The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Jokic & Nuggets edge out Clippers, Pacers-76ers + Draymond & Warriors in trouble?

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Jason Timpf reacts to the Tuesday slate of NBA games which featured Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets beating Paul George, Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, and Russell Westbrook 111-108 (5:30). The Clippers have not won a game since acquiring James Harden. Jason then reacts to Tyrese Haliburton’s 33 point, 15 assist night where he carried the Pacers to a 132-126 win over Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers (33:00). Last, Jason reacts to the Warriors Timberwolves fight where Draymond Green put Rudy Gobert in a choke hold where Draymond and Klay Thompson were both ejected (50:05). #volume #Herd (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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draftkings.com slash basketball terms. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Wednesday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week. I've got another jam-pack show for you guys today. We're going to be breaking down a couple of games from the in-season tournament slate last night. The Clippers and Nuggets played a highly entertaining game. The Clippers trying to get out of this long losing streak.

And they had a seven-point lead about halfway through the fourth quarter. And then the Nuggets just started spamming Yokic post-ups as they came out with the win there. Lots of interesting stuff to get into from both teams in that game. And then the Indiana Pacers went into Philly and handled business beating the Sixers. Tyrese Halliburton was incredible. 15 assists, zero turnovers, really picked them apart and pick and roll in the fourth quarter. We're going to talk about that game from the perspective of both teams, and then we're going to do a deep dive into the Indiana Pacers,

a team that is now sitting at 7 and 4, which is the 7th best record in the NBA at this point. We're going to just talk about how Tyrese has been so successful, a couple of key contributors, talk about their big picture numbers so far this season, just a classic deep dive like we've been doing on teams that we've seen earlier. Then at the end of the show, we're going to play a game of fake questions, real answers. I've got three fake questions for you guys. This time, a couple of them to allow me to briefly touch on the Lakers and Warriors games from last night. And then the third one, Draymond Green, put Rudy Gaubert in a headlock last night,

which is objectively funny, given the way I've been defending Draymond as of late. So we're obviously going to talk about that for a couple of minutes as well. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to our brand new YouTube channel. It would mean a lot to me as we try to get this channel. off the ground if you guys would scroll down and hit that subscribe button. Don't forget about our podcast feed, wherever you get your podcast under hoops tonight. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason LT so you guys don't miss any show announcements as well as

the video breakdowns that I do. I posted a ton of clips, particularly of Tyrese Halliburton today on my Twitter feed. You're going to want to follow me there to see that stuff. And then last but not least, we need mailbag questions for later in the week. So keep dropping those in the YouTube comments so we can hit them later on. All right, let's talk some basketball. So this Clippers Nuggets game was a. a really interesting example of two incredibly different basketball teams,

giving each other problems for different reasons, right? Because the clippers had an extended run in this game. From about two minutes to go in the second quarter to that Kauai jumper over Christian Braun in the fourth quarter that put the clippers up by seven, they outscored the nuggets 58 to 38. So an extended stretch of them playing some pretty dominant basketball. And one of the main reasons why is on the offensive end, they are actually capable of giving this Nuggets defense, which is a good defense,

they're actually capable of giving them some issues. We've talked a lot about this on the show. Like, how would you cause problems for this Nuggets defense? Because this is not a team that has like five top tier defenders out there that's flying around and making plays. This is not the Minnesota Timberwolves, right? Like, there are points in this team where you have advantages where you can attack. They are just incredibly well-coached.

They have a scheme that works for them. all of their guys are bought in, and they have a handful of guys that are great defensive players. Contavius Cawahua Cahawahawap is a great point-of-attack defender. Aaron Gordon is an incredibly versatile defender. Michael Porter Jr. is good in help-and-recover situations, right? So, like, they've got guys that are capable, and then the rest of the guys are all just really bought in, and they do their jobs. But one of the things that the clippers can do and have been doing for years now is they get you

out of your base scheme by spacing you out with high-level ball handling, and then picking you apart from there. And they've done damage over the years to great defensive teams, famously just picking apart the Utah Jazz without Kauai Leonard by spacing them out and driving and kicking them to death, right? And so, again, when it comes to this particular Nuggets team, if there was a way to score against them, it would be the way the Clippers did for the most part during that game last night.

And I know you see, oh, they only scored 108 points, but you've got to remember this was a slower-paced game, and the Clippers actually scored about 114 points per 100 possessions at that pace during this game, which is a hefty six points per 100 possessions more than the Denver Nuggets have been allowing over the course of the previous games that they had played this season. So they were having success in that regard, and obviously it showed on the scoreboard when they took that leap. How did they do it? By pulling Yokic up to the level of the screen, right?

Now, Denver has in recent months, basically dating back to the playoffs, been kind of oscillating back and forth between bringing Yokic up to the level versus kind of having him sit back. There was a brief stretch in the fourth quarter, I think. It might have been in the third quarter where they did actually drop Yokage back quite a bit and try to bait them into attacking him at the rim. And James Hardin had one bucket on him where he kind of elbowed him in the chest in a play like that.

and he had another similar play where Yokic actually bothered him at the rim. But they had some success in this game by pulling Yokic out to the level of the screen. From there, it's that pocket pass to the middle of the floor. Many times in this particular game it was Terrence Mann that was operating there. But then on the backside, you have incredibly skilled players, right? Like there's a play where it's PG on the left wing and Kauai in the left corner. And there, you know, Terence Man makes the catch and makes that kick out pass to Kauai in the corner. and now Kauai is attacking with an advantage.

He ended up, like, missing a little floater on this play. There's another one where it's like Kauai on the left wing, and it's Russell Westbrook in the corner, and Russell Westbrook cuts out of the back, weekside corner and dunks it with two hands, right? Like when they were pulling that second defender up to the level of the screen, in this case, Yokic, they're playing four on three on the backside with really, really skilled players, right?

And they were basically at the level on Hardin, for the most part. There were some stretches where they went a deeper drop on Hardin. But then they were up at the level on PG, most of the game, PG's just been unbelievable as a pull-up shooter as of late. And then Kauai Leonard as well, they were kind of showing high. And then from there, down the stretch of the game, there's a lot of classic matchup attacking stuff, right? Like PG face up on Cantabius Caldwell Pope, who's an excellent perimeter defender,

but he's given three inches to Paul George. He's a little bit shorter, right? So PG, just like hard jab step, elevates over the top, knocks the shot down. You know, Christian Brown does a really nice defensive possession on Kauai where he traps him there in the middle of the floor. This is the bucket that put the clippers up 99.92. And it just doesn't matter because Kauai's so much damn bigger than him, he could just shoot over the top, right?

It's James Harden getting Zeke Naji on a switch and just toasting in with that classic, you know, series of between the legs, crossovers until it just explodes to the left and gets all the way to the rim for a layup. Like, that is kind of like the idealized version of the clippers and what they're capable of. And that's kind of been a similar problem that they've caused for teams forever. You want to run your traditional coverges. they're just not going to work against us because we can hunt, you know, individual matchups

because we've got size all over the floor on the perimeter. And then in pick and roll, like, we just have our pull-up shooting is so good and our playmaking is so good that you're just going to be in a position where you're kind of compromised on the backside, right? And so they did have some success against Denver's defense doing that. But the big question is, can you do that to Denver, space them out, cause problems for their defense? while also having enough size on the floor to hang with Denver's size. And the answer is not this Clippers team, at least.

And, you know, I've looked at teams out there over the years that, or over the last year since Denver's kind of made this ascent, as teams that could potentially do this. Like, you know, I'd like to see a better version of the Lakers take a crack at the Nuggets where AD doesn't just get completely demolished and they get some higher level perimeter play. maybe after a DeAngelo Russell trade, right? I'd love to see the Milwaukee Bucks have a chance to see Janice and Brooke Lopez

battle against those guys while having the firepower that Dane brings to the table, right? Like Boston is another team that's kind of got similar attributes to the clippers in the sense that they can really space you out and they've got a lot of different guys that can attack matchups. But I am yet to see a team that can do both that can space out Denver on one end and cause their defense problems while also holding up physically. under the Denver interior onslaught on the other end of the floor. Because at the end of the game, when it was 99-92,

when Kauai makes that little jumper to put them up seven, the Nuggets just said, screw all the bullshit. We're just posting up Nikola Yokic every single time down the floor. There was one random possession after Kauai made the shot where they just played terrible transition defense. And Christian Brown threw that lob to Michael Porter Jr. who dunked it with his left hand to make it 99-94. But after that, it was literally a Yokic post-up on every single possession.

The only one that wasn't was the Reggie Jackson layup, which was literally on a play where they were trying to post Nicola Yokic up. And while they were kind of navigating all the screens over there, Reggie Jackson noticed that all the help defenders were occupied and just tried to beat his defender to the left-hand side and get all the way to the rip. So, like, they didn't mess around. They knew what their advantage was, and they just completely, completely spammed that down the stretch of the game.

So what I want to do to kind of like demonstrate this is, is kind of go over possession by possession, with the kinds of shots that the clippers were getting versus the kinds of shots that the nuggets were getting. And then you tell me whether or not you think if we played that same game 10 times in a row, which team would win. Because I think this is an interesting exercise in shot quality. Because the important context here is Tyloo does not trust any of the centers

on his roster. Obviously Plumley's heard at this point, but he will not play Zubak at the end of games. He's played in just six of the 23 clutch minutes that the Clippers have played this year. And if you were going to play him, it'd be in this particular matchup against Yokic, and they didn't do so. Like, for whatever reason, Tailu just, when push comes to shove, he feels most comfortable going small. And that's going to be, unless they have an upgrade for Zubak, which I don't think they're going to find this season.

I mean, maybe they do. Daniel Tice just got to buy out from the Pacers, and he's going to come over and, maybe he gets some of those clutch minutes, but like, I have a hard time believing that he's going to trust Daniel Tyson those moments, right? I think it's probably going to be PJ Tucker playing center a lot, you know what I mean? Or they ended up getting rid of PJ Tucker down the very end of this game, but I'm not sure that that's going to be a problem that goes away for the clippers, right? It's going to be these small lineups in crunch time. So you have huge mismatches for Yokic against every clipper on the floor. And that kind of is the crux of the issue.

here. So we're going to start with, again, it was 99-92, and then we get the bad transition defense possession that leads to the Michael Porter Jr. dunk. From there, these are all of the Denver offensive possessions down the stretch of the game. There was a simple dribble handoff between Reggie Jackson and Yokic that got Paul George switched on to Yokic. He posted right in the middle of the floor, hit him with a hard right-hand dribble spinning over his right shoulder for a short jump shot in the lane. Super high percentage. shot, he's going to make that 70% of the time, especially against that type of matchup. He makes it.

Very next possession, they run another kind of ball screen on the left side of the floor to get PJ Tucker off of Yokic. Again, one of the things I like about the Nuggets is, like, this is an incredibly well-coached team, and they take execution very seriously. So, for instance, like, Yokic can score on PJ Tucker, but hey, we got 24 seconds. Let's get them onto a smaller defender. That's less of a fire hydrant, right? And they were really deliberate about just like when they got down the floor.

let's run a wedge screen. Most of them, like there was that one little dribble handoff that I just mentioned where he shot the little turn around over Paul George. But the rest of them, it was the same action every single time down the floor. You're having your post-entry, whether it's KCP or Reggie Jackson, come up the left side of the floor. And then Yolk it's starting at the right elbow. And what he's doing is he's coming off of like a wedge screen to try to get down to the post, right?

And I mean, essentially the idea there, because a lot of teams run wedge screens for post-ups, You're trying to either get the defender in trail position so you can get better post-up position or to force a switch, right? And in this particular case, you know, PJ Tucker had had some success on a previous possession like pushing Yokic all the way out to the corner on a post-catch. And he ended up taking that crazy one-like fade away out of the right corner, right? And like that's an example of what P.J. Tucker could do. Not that Yokch can't eventually solve that, but why not run a basic action to try to get Yokch into a position where he's catching deeper to the basket? or with a better physical matchup against one of the other players on the floor, right? So after he gets the bucket over PG, the next possession, they dribble down the left side of the floor.

He comes off of one of those wedge screens down to the block and ends up with a post-up on Terrence Mann. And PJ Tucker ends up hard doubling Yokic on the face side, right? And in the sequence, they actually force Yokic to miss the shot. He misses like a left-handed, weird pushout that barely grazes the front of the rim. The problem is because PJ Tucker Hard doubled, James Hardin slid over to kind of go over to PJ Tucker's man. And as a result, Aaron Gordon is standing completely unguarded under the rim. And he just jumps and grabs it and just kind of puts it right into the basket, right?

So like, again, you tried single coverage, scored over Paul George. You've now tried a double team and Aaron Gordon got an easy offensive rebound put back. Next possession, same thing. same little wedge screen coming off of the right elbow and Yokic catches on Kauai Leonard. Kauai Leonard's posting him up, backs him down, backs him down, spins back over his left shoulder, draws a foul. Okay, so now we've gone to the Yokch post up and there's a bucket or a foul on every single possession, right?

Next one, same thing, straight post up of Paul George on the left block. Okay, so Paul George is the guy that gets switched on to him after the wedge screen. He kind of spins off towards the baseline and Terrence Mann, was a really nice job jumping up and offering help. And actually forces Yokic to miss the shot. But again, like, Yokic spun off. So he's at the basket now. And so who's going to get an offensive rebounds?

Who's going to get the rebound when there's, you know, three or four clipper perimeter players, and then Nicola Yokic standing there underneath the basket. And he just went up, got his own offensive rebound, and put it back into the basket. Next possession, straight post up with Paul George. This was a really interesting play because Norman Powell hard doubles. The clippers are sick and tired of Yokic picking them apart.

He hard doubles. Yokic just throws the pass right back out to the perimeter. And as the clippers are rotating back, Norman Powell, who offered the hard help, he had to recover to Aaron Gordon under the rim. Terrence Mann, who was guarding in the weakside corner, had shown on Aaron Gordon on the double team to take away that pass. But now he was recovering back to the corner. And literally, KCP, who again, this is the continuity factor, he's seen this exact look a million

times. Yokic is there, guarded in the post. Norman Powell's in the process of recovering to Aaron Gordon. Terrence Mann is in the process of returning to the corner, and there's a little window there as those two guys are moving. And KCP just rifles an overhead pass that hits Aaron Gordon in the perfect spot for him to quick jump up and dunk it into the basket. It was actually an and one, and so now the nuggets are up by three. Then we get to the Reggie Jackson Drive. So Nicole Yokic is on the right elbow. He's getting ready to come off that wedge screen towards that post up side, right? All the clippers basically have their back turned to Reggie Jackson trying to work on who's going to end up following Yokic down to the post. Reggie Jackson and against a good perimeter

defender, in this case, Terrence Mann is on the ball. And he just hits him with a hard move to his left hand. And this is something that Reggie Jackson can still do. If you give him space, he can beat people off the dribble. And he beats Terrence Mann off the dribble, gets all the way to the basket, and knocks it down. And then the final one, Yokic straight post up of Kauai. This This time, Kauai Leonard's like, okay, obviously if I play it from behind, I'm going to foul him or give up a bucket. So Kauai fronts the post. Gets in front, sits slow, does a good job denying that post entry. Paul George offers backside help.

And so they throw a pass over the top that Yokic catches up high. PG comes flying in to try to knock it away, and he just feeds it right under the basket to Aaron Gordon because that's Paul George's man. He was bracketing off of Aaron Gordon to help Kauai fronting the post. It's an easy dunk for Aaron Gordon. So again, look at those possessions that I just laid down. That's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, seven possessions, seven consecutive post-ups. And they scored on every single one of them directly as a result of the fact that nobody in the lineup could hang when Nicole Yokic under the rim. And like now we're going to, these are the Clippers possessions.

I listed them out. Okay, there were a couple of good ones. There's two good shots that they got. There was a play that James Harden brought Nicole Yokic. up to the level of the screen, and he ended up hitting Terrence man on the left block as he was rolling to the basket. That engaged the low man. He made the extra pass to Norman Powell in the corner.

He knocked down a three. So that was a wide open catch and shoot three for Norman Powell, basically picking the nuggets apart and pick and roll. Then there was another one where Yokic got onto a switch on Hardin, and Hardin beat him to the basket, made a nice move, and actually got all the way there. He just smoked the layup. So I would call that a high percentage shot, even though it was a miss. So those were the two good shots that the clippers got. These were the shots that the other shots that the clippers got. A Kauai contested pull-up three.

Paul George missed drifting catch-and-shoot long jump shot that was contested by Contavius Caldwell Pope. Paul George missed impossible pull-up three. Shot clock violation. Paul George missed impossible pull-up three. Paul George draws a foul on a pull-up jump shot. That was the one on the left wing where he just kind of like went into his hezzie and just got bumped.

So he got two free throws there. And then Kauai missed a really tough left shoulder fade over. Aaron Gordon, and then Paul George missed another impossible pull-up three. And at the end of that run, it was 109 to 104 with 32 seconds left. So we started with the clippers up by seven, and we ended with them down by five. Now, you might tell me, make or miss league, Jason. But really, out of what I just listed, what's going to happen if you play that game 10 times? You'd be lucky if one out of those 10 times Paul George makes the same impossible pull-up Thursday. And we've seen him do it. He did against the Lakers in forced overtime.

Like, Paul George can get hot and make shots. But if you're banking on you winning games by knocking down difficult, contested pull-up jump shots, while the other team is banking on winning games by force-feeding an incredibly high percentage play around the basket. Like, they scored seven consecutive times. If you do that 10 times, they're scoring at least, if you play that same game 10 times, they're scoring at least five out of the seven, about every time. About every one of those 10 games.

Like there's no version of that where, like, you hold the nuggets to go 0 for 7. Not with those lineups, not with those personnel mismatches, not with Nicole Yokic on the floor. And so again, like that, that to me is why it's so important when you're watching film and when we're evaluating these teams to separate process from results. Because when you get into a seven-game series, you've got to do it four times. You got to do it four times in two weeks. And so, like, if we saw a Clippers Nuggets matchup in the playoffs, like, if that's the way that one team is approaching the offensive end,

and then the other team is just getting these easy bread and butter plays, like they're just going to win. I don't know what else to tell you. Now, from 109-104, it got a little weird. Reggie Jackson missed both of his free throws, and then Kauai got that weird call on the missed dunk, and then Yokic turned it over against the Clippers back court pressure. And so as a result, Paul George got a chance to tie the game

with the pull-up three, but he ended up shooting it into the side of the rim, and it got wedged in there between that and the backboard as the Nuggets got away from the win. So, or got away with the win, I should say. But I thought it was really interesting because, you know, this is a consistent thing that I've seen around the league in general with general managers. You know, and we saw this with the Nets, like we're getting KD, Kyrie, and James Hardin. We got the Sons. We're getting Kevin Durant, Devin, Booker, and Bradley Biel. We've got the Clippers. We're getting Quay Leonard, Paul George, and James Hardin. with Russell Westbrook, right?

Like this idea of, of we're just going to put together all of these pull-up shooters. And we're just going to be so hard to guard because of all of our pull-up shooting game that we have. And really, pull-up shooting I've always said is a ceiling razor. It's a thing that pushes your team over the top. It should never be your bread and butter. There's one player that I can remember in NBA history who like pull-up shooting was kind of of their bread and butter and was the, and it's Steph with the Warriors. But even then, it's like, like, not really, though, because he works off ball so much.

And, like, the Steph off ball actions produce so much reverse gravity away from the rim that, like, there's all this high percentage stuff happening around the rim. And again, like, what did I say were the high percentage plays for the Clippers down the stretch? It was the James Harden Pick and Rolls. Now, the Clippers did, the Nuggets did end up eventually slowing that action down by, one, the switch by getting Yokic onto James Hardin, they could have offered better help and gotten away with it in all likelihood. Then there was another play. It was actually the same possession

before the Yokic switch where Reggie Jackson just did an incredible job navigating the screen as Yokic was in a deeper drop, and it actually kept the pocket pass from happening, and they kind of shut the action down, and that's when they, Terence Mann ended up popping to the three-point line, which ended up causing the switch as Reggie Jackson recovered out to Terrence Mann instead of Harden. But again, like, in general, like that sort of action when you're just getting the defense into rotation and playing basketball out of that, even that is a higher percentage play than just consistently taking tough pull-up jump shots. There's just nobody that can make them at a high enough rate. Again, Steph can. He's about 1.2 points per pull-up jump shot. He's the one guy that, like,

if he, you know, we saw him do it against the Celtics. Like, okay, you're going to run your drop coverage. I'm just going to pick you guys apart by hitting these over-the-top jump shots. But even then, I would argue it's not their bread and butter. There's so much more that comes from that offense. And so, like, this is the issue. Like, you, it is better to be effective than pretty. You know, when Paul George is hitting those crazy pull-up jump shots, it's, God damn, it's impressive.

Like, it's like Paul George, his fluidity in his jump shooting is just so impressive. And that's why so many young basketball players are such big Paul George fans, including myself. But at the end of the day, like those ugly ass Yokic post-up at the end of that game that almost always were, you know, misshot offensive rebound, a little bobbled here, Aaron Gordon not quite dunking it, kind of barely getting it over the front of the rim. Like, it doesn't matter.

They scored every possession. I mean, I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but I think it was 15 points and seven possessions because it was buckets on all of them and then the and one on the Aaron Gordon play. That's 15 points in seven possessions. Like, that's really reliable basketball. Now, a couple things. On the clipper side, there was some upside, right?

I think you saw some of the potential of that group offensively. But like I said, one of the downsides of the James Hardin trade is you sent out all your forwards, all of them, literally. And you brought back a forward that was shorter than all the forwards you sent out. And you sent out your one really athletic young forward, right? You sent out one of your best perimeter defenders in Nick Batum. So like in that situation, you've created other physical mismatches elsewhere on the floor. I think Daniel Tice will help.

He's a perfectly fine backup center option. But in order for me to truly get behind the clippers as a potential contender, I would need to see the offense kind of develop into a more consistent version of what we saw last night. And then I really think they need an upgrade in the forward spot. Like just another body out there so that when they go small, they're bigger than they looked last night. Like when it's Terrence Mann and Norman Powell and James Hardin all on the floor, without a center, that's a really small basketball team. And you're going to have a really, really hard time winning games,

especially in the later phases of the playoffs with that. On the Nuggets front, I thought the Nuggets played like shit in a lot of ways in this game. They really got baited by the Clippers switching into some poor isolation decisions. A lot of guys, you know, again, this is what switching does, right? Like switching negates screening actions. That's what it does. Like if you run a pick and roll, you run it so that you can get downhill.

because the guy's going to chase over the top of the screen. If he doesn't chase over the top of the screen, it's just a switch. Now we're kind of back where we started, except for now I have to beat a different player off the dribble, right? And it can be effective in stagnating teams. And I think the nuggets always knew in the back of their head they'd be able to do what they did down the stretch, which is go to Yokic.

But for a large portion of the game, it's like, here's Aaron Gordon trying to isolate Kauai Leonard, and he gets ripped, you know? there was a lot of kind of like freelance basketball taking place in large part because the clippers were baiting them into it in a lot of different ways. But I put down in my notes, Yokic is the best break glass in case of emergency option in the NBA, which, I mean, he's the best player in the NBA, so it doesn't really matter what the little individual categories are.

But it just, that's what that kind of felt like to me. It felt like, ah, shit, the clippers are up seven on us. Like, let's just go to Yokch every time. and we'll get a win like that. I also wanted to shout out Reggie Jackson. He's at 17 points per game on 53% from the field and 39% from three over his last three games, 12 assists and three turnovers. Doing a really nice job filling in for Jamal Murray with his current hamstring issue.

And again, I think it's an example of how easy it is to play with Nicole Yokich. This is a good NBA guard. Reggie Jackson's a good player. Is he good enough to start for a really good team? Probably not. But is he good enough to fill in? for Jamal Murray in a system like this where they need good guard play next to Yokic? Absolutely. And I think he's done a really nice job. I thought he had some key defensive moments

in this game. I mentioned to you guys the, like Hardin ran the pick and roll and got an easy shot out of it. It was like the one easy shot they got, right? And then on the very next possession, Reggie Jackson just was like, not enough of this, and fought over the top of the screen, stay attached and basically shut the action down. And so I think that's been a really nice, We talk a lot about the Nuggets Bench not being very good, but they do have some individual good players. And the bench lineups have really struggled, but as individual bench players have stepped in and played core important minutes with the, as they've played core important minutes with Yokic in the starters, they've been able to kind of fill in and be a reasonable facsimile of what the other guys do, right? I also wanted to, I saw kind of a similar type of dynamic taking place with Jalen Pickett. And then again, he got put into a tough spot too with the clipper switching where he had to take

a couple of tough pull-up jump shots, pull-up threes off the dribble that he probably otherwise wouldn't take. He actually did make one of them. But I actually thought he did a nice job in general in the Yokic actions of like understanding how to catch and move without the basketball and to throw those post-entries when they're there and to not get carried away with looking for your own shot. I thought he did a decent job, and he's a guy that kind of has like a stocky, low center of gravity who can have some success defensively as well. Now that it was an impressive win for the nuggets, because again, when you play

like shit and you win, especially when you've got guys out of the lineup, that's always encouraging. 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 which I'll say it. Yep, that's me. Clever Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits,

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This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next, we'll talk about life,

mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest, conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me, or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right what you need to be. 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. Hey, this is Robert from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. Joe and I are both lifelong Star Wars

fan, so we're celebrating May the 4th with a brand new week of fun, thought-provoking, Star Wars-related episodes. Join us as we tackle science and culture topics from a galaxy far, far away, such as the biology of taun tons and wampas on the ice planet hot, or the practicality and corporate business sense of the Sith Rule of Two. Listen to Stuff to Bo Your Mind on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's move on to Pacers Sixers, the Tyrese Halliburton Show.

I thought the way that he picked part the Sixers' defense in this game was super impressive because there's three layers to the pick and roll attack, right? Like there's the on ball layer, there's the roll man layer, and then there's the weak side layer, right? And you have to be a legitimate threat at all three layers in order to make yourself difficult to guard there. And Tyrese just kind of slowly built this fear in the Sixers' defense

that manifested in a shit show of a defensive quarter for the Sixers in the fourth quarter. And I wanted to kind of break that down. So it started with pull-up shooting, right? So Tyrese makes like four pull-up threes in the first half. And by the way, he's up to 25 for 62 on pull-up threes this season. That's 40.3%. And that essentially put the Sixers into position where now they're starting to

consistently come out to the level of the screen. And just in general, they're overreacting to Tyrese Halliburton on ball reps, right? Then he started burning them on the weak side by hitting cutters, coming out of that weakside corner. Obie Topin in particular, I had a bunch of these in this particular game. We're going to talk about Obie Topin later, but one of the big things that's made him a seamless fit with this Pacer's team is that he just is a very good cutter. And he's been one of the best cutters in the NBA to start the season this year. So like if you're burning a team at the point of attack by hitting pull-up jump shots, which is pulling the roll man, the screen defender

out, and you're also burning the low man, because when the low man comes over to tag the roller, that's where the cutter's open, right? If you're consistently burning that with cutting out of the weak side corner, that can open up some things where the roll man has some space, right? Because if you're taking away the on-ball guy and the low man's hesitant to help, there's opportunity in there for the low man. And what was interesting is like Miles Turner was in foul trouble all night and had 15 points in the fourth quarter of this game because he was just getting all the space in the world to kind of navigate and operate in that short roll area. And again, like it was such a, it was so funny because in the fourth quarter, it was like a total shit show because

the Sixers just had no idea what to do. On the possessions where they didn't tag the roller, Miles Turner would get a bucket. There was a possession where they tagged the roller and Tyrese Halliburton just throws a lob and Obie Topin comes flying in from the weak side, just, ah, you know, ducks on Tyrese's head and screams and yells. And then it's like final, M.B. kind of runs a more traditional drop coverage and Tyrese Halliburton just hits like this, amazing right-handed scoop shot off the glass. There was another possession late where M.B. Kind of like did his quick show, but then quickly recovered back to Miles Turner.

And Halliburton just bam, hits a left-hand stepback dribble onto the left wing and knocks down another pull-up three-point shot. They just had literally nothing they could do with him. He absolutely and utterly picked them apart. And again, guys, this is an elite defensive team in the Philadelphia 76ers. No one was safe. Now, again, we'll talk about, I'm not going to talk too much about the Sixers today because I want this to be more of Pacer's focus.

But, like, Tyrus Maxie did not have a good defensive game, and he's still a young defensive player's super active and is always playing hard and has good quickness, but his defensive instincts and anticipation are just a little bit off. And he was responsible for a few of those early Tyreys Halliburton pull-up threes. And obviously at the point of attack, he couldn't hold his. zone in the fourth quarter and was in trail position too frequently and not applying good back pressure.

Like obviously Tyrus Maxy is a weak point there. But the rest of the lineup that you have out there is good defensive players. And he was just completely picking them apart. Tyrese has been, Tyrese Halliburton, I should say, has been the best pick and roll player in the league by a mile to start this year. He's run 218 pick and rolls that have led to 283 points. That's 1.3.3. zero points per possession. That is preposterous.

There are 30 players in the NBA to run at least 100 pick and roll so far this year, and Tyrese is comfortably ahead of the field. He's at 1.3. Luca Donchage is in second place at 1.11. We're not talking about a small gap here. That's a 17% gap. He's 17% better than the second best pick and roll ball handler in the league. And so, again, like, we talk about that dynamic of the, the three different levels of pick and roll shot creation, right? Shot making at the point of attack area, the roll man, the weak side, and obviously passing is the connective tissue that puts all those

three together, passing from the ball handler to the roll man or to the weak side corner, passing from the roll man to the weak side corner, you know, like that, that is all connective tissue there. But Tyrese in particular puts it all together because he is great in all three areas. So we talked about the pull-up shooting, obviously 40% on pull-up threes. For this season, a Tyree Haliburton pull-up jump shot is worth 1.22 points per possession. That's insane. We talked about this with the nuggets, but the idea of what's untenable for a defense to allow. Like, you want to know why the nuggets were just letting Paul George and Kauai work one-on-one

and take tough pull-up jump shots? because they'll probably make half of them, and they're mostly twos. So that's a point per possession. That's a totally acceptable, you know, arrangement for a defense. And in all likelihood, they're probably only going to make 40, 45% of them, and now you're down at, you know, nine-tenths of a point per possession, right? You have to be able to cause such, you know, destruction to a defense that it's untenable for them to continue. and when you're getting 1.22 points per pull-up jump shot,

that is a real easy way to have opposing coaches like, hey, we got to show high on this guy. Like, we can't, we can't give him this shot. If he does, he's literally going to kill us. And that's literally what happened in the first quarter when he sat there and made the shot time and time again, right? Then he's got this deadly floater in the mid-range. He's 13 for 23 on floaters this year.

That's 56% or 1.13 points per shot. That's really good. And then he's 66% in the restricted area on 2.3 makes per game, which is not amazing, but it's solid. It's perfectly fine. I would even argue it's a little above average for an NBA guard. And we talked about that little scoop finish that he had over and beat.

Because, like, Tyrese is not an elite athlete, but he's got good size. And I think he has elite start-stop quickness. I think he can get to his spots in large part because of his ability to go from, like, those hesitation moves to good, quick, explosive dribbles, that first step to get to where he wants to go. And then he has all the shot-making stuff from there. But then you have to be able to make the reads. And, like, you know, it's funny. I hate, you know, there's a certain amount of play.

There's, like, two different kinds of, like, good playmakers in the NBA, in my opinion. There's, like, the Jason Tatum Janus class where it's like, or I'd even throw Kauai Leonard in there in terms of relative to what he used to be, where it's like, this guy's starting to kind of figure out how to make teams pay for throwing the kitchen sink at him. And he, you know, he's averaging six or seven assists a game or whatever, you know, like Kauai. went from a guy who just was just a flat-out terrible playmaker to like, now he's good at it. Like, he's not great, but he's good, he's fine. He's average, slightly above-average type of playmaker, right? There's always like a chasm, though, between those guys and like the really good playmakers at the top of the league. And I've always thrown in Nicole Yokic, Luca Donchich, LeBron James in this group.

Chris Paul is in this group when he was in his prime and he could score the ball more. Tyrice Maxie's in this group. And this is like, it's almost just like a natural thing. I'm going to get really nerdy here for a second. I'm a diehard Star Wars fan. But in the Star Wars universe, there's this concept of like force sensitivity, right? So like the Jedi would like find all the young kids in the galaxy that had a connection to the force and they bring them to the temple and they train them, right?

That's kind of like the way I view high, high level playmaking in the NBA. It's like you either have it or you don't. It's not something that can be taught. it's not something that even like looks the same for every player. There are just some guys in the league that have a natural affinity for making lightning quick decisions and that can quickly interpret everything that's happening on the floor and it comes natural to them. It's not like a, oh, you know, I got to the point where I could kind of make some reads.

It's like they relentlessly make the reads and it's just, it's like hardwired into their system. And I think we can pretty safely say at this point that, Highreys Maxie is one of those guys. And like there is a skill element. I want to be clear. There's a, we talk about energy transfer for jump shooting, right?

Like transferring energy from the, from your feet through your handle all the way through the jump shot, right? Or that like kind of that fluidity, right? That fluidity between transferring from your handle into a jump shot. The same thing applies to passing. Like you need to be able to make a retreat dribble. But like, let's just say you make a right-handed through the legs crossover to your left hand in a retreat

dribble because you see a, you know, pressure in your face. And you need to quickly throw a left-handed skip pass across the court. Like, I think young players in general need to practice this. I saw a video of Jayland Hood-Shafino for the Lakers who's trying to come back from a knee injury, I believe. And he was doing a drill with the Lakers staff where he was working on movement shooting. But what they did to kind of get it started is they had him take a retreat dribble and pick and roll and throw a left-handed skip pass.

just made him throw a left-handed skip pass to start every rep. And then he ran to the block and then cut through to the weak side corner. And one of the coaches hit him for a catch-and-shoot jump shot in the right corner. What I liked about that is like that's an example of like layering stuff in a drill to make sure you get reps because it's hard to just be like, hey, we're going to practice left-hand passing today. But if you mix it in with stuff, it can matter. But again, like there is a skill element.

Like Tyres Maxi is one of the best left-handed passers in the NBA. It's a vitally important skill. Again, like specifically that left hand because most pull-up jump shooters that are righties are most comfortable shooting pull-up jump shots when the ball's in their left hand. They want to drive left, hit that high hesitation, and then rise into a jump shot. The main reason for that is their left foot is back. So the right foot's forward. It's natural footwork for a right-handed player. When you're coming towards your right-handed player, you have to swing that right-foot around, which adds like an additional kind of physical exertion element to the shot, which just

makes it harder, right? We all remember the video that was going around a while back with Cam Johnson and JJ Reddick talking about right-handed shooters going to their right. They have to square up in mid-air. It's more challenging, right? So if pull-up shooting is a vital part of pick and roll, and most right-handed players are better pull-up shooting going to their left, then the ball is going to be in your left hand. And if you're going to make passing reads out of that,

you're probably going to need to be able to make passes with your left hand. And so I wish it was a more consistent thing that we saw in player development among the younger players. But even if we assign that as a skill, which again, like Tyrese has those – or Tyrese Halliburton has those – skills down. He's got the handle. He's got the fluidity connecting the handle to his passing and to his shooting and all those different things. It's also just a natural ability. Like the dude just sees ever, there was a play in the fourth quarter of this game where he hit. I think it was

Obie Toppin, but I'm not certain. But it was on the right wing. It was a broken play. And he lost control the ball, and he was facing away from the basket. And he gained control and turned and identified a cutter out of the weak side corner, out of the right corner, all in an instant. and like through a perfect little leading pass that just hit the dude in stride as he was going to the basket. And I'm like, this is just lightning quick instincts from this kid. Like it was a broken play. It wasn't even like, oh, a textbook pick and roll low man read. Like it was a broken play where he just saw something break open.

And he just doesn't miss these opportunities. He sees everything before it happens. I've been so incredibly impressed. And I had a ton of fun today diving into the Tyree's Halliburton film, as I keep trying to say Tyreys Maxie, thanks to that Sixth, game. Obie Toppenny at 27 in this game. He's averaging a career high 11 points per game in a career best 69% true shooting percentage, despite the fact that he can't really shoot, right? And still isn't particularly, I think he's right around 30% from three this year. So how is he having

more offensive success than he used to have in this system than he did in other systems? He's doing two things extremely well. The Pacers have done a really nice job of just focusing him in, focusing him at what he's good at, right? And that's moving without the basketball cutting. Like, if you see the low man go over, instead of just waiting for a corner three, cut. And like, we've seen this with Aaron Gordon with the nuggets. You can be a good spacer as long as you catch and dunk everything under the basket

quickly. And that's kind of what, it looks a little different because he doesn't have the matchup attacking piece that Aaron Gordon has. But it's similar to Aaron Gordon in the sense that, like, the, with the inverted spacing with Miles Turner doing so much dribble handoff, stuff around the three-point line and popping to the three-point line so much. He's got kind of that whole baseline to work with. And Tyrese is just super good at finding him.

He's a big target similar to Aaron Gordon in the sense that it's like, just throw it somewhere up there and he's going to get it. Like the donkey had at the end of the game, that backside lob. Like it was, he's so high above the rim. It's just a massive target that you're throwing at. He has scored 17 baskets on cuts this year. That is the seventh most in the NBA. And then the second piece of it is just running.

his lane in transition. This is a team that pushes the ball a lot, and they've got guards that are willing to push the ball ahead. He's got 20 May transition baskets, which is the 12th most in the NBA. Defensively, he's still a mixed bag. He's so top-heavy that he's kind of easy to knock off his center of gravity. You saw Tobias Harris have some success against him last night doing that. But he's found a role here, and he's excelling in it, and I'm happy for Robitopin. Miles Turner, we talked about the stuff he did on the roll. I won't get into that again, but just quick hands, quick decisions. and finishing and making free throws, that helped too,

because he drew a couple of fouls down there. But he also got a couple of key stops on Joel Embed just by keeping his body in front. He's one of the guys, too, that's big enough to kind of hold his own down there a little bit. He had a play and pick and roll where he beat Embed to his role spot and took a charge. There was another play where Embed tried to kind of force a quick ISO on him,

and he had Embed so flummox that he ended up shooting behind his head and he got a miss. And then Embed was frustrated, and then Embed actually did meet him to the middle and because he's frustrated instead of just dunking the basketball, he tried to like pulverize the rim and ended up missing a dunk. Shout out to Miles Turner. I thought he had a big game.

It's so hard to play well when you're in foul trouble because it disrupts your rhythm. And when you do get into the game at the end, it's like you feel like you're not even a part of the basketball game at that point. Yet he kind of stayed resilient through all that. Bruce Brown, he's been getting his face just, you know, literally burned off by Tyreys Maxie over the course of the weekend, right? gave him 50 the last time they played. But finally got some stops down the stretch of this game.

Some big stops on Tyrese Maxi had a big semi-transition layup, where kind of similar to what he did to DeAngelo Russell in the Nugget series last year. We're coming up the left wing. The bigs are back in transition, but they're up at the level because they're getting ready for whatever Tyreys Halliburton is going to do. So there's kind of like this open space on the backside of the play,

and he just goes right hard to the rim on Tyrese, and gets a layup. I thought he played really well. I thought he's been a really nice fit for them. In the big picture, they're currently seven and four. They have the seventh best record in the NBA. They finally have some signature wins. I didn't have them on my power rankings yesterday because they had just one win against a team that is currently below 500. In fact, their first five wins were all against teams that are currently below 500. But since then, they beat the Bucks and the Sixers, albeit the Bucks without Dame. They have the best offense in the league, 122 points per 100 possessions. They are a terrible defense. So they're 28th in defense. A big

issue on defense right now is they can't protect the paint. They are the only team in the NBA currently giving up over 60 points per 100 possessions in the paint. They're also 24th in defensive rebounding. The rebounding is tough because they are a small team and that's just going to be kind of the reality of their predicament. But I do think they can be better than they have been defensively. They don't force enough turnovers for being as athletic as they are. And just in general, I think they're capable of being a more aggressive perimeter defense forcing turnovers and getting out And I think that'll be the obviously the biggest thing that prevents them from being as good as they're capable of beating. Then my biggest question with this team right now is where does Ben Matherin fit into this picture?

He only played 16 minutes all night last night. They closed with Buddy Heald in his spot. His scoring efficiency and usage are all down this year. And so I'm just, I'm really interested to see whether or not he's going to get enough opportunity to continue his development here. if he's going to end up getting squeezed as a result of that Ben, as a result of that Bruce Brown signing. All right, let's move on to fake questions, real answers. Jason, are the Golden State Warriors in trouble?

No. What did I tell you guys when the Lakers got off to a bad start? I said, when it comes to good teams, you don't just rip off wins against good teams. Like, it doesn't happen. You're not going to see a team go on an eight-game winning streak where they beat eight playoff teams. That doesn't happen in the NBA. The league is too deep.

The Boston Celtics have been incredible and have been so dominant. And they went to Minnesota and lost and they went to Philly and lost because sometimes when you play great teams, you lose. And by the way, the Celtics have, I think last time I checked, they've won seven games against teams. that are above 500. So the Celtics have beaten a lot of good teams. But you don't beat the good teams every time. You're going to drop some games against good teams, right? So generally speaking, the good times in the NBA regular season for good teams

where they rack up wins are usually you're healthy and you're playing a weaker stretch of your schedule. Like the Lakers, they've won three in a row. Now they're six and five and things are just kind of better, right? Well, they're healthy now. AD's back from his injury. Ruih Hachamura's back from his injury, and they played three opponents in the Sons, the Blazers, and the Sons of Blazers and the Grizzlies that are combined nine and 22. So again, like, that's when they will go on a win streak, right?

And that's the thing with the NBA is like, then you're going to have these downstretches where it's like we're playing some tough opponents and guys are hurt. And like all of a sudden it's like, oh shit, we lost two or three games in a row or we lost four games in five tries. That's what happened to the Warriors. Like, Steph is hurt. Steph got hurt and you're playing a really tough stretch of your schedule, and now you're dropping games. Right? Like, you had a bad matchups. Like, we talked about the Warriors' toughest matchup for them is elite rim protection teams that have good perimeter defenders that can, that can kind of pressure the ball and force them to back cut into their rim protection,

right? That's the type of team that causes the Warriors' problems. They lost a two of them over the weekend and then they dropped a game where their best player was out. So like does that to me reflect the big picture of Golden State? No. Like we talked about if they're going to beat those sorts of teams, they need more scoring punch, right? Like they're going to need Clay and Chris and Andrew Wiggins to get back to form, right? But at the same time, you know, Andrew Wiggins is playing really poorly. I don't think that's going to continue throughout the season. Like there's, they have, they have ways to fix that within the, within this locker room, within the scope of this. current regular season, right?

But this is what the bad times look like. Injuries, tough schedule. They lost some games. It happens. What did I expect from the Warriors this season? If you guys remember in the season preview what I said, I viewed the Chris Paul trade as a playoff ceiling razor, but that within the scope of the regular season,

I still thought they would struggle some and that they'd be kind of in the middle of the pack. Kind of seems like where we're headed. But like, I'm not ready to write off the Warriors over the streak. They're one of only six teams in the NBA right now with a winning record over 500 or better teams. They've won four games like that this year against 500 or better teams.

They have quality wins. The Steph injury is not serious. He's going to be back. Talk about Draymond in a minute. He's going to be suspended probably, but he's going to be back. The Warriors are not done. This is just what the downtimes look like.

And just in general, as an NBA fan base, we all need to do a better job of like kind of understanding that within the 82, there are going to be highs and lows. There's no steady ascent into greatness. Like even let's look back at the year that they won the title. They start 15 in one in large part because they're healthy and there was some easy games on the schedule, right? They get off to a great start for the first, what, two-thirds of the season,

and then Steph gets hurt. And then they start dropping games. And it's like the sky is falling. And then everyone gets healthy in time for the playoffs and they win the title. So again, like just in general, we need to, these little three, four, five game windows where teams don't play well, we need to do a better job of compartmentalizing and not overreacting to. These 10, 15 game stretches where a team looks somewhat mediocre, but key players are out

of the lineup. Like, all that tells me is, yeah, if that key player misses the playoffs, then, yeah, they might not be able to win a series. You know what I mean? But I just, I think that's so interesting because, like, my next question is, Jason have the Lakers finally figured things out. And I mean, this is what the good times look like. Easy schedule.

Guys healthy. You're going to rack up some wins if you're a good team, right? And there are some encouraging signs, right? Their shooters are making shots finally. Like I talked a lot going into the winning streak about how what's so bizarre about this Laker team is DeAngelo Russell, historically good shooter, not making shots. Austin Reeves, historically good shooter, not making shots. Gabe Vincent, historically good shooter, not making shots.

Torian Prince, historically good shooter, not making shots. Like all those guys were shooting horribly compared to their career averages, right? And like, what you've seen over this recent winning streak is those guys have started to make shots, and that's good, that's positive regression, that's a good sign, right? A lot of better offensive process as well, I think that has led to that, but we're not going to get into that today. Anthony Davis appears to be over his hip issue. Like he was moving great last night. That's good.

Help is on the way. Jared Vanderbilt's going to come and help with a lot of their perimeter defense issues. And then I want to shout out DeAngelo Russell. A big game. I think he hit six threes last night. I think he's in a tough spot in a lot of ways because I said this on the show. Some Laker fans disagree with me, but I think that DeAngelo Russell getting traded is one of the safest bets of this NBA season. He plays the exact same position.

is Austin Reeves and does all the exact same things for all for like you know their Delo's a little bit better as a passer Austin's a little bit better as a score in my opinion especially within the playoff context but like they're more or less the same player and they're both limited athletes so they can't play together and that just kind of inherently makes it so that if you have if you're serious about winning a title this year you're gonna just in terms of resource allocation you're better off turning Delo salary into a great perimeter defender that can play next to Austin right um I think you've seen that in crunch time they've consistently gone down with Austin and Crunch Time instead of DeLo.

But despite that, he's just been such a professional. He's been a leader to the young players on the team. He's had a really good attitude. When he's been benched, he's cheered the team on. He even did that during the Nugget series last year. He just has been a force of positive energy. And like, he's in a situation where, like, he might play amazing the rest of the year and he might stay with the Lakers.

I don't think that's going to happen. But that's certainly an outcome that's on the table. But like that's what's crazy is like he's in a situation where he could play amazing until February and they still trade it. Like that's the predicament that he's in and he's just handling it like a professional. And that's the thing. Like I think a lot of times we talk about guys as basketball players and we forget to talk about them as humans. And like to me, DeAngel Russell has some limitations as a playoff player. It might end up causing him, in my opinion, will end up causing him to be in a different jersey come February.

But the dude is just a professional and he's a great dude. and is doing a great job maintaining the chemistry situation within that Lakers locker room in a way that he could have gone a different direction if you wanted to, right? All right, last question. Jason, you've consistently defended Dremont as different than Dillon Brooks because he doesn't cross the line into trying to hurt people. What do you have to say after the choking incident last night? Like I said, I thought this was legitimately hilarious because I just, It was just funny that I went out on a limb and then this happened.

Do I think it's the same as, you know, trying to close line a guy who's going up for a dunk and breaking his elbow? No. Do I think it's the same as deliberately rolling up on someone's knees and trying to break their ankle or whatever the hell Dylan Brooks was doing? No, it's not the same as that. But it was bad. I can defend him for taking Gobert off of clay. But, like, it's one of those things where, like, if you were watching the clip, you can kind of It's like, I can defend this.

I can defend. Oh, okay, now I definitely can't defend this because it was like he didn't just put him in a headlock. He locked it in and then held on for a long time. And like, then after that held on for longer. And so here's the thing. It was clearly out of line. I think he's probably going to get a pretty significant suspension and he's going to deserve it. And unfortunately doing like making that decision and putting your team in a predicament where they're in a losing

streak and they need their players available. I think it was a mistake. But at the same time, like, obviously, I don't think that's the same as, that's classic Dremont doing too much, but it's not the same as, it's not the same as, uh, as like actually trying to hurt people, unless you think Dremont was trying to kill Gaubert, which obviously is just super dramatic. Rudy made some comments after the game that were dramatic in that regard. Obviously, Dremont's not trying to hurt anybody. He just was, he just crossed a line and did something that's to get him into a suspension situation. And like I said, when it happens, I will agree with the suspension because, I mean,

here's the thing. Clay and Jada McDaniel started the fight. And Rudy Gobert pulled Clay off. And like, what was interesting about it was Rudy kind of had a similar type of thing going on, but then he didn't lock in. Like he pulled Clay off and his hands were near the neck, but he didn't lock in. Dremont, like, did the same thing to start. and then he locked in.

And from there, it's like, that's just completely indefensible. So whatever happens will be deserved at that point. All right, guys, that is all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show. We will be back with more instant reactions and deep dives tomorrow. The volume. 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 headwriter, 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.

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. Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement

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