The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Donovan Mitchell trade reaction: Utah Jazz send star guard to Cleveland Cavaliers

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

Jason Timpf reacts to the Utah Jazz trading All-Star shooting guard Donovan Mitchell to the Cleveland Cavaliers and its implications for both teams involved, the New York Knicks, and the Los Angeles Lakers. #herdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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In Tennessee, redline, dial 1-800-9-9-97889 in Tennessee. Visit www.1-800-gambler.net in West Virginia. All right, welcome to Hoops tonight, presented by FanDuel here at the volume. Happy Thursday, everybody. I hope all of you guys have had a great week so far. Weekend is right around the corner. Well, out of nowhere, these Cleveland Cavaliers end up stealing Donovan Mitchell. Now, I shouldn't say completely out of nowhere because they were briefly mentioned in the discussions. But Ian Begley had reported earlier this week, I believe, that the Cavs had dropped out of that race. So we had all kind of viewed them as out of sight,

out of mind. But as it turns out, Danny Aege wanted draft compensation and the Cavs were willing to give more draft compensation than the Knicks were. They circled back to them. This was reported by Jake Fisher. They circled back and asked the Knicks for their final best offer and they were only willing to give two picks and they ended up losing the race. So a lot of really interesting perspectives to look at from this deal. We're going to look at it from the Cavs perspective, from the Jazz perspective, from the Knicks perspective, and then the Lakers as well, because now they become an interesting candidate

to steal some of these veteran role players from the Jazz now that we know that Danny Age wants draft picks. Then for those of you guys who are fans of the show, stick around after I have to update my Bulls season preview because some of you guys in the comments pointed out that I had missed Goran Drogich as one of their signings. There are every off-season, hundreds of personnel transactions around the league and I'm going to miss some.

So please, if you guys can help me, if you guys see me in my season previews, forget a name, especially an important one, drop it in the comments and I'll make sure that I update that as we get further along. I'm also, I watched Lithuania versus Slovenia this morning, which was an amazing basketball game, one of the more entertaining basketball games that I've watched in this year. I'm going to give a short breakdown on that as well. at the end, I'm going to do a video breakdown on Spain pick and roll, a concept that we're going to talk about a lot on this show, and I want to make sure that you guys have a good understanding

of it so that I can reference it throughout the year, and you guys know what I'm talking about. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the volumes 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 any show announcements. And last but not least, if you miss one of these videos and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish them, you can find them wherever you get your podcast. podcast and audio form under hoops tonight. A couple other things too.

I'd appreciate bear. If you guys could bear with me today, I have terrible allergies. And so that's been driving me nuts. So this will be a little sniffly and a little weak voiced. Also, I know some of you guys have been complaining about this ancient history.

I don't even know what you call this thing. That's behind me. It's an ancient piece of furniture. My studio is getting remodeled. It is almost done. probably our next video, I'll be back in the studio. Just wanted to get some permanent adjustments and stuff made so that it's better for this whole season. So again, I apologize for the setup, but just one more show, guys.

And then we'll be back to normal. All right, let's start from the perspective of the Cavs. So before the trade, the Cavs were an excellent defensive team when Evan Mobley and Jared Allen were on the floor. That was the really interesting dynamic of last year's team. It was like Darius Garland and Colin Sexton, these two dynamic guards. And then you had Lori Markinen, this huge forward that could shoot on the wing. And then Jared Allen and Evan Mobley. And they were a very good team with those five on the floor.

And then the injuries started stacking up. Evan Mobley, or excuse me, Lori Markinen ended up getting hurt. Evan Mobley missed some time in the middle of the season. Jared Allen had that finger injury at the end of the season. And so things kind of fell apart because of that. But when we got into the postseason, you saw pretty quickly. And really it was a situation throughout the season. As good as they were defensively, their shot creation just wasn't up to what the rest of the league had to offer.

They were 20th in offense this season. In that Atlanta playing game, the single elimination game after they lost at Brooklyn, they only scored 40 points in the second half as they blew a 10-point lead. They just don't have enough shot creation to hang with the better teams in the league. So the obvious move there was, do you extend Colin Sexton and think of that as the guy that can fill that role? Or do you target someone better? And that's basically what they're doing. They're flipping Colin Sexton in addition to draft compensation and Lori Markinen for a much, much better guard to have as a partner alongside Darius Garland.

Darius Garland's a really good guard in this league and a very different type of guard than Donovan Mitchell. He's a little bit more of a playmaker out of high pick and roll. as opposed to looking to score. Like we did, those of you guys who remember, I can't remember where he was on the list. He might have been 24, 23. But when we did our top 25 players, Donovan Mitchell,

his ability to score the basketball is unassailable. He's one of the best scoring guards that we have in this league. He, in his last three postseason runs, is averaging 10 three-point attempts per game and shooting them at 41%. He, out of all players in the NBA, to run at least 300 pick and rolls last year. He was third in points per possession,

which is incredibly impressive, especially when you factor in the type of role man that he had in Rudy Gobert, who's really flawed. So, but his one weakness is he doesn't really see the totality of the game. He's not a good game manager. Doesn't understand the player's rhythm around him in when to shoot versus when to look to get his teammates involved. Dary Scarlane's much better in that area.

He averaged nine assists per game. year still can score the basketball 22 points per game on 58% true shooting, an excellent playmaker out of high pick and roll. It'll be a really interesting one-two punch with the two of them because they have different approaches. And then the most interesting part about that, Mowbly and Allen, they were excellent defensively. Like I said, they had a 103.7 defensive rating with the two of them on the floor, but they're also significantly better role meant than Donovan Mitchell is used to playing with. You know, the big issue with Rudy Gaubert is when they would switch pick and roll, when teams would switch, he'd run down to the rim and call for the basketball, but nobody on

the jazz would pass him to the basketball. And the main reason why is he struggled with the simple concept of a quick seal and a short hook shot. That little skill, not a difficult thing to do. The inability to do that is what makes Rudy Gaubert such a limited offensive player. It's why I viewed him as a negative asset. That's why I was so. stunned that Minnesota paid as much for him as they did. Jared Allen is 10 times the offensive player that Rudy Gobert is because he can do that. When you switch a pick and roll, he can take the smaller defender down to the block, quick seal, demand the basketball, catch, turn over his left shoulder and make a right-handed hook shot. That is a must. You can't

just be a vertical spacer. Riti Gobert is a great vertical spacer. The problem is as most defensive schemes and pick and roll coverages do a good job of taking the lob pass away, either by offering help out of the weak side corner to tag the roller or by using a drop coverage and keeping the big back by the rim. So when you take away those lobs, you have to find other ways to score and pick and roll. And one of the easiest ways to do it is if you drag the big in the drop away from the play, it forces them to switch, at which point the guard will run and dive to the big man, that's when you can throw the ball to Rudy or whoever it is to score. So Donovan Mitchell is now going to have a dynamic rim roller and Jared Allen.

Evan Mobley is really raw, but he actually projects to be even more dynamic than that. He's got the vertical spacing. He's got the skill around the rim to attack switches. But he also has the ability with how skilled he is and how well he passes the ball to be good in the short roll. This is where, you know, instead of rolling hard to the rim, you just kind of go to the semicircle and ask for the basket. ball. Then when you catch there, you can either make reads or you can shoot short jump shots or little

floaters and things like that. He also shows some potential as a pop big who can pop to the three point line, knocked down three point shots. Didn't shoot the ball well last year, but his form looks good. He should shoot the ball well over the years. And then also attacking closeouts and driving to the basket. He's got potential. We talked about this during the season last year, but the big difference between him and like an Anthony Davis is he's got such quick feet that he's. He's got such quick feet that he's He's actually going to be more dynamic driving the basketball than Anthony Davis was. Obviously, he's got a long way to go to get to that point. But Evan Mobley is a super, super interesting player to have as another pick and roll partner.

So you've got two dynamic pick and roll ball handlers and two dynamic pick and roll men that should make them a lot more interesting on the offensive end of the floor than they were. Obviously defensively, it's going to be tricky. They're excellent in the front court, but they've lost a wing in Lord. Moranin. They've got good athletes on the wing. I actually really like Isaac Okoro, but they're a little bit limited in that regard, but it shouldn't matter with how big they are in the front line. And they're deep in the front line, too. They've got Robin Lopez. They've got Kevin Love. This is an incredibly deep basketball team. Hopefully Ricky Rubio will be coming back as a backup in

the back court. They've got Caris Lavert. This suddenly looks like as deep and as talented a team as we see in the league. The weakness will be they don't have, you know, what are you guys, when I'm talking about teams, what's the one thing that I talk about that the cats don't have, that big mismatch attacking forward, right? But maybe Evan Mobley will develop into that for them this year. A lot's going to be on Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland on the defensive end.

Donovan Mitchell was an atrocious defensive player for Utah last year. He's going to have to get that together. Darius Garland's not great either. but with as good as they are on the back line, they should still as a team be a better defensive team. They'll just have to figure some of that stuff out to reach their ultimate playoff ceiling. My one major concern would be

when you're running into, let's call it a Jimmy Butler out east or a Janice out east, or say you make it to the finals and you run into a Steph Curry or a LeBron James or a Luca Donchich or a Nicoliochich, you have to be able to out-execute those guys

down the stretch of pivotal playoff games. And that is a lot to ask for Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell. So my initial take, and I want to marinate on this longer, and again, we have to make some adjustments to our power rankings because I did not have the calves in the top 15. I mean, look, here's the deal, guys. We had an option. We have a month from today to the start of the preseason.

We had an option to either continue doing stupid off-season filler content or to start talking about this year. And I really wanted to get forward into talking about this year. So we started early, and obviously there was a risk that some stuff could happen and mess up our list, and there you go. So we're just going to call the Bulls 15A. And today was supposed to be the Pelicans at 14.

I'm going to have the Pelicans at 15B, whatever you want to call it. And then obviously the calves will be vaulting up, higher up into that list. We knew that was a risk. Like, guys, the Lakers are going to make some big trade. So whenever the Lakers make their trade, I'm going to have to change where they show up in the power rankings. But with LeBron James and Anthony Davis on the roster, I obviously had to have them on my list.

So it's an imperfect system. But anytime anything changes, anytime new information comes out, I promise we'll do a full deep dive breakdown into it. When we get to the calves higher on this list, I will do a much, much more in-depth breakdown of what I expect the calves to do on both sides of the ball. because I do think it'll be a lot different with Donovan Mitchell in the mix and without lowering Markinen as that huge wing that they had last year. So looking forward to the Jazz, they're in a full rebuild now. And, you know, it's funny because Danny Hange has this reputation as being a guy who's very stingy in trade negotiations,

which is why he never made the big deal when he was with the Boston Celtics, right? And to his credit, his stinginess has paid off. this summer because he's gotten two massive halls for two players that you wouldn't think would pull those kinds of halls like Donovan Mitchell is a better basketball player than Rudy Gobert but like I didn't think you'd get this type of package Rudy Gobert I was stunned and I've been wrong about a few things this summer that's the part of the deal when you make predictions and when you have analysis especially when you do it as often as I do you're going to be wrong about stuff I did not expect Rudy gobert to get a big deal you got four first round draft

and a pick swap. Donovan Mitchell, three more draft picks and two more pick swaps. So just from Rudy, just from Rudy Gobert and from Donovan Mitchell, they got seven first round picks and three swaps. So look, we can talk shit about Danny Aange all we want, but the dudes kick an ass this offseason. You got to give him some credit for that. There was a tweet that came out that they view all of the pieces that came back from Cleveland as projects that they plan on keeping. I thought that was interesting because I thought Lori marketing would be a guy they'd consider moving because he's, He's kind of a known commodity at this point. I think he turns 25 this year.

Them getting Sexton at less than $20 million a year for four years is really interesting because especially towards the tail end of that deal, if the salary cap goes up significantly, he could be a really affordable, like, backup scoring guard or second side scoring guard. So my guess is Utah ends up flipping Colin Sexton at some point during that contract for a couple more picks. they've got all these veteran players on the roster that are available for picks. We're going to get to that more with the Lakers,

but when it's all said and done, this rebuild could end up netting Utah over 10 first-round draft picks. So huge shout out to Danny Aange for really impressive offseason. Look, he stood up for what he believed in, something that we've all roasted him for, and he's winning, guys, he's winning. Not real basketball games, but he's winning at the GM game of rebuilding. The Knicks. So they didn't want to overpay for Mitchell.

That's fair. Someone else might be right around the corner. Like, you just have to be willing to pay when that right guy comes along. You know, like, there was some debate when Kauai Leonard became available with the Spurs as to whether or not the Lakers could get him. There was Intel that said the Spurs

didn't want to do a deal with the Lakers, but the truth of the matter is that the Lakers were also being stingy on price. They missed out on Kauai. Then Anthony Davis came along. They actually threw the kitchen sink of assets, and they got Anthony Davis and they won a championship. So that's the kind of approach.

You got to look at it from the perspective of the Knicks. You didn't get Donovan Mitchell. Someone else might be around the corner. When that guy comes along, don't be cheap, because if you're cheap, you could end up missing out. Looking forward to the Lakers. So the intel was, as you guys remember after the Patrick Beverly trade, I really thought the Lakers would turn towards the Indiana trade

because I just thought that was a better fit for the direction they were going with the roster, especially with how small Rudy, excuse me, Patrick Beverly is, and with the fact that they lost Stanley Johnson at the time their biggest and most athletic wing. But they were waiting around, it looked like, from what I had heard, that the reason why they weren't going the Indiana route is Indiana wanted two first round picks, and they thought they could get involved in a potential Jazz Nix three-teamer for one first-round pick.

That's why they were looking that way. Well, that three-teamer is now off the table. So now you've got to look at potentially talking to Aange. Now that you know he wants draft picks, maybe you get something like Malik Beasley and Rudy Gay and Boyan Bogdanovich, two six eight wings and another really good shooting guard for maybe two first first first round draft picks. That's something that we know Danny Ains is going to put a lot of value on. That might be interesting.

Maybe they do end up circling back to Indiana now that the three team trade is off the table. Excuse me. But all I hope is that the Lakers don't end up using this as an excuse to bring Russ back into camp. There's been more intel on that front. Mark Stein reported that Darvin Ham's been really pushing for a big role for Russ on this team. I just think that would be an absolute catastrophe. And if they did that, I think the Lakers would deserve everything that's coming to them. Hell, I'd probably end up turning this season into an opportunity to just scold the Lakers after every

loss for self-sabotage at that point. But hopefully they end up circling back and making a deal either with Utah or with the Indiana Pacers. I would imagine the Charlotte Hornets are still available as an option there as well. They just need to do something. Whatever the deal is, they cannot bring back Russell Westberg. That would just be a disaster. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged.

It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast, Superhuman, documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win.

A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me, Clipper Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball. ball to college football or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes,

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Listen to The Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do a little kill? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at It Podcast. I'm Sam Jay.

And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so you all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed cracks. I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now.

Thank you for finishing that sentence. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So what I had planned on talking about today was the New Orleans Pelicans, but I was going to do a,

an adjustment to my Bulls preview because I missed out on Gorin Dragich. Again, guys, hundreds of personnel moves. If I miss something, please let me know. I have my direct messages open on Twitter. You can do that there or you can do it in the YouTube comments. Just let me know if I miss something or if you're a fan of one of these teams and there's a specific dynamic that you think I'm missing that I need to dive deeper in. Just remember to let me know.

Goran Dragich is Lonzo insurance. That's what he is after Lonzo went down last year. but he's kind of risky in and of himself. Over the last four years, he's only averaged 41 and a half games played. Last year, he was awful. It was the second worst scoring season of Gorin Judge's career. He ran 53 pick and rolls and only scored 35 points. When he's healthy, I really like what he can do with the basketball.

He's good off the dribble shooter, a great passer in pick and roll. He's excellent in the mid-range. Specifically, he's got a good amount of size compared to a lot of pick-and-roll guards in the league. And so he can do this thing where he kind of gets into the lane, gets you on your hip, and just does a pound dribble and like a step, shoots like a step back, like a high arcing, pull-up 12, 13-footer. He's a very, very interesting pick and roll player. He just hasn't been himself lately.

And, you know, I was watching him in the Euro basket today. And same thing, like, just doesn't quite look like he has that burst that he used to have. Although he did make some big plays. Hit a couple of huge jump shots. hit a dagger three-pointer today as well. This last season, he shot only 38% from the field, 25% from three. So, like, look, best case scenario,

he gets back to what he was, you know, a couple years ago with Miami, and he becomes, you know, because I talked about Alex Caruso and Lonzo Ball as guys who can attack closeouts and make reads. Lonzo's great making reads in the open floor, but neither of them are above average creators against the set defense.

So having Gore on Dragich, Drogich as, you know, an alternative to the Levine de Rosen stuff where he can attack a set defense, because you can have Drogich when he's healthy attacking in high pick and roll against a set defense and he can get you good stuff typically. So on the best case scenario, he could end up being that for them. The other thing, too, is he would immediately be their worst defender in the back court. So, I mean, it's Lanzo insurance, but if he gets, if Lanzo gets hurt, I mean, that's curtains for Chicago anyway. Moving on to Lithuania versus Slovenia.

This is a really interesting game. It was like, for those of you guys who have been listening to the show for a while, this was like the textbook Biggs versus Perimeter Players game, right? Because you've got Luca Donchich and Goran Drogich, two high-level NBA ball handlers versus an undermanned Lithuania backcourt. And then going the other way, you've got Jonas Valenchanus and Domana Sabonis, literally going against an underman front court for Slovenia.

So it was kind of like the classic example of that debate. And it was so back and forth because it was tied 73, 73 late, like midway through the fourth quarter, early fourth quarter. And Valenchuas and Sabonis just start cooking in the post. And Jonas Valenchuus ends up drawing a foul. And then Sabonis ends up getting Luca Donchich on a switch and hitting an easy hook shot over the top. they go up 78 73 and they call time out and you're sitting there thinking like oh well maybe the bigs are going to win but almost immediately luka just starts spamming spain pick and roll which we're going to talk about more in a in a minute

and he gets subonis on these switches and he starts attacking subonis and he starts drawing fouls on subonis and once he starts drawing fouls then lithuania starts sending extra help towards luka and he starts picking them apart hitting cutters underneath the basket for layups and just methodically executes every trip down the floor to build the lead. On the other end of the floor, they did what I talk about all the time. They just started scrambling and crowding Sabonis and Valenciunis out of their post-ups. If I'm not mistaken, the rest of the game, they only had one post-up, which was Sabonis, and he drew an offensive foul because he elbowed Luca in the face.

So the point is, like I always talk about with Biggs, it's just harder to get them to their spots where they can be effective than it is for perimeter players. There was a nasty play. I think it was 81 to 80, and Luke is attacking off the dribble, and he drives right and gets the defender kind of leaning that way. Does this nasty pullback dribble, gets tons of separation, just peaks at the rim for a second. Defender lunges up.

He advances, gets the defender on his hip, slowly works into the lane, just waits just long enough for Jonas Valenchunis to commit and then wraps it around to his big man for a layup. and I'm sitting there and I'm like, this is surgery. He's performing half-court surgery on Lithuania, which is my favorite thing about that big playmaking forward, which is why I've always viewed that specific archetype as my favorite archetype of player.

But it was just an interesting game, and it came down to could Lithuania punish them with their size, or was Slovenia going to pick them apart with their perimeter talent and the perimeter talent won? Just once, obviously, there are going to be games where the bigs win. that's, you know, and there are going to be guys who will say, use that as an example to argue that bigs are more valuable. But today, for me, it was confirmation of my personal basketball worldview. There were three interesting things that I wanted to hit really quickly from this game.

First of all, Lithuania's ball pressure. So to start the game, Lithuania was getting up into Drogich and Luca full court. And I've talked about this a lot on the show, but this concept of like comfort from perimeter players. You know, NBA players are so damn skilled that if you allow them to be comfortable, they will get hot every single time. You know, when you think about the idea of like hot shooting nights versus poor shooting nights, the poor shooting nights almost never happen when they're comfortable. If they're comfortably getting to their spots,

they will naturally build rhythm throughout the game and they will shoot well and they'll beat you. and your job as a defense is to try to make them uncomfortable. And when you make them uncomfortable, they might still beat you. But you might force them into bad shooting nights because they struggle to build their rhythm because they're not operating with enough comfort. And I thought it was a really interesting strategy from Lithuania to pressure the heck out of Luca and Goran just to make them speed up and to be uncomfortable, get to their spots, but more rushed than they want to, or not with the pace that they want to.

And as a result, I mean, Luca in particular didn't have a great, great scoring game, right? But the second thing I want to talk about, there was an interesting counter from Slovenia in that third quarter. They just started posting Luca Donchich every time down the floor because he's huge and he has a size mismatch against every perimeter player on the Lithuanian roster, right? And immediately they went on a run and ended up taking, I think, like an eight-point lead in that third quarter. First, as a score, he spun off of a guy and got a dunk. Then he was passing the ball out of there for wide-open shots. You know, When I talk about heliocentric players, heliocentric players are guys that love to attack with a live

dribble and command every possession, right? But the difference between Luca and LeBron and the other heliocentric players around the league that aren't as effective, the Trey Young's and the James Hardens of the world, and there's a lot of them now. But the reason why is, you know, the James Hardin and Trey Young types, it's all high isolation, it's all high pick and roll. They can't attack from different spots on the floor. So even if they do have a certain amount of success for a certain amount of time,

especially in a playoff series when a defender gets to see that same action dozens and dozens and dozens of times, it just ends up becoming predictable and they end up having more success defensively. And that's the advantage of what Luca, excuse me, what Luca can do and what LeBron can do. It's like, oh, you know, they're kind of figuring out the high isolation thing. They're kind of figuring out the high pick and roll thing. I'll take them to the post.

Maybe it's a back-to-the-basket, slow methodical post-up. LeBron will do a lot of face-up stuff, catching at the elbow and turning and facing. Luca can do that too. The variety in their attack makes it so that they have more counters when defenses start to figure stuff out. They had some success against Luca, ball pressuring in full court, so he gave up the damn basketball. And he ran to the post, demanded the basketball, and made plays from there. And again, big guys, especially a lot of you younger big players that want to be ball handlers, The easiest counter for a big player that handles the basketball is to put a small,

quick guard on you that can get into your dribble pocket and make you uncomfortable, and he can beat you to spots. You can't just drive right or drive left because he's going to slide with you because he's quicker, right? So if you can give up the basketball and make plays with your back to the basket, look, you don't have to dribble anymore. You're fighting for position. You can use your arms to shield the player off and get positioned to then turn and face with a triple threat. You don't have to dribble the basketball.

and you can work him further to the basket by backing him down. That is just, it's a bit of versatility that I think is almost a lost art in the league these days because post-ups are so few and far between. But I think it's still a really important way to be a well-rounded basketball player, and I thought it was impressive that Luca did that. All right, last thing for the night. Spain pick and roll. So at the end of the game, the Lithuania was spamming Spain pick and roll every time down the floor.

and as a result they were getting switches onto Subonis and they were getting lots of good stuff. Now, Spain Pick and Roll is one of the most common NBA actions, and I referenced it a lot on the show. So I wanted to take a second to demonstrate it to you guys with some video so that you have a really good idea of what I'm talking about every time I mention that for the rest of the season. So first, let's take a look at some video. Let's watch this once in real time and then we're going to slow it down. As you can see, Booker ends up getting a wide open three and knocking it down. So as Aiden is rolling to the rim, watch Devin Booker back screen Jonas Valenciunis, which forces Brandon Ingram right here to lunge backwards to help on that lob pass,

which allows Devin Booker to break open to the three-point line. Spain pick and roll is all about making your defenders make decisions about whether or not to help or to stay with their man, and it gives your ball handler more options. The Phoenix Suns are one of the best Spain pick and roll teams in the league, probably the best. And the main reason why is because they have the perfect combination of players to do it. You have Chris Paul, the pick and roll ball handler, who's an outstanding passer, and if you give him space, he can knock down shots. You have DeAndre Aiton, who's an outstanding

role man with great hands, who's a problem when he catches the ball within a few feet of the rim, right? And then you have Devin Booker, this amazing shooter, especially on the move, that is the guy who's relocating to the top of the key. So again, it's all about the threats and the combined threats of all three players within that action. If you play off of Chris Paul to deal with Devin Booker and DeAndreighton, he's going to get to his pull-up jump shot. If you help on that back screen on the roll man, then Devin Booker's going to get a wide open three. If Brandon Ingram ignores that screen and just runs out on Devin Booker, Deandreaten's probably catching a lob underneath the rim.

It's an extremely difficult action to defend, especially when you have the right type of personnel to make people pay. These are the little types of complications within the NBA that happen in almost every single game. And one of my goals for this season is to help everybody understand that really, really well so that when we're doing our breakdowns, I can mention these things and you guys know exactly what I'm talking about. All right, on that note, that is all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate your support. I believe we're taking the rest of the weekend off. So plan on Monday evening getting a full breakdown on the New Orleans Pelicans and us continuing to work our way.

through these season previews. The other thing, too, the Lakers, Rob Plink is famous for, you know, having that move in his holster, that backup plan. When his plan A fails, he usually goes to plan B quickly. So I wouldn't be surprised

if the Lakers made a move sooner than later. All right, guys, that's all I have. I'll see you guys after the weekend. The volume. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends,

me and hilarious guests from Bob Odin Kirk 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. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within

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