The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Lakers beat Warriors without LeBron, Luka Doncic & Kyrie Irving initial impressions

Episode Date: February 12, 2023

Jason Timpf breaks down the Lakers beating the Golden State Warriors without LeBron James. He discusses the Laker debuts of D’Angelo Russell, Jared Vanderbilt, & Malik Beasley. He discusses how the Warriors have struggled on offense without Steph Curry, and how they should handle the the potentially botched trade for Gary Payton II. Later, he breaks down Kyrie Irving & Luka Doncic's first game together for the Dallas Mavericks and why there are reasons to be excited, despite the loss to the Sacramento Kings #volume #herdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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on Saturday night. We have a jam-packed show tonight, a highly entertaining game between the Lakers and the Warriors, despite Steph Curry and LeBron James both missing the game. I also have some thoughts about the Gary Payton fiasco surrounding that trade and some of the shenanigans that the Portland Trailblazers may or may not have been engaging in. And then in the back half of the show, Luca and Kyrie make their debut together in an overtime loss to the Sacramento Kings. And I've got a lot of thoughts on just the initial impressions on Kyrie Irving with the Dallas Mavericks, well as the Sacramento Kings, who on the strength of a big performance from Deerran Fox, notched a big win. 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.

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Terms apply. Again, enter your email in the code Hoops. O-O-P-S for $20 off. Download game time today. Last-minute tickets, lowest price, guaranteed. All right, let's talk some basketball. So, LeBron James was out. Anthony Davis did not play well. Really in any facet of the game was losing contested rebound battles. He could not finish around the rim, could not make his jump shot, just was having a nightmare game, aside from a handful of big defensive plays down the stretch. and the Lakers won a game on the road against the team that was 21 and 6 at home coming into the night. Now, obviously, Steph was out, but you're not going to hear that excuse get thrown around in the Warriors locker room when LeBron James missed the game.

And this is a Lakers team that was, what, 25 and 31 coming into the game. But, you know, the theme of this show as it pertains to, or the theme of this game, I should say, as it pertains to the Lakers, is margin for error. when I covered the Lakers before I worked for the volume, I used to always say on my show, I would say that if the role players played well alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis, they would beat the shit out of you. And then if the role players played okay,

they'd win by 10, 15 points, and if the role players played poorly, the game could go either way. But that was based on the roster before the Russell Westbrook trade. Now, again, I wait too, much blame has been associated with Russell Westbrook as it pertains to the Lakers struggles as opposed to the Russell Westbrook trade and the talent that was sent out. Again, in that deal, they lost Kyle Kuzma, a big forward that was a great two-way player.

Contavius Caldwell Pope, one of the best role player two guards in the league. In the ensuing salary crunch, they lost Alex Caruso, one of the best guard defenders in the league, who had great offensive chemistry with LeBron James. Shout over 40% from three. His last year with the Lakers was great cutting to the rim. off the ball, lots of synergy that those players had alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis. And when those guys went out, that talent level dipped below whatever that, you know, absolute minimum they needed to be a functional basketball team. And Russell Westbrook, in his declined phase of his career, was not good enough to make

up for that talent that went out the window. And what happened with the trades, and we're going to talk a little bit about the downside of them waiting this long here in a little bit. But what happened with those trades is you brought back in enough talent from the role players to bring them back above that minimum level. And now they look a lot more like a functional basketball team. Now the role players are not always going to play that well. Role players are always a little bit more inconsistent than stars are. That just kind of comes with the territory.

But what you saw tonight was with them playing really well, they were able to allow Anthony Davis to struggle in all of those phases of the game. and to allow LeBron James to rest his foot, hopefully up until the trade deadline. Excuse me, the All-Star break. If they can rest him to the All-Star break, they can get him 12 full days off through the Sunday of the All-Star game, then ramp him up for a few days before the rematch, rematch with the Warriors the following Thursday. But that margin for error did not exist before this trade deadline. and you're seeing why I've been preaching so much about that.

Because as a result of not having that margin for error before this, you had to run LeBron James into the ground. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that later, but this is why it's so important to have all of that talent in the other areas of the roster. I always talk about all the different responsibilities that have to be filled on a basketball court. Role players are monumentally important in those areas,

and you saw that tonight for the Lakers. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the game plan that the Lakers used, and then we'll talk about the specific role players. So tactically in basketball, every coach goes into a game with a game plan, right? And for this particular game, especially since Steph Curry was out, it opened up some options for the Lakers to be particularly aggressive on defense. And so what they did in this game is they took Anthony Davis and Rui Hachamura, and then in the bench lineups Jared Vanderbilt and Wenin-Gabriel, and they basically had them completely ignore Kavana Luni and Dremont-Grin when they were on the floor and also Jemichael Green and Jonathan Comingo when they were on the floor. So they were lingering around the paint.

Then what they did with all of the guards is they denied them the ability to come off of those dribble handoffs and wide pin downs. Now, in basketball they call it top locking, but basically what that means is, is like, screens over here, I'm guarding this guy. Rather than locking and trailing, which would mean I'd get behind him and try to stay attached, I'm top locking, which means I'm getting between him and the screen. And basically giving up a back cut at the expense of taking away his ability to come off the screen. Now, in theory, you'd think you're going to get back cut all day long. But what's happening behind those back cuts?

Anthony Davis is waiting there. Rui Hachamur is waiting there. Jared Vanderbilt and Wenny Gabriel are waiting there. So essentially the Lakers ignored Draymond and Kevin Lune and the other Warriors non-shooters to allow their guards to overplay every single screening action that Golden State used in the game, and it shut down most of their motion offense. I thought it was really, really smart on their end, and it actually led the Lakers to holding the Warriors to 26 or fewer points in three of the four quarters,

and then they made just enough offensive plays down the stretch. Anthony Davis made a couple big defensive plays. They ended up getting the win. Now, I have some specific ideas in mind for how to counter that sort of thing. We'll get to that when we talk about the Warriors. but I do want to stay on the Lakers for a little bit. Lots of the older Lakers played well, like Dennis Schroeder had 26 points.

Austin Reeves, like completely shut down Clay Thompson, down the stretch of this game. He's always been an underrated defensive player in this league. But I want to focus on each of the brand new Lakers for just a minute. So I thought DeAngelo Russell was really good. He defended well, started the game on Clay, made enough plays offensively to be a net positive. Anthony Davis was not screening well for him.

Again, we talked about this earlier. Anthony Davis struggled in every single phase of the game. So he wasn't getting. hitting those downhill opportunities that really open up the pick and roll for him. But he still made quite a few plays. I was talking with Carson. You guys have seen him come on the show before in a text message thread during the game. And he was just saying how DeAngelo Russell never looks rushed when he's in his screen.

And I noticed that too in the game because Golden State was pressuring the hell out of the ball. And to the credit, you know, we talked about Anthony Davis's screening. I want to credit the Golden State guards as well because they did a really nice job staying attached and fighting over those screens. But even with that, DeAngelo Russell did a really nice job, just staying slow, staying under control, and making just enough offensive plays to be a net positive. You made a huge three down the stretch of this game. He had a really nice and one in traffic down the stretch of this game. Honestly, it was a breadth of fresh air to see a real skill guard in that back court. Again, DeAngel Russell is not my favorite skill guard in the NBA, but it's about fit and it's about need.

and just seeing that type of offensive skill put into a back court that completely lacked it was really refreshing tonight. Jared Vanderbilt. I said on a, I can't remember which episode of our show I set it in, but he was my favorite player in that trade deadline deal because he's a real athletic forward. Like, Ruehachamur is more of an offensively minded, big forward. But Jared Vanderbilt's like a legit, like dirty work, just monster of an athlete that plays at the power forward position. and you saw him just completely wreck that game on both ends of the floor.

He had four, I told you guys coming into the, when we did our first preview of the Lakers trade, that he was averaging four offensive rebounds per 36 minutes. He grabbed two of them tonight in just 17 minutes and played excellent defense, finished the game with 12 points, eight rebounds, and four assists in just 17 minutes, which is an outrageous box score. If I would extrapolate that out to a 36-minute shift,

25, 17, and 8. I told you guys right when the trade went down that I thought he was a much better version of Wenian Gabriel, and you guys all got to see what that looks like tonight. Lakers fans are going to love him, and honestly, Darvinham needs to find more than 17 minutes for him. He just played him two shifts in this game, one in the middle of each half. I'd like to see them find a way to just kind of fit him into the game a little bit longer. Rui also played extremely well, 16 points and 7 rebounds. Doesn't seem like much in the box score, but it was deeply impactful.

you know, one of the things that I really liked about bringing in Jared Vanderbilt is it creates a positional battle. I'll give you an example. So like when I signed at Arizona Christian after my second year in junior college, I was an all-conference player in Jukau. They brought me into Arizona Christian, and I took a starting a starting spot away from a player that had an all-conference selection the previous year at the small forward position. And his name was Jordan, very good player. He ended up starting a bunch of games that year. I ended up starting a bunch of games that year. but we battled every single day in practice. And in the games, we all brought our absolute very best because we knew that like if I didn't have it that night, Jordan was getting the minutes.

And if Jordan didn't have it that night, I was getting the minutes. You know what I mean? It was like a real positional battle between two really good forwards that had track records of success in the past. And so as a result, it actually forced us all to be on the top of our game at all times.

And that's kind of the way I looked at it. like no Jared Vanderbilt, Rui Hachamura is really the only forward on the roster. He's getting all the minutes. So there's less motivation to be dialed in on the glass or to defend at an extremely high level. And I thought this was Rui Hachemura's best defense and rebounding game of his entire Lakers tenure so far.

And I think a big part of that is that positional battle with Jared. You know, if he's not playing well, if he's missing those shots and he's not contributing on the defensive end and he's not grabbing rebounds, Darvinham's going to pull him. And Jared Vanderbilt's going to get those minutes. And just like in any industry, competition is good. It actually drives success from everybody involved.

Another thing that Rui did really well tonight was just rescuing possessions. He had a couple of late clock threes, a couple of one dribble pull-ups on possessions that broke apart. I always talk about rescue possessions or offensive players and their ability to rescue possessions as the difference between good offenses and great offenses, just squeezing an extra four or five points. out of game is the difference between a 111 offensive rating and a 117 offensive rating, right? And that's the difference between a middle of the pack offense and a great offense, right? So getting that type of offensive production from Rui is really going to help this team, especially when they get in the playoffs and the easy opportunities go away.

Malik Beasley had a rough shooting night, like he's 0 for 6 from 3, but even he made some big plays attacking the rim. He had a nice little floater push shot in the first half. And then in the second half, he made a driving layup and then missed. another that occupied the rim protector allowing Jared Vanderbilt to get an easy offensive rebound put back. And his shot quality was great. So in the long run, I do believe he's going to make a lot of shots and fit really well. So a lot to be optimistic about for Laker fans after tonight, obviously. Winning a big game on the road, a must win without LeBron

with Anthony Davis not playing well. But I do want to talk really quick about LeBron's foot because I think it was Chris Haynes reported that LeBron's foot has been experiencing, he's been experiencing quote-unquote unbearable pain. Now, Rob Polinka did come out and say that the imaging that they recently got done was clean. So I think it's mainly just soreness. But I do, you know, this, I want to be clear. Rob Polinka did an amazing job at this trade deadline. Zooming out to the Rui Hachimer trade to what happened at the deadline, Rob did a great job. So I want to set that as our initial kind of like basement for this conversation. but a couple of things.

The Mobamba trade, who Mo Bomba didn't play tonight, but the Mobamba trade was unrelated to the summer. That could have been made even if they made a deal this summer. The Rui Hachamura trade was unrelated to this summer. They could have made that trade at this deadline even if they didn't make it during the summer. So the only real difference is, is like, let's compare, you know, Buddy Heald and Miles Turner

versus DeAngel Russell, Malik Beasley, and Jared Vanderbilt. Now, Jared Vanderbilt's very good. I think Miles Turner is a little bit better. Malik Beasley's very good. I think Buddy Hills is a little bit better. So the real swing piece in that trade is DeAngelo Russell and you save one pick. Now, what did I say coming into the season? If you guys remember, I was clear.

I said, I understand the thought process behind the Lakers waiting. Maybe you get a better deal. But what did I say was the risk? I said the risk was that you were going to dig yourself a hole in the standings. and put yourself in a situation where you have to have a bad uphill climb to get out of that situation. It ended up being even worse than that. 25 and 31, LeBron James experiencing foot pain, and the reason why he is experiencing those

foot issues is that when Anthony Davis went down, LeBron had to absolutely hit the Jets to a damn near MVP level just to keep the team afloat. And he did, to be clear. The Lakers net rating this year with LeBron James on the floor is, I think, plus 2.7 per 100 possessions. To give you some perspective, the Milwaukee Bucks for all teams are sixth in net rating at plus 2.9. So that's the level of play that LeBron's been giving you this year just to float you to six games below 500. So all I'm saying is like, this might all work out. The team looks great.

But LeBron and Anthony Davis have to play at a playoff level now from the middle of February all the way until the end of this season. And you're asking a 38-year-old to do that and an injury-prone center to do that. Again, results tell the story. I say this all the time. The winner tells the story. So this might all work out and the Lakers might win the title this year, in which case Rob Polinka looks like a genius.

But let's say that they, Anthony Davis breaks down because he has to play at a playoff level this whole time. Or LeBron James breaks down because he has to play at a playoff level this whole time, while the Celtics can ease their way into the playoffs, while the Bucks can ease their way into the playoffs, while the Nuggets can ease their way into the playoffs. Now we have to push things forward to next year. And Rob Polinkas Deals did a nice job providing future flexibility. But I've always said that the urgency is LeBron's late prime. And why? Because if you don't do it this year, you got to do it next year.

And if you make it to the finals in 2024, LeBron is 39 and a half years old. And it's very likely that at 39 and a half, he's not quite as capable of carrying you to a championship ceiling as he was in the bubble in 2020. So Rob got his wish. He got a better package. But he paid dearly in the standings. and he paid dearly in wear and tear on his 38-year-old superstars body. And results will tell the story. But if LeBron James and Anthony Davis break down, I do believe it is associated with the fact

that you did not give them this margin for error throughout the season. And that's why I disagreed with that strategy. That's why I would have made the deal this summer, this previous summer. and maybe they're sitting at 31 and 25 instead. And now you're more concerned about just getting to the playoffs as opposed to you literally have to go 20 and 6 or whatever just to have an opportunity to get out of the playing. Or asking LeBron James and Anthony Davis to win a must-win game on the road

at Golden State potentially. Like that's the predicament that they're in. That has to be factored into your calculus of the way that you interpret this trade. But to be clear, having waited, Rob did some really nice work around the deadline bringing good players in. On the Golden State Front. Now, I talked a lot earlier in the show about the Lakers top locking and not allowing the shooters to come off the screen, forcing them to back cut into the rim protection. I would have adjusted to that by doing what the Warriors did to the Boston Celtics,

which is lean heavily into pick and roll in isolation. Pick and roll was their most effective play type in the game by far. The Warriors ran 33 pick and rolls tonight for 34 points. Every other play type was below a point per possession. Off screen plays, 0.69 points per possession. Handoffs, 0.46 points per possession. Post-ups, 0.67 points per possession. All that data is courtesy of synergy, by the way.

I would have leaned into the pick and roll, which obviously was what was working. Because in that case, when you have a live ball dribbler coming down off of a ball screen, First of all, Anthony Davis is in drop, so you're going to get some good looks potentially for pull-up shooters guys like Clay Thompson and Jordan Poole, right? But most importantly, all of your off-ball players, because they're not preparing for coming off of pin-downs and stuff, they're sucked into traditional help position. So now if they ignore Dremont and you make that pitch out to him, or if they ignore Luni

and you make that pitch out to them, they can quickly flow into those dribble handoffs that get those wide-open shots because it's not like they're locked up to the shooters off the ball in pick and roll. That would just give Jordan Poole way too much space to operate. They're in traditional help side. They're not locked on to their man. That is what opens up those dribble handoffs for those opportunities. So I would have made that adjustment personally, but to be honest, it's a regular season game. And you're not always going to see those types of adjustments in that setting. And we literally saw in the finals last year, the Warriors go heavy into pick and roll to adjust to Boston running that drop coverage scheme. So it's not a criticism of

Steve Kerr. It's just the reality of regular season basketball. like sometimes you're just going to lean into a game plan because it's not worth diving that far into the weeds. And then honestly, it was also just a poor shooting night. Clay Thompson and Jordan Poole combined to go six for 23 from three. So you kind of just throw it away at that point. And credit the Lakers, they played really, really well tonight. Thoughts on the Gary Payton situation.

Super weird. Apparently Golden State thinks Portland didn't properly disclose the injury. There may or may not have been toward all shots being shot into Gary Payton's dabbed him in every single day just so he can play, which is obviously a major, major scandal. I think it's a major, major scandal, but it seems to me that the league is basically just saying take it or leave it. I haven't, I'm not 100% sure, but I've seen some reporting that they're not going to let them adjust the pit compensation. And so it's a really tough position. And it really sucks because the bridge between James Wiseman and the Warriors was already in pretty

rough shape. And trading him seems to have, you know, you would think, theoretically burned that bridge completely. I still think this ends up with the Warriors just accepting the deal, but who knows? We'll see. We're going to find out tomorrow. And in theory, Gary Payton should be available for a postseason run. I've talked a lot about how much I value him, so I'm not going to get into that today. But the Warriors are going to have to pivot to the buyout market.

Now, what's interesting is the last few years, the buyout market has not been very good. But this season, it actually shapes up to be pretty interesting. and I think that's a byproduct of how busy the trademark it was. I'd be keeping an eye on guys like Danny Green, who potentially could be healthy for a playoff run. I keep an eye on Nerlands Noel potentially getting bought out. Patrick Beverly, although I'm not a huge fan of his fit in Golden State. His name got brought up on the national broadcast tonight.

First of all, I think Golden State's guards are excellent. Patrick Beverly is a little bit of a ball stopper, doesn't work super well in the Golden State scheme. He doesn't make quick decisions. He kind of catches on the wing and he'll jab step and do that sort of thing. Another guy to keep an eye on is Dwayne Dedman. The Warriors need a big, and I'm not a huge Dwayne Dedman fan, but he's kind of one of the only ones that could come available this year. So I do think the Warriors will be active in that market. And that might have to be the way that they shore up their depth before Gary Payton can come back. They have a big game at home on Monday against Washington that they have

to win. All right, moving on to Mavericks King. So Deerrin Fox really took this game over down the stretch, making all sorts of little short jump shots in the lane and made a huge defensive play in a trap on Luca where he shot the passing lane and got a dunk and made a couple floaters as well. I was pulling some data on floaters because it seems like every single Deere and Fox floater that he takes goes in. He's shooting 54% on floaters this year.

There are 74 players in the NBA who have taken at least 50, floaters and Dieran Fox is sixth in percentage out of 74. Again, at 54%. A little trivia. Who do you guys think is best in the league at floaters? Nicola Yokic, just take a wild guess at what the percentage is. It's 70%. Nickel Yokic is suiting 70% on floaters. Every single Nikola Yokic stat is just amazing to me. The reason why I bring that up is downhill guards in particular, really fast downhill guards, they need something to check up before they get to the rim for a couple different reasons. One, it's about wear and tear. You don't need to be flying into bodies all the time and trying to finish in traffic. It's going to get you into some trouble. And two, your rim

finishing will go down if the rim protector can linger around the rim. So having that floater, the ability to check up short, especially with your athleticism, to then short, to take that little short pop floater in the lane is a great counter to that sort of thing. I see John Morant do this a lot as well. But the other big part of it is, is the mid-range shooting. And Dearen Fox is shooting 44% on twos, jump shot twos that are inside the three-point line this year, which is excellent.

And the Mavericks just couldn't do anything with him down the stretch of this game. Another huge element to the King's late-game success in this game, I thought was Terrence Davis. He did a really nice job, ball-pressuring Luca. And I thought it was some poor strategy on Dallas's part, which we'll get to here in a minute. But just by pressuring Luca and having him slowly bring the ball up the floor

made it really hard for Dallas. to get into situations where they can actually run something, like a specific pick and roll or a specific post-up or things along those lines, because by the time they got the ball up the floor, Luca had to do something quickly, and more often than not, he was just trying to go downhill on Terrence Davis. But, you know, for a guy that was giving up a lot of weight to Luca, just by keeping a good strong base and sliding his feet well,

he did a really nice job impacting the game with his ball pressure. What I would have done there is I would have just given the ball to Kyrie and then had him bring the ball up the floor and worked from there. Specifically, I thought the Mavericks' best stuff that they were getting down the stretch of that game was when Luca was in the post on that right block, you know, with his left hand dribbling, getting ready to shoot over his right shoulder, because the Kings were doubling out of it. And the Mavericks did a nice job of putting Kyrie Irving one pass away. And, you know, I noticed this a lot when Kyrie was with the Nets where they would have,

you know, because Kevin Durant was one of the best pick and roll ball handlers in the league with the Nets. And what they would do is they'd have Kyrie set the pick. because then when the trap comes, KD's making that quick pass to Karee on the short roll, and it's a four on three, but you have one of the best offensive players in the league making that first decision in the four on three, and they would just torch teams with that.

And I thought the Mavericks were getting really good shots when they would post up Luca, have Kyrie one pass away, so when the double comes, it's that four on three, but Kyrie's making that first play, and they got some really good stuff out of that, and then they completely went away from it,

which was confusing to me. But one of the easiest ways to do that is have Kyrie bring the ball up the floor so that you have time for Luca to just jog down to the block and then fight for position against Terrence Davis. But credit to Terrence Davis, he did a really nice job impacting the game with his ball pressure. He also hit a huge three in OT after the Mavericks jumped out to a three-point lead. The King's defense has now given up 120 plus points in four straight games. They are 23rd in defense.

Again, the Kings are really fun. I always enjoy watching them when I watch them play, but there's a clear ceiling here with their inability to get stops, which really comes down to the front court, in my opinion. One note on the Mavs, too, with their final shot. You know, there's this debate like who gets the last shot, and it's, to me, the decision is so simple. When you've got two really great shot creators like that,

it's who's got it going? Who's in a rhythm? And what I didn't like about Luca taking that step back three. And, you know, again, like for Luca, it's a makeable shot, sure. But, like, and I saw just an inkling of frustration on Kyrie after the game. I don't know if you guys noticed that. But Kyrie had it going. He had just hit a wild three before.

He's been freaking amazing on the offensive end since he put on the jersey. That's one of those moments where it's like you put the ball in Kyrie's hands to try to tie the game there. But we'll see how that shakes out over the coming months. Big picture, what I really like about Kyrie's fit with Dallas is he brings real pace and tempo to their offense. Everything Luca does is slow. And, you know, Kyrie is a live ball shot creator that does it out of ISO and pick and roll similar to Luca does, but he's much, much quicker with the way that he does that. You know, if you throw the ball to Luca with 18 seconds left on the shot clock on the left wing, it might take him nine seconds to decide what he's

going to do, whether that's a step back or beating his man off the dribble or backing him down into the lane because he's going to use a bunch of dribbles, he's going to turn and pivot a bunch of times, he's going to be very methodical in the way that he does it. And one of the nice things about Kyrie is he does play with real tempo. He's very quick with his decision to attack or to shoot. And there's a couple of different ways that I've seen that help. One, it's kind of like a change of pace when Luke was off the floor. You saw that a little bit tonight and you saw that a lot in the two wins. Like, Kyrie just immediately walks into Dallas and goes on the road to the clippers and wins and goes on the road on the road to the Kings and wins. That's why you make

the superstar trade. And what blew my mind about everything surrounding the Kyrie discussion when he was available for trade is people continually glossed over the fact that the dude is freaking incredible at basketball. And like, yeah, if you want to have a conversation about the off-court stuff, that's fine. But like, as a basketball player, the dude is an all-world talent, and that immediately changes everything about the geometry of your basketball team. That's what allows you to sit Luca to rest in injury

and win on the road against the Western Conference playoff team and then do it again a couple nights later. But fundamentally on the basketball court, though, you could even see it when Luca and Kyrie were together, just Luca making quicker decisions in the ball popping around more. And, you know, one of the things that I said about Luca, when all this was going down, I said,

don't just assume that he can't play a different style. Yes, Luca is very heliocentric and slow-paced when he's been running the Mavericks the last few years. But this dude grew up playing professional basketball in Europe. This dude is accustomed to ball movement and passing screen away and running sets. He's done all of that shit his entire life. So I have no idea why people were.

just assuming that Luca would be incapable of playing that style. And I loved seeing that little bit of different tempo and pace to the way that the Mavericks played with Luca and Kyrie on the floor together. One other guy I wanted to talk about with the Mavs was Josh Green. You know, he came into the league as like a really great athlete. That was good, strong athlete. It's kind of like the modern day wing that's a little bit shorter, but, you know, quicker and more stout and has a lower center of gravity.

but he was a real liability in last year's playoffs. And, you know, Jason Kidd had some tough decisions in that bench guard role to go with either Frank Nilkeena or Josh Green, and neither of them were making the corner threes that the Mavericks were generating for them. And it was a whole thing. But early in the season, I told you guys, you could tell immediately that Josh Green was in the lab all damn summer

because he had made so many improvements as a ball handler and a shooter, and you saw it every single time you watched the Mavs play. But I pulled some data today to show you guys just how ridiculous the improvement is. So last year, there were 257 players in the league to have at least 100 spot-up opportunities. And Josh Green ranked 202 out of 257, scoring just 0.92 points per possession in spot-up roles or spot-up situations. This year, he's averaging 1.2 points per spot-up possession. there are 195 players who have run at least 100, and he's 24th. So in one summer, he literally went from being one of the very worst spot-up players in the league

to one of the very best spot-up players in the league. So tip of the cap to Josh Green, because I, just the sheer thousands and thousands and thousands of reps that took this summer to make that type of improvement, I think is really, really impressive. As a team, the Mavericks are still really small, and I don't know if they can hold up physically in a playoff series, but if Maxi Kleba can get healthy and you look at a lineup of, you know, they went heavy with Reggie Bullock tonight, so theoretically it'd probably be like Maxi Kleba.

They could theoretically go with Powell there, but I think their spacing is better with Kleba. Do you go Kleba with Josh Green, Reggie Bullock, Luca Donchitz and Kyrie Irving? If they can just keep games close, that five is going to be a pain in the ass to deal with at the end of games. And they're going to get great shots all the time. So, again, I don't have them as a top tier championship contender or anything like that.

I'm more interested in the Mavericks in the long run. But man, are they going to be fun to watch? And I'm looking forward to watching the Mavs the rest of the year. All right, guys, we are taking the next two days off for Super Bowl. But we'll be covering Monday night's games on Tuesday morning. And then we'll be doing a show on Tuesday night. Breaking down, I believe that one is Celtics Bucks. that night. That will be live on AMP. The Warriors play the Clippers that night. We'll be

breaking that game down on Wednesday morning. So that's just kind of a little look at our first three shows next week. But I enjoy the Super Bowl. I'm on the Eagles. I think they're going to win by about a touchdown. I'm excited to hang out with some friends and enjoy and watch the game. And we've done a, it's been a busy week. I was telling my wife this morning, I think we've done eight shows in the last seven days. So I'm looking forward to a couple of days off. But I'm also very, very excited for the stretch run with you guys. As always, I sincerely, appreciate the sport and I'll see you guys next time. The Volume.

Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite on Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter.

Listen to humor me with Robert Smike. 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's 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 IHard 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, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifers Show.

This is a place for raw, unfilled conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. 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's podcast network on TikTok. This is an IHart podcast. Guaranteed human.