The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Warriors Bounce Back + Kawhi Looks Special

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

Jason reacts to the Golden State Warriors losing a strange game to the Denver Nuggets without Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray followed up by an impressive win over Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks without Steph Curry. Jimmy Butler was incredible offensively and Draymond Green led the charge defensively. Then he discusses the Los Angeles Clippers getting a great win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, Kawhi Leonard looking like he has his legs back, Donovan Mitchell's struggles, and more. Timeline 4:15 - Start 5:15 - Nuggets/Bucks 28:15 - Cavs/Clippers (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.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey guys, it's us. The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas.

We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it. But, you know, tired and sick. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.

you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. 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 ice. Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Winning on Clay is an art. The rallies are relentless. And at the French Open, only the toughest survive. I'd know. I competed there for decades. Join me, Renee Stubbs, on the Renee Stubbs tennis podcast for no-nonsense breakdowns of the biggest matches, the toughest players, and the moments that define Roland Garris. She can win.

She's an outsider to win the French fame. And she likes Clay. Listen, Lina Rubakina is arguably the best player in the world right now. And I actually can win on any service. Listen to the Renee Stubbs tennis podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. The story I've told myself can then shape my behavior, and that can lead me to sabotage the possibility of connection. This Mental Health Awareness Month, tune into the podcast deeply well with Debbie Brown.

If you've been searching for a soft place to land while doing the work to become whole, this podcast. is for you to hear more. Listen to deeply well with Debbie Brown from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. When it comes to college basketball in March Mania, one thing is for sure.

Nothing's for sure. Upsets, buzzer beaders, Cinderella's advancing, topsees going home early, it's all going to happen. Bet the unexpected, every upset, every day with Draft King's sportsbook, with live betting, exclusive content, promos and parles. Draft Kings is the ultimate college basketball destination for March. Ready to make your first bet? Check out the matchups and pick a team to win. It's that simple.

I'm a big Arizona Wildcats fan, born and raised here in Tucson, Arizona. I'm a little skeptical about them on the offensive end of the floor, but they looked really good on defense again last night against Kansas, so I'll probably be betting on them this time around. First time, here's something special just for you. New Draft Kings customers bet $500 in bonus bets instantly. Bet the unexpected with Draft King's Sportsbook. Download the Draft King Sportsbook app and use code hoops. That's H-O-O-P-S. That's code hoops for new customers.

You get $200 in bonus bets when you bet just five bucks. Only on Draft Kings, the crown is yours. Gambling problem, call 1-800 gambler. In New York, call 8778-Hope-N-Y or text Hope N-Y to 4-667-369. In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-78-7-7-7-7 or visit ccpg.org. Please play responsibly on behalf of Boot Hill Casino and Resort in Kansas. plus age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction.

Void in Ontario, new customers only, bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkng.c.c.c.com audio. Welcome to Hupes tonight here at the volume. Happy Wednesday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week. Just a quick show for you guys today.

We're going to be hitting two games from last night's slate. As the Golden State Warriors without Steph Curry put on a defensive master class against Janus, Dame, and the Milwaukee Bucks. We're going to be breaking that game down. I want to talk about some specific concepts in modern NBA defense and how it's a little bit more about a team concept than people are willing to give these schemes credit for. We're going to be talking about that. And then a little bit of my concerns surrounding Milwaukee in the big picture. Tail end of the show, we had a showdown between a red-hot Los Angeles Clippers team and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

And what was a shootout for most of the game until the Clippers were able to regain control with their defense late. really fascinating game that taught us a bunch about both teams. 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 show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast fee wherever you get your podcast under Hoops tonight. We also have brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We're releasing content throughout the year.

Make sure you guys follow us there. And last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions and the YouTube comments so that we can keep getting to them throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Warriors dropped a game a couple nights ago against the Nuggets at home without Jamal Murray and without Nicola Yokic playing for the Nuggets. And to be clear, my thoughts coming out of that game were this is March in the NBA. You're going to see this quite a bit in this time of year because it's like a funky phase where half the league already knows exactly what they are and are in some variation of cruise control where you don't know what you're getting any given night because they're either saying. saving legs for the playoffs or they're just not feeling that level of intensity.

And even for the teams that made big deals at the trade deadline, the newness is starting to fade. It's been over a month. And this is just kind of like this a lull that you're going to see. And you're going to see some weird results. Denver in particular has been a total shit show. Like they get smashed by the thunder, but then they beat the thunder.

Then they get smashed by the wolves. Then they nearly lose to the Lakers missing four starters. Then they do actually lose to the Washington Wizards at, home just to go into Golden State without Murray and Yokic and beat the Warriors who were red hot. It doesn't make any sense. That team is just bizarre. You're going to see a lot of general or a lot of weird results in general this time of year. Like the Pacers without four starters just went into Minnesota and beat the wolves at full strength. The Wizards also went into Detroit and beat a Pistons team at full strength a few days before their win in Denver. Although it's worth mentioning the

Wizards have some real stuff to start getting excited about with their young talent flashing some real two-way potential guys like Alexar really shooting the ball well from three, defending really well, Balakula Bali, Kishon George, Bub Carrington. They've got a bunch of guys that are popping for them. But the point is, is that it's March. And so there's a certain amount of weird result that you're going to see in there. And Steve Kerr informed us that Steph really just needs a night off and that he's been dealing with some back soreness.

And so the Warriors needed to beat the bucks last night without Steph Curry. And so conventional wisdom would tell you, you go into that game thinking you're going to win with defense, right? Take Steph out of the equation. You're going to put a probably a better defender than Steph into that rotation spot. Obviously, you lose the world on the offensive end of the floor, but if you just defend extremely well, you give yourself a chance. And that's exactly what the Warriors did. They held the Bucks. It's just 92 points. They had two separate 17 point quarters that they held them to. They responded to two separate Bucks runs with defensive runs. There was a late third quarter run where it was really the only phase of the game where the

Offense was in like really, really cooking. Dame had the pick and pop with Brooke Lopez going and Brooke was hitting threes. They had some two-man game with Dame and Janice, where they were passing well out of it. Yannis was drawing double teams in the post and passing well out of it. He made a nice pass to Brooke Lopez, who sealed the low man and got an easy layup. They were skipping the ball to Kyle Kuzma,

who hit three after three after three. It was just the one phase in the game where Milwaukee's offense just looked like it was getting easy stuff. And so they go on this run, and they go up 76 to 70, and then promptly the Warriors put the clamps on them and hold them scoreless for three straight minutes, and they regain control. And then something similar happened in the fourth quarter. The Bucks go on another run. This time, Janus is on the bench. Dame is doing a lot of cooking in ball screens. They cut the lead down to three, but the Warriors hold them completely scoreless over the final four minutes of the game as they pull away and win by 11. And so it was their defense that was able to completely strangle the bucks at these stretches

that allowed them in the limited offensive production they were getting under the circumstances to have enough to win that game. I want to start by digging into the concept of being in two places at once on defense. This is really the superpower that Draymond Green has used to become one of the best defenders that the league has seen over the last decade, right? We think of defense too reductively sometimes. A lot of times we'll think of it like, can I guard my man? can he guard his man? Do we have five guys that are all like elite defenders that can defend on an island

and keep defenses out of rotation and keep their defense out of rotation and so on and so forth? And there's a certain amount of that where you do need guys that can hold up one-on-one. Draymond got a huge one-on-one stop against Janus late in the game where he forced him into kind of a drifting, floating hook shot that he missed off the rim. But most of the best defenses that you'll see in the history of the league are centered around a concept that involves actually being aggressive on the ball, meaning like putting two defenders on the ball or overhelping, putting guys into situation

to make stars play in a crowd, but then those openings disappearing really quickly through excellent rotations and setting up the floor in a way where you have a plan for whatever it is that you're dealing with from the opposing star. And like, again, like, this is, think about Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City is the best defense in the league.

they're not just out there letting all their guys play one-on-one on defense. That defense is predicated on aggressive coverages, leaving openings that quickly disappear as you rotate out of it with your speed. I thought the Warriors executed this concept to perfection in this game. I thought it all started with Draymond, who did an incredible job on Janus Allgame, but especially in ball screens, where he was consistently able to get up to the level to defend the ball,

but to get back in time to hand up. Yannis on the roll. We saw a play early in the game where he got a block on Yonis, where he was like kind of trailing the play a little bit, and he jumped and squared up in midair to get a piece of the ball on the way down to force a miss. He had a huge one late in the game when the ball screens were getting pushed a little bit further out towards half court. Really good ball pressure from Gary Payton. They were pushing the ball screens out further to half court, and those rotations were more in like the short roll area. And Draymond Green, once again, showing up to the level, He lets Janus get past him, but he sprints back.

And by the time Janus actually caught it, Draymond had him squared up again. And then he was able to play one-on-one defense and forced Draymond into a tough fadeaway. Quentin Post, who had some issues defensively in this game, had a big one late where he showed on a ball screen. Brooke Lopez slipped out of it. He was slipping towards like the top of the key area.

And Post just sprinted back. It got back in front of Brooke, kept him out of rotation, forced him into a tough fadeaway jump shot that he missed. So again, that concept, the ability to be on the ball to force a star ball handler to get rid of it, but then also the ability to recover in rotation to where the opening is gone. That is the concept that makes an elite defense

reach that level. Is their ability to make you constantly feel like you're playing in a crowd while never actually conceding the openings that lead to the wide open shots that will cook you in this sort of situation? And then in those one-on-ones with Janus, Dremont is one of the few defenders in the entire NBA that has the strength and the quickness

to force Janice into actually taking over the top shots. We talked about this concept in the Thunder game, if you remember with Isaiah Hartenstein. With Janus, there's a specific amount of like, you need to have the strength so that when Janus sees those small openings, he can't just blow through your shoulder. But you also have to have the mobility to get to a spot so that Janus actually has to make a move, right?

Once you have the ability to slide your feet and hold that strength on that shoulder, you can flatten drives out with Janus. Once you start flattening drives out with Janus, it turns into drifting tougher contested layups. It turns into the hooks and the floaters that he can make and he's gotten better at them. But over the years, even with that improvement,

he's still getting less than a point per shot. He's still missing almost 60% of his hooks and his floaters and things like that. That big ISO stop he had late. Big possession. Janus against Dremon. On the left, you know, elbow extended area. Janus makes an aggressive move towards the right.

Drayman slides his feet, absorbs the contact, flattens out the drive, forces him into that tough little hook in the lane that he leaves short off the front of the rim. And again, like, we've talked about how Isaiah Hartnstein held Janus to his worst shooting game of the season. He held Janus to 47. percent from the field. Well, I should say

Hartinstein and the Thunder held Janus to 47% from the field, which was his worst shooting night of the season. Well, Draymond Green and the Warriors just held him to 31% from the field. 16% lower from the field than he has against anybody else in the NBA this season. Just a casual reminder that Draymond Green is still very much

one of the very best defensive players in the NBA. And, you know, the second place that you're going to see that be in two places at once type of concept. come into play is with gaping and closing out. I talk about this concept a lot, but gaping, all it is is if you're one pass away, meaning like you're in the driving lane, if there's a ball handler and there's a defender squared up with him, he's got a driving lane to the right and a driving lane to the left. If you're guarding one of the guys that's one pass

away, almost every defense is going to have you gap into the lane a little bit. So that person's going to step over and exist in the driving lane so that even if he does beat his primary defender off the dribble, he's just running into help. But in those situations, it requires really sharp closeouts to prevent giving up those wide open threes that can come from just a simple swing pass, right? I thought a perfect example of this was the late three, the tying three, that Gary Trent Jr. missed. Again, that could have tied the games. Ninety-six, 93, it was a little over two minutes left. Damon and Janus are trying really hard to run a cleared side pick and roll on the right side.

And it was hilarious because Janus is having a meltdown because Torian Prince would not get out of the corner. And he's over there just like waving like, get out of there. And so Torian finally clears out of the corner and they're set up to run their cleared side ball screen. Why, I've talked a lot about this. The bucks I think are at their best sometimes with Janus and some of his limitations as a playmaker to keep the floor in front of him. And so if you clear the side, then when he rolls into that space in the short corner, he's got the entire floor in front of him and he can just barrel downhill to the rim and have really easy passing rates available. That's why he's wanting that cleared side. He wants to roll into space, right?

So the warriors decide to defend it by icing. What that means is Gary Payton the second is going to completely close off the drive towards the middle and force Dame towards the sideline, where Draymond is going to be sitting in basically a deep drop coverage kind of right around the elbow extended so that if Dame drives, he's basically driving into a bracket. He drives into a bracket where Janice and Gary Payton are there kind of trapping. him on both sides. And then Janus has to roll not towards the cleared side. Janus would have to roll towards the middle, which is where all the traffic is. That's why teams try to ice those side

ball screens, right? So Janus flips the screening angle and tries to screen Gary Payton so that Dame can at least get towards the sideline with a little bit more of an advantage. So Draymond identifies it immediately and goes, oh, Janus flips the screen. I don't want Dame just gets screaming downhill. So Draymond rushes up to the level like he's going to blitz Dame coming off the ball screen. This causes Dame to panic, and Dame dribbles back out to half court.

But Gary Payton loses contain on him, and all of a sudden, Dame comes screaming downhill from the top of, from out by half court. As he comes screaming downhill, though, where's the next defender in the chain? It's Brandon Pajemski, who's gapping off of Gary Trent, right there

at the top of the key to help contain on the Dame drive. So Dame obviously sees the read and goes, I'm going to swing it over to Gary Payton, or excuse me, to Gary Trent Jr. on the left wing, right? But if you watch Pods, Pods identifies it in real time and he sees Dame picking up his dribble to make that swing pass, starts his rotation early, and ends up getting a great contest on Gary Trent's three. And again, that three would have tied the game. But because of the great contest from Pajemski, he rushed it. You can see Gary Trent rush the shot and he leaves it way short and ends up grazing the side of the rim and it had no chance of going in. And again, that entire play got blown up because you had

an ice coverage that caused the bucks to do something they didn't want to do. So then when Janus flipped his screening angle, Draymond threw a blitz, which forced Dame to audible into dribbling the other way. But even when Gary Payton lost control, there was another defender there in the gap to make it feel like he was playing in a crowd, make it feel like there's an opening, but there's actually not an opening. Paz is on top of it. He gets a great close out. And so essentially there's no paint touch. There's no compromising of the interior or the defense. There's nothing at the rim. It's a smothered catch and shoot three that gets rushed and badly missed by Gary, by Gary Trent. And again, like the Bucks shot extremely well on open threes,

on unguarded catch and shoot threes, they were seven for nine. But they only generated nine of them. When Golden State got a good contest on a catch and shoot Milwaukee jumper, they were just five for 17 on those catch and shoots, the contested catch and shoots. Again, those gaping closeouts are one of the big ways that Golden State can make those perceived openings disappear in a heartbeat. Again, it was just a defensive master class from the Warriors.

On offense, it was just about timely contribution. Like when Milwaukee took their six-point lead in the late third, Jimmy started going to work and did some nice grift work to get to the line a few times. I thought he was brilliant over the last like 15 minutes or so on offense. He just kept getting to the line. He hit a few pull-up jump shots, including a four-point play, like an and one three-point shot on the left wing. He made some nice driving kick plays, like a really nice bounce past to Quentin Post in the right corner,

whereas he was driving along the baseline. The defender was there in the passing lane, and so he had to change his pass angle to like bounce right next to the defender so that it can sneak through to Quentin Post. The Bucks were also doing a lot of aggressive helping late in the game off of Gary Payton and Brandon Pajmsky. They put Lopez on Gary Payton and just sitting him under the basket. Gary Payton had a really nice relocation to the top of the key where Jimmy just shoveled it to him and Gary Payton knocked down the three. Gary Payton keeps sitting these uncontested threes and it's been part of the way that he's maintained his value on offense. And then late in the game, they ended up in rotation in a ball screen,

and Pajemski ended up rotating up to the right wing. Jimmy sprays it out the pods, and he ends up hitting the big uncontested three. But Jimmy just kept making smart plays as that primary handler in those situations. And credits of those guys, they knocked down the shots. I thought Buddy healed the two transition pull-up threes he hit after Milwaukee took that six-point lead. I thought both of those were huge shots. One on the right wing, one in the left wing. those were just really important shots in the flow of the game. It's just a really impressive

bounce back win for the Warriors after the disappointment of that loss to Denver. And then on the Milwaukee front, again, Janus's three worst shooting games of the season have all taken place in the last week. You know, the Lakers won is whatever. The Lakers have been one of the best defenses in the league for the last several months, but they were down a bunch of guys and they were just doubling him constantly. And the Bucks did burn the Lakers by just skipping the ball across the court and hitting threes. But the Thunder the Warriors and the Lakers are three of the best defenses in the NBA. And Janus has really struggled to get easy stuff at the rim against them.

Again, Thunder and Warriors being his two worst shooting, literally the Lakers Thunders and Warriors games, all three of those are his three worst shooting games of the season. I just hope he's not dealing with any sort of like nagging lower body injury because I would really like to see Janus healthy in the playoffs again after what happened in the last couple of years. And it just seems like he's trending downward right now. and I just hope everything's all right with him physically. The concerning thing for me with Milwaukee is they just haven't been able to put things together on offense,

which is concerning because that was a strength of theirs for most of the season last year. And again, like with their defense, even though it's performed well statistically, they have a tendency to break down relatively easily despite those defensive rating numbers. You look at the numbers and it's like their 10th in defensive rating on the season. They've been the best clutch defense in the NBA this year. statistically it all looks great, but time and time again in these spots, especially against the best teams in the league, it's the same issue. It's Brooke Lopez in space. Like, he's either sitting at the rim and leaving a shooter open or he's going out on the perimeter and guys are

running right around him. Every time they end up in rotation, you see these sequences like the Pajemski three late in the game. Watch Dame and Gary Trent on that play. They just look lost in rotation on the backside. And it's like when you really get down to it, it's like they're best lineup is probably what you saw there, right? Like with Gary Trent and with Kyle Kuzma. And it's like when you have that group out there, there's just too many players on the floor that are prone to defense's mistakes that's separate from any sort of big picture large sample size metric they might put together, make their defense a little rickety when they need to get stops in these situations. And it's just, it's hard to overcome that unless you're

a world beater on offense and the bucks just haven't been that good on. that end of the floor this year. They look to me like a team that's destined for a disappointing finish at this point. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news. What's the news? Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast. Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to a first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name Hey Jonas, guys. I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what

we should call it and... We were thinking, I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit

for the podcast where people could call in and say, hey Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas. And offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. 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 headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement home. 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. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves.

Their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered. SportsSlice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slices Life 12 in the TikTok podcast. network on TikTok.

The French Open is one of the toughest tests in tennis, and I know firsthand because I competed there myself. I'm Renee Stubbs, and on the Renee Stubbs Tennis podcast, I'm breaking down everything happening at Roland Garris. Every match, every upset, and what it really takes to win on clay. Jenchian win. I mean, she went down in three to Rabakina, but I'm delighted. She's an outsider to win the French for me.

And she likes Clay. Listen, Lerner Rabakina is. arguably the best player in the world right now. And I actually can win on any surface. Because if she's serving, well, good luck. Consider this your court side seat to the French Open. Listen to the Renee Stubbs tennis podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. All right, let's move on to Cavs Clippers. So the Clippers, big test for them last night, an opportunity to legitimize some of their recent success. The Clippers had won six out of seven.

including a three-game winning streak against Detroit, New York, and Sacramento, playing some really good ball. Their top five in both offense and defense in that span. Kauai Leonard has started to look stronger. They're just coming together, right? But the Cavs present a real challenge, particularly on the offensive end, because they can just be so difficult to keep up with. And the Cavs made it abundantly clear right out the gates of this game

that they were going to make it very difficult to keep up with it. They came out and laced three straight threes. Max Truce hit two in a row, Darius Garland, laces is a three off the dribble. They hit 45 points in the first quarter. So pretty quickly the game took on the feel of a shootout. I talk a lot about the concept of winning games in different ways. Why? Because in the playoffs, you got to beat four different teams in a seven game series, usually four very different types of opponents. In one round, you might face like a big physical defense that drags you down into the mud, everybody's legs are tired, jumpers stop falling, and it turns into like winning a rock fight, right? But

then in the next round, you might fight against a thinner, faster team that plays really fast and scores a lot of points, and it becomes more about your offensive firepower and your ability to keep up with your perimeter speed. Even just stars can present different challenges. Oh, this team has, you know, Nicola Yokic or if you can Zubach, right, a big strong center that we have to match up. Or maybe it's a super quick guard like Darius Garland. Like, how are we going to keep Darius Garland from getting out of his spots? Every team presents different types of challenges. That's why it's so important to be able to win different types of wicks. I thought this particular game was a test of the Clippers' offensive firepower.

Cleveland is the best offense in the league. And while the Clippers did have some success against their offense late in the game, by getting some stops for two and a half quarters, the Cavs were just red hot. They were in the zone. Sometimes that's just how it is. It's not like Chris Dunn and Kawhi Leonard weren't guarding at the start of the game. It's just good offense beats good defense every time.

So sometimes you're kind of just hanging on for dear life and you just have to find a way to score at a similar pace just to weather the storm until they cool off and start missing shots or until your defense settles in and you start making them uncomfortable. That's what I mean when I say the game took on a feel of a shootout. Like the clippers were just trying to keep up

for the first two and a half quarters of that game. Now, in order for you to be able to consistently score against a good defense, and again, we've talked a lot about the Cavs' offense, they're seventh in defense. It's not an exceptional defense. team, but they're a very good defensive team. And if you're going to generate consistent

offense against a top 10 defense like that, you need to have a bunch of different guys that can generate quality shots from a bunch of different types of actions or sequences. And the Clippers proved that they were more than capable last night. Kauai looked absolutely amazing. It's crazy because like a few

weeks ago, he just didn't look good physically. It looked like he wasn't getting lift. It looks like his base was getting disrupted by basically every team that he ran into. Last night, the Clipper play-by-play guy said on the broadcast, quote, this is the Kauai Leonard we know and remember and this is the Kauai Leonard we need. And he was absolutely right. Kauai had 33, 7, and 4 with four steals. He was 12 for 19 from the field, five for six from three, several specific types of

plays that I thought were great signs of the improving strength of his base. And again, that's always been where Kauai beats people. He's got such a strong base that he's dislodging you for your base and he's getting such great lift that he can knock down consistently pull up jump shots from everywhere on the floor and get to the room. He's just that pure three level score that you can't keep from his spots. You can see the base strength coming together with some of these types of plays. He had a tap-in offensive rebound put back on a shot that he missed where he beat everyone else back up off the floor on his second jump. That's always a sign of athletic dominance when you can win on the second jump. That was a big sign. He hit a right shoulder fade over

Dean Wade, big shot late in the game. Dean Wade defends him super well, gets a great contest. Kauai has to fade dramatically over his right shoulder, but he just gets excellent lift. And if you watch the shot, he gets such great lift that even though he's drifting away from the basket, his body is perfectly still and balanced while he's rising up and knocking down that shot. He had another right shoulder fade over Evan Mobley late. It was a different kind of fade. It was like a quick spinning fade out of a drive. And like once again, look at his balance.

And that's a great sign because those quick spins, those quick moves, those are the hardest moves to stop your body and get balance as you're coming up off the ground. All night long, he just looked like Kauai. We know that at his best, he has this like scissor dribble combination that he'll go to for pull up threes where he'll just pound the ball between his legs and just go straight up. into a three out of it. He does it out of a couple of different footworks and a couple

of different dribble combinations, but it's basically it's like a live dribble jab step where he'll like use that between the legs dribble to essentially jab and get the defender to take a step back so that he can just rise up and knock it down. He was hitting that all night long. He just looked great. James Hardin

was really smart with his attacks all night. He was using guard screens to get favorable matchups before getting into ball screens and then he was attacking those guards in ISO as well. He didn't shoot the ball super well, but he got to line 11 times, so he finished with 22 points and 9 assists with zero turnovers. That's a pretty damn good James Hardin game. But it wasn't just those two guys. Bogdan McDonovich had one of his best games as a clipper. Some nice secondary shot creation with the bench group. He also closed the game

with James Hardin and Kauai and did some really nice connective playmaking. He was being guarded by Garland. So Kauai was trying to attack Garland by bringing Bogdanovich into the action as a screener. At first, they try to hedge and recover, which is the most common coverage that you'll teams use when you've got a small quick guard that a team's trying to attack because quickness is the ability to rotate, right? He can throw a hedge and he can get out of there as quick as possible. Garland hedges, Bogdanovich slips, Kauai throws the pass to him, he makes a nice read out to James Hardin in the corner. James Hardin gets a close-out, drives the close-out and makes the floater. That is that like excellent breaking down,

the incremental breaking down of the defense, right? Kauai draws two, But Donovic extends the advantage with a nice kickout read. Hardin gets a closeout that he scores against with a driving floater. Getting three high-level offensive players in those sequences makes them more resilient against better defense, right? Then after the hedge didn't work, they just straight up blitz, Kauai with Darius Garland. Floated out to Bogdanovich, he beats Donovan Mitchell, who rotates to the top. He gets into the lane and hits that tough floater that he knocked down in the lane.

He was eight for eight in this game for 20. points. That's how you're going to keep up in a shootout. All of those offensive initiation points that you have, all those connective playmaking pieces, all the play finishing coming together, right? And then there was Zubach. Zubach has been sneaky kicking the shit out of some of the best centers in the league all year. I saw a tweet last night that he's hung 20 and 20 on a bunch of the all-star centers. And that's not exactly true, but it's close enough to true. He had 21 and 22 against Wemby. He had 20 and 19 against Jaron Jackson. He had

21 and 19 against Anthony Davis. 23 and 18 against Raymond. And then last night he puts up 28 and 20 against Jared Allen. And it was just as bad for Jared as it looked on the box score. Zubach whooped his ass.

Straight up scored on him in the post a bunch of times one-on-one. Just absolutely butchered him on the offensive glass. Shot goes up. He was just leaning on him and just shoved him out of his spot. getting whatever he wanted. He had eight offensive rebounds in the game. There's a huge play late. Cleveland cuts the lead to seven and gets two stops in a row against the

Clippers' offense. But on both plays, Zubach just wrecking balls into the lane and taps the ball out and they keep the ball alive. Two times in a row. He was hitting shots in the roll off of Hardin. He was ducking in on cuts. He was just an absolute monster. He kicked Jared Allen's ass. There's no way around it. So the question is, why does Zubach keep kicking ass against some of the best bigs in basketball. It's an interesting part of the way the modern game has changed at the center position.

As things have changed with pace and the way teams run up and down the floor and attacking ball screens with rim runners and vertical spacers, we've seen a massive increase in these like thinner rim running types of bigs. Jared Allen and Mowgli are great examples. Victor Wembeyanama, Chet Holmgren, Anthony Davis kind of fits this mold, Rudy Gobert, Derek Lively, that type of guy has become wiener. more common in the league as the league has become faster, more of a transition game, more of a pick and roll, rolling hard to the rim, you need vertical spacing type of league. Back in the day,

there were two or three huge bruising centers on every team. Now, half the teams in the league don't even have a guy like that. I actually think it plays a role in how dominant a guy like Nicola Yokic is in this era. And by the way, I don't mean that as a shot at Yokic, it actually reminds me a lot of the dynamic with Michael Jordan in the 90s. Back then, teams were so loaded up on size and strength that overwhelming quickness was a game breaker in a lot of ways that Michael Jordan took advantage of. These days, the league is so loaded up on quickness that size and strength can be a game breaker.

And that is how guys like Zubach and Yokic to a much greater extent have had a lot of success. If you're really, really big and strong and you have the footwork to actually use that physical leverage and the touch and the IQ to make teams. pay by winning ground battles, you're going to win a lot of battles in this league. It's a matchup problem for a lot of these teams. Zubot's just too big and strong for these guys. I heard Fran Fashilla, who was doing the color commentary last night, he was saying after the game that early in the game on Zuz's first post up.

He's like, he literally said he's just too much for him. He can't hold his ground. And it really was that simple. So you get great offensive games from Kauai, Zhu, and Bogdanovich. You get a good game from Hardin. Even Norman Powell in his limited minutes, I mean, he played 18 minutes and dropped 11 points in a 36-minute game. That's 22 points. I mean, that's a high offensive output for a limited role.

That allowed them to keep up with that red-hot scoring effort from the Cavs. There in the late third quarter, their defense finally started to settle in. I thought Derek Jones Jr. was instrumental in this stretch. Had some great reps on both Garland and Mitchell. Kauai I thought was great all night on Donovan Mitchell. the Clippers really started to force some more difficult shot angles from the guards that forced some misses. That was what triggered their run when they started to pull away. We talked a lot about their offense earlier, but the Clippers held the Cavs to just 19 points over the final 15 minutes and change of this game.

It was just a really impressive win for the Clippers. And here's the thing. We can't completely write off this upside that they're showing. this team build always had this capability of putting everything together and suddenly Kauai gets his leg strength and just stays healthy. And like, what if Kauai just stays healthy to mid-June? Well, then they're absolutely a threat. It's just going to be really difficult to shake the pessimism

that surrounds Kauai in his health. This time last year, he was kicking ass too and so were the Clippers. March 29th of last season, in Orlando, Kauai drops 29, 11, and 5 with four steals and two blocks, goes 12 for 21 from the field and three for six from three. Looks incredible. He played one more game that season and we didn't see him again.

So it is what it is. There's a version of this story where Kauai holds up and the clippers are a real threat, but that question mark is just always going to be there with them. On the Cleveland front, I had a bunch of Cavs fans pissed off at us the other day for talking about some of their struggles with sizing Orlando. Most of it was people just getting hung up on a title. But I want to be clear,

like I wasn't saying the Cavs as a team got exposed and that they're fraudulent or anything like that. I just think that there's value in looking at why a team is struggling because it helps us learn about them. It's so rare for a team like Boston last year or Denver the year before to kind of run through the playoffs without facing much in the way of adversity. The vast majority of the time, you're going to find yourself trailing in a playoffs. series, even if you win the title. That's what happened to the 2022 Warriors. That's what happened to the 2021 Bucks. That's what happened to the 2020 Lakers. That's what happened to the 2019 Raptors. Even the 2018 Warriors trailed in a playoff series, the 2016 Cavs trailed, the 2015 Warriors

trailed. Like, usually adversity is a part of the grind all the way through to the finish line. There's no perfect basketball team in the NBA that just beats the shit out of anybody and everybody. And so with that being the case, again, that does happen occasionally. It's rare, though. And again, like, even with a team like Boston, like part of it was they caught some favorable matchups along the way. There's a version of that where they win the title, but it looks tougher if they have to face Denver and Milwaukee, right?

So, like, it's one of those things where when we're talking about these flaws with these teams, it's just about learning so that we can try to figure out what makes them struggle so we can at least identify that sort of thing when it pops up down the line. Once again last night, they struggled with size. Zubotch kicked Allen's ass, but similar to the Orlando game, I was talking about how their perimeter size caused issues for the Cavs Guards. The length of Kawhi, the length of Derek Jones Jr., the overall size of the clippers on the floor, Derry Scarlin and Donna Mitchell went just 11 for 32. Kawhi on the offense event showed a relatively easy willingness to target Cleveland's perimeter players and get pretty easy over the

top shots. They chewed Cleveland up and spit them out on the glass. It's just worth keeping an eye on. When we see Cleveland struggle in the playoffs, this is probably what it will look like. Bigger physical teams, especially on the perimeter, making life tough for them, making them feel like they're playing in a crowd and leading to some inefficiency from their guards. All right, guys, that's all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We are back tonight after the final buzzer of Nuggets Lakers. We have our course correction segment that we're also doing there. Plan on hitting at least another team or two in that show as well. So make sure you guys come out, come hang out later tonight live on YouTube. I'll see you guys. 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 I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it. Hey, guys, it's us. The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick.

And guess what? We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. Nice. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to us. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it.

But, you know, tired and sick. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you guys. at your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. 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 I-heartedly. Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Winning on Clay is an art. The rallies are relentless. And at the French Open, only the toughest survive. I'd know. I competed there for decades. Join me, Renee Stubbs, on the Renee Stubbs tennis podcast for no nonsense breakdowns of the

biggest matches, the toughest players, and the moments that define Roland Garris. She's an outsider to win the French for me. And she likes Clay. Listen, Lina Rubakina is arguably the best player in the world right now. And I actually can win on any surface. Listen to the Renee Stubb's tennis podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. The story I've told myself can then shape my behavior, and that can lead me to sabotage the possibility of connection.

This Mental Health Awareness Month, tune into the podcast deeply well with Debbie Brown if you've been searching for a soft place to land while doing the work to become whole. This podcast is for you to hear more. Listen to deeply well with Debbie Brown from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.