The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Lakers Tonight with Jason Timpf - Lebron and the Lakers Quit, Should Vogel be out the door?

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

Jason breaks down the Lakers incredibly disappointing loss to the Pelicans and what needs to change moving forward for the Lebron, Russell Westbrook and Frank Vogel. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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All right, welcome to Lakers tonight, presented by Fanduel here on The Volume. I'm Jason Timp. Happy Sunday, everybody. I hope you all had a great weekend. We are going to solemnly go over the latest example of the Lakers trying to tell us exactly who they are. We're going to get into, you know, it's funny. I talked with my producers after the show the other night. I was so thankful for an opportunity to really get into the weeds of basketball, especially with the Lakers. And there's just not a lot to get into the weeds with tonight in terms of on the court X's and O's, because the Lakers quit. And when they quit, it no longer becomes about what's happening on the court.

It becomes about a much larger issue. And we're going to get into that. Just for the sake of having some sort of pallet cleanser at the end of the show tonight, I am going to go around the league really quickly, touch on that Warriors Mavs games. A couple of interesting things that I saw in that game. we'll talk a little bit about just how dominant Philly has been. And we'll also talk a little bit about the Sons without CP3. But we have to start with the Lakers.

And as unfortunate as it is, it seems like the most likely outcome ended up coming true. So as I told you guys, after the Anthony Davis injury, the Lakers were going to have several opportunities over the course of this next 25 games, 24 games, whatever the number was, to quit. Because of the fact that even with, With Anthony Davis, they don't have enough talent to beat the best teams in the league. And without Anthony Davis, they're mostly bad unless they play absolutely perfectly to their strengths. And all of those little quirks about who they are as basketball players that plagued them all season,

only if those things weren't the case, could this team even compete with any decent basketball team on any given night? And so they were going to find themselves in these circumstances where it was going to be a question of whether or not it was worth it for them to go for it. And it happened right away in that Utah Jazz game, or excuse me, in the Clippers game. They're down 49 to 33, you know, early second quarter, and you're like, hey, maybe this is the time. And instead of quitting, they fought through that. And they went for it. And unfortunately, their leader, LeBron, had a really, really rough game, and they lost. And so apparently that was the final blow, because this was the first time this season where we didn't even have our fake comeback.

We didn't even have our little signs of life as we went to the young players. This was a full-blown team letting go of the rope and deciding that what it was going to take from the standpoint of work and effort and diligence to try to keep this ship afloat long enough for Anthony Davis to come back, that's not worth it to the guys in that locker room. And that's one of those important details as fans that you guys got to try to remember. Don't burden yourself with caring more than the guys in the locker room care because they clearly don't. And so I want to hit on two guys in particular on that front because these two guys are the leaders of the team right now without Anthony Davis and they each kind of quit in their own unique way. And as a result, the rest of the team followed suit

and it led to the collapse that you saw tonight. For those of you who just joining us, this is Lakers tonight presented by Fanduel here on the volume. We're just talking about just how bad this Lakers quit was tonight. I wanted to start with LeBron. you can be a winner but have shortcomings. Like, for instance, LeBron James and Kobe Bryant are both winners. They're two of the greatest winners in NBA history.

I have them both as top five players all time. So it's not undercutting either of them. But the way that those two guys react to circumstances like this are very different. So go back to 2013, for example. Very similar example of a team that had great-ass aspirations that wasn't coming together. There are a lot of differences in the sense that the way the teams were put together fundamentally flawed were flawed in different ways, but that 2013 team was in a similar predicament. They were up against it at the end of the season, needed to make a late push

to make it to the playoffs, but there was also this obvious Paul hanging over the team, this obvious understanding that they didn't have enough. The 2013 Lakers weren't good enough. But Kobe looked at that with obstinence and was like, screw this. I'm going down with the ship. And every single night, even though he was dealing with ankle stuff and it banged up nonstop, he just pushed through in his own way to try to force the team across the finish line. And it was a bad idea. It led to his Achilles tear as he went on a long stretch of basketball there at the end of the season

where he was pushing himself 40 plus minutes a night. and it actually wasn't good for him, especially when you understood that that team wasn't good enough to win the title. But that was Kobe's way of reacting. That was Kobe's way of handling that situation. LeBron, even though he is still very much a winner, the way that he handles these types of situations is as soon as he makes a calculation in his head,

that he understands that he no longer has what he needs within either his own physical condition, in this case dealing with his knee injury, and with the roster, when he makes that calculation and decides, you know, does not compute, cannot win the title, he just, instead of doing what Kobe does, did, instead of pushing through that finish line,

LeBron's like, hey, this isn't worth it. And I'm just going to pull way back and just kind of coast through the finish line here and we'll get him again next year. That's kind of been his idea. And there have been so many examples of that throughout his career, like in the 2014 NBA finals with the heat. There was some bad body language.

He was putting out big numbers, but you could tell he wasn't really trying to assert himself in the game the way that he was capable of because he knew that that team wasn't good enough. One of my favorite examples of this is literally in the 2018 postseason in the first round against the Indiana Pacers. They're on the road in game four in Indiana, and they're down two games to one. and Indiana is up by four with a couple of minutes left in the fourth quarter, or about halfway through the fourth quarter,

and LeBron's kind of in that same group. You could see him in his head. You could see the body language. You could see the decision-making, and he's thinking, hey, this might not be worth it. And he was mailing it in. But then Kyle Corver came flying off a screen and hit a three. A big, big three to put the game back within the balance

to where LeBron could take it, and he decided to go for it again. But that was an example of LeBron teetering on that line. Had they lost that game, they probably lose game five at home. They probably go home in the first round, and LeBron's thinking, hey, we couldn't have won it anyway. That's kind of been his philosophy. It's a shortcoming, I always call LeBron a fair weather leader.

If you have a team that has real championship aspirations, a real opportunity to win the championship, he's probably the best guy you could have in that seat. He has such an understanding of the ebb and flow of the regular season. He has such an understanding of the ebb and flow of a seven-game playoff series. He knows how to win at such a high level that you cannot have a better guy in that spot. But if there's a team that legitimately cannot win the championship, he's one of the worst guys you can have in that spot because he's going to act like this.

The truth of the matter is, even though the pelicans have been playing good basketball lately, even though I think they literally just went into Phoenix and won the other day, they're legitimately good. They're defending really hard. Willie Green has the guys playing really hard. Brandon Ingram was playing better defense than he has since he was in a Laker jersey. That team is good. And so are the Clippers.

But these were two winnable games. These were two games that if LeBron and Russ really wanted to do this, they could have done it. And don't tell me about LeBron's box score. Don't tell me about how many points he scored. I don't want to hear about his field goal percentage. That was a disengaged LeBron that was willingly, withholding massive portions of his ability to impact the game because he didn't think it was worth it. That is, in my opinion, indisputable for anybody who's actually watching what was happening on the court

tonight. That was him telling you he didn't think it was worth it. Now, there's a case to be made that he's right. Because the truth of the matter is, LeBron, since his knees started swelling, hasn't looked remotely similar to the guy that we saw over the court. the last two and a half seasons that was very clearly the best player in the league. That's not the same guy that we've seen in this last couple of weeks. I told you guys in the last show, I can't remember two games and three tries like this against the clippers and against the Warriors where LeBron was this bad for an extended stretch of the game, in this case, in crunch time in both of those games.

That's not a coincidence in my opinion. I don't think LeBron got worse. I think he's struggling with Lyft on his most. important leg, which is his left leg. And as a result, it's starting to affect a bunch of areas of his game. It's affecting his confidence. It's affecting his belief. That's part of that calculation he's making when he's saying, I don't think it's worth going for this season. He's saying, my knee can't do this. And he's factoring that in. But this is LeBron's, this is part of that journey. I would be, I would be shocked if this doesn't end up going the route of the 2019 Lakers where LeBron plays maybe a half dozen more games. I think he has to play 58 games to qualify for the scoring title.

Maybe he guns for something like that. But I just don't, I just don't see the point in trying to limp LeBron James and Anthony Davis, injured versions of them into a first round series against a Phoenix Sun's team that is going to beat the living shit out of them. There's just no point in trying to persevere for something like that. Anthony Davis needs to take a good, long time to heal up these injuries that he's been dealing with, with his midfoot sprain and with his knee, and LeBron needs to get whatever's going on with that left knee figured out. They need to retool in the off season, and they need to make a run next year. Because there's no point in continuing to waste physical resources on these guys that don't want to do it. They've been

trying all year long to tell us exactly who they are as a basketball team, and we've tried and tricked ourselves into thinking they might not be, but this is that. This is that final, this is that, that, you know, resounding statement of what they intend to do down the stretch. Now, the way that Russ has choose to handle this is very different because Russ is a little more Kobe than he is LeBron in terms of his obstinence. Like, Russ is going to pound his head into the wall to try to stop the season from going down this route. But you saw that tonight manifest in Russ' regression, regressing back to what he was early in the season when he was struggling. You know, Russ just played three of the best games he played in the Laker jersey,

against the Warriors, against the Jazz, and against the Clippers. He was excellent as a backup perimeter initiator, limiting his mistakes, generating rim pressure, creating shots for his teammates. He was giving better defensive effort than he had given in a long time. and his way of quitting was saying, screw that, I'm going 2017 Russ. And today, all of his, you know, all of that work he had done to temper his own nature to try to fit into the role, he just threw that all away tonight and went all in on, I'm just putting my head down and driving to the basket, zero assists in seven turnovers.

that's that that is that is the definition of Russ leaning oh I guess he did have one assist in crunch in garbage time I want to make sure I give him his credit there but you're seeing Russ in this case say screw it I'm doing it my way that's his way of quitting Russ's way of quitting isn't going to manifest the way that it did for LeBron but what's funny is LeBron and LeBron and Russ started this game with that tone the rest of the team followed And it was over. And this is the result that comes with that. I'm really curious to see what happens here in the next couple of days. I'm curious to see if we get an announcement from sham saying that LeBron's going to hang it up or that he's going to take a week off or something along those lines, something referencing his knee. I'm curious to see if they dip into some G-League talent and try to develop some of their younger players and maybe bench Russ or send Russ home or something along those lines.

I'm really curious to see what's going to happen, which brings us to Frank. And this is the last thing I wanted to hit on on the Lakers front. You know, I have been back and forth about firing Frank all season. He was put in a really unfortunate position because he's kind of a one-pitch guy. Frank Vogel's pitch is, if I'm a big basketball team that has defensive-minded role players, I'm going to coach the best defense in the league because I'm going to chase and funnel guys to my big guys to the basket and we're just going to smother you with our physicality and we're going to be incredibly difficult to score on. But if you lean into any other direction outside of that,

it plays into his weaknesses. Defensive versatility, the willingness to do different things on defense, that's a huge weakness of Franks. Offensive, the understanding of how to scheme an NBA offense in the year 2022, that's not a strength of Frank Vogels. So when you build a team like this, it's obviously going to play directly into his weaknesses, and he's going to look inadequate. So I want to throw some defense to Frank Vogel in the sense that he was set up to fail. But those weaknesses are what they are.

And if you don't think that by next season, you can recreate the personnel and the identity of the 2020 Lakers that Frank coached so well, then what's the point of keeping him? At this point, you need to do one of two, things. You either need to have someone in-house, someone like Phil Handy, to take the team moving forward, or you need to find somebody outside of the franchise. This now becomes a great opportunity in this next month and a half to get a look at Phil Handy, to get a look at Dave Fisdale,

and to see if those guys can get the job done. Just in terms of their scheming and their approach, you get a feel for those guys. After the season, if it's obvious that they're not the guys, then you can spend all summer, or hopefully early in the summer, getting the best available candidate to come in and try to get this team back on track. But at this point,

there's literally no reason to keep Frank around. There's nothing to be gained. All you're doing is hurting him, putting him in a situation where he's not happy, he's not engaged with the team anymore, the team's not engaged with him. it's like continuing to date somebody that you know you're a bad fit with just because you live with each other and moving out is kind of a pain. There's no point in delaying the inevitable here.

I would give the keys to Phil Handy. The reason why is we already have examples of what David Fisdell is as a coach. There's legwork that can be done in the form of interviews and watching tape and digging back into Fisdell's history to see what he's like as a head coach. We don't really know with Phil Handy. We don't know how he is managing timeouts. We don't know how he is with time and clock situations. We don't know how he is play calling. We haven't seen enough of that yet.

So give Phil Handy a chance over the course of this next month and a half of the season to essentially audition for the head coach of the Lakers. That's the direction I would go. Because at this point, again, there's absolutely nothing to be gained by keeping Frank around. He's a bad coach for this group, even though he's a good coach for other groups. The guys have already quit on him. and you're going to have to fire him this summer anyway. So why would you keep him around for a month and a half to be miserable

so that all the guys can be miserable? Just try throwing a curveball in there and see if you can get something different over the course of this last stretch of the season to try to get just a cleansing effect. But in summation, guys, like there's just, I'm not a defeatist, I'm an optimist. Raj and I all season long talked about how there was a good team

in this Laker locker room. we were incredibly defensive of the fact that we knew that when LeBron and AD were healthy and they were surrounded by a scheme and a set of role players that worked, that they were extremely tough to beat. But for whatever reason, it never came together, and the writings on the wall, it needs to be accepted. Because if they didn't try tonight against the pelicans in an extremely winnable game, go look at the rest of their schedule in March.

What do you think they're going to finally turn it up against the suns? Do you think they're going to finally turn it up against the Warriors? They play the Mavericks on Tuesday. The Mavericks are awesome. We're going to talk about them in a few minutes. Do you think the Lakers are going to suddenly figure it out against Dallas when this perfectly winnable game was on the table tonight and they literally just didn't go for it? They're telling you what they want.

They want to be done. So let them be done. This is Lakers tonight presented by Fanduel here on the volume. I appreciate you guys coming to hang out. I can't talk any more Lakers tonight, guys. I'm over this team. We're going to move on to some of the other games that happened tonight. I wanted to talk specifically about that end of the game from Dallas and Golden State.

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permitted parishes only, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Virginia or West Virginia. First online real money wager only. Refund issued as non-withdrawable site credit that expires in 14 days. restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.Fandul.com. Gambling problem, call 1-800 next step or text next step to 533442 in Arizona. 1-88-78-8-9-7777 or visit cpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. 1-800 gambler or visit fanduel.com slash RG in Colorado, Indiana, New Jersey, and Virginia. 18777-7-70 stop in Louisiana.

1-800-270-7-117 for confidential help in Michigan. 1-8-8-Hope-N-Y or text Hope N-Y to 467-369 in New York. In Tennessee redline, dial 1-800-9-9-97889 in Tennessee. Visit www. www.1800 gambler.net in West Virginia. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential.

Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying.

Yep, that's me, CliverTaylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clivert Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger.

So, if you've ever supported me, or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need. to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple 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 ton-tons 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. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J.

And I'm Alex In. English. Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack, so I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now, so. Thank you for finishing that sentence.

I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I was so fascinated with the way that Dallas came back to win that game. Because they were getting a boatload of stops. Golden State could not score.

I saw a stat that one of the Lakers beat, or, or, Warriors beatwriters put out there that the Warriors did not make a field goal from the nine-something minute mark to about the two-minute mark in the fourth quarter. And so what I was fascinated by is the way that Dallas was getting stops because they had a lineup out there with Luca Donchich, who's a good, he's a big defender who can gamble and play passing lanes a little bit. He's a decent positional defender, but he's certainly not a good defender. He's just passable. You know, Dinwiddie's an okay defensive player. Jalen Bruny. is okay. They went with Luca, Spencer Dinwiddie, and Jalen Brunson, so they're three best

shot creators. Reggie Bullock, who is lock and trailing Steph all over the court and just denying him the basketball, but he's an only okay defensive player. He's not a great defensive player. He had a good defensive season last year with the Knicks, but over the course of his career, he's been more or less just an okay defensive player. And then Dorian Finney Smith, who's a really good defensive wing. So they had Dorian Finney Smith, a wing playing center, a two guard chasing Steph around, and then three more two guards on the floor and completely and utterly shut down the Golden State Warriors. And I don't think that's a coincidence.

And I think it's an example of the direction that the game of basketball is going in. Something I've been talking about nonstop and something that I think is so important and the teams that embrace this first are going to be the teams that win. And the teams that cling to the old style of basketball are going to be the ones that look like the Lakers.

So when you have that, that group and you switch everything, you shut down all of Golden State's actions, all of their pin downs and flares and split cuts and Steph flying off the screens. None of that works when you're switching everything. So then it becomes who can create a shot. And you've got Andrew Wiggins who loves to take and settle for 18 to 20 foot pull up jump shots that he's only going to make, you know, 38% of the time or whatever it is. And then you've got Steph who, when they really are keying in on him at this phase in his career, he's going to struggle to get shots. off. I'll talk about that here in a minute. But for the most part, it's a lot of guys on the

Warriors that aren't great at creating their own shot. Even Jordan Poole is really struggling against Dorian Philly and Doreenny Smith's length. So at the end of the day, the Warriors, their high powered offense, their motion offense with all this movement and cutting and screening, was utterly shut down by a team that just switched everything. And again, so many coaches get caught up in, oh, I'm giving up a size mismatch. This guy can shoot a jump hook over Jalen Bunn. Brunson in the post, or this guy can get an offensive rebound against Spencer Dinwiddie. Yeah, you're right. They can't.

You're going to give up some things. Every defensive scheme is an example of giving and taking. Here's the thing that I'm going to take away from you, and here's the thing that I'm giving to you as part of the process of taking that other thing away. And Dallas gave up size mismatches all over the floor. Dallas gave up athleticism matches all over the floor, and it just didn't matter because they switched everything. And then on the other end of the floor, with those three high-level dribble drive guys,

and Spencer Dinwiddie, Jalen Brunson, and Luca Donchich, they're meanwhile getting fantastic stuff against a great Warriors defense. That has tons of length and athleticism. That is great perimeter defenders who slide their feet and keep guys in front. And it's just not enough. Because on the other end, they're just picking their spots. Who has the best matchup? Spencer Dinwiddie was getting good stuff at the end of the game.

That Luca was able to give the ball up because, Spencer Dinwiddie was able to create his own shot and was able to create shots for his teammates. That's the advantage of that style of basketball. That is five-out basketball. That is switch everything basketball. That is modern basketball. And that is what works now. And for whatever reason, there is nobody in the Laker front office that has watched enough hoops over the course of the last five years to understand that because they've done everything in their power to alienate that sort of thing and lean into it. When everything was hitting the fan in the third quarter today, guess where Vogue went, DeAndre Jordan, who at one point decided he was point DJ and dribbled the ball

up the floor and threw it 30 feet over someone's head into the stance. It went about exactly as you would expect for a non-MBA player trying to play in an NBA basketball game. But at the end of the day, I thought it was super fascinating to see these teams like Dallas, there are so many other teams like this around the league, that are succeeding playing a modern style of basketball. And it doesn't have to be, everyone told me all season long, the Lakers don't have defensive personnel, the Lakers don't have guys that can keep people in front.

And there's a lot of truth to that. But they certainly weren't going to succeed playing old-fashioned basketball. If Dallas can get those guys to guard, the Lakers should have been able to get any of these guys to guard, and they just haven't been able to. Last thing I wanted to hit on the Warriors was Steph's shooting slump. So for this entire season, he's shooting 37.6% from three. But he's certainly not trending in the right direction, because in his last eight games, he's shooting 34.2% from three.

Before the Draymond injury, the Warriors were 28 and 6, and since the Draymond injury, they're 15 and 12. So obviously, Draymond plays a part in this. It brings a lot on the defensive end, but also for Steph's shot quality. He's really good at setting screens and rescreening and, watching Steph off the ball and hunting him in the spots that he likes to be. They have a great chemistry with each other. So shot quality is part of that. But the other part of it that's really fascinating to me because this is, I don't think this is a slump anymore. We are now

bordering on this is a half of a season where Steph has not been able to shoot the three nearly as well as he has used to, like massive decline, like 10% down from what he was shooting over the same stretch of games last year. That's how bad it's been. And what's really fascinating to me is the way that a guy like Steph Curry would age. Because you watch a guy like LeBron or you watch a guy like Chris Paul. You watch these older vets that are good with body positioning and pinning guys and using their strength and angles to get their shots off. LeBron is way less athletic than he used to be when he was younger,

but he's still so effective getting to the rim and finishing because he just does it with his strength and with savvy and positioning and sealing. and it's almost like a below-the-rim version of himself. But with Steph, because he is a jump shooter, because the lion's share of what he generates as a score is as a jump shooter, that minuscule decline can be the difference between a great look and only an okay look. When Steph was at his peak physically, he could have an inch of space, and that was enough for him.

But maybe he needs five inches of space now. as he's slowed down a little bit, and that difference can be the difference between shooting 44% on 13-3s-a-game and shooting 34% on 13-3s-a-game. So it remains to be seen because he looks mostly the same, right? Like, he doesn't look slow out there,

but again, a minuscule decline for a guy like Steph could be the difference between him being a great shooter and an amazing greatest shooter of all time and just a great shooter. that's the type of decline that you might see there. And it remains to be seen, like I said, this could either be a long, drawn-out slump, and we'll see him bust out of this.

I said this on the favorites earlier this week. Steph is a bona fide MVP candidate, in my opinion, because if he shoots really well for a month, if he has one month where he shoots 48% from three on like 15 attempts, then all of a sudden his percentages round out. He finishes around 40% for the season. That's an MVP candidate. Because if they end up high enough in the standings,

that's a very, you know, traditional type of MVP candidate. So I'm not trying to, you know, sign his own pitcher where he, so to speak. I'm just saying that this is now a very, very, very long drawn-out slump and it very easily could be the sign of a decline. Really quick hitters here. I wanted to touch on just how dominant the Sixers have been. It's only been two games. But I have some crazy stats for you guys.

So James Hardin and Joel Embed have played 53 minutes together. in those 53 minutes, the Sixers are plus 46. Think about how crazy that is. That's a plus 43.1 net rating in those minutes. 134.5 offensive rating, that's outrageously good. 91.4 defensive rating. That's outrageously good. That is about as resounding, a dominant beginning to this era that you could have possibly scripted.

what I thought was really interesting is the difference in the way that James Hardin is playing with Embed and without Embed. So when Embed's on the floor, James Hardin is only attempting 9.5 shots per 36 minutes. But in those same minutes, he's averaging 15.7 assists per 36 minutes. So when Joelle Embed's on the floor, he's going full playmaker. But when Joel Embed's off the floor, his field goal attempts go up to 20.1. per 36, and his assists drop all the way down to 8.4 per 36. So he's completely changing his approach when Embed's off the floor to your vintage James Hardin, I'm trying to score the basketball. The reason why I think that's interesting is I think that one of the ways that these two teams,

the way that Minnesota guarded him and the way that the Knicks have guarded him, way too much like trapping and sending two bodies at Hardin while he's running those screen and rolls with Embedde, when James doesn't want to shoot when he's with him. Bid. James wants to facilitate when he's with Mbid. And my thing is, like, with how dominant Mbid is playing right now, very clearly one of the best players in the league, probably going to win MVP, why would you play into his strengths? You should want James Hardin to beat you, not Mb. So my thing is I would like to see some of these teams with Mbid on the floor, play James Hardin straight up a little bit more, and try to get the Sixers out of rhythm and start to try to get James

to gun a little bit and maybe get that dynamic to swing. switch away. Because the amount of free throws that Joel Embed is getting with James Hardin is insane. And a big part of that is him catching the ball in that short roll unguarded because his man is trapping James Hardin 30 feet from the basket when James Hardin doesn't want to shoot. So that's going to be the interesting dynamic to watch there. One last note on the Sixers, while Joel Embed and James Hardin are on the floor, other Sixers players are shooting 42.4% from three. That's how open

and high quality the looks are that the other role players are getting playing alongside Joel Limbid and James Harden. That's scary, especially with how good those role players are at doing the defensive job on the other end of the floor. Last really quick note before we get out of here, the Phoenix Suns lost their second consecutive game without Chris Paul. Their offensive rating this season drops from 115.9 with Chris Paul on the floor to 106.3 without it. Translation, with Chris Paul on the floor, they're one of the best offenses in the league.

With Chris Paul off the floor, they're one of the worst offenses in the league. That's basically the difference that we're talking about. And this goes back to what I said when I was talking about the Suns last week. This Chris Paul injury is fine. They bought so much leeway that they can drop a couple of home games like this, and it's not a big deal. They're going to end up the number one overall seed pretty much no matter what. So everything's fine. But if Chris Paul, for whatever reason, can't play in the playoffs, whether it's from this injury or him being a shell of himself because he's not in shape when he gets back or he's not in rhythm, or if he, for whatever reason, suffers some other kind of injury and he can't play in the playoffs,

this suddenly becomes a very beatable basketball team. That's the fragility of the NBA. That's just how this works. When guys get hurt, you lose. I mean, you don't have to look any further than the Lakers to understand that. but I'm just saying even for a team as talented as the sons, they are not immune to that either. And they're going to need all their guys to be healthy to have a real chance to win.

All right, guys, that's all I have for tonight. I appreciate you guys dealing with an extremely frustrating Laker team tonight. We will be back on Tuesday after the Dallas Mavericks game where who knows what's going to happen. Who knows if they're going to have a different coach? Who knows if they're even going to go for it that night? but we will be here right after the final buzzer that night. As always, I appreciate your guys' support,

and I will see you in a couple days. 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

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