The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - LeBron James DOMINATES, LA embarrasses Zion & New Orleans, Tyrese Haliburton will be "all-time great," Giannis upset

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

Jason Timpf reacts to LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and the Los Angeles Lakers' dominant 133-89 win over Zion Williamson and the New Orleans Pelicans (5:40). Jason discusses how LeBron's performance left him "at a loss for words" and shares what he believes must happen for him to consider Los Angeles a major NBA Finals threat. Jason also reacts to the Indiana Pacers vs. Milwaukee Bucks NBA In-Season Tournament semifinal game (19:00). Jason reacts to Tyrese Haliburton officially arriving as a superstar as the Pacers have now knocked off Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics and Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks en route to the championship game. #volume #herd (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Tontons and Wampas on the Ice Planet Hot, or the practicality and corporate business sense of the Sith rule. of two.

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Eligibility and deposit restrictions apply. Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. terms at sportsbook.draftkings.com slash basketball terms. All right, welcome to Hoops and I here at the Volume. Happy Thursday, everybody, for the last time. I hope all of you guys have had a great day. We've done two additional videos today. Earlier today, we had Brendan Clean from Lockdown Suns on the show,

and we did a deep dive on the Phoenix Suns. You can find that video back there. We also did a breakdown of Pacers Bucks that you guys can find on the feed. In this video, we're just going to be talking about the Los Angeles Lakers behind just a phenomenal performance from LeBron James, 30 points on 12 shots, 4-4-4 from 3, 8 assists, zero turnovers. As the Lakers go up by 40-plus, he sits the entire fourth quarter, dominant performance for the Lakers who are heading to meet the Pacers on Saturday in the NBA Cup

Championship game. We're going to break it down. You guys know the job before we get started. Subscribe to our brand-new YouTube channel. It would mean a lot to me if you guys would scroll down and hit that subscribe button. Don't forget about our podcast feed, wherever you get your podcasts under hoops tonight. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason LT, so you guys don't miss any show announcements or the film breakdowns that I do,

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That's H-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, you know, sometimes there's this thing that can happen in a basketball game where one player reaches such an insanely high level that it actually saps the other team of confidence. And it actually trickles down the roster and then everybody just starts playing poorly. It's not to say that there isn't a team effort, but sometimes there's just a way a player can carry himself to where it seems to sap the other team of belief. It's like snatching their heart, so to speak.

Tonight, LeBron James snatched the heart of the New Orleans Pelicans, early and often. From that slip that he had down to Irv Jones that post up where he drew the foul just proving like, hey, your main guy? Yeah, he's too small. He can't guard me, right? And then to, oh, you're going to drop back and give me this shot? Well, I've been working on it, I'm shooting over 40% on it this year. I'm knocking it down.

Oh, your best player. Zion Williamson? Yeah, I know how to read his game, and I don't trust his ability to knock down an outside shot. So I'm just going to beat him to spots right outside the restricted area and take charges and sap him of his confidence and completely remove him from the game. He dominated every single facet of this game. Honestly, like, 9 for 12 from the field, 4 for 4 from 3, 0 turnovers, 8 assists, 30 points,

didn't even play the fourth quarter. I'm completely out of loss for words. I've been saying this all season long, but, you know, what have I said? The Lakers got hit by a really unfortunate string of injuries, right? They lost all their high motor athletes. Cam Reddish got hurt, Ruehachamura got hurt, Jared Vanderbilt didn't start playing until a couple of games ago. The bottom fell out in all of their athleticism.

And suddenly it's like Austin and DeLo look on athletic, right? You know, because they're not playing alongside other high motor athletes. It's LeBron James and Anthony Davis. They can ebb and flow in their effort during the regular season, so when they wouldn't bring effort, they would look really, really bad. And I kept saying, like, these are really important archetypes that they need. Give them time. Like, LeBron looks great.

And what did I always say? Like, LeBron looking great is actually more of a positive trend and is more meaningful than anything having to do with some of this other stuff that we've seen, right? Now, do the Lakers have some stuff to work out before the postseason in terms of that two and three spot? Yeah, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But within the regular season, I just wasn't concerned with the stuff that I was seeing earlier. This is just natural ebbs and flows that you see during an NBA regular season that kind of tends to go around with your strength of schedule and with your injuries. The Lakers have played one of the toughest schedules in the league this year.

They've played like 23 games, and 18 of them have been against teams that are 500 or better. And so when you look at the kind of ball that they were playing, some of the injuries that they had, they looked a little less capable than what they really. really are capable of doing, right? But the big silver lining under all of that was LeBron, was playing some of the best basketball of this late phase of his career. And that matters more to this team's ultimate ceiling than anything else. I think he's playing at the highest level that he's played since the 2020 season when they won the title in that season. Now, again, the scoring is down a little bit, right? He's at 25 points per game. But that has way more to do

with just the way the team is organized from the standpoint of having two skill guards that are taking a lot of shots, right? They're also in a five-out system this year for the majority of their offensive possessions, which is more read and react and more shares the load among the rest of the players in the team. But he's actually shooting his highest true shooting percentage since 2014 when he was with the Miami Heat. He's shooting over 40% from three. His jump shots worth like a point of 1.1 points per shot, which is like over 20% higher

than it was last year. he's just playing at a much, much higher level than he has in the last couple of seasons, which is a very, very encouraging note for what this Laker team can eventually achieve. Like here's the thing, if they keep racking up wins, which again, they're going to have to maintain this level of play. They do have an easier schedule down the stretch of the season. That will help. But if they can maintain this level of play, he has a chance to enter into the MVP conversation

with the job that he's doing on both ends of the floor. I wanted to hit a couple of specific things that he did in this game. I thought the job he did on Zion Williamson, removing him from the game, changed the dynamic early. Zion Williamson's dribble penetration and his ability to pass the basketball is one of the most important elements of that Pelican's offense. And Zion is such a weird player type that there's only a handful of guys that really can defend him well. But LeBron's one of them because he's not bigger and stronger than LeBron. He had, LeBron has the ability to anticipate his movements and to beat him to.

spots. And that has gone a long way in this particular matchup, and he's consistently looked pretty good guarding Zion on the ball. The over-the-top shooting, one of the things I've talked about with the pelicans is they're an aggressive ball screen defense. They bring Jonas Valanchunis up to the level in a lot of cases, and they're really aggressive in help with Zion and Brandon Ingram on the backside, and the Lakers have some issues with weak side shooting, which we'll talk about because the shooting actually turned around for the Lakers in a big way in this game. But one of the most important elements to this Laker offense succeeding against elite defenses is over-the-top shot making. Why does that matter? Because we talk about spacing all the time, right? And one of the

best ways to beat spacing issues is to shoot over the top. Spacing primarily has to do with your ability to find driving lanes and to get into the rim. And so when teams pack the paint, you have to beat them with the jump shot, either at the ball or on the weak side with kickouts. And I thought his over-the-top shooting went a long way, right? Like the game kind of got off to a weird start. Lakers defense dominated early. Pelicans came back on some turnovers and the Lakers were doing a bad job of boxing out. The pelicans were crashing a lot out of the corners and getting offensive rebound putbacks, right? LeBron hits a freaking heater in that second quarter and just builds that double-digit deficit back up. And as soon as it got there again, that was where the Lakers kind of regained their confidence and just ran away with the game from there. And then in that third quarter, I thought he did a really nice job. You know, we talk a lot about Tyrese Halliburton and playing with pace and playmaking. That was a lot. a lot of what LeBron is doing in that third quarter. Bringing the ball up with like real

verve, like getting downhill, causing all the pelicans to kind of coalesce around him, and he's dumping it off to DeAngelo Russell for three. He's throwing kickout passes to Tori and Prince in the corner. Every single time Anthony Davis breaks open at the rim, here's another lob. Oh, Dilo makes a back cut off of

a back screen. LeBron hits him off the bounce pass. Like he just was torching them by making plays, but he was, those passes become available as a product, his rim pressure in the amount of pace that he was playing with. Took care of the basketball, too. Obviously, the zero turnovers is important with that Laker defense.

I can struggle sometimes when they're – they've actually been better in transition this year than they were last year, which is going to be vitally important for the Tyrese Halliburton matchup, obviously. But, I mean, here's the thing, guys. The Lakers are on the rise. Eighth best record in the league now, despite their injuries, despite the schedule. They've won three straight games against 500 or better teams. They have nine wins against 500 of better teams.

which is now tied for the most in the NBA with the Boston Celtics. They have the third best defense in the league over the last 10 games, and this shooting progression thing is a real deal. Because do I think the Lakers are a good shooting team? Probably not. But I think they're an average shooting team. Austin Reeves is a good shooter. Daniel Russell is a good shooter.

Tori and Prince is a good shooter. LeBron James, for the majority of his career outside of last season in 2015, good shooter, right? Like, they've got guys off the bench that can knock down shots. Gabe Vincent is a good shooter. Rui Hachamura is a good shooter. they have shot atrociously bad this season. And that's the thing.

Like, I don't expect them to be one of the top 10, three-point shooting teams in the league, but they should be in the middle, right? And so what led a lot to this positive regression, in my opinion, is gaining confidence from their leader and then driving energy and confidence from their defense and that flowing into better shot quality and just overall, you know, like just the attitude and energy

that they play with. And I think that's going to be important because you're going to see more and more teams do what the Phoenix Suns did in that second half, do what the Pelicans did tonight, which is pack the paint and force guys to knock down shots, which they did. Now, again, don't overreact to regular season trends in either direction. Am I here?

What did I say before the season? I said I saw the Lakers as the fourth best championship contender behind the Nuggets, the Bucks and the Celtics, right? I've swapped the Celtics in the Bucks because I think the Celtics are playing some better basketball, but I had the Lakers at number four, okay? I'm not like, like after their bad start, where, what were they, five and seven at one point? if I remember correctly, or three and five, there were somewhere below 500 there after like eight to ten games or something like that.

I said I don't change my opinion about the Lakers at all. Still in the same spot. I don't think this team can win a title unless one of two things happens. Either Anthony Davis takes an offensive leap back to where he was in the bubble, which he's capable of doing, or they make a trade at the deadline. I believe they will make a trade, and I believe that trade will push them over the top into that conversation with the Nuggets and Celtics.

But again, you don't overreact to regular season trends. There will be a stretch again soon where the Lakers have some guys banged up and they play some tough games on their schedule and their effort goes down a little bit and they'll drop three out of five games because that's just what happens in the NBA regular season. But this team was awesome after the deadline last year, was awesome in the postseason, and I do believe that they're capable of being awesome again this season. If they're going to reach the Nuggets level, if they're going to reach the Celtics level, in my opinion, they're going to have to push their chips in

and upgrade that DeAngelo Russell position into a really good two-way player. But that's, again, a problem for the deadline. If they have their health, especially with those athletes, if they have Ruizu, Hachemur and Cam Reddish and Jared Vanderbilt, available and healthy, they're going to win a lot of regular season games. And a lot of the issues they had early was a lack of athleticism, which stemmed from injuries to a core position group, which was under-discussed, in my opinion, in a lot of platforms.

I wanted to do one last shout-out for Anthony Davis, because he gets a lot of criticism for his offensive inconsistency, which I think is legitimate. However, that was just a ridiculous defensive performance. I swear, just in the third quarter, he blew up like six plays at the rim, what looked like easy layups that he turned into misses. And, like, again, his defensive consistency has to be factored in here.

Like, a night like what AD just had defensively is worth a 25, 30 point scoring night, you know? Like if you get 27 out of C.J. McCollum, is that more impactful than what Anthony Davis did defensively tonight? Like, that's up for debate. And again, those are just the kinds of things that we have to factor in when we're having these conversations. Like Anthony Davis, like I'm hell or high, hell or high water, he's going to be impactful. There's a scale there. Some nights he's less so than others. But like when he's locked in defensively, it's one of the most impactful things that you'll see from a player in this league and his ability to, um, uh, to anchor that Laker defense and on the glass. I'm not going to talk about the Pelicans tonight

because it's just not the right night to talk about them. There's not really anything you can take away from that. They're six and four in their last 10 games, but they're three and four in their last 10 games against anybody that's not the Kings. They've had their number, but they've had some bad losses too. Like they lost to the Bulls. Like, I want to do a deep dive on the Pelicans.

I just want to wait a little bit until a different night. Tonight's not the night. 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 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 you'll say.

Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. 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. 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 where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart 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. 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 Blow Your Mind on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

podcast. The simplest way to break down this particular game was that the Bucks just could not guard Tyreys Halliburton, no matter what they tried. Every time they tried low drop, he rose up into a pull-up three and he beat them with that. Every time they tried high drop, he consistently made that pocket pass to Miles Turner, who was amazing in this game, catching and finishing at the rim, also was amazing on the defensive end of the floor protecting the rim. He hit some shots in pick-and-pop situations as well. Miles Turner was fantastic. And that to me is like one of the fundamental pieces of beating that specific coverage. And the high drop, it's like a softer version of putting two on the ball.

And so as that pocket pass is open, that player has to be able to score and make reads out of it. Miles Turner was fantastic. But low drop, he beat him with the pull-up three. High drop, he beat him with the pocket pass. When they switched, he was able to score on Brooke Lopez. And then when they went to the zone, the Pacers did a good job of getting the ball to the middle of the floor.

Bruce Brown did a really nice job making those little pop shots in there. He's been good at that shot since he was with the nets. and that middle of the floor, not just the mid-range shot-making, but having a player there that can make quick decisions is a fundamental part of scoring against a two-three zone. And the Pacers just executed extremely well against every single coverage the Bucks used, and it just came down to Tyrese Halliburton

and the fact that the Bucks couldn't do anything with them. It was interesting, too, like down the stretch, they go to the zone to just try to make somebody else beat them, right? But again, against a team with that much offensive skill, it's not easy to get stops with his own defense, and that's when we saw Bruce Brown get off. Literally, there were two random possessions in that zone stretch where they went to man.

And on both of those possessions, Tyrese just beat them and they came up the high drop coverage with Brooke Lopez. He just beat him with that pocket pass to Miles Turner. And then it's like, then down the stretch, Brooke Lopez just switches, right? And Tyrese just quickly just tells everybody go to their spot. They run two guys at the corner, two guys of the wing. Tyrese goes to the top of the key.

Boom, boom. hits him with a move to the right, gets all the way to the rim, gets into Brooke's body to protect the basketball and finishes on the right end of the rim. You guys might remember a play at the very beginning of the game where Brooke Lopez switched. He went to the left side. They cleared the side this time. Everyone went away to give him the entire side of the floor. Hit him with the same kind of dribble combination, got all the way around him and finished on the right side of the rim.

And then late, the final play, the dagger on that left wing, it was a high drop coverage possession. And he kind of pulled the ball out to the further to the, further to the. the left, which caused Brooke to go with him. His on-to-ball defender basically peeled off, and that's when he hit that stepback, which he's been doing a lot against Biggs when they come out in that coverage, especially going to his left,

especially on the left wing. He can get a lot of separation with that, and he handles the ball really well with his left hand, hits the step-back three. And that really fundamentally is the problem. You can't run any coverage against him because he is a counter for all of it, right? If you run any sort of aggressive coverage,

so like a blitz or a high drop or a show or a double team in any sort of switch situation, he's going to beat you with the pass. If you run a low drop, he's going to beat you with a three-point shooting. He made two of them. You guys might remember the play where he was talking to Dame saying, like, I can do that too, right?

Like, that's what he did on those possessions. Basic lower drop coverage coming over the top of the screen, knocking down a pull-up three. When they switch, he can beat bigs on switches. He's been beating bigs on switches like damn near a point-and-half per possession all season. He's just outrageously good at organized modern NBA offense. And, like, still hasn't turned the ball over this week.

He's confident and cocky and talking shit. And, like, guys, this is the – this is – you know, sometimes in the NBA, we see guys take a leap, right? You're like, oh, look at Austin Reeves. Like, this was a guy who was undrafted. Probably should have been an early second round pick, but certainly not any sort of lottery guy. Holy shit, he's like a really good NBA player, right? or it's like, Deerrin Fox, he's taking a leap this year. Like, he's gone from, like, you know, a lower level star to, like, one of those guys that's

kind of, like, just below the superstar level, right? You know, like, we see these rises that take place in the NBA. But every once in a while, we see an all-time great rising from the pack, right? We just recently saw this with Nicola Yokic, and it's like, holy shit, nobody can guard this guy. And we are literally watching that with Tyre's Halliburton. This is the guard version of Nicola Yokic. Nobody can guard the guy.

He's every single play type when you make him a score, he's scoring well over a point per possession, every single play type when you make him a passer, he's passing to guys in good position. Like little things, like Obie Toppin, limited player with the Knicks. But he's found a role on this team just by running his damn lane in transition,

that ridiculous reverse lob that he caught from Tyreys Halliburton. If you watch, Isaiah Jackson has a nice contest of Dame at the rim, and you see Obie Topin just start sprinting. off the left side of the floor, just running as fast as he can. And Tyrese gets the ball every single time someone is open up the floor. He makes that kick ahead pass. Leads him perfectly towards the rim for the reverse dunk. This is the rise of an all-time great.

That is what we are watching. It's like everyone's talking about the Steve Nash comparisons. It's like Steve Nash plus like real scoring aggression, more athleticism in terms of lateral quickness. He's got the jump shooting is insane. Obviously, Steve Nash was a great jump shooter as well, but it's like that, but just stretched out into like more of a dynamic athletic player, right? It's like, get on board, guys. This is not just another hot streak. This is a guy that all of the best players in the NBA are struggling to guard, right?

Now, is he going to light everybody on fire to the extent he did the Bucks? Probably not because the Bucks have some issues at the point of attack, which we'll talk. But the meat and potatoes of what he's doing is replicable at all levels of the NBA. He even made some defensive plays in this game, which he's been a bad defensive player this season. But as a team, the Pacers are kind of rounding into form. And that to me is the key. Because outside of that third quarter run,

if you go back to the first half of this game and both halves of the Boston Celtics game, they're playing good defense. They're playing good defense. And I talked about in our Pacers deep dive last week, I think it was after the heat game, if I remember correctly. I talked about how they have the personnel to at least be okay.

because of all their speed. And like they do have guys who can defend at the point of attack like Bruce Brown and Aaron Neesmith, who's been amazing in these last two games. And so like they've got guys who can take the top end personnel. They have speed off the ball. Miles Turner can protect the rim. They are capable of being a better defensive team

than they've shown to this point in the season. They've shown it this week and it's led to wins and now they have an opportunity to play for the NBA Cup on Saturday. Now, the offensive glass is still an issue. That was something that was an issue all game. And obviously in the long run, that's going to be something they're going to have to address by just more wing, basically upgraded versions of Obie Topp and Aaron Neesmith, right? But those are big picture conversations about the Indiana Pacers, right?

Within the scope of this season, they can defend better than they have, and the offense is completely and utterly unguardable. And Tyrese Alliburton is playing like a superstar, and he's here to stay, guys. This is not a short-term thing. Jump on the bandwagon. This dude, he's on the Steph track. He's on the Yokic track. he is headed towards top-tier superstardom. That is what we are seeing.

Just outplayed Jason Tatum, Yonison Tenacompo, Dame Lillard, all in this week in high-stakes games. And not to mention, he's got some of that Steph thing going on where he's just incredibly fun to watch. Like I said, a shout out a couple of other quick pacer. Miles Turner, like I said, amazing in this game, protecting the rim and working out of the role. Aaron Neesmith, his possessions on Chris Middleton, he just flat out, he raced him from the game. On Janus, I thought he did a pretty good job. He's giving up a ton of physical advantage there. And Janus got him a few times. But for the most part, it picked him up full court, applied ball pressure, disrupted his rhythm, got some stops. I thought he was really good. And then that

bench group that Isaiah Jackson with T.J. McConnell and Ben Matherin, like, that group is defending really well. And T.J. McConnell's just organizing them and making good plays. And T.J. McConnell is deceptively, like, he's a guy that, like, a lot of people don't think of as a great. athlete, but he's super fast. And like, he can beat people off the dribble. And that to me is like the start of it, right? It's beating people off the dribble. He's got a good little 10-foot drifting fade away. And then he's a great pastor. And that just gives him the ability to organize that unit. And then all of those guys are flying around on the defensive end of the floor. This, again, I said after our last pacer's deep dive, that right now they're just

an exciting team. But if they want to make some real noise, they have to defend better than they they have this week. And suddenly they just beat the two best teams in the Eastern conference and they're going to have a chance to play for the NBA Cup. on Saturday. On the Bucks front, if it looked to you like the Bucks couldn't guard in transition, that's not just a Pacer's issue. We saw this all this game, not just on misses and steals, but made baskets. The Pacers are just running down the floor and getting wide open shots. They're not getting matched up. They're not sprinting back. Bad transition defense principles, right? Like transition defense is simple. You sprint back, basket first, then you fan out. You match up

with anybody in a transition play. You don't look for your man. You look for any man. If you can get back in time and you have opportunities to switch back to your matchup, great. But in transition pushes, you have to just get matched up. You have to communicate. They're not very good at it. By the way, Milwaukee allows opponents to play in transition on 18% of their possessions, which ranks dead last in the NBA. A significant issue in this game.

And then the point of attack defense is something I've been, I'm not the only guy, but everyone's been preaching about all season, which is like can Dame and Malik Beasley defend well enough at the point of attack to give your defense a chance to be good enough to compete for a title. And the answer is no, to put it simply. I've said this about the Bucks and the Lakers all season. Like upgrades at that point of attack position is what their season basically hinges on. And if you think about it, like, against over the dregs of the regular season, you can be a good defense if you're good on two of the three levels.

Now, what are the three levels of defense? Point of attack, ball screen defender, weak side defense, like rotations and help side, right? those are the three layers. The bucks are excellent at the rim in their pick and roll defense, and they're excellent in rotation and in help, right? And then the fourth level would be defensive rebounding, right? But I'm just talking about actually guarding the plays themselves. But defensive rebounding is an important element of that, right?

But the bucks are great on those two levels, but they're really weak at the point of attack. And that can give you a good defense, or at least a passable defense over the course of the regular season, but against these types of teams, you have to be great at all three levels. and that's why, like, it'll be really interesting to see who wins this Lakers Pelicans game because the Pelicans are excellent at the point of attack, excellent in help,

but bad in terms of their rim protection and ball screen defense because of Jonas Valachunis, right? The Lakers have players for all three levels now that Jared Vanderbilt is healthy. Like, you're going to see Jared Vanderbilt on Tyre Saliburton. They're good in help. They're good at the rim. They've been one of the best defenses over the last month in the league. I have to look, but last time I checked, they were like third in the league over the last 10, 15 games. So the Lakers are going to be an interesting challenge for Tyrese, but we'll see when we get there.

But to have any hope of guarding Tyrese Halliburton, you have to be good at the point of attack. You have to be good in your ball screen defense, and you have to be good in help. And I thought that you just saw a pretty clear example of the fact that the Bucks could not defend at the point of attack. Tyrese Halliburton was getting wherever he wanted, and that was where everything broke down for this team. And then lastly, on the Bucks front, like, Dame talked about this. He was like, hey, we're 15 and 6, but like I haven't even really got going. yet. I don't even have my three-point shot yet. Like, this is going to get crazy.

And, like, I tend to agree in the sense that, like, Dame has started to shoot a little better as of late. We're starting to see more flurries like that flurry. He had to start the second half. But in the big picture, he just hasn't been good enough. And this team will not be a championship contender unless Dame can get back to where he was last season. That is an absolute prerequisite. Now, I still believe he will do so, but we're now over a fourth of the way through the season and he's still not to that level. And so the onus is on Dame to figure his stuff out there because Janus is having the best season he's had since his title year.

Janus is incredible. So Dame's got to meet him at least near that level for this team to get where they want to go. All right, guys, that is all I have for this video. I will be back tomorrow with the nerd sesh guys. We're going to bounce around the league and hit a bunch of topics. I will see you guys then. As always, I appreciate your support.

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