The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Most important traits to win NBA title: What did Warriors & Nuggets have in common?

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Jason Timpf breaks down his 10 most important traits to build a championship basketball team. What did Giannis Antetokounmpo's Milwaukee Bucks, Steph Curry's Golden State Warriors, and Nikola Jokic's Denver Nuggets all have in common? #herd #volumeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I hope all of you guys had an incredible week. Our wrap-up coverage of the NBA Finals is brought to you by Chase Freedom Unlimited. How do you cash back? Today we're going to be going over the 10 most important traits that we should look for. in potential NBA champions moving forward. 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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If you're looking to get out to a major league baseball game this summer or even a concert or a comedy show. Game Time has amazing last-minute deals on tickets to all of these. If you live in the San Francisco area, I'm going to be out there for the final show of the Dead and Company tour. It's just about a month. I think it's a month from tomorrow is actually the final show that I'm going to. Game Time's going to have a good deal for you to go see one of those shows.

Hell, it doesn't even have to be San Francisco. They're going to be all over the country here for the next month. I think they're awesome. You guys should get out and see them. Game Time took really good care of me earlier this year when I went to a show, or excuse me, a game at McHale Center to watch the University of Arizona men's basketball team. I got a fantastic seat, got a great deal on it. The user experience was super smooth. I highly recommend you guys try it. No matter where you live, get out and have some fun this week.

Download the GameTime app. Enter email and redeem code hoops for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, enter your email and the code hoops. 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 as I sat down over the last couple of days to work on this particular video, last year, if you guys remember, I think it was something like the five biggest lessons I learned from that NBA season.

And it's funny because as I was kind of making my list, it ended up being all these things that I expect or that I'm going to be looking for as I'm trying to evaluate basketball teams in the future and their potential to win an NBA championship. And next thing you know, my list got pretty long and it kind of all had to do with that. So I kind of changed it on the fly. And so we're doing the 10 most important traits to look for in championship teams. I think what will be interesting about this particular list is we'll just come back to it.

Every time we're taking a deep look at a particular team and their chances to win the title, we'll come back and look at this list because I think a lot of you guys are going to agree with most of the items on this list as things that are kind of important for teams that have serious. ambitions to win a title. And so it'll be kind of like a checklist for us to evaluate teams in the future. So without any further ado, let's start with number one, size. An NBA championship team most likely will need size. Since 2017, every single champion, aside from the 2022 Warriors, was huge, right?

The 2017 Warriors had Kevin Durant on the front line with Andre Agu Doudala and Dremont Green. Andre Gouda and Dremont Green aren't the tallest dudes in the world, but they're super big and strong, and then obviously Kevin Durant brings a ton of length to the table. Same group in 2018. In 2019, that front line had Pascal Seacum and Kawhi Leonard and Serge Baca and Marcus Salt. They were huge. The 2020 Lakers, Anthony Davis and LeBron James, sometimes at the 3-4 alongside Dwight Howard with guys like Kyle Kuzma, Danny Green, and again, one of the themes here is it's size down the roster. It's not just size in the front court. It's size down the roster. The

2021 bucks, another huge team. Brooke Lopez, Janice Antenacupo, Chris Middleton, 6-8, 611, 7 foot down the front line, right? We go to the 22-2020 Warriors. They're the outlier. But Steph is like the big outlier in NBA history as it pertains to size. If you're ranking the top 15 players in NBA history, he's going to be the only guy on that list that's less than 6'5. So Steph is going to consistently break the mold with these kinds of things. And that's why when we evaluate the warriors, they probably have to be evaluated based on a different list than this. But they're the one outlier. And then we go right back to normalcy with the 2023 Nuggets who are massive down the line with Nicole Yokic, with Aaron Gordon, with Michael Porter Jr., with Contavius Caldwell Pope.

Jamal Murray is even big compared to most point guards. Bruce Brown, a bigger, stronger, better athlete than most of the backup bench guards that we have in the league. So the question is, why does size matter so much in the NBA as it pertains to winning championships. Like I said, 2017, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23. That's six of the last seven champions that were massive down the roster in terms of their overall size. Well, first of all, it's rebounding. Famously, Pat Riley once said no rebounds, no rings. You have to finish out defensive possessions, which gives you an opportunity to spring fast break opportunities, right?

You also need to have size down the roster. Why is that? The more jump shots that are taken in NBA games, the more long rebounds there are. When big, big, you know, guys are engaged in boxouts underneath the basket. Often the ball just comes carrying off to some random place. And it's almost like a game of three flags up. If you ever played that when you were a kid where someone would just throw the ball up in the air and then if you caught it three times, you got to go be the person who throws the ball, right? Like that's kind of what contested rebound situations and long rebounds are. The ball's coming out. No one's really in position. It's just a bunch of guards and wings trying to fly in from the perimeter to grab contested rebounds. And so having that

type of athleticism on the perimeter is a huge deal there. Size also helps with your paint finishing on both ends of the floor. Your ability to finish over defenders around the basket and your ability to dissuade opponents from finishing around the basket. And then last but not least, shooting over the top from the perimeter. When you've got a guy like Michael Porter Jr. Who's taking jump shots over Austin Reeves contesting in the corner, he just doesn't see him because of the size advantage that he has.

So chances are, if we're looking at your team next year to win a championship, they aren't huge, they probably aren't going to win the title unless they're fantastic in every other area of the game. Again, as we're looking at these lists, if you fill nine of these 10 categories, but you don't have the size, chances are you still have a good chance. So this is kind of going to just be a checklist that we refer back to throughout the season next year. Number two, strength. Why is it that guys like Nicola Yokic, Leophan, Leibald, and Jimmy Butler or always go up a level in the playoffs while we often see skinny or thinner players struggle a bit. That's not the end-all be-all.

There are thin players who succeed. Devin Booker is not the biggest, strongest player in the world, and that dude shot the lights out this entire postseason. So it's not like a perfect rule, but for the most part, guys who are bigger and stronger seem to go up a level in the playoffs. Why is that? You have to play through contact. As the officials swallow their whistle and they allow more contact,

you have to be able to thrive in those situations. getting to spots. There are these spots in the floor where you're comfortable where you can go to shots that you trust your ability to make. In order to get to those spots, you have to fight for position, either through setting your man up for a screen and then jolting to that spot or fighting for position in a traditional kind of post-up sense, regardless of whether that's on the wing or the elbow or at the block, you need to seal your defender and create a passing angle for your guard to get you the ball. And so the strength, the big physical strength to get to those spots matters. Fighting for easy shots closer to the rim. You've seen a lot over the course of this season, teams that rely heavily on pull-up jump shooting as the bread and butter of their offense, they tend to struggle to generate quality shots over the course of the series.

As high-powered as that Sun's offense was all season, they barely averaged 110 points per 100 possessions against Denver because they struggled in the physicality. of that matchup. One of my favorite examples of this is Bruce Brown versus DeAngelo Russell in the Western Conference finals. Just every single time he caught Anthony Davis kind of out of position, usually because Yokic pinned him back in transition, he would just hit the jets. And DeAngelo Russell, even though he's a, actually, I think DeAngelo might even be an inch taller than Bruce Brown. If I remember correctly, I think I could be wrong about this, but I think D-Lo is 6-5 and I think

Bruce is 6-4. But they're about the same size. Let's just call it that. But Bruce is so damn strong that he's just pushing through and just bullying DeAngelo Russell to get to those spots. That kind of thing just matters at this level. Fighting for position, getting to shots closer to the rim. Same thing goes on the defensive end as guys are trying to beat you to spots. If you're the bigger, stronger athlete, and they're allowing a lot of contact, that's going to help you fight in those situations. So size and strength are the two biggest ones that I looked at.

Three, top end ball handling. This was the Celtics conundrum coming out of last season. Oh, Jason Tatum, Jalen Brown aren't ready. Let's bring in Malcolm Brogden. You know, and again, I'm a big believer in just kind of learning as things go on. I was one of the many people who recommended that the Celtics make a trade for a guard after last season. Right? So I'm not over here sitting like I was prescient with this kind of thing.

I was wrong about this. But again, all I'm going to try to do year and year out is try to learn based on what I notice and hopefully not make that mistake in the future. We picked most of the series correct this year. I want to say there were like 15 series or something like that, and we picked like 11 of them correctly. I'm not 100% sure, but we got most of them right. But that's just probably luck, first of all.

Chances are next year I'll have a significantly less successful playoff run picking series, but I still got a bunch of them wrong too. And so even though I hate predictions and I don't really care all that much about them, for the purposes of the show, I want to do the best that I possibly can. and the only way we're going to do that is by learning lessons as the years go by and hopefully not making those mistakes in the future. Top-end ball handling apparently matters a hell of a lot more than aggregate ball handling. Because the Boston Celtics, this year, even with Malcolm Brogden, although he was hurt,

but even as you go back into previous rounds before he got hurt, the Celtics still had the same problem, which was no matter who they gave the ball to, that guy wasn't quite good enough at being that half-court surgeon that they needed. You know, as we look, like, look, Denver, as I said in our NBA finals wrap-up, they did not have to play any of the top eight records in the league. Why is that? Why didn't they have to play any of the top eight records in the league? Well, Milwaukee lacked top-end ball handling.

Yonis still really struggles in the half court to create quality shots. So does Drew and Chris, right? Boston, top-end ball handling. Like, they got into that series with Jimmy Butler, and Jimmy Butler was so much better than Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown at consistently generating quality offense in the half court. They couldn't overcome that even with a massive talent advantage. Philly, they had that issue with Jason Tatum.

So what does that tell you about their top end ball handlers? Obviously, James Hardin in his decline, Joel Embed's inability to handle double teams in the half court, their limitations in top end ball handling were the problem. Memphis, same thing. Their best guy to create his own shot down the tail end of the Lakers series was Desmond Bain. That's just not going to cut it. Cleveland. Same thing. Donovan Mitchell, two tunnel vision, Darius Garland, not a good enough score. Sacramento. They only had a 109.3 offensive rating against Golden State. I thought Deere and Fox and Malik Monk had some real moments in that series,

and they're good foundational guys, but they aren't good enough to overcome the limitations that they had in their front court scoring. So the top end ball handling down the line wasn't good enough. The eighth best record in the league, the New York Knicks. They ended up losing because it was like Jalen Brunson and nobody else could create their own shot. And Jalen Brunson wasn't as good at it as Jimmy Butler was. So you guys get the point. This is still a superstars league in the NBA. There was that moment there in 2021 where we're like,

oh, look at the Phoenix Suns. Like maybe just maybe, you know, overall talent can eventually win. Nope. And it didn't work for Boston the last couple years either. Your best guy has to be one of the very best guys to win a title. And that's just as we look back, Yokic finals MVP. Steph Curry, finals MVP.

Yonis in 2021, he did it, but as we look back, like, it was against that Sun's team that didn't really have a superstar. It was against that Atlanta Hawks team where it's like, yeah, he's better than Trey Young by a lot. The Brooklyn Nets fell apart because Kyrie and James Harding got hurt. So is Kevin Durant, a bunch of veteran minimum contract type of dudes? Like, it's a different, it's a different, that was kind of a strange season. But even then, Janice is the very best defensive player in basketball. average 35 points per game in the final. So he's probably the worst guy out of all of these recent NBA finals MVP's,

and it's Janice Antenicoopo. So if he's the worst guy on that list, what does that tell you? We go back to previous year. It's the second greatest player of all time is LeBron James. Go back to the previous year. It's Kauai Leonard, this big strong forward that can bully his way to spots and get whatever he wants. Kevin Durant, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, should have been Steph Curry in 2015. You guys get the point.

Superstars still rule the NBA. your top-end ball handling matters way more than aggregate ball handling. Even really talented teams that don't have a great top-end ball handler can easily lose out to a well-coached, good defensive team that competes and has a star that's going to out-execute your stars on the other end of the floor. So top-end ball handling still matters. Number four, you have to have at least one elite unit on one end of the floor. Remember, we used to have this top-10 defense rule forever, right?

So for decades, if you didn't have a top 10 defensive rating in the regular season or a defending champion, which means you had a top 10 defense the previous season, you don't get to win a title. 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 which I'm saying. 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 Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes,

follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam Jette. And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so 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. They're finishing that sentence.

I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why is that the case? Why did that top 10 defense rule hold true for so long? It's because defense is the most consistent thing in basketball.

Jump shooting does have some variance. I think that it's overstated, especially by a lot of people that pay too much attention to shot quality and things like that. But there is some variety in basketball. Some days you don't feel quite as good. Sometimes the shots don't fall as well as they usually do. You can have up and down, you can have a naturally up and down nature to what you bring offensively.

In fact, most teams do. But defensively, if you bring the effort-focused energy and the attention to detail, that will be reliable for you every single night. Even like that 20-21 Bucks team that had some limitations in the half-court offensively, it just didn't matter because of how damn good they were defensively. The iconic moment of that entire playoff run was Janice Lentenicoopo dissuading Devin Booker on a pull-up shot and pick and roll and then turning and sprinting and elevating and blocking D'Andre Aten at the rim.

It was otherworldly defense that carried them through that particular playoff run. So it's the consistency of defense, the fact that it can be counted on on a daily basis that makes it so important. But then Denver broke that rule as the first team. that was not a defending champion or a top 10 defense to win the NBA championship. But they were by far the best offense in the playoffs. They had a 118.2 offensive rating. That was even higher than their regular season offensive rating.

So their offense actually went up a level in the postseason. They had a 120 offensive rating in clutch situations. They stole games in clutch situations. Like everyone remembers the Lakers series as a sweep as they should. It was a sweep. But a lot of those games were close. I think three of the four were close, and the one that wasn't close, the Lakers had a big second-half lead, right?

So, like, coming back and winning games at the end with a reliable offense was a huge thing for Denver. They were eight and four in games in this postseason that evolved clutch situations. You guys might remember in game four of that Lakers series, Thai game, Nicole Yokic in the left corner, just bullies Anthony Davis to the basket for the would-be game winner. Miami in game five, as they closed out the trophy, I broke it down in our video after the game,

but that Yokich posed up against Caleb Martin against a switch for that easy layup to get the lead back after Jimmy made a fadeaway. After Bam scored, there was that Bruce Brown offensive rebound putback because Miami had to bracket Aaron Gordon on a boxout. Like, their offense had an inevitability to it and a consistency to it that mirrored the impact that we see from dominant defenses over the year. So I don't think you necessarily have to have the best defense anymore to win a title. But you either need to be unbelievably great on the defensive end of the floor or unbelievably great on the offensive end of the floor. You have to be dominant in one of those units to have a chance to win a championship and you won't find a team in recent NBA history that hoisted the trophy without one of those units being elite. Number five, competitiveness. I always talk about this, or define it as hating losing more than you love basketball.

basketball's fun. When you go play pickup, it's fun. When you go shoot around, it's fun. It's like one of my favorite sports in the world, well, it is my favorite sport in the world, but one of the things that I think makes it such a popular sport around the world is we can all throw headphones on and go out to a park or go to L.A. fitness, and you can shoot around by yourself and have a great time because basketball's fun. But basketball games, they're nasty.

And a lot of times in order to avoid losing, you have to do some things that are not, fun, like engaging in physical battles all over the floor, attention to detail, effort, focus, energy, those kinds of things, right? So how much fight does your basketball team have? How much are they willing to give an extra effort when they're exhausted? How could, like that Laker team drove me insane with their inconsistent effort. One night they'd come in and mail it in, and then the next night they'd come in and dominate. I literally picked every single game of the Memphis series and the Golden State series correctly and to the tune of what the games would look like just because I was so familiar with the cadence of the way the Lakers brought effort.

And I hated that about that team because they were competitive, but they weren't competitive enough to bring that nastiness on a daily basis. That nastiness is what carries you in the rock fights. And I don't think it was a coincidence that the Nuggets and Heat, two of the most consistent effort teams in the playoffs, it to the finals this year. The Nuggets ended up winning what, like eight of their last nine games in the postseason? They didn't mail anything in.

They didn't conserve energy. They came out every single night and wanted to murder you. And that's why they got the trophy. Same thing with the Miami Heat. Competitiveness is a prerequisite to winning in the late rounds of the NBA playoffs. It's something we should look for in basketball teams moving forward. Number six, experience. Young players still don't win in the NBA.

NBA playoffs. Michael Porter Jr. was the only player under the age of 25 to play over 100 minutes in the NBA finals this year. And guess what? He was the only guy who really struggled. He averaged under 10 points a game on just 33% shooting. Relative to his regular season performance, he was the guy who struggled the most. Why is that? I look at it kind of based around a cliche. Like, oh, young players don't know how to win. Older players know how to win. That's a cliche, but what does that mean? What, like, what does it mean for a player to know how to win, and how does a player reach that point? To me, I always refer to it on this show as scar tissue. As a young basketball player, you win and lose a lot of basketball games, right? But you haven't

lost enough yet to really know why you lose, right? Like, you're a 23-year-old. I'll give you as an example. I'm on a men's league team now that has a bunch of grown-ass men and we win the championship almost every single time and we very, very rarely lose games. But it's because we're a bunch of guys in our 30s who played in college and we just have a really good basketball experience that we lean back on. When I was a kid, when I was like in my early 20s, I would play in the same men's league with a bunch of other guys that were my age, young kids in their early 20s, and we get our ass kicked all the time, particularly by older teams. And then we go over the sideline and we bitch and moan about how many touches we're getting. And it's like,

oh, you shot the ball too much or you didn't pass the ball enough and all this kind of shit. And it's like, well, actually, we probably lost because we weren't really connected enough defensively, didn't run back in transition, didn't make, yeah, yeah, didn't make the extra pass when the guy was open. didn't compete on the glass, like, uh, didn't know how to attack his own defense when an old man team brings out his own defense. Like those were the actual reasons why we lost, but we're too stupid and young and immature to look in the mirror and accept those things as reasons why you lose. So what happens is, is over the years you build up scar tissue, you lose and you lose and you lose and you

lose. And every time it fucking hurts. And you just, and you just take that to heart and you remember why. and eventually it clicks for you. Eventually it clicks. And then suddenly you start to realize like, oh, we won today. Why did we win? Oh, we won because we were doing these little things, right? Every player, by the time they reach their mid to late 20s, especially when they're playing basketball as much as professionals do,

they do learn. And they start to understand what it takes to consistently win basketball games. And so they have, they approach games with an attention to detail. When I go up and I play in a basketball game now, and again, it's just, it's just a stupid men's league, right? But you guys know how crazy I am about basketball. So, of course, I take it seriously. Every time I approach the game with this, like, incredible attention to detail as it pertains to the little things that win. When I was 22 and I'd go up to the gym or 19 and I'd go up to the gym for one of those men's league games, it's like, I hope I score 37.

tonight, God, I hope I get some cool dunks, you know, like you're just, you're just an idiot. It's no different than anything else in life outside of sports. When you're a young kid, you're an idiot, and you don't realize it, and then suddenly you reach the point where you learn and you look back and you're like, ugh, like, why was I thinking that way? Why was I doing things that way? Kids just struggle with that particular concept. And so I don't think it's a coincidence that we see teams that, like the Memphis Grizzlies, for instance, that win a bunch of regular season games just on the strength of their talent and their athleticism. And then they consistently get into these slowdown playoff series against veteran teams

and just get beat in the margins. And they'll still have these crazy games, like these blowout wins, like they had in game five against Golden State last year, like they had in game five against the Lakers this year, but then they can't replicate that. They don't realize why they won. They don't know how to attach the correct reasoning to their result and learn that moving forward. That's why I call it scar tissue. The pain of loss leads to scar tissue that helps you do the things you need to do to win.

And so when we see teams that have a bunch of young players in the rotation, win a lot of regular season games, we should probably realize that that means they cannot win an NBA championship in all likelihood. Again, I don't think there's an arbitrary cutoff. I don't think it's just because Michael Porter Jr. hasn't turned 25 yet, but I don't think it's a coincidence that he was the youngest, real rotation player in the series and the guy who struggled the most. There is no specific cutoff date.

I just think as a team, you need to have experience, and you need to not be relying on too many young players in your rotation. It's okay to have a couple of them. We've seen that. We saw the Lakers have a lot of success with Austin Reeves and Rui Hachamura, although they're both 24. You know, we saw the Warriors last year with Jordan Pool getting big minutes. Like, it can happen.

But the overall nature of the team, the character of the team needs to be a grown-up and experienced basketball team. Number seven, you need to have above-average role players. I'm just going to list some teams, some recent NBA champions. And pay attention really quickly to which of these guys was on a veteran minimum contract and which of them was not. Nuggets, KCP, not on a veteran minimum. Michael Porter Jr., not on a veteran minimum. Aaron Gordon, not on a veteran minimum. Bruce Brown on a mid-level exception.

So they're core role players. None of them were just cheap dudes you pick up for free that don't have any impact on your cap space. The Warriors, eight really good players, Steph, Clay, Jordan Poole, Andrew Wiggins, Draymond, Graham on Green, Kavon Luni, Gary Payton, the second, and Otto Porter, Jr. I'm pretty sure Gary Payton, the second, Autoporter, Jr., were the only two veteran minimums in that group.

Kavana Luni makes a decent amount of money. Obviously, you're a core four guys for the Warriors, make a lot of money. It's important to have very good role players behind your stars. The Bucks. Drew Holiday, Chris Middleton, Yonison Tenacumpo, obviously is their big three. But then they had Brooke Lopez and PJ Tucker, Pat Connitton, and Bobby Portis, the Lakers, LeBron James and Anthony Davis, but they had Contavius Caldwell Pope. As Nuggets fans know, Danny Green, a guy who's making $15 million a year. Alex Crusoe was a dude. They picked up undrafted, but Kyle Kuzma is the guy that costs money, Rayjean Rondo, Dwight Howard, like there are only a handful of veteran minimum contracts in that group. I think out of all

the players I listed, I think there were like five. So when you see your team talking about like, hey, let's get a third star and let's round out the roster with veteran minimums, okay, feel free to try that if you want, but none of the recent NBA champions won that way. They won that way with a couple of really expensive players on the top and then a bunch of mid-level salaries and maybe one or two are in minimum contracts. The vast majority of these teams have really good players down the roster. You need really good basketball players behind your stars to win an NBA championship. Number eight, coaching. Coaching played a huge role in these playoffs. Obviously, we talked a lot about Eric Spolstra, making opposing stars uncomfortable, his really smart spacing concepts,

clearing the side for Jimmy Butler so that he had really good confidence as he was kind of going to work off the dribble. He was the first guy I saw successfully use. zone in large doses in the NBA playoffs. I thought Mike Malone did some really good work throughout the playoffs, although he didn't need to make many adjustments just on account of the fact that their team was so damn good. But remember when LeBron was cooking them with ghost screens with Austin Reeves to attack Jamal Murray, and then he switched over Jamal Murray onto Dennis Schroeder so that it wouldn't

be on a movement shooter so that he wouldn't be able to run that same action? Or when Eric Spolcher was denying the high post in their zone sets. And so they just moved Yokic down to the short corner and either had him flash high or stay down and try to drive the zone. Darwin Hamver, Steve Kerr was a really interesting playoff series earlier in the playoffs where they were making all those adjustments around Steph Curry and Anthony Davis trying to pull Anthony Davis away from the rim or contain Steph Curry in pick and roll. I thought both of those guys did really good work throughout the playoffs.

And then we saw the opposite of that. We saw Mike Boodenholzer just letting Jimmy attack True Holiday on an island without double teams. We saw Joe Missoula refusing to ignore PJ Tucker in the Sixers series until game six. So you got to see the best of both worlds in this particular playoff run. I think you need to have a head coach that can make the opposing team uncomfortable and find ways to avoid the same thing happening to your team, which leads perfectly into number nine, versatility.

You've got to give your coach ammunition for adjustments. You have to be able to play multiple ways. We saw Cleveland lose. The Cleveland Cavaliers dominate all season and then lose because they were incapable of creating a shot out of anything other than high pick and roll. And so as soon as Tom Thibbido found out that he could kind of leave those weakside corner shooters and just kind of defend the pick and roll three down two, Cleveland's offense just died in the first round. We saw Boston have similar issues against Miami as they

struggled to find different ways to attack when Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown were struggling. On the defense event, we saw Joel Embed, the great rim protector that he was all season, really struggle as soon as Boston pulled him away from the rim because he wasn't capable of defending that context. Teams are going to force you away from your bread and butter, and you need to be comfortable switching gears to a different tactic and having success with that tactic. That is a talent thing. You need to have the requisite talent to be able to play multiple ways. Like Denver's offense is a great example of this. They can run through Yokic in the post. If you run drop coverage and you stay glued to the role man, Jamal Murray can kill you with pull-up shooting. If you play up onto that pull-up jump shot,

you're opening up the pocket pass and Nicole Yokic is going to kill you. If you, you switch it, they can just go down to Yokic in the post or Jamal Murray can work out of ISO. If they put a great defender on Jamal Murray that's causing problems, you could switch and start running action for Michael Porter Jr. and for Contavius Caldwell Pope. They can go to Aaron Gordon when they move a smaller defender over at Aaron Gordon. He dominated in the post in this playoff run. They just had so many different ways they could play offensively. It literally made them unguardable. Last but not least, continuity. Each of the four NBA finalists, from the last two years, the Celtics, the Warriors, and the Heat, and the Nuggets,

involved groups of core players who had been playing together for years. Why does continuity matter? I believe that talent is flattening out across the league, just by virtue of their being so much talent. And then also, with the new CBA, that's just going to get more and more dramatic as the years go by. You're going to see more and more talent parity across the league. And what is going to be the separating factor? In my opinion, basketball teams that know how to play.

play together well. There is a rhythm and flow to basketball like we always talk about. And that rhythm and flow with basketball becomes instinctual to players that have been playing together for years and years and years. It's the, the reeds become consistent. You find out where guys like to cut, where guys like to relocate on the three point line. When you run two-man game, Jamal Murray and Nicole Yokic have literally run thousands of ball screens and dribble handoffs and inverted ball screens. Those dudes just, they've done it so many times. They don't need it's just second nature to them at this point. And the same thing goes on the defensive end of the floor

as you learn how to have a similar kind of expectation for your teammates on the defensive end of the floor. Continuity is beginning to take over in the NBA. And it'll be really interesting to see in this particular offseason how many teams really shake things up versus try to bring all the same guys back. As someone who roots for the Lakers, I'm hoping they kind of just bring everybody back.

And then, yeah, like if you have an opportunity to, flip up, like, if DeAngelo Russell comes back for 20 million and Rui Hachamura comes back for 15, and yeah, you can flip two guys for a really good guard or a really good star, like, yeah, maybe, but like, dude, bring your players back and just hope they learn how to play better basketball together. Again, most of these series are decided by smaller margins than we think. If you really look back at it, the margins are usually pretty tight. Playoff series are decided by tiny, tiny gaps. I mean, Philly was up big and had a really good chance to win in game six against Boston.

They lost that series. You don't think those guys are haunted by some of those moments. You don't think Golden State looks back to game four against the Lakers. You don't think the Memphis Grizzlies look back at game four against the Lakers as a missed opportunity. Playoff series are defined by the tightest of margins, and continuity is another great way to gain an advantage. So, recapping really quick, size and strength, top-end ball handling, an elite unit, either on the defensive end or the offensive end, competitiveness, experience above-average role players, coaching, versatility, and continuity.

Those are the 10 things that we are going to use every time next year when we're starting to examine a team and their ability to win an NBA championship just as a kind of like a baseline for us based. Again, like I always say, the best indicator of future performance is past performance. That's how we learn from the past and help to better predict the future. All right, guys, that is all I have for today. I am hopping on a plane and going up to Bozeman and hanging out up in Montana for the next five days. I will be back late on Wednesday, so we're not doing anything that night.

I will have my stuff with me in case of catastrophe, knowing my luck, I'll probably land in Bozeman and LeBron James will ask for a trade or something stupid like that, chances are. But if nothing happens, I plan on taking the whole stretch off. we will be coming back on Thursday to cover the NBA draft with the nerdsash guys and with Colin Coward. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys. And I'm going to enjoy this break. And I'll see you guys next week. The volume.

Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and 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 I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast'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. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, listen to learn the hard way on the

IHard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHart podcast.