The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Warriors Media Day Reaction: Steph Curry, Draymond locked in + free agency recap
Episode Date: September 28, 2022Jason Timpf reacts to the defending champion Golden State Warriors' media day. How did Steph Curry respond to Giannis Antetokounmpo calling him the best player in the world? How does the Warriors' ext...ended continuity give them an advantage? Lastly, how should Golden State approach upcoming free agency decisions, particularly around Draymond, Andrew Wiggins, and Jordan Poole? #Volume #HerdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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All right, welcome to Hoops tonight, presented by Fanduel here at the Volume.
Happy Tuesday, everybody.
I hope all of you guys are having a great start to your weeks.
We're going to be doing two videos today.
This morning, we're going to be covering Warriors Media Day,
and then this evening we're going to be continuing with our power rankings.
We are moving into the top tier of contenders.
We have four teams left, the clippers, the bucks, the Warriors, and the Celtics,
not in that order.
We're going to be doing deep dives into all four of those teams.
Everything they did this off season, everything they do offensively and defensively.
Tons of basketball analysis today through Friday in the evening.
so keep an eye on your feeds for that.
One other quick note, I was looking at the comments from yesterday's Media Day video,
and there's a lot of like anti-Lakers stuff.
Not so much anti-Lakers, but just people complaining that we talk about the Lakers.
I wanted to address that really quick because it's really pretty simple.
First of all, we talk about the Lakers for three reasons, okay?
First of all, you guys care about the Lakers.
Guess which one of our Power Ranking's videos has done the most views?
The Lakers won.
That's just smart business.
Two, I used to cover the Lakers so I know a ton about them.
I have a lot of friends who are big fans of the team and who cover the team.
They're a team that I'm invested in, so I like to talk about them.
And then last but not least, they have LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
Yes, last year was a dumpster fire.
There's also a chance that this year could be a dumpster fire.
But the reality of the situation is they have a high ceiling.
Yes, they do.
They are involved in the landscape of the league.
But make no mistake, as this year progresses,
we are going to focus on the good teams that play good basketball.
So if the Lakers start to flounder and they start 10 and 20,
we're not going to talk about them anymore.
We're talking about them now because they are relevant.
If you're pretending like they're not relevant,
you're not being honest to have LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
If they are healthy, they are at least a threat.
Even if they are a lower level threat,
they're at the very least a threat.
But at the end of the day, we're going to follow what you guys want
and where the good basketball is.
and usually they're correlated.
Guess what?
Our Lakers videos in March and April last year did not do well.
You know why?
Because the Lakers sucked in the entire Laker fan base bought out of the team.
But this year, the Lakers optimism is back and it's just good business.
It's the same reason we're doing Warriors right now.
We have a lot of Warriors fans who are fans of the show.
So we are going to be doing a Media Day video about the Warriors.
I just wanted to explain that really quick so people understand.
And then just to set the expectation that, look,
We're not going to cover the Lakers if they turn out to be a dumpster fire.
We're going to follow the good basketball around the league.
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you can find them wherever you get your podcasts under hoops tonight. And on that note,
let's talk some basketball. So there are three things that I found interesting in Warriors Media
Day that I wanted to touch on. And we're going to start with Janus and a quote that he had from
his Media Day in a response that Steph had. So Janus said, quote, two years ago when we did that,
Yeah, when I was sleeping in my bed, I was like, ah, yeah, maybe I'm the best player in the world, you know?
But now, no.
In my opinion, the way I view it, the winner is the best.
The guy who wins is the best.
I believe that the best player in the world is Steph Curry until the next player.
End quote.
Steph responded at his media day, quote, I would say the same thing.
When you're facing the champions, that's part of the nature of the league.
We all want to win the championship.
And when you look at the team that's the last team standing,
I was thinking the same thing about him last year coming off their run.
So first of all, when it comes to player rankings, everyone's got different criteria.
For instance, like people who weigh the regular season heavily,
most of those people have Yokic either near the top or at the top, right?
You know, player teams that are people that value playoff basketball more,
have some of the traditional guys up there like I did,
like Janus, KD, Steph, LeBron,
guys who have actually won NBA championships,
led teams to NBA championships.
And then there's everything in between,
the entire gamut of different approaches to ranking players.
Now, what's funny is I used to deal with this particular problem
by having like two separate conversations.
And since then, I've kind of merged them into what I used
for our player rankings during the summer,
which is a combination of both philosophies.
But those two philosophies are, who is the best basketball player alive?
And who deserves to be called the best?
And the main difference there is the appropriate respect that we pay towards the Larry O'Brien
trophy.
You know, I talked about this a lot when ESPN came out with Steph at fifth in their player
rankings, which I thought was outrageous, especially coming out of what he did in that
playoff run. But when that ranking came out that day, I was complaining that I don't think
enough respect is paid these days to how difficult it is to get the Larry O'Brien trophy.
Like, I've seen C.J. McCollum, who's a player that I really like, and a player that I think is great
for young basketball players to emulate because of how skilled he is, despite not being that great
of an athlete, I saw C.J. McCollum single-handedly destroy the denizens.
for nuggets in a playoff series, including going off in game seven on their home floor to steal
a game that they should have lost. That's a playoff success from a player. Why don't we all think
C.J. McCollum is a top 10 player? Because he struggled in the first round series that year,
and then he struggled in the conference finals that year. Dominating a regular season is one thing.
Dominating a playoff series is one thing. Dominating two playoff series is one thing. I saw Nicolating
Yokic outplay Kauai Leonard in the conference semifinals after a great first round series,
after a great regular season in 2020. But then what happened? He ran into a different matchup,
Anthony Davis, one of the best defensive players of the league. He got outplayed by Anthony Davis.
They lost the series. It's hard to lead a team through a regular season, to lead a team
through a first round series, a second round series, a third round series on the NBA final stage.
different matchups,
encountering better defenses,
maybe a specific defensive matchup
that's going to give you problems,
facing real adversity.
You know, this was a relatively low adversity
a season or playoff run for the Warriors,
and still they were down to one in the finals to the Celtics
against the team that I thought was actually a little bit more talented.
Steph Curry sprained his foot in the regular season
and came off the bench to start the playoffs.
You know, Clay Thompson coming back from his injury.
Draymond Green's back injury.
This was a season filled with adversity that ended with them finally getting the Larry O'Brien
Trophy.
That process and that result is nowhere near valued enough by people, in my opinion, by people
who evaluate basketball players.
It is anybody can have one good game or one good series, maybe even two good series,
or a great regular season.
It is an entirely different animal to do the whole thing.
And when you see that adversity come to fruition when they hoist the trophy,
it's a special moment.
And I think we have to acknowledge that.
So that's why I used to split those debates into two completely separate topics.
Who's the best player in the world?
Who's the guy who went through all the adversity and hoisted the trophy?
Like I never actually thought Kawhi Leonard was the best player in the world in 2019.
I don't think any of you guys would agree with that.
However, he hoisted the trophy at the end and went through the grind, did all of the things,
you know, implemented himself with an entirely new group of people, an entirely new situation,
and made it to the finish line.
I understood that people were willing to say Kauai was the best player in the world at that point.
And that's kind of my thing.
Like, in my rankings, I have Yonis number one.
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I have Yonis number one because I think he's the best defensive player alive and a top five offensive player.
I think physically he is completely incapable of being handled by any team in the league.
That Boston Celtics team was the one team that should have been able to do it.
and even they couldn't handle him.
He's incredible.
I have him at number one.
But I totally understand why Janus would want to consider Steph the best.
I understand, I even would agree that if you're talking about like holding the crown,
so to speak, the proverbial, like theoretical crown that you give to the person who's
last man standing, I would agree with giving it to Steph.
My rankings, my player rankings were a combination of the two.
So I had Janus one and I had Steph two.
but I didn't disagree with either.
If you were to swap those on my list, I would have been fine with it,
because I do understand those two different ideologies.
And I think it's cool that Steph and Yanis kind of played off of each other there.
Janice is saying like, hey, Steph gets bragging rights this year.
Cool.
I agree.
He should get bragging rights.
Now, do I think Janus is better at basketball than him right now?
Yeah, barely.
I think Steph's the best offensive player in the world.
I think Janus is the best defensive player in the top five offensive player.
that gives him an edge to me.
And I think a lot of Warriors fans would agree.
I don't think that's disrespectful.
I don't think that's like saying KD's better than him or something like that.
But the reality is, is Steph gets bragging rights this year.
And like Steph said, Janice had bragging rights last year.
That's that proverbial crown.
That's that level of respect.
Who deserves to be called the best versus who actually is the best.
I thought that was an interesting little moment from Media Day yesterday.
The second little concept I wanted to talk about from Media Day,
was continuity. This was a big focus among the interviewer questions on Media Day.
So first of all, we've heard that in the first couple days of practice for the Warriors,
that the starters have been absolutely destroying the second unit. And that's kind of what
started the continuity discussion was Steph Curry was asked about that. He said, quote,
it's supposed to be like that. We know what we're doing. We have good chemistry.
We are just coming off of playing in the finals three months ago. And also setting the tone
of what it means to play for this team the way that we do.
Steve Kerr piggybacked on that and said,
I think organizational stability is a huge factor in pro sports.
But I think especially in the NBA,
especially today because of the player movement,
we have a really stable, solid organization,
a very successful one.
We have worked together well.
And when you throw all that together with this talented core,
there's a kind of an institutional knowledge
that allows you to kind of push forward quicker
then if everybody is brand new.
We really look at that as one of our advantages.
Now, there's no doubt that continuity is a huge advantage.
But I wanted to spend a couple of minutes today talking about
the actual basketball and personality and locker room advantages
that take place as a result of continuity,
just so that we can kind of like understand it a little bit more
on a kind of like a line-by-line basis.
So I wanted to look at it first from the standpoint of non-basketball.
So first of all, when you have continuity, the personalities that are in the locker room, they understand
their fit. They understand the dynamic, right? There's a clear power, like, hierarchy in the,
in the Warriors locker room. Like, everyone knows Step is the leader. Everyone knows Draymond is,
like, the emotional leader, right? You know, everybody understands the role that Clay's personality
has in that locker room. What Andre Aguadala's personality does in that locker room. It's an
understanding of roles. And the important thing is, you know, the importance of the role. And the importance of the role is,
detail there is then when you bring in new players, the new players know not to mess with that.
You know, if there's lots of turnover every year, a free agent, whether it's a mid-level
exception or a decently paid role player or star, they can come in and they can be like,
hey, I got just as much right to move and shake in here as anybody else does, right?
But no NBA player in their right mind is going to walk into a locker room that Steph Curry,
Draymond Green, Steve Kirk, Clay Thompson, and Andre Guadala have ran for a decade and go like,
I'm here to stir the pot. They'll get you out of there so fast. You wouldn't even dare try
because of the established nature of that locker room. I think that's a big advantage when you
are mixing in the occasional new players, a first round draft pick here, a guy like an Andrew Wiggins.
You know, when you bring in, or like the James Wiseman, Jonathan Comingga, you know, Moses Moody types,
they know what they can and can't do in that locker room because of the established
norms in there.
Also, that group has a lot of experience with the highs and lows of an NBA season.
If they go out on opening night and they lose to the Lakers, you know, if the Lakers lose
that game, even though they have some continuity with LeBron and AD, if the Lakers lose that game,
there's going to be a little bit of a shaken confidence in that locker room,
especially if they get dominated.
If the Warriors lose that game,
even if they get blown out by 20,
there's going to be an understanding
in that locker room of the dynamic of the regular season.
I think it was after the 2000,
I can't remember what year it was.
It might have been after the 2017 season,
but I think there was an early season game
where the spurs came in
and just beat the shit out of the Warriors
in an early season game.
Those guys weren't worried.
Those guys aren't scared about that.
They understand that's a normal dynamic
in the NBA regular season.
same thing goes in reverse. They started what, 15 and 1 last year or 14 and 1 or something like
that in their first 15 games. Steph and Draymond and Clay knew, Steph and Clay knew, even in that
moment, that there would be lulls. They had a stretch later in the season where Steph went really cold.
Draymond got hurt. Clay Thompson took some time to get his legs underneath him.
Steph missed a stretch of games before the playoffs. They understood it before that season that that
was the natural flow of a season. They will understand that even further now. Those are the
emotional non-basketball advantages that come from continuity. On the basketball court,
it's about understanding your teammates' basketball personalities, right? Like, there are some,
I was always the kind of player when I was playing in college that I liked tough love. I liked
when my coaches really got on me. I liked when my teammates would cuss me out or demand more out of me.
but there were other types of players that if you did that too they would shrink into themselves
lose confidence and it would be a problem when you have good continuity everybody understands how
they like to be communicated with they understand boundaries they understand where the line is and
they can't cross it or what they need to approach that line to get a point across that's an advantage
of understanding your personalities in your locker room there's a another concept of rhythm
I think that Steph, Drayman, and Clay have a really good understanding of when the other needs the basketball.
When we might need to run a fake dribble handoff for Draymond to get something at the basket to get his confidence going offensively.
When Steph needs to hunt for Clay because he's feeling like he's not involved in the offense enough.
Or when Steph needs to go through a stretch in the third quarter or he's shooting every time down the floor.
That balance of touches, that power dynamic in controlling the basketball is something that the Warriors have great
understanding of in their locker room through continuity.
It also helps with natural basketball reads.
I have the basketball.
I dribble to the elbow and I pick up my dribble and I'm looking at you in the corner.
You might relocate, you might stay, you might cut back door.
A lot of times with new basketball players, you'll misinterpret those situations.
Either you'll think he's going to cut and you'll throw it out of bounds, or he does cut and you miss
him because you weren't expecting it, or the player in the corner won't know.
when to cut or when to relocate or when to stay put. There's a natural chemistry,
kind of like a seeing things before they happen type of deal that happens with continuity.
Any of you guys out there who have buddies that you go play pickup basketball with two,
three times a week. I have guys, I've been running a men's league here in Tucson for half a
decade now in my team. I have guys on that team that I've been playing with literally for the
better part of a decade. Those guys, like when I go play basketball with them, it's just a
natural fit because I've been doing the same thing with them for so long.
That is a huge benefit that comes from continuity.
And then last but not least is understanding the offense,
especially complicated offenses like the Warriors,
which we're going to cover later this week in our power rankings,
the Warriors' offense has so many different facets.
There's so many sets, there's so much movement,
that it can take time to learn.
Not just learning the actual plays themselves in terms of the X's and O's,
but also the reads, because the warrior system is very read and react.
It's very loose, and it allows you to freelance in various ways based on what the defense does.
When you spent a lot of time around an offense, you understand those things.
But it does take time for new players that come into the warrior system to learn that stuff.
So it's very beneficial when your core players, your core five players, Wiggins, Iguidal, you know,
six even with Jordan Poole, Steph,
Curry, Clay Thompson, Draymond Green. When those guys have a very firm understanding the offense,
it gives them an advantage over other teams. As many of you guys know, we've been following the show
for a while, I coach high school basketball. I do it in an assistant capacity since I obviously
don't have my evenings available with this job. But my primary role is I coach practices in the
morning. We go every Monday and Friday morning. And when I'm working with those guys, you know,
it's been really interesting. This is my second season doing this. It's been interesting to see the
difference between these two seasons because of COVID.
When COVID happened, they shut down the lower levels of the team.
For obvious reasons, it was really difficult to run the season.
They didn't want to have as much exposure.
They just ran varsity that year.
That group won the state championship.
But nine seniors left the program.
Last year was a very challenging year because we had all of these new young players
who were not involved with the previous season.
Not only that, they didn't even have a season because of freshman in JV.
basketball being canceled as a result of COVID.
During that season, especially in the first few months,
it was a slog trying to teach them our offense
and get them to understand the way that we wanted to play.
This year, we're in our preseason practices.
And like, for instance, yesterday,
I was late for practice because I had another engagement
and I just texted the guys to get started without me.
When I showed up, I walked in
and they were already running our offense from last year.
Without me even having to tell them,
They just walked in the gym.
They knew what I wanted.
They knew the kinds of sets that we were working on,
and they were playing five-on-five working on their sets.
And I remember sitting there thinking like, man,
we are at such a huge advantage this year just compared to last year.
In one year, because of continuity,
we returned almost our entire starting lineup from last year,
and because the kids already know the offense.
And we have a couple of different things we're working on,
like read and react, five-out stuff,
and then actual sets that involved running actions
and just to see how much better they are in those two areas,
just compared to last year is monumental.
So you can imagine at the NBA level over a decade
just how firm of an understanding a team like the Warriors has of their offense.
And imagine the Lakers by comparison.
They're sitting with Darwin Ham today learning a brand new system from scratch
with, what, three players that returned from last year,
that actually were in the rotation?
you know, maybe four if you count when and Gabriel.
Like that team is at a disadvantage with their system and execution
compared to a team like the Warriors.
And almost every team in the NBA is in a similar predicament,
at least to some extent, compared to the Warriors.
Connoody is a legitimate basketball weapon.
The Warriors were not the most talented team in the league last year.
And they won't be the most talented team in the league this year.
They actually lost a little bit of talent losing Gary Payton.
in the second in losing Otto Porter Jr.
But they're every bit as big of a threat to win the title this year as they were last year
when they actually won it.
And a huge part of that is how smart they are as a team, but also how much continuity
they have.
And I do think it's important that it's discussed.
The last Warriors thing that I wanted to touch on was the extensions and free agency.
So Andrew Wiggins, his deal expires next summer.
I believe he might be a restricted free agent.
I'm not 100% certain about that.
And then Draymond Green has a player option this summer.
Now, ideally you keep both, and then the issues, you know, goes away.
But it gets even more complicated when you factor in that Jordan Poole's going to need to get paid.
And at the end of the day, we actually heard Joe Lake about after the season when he was addressing the auto Porter,
the second, or Otto Porter Jr. and Gary Payton the second, leaving the team.
He talked about how it was just unrealistic for him to be able to pay everybody.
So there's some difficult decisions coming up for the Warriors.
And, you know, in the past, it might have been the easiest decision in the world to prioritize Draymond over Andrew Wiggins.
But now it's kind of a tough call.
And I honestly don't know which one they should favor.
Because Andrew Wiggins has turned himself into a vitally important part of this team.
He's what I would call a 3-and-D star because he fills the role of 3-D, right?
Spotting up and knocking down three-point shots, you know, defending on the wing on the other end of the floor.
but he's unbelievably good at both.
So for instance, defensively,
Andrew Wiggins is on the short list of players in the running for best perimeter defender
alive, which is an insane bit of progress from a player in Andrew Wiggins,
who was a bad defensive player in Minnesota.
The job he did on Luca Donchage, the job he did on Jason Tatum,
was a job that only a handful of players in the league are capable of.
Guys like Jason Tatum, maybe a Ben Simmons, maybe a McAil Bridges.
there's only a small handful of players who can do what Andrew Wiggins did in those two series.
That's how much of a star he is defensively.
Then on the offensive end of the floor, it's not just shooting spot-of-threes or attacking close-outs.
He has legitimate scoring punch.
He draws weaker match-ups because of the other players on the floor for Golden State,
and you can toss him to basketball, and he can go create his own shot.
Obviously, he's a little bit more inconsistent in that role.
You don't want to rely on him as a...
lead score, but that capability to provide real scoring punch in combination with him being a
defensive star, like an impact defensive player, that makes him a 3-and-D star. You could make the case
he was the second best player on the Warriors last year. It's a tough call. Some of that is Clay Thompson
was coming, excuse me, trying to get his rhythm back coming back from injury. And Draymond Green
didn't have a great playoff run, although he had a lot of really big games. And he helps you
a lot in specific matchups like the Denver Nuggets game.
And then I'm really glad he had that good moment there in game six of the NBA
finals to just kind of remind everybody what he's capable of.
But, you know, it's always been the joint effort in Golden State.
And when the ESPN came out with their player ranks, you know, Jordan Poole, Clay Thompson,
Draymond Green, Andrew Wiggins, they were all in that like, I think, 30 to 50 range
or whatever.
And that was kind of the best way to describe that roster.
They were not top-heavy.
They were not a, you know, LeBron James, Anthony Davis type of team.
They were not a, you know, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving type of team.
It's Steph, the bona fide star, and then four players who might not be stars,
but are very close to that and are absolutely stars in their roles.
And when you have four guys who are stars in their roles next to a guy who's in conversation
to be the best basketball player alive, that is enough talent to contend for a title.
It's a very interesting dynamic on that team.
But I'm really curious to see what they decided to do next summer.
And I would not be surprised if they prioritized
Andrew Wiggins due to his age and the impact he has on this team. And it's going to be
unfortunate that the Warriors end up losing Dremont and it will fundamentally change the dynamic
of that entire team. But it's just the reality of the predicament. He's getting older.
Jordan Poole needs to get paid. He's younger. Andrew Wiggins needs to get paid. He's younger.
Obviously, you've got other rookies in the pipeline. It's just eventually going to become
untenable to pay all these guys. And it'll be really interesting to see who ends up taking the first hit.
All right, guys. That is all I have for right now.
Now, like I said, later this evening, we'll be continuing with our power rankings with number four.
I will see you guys later tonight.
The volume.
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 starting.
starving for banter.
Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged.
It's the enhanced games.
Some call it grotesque.
Others say it's unleashing human potential.
Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all,
embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.
Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds.
I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth.
Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
A win is a win.
A win is a win.
I don't care what I'm saying.
Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th.
You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey,
or my career in sports media.
Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast,
The Clifers Show.
This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with athletes,
creators and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it.
Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok.
This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.
