The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Lakers-Suns Reaction: LeBron James outplays Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis returns

Episode Date: November 11, 2023

Jason Timpf reacts to LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and the Los Angeles Lakers' thrilling 122-119 win over Kevin Durant and the Phoenix Suns (5:00). Jason discusses LeBron's "amazing" crunch time play (10:10), Anthony Davis' return from injury (14:25), and what's going on with Austin Reaves' benching (15:00). Later, he touches on why Kevin Durant and the Suns will be just fine, despite their early season problems, as Bradley Beal, Devin Booker, and others recover from injuries (23:40). #volume #herdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Happy Friday, everybody. I hope all of you guys had a great week and that you have big plans for the weekend. Just going to do a quick show tonight. We're going to do 15 minutes on Lakers' Sons, and then we'll get out of here. Busy week on the channel in case you missed it earlier today. We did an hour doing a deep dive on the Minnesota Timberwolves, as well as Anthony Edwards and his progressions as a passer.

We hit 11 mailbag questions that bounced all around the league. That was just recorded earlier today. That's a little bit further back on the feed. We also did a half dozen or so deep dives on particular teams that you can find on the feed, and then a bunch of instant reactions. so don't forget to go back and look and see in case you've missed anything. We've been doing like seven, eight shows a week so far to start the season. We're going to take some time off around Thanksgiving,

so I wanted to load up on that front. Again, just going to hit 15 minutes on Sons-Lakers tonight. You guys know the joke before we get started. Subscribe to our brand-new YouTube channel. In case you missed it, we are doing a giveaway, Laker tickets for Sunday, Lakers Blazers. And all you have to do is take a screenshot that you subscribe to the channel and go to my Twitter feed or the volumes Twitter feed

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Don't forget about our podcast feed or every future podcast under hoops tonight. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason LT. That's where I do my film breakdowns as well as my show announcements. And the last bit at least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments. so we keep hitting them throughout the season.

All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Lakers keep forgetting their identity. This is a consistent fame that has happened as I've covered this team very closely over the LeBron James Anthony Davis era. Every time they've won for an extended period of time, it's been on the strength of their defense. It was in 2020, an outstanding defense anchored by Anthony Davis many times next to another 610 plus human, right?

2021 season, that identity continued throughout the year. They just ran into injury issues, right, with LeBron's ankle and Anthony Davis's groin, right? But then they had a long period of struggle after that. And it wasn't until they kind of rebound into their defensive identity around the trade deadline last year that they were able to rip off a bunch of wins again. And then once again, post-deadline, second in the league in defense, fourth and rebounding. They were an excellent defense and rebounding team. And then they rode that defense to knock off the two-seed and the defending chain.

camps in the Western Conference on their way to the Western Conference finals. Every time they've been good, it's been because of defense. But there have been a couple times over the course of this era where for whatever reason they've tried to reconfigure themselves. And I honest to God don't know why. But the Russell Westbrook trade, it was like, we're going to become fast. We're going to take the ball out of LeBron's hands who won the game, it won the championship as a point guard.

And we're going to play up and down fast break basketball. Right. And then even this most recent time, it's like we're going to add all this offensive skill and we're going to be this like, you know, super skilled five ball handlers, five shooters, read and react, you know, Golden State Warrior style offense. And they suck it offense because they don't have anybody who's that good of a jump shooter or that good of a, you know, quickness threat like guys like Darren Fox and Malik Monk are to actually have that sort of offensive system work for them, right?

And what's been really funny is even as they sit here at four and five, they've been deep in the hole in all four of those wins. We had the Sun's game, down big in the second half, hellacious fourth quarter defensive and rebounding effort to come back and win. The Orlando Magic game, literally down big in the second half, hellacious defense and rebounding effort in the second half on their way to a win. Then we had the Clippers game. Same sort of thing.

Looked like shit in the first half, down big in the second half, halacious defense and rebounding effort in the fourth quarter as they come back to win. And then once again against the Phoenix Sun, same thing, down big in the second half and have to ride a hellacious defense and rebounding effort in the fourth quarter to win. I don't know what it's going to take for them to kind of understand that that's their identity and lean into that more. But it's been a struggle so far for that team this year. They held the Sun's 23 points in the fourth quarter, finally started to get control of the

defensive glass down the stretch. they actually punish the sons with a couple of big offensive rebounds and crunch time on the other end of the floor. That's what they're capable of. I mean, again, this largely was the same core. You know, more Rui Hachamura minutes who's had trouble getting into Dharvanham's rotation this year for whatever reason, and more Jared Vanderbilt minutes because he was healthy last year. But aside from that, and Dennis Schroeder, who's a small guard who wasn't helping you on the glass that much anyway, they are just a, they just the same group of guys.

Austin, Dilo, LeBron, Anthony Davis, that group is not competing on the glass as well as they used to. And so they've had a lot of issues there, right? And so, again, I think it's going to be really important for Darwin Ham to do what he did in that second half, which is like lean into the guys that are doing their jobs. You know, Cam Reddish, for all of the flack that he caught for missing threes early in the season and struggling offensively, the dude has been one of their best point of attack defenders to this point in the season. He struggled in the first half of this game, got in some foul trouble. But in the second half, he was excellent defensively, disrupting the ball,

getting in between screening actions and getting steals and getting out in transition and obviously he hit four corner threes and hit that big time transition pull-up three. But like again, he got big minutes because Dharvan Ham saw him competing defensively on the glass. Rui Hachamura finally got like extended run in the second half of this game. Why? Because he was competing defensively, jumping passing lanes, in the right place at the right time, competing on the glass. And it helps when he's making shots the way he was as well. Same thing goes with Christian Wood, who repeatedly has cracked into the rotation this year on the strength of him competing on the glass in particular. And Christian Wood's defense has been a little bit

of a mixed bag and pick and roll. He's been bad, but he's been really good in help. And he's been okay on the ball, right? But I thought it was interesting that Darvinham, it was like, it was a lot less of DeAngel Russell in the second half. It was a lot more of just sizing up and playing the guys that were competing defensively. And then one of the things that's been a good trend for the Lakers, and this is something that I've talked about in some of our rant sessions that we've done. But like, last year, LeBron had a really bad crunch time season. And one of the main reasons why is especially after his foot injury, he just wasn't as explosive as he used to be, but he used to just kind of like get switches on bigs and then settle for his pullback three and

miss it the vast majority of the time. And he just wasn't as dominant down the stretch of games as he's shown himself to be this year. This year, it's been a steady diet of like he keeps making timely jump shots. Like he just keeps doing it once again tonight. Late clock situation gets a switch against Grayson Allen on the left elbow. And what do I always say is my favorite LeBron James jump shot that I actually think he has a good chance of making most of the time, the right shoulder fade. Pretty much, unless he's taking it against an outstanding wing defender on the baseline,

he's going to make that right shoulder fade. It's the jump shot that he makes most frequently. Got to it late in the game, knocked it down. Consistently was hunting switches and baiting Phoenix into double teams and making the right feeds out of that, and then kept trusting Cam Reddish. Again, he got so much flack after that Miami Heat game for making a pass to a wide open corner three-point shooter,

which was objectively a better shot than him forcing it over a double team. And he got a bunch of shit for it, and then he did the same thing tonight, and it worked. What did I tell you after that heat game? I was like he did the same thing in the playing game against Minnesota, and it worked. This did, like, everyone wants to call out LeBron for his late game passing the ball, only when guys miss shots.

But he has literally won championship after championship after championship after championship. Don't forget he's got four of those things, largely on the strength of him being that type of decision maker. He leaned into it again at the end of the game tonight and it carried him home. I thought it was particularly interesting that Cam Reddish had just missed back-to-back corner threes because he made one early in the game and then he made three in a row early in the fourth quarter and he also made that bailout three at the end of the third quarter. but then he missed two in a row in crunch time.

And LeBron went back to him, and he made the big one. And, like, again, like, that's one of the unique things about LeBron as a late game decision maker is, like, he trusts the best advantage available on the court, right? For instance, do you guys remember that stretch there where he was like, hey, Austin, you just go run, pick and roll with Anthony Davis and take advantage of Yusuf Nurkich and his weak drop coverage for a few possessions? Austin made some plays, right? Like, he just, like, what he's doing is he's looking at the floor,

identifying his team's best opportunity for offense, and he's leaning into that. Sometimes it's him, sometimes it's Austin, sometimes it's AD in a post-up, sometimes it's him just driving and kicking and trying to get a shooter an open look, especially when the team that they're playing against is giving that shot up.

I think LeBron has been amazing in clutch situations this year, which is a very encouraging trend after how bad he was on that end, or in that area last year. It just wasn't as explosive for whatever reason. And then the jump shot had failed him time and time again. So I've said this on the show before, but all these other issues the Lakers have had are somewhat fixable, right? But, like, LeBron and his individual ceiling,

I've said it since the summer, him getting back to roughly what he was in 2020 is an absolute requirement if this Laker team is going to compete for a championship. And once again, we saw LeBron outplay. He outplayed Kauai and Paul George in Crunch Time in the Clippers game. He outplayed Kevin Durant in Crunch Time twice now against the Sun. So that is really encouraging on that front.

Shout out, Rui Hachamura. Got a really unfair shake. Unfair is the wrong word. But he's gotten an unfortunate shake in the early part of this season with him being hyped up as the starter going into the season and then losing that job to then kind of being in the doghouse and the rotation for whatever reason, to then getting in. injured, this like freaky, you know, eye contusion that turned into a concussion protocol thing. And then even again tonight, like only eight minutes in the first half as he seems to be

kind of buried in the back of the rotation. But came in in that second half tonight, played his ass off, made a bunch of big defensive plays, made a couple of huge threes, that had a big transition dunk. Rui was awesome. Anthony Davis, first came back from an injury, it looked like he wasn't quite as mobile as you would expect. He missed a couple bunnies early where you could tell he was kind of hesitant jumping. So clearly whatever's going on with his hip is still bothering him a little bit.

that's the, again, one of those things is like this team also isn't going anywhere unless Anthony Davis plays like one of the best players in the world. And so to get a win in a game where he was mostly bad is actually really, really, um, basically just one gigantic silver lining in this situation is you hope to eventually get more out of Anthony Davis in the long run as well. I shouldn't even say hope. You expect to get more out of Anthony Davis. And then Austin Reeves is, uh, the last individual player that I wanted to shout out. He also got a really unfortunate set of circumstances tonight. Austin Reeves is the third best player on the Lakers.

I've been saying this forever. He, I believe, is sincerely one of the top 50 players in the NBA. He was one of the very best players on Team USA again this summer, so it's not a Laker jersey thing. I bet you if you ask the coaches on Team USA, that's literally what they would tell you. And honest to God, like, for him to go through what he did tonight, which is basically like he's struggling.

He's not playing good. struggling on offense outside of a three-game stretch recently where he looked good and then he played really poorly against Houston and then he's struggling defensively and on the glass but so is DeAngelo Russell he's been a little bit better offensively but he's also been inconsistent has made a lot of mistakes and has been just as bad as Austin defensively and on the glass and in the big picture Austin is the guy that the Lakers lean on the most you literally saw that at the end of that game when when the shit went down Darvin went with Austin not Dilo

And Austin was the guy that LeBron trusted run the late game actions, and he made the shots, right? And yet he got benched in large part because they just expected him to accept it, right? And that's kind of unfortunate. He's in a situation where he belongs in the starting lineup. And his coach sits down with him and goes, hey, not only am I benching you, but I'm benching you for a journeyman forward. It can't play to excellent tonight. But a journeyman forward that was expected to not even be in the Lakers' rotation at the beginning

of the season. And now he's starting for you, in large part, because we believe you'll handle it better than if we bench the other guy. And that's basically what happened to him. And he came out and played one of his better halves of the season in that second half effort, and including that stretch in crunch time where he kind of took over the offense. So shout out to Austin. I thought he got dealt a pretty unfortunate set of cards this evening, and he handled it really well.

I understand what Darvin Ham was going for. Because in the big picture, the Lakers still have a lot of issues. I was texting with the buddy during the game. And literally both of these teams look like they're not even close to as good as they're going to be. Like the sons, we're going to talk about them in a minute, still really struggle with rim pressure, still really struggle with offball players getting ignored, right? Devin Booker is one of the best rim pressuring guards in the league, and also is just another awesome offensive player at the end of games that's going to make it much harder

to throw the kitchen sink at Katie the way that they did tonight, right? So like again, both teams have a boatload of issues. The Lakers just came out with a victory in this one. The Lakers, defensive rebounding, still a massive problem. And it's like mostly, like I said, it's about competitiveness and effort. There is a personnel element, right? Jared Vanderbilt, seven rebounds a game last year. Rui Hachamur in a bigger role last year.

Five rebounds a game last year. So like they're missing some of the rebounding, you know, a contribution that they got from some of those guys. But as a group, they're still capable of doing way better than they have been doing. It's something that they have to do a better job of. I think Darwin Ham might have to consider sizing up more frequently at the expense of his perimeter defense, especially when the perimeter defense hasn't been as good as you need it to be. But the perimeter defense is an issue.

And like that's kind of where I was confused on the Austin Reeves benching. I have said on my show several times, I believe D'Angelo Russell getting traded at the deadline is one of the safest bets this season. And it's really this simple. they, he is a good player. I do believe DeAngelo Russell is a good player. Just don't think he's a good fit on the Lakers. He's a good player who's on an affordable deal. And so, like, there's, but he also plays the same core position group as another player in

Austin Reeves, who is more or less the same type of player, just a better version of it. But he also struggles athletically. He also can struggle at the point of attack from time to time, right? So, like, Austin's had a really bad defensive season for the record. and I say that because he legitimately was a plus defender for the Lakers last year, and he is struggling this year. I don't know if it's his legs. I don't know if it's his confidence or what the deal is.

He's going to have to figure that out because if he keeps defending and rebounding like this, then a lot of the things that I say optimistically about Austin just become not true, and he's going to have to improve in those areas. But Austin and D. Lo are redundant. And so because they're both redundant and because Dilo is a good player on an affordable deal, and because the Lakers believe that Austin is a better player, they're going to probably end up trading Dilo, right? So, like, at the deadline,

there's a version of this where the Lakers have a different lineup configuration with a better athlete in the backcourt. But that's not happening for a long time. Like, Dilo's contract doesn't even become available to be traded until January 15th. So at the end of the day, like this group has to figure out how to compete better on the glass than they have done so to this point.

offensively as well, just in terms of their approach. I thought you saw in that first half in particular, the Lakers are starting to generate higher quality looks. They're starting to run more spread, pick and roll. They're starting to clear the side more and give their best players more room to work. They're starting to match up hunt the right way, and they're starting to get higher quality looks. And you saw in that first half, shots weren't falling,

but then they started falling in that second half. I've been saying this for a while, guys, but like the Lakers have a lot of really good shooters that are not shooting well. Like Tori and Prince, not a great NBA player, but he is a great catch-and-shoot player, hasn't been able to make catch-and-shoot-threes this year, right? DeAngelo Russell, like, one of the things he's great at is catch-and-shoot-threes, not making them this year. Austin Reeves, one of the things he's great at, catch-and-shoot-three.

I think he was two-for-four tonight, but over the course of the season, he hasn't been making them, right? it's actually ironic that it ended up being Cam Reddish that kind of busted them out of their slump because there were a lot of really good shooters for the Lakers that were missing shots. But again, you saw what happens when they start making shots and almost invigorates the team. They start to play better defense.

They start to compete more on the glass and then other things start to kind of click into place. So long way to go for the Lakers, just like there's a long way to go for the Sons. But I think these four fourth quarter kind of comeback explosions that they've had fueled by defense, are a good indicator of what this team is capable of if they can get some of their other shit together. But I could tell you as a fan, and again, everyone who listens to the show knows,

like, this is the one team that I actually root for. Like, as a fan, they're miserable to watch. They're a miserable team. I have so much more fun watching other NBA teams right now. And thankfully, for my job, I get to watch good basketball. Like, I watched a ton of Timberwolves film today. I rewatch the Celtics game for a second time, and then I watched this Pelicans game again. and like I just have so much fun watching that team because of the way they play.

They play a likable brand of basketball. And there are a half dozen other teams that I've been covering this year that I've really grown to like watching. I do not like watching this Laker team right now. But at the same time, I do think they're capable of becoming a team that plays a better brand of basketball. It's just a matter of commitment on their front. 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 you're saying. Yep, that's me. Cliver Taylor the fourth. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated.

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Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down,

and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because, of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line.

We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

Moving on to the Sons. So one of the things that kind of really stood out in this game was the ignoring of the off-ball shooters. This is something we knew was going to happen. This is something that happened in the playoff series last year. This is something that happened even during the regular season last year, but it's kind of been exacerbated this season by the injuries. But specifically, Kita Bates job, Josh Kogi, and Jordan Goodwin. And those guys are bringing a bunch of other good to the table.

I thought Kita Bage Jop did a pretty decent job playing good physical on the ball defense against LeBron tonight, Josh Hocci and Jordan Goodwin have been excellent on the offensive glass throughout the season, and they've applied rim pressure, and they've played good point of attack defense, but they're just getting completely ignored on the other end. And those three guys went two for 13 from three tonight. And when I tell you they're all wide open looks, like they are literally all wide open looks. There was a wide open three out of the right corner that Josha Koji shot like two feet over the back of the rim. So like, again, one of the things that you have to understand here is like injuries do play a role. Like what I'm looking for,

for a lot in the regular season when guys are in and out of the lineup is more just identity stuff. Like what are their habits? What are the things that they like to do on every single possession? Right. And like just like the Lakers were missing a bunch of forwards and it was impacting their rebounding, the sons are missing their offensively minded stars that are forcing them to play defensively minded players that struggle to knock down spot up shots and play off the ball. And as a result, their offense is starting to run into some issues. Right. And so like again, like if Devin Booker is out of the lineup and Bradson, Bradley Beal is out of rhythm coming back from injury.

When we get to April, the sons are just going to lose, right? Like, whenever we talk about the sons, we're trying to envision what they're going to be in April. And what they're going to be in April is a team that hopefully has Devin Booker healthy with Bradley Beal healthy and Kevin Durant healthy. Like, I don't think Grayson Allen is going to be out there for LeBron to matchup hunt in a playoff series potentially, not at the end of a game, not in the late fourth quarter phase, right?

That's what's always weird about these regular season games. It probably won't be Cam Reddish wide open in the corner. It'll probably be either Tori and Prince alongside Jared Vanderbilt or it might be a traded player that they get back in the DeAngelo Russell deal. Who knows, right? But what we're more interested in is what kind of basketball are these teams playing, right? And that's the thing. Like when I look at the Suns, like when I look at how well Kevin Durant has handled double teams, particularly out of the post this year, he's been so good out of the post this year.

His rim finishing has been ridiculous. There are so many good things that Kevin Durant's bringing to the table. And really, your ability to throw the kitchen sink and get the ball out of his hands is kind of irrelevant when you get to the postseason. Because if it ends up being, you know, KD, Booker, Beal, and Nerkich and, you know, Eric Gordon, I don't think you're going to be able to get away with that at the end of games. And so, like, again, we kind of got to separate the realities of what the team is going to look like from what they are right now. And what I'm seeing from a son's team is a team that competes defensively.

I'm seeing a team that knows how to get their superstars into situations where they can make reads out of double teams. And I'm seeing a team that's struggling to finish plays. They're struggling to knock down the shot at the end of the play. We call that like the tip of the spear, right? You have your play initiators and you have your play. finishers. And like one of the reasons why I've always liked, you know, the playmaking forwards is when push comes to shove, they always throw the kitchen sink at the star, and it ends up being somebody else that's wide open. And like, again, you've got to have someone that can knock that

shot down. Now, one of the things you look at from a game like tonight is it could have easily gone the other way because Cam Reddish is also one of those guys. Cam Radish is very much in that same level as Keita Bates's job and Josh Koji and Jordan Goodwin in terms of the fact that like if you leave him open, you kind of expect him to miss. But tonight he made them, right? And again, like that ended up being a significant role in this game. One of the things that happened in this game for the Sons that is a consistent theme that I've seen from the Sons this year is they get off to pretty good starts and then KD in the

fourth quarter makes a bunch of shots in the middle of the fourth quarter. But then eventually KD runs out of gas because consistently making shots over like three defensive players is incredibly difficult and fatiguing. And even in just the two Laker games, KD had crazy stretches in the late 4th, but then in the final minute or two has had misses. And it's not because Katie's like not clutch or anything like that. It's just it's really hard to continually hit those shots time and time again

against a set defense that's throwing the kitchen sink at you. And so again, like Booker being back goes such a long way to alleviating that problem. He also helps with rim pressure. So, like, again, we talked about this with the Clippers. I told you guys after the regulation of the Clippers' Lakers game, that I felt pretty confident that the Lakers were going to win an OT. One of the main reasons why was the one thing the Clippers had going for them was Paul George making impossible pull-up jump shots,

whereas the Lakers were executing and getting quality shots. That's kind of the way I feel about the Sons right now. Like, it's just really difficult to win games. If the two shots you can get from your offense are a heavily contested pull-up jump shot from Kevin Durant or a wide open catch and shoot jump shot from a player that's probably going to miss it, right? And so one of the things I like about Devin Booker in particular is he's really good at getting all the way to the rim for layups. He's got excellent quickness and he's got great touch off the glass when his body's moving

full speed. And then from there, he's actually even better, he's an even better playmaker than Kevin Durant. And so, like, I think that getting Devin Booker back just fixes so many of their problems. The question is, is just can he ever come back and play for me? more than a game or two without suffering some other nagging injury. I hope they let him take his time to get way back to 100%, then ease him back in it and keep his minutes down.

Do what you got to do to keep Devin Booker on the court because he need him. Last minute, at least, Bradley Beale. I've talked to you guys a lot about this specific concept on this show, but like there is a huge difference between a basketball player returning to the court and returning to form. It's trust in whatever your injured issue was. So like, I actually did think it was. a good sign that Bradley Beale had that nasty two-handed dunk in the first half because that's

one of those plays where like, if you have a bad back, you don't do something like that. You know what I mean? So that was encouraging. But just in general, from there, there's like a timing and like a, there's a timing and a rhythm element to it. It's funny. I've been dealing with this Achilles soreness thing that has literally ruined my basketball life over the course of the last few months as I've tried to come back from it twice now and then had to shut it down. But I came back from it, because I made a commitment to play in this money tournament with this guy here in town named Luis, who does a great job kind of organizing basketball events. And he's like, hey, like I put the money down while you play in this tournament. I said yes, and it was like two

months in advance. Then I get this Achilles injury. It's just like severe soreness in the Achilles, basically. And so I shut it down for like two weeks. And then I'm like, I have to play in this money tournament because he's counting on me to play. And I am, um, uh, and at, and at, like if I just leave him hanging, it's literally going to cost him money, right? And so there were five games. It was one game the first night, then there's four games the second night. And it was crazy because, like, what I did in the days leading up to the tournament was I shot a lot. And so, like, I was constantly in the gym shooting, but I wasn't playing because I was trying to take it easy on my Achilles. But I actually went to the tournament and I told Luis, I'm like, hey, man, like, I'm ready to go.

Like, I've polished up my shot and my handle like I'm ready to go. I'm just in kind of bad shape right now in terms of like cardio shape. And like when I tell you I played so horrible in the first game, like it was legitimately comical how bad I played. And then I played a little bit better in the second game. Then I played a little bit better in the third game. And then I played a little bit better in the fourth game. And then we won the championship and I won MVP and we got the cash. And like literally it was like this steady progression to me getting back to what I was. And the main reason why is like even though I had my jumper like feeling good, I hadn't really establish the timing of like five on five, like a real basketball and like what it's like

when someone's got their hands on you and hand checking and like when you're freaking tired from running up and down the floor. And then God, if any of you guys have ever played in a money tournament, like literally how it goes is everyone puts in like a three to five hundred dollar entry fee. And then there's like a pot that's like anywhere from $2,000 to like $7,000. And I've played in a bunch of them. I've won like four or five of them in my life. And like, they are some of my favorite basketball in the world because they're like super insanely intense. Like, like everyone plays so damn hard because cash is on the line, right? And like, none of us are rich out here on these streets, right? So like literally, literally we all want the cash, right? So like I, like, it was, it was such a crazy, like, the latest example to me of like this simple concept of like whenever we see a player come back from injury, we have to kind of accept that there's a long runway there. It's going to take. a while for them to get to the form of basketball player that we're expecting, right?

We're literally watching Anthony Davis struggle as he's coming back from this groin spasm that's kept him out for basically two games, right? Like, we're watching Bradley Beale, like, just silly things. Like, he had two bad late game turnovers, and it's like, like, Bradley Beale is a good ball handler. He's not going to make those mistakes when he kind of has a better feel for the timing of a game. So, like, I'm not worried about the sons.

Again, when it comes to the Lakers and the Suns, I think both of these teams are pretty bad right now in the big picture. I mean, just look at their records. They're both, what, four and five right now? So, like, these are two teams that are really bad right now, but that both have top-end potential. They just have to get healthy. They have to get in rhythm. They have to figure out how to play together. They've got to build good habits.

They've got to get in better shape than they're in. They just have a lot of problems that they've got to fix. But at the same time, that's why you play 82 games. and that's why so many players come into the season and try to play their way into shape instead of coming into season and shape. All right, guys, I'm going to take a couple days off. We're going to go Saturday, Sunday off,

and then we'll come back on Monday with a breakdown of the weekends games and as well as some of the other action from the playing tournament this Friday that I didn't get to watch tonight. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys rocking with me and supporting the show, and I'll see you guys in a couple of days.

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

Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to Look Back at it on the IHeart 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 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 Cliverts show on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok.

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