The Ringer NBA Show - The Clippers Advance, A Weird Game In Philly, and Monday's Matchups | Post Game

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

Kevin O'Connor and J. Kyle Mann sit down every Sunday of the NBA playoffs to bring you in-depth analysis of the latest matchups! Today they break down the Clippers victory over Dallas in Game 7 and explain how Kawhi Leonard can flip a switch and become one of the best players in the world (01:10). They then discuss the odd Atlanta-Philadelphia game that resulted in a Hawks victory (19:01). Then they preview the upcoming Monday games, discuss what they can expect from the Nets in their matchup against the Bucks (34:40), and figure out what has to be done by each team in the Nuggets-Suns series (50:41) Hosts: Kevin O'Connor and J. Kyle Mann Producer: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What If the Len Bias story hosted by Jordan Ritter-Con is the ringer's latest narrative podcast. Episodes 1 and 2 launch on June 9th, and you can find new episodes every Wednesday on the Book of Basketball 2.0 feed. Here's a quick trailer. You've heard his name, Lynn Bias, 1980s phenom, second pick in the NBA draft. And then, cocaine, tragedy, one of the most shocking deaths in sports history. 35 years later, Bias' legacy is still making an impact. From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network,

this is What If, the Lynn Bias story. I'm Jordan Ritter-Con. Welcome to the Sunday edition of the Ringer NBA show. I'm Kevin O'Connor in every Sunday for the rest of the playoffs. I'm excited to be talking basketball with Jay Kyle, man. What's up, Kyle? Hey, KOC, what's going on, my main man? How you doing?

I'm doing really well today, man. we had a good day of basketball games earlier. We had the Hawks and the Sixers and their game one. But first we're going to start out talking about the game seven that we had today. And that's the Clippers and the Mavericks. Clippers took this game. And midway through the third quarter, it seemed like momentum was swinging towards the Mavs. They went up five and then boom.

Clippers go on a run, lead at 15 points entering the fourth quarter and they never looked back. Kauai had 28 points on 15 shots. with 10 rebounds, 9 assists in 0, 0 turnovers for Kauai Leonard. Kyle, it just seems like in these big must-win games, Kauai can just flip a switch and become the best player in the world. It does seem like that. You know, nine of those rebounds were defensive. You know, got just really, really impressive.

The four steals, too. It seemed like he halfway through maybe around game five, really just flipped the switch. They talked about it on the broadcast, and I think it's totally true that he he started to really insist on taking some ownership. I don't know, who knows how they came to make this decision, but they stopped switching the pick and rolls,

which is ultimately what Luca was just killing them with. He kills everybody with that because Luca is just a chess master in terms of manipulating the matchups that he wants and things like that. It was a series, like, on paper, the Clippers have a lot more talent than Dallas. And it was, didn't it just kind of feel like, despite everything that was going on,

like Luca and well, the MAVs just kind of kept just hanging around. It didn't seem to add up, you know, when you were kind of looking at what was happening on the floor. Did you kind of get that vibe too? Yeah. I mean, it just seemed like it was Luca, Luca, Luca, Luca, Luca, Luca, Luca, Luca, Luca,

Luca, Luca, Luca, Luca, Luca, Luca, and that's it. Like, there's never earning support. And I think in that third quarter, when the Clippers did turn it around, it felt like to me, Luca kind of hit a bit of a wall. He seemed tired on the defensive end of the floor.

some real lazy closeouts. Offensively, he'd lost what he had in that first half. And if you're not getting support from the rest of your roster, it's not going to help. And that's where the Clippers, as you said, they just seemed like the more talented, deeper team. And you've got to give Tyron Lou credit. You know, he didn't start the series with Luke Conard or Terrence Mann, but the coaching staff figured it out.

Stuck with those guys. Karnar gave them some really good minutes off the bench tonight. Man, he had some big time shots on the first half, played solid. active defense. I mean, that Clippers benched did a good job. And sticking with Reggie Jackson as well, benching Patrick Beverly, another good move by Tyloo in this series. Those X factors, I mean, you know, Kauai Leonard and Luca, they were both great in their own respective ways, but the edge, the clear edge was with the Clippers other guys when reviewing this entire series. Yes, definitely. And to me, the thing that really stood out was just, A, this game kind of had, this game kind of had like

a sleepy pace for a game seven. Maybe it's that Sunday afternoon. Is it the cardboard cutouts in the crowd too? Well, no, I just like the literal pace of the game just felt. And I was, the vibe that I was getting as I was watching it was it just felt like the Clippers at no point felt like they were impeded from creating open shots. And the numbers support that. In this game, the Clippers had 44 spot-up opportunities in this game.

And they hit on 1.409 points per position. on those. And compare that to Dallas, who only got 27. So, I mean, they were really, really producing. And a big part of that was, to me, you know, Carlisle goes and makes this switch, I think, I guess it was like game five or six when he started to go with the two, the Twin Tower thing with Bobon and with KP, which is something that we can, you know, the roster stuff with Dallas is a conversation we're going to have to have. I think that it's a looming thing over this. And it really is tied into how Luca plays and Lucas evolution. But if you just look at the fact that the clippers have these, you know,

rangy quick wings who have, they have a lot of dynamic ball skills among their wings, and they just keep throwing them at you, keep throwing them at you, similar to the Hawks in a way who we'll talk about. But the Mavs, when they had that big lineup out there, their north-south foot speed was just really, really compromised. They couldn't get any ball pressure to keep the clippers from going where they want to go. I mean, nobody can stop Kauai from going. where he wants to go. He just slowly, he's so, so strong and so effective. And I can't even count

how many times they got along the baseline and just kicked it back out and shot wide open shots. And the clippers hit him. I mean, it was, it was just a consistent flow of spot-up offense that Dallas just couldn't do anything about despite the fact that they were still scoring the ball themselves. Everything you just said reminded me of the Draymond Green. There's 82 game players and 16 game players. And in this series for the Mavericks, you see Max and Cleba become a nine-minute per game player. You see Dwight Powell getting five minutes in this game seven, which I'm a little bit surprised about after how well he did in game six and game five. You see Trey Burke coming off the bench. Jalen Brunson only 10 minutes coming off the bench. It just Carlisle didn't have a lot of

options off this bench. And a lot of the guys are performed well around Luca over the course of the season. It seemed like that the skills just aren't translating to a postseason setting now for the second season in a row. And for the Mavericks here, you know, we'll talk about the Clippers more in a second, but with Dallas spinning this forward for them, the lack of self-creation scoring weapons, aside from Luca, Hardaway Jr. is a nice player. He's a nice player. He can't be your number two if you want to win a championship. Porzingis plays like a number three, a big floor spacer. Carlisle talked all serious long about how, you know, he's saying KP's playing great, KP's doing what he need him to do. The problem is, and we have a video about this on Monday on the

void. KP is a $30 million player playing like a tall wing, playing off ball, cutting and slashing, but he's not somebody you can give the ball to. And he also, to your point of both defense, not making it up on that end of the floor either, to the point you're playing a lot of zone. The clippers were taking those open jump shop opportunities when Boban and KP are hanging around in the paint preventing layups with their size and length. There just weren't enough answers on either side of the floor. And when you think about this Mavericks roster moving forward, you get Hardaway, Redick, Mellie, and Bobon all unrestricted. Josh Richardson can become an unrestricted free agency as a player option for next season.

Don't have a lot of cap space options unless you lose all of those guys. You already gave up first round draft picks and 21 and 23 to the Knicks because of the KP Hardaway trade. There's not a lot of paths for next season to become great overnight. And with Luca playing at the level that he is, an MVP level talent, a guy who, this series showed that at times looked like the best player in the world in the series at times. The rest of the roster around him is not at the level that it needs to be for the Mavericks to make a leap. Yeah, exactly. And the whiffs, like you just detailed, the whiffs that they, it was just whiff after whiff after whiff.

Like they whiff on, it seems like they did on the KP trade. I'm ready to say that. They owe him, like you said, $70 million in the next two seasons. They paid him 31.6 this year. and yeah just his inability to create his own shot he even looked passive there were times like where he he like flexed after those cutting dunks and i was just like what what what do you what do you flex for like yeah i mean i'm happy for him in that sense but it's just like his inability to get his own offense is just really staggering uh and and it's a tough problem for them and you think about

you look you talked about how they forfeited those draft picks and then you look in the draft their their ability to get immediate help. I remember you and I talking about this last summer. I mean, we're just in a time warp. I don't even know what time of the year that was when we had that conversation. But we were just praising Dallas for how they did in the draft. And you look at like, and I'm not trying to knock you for the Tyrol Terry thing, but he wasn't ready to play.

He didn't give them any immediate help. And then you look at Tyler Bay, not ready to play. Josh Green, as much as I like him and I'm optimistic about him, not ready to play. Not that rookies typically are. And then they lost the Josh Richardson trade. I mean, he just was not what they expected. Imagine the offense that Seth Curry could have given them in this series, as much as they wanted to punt and avoid the match at problems that the Clippers gave them a year ago.

No progress on that front. So you just think about, like, what, to me, I think there's a couple different questions here. A, what the hell do you do if you're the Mavs, like in terms of going forward personnel-wise? I think we know what they need. They need a secondary creator that is reliable. I was talking about this the other day on another pod but the problem is everybody in the league wants those players. So how are you going to get them cheaply?

That's the most valuable player type. I was having a conversation with some Knicks guys on a draft pod. I don't know they both were Knicks, but I was just saying that that is the most valuable type of player going forward. And I think that getting a player, they're going to get super creative a lot like the Lakers are in this offseason. But go ahead. I mean, I think a lot, the KP trade, it made sense.

It did. It's a gamble on a player who has shown superstar ability. Chris Taps, poor Zingis with the New York Knicks at final season with the Knicks. He had moments where he was absolutely sensational on both ends of the floor. And you think about his youth at the time and you think about projecting forward, what he could turn into. The skill development hasn't happened. It hasn't happened. He mentioned how he is incapable of creating off the dribble for himself.

All of his, like, I believe the number is. 80% of his made baskets this season were assisted. He's a spot-up shooter from deep, which has benefits for the offense. He can cut and slash to the rim, but he is ineffective on the post. He is ineffective in isolation. He is ineffective even attacking closeouts for that matter. Porzingis's lack of skill development to me is the most damning aspect of the deal when assessing it.

The injuries, like, it's unfortunate and that's probably impacted his play too. Hugely, it has. Definitely. I mean, defensively, he doesn't move with the same fluidity. I mean, watch clips of him with the Knicks on defense. He moved much better. Yeah, I mean, he doesn't, his lower body flexibility is just totally gone. He can't get low anymore. He used to throw his, he used to just throw his body around a lot more on like lobs,

on like cleaning up, you know, getting on the offensive glass. I mean, you see all those clips of him like following up and getting nasty tip dunks over people. Those things catching. He's not a vertical spacer anymore, which I thought he would be. he's just stiff out there you know and I joked a couple years ago about like about his injuries which you know

it's cruel to joke about injuries period but I was just saying like what if he just becomes a seven foot three Ryan Anderson and that was a joke at the time but it's just like he's not even an aggressive shooter anymore from distance 36% good not great yeah and he caught a couple

he caught a couple that were kicked to him that I thought he could have taken and made you know if he was in a at his size if you look at somebody like Brooke Lopez, there are times he doesn't give a shit at all who's like contesting him on threes. He'll just shoot over them. You don't get that same kind of swaggy confidence from KP. For me, the question too is kind of like, you know, Luke has been sensational. I tried to pull up the, see some of his playoff totals. I'm sure they're astronomical for players under 23 years old.

he for me that if they can't do that if they can't create the roster accommodation that they're going to need for him where do you think that Luca as remarkable as he is i mean he can't continue this like the grinch carrying the sleigh up the hill by himself i don't care how i don't care if he has the strength of 10 grinches he can't do that in the play it's just they're going to keep pit in the same wall. What do you think Luca can do specifically to maybe accommodate the pieces

and be malleable to what they are going to have? Do you think there's anything he can do? I mean, so the first two things that pop to mind is obviously the file shooting in this series, awful from the free throw line. Tonight, he was only 7 of 11. That was one of his better games

of the series from the line. Conditioning, everybody's always talked about that. We mentioned in passing earlier, him getting a little bit fatigued towards the end of that third quarter. Those are the two key things. Sometimes when Luke is off the ball and he catches it, he's not a threat to just catch and shoot.

He'll pause and sometimes shoot or pause and then get into a dribble. Are those things connected? Continue your point, but I was curious just on a little off ramp here. Are those things connected? Do you think in terms of his shooting? The conditioning aspects?

No, I mean, the movement, his comfort level, shooting without movement. I was just curious real quick. I wonder if those things are connected. So the interesting thing is he doesn't shoot a bad percentage on catch and shoot threes. This season on 85 catch and shoot threes, he shot 34%. Last season, that number was only 28%. So slightly better, still not great, still below average.

Maybe it is a comfortability thing. Maybe it's mental. I don't know what it is, but that needs to change because I'm curious about your thoughts. when we talk about the need for a secondary creator, isn't the natural next step for Luca to become more of a potent off ball player? So he's constantly a threat on the floor. It can't be like Hardin.

It needs to be more like Steph. Like he has that in him. He has the IQ and the ability to be a guy who's cutting or short rolling after a screen. Isn't that the next natural step for his career? Short rolling. Very interesting. I don't even know who they would even do that.

with. I mean, you got to think about it. Nobody right now. Yeah, nobody right now. Yeah, I think for me the big thing is you start thinking about offball actions that it sort of flies in the face of what Luca does physically out there on the floor. You know, like a lot of the thing that I always refer to is just that like, you know, defending Luca is like trying to race somebody who's in control of the starting gun. Like he never, he is just a spatially brilliant player. Like, He's so, so good at carving out space when you, he's really good in creating imbalance and carving you out all the way of the basket like they were talking about. And he's huge.

But I don't know that I see him being like a highly kinetic offball player. You know, Hardin never really got to that point either. They're very similar in that way. I guess the difference between Hardin and Lucas, Luca is a little bit bigger, taller. You know, we know we saw this evolution from LeBron. Now, physically they're not the exact same type of player. Obviously, no one is physically the same as LeBron. because he's just a freaking outlier period in the history of basketball.

But Luca, to me, I could see an evolution where he's starting to show the scoring aggressiveness in the post-up game. He's starting to show some of that. But if you noticed, whenever he wasn't getting to his shot, the post-ups kind of hit a wall. To me, that's like one more option that they could do to create movement. Because that's one thing that you could criticize him is that when you're playing with a player like Luca, rhythm can be really tricky to come by if you're just catching, you know, flat-footed a lot. I could see them like, you know, ramping up the way that they approach what happens off-ball with his post-ups. That's another way that they could do. But again, that's just putting more

load on Luca. So as much as we talk about his conditioning and stuff like that, it's like, yeah, he wore down. I mean, yeah, he wore down because he was carrying the whole thing. So, I don't know. It's just like an amalgam of things that, uh, It's a weird situation where they're in, where they're going to watch this really brilliant player blossom, but they're kind of painted into a corner with what they can do for him. A lot of work to do for the Dallas Maverickson entering this soft season. And for the Clippers,

looking ahead, they face the Utah Jazz, a team that's been waiting for their opponent. Do you have any initial thoughts on the Clippers Jazz series, Kyle? I mean, defensively, I think it's going to be an interesting challenge for Donovan, Mitchell,

in the same way that it was for Luca in this series. I mean, initially who do you think, who would you pick just at the cert at a glance at first at first glance with this matchup? Utah. Utah won the one two, two to one.

I'm unsure about the, they last played in February. Yes. It's, there's some relevancy, but Lou Williams was still in the Clippers at the time. Right. So much has changed.

But yeah, jazz did win those. And I'd pick the jazz in the series. I think it'll go deep. Wouldn't surprise me if this is a seven-game series. Kawhi Leonard is going to present the same challenges to them that he did to the Dallas Mavericks as he would for anybody. He's quiet.

Paul George, if you're the Clippers, you hope that he does step up. And I would expect, you know, around the edges, we'll likely see more Zubots in this series. We'll see more Zubots versus Gobert. So they're going to change what they do. I don't think we'll see as much small ball. Then again, it did work for the Clippers rolling with that, especially against the Maverick Zone defense. They shredded that with the amount of John. jump shooters they had on the floor with Gober and a drop defense and pick and roll.

Maybe it'll be a similar idea trying to hit a lot of jump shots. But we'll have more talk about that. Real ones will do a deeper preview of this series on their next episode on this podcast feed. And I'll be reacting to Game 1 on my Tuesday night show of the mismatch with Chris Vernon. Let's move on here, Kyle, to the Hawks and Sixers. Atlanta took Game 1, winning 128 to 124, but the score doesn't outline. What a weird game. This was very strange.

The Hawks led by 20 plus points virtually the entire time. Trey Young seemed dominant the entire night. Hawks got into any action that they wanted to. But then the final five minutes, what happened, Kyle, the final five minutes? I mean, it's a classic kind of move where the more physically dominant team starts trying to junk the less, you know, the physical. The athleticism is different. They have two types of athleticism because the rosters are. built differently. You know, Philly has this more of a classic 90s, 2000s type roster with a lot of

bigs, a lot of length, a lot of size, less focused on shooting and playmaking throughout the roster. But anyway, in this game, I mean, it felt more like a tournament game. It was one of the most tournament-y, like NBA games as I'd seen in a long time. You don't typically see that happen. And, you know, burning the timeouts, I guess, when they did, because there are a lot of just different kind of schematic adjustments that Philly made throughout the game. But their inability to get the ball in bounds towards the end of that game, because I kept thinking, well, it was like, well, it's over. And then you just couldn't believe the difficulty that they were having it in bounds because Philly's length was just swallowing Atlanta up. And Atlanta just, I mean, they just, they kind of panicked a little bit there at the end of the game.

They big time panicked. I mean, Philly going with traps and full court pressure just changed everything over the final 442 of that game. Philly had 25 points. Atlanta had 12 points shot only three of eight and had four turnover. So they had more turnovers than makes over the final four minutes and 42 seconds of that game. It's impossible for Philly to use that length and athleticism in a full court press or like trapping all game long. But is there anything the Sixers can take from the finish of game one and apply it to game two in your opinion, Kyle? Well, don't give up 42 points in the first quarter.

That's a big one for that. Yeah, that's a good idea. do that. I think that they, well, they started with Danny Green. Like, they varied it as the game went along. They started with solely with Danny Green on Trey Young. I just, that's just not going to work full time. So can you take anything from the end of the game and do it in its game too? Could they sprinkle it in? Maybe after a timeout here and there randomly after a made basket. Is there anything to take from the finish? I mean, I don't know about like full court pressure. I don't know. Most NBA players don't want to do that,

I would assume. But I mean, in terms of, well, like the win? Well, like, Like raising the pickup point, I think, is one of the big things. That's one of the main things that they're going to have to do. You're going to have to, and there are a lot of things tied up in this. And specifically, in the past, you know, they switched to Simmons on to Tray Young. I went and did some digging and was looking at, you know, in the past Simmons has given Tray Young some trouble. He only, you know, in pick and rolls with Simmons directly on Tray Young in the past two seasons, he was 0.870 points per chance. the thing that's a difference between green.

Now, Green's not a small guy, but he's not as big as Simmons and not as mobile as Simmons anymore. Simmons can really bother Trey in terms of once, you know, because Trey's not very big. He's probably, I mean, six feet tall probably, probably right there with Chris Paul, I'd say. Simmons can give him more trouble whenever he's trailing him as a ball handler, and then you can put Embeddeed in front of him and blocking, and you're forcing Trey to play in a tougher crowd. I would say, you know, I think that they're going to have to start trying to bring the pressure up, not necessarily like a three-quarter court, but maybe even a half-court junket so that Trey is being forced. And maybe they were doing some of this where they were like flashing blitz and coming back. Force Trey to have like a moment of thought there, move him east-west instead of north-south.

Don't give him north-south options because he'll pick you apart. He's really, really good at that. they did a really good job of just like kind of pressuring him towards the sideline around half court. What do you think? Do you think that they, are they going to do that? Should they do that? What do you think they can do to slow trade down in general? I mean, you can't do it the whole game, but I think it's worth throwing out there here and there. Like a curveball, you know, throwing your slider.

Here and there, you mix it in and, you know, see how it works. It's very possible Nate McMillan and the Hawks coaching staff, which has been terrific all season long ever since McMillan took over, will have a counterpunch ready for that moment. And it may be ineffective in game two. It may, if anything, it could hurt in game two. But I think if you're the Sixers with the amount of success you had, it's just the Hawks looks like a,

they looked like a G-League team, Kyle. They look dominant until that happened. They looked like a G-League team. If you can make them look even like a worst team in basketball, not G-League, it's effective. Are you saying when they pressured them, they made Atlanta look like a job? They made Atlanta look like a G-league team.

They panicked. They were fearful. Kevin Herder made that nice pass full court. But other than that, everything was tough. Might have been lucky. Can we just say? Might have been lucky. He was scared jealous.

Yeah. And with that said, though, I mean, over the full duration of the game until that point, Atlanta played really, really well. They did. They got the shots that they want on the offensive end of the floor. When Philly was in their standard defense, They did mix it up.

Sometimes they dropped. Sometimes they showed on pick and rolls. Occasionally they switched. They tried a lot of different things. But no matter what they did, Trey Young had a sensational performance against any defense of six just threw at him. The fact that Joelle Ambide was great,

39 points on 21 shots and 15 free throws. And the fact the Hawks did this without DeAndre Hunter, who's been really good for him, for again this entire season. does your confidence increase at all in Atlanta's chances to actually win this series even if Embedd is playing or are you still like all on the Sixers here

like I was before the year, before the series I said the Sixers would win if Embed plays. Right. Embedd played and he played great. But the way the Hawks got a lot of those shots, I feel pretty good about them at least making this more competitive than I might have expected with a healthy Embedde. With Embedd, I think with a healthy Embedd I think the Sixers are going to win because we saw that they have some options.

I don't know that that first quarter was pretty aberrational. And you want to talk about like a stylistic difference. In this game one, Atlanta ran 62 pick and rolls 1.097 to Philly's 42. Philly posted up 24 times at 1.375. So that is working. And Atlanta didn't post up at all in this game according to Synergy. And so you have a pretty heavy stylistic difference here. I mean, in terms of them being able to stop what Atlanta's going to do, in the past, I talked about like the problem is that it's not just as simple as putting Simmons on Trey anymore because Atlanta's roster curation over the past year, year and a half has been very good.

They've surrounded, you want to compare the situations that like Trey and Luca are in. Big difference. Big difference. Pretty massive. Like, Luca, if you want to talk about teams that are built around one player, the whole, the whole. heliocentrism idea. Trey has been enabled to improve his pace as a playmaker. They've praised him a lot for his improvement,

and you do have to embrace those things. You know, Nate McMillan does get credit for talking him into doing those things, but the addition and the oncoming, like, the fact that Bogdan Bogdanovich has started to have more consistency in terms of being in the lineup. Hit some big ones down the stretch of that game, didn't he? Oh, boy. And you wonder why we made such a big deal about Milwaukee

potentially getting Bogdanovich in the offseason. He's got some stones. That's why. But the big thing is that they have this three-headed monster that can, you know, normally when you're in the pick and roll and your throw, the reason they're picking roll is so effective is that your pressure release valves when you throw to spot up players, usually it's like catch and shoot, limited, you know,

driving to the basket, scoring things like that. With the hawks, it's not like that. When they throw to their pressure release valves, they can just really throw up mixing, they can mix their looks up to where, you know, we've talked a lot about Bogdanovich, to me,

the X factor in this series, if this player plays well, I think that Atlanta has a really great chance, and that's Kevin Herder. Ooh, Kevin Herder. Why is that, Kyle? Just because I think that with two pick and roll, you know,

Playmakers in the lineup, you know, Bogdan being the secondary, Herder being the tertiary, if Herder shoots it well and makes good decisions off the, catch, it's going to be really difficult to guard Atlanta. He had stretches in this game where he was hitting shots. Like Bogdan obviously is clutch. He's played in a lot of big games over his career. That one that he made was really nasty. I thought Huey made a really good point about that big

three that he made in the fourth quarter. It wasn't even off the catch. That ball was low. He had to pick it up and then shoot, which is really difficult to do in that situation. But I just think that they present an offensive challenge that not a lot of teams in the NBA can throw with their personnel. Sure. So. Yeah. Herder was really good in that game.

You know, last five minutes aside, the Atlanta bench overall outperformed Philadelphia's bench. I was a little bit surprised. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised because he's been doing it since he coached the Celtics. Doc Irver's going with all bench units in the playoffs. So you said something about that. Yeah. I mean, I think I think it might be a good.

idea to at least have Tobias Harris out there to help initiate some offense for you and give you a score with those bench units. I'd like to see if I'm the Sixers, maybe put Thibel in the starting five flipping Danny Green to the bench. I'm not sure if this is too much of a demotion for a veteran for chemistry reasons or whatever. But on paper, I like the way Thibel defended Trey more than Danny Green did. I thought he made it a little bit more difficult for him watching those games. So on paper, I like the idea of flipping those two and seeing how that works. With that said, though, that would hurt your spacing in the half court even more on offense. So there's a push-pull between the choices the Doc makes with the offenses, with the lineups that he puts

out there with how it affects the offense versus how it affects the defense. But I do think get away from those all-bench lineups if you're the Sixers. And you're 100% right on the hawk side of it, though. If you're able to get this version of Kevin Hurder again or even better, that is one of the swing X-factors in the series. And the other one, though, is DeAndre Hunter. If you're, because one of the things that Ben Simmons did really well in this game for Philadelphia, it's attacking in the open floor when he had a cross match. Because the Sixers had Ben Simmons defending Bogdanovich,

at times Bogdanovich would be defending Simmons going back the other way, even though that's not what Atlanta wanted. They wanted the Hill on Simmons. And Simmons would just attack downhill, get to, the basket, get some layups with his right hand. And for Atlanta, if you're able to get Hunter back and plug him on Ben Simmons, that changes what they can be on both ends of the floor as well. So getting DeAndre Hunter back for Atlanta Hawks, I'm curious about your thoughts on how he might impact the series from a matchup point of view, because I've been highly impressed by him all season

long. Well, I think he shrinks the gap defensively for sure, because he's physically different than Herder. As much as I like Herder and much as I like Bogdanovich, I mean, if you you put Hunter out there. It always felt like, you know, it's the Sixers physically have a big advantage because they can force those, because of their physicality, can force those cross switches. And if they can junk it up, like we were talking about in speed, you know, it's speed Atlanta up. Don't let them have the time.

Like push them further into the shot clock so that they're making more frantic decisions. And another thing, too, I do think that he shrinks the gap defensively. That's one of the big things. And he can catch and shoot. He's been really phenomenal, really poised player, too. Another big thing, too, is that, like, if Danny Green is going to just not shoot well, I think that that's going to pressure them potentially to make a decision, too. Of course, you're kind of between players there because if you put in Thival,

he's not going to really shoot the ball well either. For me, too, another big factor is how can Philly work? We talked about this. The Knicks weren't able to pick on Trey defensively. Like, they just weren't in the position to do it. How do you think Philly can further target, tray, on the defensive event, make him work to supplement, you know, making him work harder on the offensive event? I'm not so sure they have the personnel in the same way it was an issue for the Knicks.

If the Hawks were to advance and face the nets or bucks, to me, those teams with the weapons on Brooklyn, Kady, Kyrie, potentially hard. And if he comes back, he will be out for game two was announced today. And then obviously for the Bucks, you got Yannis, you have Chris Belton, you have Drew Holiday. those teams just have more of those perimeter-based creators who are better able to seek out those mismatches using pick and rolls and switch against a switching defense. Whereas with Philadelphia,

you don't really have that presence who can initiate those sets to create those switches. Like if you're Tobias Harris running a pick and roll, if you're Philadelphia, you might like to have Tobias Harris on Trey Young, but I'm not sure it might be worth the eight, nine, ten seconds of the 24-second shot clock it is to get that mismatch. when it's possible, Atlanta could just switch that out again, too. I don't know if Philly has the personnel.

I think the Knicks could have done a little bit more at times. They would put Trey in a pick and roll with Bullock. And they wouldn't attack Trey when he would hedge out or at all, right? As Derek Rose had turned the corner on the screen, he wouldn't attack. Maybe you can do a little bit more of that. But at the end of the day, I'm not convinced that they have the personnel for. Do you feel a little differently about the potential ways to attack Trey? No, I think you're right.

I mean, I think that another thing is that I think a couple different things. I think that they could, I was noticing that like John Collins off the catch was a little shaky attacking their pressure. Oh, yeah. He had some fumbles. Yeah, he looked a little shaky. I'm not saying that that's going to continue to be a thing. I mean, you'd like to see, you'd like to get a little more out of Tobias Harris. But I think whenever you start talking about chasing novel, schematic ideas, you can quick,

run it. If those things aren't like sure fire, this is going to work easily, if it's something that you have to really work to set up, like the idea of like, you know, targeting tray, if you're not really confident about that working, you're going to eat into your shot clock, you can go too far hunting things that aren't typical within the flow of your offense. Like, and you can, you see teams do this whenever, and sometimes it can be an advantage for the team that's being targeted. If they have to go way out of their way and they start morphing their personality offensively as a team. Now, the Sixers, like you said, they're not super dynamic in terms of, like, all their creators. As much as they've improved, yeah, that's a tricky, dicey thing. So that could be another thing to motivate them. And that might be why the Knicks didn't do it either because they offensively were so limited.

It's just like if they did something out of character, it could just even further compromise their offense. And you could see why maybe that, why they would do that. So I think that makes sense. We had just mentioned that Hardin will be out for game two of Bucks Nets. Let's talk about Monday's games and get started with game one of Bucks Nets. Brooklyn won game one on Saturday, despite James Hardin, re-injuring his hamstring, 43 seconds into the game.

It's awful. Now that happened. First play. First play. Yeah, offensive sequence. Bucks went up 20 to 11 early in that game. Dominated the offensive boards in the first quarter. They had a 42% offensive rebounding percentage in that first quarter.

But then things changed. Blake Griffin goes off. Brooklyn starts gang rebounding, keeping the bucks off the boards. Bucks can't hit a three, Bucks can't get a stop, Nets win game one. And without Harding, Kyle, I come away from this game feeling like Brooklyn made a real statement. The Nets felt like the deeper, stronger team with no weak links, considering they won it, not because Katie went off or Kyrie went off.

Those guys had good games, not great games. They won because everybody produced at a high level. Bruce Brown playing making in defense, Blake Griffin hitting threes and making hustle plays. Nick Claxton's defense. The Nets, to me, just looked like the deeper, more talented, and more prepared team. Yeah, they did. And I think you and I were talking about there's, there's sort of a characterization of Brooklyn that has been maybe warped, I guess. Maybe it could be a case of us just not having a tremendous amount of tape with them and maybe being reductive in the way that we view Kyrie and K.D. and Harden, frankly, and just being like, well, they're,

they're just going to throw the ball back and forth and then take a shot. shot, which they get a lot of mileage out of that because of how talented their shot creators are. It's also funny to think that, like, Spencer Dinwiddie could also be on this team, which is kind of mind-boggling. But the big thing is that, for me, is that Milwaukee lost those minutes in the second quarter. I mean, Brooklyn can just throw these flurries of points at you, like, as a result of their talent, but also as a result of their ball movement, which is kind of addressing what I was talking about with the way we were viewing them as a team, you know, the more that they can get out of those second guys that you highlighted correctly that, you know,

there aren't many noticeable weak links or there weren't last night in the way they played, specifically like Brown, but even Mike James comes in and gives you some minutes. You know, in the second quarter, they went on a 20 to 6 run that was pretty tough for Milwaukee to come back from because they never really gotten an offensive rebound. There was another 9 to 2. I'm talking about scoring in bunches at the end of the third. they went on a 9 to 2 and then another 12 to 2 run. And then in the end of the 4th, they sunk the dagger in and finished them.

But there are a lot of different kind of mitigating factors, I think, that caused this. I'm curious to ask you, I mean, how much of this is, do you think is like adjustable for Milwaukee? And how much of it was any part of this, maybe nerves a little bit? Because we did see some shakiness, bumpiness from Milwaukee in that game one against Miami. And then they were a totally different team, you know, in the rest of the rest of it. rest of the series. I mean, Yanos even alluded to how in some ways it felt like deja vu with just the way in which the game happened, uh, the way they didn't shoot the three ball well. And I do think I'd really do think a little bit was maybe a little rust or a little nerves.

It felt like to me watching the game, the bucks were pressing a bit. They were taking a lot of three pointers that were contested early in the clock rather than moving the ball around. And granted, that's part of what NBA offense is nowadays. It's taking those early offense threes, even if the defense is back. Because that can be. be the best shot rather than going into a half court set. But it felt like to me the bucks were never in a rhythm and missing those three pointers oftentimes when you're contested. That's what jump starts.

The Nets offense going back the other way. To me, if I'm thinking about the bucks and their adjustments here, slowing it down a little bit more could help. You know, Yannis was very effective in isolation, scored 1.2 points per chance according the second spectrum. Brooke Lopez did not get a lot of opportunities inside, which I found kind of weird. You got to play Brooke Lopez a lot in the series because you lost even Chenzo. You lost even Chenzo.

That means your wing depth is even depleted further if you go small in the front court. But Brooke Lopez took only 11 shots. Five of those shots were a tip in offensive rebound attempts. So he took only six real shot attempts. And two of those were those weird buzzer beaters at the end of the half and then at the end of the third quarter. So in a normal possession, they only went to Brooke Lopez four times. And I thought I'd see the bucks, you know, use their size a little bit more with some post-ups or just really like attacking the paint with size. It didn't see a lot of that.

So I think that's one of the adjustments that comes to mind. But I don't necessarily think that's the main thing. The problem is, as you said, Kyle, the net's just, they're more than an ISO ball team. They beat you with cutting with ball movement. And there were so many times in that game one where it felt like the nets were just getting whatever. the heck they wanted with whoever they wanted it from. So yeah, I think that you're right. Like shot allocation is a big part of it.

I have a list of things that were bad. I mean, we should talk about Jeff Teague at some point. Jeff Teague, Brits. He was horrible. I mean, that run that I talked about where they went, where, you know, Brooklyn basically put Milwaukee into panic mode and then, or maybe not full-bon panic mode, but we're assuming, we're speculating a little bit. They pressed a little bit like you talked about, which can lead to, they have some shot

creators that in normal circumstances can dig them out of holes quickly. but Brooklyn is it's going to be a tedious, tenuous balance for them not to get into those rushed situations to be more patient. Because in the beginning of the game, their attempts by quarter in the paint, they went nine for 15 in the first quarter, six for eight in the second, four for seven, and the third and five for six in the fourth. So you can see that it just sort of slowly filtered, tapered off as the game went on. And I think a big thing for Middleton specifically, I think he went like six for 23. A lot of those were those just kind of dribble pull-up shots that he takes early clock. Well, you know, Katie is showing us that he is mobile in those ball screen situations, getting up contesting him.

They're really bothering his body a lot. I noticed him complaining for fouls. I think that they should continue to do those kind of weak side pin down things they run with him where he's coming off maybe a couple screens, getting into it with, you know, Harris or Bruce Brown or Kyrie. Getting into the middle, maybe getting in the line more. The free throws are a big part of this, too. You know, you would think that Milwaukee would be able to generate a lot of free throws. There's a lot of things that just sort of roll downhill, like getting in the lane,

getting it up high on the glass so that you can really exploit that rebounding advantage that they have, like Janus and Brooke. But Middleton flat out just has to play better. That's a big part of this for me. And Middleton should be better moving forward. The Bucks should shoot better from three. They're only six of 30, and that's the big thing. know that Milwaukee fans were talking about after the game, like, we're not going to shoot this poorly

again and probably won't. I mean, I think the flip side of it is you could say, Kevin Duran and Karee were combined 23 and 51. They could have better shooting games as well. And, you know, you mentioned in passing there, the minutes. A lot of people talked about the fact that Janus and Chris Middleton and Drew Halle, they didn't play heavy minutes. They weren't touching 40 minutes per game like the Brooklyn starters were. You know, that's Bud's philosophy. He's always played his starters mid 30s and minutes. You'd like to see that increase, but I don't necessarily think it's the main

thing. I felt like watching that game, the Dante DiVincenzo absence loomed large. You know, he's a good shooter for you, a good cutter, good decision maker off the dribble when it comes to making passes within the flow of the offense. It's rock solid defender. And you mentioned Jeff Teague, who couldn't contain anybody

who added nothing on the offensive end of the floor. It felt like just wasteful to have him out there. And whereas Brooklyn, guys off the bench, they brought something to the table. It just, I felt like the Nets just felt like the stronger overall roster with no weak links, whereas Milwaukee was covering for weak links throughout the game. Jeff Teague being out there is because DeVincenzo is out and the way they play defense. Kyle, I was amazed looking at the, first of all, watching the game, it didn't feel like the

bucks switched a lot. And looking at the numbers, they definitely didn't switch a lot. according to the second spectrum in that game one, Nets ran 34 off ball screens. The Bucks didn't switch a single one of them. The Nets ran 16 dribble handoffs. The Bucs switched only two of them. The Nets ran 61 pick and rolls.

The bucks switched only five of them. Wow. Like there's no easy answers to containing a team with Kevin Durant and Kari Irving and maybe James Hardin if he were to come back. And you don't want Brooke Lopez or Bryn Forbes or Pat Coniton. or Jeff Teague or Bobby Portis caught on an island against any of those star players, which is why you're not switching. I come away from the game feeling like this.

Isn't it kind of weird? It's odd that all season long, you work on your switching over the second half of the season, you switch 25% of pick and rolls against the nets you did it 17% of the time. And then in game one, and you have 61 pick and rolls you defend it. You do it only five times. You go back to playing your regular drop style coverage.

It's just kind of weird. you build for this all year long and then you default to what you've done for years. It is strange. This matchup is a little bit different, though, than what they've been facing so far in the playoffs and what made them look so frankly so damn good against Miami is that, you know, when Brooklyn throws those smaller lineups out there, like Bruce Brown deserves a lot of credit. I know you're just thrilled about this. Yeah, let's go.

Bruce Brown, hive unite. Let's go. Could you have been more vindicated on the first in the first game of this? Not that I even thought you were wrong. It's just this is very much one of KFC's favorite themes of the season. And this is paying dividends early, is that, you know, they, just Bruce Brown being out there caused Milwaukee's spatial issues. I mean, they were trying to force on a couple of these KD. When KD is running these ISOs that they're trying to funnel towards the baseline, like they did a couple where, I think PJ, PJ was, he's been trying to push KD right consistently, body enforce him right.

I guess it's because also Katie got hurt going right. I don't know if that's like pushing him. You know what I mean? Like his original Achilles injury was, I even think his re-rubpture was going right. So I don't know if I'm not saying that's why PJ's doing it, but I'm just saying he has found, I guess that that's an effective thing to do.

But when he pushes him towards the baseline, they had this happen a couple times where Bruce Brown wasn't even spotting up. He was just standing around the foul line area. And like Bryn Forbes was on Bruce Brown. And Kyrie just snuck right into the lane, had a ton of space and just caught an easy pass and scored. So Katie really complicates these things, A, because of the on-ball pressure and the things you have to do to help,

because then that causes your defense to go into rotation and smart. And they put a lot more able passers and cutters on the floor, like with Claxton, with Bruce Brown, with Joe Harris. But Katie's shot making just complicates it because you can make a great rotation, and he can still dribble into a shot and hit it. That happened a couple different times, it's going to be challenging to see you talked about Devinchenzo

that's going to continue to make it a challenge his absence there on both ends of the floor because another thing is too that you lose the pick and roll reps that Devinchenzo would throw and that's not that those things are dependent on but those are the kind of ways that you kind of water your plants throughout the game they're important and I wanted to just say too that like Teague's inability he came into the game just

asleep. I mean, like his defensive containment, like you talked about, he let he let Kyrie just dribble in rhythm into a couple different shots. He was just sluggish on ball screens. He's going to have to just step up honestly. Like he's going to have to play better. They don't have a choice. He has to play better. For sure. I mean, this is the tough thing for the Bucks and why my number one takeaway, like from the top when we started talking about this game is the Nets just felt like the deeper, more talented team. Like I think you can look at Mike Boodenholzer. This is why so many Bucks fans say play the stars more minutes because your options on the bench are weaker. Like if you're not playing Jeff Teague, you're playing Elijah Bryant.

You're just playing Jordan Wura. You're playing Axel Tupon. You're playing Sam Merrill. Like you don't have a lot of options on the bench. These are guys that would fail the Charles Barkley who he play for tests. Like it's like that's what the deep bucks bench is. So, you know, for the bucks here, I think you do have to play the starters more. I'm not convinced Buden-Hoser will do that after game one.

he was asked about her and he's you know he's like i want to keep guys fresh i don't think that's going to change you're not getting de vincenzo back playing drop coverage i don't expect that to necessarily change unless you're pulling brook lopez off the floor maybe we will see some small ball with yonis at the five and p j tucker at the four um but overall i i come away from this game just feeling highly impressed from brooklyn's depth and their ability to play together against a really good defense. And the rest of this series, I picked Brooklyn to win it before the playoffs began.

I started to waver a little bit ahead of the series. Still picked Brooklyn, though. And I'm not changing. I'd still pick Nets in seven, maybe six. But this Bucks team, I would expect them to pull out some victories the rest of the way. Or do you feel any differently there?

Kyle, what's your prediction for the rest of the series and who do you think wins it? They have some, they have some like ebb and flow where I think they, they obviously can get a lot better performance. And another thing, too, is, you know, they got, Brooklyn got some, some offense from Mike James that really hurt. And then you just kind of think about some of those things can not kind of ebb and flow back and forth. And like Blake Griffin, I don't know, I on Bill's pod actually picked the Nets and six. I feel more confident about that just because of the adjustments and things, where can they go from here? You know, the free throw rate, you know, a generation kind of stuff is really big too because, you I also got to the line. I think he put up like three free throws total. They really didn't capitalize. I think they were 11 for 19. And Brooklyn is very efficient and very productive from the foul line. That's another hard thing for them to account for. And it's going to be a challenge. I mean, I'm of the mind too with like Janus that like I've always said even if Janus hits a couple shots, I'm happy. Yeah, I agree. Because in the short term you might in the short term, you'll have people kind of crow and.

and, you know, prance in a circle and be like, ho, ho, happy learned how to put kind of thing. And it's just like, I, Yonnes, the more he's hunting those shots and settling, that is, that is a win for Brooklyn, a big win. So, and that's, yeah, so that's going to have to be a major thing to shift for them as well. And I think that touches on the fact, Yannis, he had a good game statistically.

It felt like just watching the game he could have brought more and been more aggressive attacking downhill. He isolated 14 times. I want to see that number hit 20. Like feed your best player, the ball, and have him get to the basket, create chances to crash the offensive boards. Even if he's taking a contested layup in the lane,

Brooke Lopez flying in. Chris Middleton coming in from the wing, attacked the boards and create those opportunities. I thought they got away from that after the first quarter. Give Brooklyn credit, they did a really nice job, gang rebounding. They stepped up with boxing out. They were aggressive attacking the defensive boards to finish off. possessions, but creating more chances like with Brooke Lopez inside or Janice inside,

to me, if you're the Bucks, that's what you got to do offensively to get going on that end of the floor. Let's talk about the second game on Monday night. And that's game one between the Nuggets and the Sons. I'm stoked for this, Kyle. I think this has potential to be another great series. But what's the number one thing on your mind that you'll be watching for in game one? I mean, the big story is it always is the story with the nuggets. What are you going to do with Yokich. Can they do anything to stop Yokic? I know you and I both went on the timeline podcast with our buddies Sam and Mike to talk about this. That's such a great show, isn't it? Yes. I love those guys. Guys know their stuff. One of the things I brought up on their show is just

that, you know, Aiton's, Aiton's positional maturity here is going to be tough. He's kind of struggled in the past. I'm pretty sure he's had foul issues against Yokich historically in his career. Seven games. Seven games they've played against each other. Aiton has filed out once, five files twice. Yeah. So only fall out one time, but if that's seven games, does he do, is that good enough? Five fouls twice, falling out only once? I'd say that's probably a good thing for Phoenix, that that's how it results in a seven game series, right? Well, you won eight and to stay aggressive.

I guess there's sort of a like trade-off thing there, like where, and to be frank, I mean, there's not a lot to be ashamed of on that front. No, no, no, no. I mean, if you think about, if you think about Gobert's supposed to be the best defensive big in basketball, I still think it's Anthony Davis when, fully healthy, but, you know, I digress. But I think that, um, I just think that jazz fans love you right now. I know. I just, I don't have any problem with Gobert. He's really, really good. And it's like Yokic, Yokic, uh, you know, he picks on everybody, even, even the guys who are considered to be the elite of the elite. So that's going to be a challenge for me to, just the off ball. He's really going to challenge their off ball discipline. But Phoenix is better than they've been in like 10 years in that,

in that sense, like off ball defensively. They've got wings. To me, the matchups, too, how do you think that they should play this in terms of their matchups with Denver's fours? We've talked a lot about Denver's how they've kind of changed the game for Denver and made them a more unique, interesting team. How do you think that they should play that? How do you think? I mean, it'll be interesting because if you're Phoenix, you have the weapons on defense, you have your options, Jay Crowder, you have McKell Bridges, Cam Johnson. And during the regular season, I was surprised with the matchup data on NBA. com that Nader was defended Michael Porter Jr. more often than anybody else on Phoenix. That came

as a surprise. But I would not expect that to be the case in the series. You have your options to mix and match. And I think that's going to be the big difference here between the Portland series in round one and the Phoenix series and round two for Denver. There's a dramatic difference in the quality of defense that Denver will be going against. You know, it's important to keep in mind. the Blazers were horrible on defense. The 29th ranked defense during the regular season. Only the Sacramento Kings. The lowly and sad kings were worse on defense than the Portland Trailblazers.

The Suns ranked sixth, Kyle. Sixth. They got great wings. CP3 and Devin Booker can get stops. The defense is really good. Like this defense, it's five guys on the court. It oftentimes feels like this crew rotates. is one. Like they play so together.

They're sharp on the defensive end of the floor, but they have one flaw. And you just hit on it earlier. It's depth behind Aiton. Like if you don't have Aiton on the floor when you can single coverage Yokic, behind DeAndre Ait and you have Frank Kaminsky, Dariusarich, and a rookie in Jalen Smith is your backup bigs behind Ait. And so the amount of pressure that's on DeAndre Aten, to not only like effectively contain Yokic and bother him in one-on-one situation,

so your team doesn't have to double. And by the way, they didn't double Yokic when Aetan was defending him on the post of season at all. So if you're not doubling, you need to stay out of foul trouble because if you get into foul trouble,

Yokic will destroy. Oh, yeah. Anybody else, just like he did to canter, just like he did to Rondea Ellis Jefferson. If you're worried about fouls, you are done against Yokic. And if you're not worried about fouls,

you're done against you. But frankly, it's got to be a monumental challenge for eating like, like as great as he was in round one against the lakers he was sensational we made a great video about her for the boy like it was it's been fun to watch dandre a this is going to be the biggest challenge of his life his life well so far in his life i mean from the basketball court speaking to his personal on the court on the court this is getting the biggest challenge of his life i feel good about the phoenix sons winning this series in six or seven really okay do you feel

otherwise, you pick in Denver? No, I picked Phoenix as well. Okay. How many games, you think? I think this one is going to go six or seven. I think I think I picked, maybe I picked them in seven. I feel like I did. You know, there's some key things for Denver here too that really,

they had some things swing extremely positive for them, like towards the end of that Portland series. Like you said the defense, for Portland's defensive competence really didn't help. But, you know, Monti Morris, I think was really, really big for them at the end of game six against Portland. He just made big play after big play. He was sensational, man.

So good. Draft Twitter legend, or just Twitter legend in general. And then, you know, Austin Rivers hitting shots, too. I think it's going to be, they do have some places

where they could get some sort of variability in their offensive output. Like if Porter, if Porter goes ahead and has like a mega leap series where he goes bananas and gives them something extra, that, you know,

that is something that's going to be interesting to account for. And how they defend him, like you said, it's because they don't really, you know, Bridges is long enough to kind of bother his shot once it's in the air. I think a lot of the work has to be done early against Michael Porter Jr. Because he doesn't have to dribble. Yeah, and then whoever they put on Aaron Gordon. But I really think specifically that guard pairing, you know, if Rivers and Monta Morris have another good series, Denver's going to be in a good position to have another competitive series and, you know,

maybe steal it potentially. I don't know. alongside, you know, a similar thought there, Kyle, I thought, you know, Denver's done a really nice job replacing Jamal Murray by committee here with Campazo, Austin Rivers, and especially Monta Morris. It seemed to me by the end of that series in round one, Morris and Yokic were having some good two-man game rhythm. You know, it's not the Murray-Yokich level, but it looks pretty good. And we've seen Yokic successfully do this with a number of guys over the years. Before Jamal Murray, it was Gary Harris. Harris and Yolkich had great chemistry in the two-man game.

Then it was Murray and Yokic. And now it's these guards, especially Morris. You're seeing Michael Porter, Jr. involved in that more often. Denver, like, I'm not saying that they are as good with El Jamar Murray. That would be a silly thing to say. What Jamal Murray can do in ISO situations pick and roll is unmatched, you know, on that roster. But they've done a good job replacing that. To me, it's like almost on the inverse here.

What, like, Phoenix presents more issues on the offensive end of the floor for Denver. You know, I wonder in this series, who are we going to see defend Devin Booker? You know, during the regular season, here's who defended Booker on Denver. Gary Harris, 78 possessions. Gary Harris is now on the Orlando Magic. Jamal Murray did 24 times. He's out with a torn ACL. Will Barton did it 14 times.

He's still out injured. We don't know his status yet for this series. And then Chris Paul Harris defended him 63 times. Jamal Murray defended him 59 times. And then it was Monta Morris and Campozo, who I would assume they're going to see a lot of CPS. Austin Rivers is probably going to defend both of them like he did against Portland. Will we see any Aaron Gordon on a Booker or a CP3 like we did at the end of round one against Damien Lillard? I look forward to seeing how Denver matches up with these guards because they're the engine of that son's offense.

And if you can try to cut that head off, it changes everything. So Aaron Gordon to me, he's going to have to have a massive series as well. Yeah, I think you're right. And this is kind of Denver's issue in the last few years, you know, stopping the ball, preventing that kind of snowballing of like downhill pressure and then shooting, you know, with the suns, that is their bread and butter. That's what they want to do. And once, you know, once the Lakers had a hard time stopping them from getting in the middle of the floor, you saw what happened. And then, so, I mean, with, with Phoenix, it's going to, that's going to

be a big challenge. I think you're absolutely right. I think that, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Stopping the ball is going to be a huge, it's been a huge challenge for Denver in the past few years, and it's going to continue to be one. But another thing for me, too, is just a big one we haven't really talked about is, like, is if CP3 gets fully, you know, if he gets into, we always joke about the percentages of how, where they are, if CP3 gets back into, like, let's say, 80% range, like where he can, can hit dribble pull-ups, where he can, you know, they didn't really depend on him a ton there to some of those close-out games. CP3's game is wide, his impact on that team is wide-spanning.

You talk about their defensive discipline, they're talking, their toughness, quite frankly, very visible at the end of that Lakers series. If he can get to the point where he's able to create and hunt his dribble pull-ups, throw lobs, be comfortable pushing in transition and putting guys in jail and creating mismatches and imbalances in the pressure,

he's masterful at those things. If he can do those things, then that even more creates problems for Denver. So keeping people out of the middle, that's what CP3 is really, really good at, even at this age. What do you think? Do you think he's going to, where do you think he's going to be physically?

I mean, I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. It felt like he got a little bit better over the course of the series, but he's definitely not, you know, peak 100% Chris Paul like we saw during the full regular season when he was an all NBA guy. So getting him to that level, like the point you're hitting on, the sons have room to get better. I think the sons can be even better than they were in round one against Lakers because

of the upside with Chris Paul. Jay Crowder started to shoot three's better in the last couple of game against the Lakers after a horrible start. And I think going into the series, like there's like six or seven guys you can argue is the best player in the world. Yokic is one of them that you can argue as the best player in the world. Devin Booker and Chris Paul are not in that conversation. But the X factor is always great young talent. Can they reach a higher level in big moments and big games? And I thought Devin Booker in that game six against the Lakers, 47 points.

8 of 10 from 3 was just draining dribble jumper 3 pointers, which is the one thing that he doesn't have on offense yet. He hits a ton of pull-up twos, pull-up threes. He shoots a lower percentage. If he continues to shoot well like he did in the last two games against the Lakers, this is a guy that we might witness a leap during the postseason, like we did with Mitchell and Murray last year. Booker could do that too. and this is going to be a series in which he's going to have opportunities. You're going to see Denver drop on a lot of picking rolls or at least give him space to take those pull-up threes. He's going to have to hit those.

So I look forward to seeing if Booker raises his game to another level in this series to become one of those guys people talk about as a star level talent nationally. I think Sons fans realize that he is already that, but even more. Like there's more to his game than he's been willing to give. He's only 24 years old, Kyle. It feels like he's been in the league forever, doesn't it? Yeah, it really does. He's a young guy and came in really young. So, yeah, I think you're right.

And I mean, and that's an issue for Denver, too, is that, that really kept Portland kind of in the series was that dribble shooting in the pick and roll. It was really their one big weapon against them. But I don't know. And you're talking about like the best players in the world. I mean, Yokic, this is another, yet another example where, I mean, Denver's demonstrated tremendous poise. like in that series to close out Portland. They never looked freaked out. They never looked like they were out over their skis or worried.

Yokic just kind of controlled the pace of the game. It's just going to be really fascinating to watch his, him picking his spots offensively against them because he just kind of willed them. And we've seen, too, that he has another gear to go to with the scoring. And the series that he put up was just phenomenal. And you were talking about who has a higher upside. I mean, MPJ has another,

another gear to go to, too. I really do think so. And it's not a common thing. I was joking with one of our mutual friends about this, that like, it's pretty funny that Denver is this team, a playoff team who has a player like him sitting over there, like, kind of like if you had stock in Amazon in 1999 or something. It's like this thing that just could turn into a really high level all-MBA offensive talent. That's what he is. And they've really controlled him. I was impressed with this. You were talking about young players leveling up. That's been like one of the big stories of the playoffs. Like young players answering the bell.

I'll be interested to see how much, how they set the parameters for MPJ because even though he had that insane first quarter against the Blazers in game six, he didn't really push it. I was really curious to see how much he was going to push it and hunt his shot, how much that would be a storyline for them.

And he didn't really. And part of that is Yokich being there and being a good influence on him, or just schematically and on the, floor, but I do think that he's something that could swing upwards for them. All right, Kyle, we get some fun games, some great series coming out the rest of this week. I'm looking forward to especially game two of Hawks and Sixers, which won't be on Monday night. That'll be Tuesday, but that series is the potential.

It'll be really fun, especially with what we saw with Trey and round one, I guess the Knicks and all those theatrics. Yes. I mean, in general, these playoffs have been amazing. The young players have been amazing. I've really, really enjoyed it. I'm going to be waiting to see what the adjustments are. but like, Trey specifically just to see him, his personality thing has kind of been an interesting thing to track because, I mean, during that game, Philly obviously is known for their very passionate fans. That's where I'll put it. They're into it and they love their Sixers, but they were getting pretty annoyed with Trey. I was noticing that. And I was just thinking, you know, he did in New York and now he's doing it in Philly. I think that Trey should have some like T-shirts, like band tour T-shirts printed up for these playoffs for him.

It's Trey Young's villain world tour or, you know, national tour. Because he's just going, you know, and he could have all the cities. He could add him as he's going. And he's just going and spreading the gospel of his villainy. It's been pretty hilarious to watch. Trey Young, been really impressive. Speaking about him bringing his villainy to Philadelphia, over the weekend, I started mayor of Easttown.

Did you watch that yet, Kyle? That's your transition to mayor of Easttown. Yeah. I wouldn't just say I'm proud of you for consuming pop culture. KS. I'm proud. Have you watched it? It's really good.

I've watched it. I'm three episodes in. I'm loving it. My finish it tonight. Since we get early endings for these games, I might bang out the final four episodes of Marevistown and be ready for next Sunday to talk about whatever happened. Yeah, exactly.

And I think that first of all, if you're watching Miravisstown, you need to be listening to the watch pod on the Rangor podcast network where they had Kate Winslet come on. I knew she was British, but I said, still was just like very freaked out when I heard her not talk like mayor. That's how like much she disappears into that show and that character. It's like that's a great show. I enjoyed it. I get a kick out of the fact that we work for a place where we're talking NBA and then Kate

Winslet's popping up on pods. Yeah. Hell yeah. Versatility, man. I remember I was on Bill's pod once. I think Matt Damon was the other guest. That's so funny. I was on with Dana White of the UFC.

That was a pretty random pairing. I like that stuff. That's awesome. That's so funny. Well, we'll be back again next Sunday. Kyle, I hope you have a fun rest of your week, man. You too, man. I'm going to eat some pizza.

It's going to be great. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the Ringer NBA show. And thank you to Steve Allman for producing. Follow the NBA show on Spotify and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And be sure to tell your friend about the show if you liked it. Thank you again. I hope you have a fun day.