got a jam-pack show for you today. We're going to hit some MBA storylines off the top. We're going to talk a little bit about the Damien Lillard news and how it's got me thinking a little bit more about what feels kind of like an inevitable blow-up of the bucks that's

happening in a few years. And a team that I think would be really fascinating to go after Janus. After that, I want to talk about some comments LeBron made about Janus, dropping 250 points per game in the 70s. I want to talk about that and how I don't think it's necessarily good for the situation and the way we talk about the game. And then for our course correction segment, I'm going to Shout out Brony, who had another big game last night who's really been playing some good basketball over the course of the last week. After that, we're going to hit two games from last night's slate as the two top seeds in the Western Conference got impressive wins where they basically blew out their opponents, then kind of sort of lost control, but then pulled away at the end as the Thunder got a big win in Sacramento against the Kings. And the Houston Rockets got a big win against the Atlanta Hawks. We're going to be breaking down both of those games from the perspective of both teams.

All right, before we get started, you guys know the drill. Subscribe to 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, 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 very new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We're releasing content throughout the season. Make sure you guys keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments as well.

We are recording a mailbag a little bit later today, so it's too late for that mailbag, but we're going to be doing another one next week. So make sure you guys keep dropping questions. in the YouTube comments. All right, let's talk some basketball. So our first NBA storyline, Damian Lillard is out indefinitely due to a blood clot in his calf muscle. First of all, this is just a huge bummer, and let's all just hope that he can be back in time for the playoffs. Because regardless of how we all feel about the bucks, I would certainly like to see them get their chance to show what they can do in the postseason at full strength. But this situation has me thinking,

because things look more than bleak for Milwaukee right now. Even healthy, I have to have the Bucks firmly outside of my top tier of championship contenders. I don't think they're close to good enough on either end of the floor to actually win for playoff series. And now you add this wrinkle with Dames condition, which is going to have, at the best case scenario, him just barely stepping on the floor before they start playing real playoff game. So to me, it's just becoming increasingly likely that the Bucks have a disappointing playoff performance and that Janice and the trade buzz surrounding him starts to get really loud this summer. Because again, I don't think the bucks are close.

I, like, there's, to me, if I look at the top tier of contenders and it's going to be, you know, five, six, seven teams when it's all said and done, we'll see. But, you know, I look at Boston and OKC is kind of like clearly above the rest of the teams in that tier. And the teams below there, the teams like Cleveland, Denver, the Lakers, whether it ends up being the Knicks or the Warriors, teams like that, I view those teams as substantially less likely than Boston and OKC to win the title. And so when you get to the following tier after that, I mean, we're talking it's pipe dream territory for most of these guys. And like that's with Janus playing as well as he's been playing this year. It just doesn't feel like they're close. Janus will have two guaranteed years

left as well as a player option. Obviously, I would view that player option is something that he would end upting out of or extending out of. And so realistically, you've got these two guaranteed years left this summer. And so if you wait an additional summer, now you have the whole like, well, what if he doesn't resign problem that's affecting his trade value? And so I think it's possible that we end up seeing a Janus and Tenacumpo trade this summer. And so we've talked about a lot of different teams and different places that he could potentially go. But I've talked a lot about the thunder going after a guy like a Kevin Durant or a Lori

marking in or something. What if Janice is the guy that the thunder end up going after? They obviously can afford him. He's 30 years old. He is a perfect compliment to Chet Holmgren. As a matter of fact, you could argue that the Hartnstein salary is the best vehicle with

which to facilitate that sort of trade. Hardinstein and then throwing in some of the younger talent, maybe someone like a Caseon Wallace and maybe one other player with a bunch of draft compensation. You can visualize a scenario where the team is built around a core of Shea and J-dub and Chet with Janus.

And like Janus would immediately make them a good rebounding team when they've been a terrible rebounding team in the Shegilders-Alexander era. I think he's just a shoe-in basketball fit in general with all of those guys. He immediately changes the physical profiles of the team and makes them that much more bruising on the front line, especially if the Thunder end up struggling this year in the postseason and they end up like losing in the second round, despite, someone like Shea having a great series, I think it could end up putting more pressure on OKC

to make a more aggressive type of deal. And you could see a trade partnership kind of forming there. And like, it's like the Wembe problem we talked about with San Antonio. If your star is ready to go and like ready to win the title, but your guys, like your young players around them that are progressing at the same time, but maybe not at the same rate, and it looks like they're not ready, then you end up in a situation where it's like we can't just wait around while, you know, Victor Wemniyama becomes one of the best players in the league and we can't support him properly.

And that's the thing. Like you don't want to run into a situation with Shea where he feels like the thunder are just processing a bunch of young talent and they're not really going for it. And so if that ends up being the case, you could see that pressure start to build and you could see a trade partnership start to form. And if they end up making a deal for someone like Janus, they would immediately solve all of their weaknesses and I think that would make them the most talented team since the 2018 Warriors. So that's a dynamic that I see kind of sort of taking some shape and man, that would

be a crazy league altering type of deal. LeBron goes on the Pat McAfee show and he starts pontificating about Janus and what he would average in the 70s and he says Janus would average 250 points if he played back in that era. And like, frankly, I just don't see the point in for the same reason why it's lame when the older players start disrespecting this era, I think it's lame for today's players to do the same thing with the past. Now, for the record, there's a reason why they're doing this. There's a reason why JJ Reddick said those guys played against plumbers. There's a reason why LeBron James is talking this shit.

And it's because they're sick and tired of the old guys talking shit. I just think it's pointless to stoop down to that level. Frankly, it's just not productive. It doesn't actually solve anything. And here's the thing. Would Janice score 250 points a game if he played in the 70s? No. But yeah, he'd kill those guys. He'd average 40, probably, maybe even closer to 50.

But who cares? Comparing errors is completely pointless. Jalen Green basically has the same career true shooting percentage as Kobe Bryant. Does that mean Jalen Green was just as efficient putting the ball in the basket as Kobe Bryant? Yeah, in a literal sense, but not in a realistic sense. because the game of basketball is very, very different now. Dudes in the 70s had bad shoes. They had shitty flights that they took to their road games.

They played brutal schedules. They had nowhere near the knowledge and understanding we have today to make our professional athletes the best they can be. Schematics have involved over the years as just more smart minds have gotten involved in the game and made their imprint strategically. I think it makes absolutely no sense to compare basketball from 50 years ago to today.

And again, even if you, you know, justify it with the way that those guys have been treated by the older generations, I just think stooping to that level, all it does is further to integrate the game. And now we're in this weird war where, like, the younger players are shit talking the old days and the older dudes are shit talking to the young guys and everyone's just being disrespectful to the game of basketball. And so I hope that that stops soon. I disagreed with LeBron's approach there.

But for our third top story, we're going to do our. Microsoft course correction segment. Welcome to course correction brought to you by Microsoft, just like star players and teams navigating performance hurdles. Business decision makers today are under immense pressure to get things right. They must rise to the occasion, turning challenges into opportunities. Microsoft empowers these visionaries with AI solutions, simplified cloud and data management, and trustworthy, responsible AI. When you're in the NBA, and you have your own hurdles to face, in this segment, we're exploring the challenges faced by teams or star players and how they can turn things around.

Whatever challenge you're facing, Microsoft empowers you with the expertise to say, bring it on. This week, we're discussing Brony James in his recent surge as both an NBA and G-League players. So last night, Brony hits five more threes, finished with 17 points,

nine rebounds, and six assists, and a win. This is on the heels of him dropping a career high 39 points in a previous G-League game a couple days prior, and that was on the heels of him dropping 17 points, in a real deal NBA game against the Bucks,

where he made a lot of moves that looked very much like a well-rounded professional basketball player. I thought this was a great time for us to just remind everybody that Ronnie James was the 20th ranked prospect in the nation in his high school class. He was a McDonald's All-American. He was absolutely unquestionably on an NBA trajectory, before he experienced cardiac arrest at USC. But then he got his NBA opportunity despite struggling for a while after the cardiac arrest incident.

And as a result, he became one of the biggest stories in all of media, not just in sports media, but the whole thing got picked up by political media because LeBron has ventured into that arena a few times and obviously has made enemies. And that is one hell of a cesspool in political media. and it is as contentious as it can be, and there's an entire side there that will jump on every little thing that LeBron does. And so it became absolutely nasty.

Can you imagine being brawny? And again, I want you to disconnect from LeBron for a second. Bronny James is an entirely different human being than LeBron, an entirely different person. Anything that he gets as an association from LeBron, imagine being in his shoes and dealing with that. Can you imagine getting on his phone and scrolling Instagram and seeing content creators,

making highlight reels of his mistakes in Summer League, or in garbage time in an NBA game, or in the early G League days? And can you imagine the comments underneath those videos and the direct messages that he receives? And again, as we've talked about, like, when you venture into this world, there are perks that greatly outweigh the negativity you face online.

That doesn't make the negativity like just go away or that it's just super easy to handle or anything like that. It sucks. I had a much, much smaller level just as a content creator in the NBA media, face a certain amount of negativity. Like, you don't wake up one day and like read the comment that's talking shit about the way you look or the way you sound and then suddenly just be like, oh, that's fine.

no worries we'll go about our day. It still sucks. And this kid was getting it at a preposterous volume every single day because he suffered an injury, a condition that dramatically affected his basketball development. I was thinking about, I was actually talking about this with my buddy Richmond Weaver on the radio a little bit earlier this morning. I remember when I broke my foot in between my first two seasons playing in college, I had a really rough first semester. in non-conference play because I was struggling with like confidence in my foot like my ability to plant that foot. I, you know, play at about back in college I was playing at 225 pounds. Like I like it's just a lot of weight to be planting really heavy on a foot that I was nervous

was going to give way and it affected my play for months. Can you imagine cardiac arrest? Can you imagine like playing hard after cardiac arrest? Can you imagine pushing yourself and like feeling your body like start to like really get into high heart rates and how that could potentially scare you how that could affect your willingness or ability to compete to a certain extent like i i just have so much sympathy for what brawny has been through over the course of this last year in the sense that he's been put through hell because of his dad in his persona And look, has LeBron done some things that has accentuated the amount of attention on his son? Yes, he's made some comments.

He's done some things. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that that hasn't happened. But he's LeBron James. So we're not also going to pretend that if LeBron shut up that Brony wouldn't be a public figure. He still would. LeBron could have said nothing. And Brony would have faced 99% of the exact same circumstances that he's faced over the last year. and the fact that his entire basketball pedigree

and everything he accomplished up until the cardiac arrest was just crumpled up and thrown in the trash as part of the way that whole thing was discussed. It just was nasty and I just feel really bad for him. And I'm just excited for him that he's starting to break through on the other side of this and show some of that pedigree that he demonstrated when he was in high school.

For the record, this won't be linear. The development of young players is not something that just goes up and up and up. He'll have stretches where he has bad games in the NBA. He'll have bad stretches of games in the G League. He'll make mistakes. There will be more content creators that have more opportunities to slander him for whatever reason. But what you're starting to see is the upside. You're starting to see that he can shoot.

JJ Redick talked the other day about how he expects Brony in the big picture to be a great shooter. You've seen some of the upside with him as a defensive playmaker. you've seen some of the upside with him as a downhill threat towards the rim as a playmaking talent. He's got ability in there. Now, I still maintain that I think it'll be at least a year or two before he can be a guy that plays real rotational minutes at the NBA level as a guard off the bench for somebody in the NBA. I still think he needs quite a bit of time to get there. But the potential has always been there. it was missing in terms of the production for a little while as a result of what happened to him at USC.

And I'm happy that we're all starting to see some of that potential start to come to fruition right now because it's just a reminder and quite frankly a resounding statement that most of the stuff that was said about Brani and said about LeBron over the course of the year with Brony and his journey to where he has in the NBA was just complete nutter bullshit. And Brani's just rubbing that in everybody's face right now and I'm happy for him. That's it for this week's course correction. Remember, Microsoft's AI solutions empower you to take bold steps and make informed decisions, sparking new ideas to help drive your business forward. With Microsoft as your trusted partner, you can navigate your journey with confidence, finding innovative solutions, and reaching new possibilities. Visit Microsoft.com slash challengers to learn more.

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 our... We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts throughout there.

But this one's extra special. So how did 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. And... 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 IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect. We were God's chosen, Kingdom on. earth. He felt destined for greatness. So when a swaggering Armenian businessman catapults Jacob

into an extraordinary world, he doesn't look back. Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, meeting the president of Turkey. I'm Michelle McPhee, and this is one of the most shocking criminal conspiracies I've ever come across. When Jacob met Levant this plant to a billion dollar fraud. But with two kings from entirely different worlds, just how long can their empire survive. The largest tax investigation in American history. You need to tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me?

Jacob told Levan, you're ruining my life. Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hardway with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kier Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience

in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking. Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing and we're still chasing it

and we don't know when we've done enough because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth? Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely.

And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines, is we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, learn the hard way. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search Learn the hard way and listen now. All right, let's get into a couple games from last night.

The Thunder just completely outclassed. Kings right out of the gate. They put Keegan Murray on Chet Holmgren to start in the Thunder just immediately started running him through off ball screens. They ran a back screen on the weak side with Shea back screening for Chet. Keon Ellis did not want to switch off of Shea. Keegan got caught on the screen. Chet got a wide open layup. That was on the first play of the game. Second play of the game, they run a Chicago action, which is just the DHO guys up top and there's a screener in front. The screener will pin down. The DHO guy will follow. And Chet comes off of both of those screens.

I think it was Dorton-Harton-Harton-Stine, if I remember correctly. So basically two screens, Chet comes flying off of him up to the right wing and knocks down with three off the catch as Keegan gets run through a bunch of screens again. Chet is kind of a cheat code in these off-ball actions for a couple of reasons. One, he's a big. So teams are most likely not going to switch guards on him.

So if you run screening action for him with guards involved, he's probably going to get some separation. because you're probably going to guard him with a bigger player. Bigger players notoriously struggle with screens. Even a guy like Keegan Murray, as good as he is in ISO, he can struggle sometimes getting over the top of screens, right? And when you have a situation where you're not switching because of a big and a small,

it just puts big guys in position where they have to navigate a bunch of screens, and that's difficult. That's why inverted ball screens work so well with the Yokicch's and some of the other centers that run that sort of action throughout the league, even Janus runs that sort of thing quite a bit. The second piece of it, though, is he's a really big target. He had another bucket later in the first half against Jake Laravia

where they ran a kind of like an offball action that Chet curled into the lane. And Jake saw it. Jake evaded the screen. Jake ran into the lane to guard Chet, but Chet's seven feet tall. And so Isaiah Hartinstein, who was the passer at the top of the key, just kind of rifled up a pass that was up high and to the right. where Jake had no chance to get it and Chet in his

go-go gadget arms went out and grabbed it and brought it in and by the time Jake Larevia was on the ground Chet was dunking it and that's a thing like he's just such a big target passing-wise and he's so tall that like if he catches anything around the rim it's just an automatic dunk

and I just saw seeing Chet run all that off ball action was just a casual reminder of some of the big picture potential this team has offensively as Chet continues to develop on that end of the floor. Their defense was immediately stifling against Sacramento's guards. Started with the Biggs. Hartnstein did a wonderful job against the bonus as he keeps racking up great defensive nights against some really tough defensive matchups. We've been talking about that a lot. They were roaming off of Keegan Murray with Chet Holmgren. And that burned them

a little bit. Keegan got 28 points and most of them were on threes when Chet was roaming or digging down into the lane. But the end result was a disaster for DeRosen and Levine and the Kings couldn't score. They combined for just 29 points on 31 shots between those two guys. I thought Caruso in particular did a great job of pressuring Levine, forced him to rush on his drives. Levine would be running right into Hartnstein at the rim and he just was hesitant to test Hartnstein at the rim so he'd like drop it off to Valenzhenius underneath the basket, but because Hartnstein didn't have to jump at the rim, he's just right there and then he would just tie up Valenciunis on the catch. I've really been enjoying watching Alex Caruso.

on defense lately. He just does all the little things that you see the great defenders in NBA history do. Starts with pressure. Off ball when he's guarding a score, he's staying attached to the body. On ball, he's applying pressure as they come up the floor. But when you start trying to attack him, he attacks you as a defender in every phase of the shot you're trying to take. I was watching him guard Demar de Rosen on a post-up. And DeMarre really drops that left shoulder and bumps him and Caruso absorbs the contact. So he kind of disrupts the base a little bit, right? Then as De Rosen spun into the right shoulder fade, he swipes at the gather. So again, as the shooters gathering the ball in the shooting pocket, there's a moment where the ball is exposed in front.

That's a great opportunity for a defender to disrupt the gather by swiping at the basketball. Then after the gather, DeMaro Zerosing rises up into the right shoulder fade and Caruso gets a contest on the shot. And I was sitting there thinking, I was like, every time I watch one of the elite defenders in the league, this is the way they guard. You think of a contest, and this, by the way, is why, you know, it's impossible to quantify all of the little minute details in basketball and why even something silly like, like, oh, contested shot percentage versus regular shot percentage doesn't factor in. What kind of contest was it? I'll give you an example. Remember when KD hit the game winner against, not the game winner, but the, yeah, it was the game winner. ended up being the game winner in game three, I think, of the 2017 finals,

the one where he hit the kind of transition hesitation, pull up three on LeBron. Brom got his hand up. LeBron was there, had his hand up. That'll go down in the books as a contested three. Do you think KD was uncomfortable at all on that shot? No, he just rose right up into it in rhythm and knocked it down. It's because LeBron did not disrupt KD's base, and he did not disrupt KD's gather.

there's all of these different phases to a shot that you have to disrupt in order to make an offensive player uncomfortable. Bump them on the base so that when they get their lift, it feels different than when they're shooting alone in the gym. If you get any sort of contact on the shooting pocket, like if you hit the basketball a little bit there, you'll disrupt their energy transfer. That's the power that they drive from their feet up through their gather up to their top of the shot. Then getting a contest on the top of the shot is a great way to tie all of that together. Alex Crusoe is amazing at this concept, this idea of disrupting all three phases of a shot, and it's a very important detail

to what puts a defensive player into another stratosphere, making stars and other shot creators uncomfortable. The Kings went on a little bit of a run in the late third quarter that cut the lead down to six, and then Chey Gildes Alexander just decided that their fun was over. He just drove right past Jake Laravia for a dunk, drove right by him again and drew a foul. They switched Keon Ellis onto him,

and he shot a step back three on the left wing that he hit. The lead was right back to 11. All of Sacramento's momentum was gone, and they never got that close again. This to me is one of the defining characteristics of a superstar in the NBA. One of the biggest responsibilities on the shoulders of players who have that role. You are the guy with the superpower. You have the thing that you do that nobody can stop. When things are getting messy and your teammates who don't have superpowers are struggling to find their footing,

sometimes you have to force the issue. find a way to make a few plays to regain control of the situation. Shea's team needed him in that spot to just get a few buckets to settle things down. His superpower being his downhill driving ability. And oh, you switched a smaller guard onto him to try to get away from the dribble penetration and he hits a jump shot over the top. He just straight up forced the issue, generated seven quick points, and any momentum that Sacramento had was gone.

The Thunder have won seven in a row now. They're the first team in the league this year to get to 60 wins. If they go 10 and 0, they'll get to 70 over the course of the final couple weeks. They are now two games up on Cleveland for the best record in basketball, starting to really separate. And they're doing all of this without J-dub, just a remarkable season for the Thunder. All right, Hawks Rockets. So the Rockets handled the Hawks at home to win their 10th game and 11 tries.

A little bit of a light stretch in the schedule, but there's a handful of impressive wins in there. Jalen Green goes. off for 32 points in this one. He's getting to the rim at will. He found some matchups that he liked throughout the game. He attacked Trey a few times. He went at Vit Kretchi quite a bit. Garrison Matthews quite a bit. Gave some wild buckets to Terrence's man. He had a baseline spin on him that like literally left Terrence stuck in the mud, threw down a dunk. He had two nasty dunks in this game because he had one where he split.

I think it was a Yika Kangu and a ball screen where Dyson Daniels was trailing him and ended up just going up the elevator at the semi-circle and throwing down a jackhammer. He also hit one of the biggest shots of the game against Terrence Man, like a little 15-foot fade away along the right baseline. He had two huge stabilizing buckets after Atlanta made their run. Similar to the Sacramento game with OKC, Houston controls the game right away from the start, build a big lead. They go in a late third quarter run, gets the lead down. Atlanta actually cut this down to four at one point. Terence Mann had a nice little scoring run, hit a big three, He hit a little mid-range fadeaway in the lane.

They cut it down to four, and Jalen Green makes four plays down the stretch that kind of ice the game. He has a driving layup against Vit Kretche that gets goal tended off the glass. He has another driving and one shot against Zachary Rissachet, a little like kind of fading jump shot after he gets some contact on the drive. He attacks Trey Young in action and draws him into a two-on-the-ball situation where Trey Hedges and then tries to recover, but they swing the ball out of it quickly and it gets Jabari Smith Jr. a wide open three on the right wing that he knocks down that, again, was

generated by Atlanta putting two on the ball because of the damage that Jalen Green was doing, attacking matchups in those situations. And then he hit the dagger over Terrence, man. Really, really, really impressive game from Jalen Green. He's had at least 28 points in five of his last eight games. I thought Sengoon was a big problem for Atlanta in this one. It's crazy how often I've watched the Rockets, and the biggest thing that stands out to me is that the other team just can't guard Shangoon. And it just changes the dynamic of the game. There was no Clint Capella for the Hawks in this game, so it was a combination of Ineca, Congwu, Georges Nying and Barlow, who were getting the Shangoon assignments. And Shangoon just killed those guys.

Nying and Barlow especially. He had a couple plays against Nying and Barlow where he scored on them like one on two. And it just didn't matter because he was just going through them. He also made a huge play in that late run that we talked about. He posted a Kongu in the middle of the floor, drew a double team, swing, swing, got a wide open three for Jbarry Smith. Shout out to Jpari Smith, by the way. Just three for nine from three in the game, but hit some huge ones late in the game that were really important.

I want to zoom in on the defensive end for a minute, though, because the Rockets ran a ton of zone in this game. And they've been running a ton of zone as of late. This is actually a crazy stat. According to Synergy, the Houston Rockets ran zero possessions of zone defense in their first 29, or excuse me, in their first 50. 59 games this season. Zero possessions of zone in 59 games. They've run 242 possessions of zone in the last 14 games. That's over 17 possessions of zone a game. Now, it's been matchup specific. Like they've run it over 40 times in three games,

specifically against Atlanta, Orlando, and OKC. A lot of like speedy kind of transition attack types of teams, right? But they're running it at least a little bit every game. And it's working. They're allowing just 0.86 points per position. with their zone defense. That's the third best in the entire NBA. They're running two different variations of it, and they're both built out of a two, three, base. But they have a version with Stephen Adams at center where he lags more back around the rim.

It's more of a traditional two-three zone. And then they have a version where they put Jabari Smith Jr. At the center position, the de facto center position under the basket, and they'll have him be much more active coming up the floor. So, like, he'll, like, when they're looking to drive on the top guy, he'll be up around the elbow just waiting and help or if someone flashes to the middle of the floor to try to catch jabari will come up and the two guys on the wing will kind of shrink down around him it's more of like a amoeba matchup zone kind of thing with jabari smith out there at the at the center position but like it works because they're active in their zone they pressure the ball meaning like they don't just sit back they get up and guard the ball they move and shift as a unit they ran 48 possessions of a zone in this game against Atlanta, and Atlanta managed a 0.88 points per possession.

As a comparison, Houston attacking Atlanta's man-to-man coverage, got 1.11 points per possession, so a dominating performance on the heels of their, I should say, on the strength of their zone defense. It's worth mentioning that the Rockets have played a relatively light schedule in this 10-in-1ststretched, but it's also worth mentioning that they've really been scoring the ball. They have a 11-19 offensive rating in this 11-game span that ranks 8.5. in the NBA. And remember, even at their best, they've struggled to score this year. Still number four in defense over the last 11 games, they've been the number one rebounding team in the league over that span. The offense is the interesting trend, though,

because if they can continue to maintain that level of offensive production against elite competition, they become way more dangerous as a playoff threat. It's been kind of like a by-committee sort of thing. They have seven players averaging double figures. Fred Van Vliet is back and he's shooting the three ball really well. Dylan Brooks in this 11 game span is taking over 7-3s a game and he's hitting 41% of them. Shangun, 18 points per game, 54 from the field, 43% from 3 in that span. Tari Yessen is pouring in 15 points a game in this span. They're just getting a lot of contributions around the board and they're really scoring the ball well.

The Rockets are playing some very good basketball. All right, guys, it's all a half for two. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. The game plan, as of right now, we're going live tonight on YouTube after the final buzzer of Celtic Sons to break that game down, as well as the Lakers Pacers game. That's going to be a really fun one. I think that's a great test to the Lakers because they're a fast team that plays in transition a lot, and they've got a quick guard, and that's a couple of things that have caused the Lakers issues over the course of the season.

So I'll be really interested to watch that one as well. I look forward to seeing you guys then. I will see you guys on YouTube tonight. The volume. What's up, guys? As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting hoops tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys.

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