The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - USA-Serbia Reaction: Kevin Durant explodes, LeBron & USA cruise by Jokic | Olympics

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Jason Timpf reacts to LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Team USA's dominant 110-84 win over Nikola Jokic and Team Serbia at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Jason discusses Kevin Durant's epic return (21 first-half points), Steve Kerr's decision to not play Jayson Tatum, and Joel Embiid's continued struggles with Team USA. 3:15 - Introduction 6:45 - USA blows out Serbia 26:15 - Kevin Durant dominates in return 30:00 - LeBron & Team USA rolling 35:15 - Jokic great, Serbia can't hang 40:30- Jayson Tatum doesn't play 49:30 - What's happening with Joel Embiid? (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.) #Volume #Herd   Follow Jason Timpf on social: https://twitter.com/_JasonLT https://www.instagram.com/jtimpf15/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Deposit and eligibility restrictions apply. See terms and responsible gaming resources at dkng.c.com slash baseball. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Monday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great start to your week. Well, Team USA had a very entertaining first game of pool play in the Olympics against Serbia as they win by 26 points. We're going to be breaking that game down from a bunch of different angles.

I'm going to start by just kind of going through the entire game. Then we're going to talk about the decision to bench Jason Tatum and why I disagree with it in some of the different angles that people are taking to try to make their case in that debate. Kevin Durant and his return once again just shows this uncanny ability to just step back out on the basketball floor after taking time away to nurse an injury, and then just immediately look like Kevin Durant as he comes out red-hot. And then at the tail end of the show, Joel Embed, once again, goes minus eight in a game.

His team wins by 26. The obvious sore thumbs sticking out on this Team USA roster, I want to talk a little bit about some of the specific reasons why that has been the case. So a bunch of Team USA stuff today. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight 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. Don't forget about our podcast feed.

We have your podcast on our hoops tonight. Don't forget it's also helpful if you leave a rating in a review on our podcast feed. And last minute least, keep dropping mailback questions in the YouTube comments. We're going to record one at the tail end of this week to carry us over the weekend like we usually do. All right, let's talk some basketball. Actually, I have one last note before we get started. So we came up with a decision for player rankings in the way that we're going to do it. So we're just going to do an in-a-vacuum list, meaning we're going to do a top 25 players list

that strictly evaluates the basketball players and how they contribute to winning in a vacuum, irrespective of the talent that they are surrounded by. Then, to address that, like, kind of like bragging rights issue, we're just going to do one episode at the tail end of that where I tell you guys who I think is the bragging rights champion of the year, meaning the basketball player that accomplished the most individually within that season and deserves the recognition at least, the bragging rights, so to speak, of being the best player in the world. I'll give you guys the candidates that I think are up for that position,

and then we'll talk about which player I pick for that spot. So that's our workaround. We're not going to do two separate top 25 lists. We'll do one, and then we'll talk about who is the guy who has the bragging rights. We're going to start releasing that stuff when I go out of town for the summer, which is from August 8th to August 8th. I'm actually going to start working on the list tomorrow, but we're going to kind of bank all that stuff and just start running it

while I'm out of town towards the tail end of the month in August. Because this team USA thing moves pretty quickly. There's the South Sudan game on Wednesday, then they play Puerto Rico on Saturday, then it's quarterfinals on Tuesday, semi-finals on Thursday, gold medal game on Saturday, and that's it for Olympic basketball. And so from that point, we have the rest of the summer to work on player rankings,

and then pretty quickly we're going to be in September, and we're going to be doing our season previews and starting to deep dive into each individual team, all the changes they made over the course of the summer and what we can expect from them going into next season. And before you guys know it, we'll be in training camp when we get to early October. So those are just some scheduling notes for the next couple of weeks. But for the rest of this week and going into next week, we're probably just going to focus on Olympic basketball. I'm probably going to try to find some time to cover some other teams other than Team USA as well. We'll see how that goes over the course of the next couple of weeks.

All right, Serbia, USA. Let's get into it. So as we expected, Steve Kerr finally went with a more typical rotation instead of his line shift. So like at the first time out, he put in just Anthony Davis for Joe Alambi. Then after that he brings in just Anthony Edwards, I think for Devin Booker at that point, it might have been for Drew Holiday. But just like bringing in one guy at a time, maybe two guys here, two guys there, more of a traditional basketball rotation instead of the line shifts that he was doing like a damn hockey team in the early part of exhibition play, right?

Which, again, that's to be expected as he's just basically testing out line-up combinations and seeing what works, right? These are the real games, these are the ones they have to win. It also looked a lot like the last game against Serbia, where Serbia came out with just an insane amount of defensive pressure to start again, picking up full court, trying to jump passing lanes, being really physical with ball pressure in an off-ball situations. They knew that one of their best advantages was we might just play harder than these guys. That was what we saw in the exhibition play. That's what we saw yesterday. And they,

if you guys remember in the exhibition play, they got a pick six on Steph for like an inbound playoff where they took the ball away from him and went down and got a layup. They did the same thing to start the game yesterday as well. They had another steal on a Joel and B. lazy inbound pass. They're very forward aggressive, trying to capitalize on sloppiness and lack of effort from Team USA. But one of the things I talked about in the last game was that's a very exhausting way to play. Not only that, like, it's a, it's a, it's a style of play that most teams don't use in large doses, especially old, grown men, professional teams, because they're older, they need to conserve energy resources. A lot of these European teams, athleticism is not really

their strength. So that's not what they lean into. They lean more into execution and playing, uh, playing like really smart in the half court, you know, uh, basketball in terms of change of pace and just setting really good picks and using your size, using your IQ, all that kind of stuff. It's kind of unusual, right? And so one of the things you'll notice is if I asked you to shoot 50 catch and shoot threes right now, or let's do a smaller number, 10 catch and shoot threes, but you're nice and warmed up, but you shoot 10 catch and shoot threes. You're going to shoot a certain percentage on them, right? But if I asked you to sprint up and down the court 10 times first,

and then I asked you to go shoot 10-3s, like, you're going to have trouble. Like, there is a muscle memory that you rely on that depends on your legs feeling a certain way. It depends on your arms feeling a certain way. And that muscle memory can get disrupted in a lot of different ways. Really, physical games can disrupt your muscle memories. You get all keyed up from the adrenaline rush of physical confrontation. Really fast-paced games can affect you in terms of, like, if you're, if you're, a team that's used to playing slow and then you run into the Steve Nash Phoenix Suns, they run you

you up and down the floor and all of a sudden you're exhausted and you're not making the same shots that you usually made. Playing with out, outside of norm defensive energy, that can be something that disrupts your typical muscle memory in situations like that. And so I thought it was really interesting in both games that in the exhibition and in this pool play game, that Serbia came out gangbusters, playing with insane effort, kept together. game close for about a half, but then the bottom fell out, and the main issue was the inability to knock down decent looks from the three point line, right? Now, that was exacerbated by the fact that the USA team shot extremely well. They made over 50% of their threes. That's why they won by

26 points, despite falling down 10 to 2. But Serbia also did not shoot well. But again, I like to think that these things are connected. You guys know me. Like, I'm going to make sure that we acknowledge the existence of luck within shooting, but we're going to prioritize actual controllable factors before we start to talk about luck as the driving force of the outcome. I tend to think that when you try to play like that, it's really hard to, after you're jumping passing lanes, picking up full court, doing all this crazy, intense defensive energy stuff to then suddenly slow down and trust your muscle memory to knock down a jump shot. It's just really difficult, right? So that ended up being the issue. Serbia ended up falling apart late in the game, especially as fatigue became a

factor. Kevin Durant checked in when it was 20 to 14 and immediately got hot. And they, one of the things I liked about it too is like, Katie didn't come in gunning trying to take tough shots. His first two shots were both clean looks in catch and shoot situations. The first one was ball screen on the left side of the floor. Ball got swung to the corner. Katie's man rotated because the corner man, the guy who's guarding the cornerman, had sucked into the paint to help guard that possession. Katie's man dropped down. I think it was Drew extra pass up the wing to Kevin Durant, wide open on the wing, knocks down the catch and shoot three, right? The second one that he got was actually off of a really interesting set that Steve Kerr had them run coming out of a sideline

out of bounds, and it was kind of a very interesting example of five-out offense. So the end-bound the ball, I think it was to Derek White in the right corner. And then Bam and AD both, both go to run and set a double staggered ball screen for Derek White in the corner. But bam just quickly slips out of it, runs to the opposite dunker spot. Anthony Davis sets the pick. Derek White comes off. On the weak side, we had Kevin Durant in the corner and we had Anthony Edwards on the wing, right? So you have three-man action, two guys spotting up on the weak side, right?

Now, in a typical, like, kind of standstill situation where everyone's just kind of watching, it's easy for those weak side defenders to suck into the paint and to be in a position where they can help but also recover. But by design, Steve Kerr had Anthony Edwards cut off of that weak side wing right as the action was taking place. So there's just a lot of ball and player movement. You can imagine it. And by the way, I clipped this play.

It's on my Twitter feed at underscore Jason LT. You guys can find. I only clip two plays from the game. But you can find that on my Twitter feed if you want to see a visual example. But as Derek White's coming off the screen, bam slips to the opposite dunker spot and ant cuts through. And all that is is just off ball player movement. And I had someone respond to the tweet.

Because in the bit, let's talk about what happened on the actual play first. Ant cuts through. A KD's man actually ends up following Ant through the lane. So KD ends up wide open on the left wing. Derek White hits him. KD knocks down the shot, right? Easy offense. But the whole whole.

I had someone that responded to the tweet, and he said, isn't that just a defensive mistake? Yeah, you're right. It absolutely was bad defense. But that's the point. When you're guarding off ball, it's a hard job. You got to see man and ball. This is why you do shell drill when you're in college and when you're in high school. They still do it in the pros. This is why you do close-out drills. This is why you work on defensive positioning, where you are one pass away, where you are two passes away, where you are when you're the lower. man in pick and roll situations, all those things get repped out because off-ball defense is difficult. You've got to track multiple things at the same time. Now imagine that I am guarding a player that doesn't want to cut, that doesn't want to relocate, that doesn't want to set an off-ball screen. It's really easy for me to be like, he's over there, he's going to be over there. So I can kind of key in on this play, and I know if the swing pass goes, I literally know where I'm supposed to close out to because this dude's not moving. But when there's ball and player movement, it's much

harder to track man and ball as guys are going through. And if you watch on the specific play I'm talking about, as Ants cuts through, Antsman is down at the nail helping on the ball screen. Super common coverage you see in professional basketball, right? As the guy's coming off the ball screen, the guy who's one pass away just sinks down to like kind of around where the foul line is so that he can dig down and try to disrupt things but also close out, right? But he's trying to track Ant and the ball. Ant cuts through and gets behind him. He's not paying attention.

He's digging down at the nail as Ant is cutting through. So then KD's man is like, oh shit, Ant's cutting through, I'm going to have to go with him because Ant's man's not paying attention. So then he follows Ant on the cut, then KD is wide open. You see the point. The idea there is, if Aunt Katie just stand, it's easy. I think it was Bogdan Bogdanovich, who was guarding Ant on this play. It's easy for Bogdan to sink down into the lane and dig down and not really give up that much of an opening, right?

But as soon as there's off-ball player movement involved, it makes it a tougher job. Same sort of thing if you just imagine the interchange. Because this one was just a set play, right? This was a set play, sideline out of bounds. We're going to run this double drag for Derek White coming out of the corner. we're going to have bam slip the screen. We're going to have Ant cut off the wing. We're going to have KD relocate.

We're going to get an open shot out of this. That's a set play. But in traditional five-out motion, you're supposed to do this sort of thing instinctually. So like if they're in free-flowing offense and Drew brings the ball up the floor in semi-transition and they just happen to run a ball screen and Ant and KD are on the weak side,

if Ant is more willing to just set a pin down for KD as KD comes up and they exchange, or if KD backscreens for Ant, or if they cut, or if they do any sort of like movement on the weak side, it makes it that much harder for those off ball defenders. You can imagine in a pin down situation, now both of those guys are talking, they're communicating a switch, or maybe they're communicating a hedge,

whatever it is they're communicating. They now have to worry about what's going on over here instead of keying in on what's happening on the strong side where the ball is. That's why that's so important. I actually thought it was really fascinating, because I don't know if you guys saw this morning, but Kevin Durant was getting into arguments on Twitter again with people, and he was specifically getting into arguments about running organized offense

versus freelance offense, right? And this is something we've been talking about a lot on the show recently. And Katie was talking about how the beauty in the game is guys just playing and it's not as structured, but there's reading and reacting. And Katie was making points. He was saying, like, that doesn't mean just standing around. He's like, guys can cut and screen and relocating. Kate, despite that not being actually a set part of the play, that's read and react basketball.

KD is right. However, where I disagree with KD is there has been an extensive amount of statistical analysis done on this specific debate. And one of the things that I talked about Cranches, Tim Cranches, who covers the Lakers, did an immaculate job, like an incredibly detailed job, breaking down the difference in efficiency on a per possession basis, when they run a set, like an actual organized offensive look versus freelance, like just dribble up the floor and do your own thing. That gap is pretty wide. It's pretty wide around the league.

And so I agree with KD in the sense that like the entire purpose of a set is to get an advantage. So if you just bring the ball up the floor and you see a quick advantage, whether that's a transition cross match or just because you're pushing in transition, the defense isn't set yet so you can attack before they get their, actual set half court look on defense, whatever it may be. Yeah, you want to have balance. KD actually specifically said that in his debate this morning on Twitter. He said it's about balance. And he's right. You want to have a good amount of like freedom for guys to take advantage of advantages that appear naturally in the game. Oh, I'm dribbling the ball up the court and the wrong

dude picked me up. He's too small. Or, oh, I'm bringing the ball up the floor. The guy guarding me is clearly tired. I'm just going to rise up into my transition pull up three. KD made one of those right before the half. It was a two-for-one situation, caught the dude on his heels, just rose up into a shot. Yeah, you want to have freelance, you want to have freedom baked into your offense for guys to capitalize on advantages that naturally appear, but it does take a certain amount of discipline to understand that freelance basketball is generally less efficient than organized basketball, and you need to run organized basketball. Now, where it gets tricky. If you guys remember from the Jaime Hakez interview,

Jaime Hakez talked about how in the NBA with the shorter shot clock, sometimes you only have a chance to get the ball up the floor and run one or two actions and then you have to get a shot up on the rim. And he's right. And so there's a timing element to it. Did you get the ball up the floor quickly enough to be able to run organized offense? Or is it one of those things where you have a certain advantage? There's only 12 seconds left. It doesn't make sense to try to back out

and run something organized. You want a free flow. That balance is an important thing to try to strike as a basketball team, but in general, I think most teams are a little too high on the freelance and not high enough on that organized offense piece, and I do think that's an area of opportunity that you see around the league, because just like that play I talked about where Aunt cuts through and it gets KD the wide open three, just something stupid like saying like, hey, you want to run the ball screen, that's fine. But every time we see KD dribble up the right side of the floor and call for a ball screen, we need to have two or three kind of preset weak side actions that these guys are

running consistently instead of just standing still so that we can just squeeze a little bit more juice out of this. Because that's really the point is like if KD running a static ball screen in a freelance situation is worth 1.05 points per possession. But if we run a weak side cut, a weak side relocation, or a weak side screen, it bumps it up from 1.05 to 1.25, then you you bet your ass that I want my coaches and I want my my my my uh I want basketball teams to try to squeeze that little extra bit of efficiency out of it right and so I I know that's a of a huge like a detour in this in this discussion but I found it super fascinating in light of the debate that Kevin Durant was having on Twitter this morning because that's kind of one of the things

that's going around the league right now like how important is it to give your players freedom to play freelance basketball versus the realities of how efficient organizing basketball is because organized basketball makes it harder for offball defenders. End of story. To that person who quoted responded to my tweet. You're right, it's a defensive mistake. But that's the whole point of running offense. You run offense to get the defense to make a mistake.

And when they make a mistake, you have an advantage. Then you can play read and react out of there. And to KD's point, that is where the beauty of basketball takes over. When you run a set and the set generates an opening, then that, so let's say, let's say you run that exact same set and Katie gets a wide open catch on the left, but a dude throws an excellent rotation and a great closeout. Katie has to drive the closeout. And then you get a nifty off ball screen or a cut or a relocation that ends up getting somebody open.

There is beauty in the flow, but in order to really get into the flow, you need to get the defense and rotation. And it's generally easier to do that when you run an organized offense. And so that's why it's a more complicated topic. Preparing for your upcoming fantasy football draft, Do you wish that you could wave a magic wand and somehow know who exactly your league mates are going to take? Well, with Draft Intel from Fantasy Pros,

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I don't care which I'll say it. 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

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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. Listen to stuff to blow your mind on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Katie gets two clean looks and catch-and-ch-shoe situations to start, right? The one on the right wing on the extra pass, the one off-the-set play.

Then from there, that's when he started to flow into the tougher shots. took a one dribble pull-up going to his left in the middle of the lane, knocked it down. Took that pull-up three in ISO against the backup center at the top of the key, knocked it down. He had a contested catch-and-shoot three against Yokic in the left corner. He had a one-legged fade-away on the right elbow area. The two-for-one right before the half takes the pull-up,

or it might have been right before the end of the first quarter. I can't remember exactly. But it takes the pull-up three with like 32 seconds left. I think it was before the half. And then he had that crazy shot as he cut along the baseline, and he, like, caught and turned into, like, a right shoulder fade right before the half. It's a beautiful example of, like, you want to build your rhythm through easy shots, and then you want to go into the tougher stuff, right? And, like, this is something that KD has always had a really good grasp on. Katie doesn't come out and just start taking super tough jump shots.

He works his way into the flow until he finds his rhythm. then he starts to see how far his rhythm can carry him with the higher level shot making that he is capable of. Having him out there, and I think he's going to end up starting before too long, if not literally on Wednesday, but having him out there just fundamentally alters, it fundamentally alters the spacing of the unit

because he's like on this team, he's like a super juiced up version of Michael Porter Jr. He's doing a lot of work off the ball, but we're talking about one of the most deadly spot-up guys literally in the history of basketball doing his thing over there. Like 23 points on nine shots. I'm always amazed, specifically with Kevin Durant, I'm always amazed by his ability to step on the floor and immediately be in rhythm.

So any of you guys who have played college basketball or high school basketball and have had an injury know exactly what this is like. This is something I see with like the vast majority of NBA players. Think about your favorite NBA team. And then you hear like Lakers fans, like, hey, Rui Hachamura has been out for two weeks with this injury. He's coming back tonight. What do you expect from Rui Hachamura in that situation? You expect him to look like Rui Hachamura, meaning physically he's going to look like Rui Hachamur on the court,

but he's probably going to be rusty, right? You expect him to probably go one for four from three, not three for four from three. You expect him to look a little tired sometimes. You expect him to make a few defensive. mistakes. You expect him to miss a couple reads because he's adjusting back to the speed of the game again. You expect that with everybody. Well, Braun, like forever,

I remember it would be like he'd take a day off or he'd take a couple weeks off to nurse an injury and he'd come back and it's like it's like he's mishandling the basketball, the jumper's not quite there. Like, that's a super typical thing. I had a foot injury before my second year playing in college.

I was terrible in the first semester. I was way better in the second semester because it's just really hard to go from being hurt to getting back to like the full idealized version of yourself. Katie has has this bizarre superpower. And I mean, the best example of it was the 2019 finals. The dude misses a month, a basketball, and then steps onto the floor in the NBA finals, in a must-win game against one of the best defenses in the league and just smooth, just comes

out, starts hitting shots and has 11 points like that before he ends. up having the Achilles injury. Like he, it is remarkable, his ability to just walk into incredible high stakes, high pressure basketball and just look like Kevin Durant. It's one of the craziest things I've ever seen. I literally don't know what to make of it. And it was super fun to watch him out there yesterday alongside the rest of Team USA. LeBron again was amazing.

The transition pushes are the main one that are standing out to me. He literally looks like old freight train LeBron with his ability. to just get that head of steam and drop that shoulder, get those little angles and then power through people for left-handed finishes and right-handed finishes. He's still operating as the hub at the top of the key and hitting cutters. A big one that you'll see is like, again, just like an off-ball screen where you have a shooter come off and then the screener will slip.

And like he hit Ant for a foul on one of those. He hit Drew Holiday for a wide open layup on a great example of what I'm talking about in terms of off-ball player movement in trying to bait defenses into making mistakes. this was the second clip that I pulled and put on my Twitter feed. Basic action, LeBron at the top of the key. Drew Holiday goes and sets a pin down for Steph Curry. Steph Curry's trying to come off for a three. Both defenders miscommunicate the switch.

They both run out with Steph. Drew Holiday slips. He's wide open. LeBron hits him wide open layup. And you got to have a guy that can like kind of make those reads and can see over the top of the defense and actually get the pass on time and on target. LeBron's done an amazing job with that. In the second half, you really started to get that pick and roll chemistry with Anthony Davis going.

He had one on the right wing where he hit Anthony Davis. He got a left-handed layup. He hit Anthony Davis for a lob dunk at one point. LeBron is just continuing to do a masterful job of just orchestrating this team USA offense, 21.7 rebounds and nine assists. Another monster stat line for him, just 13 shots. Devin Booker, I thought, hit a couple of huge threes early in the game and help situations that kind of loosen things up when the USA team got off to a slow start.

Steph's gravity, just him running around has been a huge help. I talked about the play. Again, like, the reason why those two defenders make that mistake of running out with Steph so that Drew gets open is because as a defender, you're terrified of Steph getting open and you're going to default or if you're going to make a mistake, you're going to accidentally leave the other guy open. You're never going to accidentally leave Steph open. And so that's gravity. That's just that's just the inherent like fear of Steph's shooting ability that creates opening else, opening. elsewhere on the floor. And just in general, he's running around like absolute crazy throughout the game,

and it's just creating openings. There was a dribble handoff with LeBron where his man is top-locking him. It's on the left wing. His man's top-locking him, making it really hard for him to fight over. He curls around LeBron. LeBron does a nice job of, like, pivoting into the DHO to get some more contact on Steph's man. Hit Steph with a bounce pass as he's going towards the rim.

That draws him Beds Man over. he drops it off to Embed, easy little short five-foot jump shot generated by just Steph being willing to run and run and run and run. And it's just helping to keep things open. Drew Holiday hitting open threes, he had 15 points, his cutting. One of the things that I've talked about a lot with Drew Holiday with the Celtics, and they do this with Derek White too, but Drew Holiday has a really good grasp of openings to cut and not be lazy and go to the three-point line. Generally speaking, you feel like you're doing your job by standing at the three-point line because you're giving three-point spacing. But as I've always said, three-point shooting, while it is the most efficient shot outside of the rim, it is not as efficient as shots at the rim.

Those continue to be by far the most efficient shots in basketball. There's a play. Steph ended up missing a three on this sequence. But Drew Holliday is running up the right side of the floor. His man's playing a little on the high side. There's nobody under the basket, and there's nobody in the corner. And Drew sees an opportunity. He could run to the corner or just stay on the wing, and he's still spotting up and creating

spacing, right? But his man was playing on the high side and staring at the ball. And so Drew's like, screw it, I'm just going to cut to the basket. Cuts to the basket, catches underneath, all the Serbia dudes just close in on him. He ends up throwing it out to Steph. Steph gets a wide open three. He just happened to miss it. But like, Drew has just been a really nice connective piece on this team because of his ability to cut,

because of his ability to make those extra passes. There was a play where one of Joel Embed's good plays in this game. Joel Embed cuts in the middle of four. Drew Holiday cuts back door. Embed beautiful pass to Drew on the cut. That draws LeBron's man and help. LeBron cuts and Drew drops it off. LeBron gets a dunk.

Again, you'd think Mbid posting, what if Drew and LeBron just stayed on the wing in the corner? Yeah, that's technically creating space. But what do I say off ball? Cut, relocate, screen. Those three things make it a lot harder. for the off-ball defender. Drew cut. His defender got lost as a result that forced LeBron's man to step up. LeBron could have been like, I'll take a corner three. No, why would I take a corner three when

I can get a dunk? That's worth two points every single time. He cuts back door. That's two cuts instead of two spot-ups that leads to a dunk instead of a three that might be worth 1.4 points per shot for a good shooter, right? So like, these are the kinds of things that I think are vitally important. And like, Steph is doing that all the time. He's just running. and sprinting and running and sprinting. Drew's doing that. He's cutting. That's what I like about that starting unit. Like Drew, Steph, and LeBron, they're like professional cutters. That's what they do. And that sort of thing has just kind of helped loosen things up for that offensive unit. On the Serbia front, like I talked about, same thing that happened last time. They just got really,

really, really, oh, one last note on Drew Holiday. Drew Holiday's defensive pressure continues to be really impressive. He had two steals that both led to pick sixes. He ripped Yokic on a post up right around the foul line that led to LeBron getting a dunk. then he jumped a passing lane and got a left-handed layup out of it. I think Drew's been amazing. Like, it's interesting on a team like this that he just seems like he has to start, but he just does. Like, I think Drew,

I think Drew just has to start on this team. Serbia, the cold shooting, again, same thing that happened last time. The swarming of Yokich, again, Team USA is just constantly throwing three of the best possible dudes in the world

that you can throw at Yokic. I think Embed's a little overrated defensively, and I think that's been on display in this team USA situation. situation, but he's one of the few big bodies that can kind of make things tougher for Yokic in the post, and he still had 20 points in eight assists. Serbia played Team USA even in Nicole Yokic's minutes. He played 31 minutes. They were even. They got outscored by 26 in the other nine minutes, which is insane. He had nine post-ups for 14 points, including passes. That equals 1.5, 6 points per possession. Just Yokic continues to be incredibly impressive. The one thing that

continues to concern me with him, though. One for seven on jump shots against Team USA. Struggle to knock down jump shots in the exhibition game as well. That's the one thing with Yokic that I can't figure out. He just has not shot the basketball well since he won the title in 2023. And I think he's going to have to fix that, especially in light of some of the personnel downgrades that Denver is dealing with going into next season. The NFL seasons right around the corner.

We'll be breaking down all the offseason storylines on the Colin. Howard Podcast. My best takes, guests like my buddy Nick Wright, check out the Colin Coward podcast, part of the Volume Network, available on Apple, Spotify, 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.

A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care which I'll say. Yep, that's me, Clipper 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 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 what 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 tauntons 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 podcasts. All right, two topics that I want to hit before we get out of here, Jason Tatum and Joel. So Jason Tatum gets a DNP, coach's decision. And this was a big surprise to me. Now, before I get into my kind of rationale on it, I, you know, just kind of tried to dig around and see what people were saying in terms of what the rationale behind what Steve Kerr's decision was.

And the main case that I saw floating around was like, Katie wasn't ready to start. So Katie would typically start, but he wasn't. So Katie was kind of in that bench forward role that Tatum would typically be in. And then Devin Booker, they considered to be like a better ball mover, a guy who's like a really quick decision maker in five out. And again, that's really what I think drives most of this for Steve Kerr. There's a lot of like Celtics fans that are that are making it like, oh, the Warriors are just mad because the Celtics are kicked their butt last year. This is a jealousy thing. I don't think that's the case, guys. Like the Warriors beat the Celtics in the finals two years ago. There's no reason for them to be insecure about this matchup. They beat the Celtics on the biggest possible stage to win the title. They're just old now. That's why they're bad. That's not an issue. So I don't think it has. has anything to do with that. I don't think Kerr has some sort of personal vendetta against Jason Tatum. I think this is about basketball worldview. This is something I talk about all the time. Like, I have a basketball worldview. I have a specific way that I like to play that I think teams should play. But, like, that's not the only way that teams think and that team strategize and that teams want to play. That coaches strategize and that coaches want to play. Everyone's got different strategies here. And like, and I think, I think in retrospect, we can look at the

way that the Golden State Warriors have played and look at it and go like, wow, like, often Steve Kerr would leave two of his forwards on the bench. He'd go with like, he'd have, you know, Moody and Caminga on the bench, and then he would have Brandon Pazamski, Steph Curry, and Clay Thompson all out there at the same time. And you're like, wow, they're way too small and not athletic enough. But what Steve Kerr is thinking there is Steph lightning quick decision maker, lightning quick read and react guy in five out, same for Clay, same for Pizamsky. That's what he's thinking. I think that that Jason Tatum as a guy

that has a little bit of a tendency to catch and hold, I think that Steve Kerr just kind of like doesn't like his play style as a fit within Team USA. I don't buy that though. I don't think that's nearly enough of an excuse to leave a guy who is at here's the thing do i think do i think do i think tatobs a top five player in the world no he got first team all NBA because his team has five 30 million dollar players and they won 64 games i do not think jason tatum is one of the five best basketball players in the world but like in this setting he's still a guy that absolutely has to be in this rotation he's at least a top 10 player he's in that six seven eight nine range he belongs in this rotation

He specifically plays a need. You can't justify starting three guards on a team that has Tatum, LeBron, KD, Anthony Davis, and Bam. All guys that can play the, like, Bam and AD can play the four. LeBron can play the four. There are lots of minutes at the three available. That is a misallocation of resources to have a top 10 player that plays a specific position of need. You're starting three guards, Steve Kerr. You're starting three guards.

And yeah, like Tatum is a bit of a slower decision maker than most, but I still think he's above average at reading the floor. I know he hasn't played as well with Team USA as he's capable of. He's still in this nightmare, shooting slump, his form is all jacked up, he's got a hitch in there, he's got multiple hitches in there. His form looks crazy. He's got bad misses, jumpers off the reservation, but he still brings so much to the table.

We're going to talk about Embed, in a minute. The MB thing is so much more complicated because he's struggling on both ends of the floor. He's janking things up for them on offense and he's not doing enough on the defensive end of the floor. Tatum is an elite defensive rebounder and an elite front court defender. So like there's literally no excuse. That lack of like quick decision making is not nearly enough of an excuse in my opinion to leave a player of this caliber on the bench. You can't D&P Tatum and start three guards. That is, that, that is, that, that is, that, is a decision that I can't get behind.

And so, again, what I would do, I think you start Kevin Durant and Devin Booker's spot. I think that's a very simple shoe and fit there. Now you don't have three-guard lineup. KD makes sense with the starters. Then you put Tatum in KD's slot with the bench guys. And again, this is not about the Celtics. Like I saw Bill Simmons saying that like Jason Tatum should be in LeBron's spot running the show because Tatum won a lot more games. That's stupid.

Like, you swap LeBron and Tatum this year, the Celtics still win the title. They have $5.30 million players. We don't need to overthink this. Like, it's not about what Tatum deserves in terms of what he accomplished in the NBA. It's about the fact that Tatum is too fucking good to leave him sitting when you're starting a three-guard lineup that is getting rolled at the start of every single game. Slide Katie into the starting lineup, put Tatum in with that bench group, make sure he gets his opportunities, he's too good of a player. to not take advantage of what he brings to the table. But I think this is all about Steve Kerr's offensive philosophy.

He's obsessed with lightning quick decision-making and his blender of an offense and Tatum is a little too deliberate. And I think as a result of that, Kerr has favored his guards. That's why he's playing Devin Booker. That's why he's playing Derek White. That's why he's playing Drew Holiday. Guards from birth are trained to be lightning quick decision-makers.

That's what guards do at every level. And so I think that's why Steve Kerr just kind of gravitates to those sorts of guys. I actually think, like I said, I think it's hilarious in retrospect watching the way that he was coaching that Golden State Warriors rotation. And again, this is the thing. There are different basketball philosophies, guys, like I talked about earlier. Like, there's a tradeoff. Steve Kerr knows the tradeoff. Steve Kerr knows that when he decides to play three guards, whether it be with the Warriors or with Team USA,

say. He knows he's making gains in offensive decision making and quickness. He's making gains in ball handling. And he's losing ground in physicality, defensive rebounding, transition athleticism. Like he's making a tradeoff, right? And we, by the way, we've seen the opposite version of that. The 2020 Lakers were the exact opposite version of that. They sacrificed ball handling and quick decision making and had some moments where they struggled in half-court offense, but they had Alex Crusoe and KCP and Danny Green, LeBron and Anthony Davis out there.

They were so damn big and so damn athletic. They were a monster defensive team. They were a monster defensive team. They were a monster transition team. That was a trade-off that Frank Vogel took. Frank Vogel said, I want to lean into my team's strength, which is size in mobility on the perimeter,

size and mobility underneath the basket. We're just going to be a wrecking ball physical team, right? And that's the thing. Like Steve Kerr has looked at a very similar roster. Steve Kerr could do that with this group. Steve Kerr could look at this group and he could go, I'm going to go Steph Tatum, KD, LeBron, AD. We're just going to be huge.

We're going to switch everything. We're going to lean into that. He could go super athletic. He could bench KD. And he could go, we're going to go, AD, BAM, LeBron, Tatum, and Anthony Edwards at the point. And be like, offense can be a little janky, but we're going to beat the shit.

shit out of people because we're bigger and stronger and faster at every single position. Like he has different angles he can go. And it's very clear to me, again, I don't think this has anything to do with Kerr having hangups about the Celtics or about Tatum. I don't think this is anything to do with what Tatum accomplished with the Celtics. I think this is strictly just a basketball philosophy that Steve Kerr has. He prioritizes quick decision making on the perimeter, therefore he has gone with more of his guards instead of his forwards.

but there's no justification. Look at the course. Look at the course. The guard core on this team is Steph and Derek White, Drew Holiday, Devin Booker. The forward core on this team is LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Jason Tatum, Anthony Davis, Bam, at a bio. I would argue that's the strength of the roster. Lean into size, lean into your forwards. So there's no excuse for having Tatum outside of the 10-man rotation. Has nothing to do with him winning the title. Has nothing to do with winning 64 games, has nothing to do with making first team all NBA. It had his everything to do with the fact that he's too good at basketball to leave what he brings to the table on the bench. All right, let's talk some Joel and Bid, and then we'll get out here. So we got off to

slow start again, missed a little short jumper on a catch and pick and roll. He missed a couple of free throws after getting fouled underneath the basket by Yokic. He got beat to the rim by a small guard in drop coverage. He was in drop coverage, but he was standing really upright. And then this little unathletic guard just went right around Embedged. made a layup off the glass. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? Like, this is the bare minimum of what they have to get out of you in this role. He immediately, on the same play, gives up the layup, takes the inbound pass, and just throws it right to the other team,

and they get another, they were down 10-2 like this. Like, it was a complete disaster. He was minus 8 in a game that Team USA won by 26 points. That's legitimately hard to do. And again, like, guys, like, Embed has had high moments with this team. He's had good moments. He had good moments in this game with the backdoor cut pass to Drew Holiday that led to the dunk for LeBron. He had an and one little right shoulder fade against Yokic.

He hit a little pocket pass or drop off pass short jump shot off a pass from step. Like he made, he had a big block on a play where a guy got behind him and he swatted him off the glass out of bounds in the second half. Like Embed had his moments, but it's these disastrous stretches of mistakes like he had at the start of the game. You can't afford to go down 10-2 in single elimination back. basketball. That could get you beat. That could cost you a gold medal. And so this is like a legitimate concern that I have for this team. And like, and here's the thing. I don't think it's that complicated. I still think that Joel Embed is a better franchise cornerstone, a better best player on the team than in B, than A.D. and BAM by a pretty sizable margin. But the reality is,

there are different ways to play the game of basketball. And what Joe Al-L. Embed plays with the Sixers, that style of basketball, is very different than the style of basketball the Team USA is playing. For instance, it's very similar, let's just take it like this. Put Embed on the 76ers. It's a brute force attack, right? Much less ball and player movement. The 76ers had the fourth fewest assists in the entire league last year by total assists. They're not a team that it's just flowing from side to side and there's a ton of ball and player movement. That's not what they do. Embed can catch, he can hold, he can cook, he can throw two or three jab steps, he can hit dribble combinations if he wants.

Why? Because the Sixers need 35 points and six assists out of him every single night. So it's a great fit for Embed there. If you took Bam and AD and put them on the Sixers, they're immediately a way worse team because they don't, they're not equipped for that style of basketball. That's not what they do. But if you put Embed on Team USA, they need him to set ball screens.

They need him to roll quickly into openings in the middle of the floor. They need him to make decisions when he catches there, quick decisions off the catch. They need him when another guard drives to quickly catch outlet passes and to quickly flow into the next action on the other end of the floor. They need him to sprint up and down the floor and transition. They need him to defend at a high level. They need him to rebound at a high level. Bam and AD, that's where they earn their money.

They are professionals at that kind of thing. That's why those two guys look excellent in this format, playing this style of basketball and imbid struggles. And this is different from the Tatum thing because it's similar to the Tatum issue, right? Like Tatum on the Celtics where they need him to be more of an advantage crater and more of a screener. It kind of like he's involved more frequently with the action. It makes sense for Boston, right? But there's two huge differences between the Tatum thing and the Embeddied thing.

One, a ball stopper specifically at the center position is the worst place for one in five out offense. that is the bridge guy. That is the guy that bridges the action from one side to the next. You need a ball mover at that position. And secondly, Jason Tatum is an excellent athlete who's very durable and in great shape and he excels at the dirty work stuff. Embed doesn't. He looks out of shape and he's struggling.

So like with Tatum, it's like you're willing to live with some of this because he's going to bring so much other good to the table. And Bede's been a borderline disaster on both ends of the floor. And like, we're getting to the point now, guys, like, the sample size is too small to just hope that Embed figures it out. Like, they play South Sudan on Wednesday, Puerto Rico on Saturday, quarterfinals on Tuesday, semi-finals on Thursday next week, finals on Saturday. That's five games, guys. We have five games left with this group. Like, there's not enough time.

Like, Embed is miles and miles and miles away from figuring out how to play this style of basketball. And so he's not going to figure it out before the end of the gold medal game. And again, if you keep starting him and you keep dropping down 10-2 to every single team, that could be something that's very dangerous when you get to the elimination round. You could make the case that Embed should be benched entirely. Both Bam and AD are better players in this setting, and you need to find minutes for Tatum. And an easy way to do that is stop playing three centers. If you play AD with the starters and bam with the bench guys,

Tatum, all of a sudden all these minutes open up for Tatum and then Steve Kirk can keep playing all the guards that he loves to play, right? You could argue it should be a LeBron AD front court and then a Tatum, bam, front court for the bench unit. You could argue that's the way it should be. But I don't think they're going to bench him beat entirely for all the obvious political kind of backlash that would come from that, right?

But you also can't keep starting him. If you keep digging a hole like that every game, that could be really dangerous when you get to the elimination round. So what I would do is just put Embed with the bench group. At least there you're surrounding him with more size and athleticism to cover for his defensive deficiencies. You can't play Embed alongside 37-year-old, about to be 37-year-old Steph and about to be 40-year-old LeBron.

Especially if you move KD in the lineup, he's getting old too. You can't just play Embed the out-of-shaped guy who sucks at the dirty work stuff alongside the old guys. Put him on the bench with Ant and Tatum and Bam and these freaky athletes. Put him out there with them. They'll cover for his shortcomings in the dirty work. And that unit needs help on offense. He can bring that there.

It's just less of a big deal if he co-op's possessions there. But again, this is not an indictment of him beat as a basketball player. He's one-dimensional in terms of his play style right now. He needs to play the style he plays with the Sixers. But he is a world-beater at that style. It's unrealistic to expect him to slot into a five-out, read-and-react, trust your teammates, keep the ball-moving type of offense in a few weeks when he's never done that in his career.

It's just hard to do. And so I'm not surprised that he's struggling. And I just hope that Steve Kerr makes the adjustment before it turns into an issue in the elimination room. All right, guys, that is all I have for today. Like I said, tomorrow I'm going to start peeking at player rankings. I'm also going to start taking a look at some of the other Olympic games, see if there's anything worth hitting on that front. as always, I appreciate you guys for supporting the show.

The game plan for the rest of the week on Wednesday, South Sudan game. I think I'm going with Colin Coward after the game. So it's very possible that we won't have a show until Thursday morning because I'll be going with Colin that day. And I plan on doing a mailbag late in the week. I don't think we'll cover Puerto Rico because it's just not an interesting enough matchup. And then we're going to head into next week, and it's pretty quickly going to be the elimination rounds.

It should be fun from there. Again, I appreciate you guys for rocking with me. I will see you on Wednesday. What's up, guys. As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting hoops tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us. But if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it. 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. 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 excitement to my brand new podcast. The Cliford Show. This is a place for raw, unfilled of 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 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 it podcast. For 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. 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.