The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Lakers Tonight with Jason Timpf - LeBron passes Malone but Lakers blow it

Episode Date: March 20, 2022

Jason praises LeBron’s greatness as he becomes the No. 2 all-time scorer but goes in on another brutal Lakers loss. Then he gives his thoughts on Steph’s injury and the red-hot Timberwolves. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I'm not sure that I've ever hated a basketball team as much as I've hated this Lakers team. There is something so off about the way they approach the game that is offensive to all fans. And I know all of you guys can relate to me in that regard. We are going to break this game down in its entirety. we are going to talk about LeBron passing Carl Malone. And then if you guys stick around at the end, we're going to talk a little bit about Steph Curry's injury, what that means for the Warriors.

And the Minnesota Timberwolves have won 10 of their last 11 games. And they've beat a bunch of really good teams. So we're going to dive into that and what that means and what I think of them in particular. But let's start with the Lakers. You know, I've tweeted this or said it on the podcast at least a half dozen times this year. But this Lakers team is allergic to, success. And what I mean by that is every time they do something good and are handed some sort

of reward for their action, they immediately relax. They do not use that as a motivation to keep pushing. They use it as an excuse to pull their foot off the gas. So they're up 36 to 26 at the end of the first quarter. And the most important thing that I noticed was defensive effort, but particularly at the point of attack. Everybody was doing a good job sliding their feet, keeping people in front. And then every time they got to stop, they force people to shoot over the top. This is a wizard's team that's down a bunch of bodies tonight, right? You know, Kyle Kuzma's out of the game, Bradley Beals out for the season. So they're limited offensively. So when they slide their feet and compete on defense, they get stops. And then they started running the other way in transition

and getting all sorts of easy baskets in the full court transition possessions. But in the last three quarters of the game, everything that they did to build that 10 point lead, everything that contributed to their success, they stopped doing. They completely let their foot off the gas defensively. They gave up 101 points in the final three quarters. And as a result, they gave Washington a chance. And then at the end of the game, when you give teams a chance, it becomes a make or miss league. LeBron misses a wide open three on the left wing. Chris Staps Porzingis makes a three at the top of the key. You throw now all of a sudden effort's not an issue because you are playing hard in crunch time, but now those ugly habits, I talked about this last night with

Toronto, a sloppy basketball team that has been sloppy all season will be sloppy when they need to play solid basketball. It's it those those habits are not in place. And so even though the effort is there, they're going to make silly mistakes. And they did. I talked a lot over the last week about the way teams like Dallas have been using double teams to compensate for their lack of size. And they have that down to a science. The Lakers do not have that. So when the wizard started going down to Chris Saps Porzingis in crunch time against LeBron and against Stanley Johnson, again, just by having some reasonable double and recover scheme, they would be able to handle Chris Sos Porzingis. He's not a good enough player to kill you in a game like that. But the Lakers aren't

sharp in those areas of the game. The Lakers are not a team that has established a scheme that they have all of the details ironed out. So when that happened, they couldn't handle Chris Stap's Porzingis. They got killed by that mismatch. A couple of shots missed for you. A couple shots make for them game over. And that's what I'm talking about when I talk about saying they're allergic to success. If they understood how they got that 10 point lead in the first quarter and they replicated it for the second quarter, maybe you're up 25. Maybe the dynamic of the game changes. You replicate it in the third quarter. You're up 30. Now LeBron sits out in the fourth quarter. Now we're having fun on the sideline while the young guys or the bench players are out on the

floor doing their thing. They are allergic to success. They don't understand why they have good results and why they have bad results. They haven't been able to make that association. And because of that, they haven't made the necessary efforts and the necessary steps to establish those habits in order to actually have some consistent success. More than one quarter of things going well, more than one quality win. What if the Lakers put together three or four quality wins? We haven't seen that all season because this team doesn't have the basketball character to do that. Here in a few minutes, I'm going to talk about what this team could look like with Anthony Davis coming back. What is the best case scenario for this team?

And it has a lot to do with those habits. I'll get to that in a minute. I wanted to get to LeBron because, you know, in this complete travesty of a season, he is one of the rare bright spots. He is still playing arguably the best basketball of his career, at least on the offensive end of the floor, in his 19th season, which is absolutely amazing. You pass Carl Malone tonight.

It's obviously a big moment. To me, the most important element, to LeBron's scoring longevity. What got him to this point is the way he developed as a jump shooter. I talked about this a lot the other night when he had 50 again, talking about his shot-making ability. But it's pretty crazy to see the transition that LeBron's underwent over the course of this last decade. So if we back up to 2013, so about nine years ago in the finals against Greg Popovich, mind you, this is literally 10 years into his career. He is established in the heart of his prime. He's a defending champion.

He's got four MVP's at this point. So he's already, like, firmly in the top 10 players of all time, hot on MJ's heels with lots of years left. He's already established. But he had a glaring weakness. He wasn't a good jump shooter, at least in the previous season. And even throughout most of that series, Greg Popovich playing off of LeBron really messed with him.

He didn't have, he had some proficiency with his jump shot that hadn't matched up with his confidence in his jump shot. And so when Greg Popovich did that, it got in LeBron's head a little bit. And in the early portions of that series, LeBron really struggled mentally with the coverage that Greg Popovich was throwing at it. But he breaks through, right?

He breaks through in game six and game seven, makes a bunch of jump shots, particularly in game seven. He makes five threes in that game. And the rest is history. Since that day, LeBron has been an incredible jump shooter. This season, coming into tonight, in his last seven games,

now eight because he was four for 10 again tonight. So in his last eight games, he's averaging over nine three point shots per game attempted and making over 40% of them. So here we were halfway through his career, well established in the heat of his prime, he had a major weakness. And here we are nine years later. And he is not only rectified that weakness, but it's now a strength. If you go into NBA.com and you pull up all the three-point shooters in the league that are attempting at least seven threes per game, there's like 30 guys in the league that are that high-volume three-point shooting. And LeBron's right in the middle of the pack in terms of percentage. And he's ahead of a lot of big-name guys that you think of as three-point shooters. That's what LeBron has

turned himself into. He is now a league average high-volume three-point shooter. So I translate that to he's one of the better three-point shooters in the league. That is an incredible accomplishment for a player that already had so much in his bag, that already had so many things accomplished. And yet he just continued to adapt and continue to evolve. It's a testament to his work ethic. And it's the reason why he's here today, averaging 30 points per game in his 19th season on over 60% true shooting, passing Carl Malone, and looking like one of the best players in the world.

that that's what that took as he's lost that little bit of athleticism he needed to adapt he needed to evolve it's like the opposite of russell westbrook in so many different ways and it's been interesting to see i remember back in it was like either 2016 or 2017 lebron had a bad jump shooting game and one a reporter asked him about it and lebron flat out said to the reporter i wish i could remember more of the details but he specifically said to the reporter i'm not a jump shooter it's not what i do that was his mentality kind of at that time. Like he had worked to the point where he could shoot well enough, but it wasn't, you know, was something that was his bread and butter. Now I bet you if you ask LeBron that same question, he would pridefully answer that he believes he's a great shooter. And that's where, again,

that's where the stubbornness has to fade away. Compare that type of approach to what you've seen from Russ. You need to, as you get older, be willing to read the writing on the wall, see what's still working for you, see what's not working for you anymore. Watch film, see where opportunities are. And I think LeBron understood that the easiest way for him to extend his prime was to become a better three-point shooter. And he took advantage of that. And that's why he's still where he is in the league at this

point. You know, you're going to see a lot of nefarious characters, people that have bad intentions, try to undercut these statistical accomplishments from LeBron at this point in his career, which, for the record, up front is flat out stupid. and unfair, jealous. It's just ugly behavior from those people. Because the reality of the situation is LeBron has won more championships than any player or franchise since he came into the league in 2003. He's been to the finals 10 times. His winning resume speaks for itself. If you want to try to pretend like he's not all about that, get out of here, man. Like for instance, he very easily could have sat out tonight on the back of a tail end of a back to back and played in Cleveland and had

this accomplishment in front of his home fans. Credit to LeBron for seeing a winnable game on the resume or on the schedule and thinking he had an opportunity to get his team some buffer in the standings under the circumstances especially with their schedule coming up but like what's so interesting about it to me is if you remember after in 2017 when the lake when the calves won the eastern conference after the game there was some footage in the locker room of him telling all of his teammates like hey this isn't guaranteed enjoy this moment enjoy the little victories and it's it's super to me because LeBron is a guy, again, who's been to the mountaintop more than anybody, any team, any coach, any GM, anybody right now in this air, except for Greg Popovich, I suppose.

But at this point, you know, like, it's easy to lose sight of the perspective of the fact that only one team can win an NBA championship and understand that you're going to go up to bat, you know, so many times in your career and you're not guaranteed to win it every time. So in those years when you don't, you have to take time to appreciate and take time to relax and kind of soak in the little accomplishments along the way. That's always been one of LeBron's major philosophies. And I think that's what he views with this accomplishment. He knows he's a winner. He knows anybody who's being, you know, objective about this knows he's a winner. And he knows that this is a big deal. You know, LeBron, you could make the case, and I said this in the video I released earlier,

you can make the case that just his scoring is enough to put him in the goat conversation. You know, when you look at a guy like MJ or Kobe, it's this two-way dominant score, right? A guy who could score in a million different ways, especially in crunch time and can guard the other team's best player. Well, even if I just simplified LeBron's game down to death, his ability to do things defensively as a versatile perimeter defender and his ability to score the basketball, he's, bit as good at those things as the all-time greats. He's every bit as good at those things as Kobe, as MJ. That's what makes his goat case so compelling because he has so much more that he brings

to the table as a basketball player than just those two things. And that's why I think it's important to appreciate these accomplishments to take that time. You're not guaranteed. LeBron, next year, I expect the Lakers, if help willing. I expect the Lakers to be very firmly in the top tier of. contenders. I think they learned a bunch of valuable lessons this year. I think they're going to approach the season way more seriously. I think they're going to get more. They're going to fix a lot

of the issues they made. They're going to be relevant again. Next year, the focus can be winning. And, you know, maybe when Anthony Davis gets back and they're in the playing, the focus can be winning. But right now, I understand and I respect the idea that you, of LeBron, just taking advantage of the small victories and taking the time to appreciate it. Start your bracket with a bang. Right now, Fandall Sportsbook is giving new customers a $150 $150 instant bonus guarantee. That's right. You'll get $150 in bonus site credit,

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1-888-78-9-7777 or visit CCPpG.org. slash chat in Connecticut. 1-800 gambler or visit fanduel.com slash RG in Colorado, Indiana, New Jersey, and Virginia. 1-8-7-1-8-7. 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, 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 Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. 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. Hey, this is Robert from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. Joe and I are both lifelong Star Wars fan, so we're celebrating May the 4th with a brand new week of fun, thought-provoking Star Wars-related episodes. Join us as we tackle science and culture topics from a galaxy far, far away, such as the biology of tauntons and wampas on the ice planet hot, or the practicality and corporate business sense of the Sith rule of two. Listen to stuff to blow your mind on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped 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 a little kill. Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex 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 yeah, yeah, yeah. 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 a on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence. Yes. 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. 7-770 stop in Louisiana. 1-800-270-1-117 for confidential help in Michigan. 1-8778 Hope N.Y or text Hope N.Y to 467-369 in New York.

In Tennessee, redline, dial 1-800-889-9-97889 in Tennessee. Visit www.1-800 gambler.net in West Virginia. HelpJews in poverty at helpjusnow.org. Your $25 gift today will help provide a life-saving food box to Jews. and need. Be a blessing right now. Visit helpjus now.org. That's helpjus now.org. Really quickly before we move on from the Lakers, I wanted to, I've been thinking about this over the course of the last week because the Lakers have been playing a little bit better basketball. Not great, but they're playing a little bit better basketball. They should have won tonight.

They should be on a little bit of a win streak here. So what is the best version of this Lakers team? What does it look like with Anthony Davis coming back? does it have enough to make a run at things? And when you start to look at the pieces available, it doesn't look that bad. If you look in the front court, I've got LeBron and Anthony Davis, which is as good of a front court

as you'll find anywhere in the league. You've got Wenian Gabriel now is another guy that kind of like is the opposite of the Dwight in the DeAndre Jordan. He's thinner, much faster, can get up and down the floor with the style that the Lakers play, can guard on the perimeter better. They can almost use him as a wing in a lot of ways.

That's interesting. Then you go on the wing and you've got Stanley Johnson. He's okay, you know, Carmelo Anthony is not really a defensive wing, but he accomplishes a lot of what a wing can do offensively. And you got Austin Reeves, who's one of the better offball players in the league already as a rookie. So they're pretty decent on the wing. And then you look at the guards and you've got Russell Westbrook, who we do not need to talk about.

Let's just leave that on the side. And then we've got Taylor Horton Tucker, who's an okay backup guard right in the league. And then you've got Malik Monk, who's a offensive microwave type of guy, gives a lot back on defense, but he's definitely an, net positive type of player. And then you've got some depth. You've got DJ Augustine. You've got Avery Bradley and Dwight Howard, guys that can play in specific matchups when you need something. They've got nine solid guys in that rotation. So in theory, this is still a team that has a puncher's chance to beat anybody. Because if you've got seven solid rotation players with LeBron

and AD, they should be able to beat anybody if some things break right, correct? But they, like we talked about earlier, they don't have the habits. And what's concerning to me is if you asked me, Jason, how does LeBron and AD work their way through the playing tournament and beat Phoenix in the first round? How do they do that? I would tell you it starts right now. Right at this moment for the rest of the season, they need to work on establishing habits. Treat it as like a three week long training camp. You got three weeks here. You got roughly, what, I think 12 games, take these 12 games, treat them like a training camp, really build out those habits, take it seriously so that when Anthony Davis gets back, you have the habits to match your

talent. Are they the most talented team in the league? No, we've been over that. They're not good enough with their role players, but they have a puncher's chance to be to anybody. So if you attach that with championship level habits, then they can win. They need to show us over the course of the next few weeks that they can put multiple games together of success. Now, do I think that's going to happen? No, That's why I said this is the best case scenario. But if you're in that locker room and you're looking at each other and you're like, hey, are we going to go for this or not, that's what you have to deal with. That needs to be the actionable item.

It's one thing to sit in the locker room and say, hey, guys, when AD gets back, we're going to make a run at this. No, you have some steps you got to get through first. And right now you've got to somehow distance yourself entirely from the previous, you know, psychology of this team and somehow start fresh. build a new identity around this group of guys. There's enough new faces in there with DJ Augustine, with Wenian Gabriel, with Stanley Johnson. You've got enough new faces in there to try to do that. They just got to do that. But here we are again. I think it's March 19th. And they just showed us

again that that's not who they are. So that's why what I'm laying out is the best case scenario in not the most likely scenario. For those of you are just joining us, this is Lakers tonight, presented by Fandul here at the volume. I wanted to move on to Steph Curry for a second because we haven't had a chance to talk about him since his injury. I've done as much digging as I can and paid as close attention as I can to the reports that have come out. And it sounds to me like there's optimism that he's coming back

before the end of the season. It's going to be very similar to what happened to LeBron last year. Guy dives into his leg, suffers a lower leg injury, going to be coming back with just a handful of games left. I think LeBron came back with four games left last season. They might be able to get three or four with Steph this year. You know, back in December, I did a list of what I said were my best contenders, my top contenders in the league.

The teams that I thought were most likely to win the championship. And at that point in time, I had the Golden State Warriors number one, because they were so incredible defensively. And at that time, Steph was still playing well. Steph was a top-tier superstar, like one of the best players in the world. And I'm always going to defer to those kinds of guys, especially when they have an unbelievable defense. And they had Clay Thompson on the way back.

Jordan Poole was playing well. There was a lot of reasons to be optimistic that that Golden State team could be really good. But then Steph went into a slump. And in the times that I've talked about the Warriors sense, I've said one thing very consistently. The only way that the Warriors are going to win the title is if Steph Curry has a nuclear playoff run.

Absolute peak step, 30 plus points per game. you know, 65% true shooting, knocking down half his threes. That's what it's going to take for this team to win. And he's not really shown anything. He's had these little burst where things have looked a little better, but he's not as bad as he was in January, but he has not shown us a consistent stretch of the old step. And so the injury is frustrating on that front

because he's a perimeter player who relies on his handle and his jump shot, which means he's very dependent on rhythm. For those of you have played the game at some level, whether that's, you know, in high school, college, or even if you just play in your men's league, you're familiar with the concept of rhythm. You have to feel comfortable with the basketball and confident with the basketball.

That does not happen with a flip of a switch. It takes time. So the idea of Steph busting out of his slump becomes way less likely now that he's sitting out with a lower leg injury. the only like silver lining that you could cling to is if maybe just maybe his slump was associated with another nagging lower body injury and somehow he can rectify both of those during this rehab kind of like anthony davis when he sprained his knee he was not looking good before the knee injury then he went down then he came back and when he came back he looked spry right he looked lighter he looked like he was faster he had all of these you know the kind of this newfound physical energy, right? Maybe that happens with Steph. I don't think it's likely, but that's the best case scenario. The whole thing with Steph getting hurt is exactly what

frustrates me so much about this Lakers team. Because LeBron getting hurt, that's going to happen. He got hurt a couple times this year. Anthony Davis getting hurt, that's going to happen. But it's all about getting healthy at the right time. And right now, you're seeing some teams around the league, particularly two of the top tier contenders, Golden State and Phoenix, dealing with some injuries. You could be getting healthy while the other teams are on the downward trajectory, but instead you messed around all season from day one of training camp, you didn't take it seriously, so you're a bad basketball team. So now instead of being a team that can capitalize on things,

look at Milwaukee last year. We talked about them last night. They were 19 and 17 against 500 and above teams. They were not a dominant regular season team. You know, Janus kind of fell by the wayside a lot in the discourse, but look at what happened. LeBron and Anthony Davis got hurt. You had all the injuries that happened to the Brooklyn Nets.

You know, like they, Trey Young got hurt in the conference finals. So some things broke right for Milwaukee. Next thing you know, they're holding the trophy. That's the way things can break in the NBA. And that's why it's so important to always keep your eye on the prize, even as you're dealing with little nagging injuries and things along those lines. That's what annoys me about this Laker team. I would like LeBron and AD's as a punt.

or chance against anybody in the league if some things broke right. And I don't know that they are even remotely close enough to the level of basketball, not talent, just basketball, to be able to compete in any of those environments. All right, before we get out of here, I wanted to really quickly hit on the Minnesota Timberwolves. So they are 10 and 1 in their last 11 games. In that stretch, they have the number one offense and number one defense in the entire NBA. They have the best net rating in the league in that stretch by 9.8 points over second place. They beat the Bucks, the Lakers, the Heat, the Warriors, and the Cavs in this stretch. So it sounds amazing, right? Little bit of context. When they played the Bucks, they didn't have Janus. When they played the Lakers,

they didn't have Anthony Davis. When they played the Heat, they didn't have Jimmy Butler. When they played the Warriors, they didn't have Dremont Green. And when they played the calves, they didn't have Darius Garland. The last time they played a healthy contender was the Philadelphia 76ers in that first game. with James Hardin at home and they got utterly obliterated. So to be clear, you have to take care of business in the NBA. Like look at the Lakers. They can't even beat bad teams at this point. So I never want to undercut success. They are playing really good basketball right now, but they've had some good fortune with the injuries. Looking at the team specifically, there's a lot of things that I like

about them because of what they've done in the draft. They're actually pretty athletic on the wing. Jared Vanderbilt and Jaden McDaniels bring that kind of athleticism and that dirty work element that's so important. Tori and Prince has also helped on that front. Carl Towns is one of the better matchup problems that you have in the league, right? That's always going to make me optimistic about a team in the playoffs. The reason why I'm not stoked on Minnesota, the reason why I don't think there's as good as any of these other teams that I've been showcasing on this show recently is their guards are too erratic. Anthony Edwards is young, super talented. This is nothing to be said about his ceiling.

But DeAngelo Russell and Anthony Edwards are not going to be able to execute with that slowdown, methodical, super intelligent basketball that they're going to have to play to beat the super top tier teams in the league. If you're going to out duel Steph Curry, if you're going to out duel that Phoenix Suns team with Chris Paul, or God forbid you make it to the finals and you have to be. beat somebody out east, you have to be able to execute. This is something I talk about a lot with these other contenders, right? Like, how do they stack up against the best? And I would say Anthony Edwards and DeAngelo Russell as perimeter decision makers are going to be near the end of that list in terms of teams that are going to be in this playoff run. So they're playing some good basketball

right now, a lot to get excited about. But I wish they had that one really savvy perimeter decision maker that could settle them down and get them into their stuff, get them calm when things are going bad, get the ball to the right guy when he's hot and has it going. Those are the kinds of things that would make me more optimistic about that team. And obviously, because Carl Towns is a post player, he's not a guy who can initiate from the perimeter. That limits what he can do in the half court of a playoff series when teams are really dialed in on him as well. So good Timberwolves basketball here in the last couple of weeks, but I'm not as high on them as their fans probably are. that is all we have for tonight. We will be back Monday after the Lakers play in Cleveland.

As always, I sincerely appreciate your guys' support, and I will see you. The Volume. The General Insurance presents ordering a sandwich with Shaq and Hall of Fame announcer Michael Buffer. I'm going to have roast beef. What do you want, Michael? Let's get ready for past rummy on Rye. Turns out Michael Buffer talks like that all the time. And it turns out, the general is a quality insurance company that's been saving people money for nearly 60 years. spicy.

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