The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Reaction to Nikola Jokic & Nuggets massive Game 3 win vs. LeBron James & Lakers

Episode Date: May 21, 2023

Jason Timpf reacts to Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets' 119-108 victory over LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals. Jason discusses Jamal Murray's incredible first half, how Nikola Jokic has dominated Anthony Davis, and whether this series is finished heading into Game 4. #volume #herdSee 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. 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. It 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 you're 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, unfiltered conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard,

but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHard 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. The Volume. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at The Volume.

Happy Saturday, everybody. Covers of the Western Conference Finals here at Hoops tonight is brought to you by Chase Freedom Unlimited. How do you cash back? Well, the Denver Nuggets go into Los Angeles and are the very first team in this playoff run to beat the Lakers, and they did it kind of convincingly. The Lakers kind of let go with the rope there at the end.

I'm not going to lie, as someone who's rooting for the Lakers, I'm a little bummed. But at the same time, as a basketball fan, I think it's really cool what the Nuggets are doing. And I'm excited to dive into that because the Nuggets are an unprecedented championship contender. I think they're going to win the title, and they're going to do so without a very specific requirement

that every modern NBA champion has had. So I want to dive into that concept. What makes the Nuggets this unprecedented type of championship contender? 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. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason LT. So you guys don't miss any show announcements. And if for whatever reason you guys miss one of these videos and you can't get back

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Last-minute tickets, lowest price, guaranteed. All right, let's talk some basketball. So, first of all, I just want to say, obviously the series isn't technically over, but I do believe that the Nuggets are going to advance to the NBA finals, and I actually am most likely going to pick them to win the title, of who comes out of the Eastern Conference. So I want to start by just saying congratulations to all you Denver Nuggets fans. There are a bunch of you out there who have been supporting the show over the course of the season.

And I'm sure for a lot of you listening to me during this series, as a Laker fan, it's been a little weird because obviously I'm going to bring my fanhood to my fanhood to the table. But I just want to say congratulations to you guys. Beyond this season, this is going to be a really fun team for you guys to root for for several years moving forward. And when you really look at the timeline stuff with this group and we're going to get to that in a minute,

like there's a very bright future here. And I'm very, very happy for you guys. So let's talk about this roster a little bit because, again, there's a reason why I didn't pick the Nuggets to win this series above and beyond the Laker matchup and why I would not have picked them to win the title going into this playoff run, even if the Lakers weren't involved.

And it's just rules. You know, my dad raised me on a simple idea. The idea that the best indicator of future performance is past performance. So when you're projecting or planning for things, you should go based on, you know, what the past has taught you, right? And it's just a good way to try to avoid potholes and pitfalls in life and try to navigate safely, right? And one of the things that, you know, I've learned, that we've all learned covering the league is like, you don't win if you don't have a top 10 defense unless you have an otherworldly talent advantage, which the Nuggets don't. They're a fantastic basketball team, but no one's comparing this team to the 2017 Warriors, right? And I was on

with Mark Ryan with CBS Sports Radio earlier today. And he goes, why do you think so many people have underrated the Nuggets or haven't picked them to win? And I told him, I was like, look, all of these basketball analysts out there, they have a job, so to speak, to cover the league and to learn and to try to project forward with those things, just like we're talking about. And they're all following the same rules. And by the way, we're talking a lot of analysts pick the nuggets to win this series, but not very many people pick the nuggets to win the title.

And that's kind of what he's referencing. And what I told him is like going into the field, right, with the field of 16 teams, you know, you've got the team who won the title in 2021. That top 10 defense, elite rim protection, you know, superstar talent, all the things you look for, right? You got a team in the Boston Celtics, who was two wins away last year. Elite defense, has rim protection,

has star talent, all those different things. You have the Golden State Warriors, the defending champion, who have the same core seven players that hoisted the trophy last year, have elite rim protection, bona fide superstar talent, all those things. The Los Angeles Lakers,

LeBron James, and Anthony Davis, and good role players, who won the title in 2020, and once again, elite rim protection, elite defense. So we had a bunch of teams that were just safer bets, you know, like, and that doesn't mean, like, the people who picked the nuggets to win the title, obviously they're prescient in a lot of ways, but the point is, is like, it's not disrespect to the nuggets to learn from the lessons that

NBA history has taught us and to pick accordingly. That's why I picked against the nuggets. But here I am now, and I've learned. I've learned that I was wrong and that all of us were wrong, right? And that's what's interesting to me. How does a team that finished 15th in defense and has by far the worst defensive front court of any recent NBA champion? Why is it that I think that team is going to have the Larry O'Brien trophy in three weeks? Why?

I want to dive into that a little bit. So I wrote down some notes. And the first thing I wrote is become truly unguardable. this Laker team has really high-end defensive talent. And they run these lineups where it's Anthony Davis and LeBron James flying around in the backline. They've got another big forward, whether it's Vanderbilt or Rui. And those are actually better forwards than the 2020 Lakers had. And defensively at the guard position, they're not as good as they were in 2020,

but they're better at the forward position, right? And more importantly, this particular team has a bigger defensive identity, simply because that's the only way they can win games, struggle so much offensively at times, right? And there was never really a stretch where the Lakers shut down the nuggets. There were stretches in 2020 where they shut down the nuggets. There were stretches against the Warriors and Grizzlies where they shut down those teams.

The best defensive stretch in this series was the first half of game one, and they still got 48 points. You get the point. Denver has become truly unguardable. And I think it stems from a couple of different things. perfectly complimentary stars. So when the Yokic Murray action takes place, you have no good option. If you switch, you're going to switch a forward onto Jamal Murray who can attack,

or you're going to switch a small onto Nikola Yokic who can attack, right? If you sit in a drop coverage, you're going to concede shots. If you step up on those shots, you're going to leave the roll open to Yokic, and if you help on Yokic, and this is the pivotal part, Yokch is such a good playmaker, and even Jamal Murray, who, in college averaged more turnovers than assists has become a good playmaker, six assists per game in this postseason run. And this is part two, not just guys who can shoot off ball, deadly off ball threats. Like, cannot leave them open off ball threats. And Contabius

Calvo Pope and Michael Porter Jr. Michael Porter Jr. was like 1.3 points per spot up possession this season, which was top of the league for the vast majority of the season. that's how good Michael Porter Jr. is. He's absolutely devastating, deadly, if you leave him open. And then Contavius Cobble Pope, and again, I have been telling you Nuggets fans all season. I covered him with the Lakers in 2021, one of my absolute favorite role players. I said at the time of the Russell Westbrook trade, that KCP was better than Russ right then. KCP and Kyle Kuzma were both better than Russ right then.

That's how much I value Contavius Cobbo Pope as just a guy who can lock and trail, play individual defense, attack closeouts extremely well, knock down threes at a high clip, hit movement shots coming off a triple handoffs, one of the best transition defense and offense guards that there is in the league, and he was absolutely deadly in his catch-and-shoots situations in this series. Then Aaron Gordon, the one guy that's technically not a shooting threat, he's amazing at everything you need to be amazing at

in order to be effective in an off-ball role when you're not a shooter. and that is the ability to offensive rebound, but also to get deep seals inside when they need him to, and he's got the ability, he's like in the NBA 2K video games, which I used to play a lot more when I'm younger. I can't remember the last time I did, but they used to have a metric for standing jump, right? It was like standing vertical and running vertical, I think,

or something like that. Like Aaron Gordon's standing jump, his ability to rise up from directly under the rim, regardless of where he's at and finish, is as good as anybody you'll find in the league. And so it even became an adjustment that the Nuggets were able to attack where, like, Anthony Davis is on Aaron Gordon so he can help. But, like, Jamal Murray just has to get to the rent and just kind of throw something up.

And as long as Anthony Davis comes over, Aaron Gordon is competing against four smaller players to try to get that rebound and finish it, right? Especially when LeBron James was spending time on Michael Porter Jr. Or if LeBron is the one who got beat by Jamal Murray for whatever reason, right? So, like, Aaron Gordon made himself a threat off the ball by virtue of his unique skill set and just how hard he plays. And so when you really put it all together, they're unguardable. There is no good option to defend that team. That's why I think they're going to win in the NBA finals.

Like, to Darvinham's credit, and I, Darvinham is at a good postseason, and I don't agree with everything he's done. Like, he bet. Darvinham was at the roulette table and kept picking red and it kept going black and he kept going red because he just thought Dilo's going to start making shots eventually, right? Nope. Bruce Brown's made twice as many threes in the series as D'Angelo Russell. We'll talk a little bit more about that matchup in a minute. But you get the point. Like he bet on D'Angelo Russell eventually getting hot and that making all of the other bad that came with it worth it and it just never happened, right? Same thing with Jared Vanderbilt.

He was never able to really slow down Jamal Murray and hurt them too much on the offensive end of the floor. So if there's one thing I'd be super critical of with Darwin Ham, it's just a simple fact that he failed to make this particular adjustment. But he's been good enough in the postseason that I don't think it's fair to do that. And again, there's a version of that that works. And you can kind of conceptualize what he's thinking. Jamal Murray is shooting our face off. We need somebody to guard him.

Let's try Jared Vanderbilt. You know, like, we need guys to hit those kickout threes with the way that Nuggets pick and roll coverage works. We need DeAngel Russell to start hitting shots, and it just didn't pay off. But again, and so as we look at that starting group for the Nuggets and the way that they've become unguardable, even in and of itself, that's not enough, right? If you're unguardable, you also need to be able to defend well enough. And I credit a couple of different things here. schematically, I love the way they use Yokic in that high drop. So Yokic is not a good rim protector.

Certainly not compared to his peers, but just in a vacuum, he's not a good rim protector. But what's genius about the high drop coverage that they use, and they use at various points in the series, they dropped him further back. But what works with his high drop, and they use the high drop a lot during the regular season, is it's like, okay, you can't protect the rim. Let's not protect the rim. let's just have you be the guy that you would typically be, you know, usually when you guard a pick and roll three on two, you're bringing another guy over from the weak side to be super aggressive, right? Well, they're basically telling Yokic, like, you got one job.

Like, when the dude comes over the top of the screen, you kind of dissuade that pull up or catch that driving lane, right? And then your job is just to get the defensive rebound. And they just fly around and rotate around him. and KCP's a good defender and Aaron Gordon's a good defender. I was really impressed with Michael Porter Jr. in this series defensively. Jamal Murray is pretty bad defensively, but they give him a job that he's capable of doing, which is basically just chase over the top, right? And it all just works, and they got enough stops.

And so, again, like, as we learn, like we got to learn, we got to evolve as things evolve, right? So obviously as we go into next season, regardless of what happens, we have to consider the Nuggets as a legitimate championship threat, right? despite not having rim protection and despite not being a top 10 defense, what is the pathway there, become truly unguardable, find a way to defend well enough? And it's literally that simple. So the age-old question,

can your offense be good enough that you don't need to be elite defensively to win? I think the Nuggets are actively answering that right now in front of our eyes. The only scenario where I see them not winning the title is if they just go really cold on jump shot. And that's always a threat. But if there was a team that was going to make them cold, it was the Lakers. Why? The Lakers are better defensively than Miami, and they're better defensively than Boston.

Denver's going to get better looks against both of those teams. And so right now, I think they're a runaway favorite to win the title. Let's move on to the Battle of the Bigs. So through three games, it's become abundantly clear that Nicolioch is just way better than Anthony Davis. Even in this game, AD was better than Yokch for three quarters, and then AD no-showed the fourth quarter, and Yokic, despite having nothing going, pushed through and made a couple of big shots,

a couple big rebounds, a couple big plays in the fourth quarter to seal the deal. Yokch is better. He's just better. Now, a lot of Nuggets fans were on me before the series. Why did you say Anthony Davis is better? Again, these are just my rules. I have my rules for the way that I recognize the best player in the world.

For me, I give credence to the guy with the trophy. you'll appreciate that when Yokic has the trophy and some other guy is playing well chasing his tail and I'm saying let's give the respect to Yokic until this guy actually takes it away from him that's the way it works for me and again like every there is no like Bible or like religious texts

that describes the way that basketball players are ranked I have my rules you guys have your rules I'm just going to tell you how I look at this stuff for me with my show moving forward I'm going to always give preferential treatment to the guys that have been there and done that, especially at a championship level. If Nicoliochich hoists Larry O'Brien and gets the finals MVP trophy, to me, he's got, I don't care if he, I don't care if he averages 12 points a game in the regular season next year.

I just don't. Like, that's my rule. Anthony Davis, I will say this. The gap was more than I expected. I knew there was always a scenario that Yokic could outplay AD, but I was really disappointed in Anthony Davis in this series. I think both him and LeBron James have to go back to the drawing board offensively. You know, it's funny, the regular season is not the end-all, be-all for postseason basketball,

but it is revealing. You learn in the regular season. For instance, the Lakers were a great defensive team. the entire season after the trade deadline. Not a big shock that they went into the postseason and they were good defensively. They were a terrible transition defense team. Are you stunned that they were a bad transition defense team

in the playoffs? Like, that doesn't make sense. LeBron James and Anthony Davis remarkably declined as jump shooters. LeBron kind of more of like a one-year slump. He's been pretty damn good as a jump shooter for the last decade, really. this particular season couldn't make a damn shot.

And Anthony Davis hasn't been able to make a jump shot since the bubble. Like, are you stunned that the two guys that couldn't make jump shots all season couldn't make jump shots in the playoffs when they needed to? Like the regular season does teach us things. It's not the end-all be-all, like I said, and I try to sift through it to things that apply to the playoffs. And like, like, D'Angelo Russell, for instance, like you've seen that there's a ceiling to what he can accomplish as the competition goes up.

So you got to sift through it a little. little bit, but there are certain things that we learned. The habits of a basketball team, those are the habits that you rely on when the chips are down. Like if you all season long never ran back on defense, what makes you think that when the chips are down, you're suddenly going to start running back on defense? It was part of their identity, and it manifested on this stage. LeBron James and Anthony Davis weren't going to suddenly start making jump shots. And LeBron, in particular, his slumps really drag out for a while. For whatever reason, I don't have any good explanation for it.

But no matter what, LeBron James and Anthony Davis have to go back into the lab this summer and fix their jumpers. It's funny. We're not going to talk deep about the Lakers offseason right now. I'm going to save that for after they get eliminated. But no matter what, any personnel-oriented things won't matter nearly as much as the fact that when they ran into Nicoliochic, he was just better. and I believe that LeBron James, when he has his jump shot going, can at least come close to Nicolioch's impact in his 21st season, right? I believe that Anthony Davis, the one from the bubble,

can at least come close to Nicola Yokage's impact in the postseason. But without their jump shots, neither of them are dependable offensive players. I broke this down in our last show, the game three preview. but like Anthony Davis, it used to be you threw it to him on the block and he turned and faced and it was over a point per possession. Now it's like two-thirds of a point per possession. It's a significant decline in shot creation. Those two guys have to go back to the drawing board. But one of the biggest lessons that we've learned here is Yokic isn't just better than Anthony Davis. He's way better than Anthony Davis. I'm not going to apologize for ranking AD over him to start the series because that's my rule.

Just like I wouldn't apologize if I ranked Yokic over another player and that player outplayed. played Yokic over the course of a series, I would proclaim the other dude after the series is over, right? That's just kind of the way I'd do it. But we definitely learned a lot about that. Jamal Murray, he's either on a ridiculous, unprecedented heater, or he's just a lot better than we thought. Maybe he's closer to Devin Booker than he is to that tier of, you know, guys who put up numbers that aren't very good, like the Dejante Murrays, the Bradley Beals, the Zach Levine's, the Jaumaranes, of all the... those other guards of the two guards and one guards of the league that put up numbers but

aren't really considered all-stars. Like, Jamal Murray, I think he's legitimate. I think this is legitimate. I mean, everyone wanted to undercut everything that happened in the bubble. I thought that was lame from the beginning. It's a loser mentality. But Jamal Murray made a ton of shots in the bubble. Got hurt.

In the time since coming back from injury, like every other dude who gets hurt has gone through some growing pains, right, as he's been working his way back into rhythm, he played like a bona fide superstar in the series. He destroyed the Lakers in that first half. Just lit them on fire. I think he's a legitimate star. And that's another big part of why the Nuggets are succeeding despite their defensive shortcomings.

They just have an obnoxious amount of firepower. As always is the case, basketball is a team sport. so don't overlook the contributions down the roster. Bruce Brown absolutely punked DeAngelo Russell in this series. Got in his head, got him off his game, outshot him from the perimeter, dominated the game in the athleticism areas. There was a sequence I was watching the game with the buddy. And there was a play where LeBron, I think,

it was either LeBron or Austin tried to throw a lob to Anthony Davis. and Anthony Davis like missed it over the front of the rim and tried to go grab it on the other side and like three nuggets are in there knocking around at the ball and the nuggets secure the loose ball. Very next possession, Jamal Murray takes like a, they go down the floor, Jamal takes like a mid-range jumpshot floater thing

that's like 10 feet away from the rim, kind of bobbles the ball and loses it and gets it up on the rim and Bruce Brown in a thicket of people just jumps over Austin Reeves, gets the ball and puts it back in. And I look over at my buddy and I'm like, These rim confrontations, Denver's been winning all series long.

Like, loose balls. And again, this is the thing, because the Lakers did this to Golden State, where they fatigued them into looking like a shell of themselves. The Nuggets physically pulverized the Lakers and wore them down to the point where they looked like a shell of themselves. I was so impressed by them in this series. But yeah, Bruce Brown. absolutely destroys DeAngelo Russell.

Look at how much better Aaron Gordon is than Jared Vanderbilt. Look at Contavius Caldwell Pope versus the contributions of like Dennis Schroeder and Lonnie Walker. Like down the roster, this was an outclassing. And that's how you end up 3-0. I used to call game, I still call Game 3 the Buzzsaw game, right? Whenever a good basketball team goes and plays in front of their home crowd and is far more desperate, it's whenever the home team goes up 2-0 and you go back in game 3, that's the hardest game to win. Because it's desperate home crowd, like there's a huge gap in motivation, like you're going to get a better whistle, all these different things.

And they overcame that. The only way you do that is if it's down the roster outclassing. Yokic outplayed Anthony Davis. Jamal Murray shot so well that he basically played LeBron James to a draw, right? Austin Reeves was awesome, so was Contavius' Caw a Pope called at a wash. right but down there it's like Bruce Brown destroys DeAngelo Russell Aaron Gordon destroys Jared Vanderbilt just down the roster they were better that's how you go up 3-0 in a conference finals so again shout out to the Denver Nuggets shout out to Nuggets fans I'm happy for you guys

I'm looking forward to covering this team on their path to what I think is going to be their first NBA champion a championship with this core like I said not going to talk too much about the Lakers until they get eliminated but I do have a lot of thoughts about the roster and how they should proceed. But again, I'm not going to get into that tonight. I want tonight to be about the Nuggets. So, all right, guys. That's all I have for tonight.

I sincerely appreciate you guys. We're going to be back tomorrow for game three of the Eastern Conference Finals, and I will see you guys then. 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, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer, street or 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. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care which 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 excited. to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfilled with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to The Clifford Show on the IHeard 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. On the Look Back at a podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84's 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. It was a wild year. It 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. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.