The Ringer NBA Show - Tyrese Haliburton, Tyler Herro, and the Efficiency of Movement in the NBA | The Answer

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

Kyle and Seerat start the pod by talking about basketball purism, using Tyrese Haliburton as their conversational focal point. They examine Tyrese's sharp basketball IQ and talk about how his organizational skills have elevated the Pacers' performances this season. This leads to a discussion about the meaning of the dribble in basketball and different ways players use the action to set up their offenses (29:34). They end the pod by taking a look at Tyler Herro and dissecting how his positive developments there are strengthening the Miami Heat's formidable system (35:53). Hosts: J. Kyle Mann and Seerat Sohi Associate Producer: Chris Sutton Production Supervision: Benjamin Cruz and Conor Nevins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For as long as I've known the NBA, it's been a Stars League. But even among the Stars, there's an exclusive club. Russell and Dr. Jay, Jordan, Kobe. They're all part of a select group that paved the way for the NBA superstar of today. And some even shared secrets with each other along the way. From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network, I'm Jackie McMullen. And this is the icons club. For you today, I'm a lot of you today.

I'm very excited about this show. And in the spirit of the topic, I'm going to pass a ball off quickly. Kyle, how's it going? Welcome to the answer. That's what I would say. If you've never joined us before, Sear it and J. Kyle, man. That's the name of this podcast. Yeah, we riff on deep things and we sit on beanbags and postulate and, hmm, ha, well, you know, and smoke pipes and things like that and talk about the deep love of basketball that we both share.

Yeah, like scratching our chins and contemplating is what we do here. Sure. Speaking of Chins, I was noticing Tyler Hero has a really wispy, like, goatee action going on. I was wanting, he's relevant to something we're going to talk about. I don't know why that popped into my head. So I've been curious what you're up to, Seared. I'm always curious about how your day goes because I feel like you do your best thinking, like, late at night.

I was telling our producer, Chris Hornet-Legg Sutton that I'll get these, like, very profound basketball thoughts from Seart later in the day. Is that kind of the way you work? Do you kind of, do you kind of simmer into a, or you kind of, working yourself into a lather as the day goes on with your thought processes? Yeah, I think everything for me just gets better. Like, yeah, I'm a fourth quarter person. Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah. First half, just like to kind of survey, you know, see what's going on, see who's got the hot hand. And then by the time the third comes around, I'm getting like, okay, I know what kind of game it is today. And by the fourth, I'm like, okay, now I know which tools I need to be using. I know, okay, like this is maybe a badmata bio type of. type of night. This is maybe, you know, this is maybe a Benedict Matherin type of night. Maybe I'm supposed

to be taking it straight to the rim. And other nights are a little bit more cerebral. They're more Thai Halliburton, you know, so it's just kind of, you just never know what kind of day you're going to have. That's kind of the beauty of life, right? Yeah. Yeah. Every day is a little bit different. Unless you're a parent. Every day is the exact same sort of, you know, organization and rhythm. But I'm not, I'm not here to like begrudge the life of a parent. But I think that you said something that It's interesting. You know, you kind of have, you have a single person lifestyle, which you described. I mean, like, yeah, that your life does ebb and flow in an organic, unpredictable way.

I'm like, no, I know at this time I'm going to be up. And I know I have these hours to think. Whereas, like, in the past, I used to have these very wandering, like, rabbit hole kind of things. I'm a little jealous. I mean, like, I wouldn't trade my life. But I'm a little, I'm a little jealous of your sort of pontification, your scheme, your sort of your routine, your regimen. Yeah, I mean, I think this is coming from the fact that I sent you the rundown today for today's episode on Sunday night. Manifesto, you mean.

But it was only 8.30 my time. The manifesto. Should we really pull the curtain back and tell people about your audio recording diatribes? Sure, if you want, you know, I'm fine with it. Sir, it will drop these bombs on me that are like, I figured out basketball. And it'll be like, I'll see like an audio note and it'll be like two and a half minutes. And the first one I got, I got to the end of it. I was like, what just happened?

I felt like she dropped every, like, galaxy brain thought she had. And then now every time I get one that is like two, two and a half minutes long, I'm like, we're in for a fucking ride. Here we go. This is going to be great. You should start just publishing them. I don't know, like transcribe them and just upload them. That's a good idea. I mean, Chris, would you be into that?

Maybe I just send these audio notes to you instead and you just, you just upload them into the feed. That sounds like an amazing series. I'll be totally into that. Yeah. I was going to say you made a nice segue there, though, about like efficiency and things like that for somebody we wanted to talk about today, Tyrese Aller. Yes. Yes. Tyree Taliburton is, I think this is, you know, we're going to be preaching to the choir here in terms of just preaching to each other, I guess. You're my choir in this metaphor.

Ty Alberton is obviously, he's one of my favorite players in the NBA has been since he's gotten into the league. He plays the basketball the way that I believe it should be played. I know that we are in this era where we're supposed to like every type of basketball and there's everything works and and being a purist is kind of lame. But hey, you know what? I'm kind of a purist. And I like the way that Ty Halliburton plays. He gets off the ball very quickly. He allows it to move.

Leads the NBA and passes made this season, 75 per game. And he actually leads. Let's start there. Let's start there. Your idea, let's not skim over like purism. What is your idea of purism in basketball? Sir, just start from there and then go. I'm curious.

Okay. Well, let's start from this. this may be a weird place to start, but the first basketball game ever played, as we've talked about before, did not involve any dribbling at all. Now, that was a disaster because the whole point of basketball was to not be like football,

and guys just started tackling each other. So the dribble was invented for those purposes. But let's say there was no dribbling in basketball, which is also, you know, Kyle, you're a coach. Maybe you've done stuff like this before. when I played basketball, one of the drills that our coaches would always have us do is running an offense without dribbling in order to get, you know, in our minds the idea that, hey, Pat, you want to move the ball up the floor, you want to move the ball around the floor. The fastest way to move the ball is to pass. It's not to dribble. That was kind of something that was drilled into me. I think it's just kind of like a favorite coaching phrase, right? But it's also very much true. The ball moves faster. when you pass it.

And it makes for a funner game. The Golden State Warriors always say that the ball has energy. And when the ball is in Thai Halliburton's hands, it has energy because he's not sucking the life out of it by dribbling it constantly, just thumping it in the same place across on the floor while nothing else moves around him. Sure. Which is a way a lot of basketball is played right now. Yeah. Have you ever seen Bellerman University play?

You ever heard of them? Bellarm? No. It's a school. It's actually 30 seconds from my house. I mean, like, incredibly close to my house. And they just went Division I recently. You should check them out. Like they, I know I'm dropping this on you, but they pass more than any team in college basketball. And it's like almost gimmicky, like to the point where it's like James, if James Naismith had a favorite team, it would probably be Bellarmine. Like they, and they play like all the high majors. You should go look this up. It's, it's really fun to watch. But they stick out stylistically. I think you're right. I don't know.

Jane and they, Smithy, the lesser-known brother, James. Yes. I think that you would enjoy it, but they go in and they move the ball a whole lot. They do some dribbling every once in a while to reset or just to kind of like create it. I don't know what philosophically,

what the specifics would be. But yeah, I mean, it is interesting how cyclically we've come back to where we're like, yeah, the ball does, the ball does move faster than a person can dribble or run and things like that. But Halliburton,

I wanted to just tack on some stats to kind of jump off of what you're talking about here. Now, these things have been true about Halliburton, like, at every level. I feel like he's had, like, a cult fanatic following from, like, the beginning, like, back to when he first got to Iowa State where people were like, this 65 PG here is a really creative pass or really, like, the analytics loved him from the jump, and they still do. So Halliburton has kind of grown into, he was sort of a playing a reserve role next to Fox, who was sort of the dominant, the guy who was the focal point for the Kings that they were building around, and then they somehow miraculously get this guy who decided to punt basically $8 million to go to Sacramento.

Pretty odd thing to happen, but he is leading the league right now. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Why he would do that? I don't totally know. I'm not trying to – my relationship with the people of Sacramento is great, so I don't want to besmirch when I say this. but it was an odd choice to push that far back, considering how good of a player he is, number one, and to pass up that money.

And Sacramento just didn't have a whole lot going on for him at the time. It was like their rebuild was going poorly. Getting Halliburton was a really fortunate pivot for them because the Bagley thing wasn't going well. Harry Giles had been hurt. Fox was sort of like cooling in terms of his public opinion, you know. I feel like there was like a real spike of Fox enthusiasm. And then it was like, can this guy actually lead a team?

And there was just malaise and things like that. But Halliburton came right in. And we all know about the trade and everything like that. We don't have to litigate that stuff. But I'm sure we're going to talk about the Kings in a positive way as it applies to this situation in a little bit. But he is second in the league and assist to usage, one of my favorite stats. I've become like a character of myself bringing that stat up. Leading the league in touches.

He's also, his assists per touch is pretty phenomenal. He's up there like a head of Yokich, which I think. is incredible. 0.246 and Yokic is at 0.240. This, long story short, this is a guy who has a phenomenal sense of when to be on and off the ball, which I think is what we want to talk about. Yeah, and just to add to that a little bit, I think, I think the best way to kind of show people his impact is just what he's done for the Pacers' offense.

Like, I don't think it can really be understated, even though I think it's sometimes hard to notice because, I mean, thinking about the value. of a player like Ty Halliburton is almost like trying to analyze negative space in a way. Like it's oftentimes it's about the things that he doesn't do. It's about, you know, he's talked about this on JJ Reddick's podcast, which he is like a frequent guest on. But, you know, the Pacers are a top five team in Pace this year. And that's something that he pretty much put on himself.

Like he basically said like, I want to be the outlet. Like I always want to look for the outlet. And that's something I think comes kind of naturally to him too. But that's that's because of him. And the Pacers 13th rank offense is because of him. Like, they go from having a 114 rating on offense to 106 when he's not on the floor. Wow. Which is just like, it's, that's a significant.

That's a significant joke. Especially when you consider the Pacers are actually a pretty well-balanced team as well, which we'll talk about a little bit later. But it's not like they should just be completely lost when he sits. You know what I mean? And it's just, you know, it's like the, it's the dribble that he doesn't take. And it's essentially, I think what we want to talk about here today, is guys that give other players on the team room to breathe by not sucking the air out of the

ball. I think Yokic is a great comparison for him. Caitlin Cooper, who is like, who's kind of like the Robert Caro to Ty Halliburton's Lyndon B. Johnson essentially at this point, like if you want to read about Ty Halliburton, go to Indy Cornrose and just read. So if you think there's a like a library, if Tyrese Halbert never has a like a library of his own at some point. If he's president, there will be a whole Caitlin Cooper wing. Is that what you're saying?

Like where she covered in Tyrese Albert. If, you know, if Aliburton ever does become that good, yeah, I think I think she's going to be. Or president of the United States, which I would not rule out. That dude is that sharp. You know what? Yeah, why not? Well, well spoken. Obviously a good facilitator understands the strengths and the weaknesses of the people.

people around him. I think he'd be the type of player that would really empower his staff and, you know, let them do a lot of different stuff. Sure. I think he could, I think he can unite the country. That's, I wouldn't put it past him at this point. He's, he's done that much stuff. I think you, what you're talking about like the ball having energy and things like that, like, like, A, it's just good vibes. You like to play with people like that. It's infectious. People that, like, lead by, like, getting off the ball quickly, which is, I think a big part of that, And something too, we'll talk about his own offense down the road because I think that's relevant to this conversation. But Halliburton enables people to be themselves in a way that's really comfortable, which elevates offense, which causes guys to run, which causes guys to cut, which causes them to give it because they think they'll get it right back.

You know, you play with somebody that, like, it just sucks to be out of rhythm. Do you ever play with people like that whenever you're like that? You ever play just casually with people who stick on the ball too much to, to, I play with both extremes. I mean, you know, I'm not going to act like I'm like some like, you know, vicious playmaking facilitator guy. But I don't know. It just sucks whenever you cut and somebody misses you. And like the fifth time that happens, you kind of stop cutting, right? Have you ever had that experience?

Yeah, absolutely. It's natural, right? And Kyle, I got to call you out here. You basically, you know, was texting me. He was like, yeah, my pull-up game was really working yesterday. It was just a lot of, a lot of, a lot of dribble pull-up. So I, you know, I feel like maybe, maybe you're that guy. But hey, sometimes I'm that guy too, right?

We're all that guy. When it's working and it's working. And I had to brag to somebody who might appreciate it. That's all. That's all. But you know, Kyle, when you're, when you're not always doing that, people do appreciate it. They're happy for you.

And I imagine your teammates were happy for you. Because I'm sure you do find the cutter when the time is appropriate. Sure. That's just a type of player I imagine you to be. I'm not going to ask. follow-up questions because I don't want to break the fantasy in my head right now. You will if you ask more. You will. But yeah, to your point, yes, right?

Like, this is, you know, I think movement kind of begets movement, right? Like, and unselfishness begets unselfishness as well. Like, you kind of bring it back to Halliburton, right? Like, he's a beneficiary of the flow of the offense too. He's number two in the NBA and passes received as well. So, like, he kind of like, he starts it off and he gets a ball back. And, you know, for listeners who are probably like very well versed in the Golden State Warriors offense, it's like Steph Curry, get off the ball, like, you know, pass a ball two times in the play, run around, relocate, get a wide open three, right? And that's not necessarily, you know, Halliburton's not necessarily on that level.

But because he can move on and off the ball really well, he can just kind of play in any type of offense. and the Pacers too are really well situated for this as well because they have a lot of guys that are really good at moving off the ball in different ways as well, right? Like Buddy Healed, we already know, just, you know, spot up king, kind of come off a screen, find his way into open space, like, you know, it was really great at lifting into open places,

finding the passing angle it's going to be best for the passer. Benedict Matherin just driving to the lane. Like he'll, he'll like, they're kind of like opposite, right? Like, healed will come off of the screen and kind of flare out to three point land. Benedict is like just straight slashing to the rim. The Turner just, you know, he can pop on the roll. I mean, he can pop on the on the pick and he can roll as well. So like they've got a lot of different things that he can play with.

And Halberton just, you know, he just organizes him really well. Yeah, I came up. He kind of inspired me to, and this is a term that I'm always trying to like think of terms, lamely, but I pitched this one to you that I thought that Halliburton is a universal donor, basically. Like, he's basically, like, any offense in the NBA, he's not going, you talked about, like, sucking up air. You've got to think about that with some players when they come on to a team.

Like, what does this guy need to function? Is he going to eat up a lot of touches without, like, having offense flow through him? I always tell you, I paid, the reason I love assistive usage is because I just want to see how efficient. It's an indicator of quality decisions. The thing about, like, Halliburton, you and I were talking about, and this got a lot of coverage. People were tweeting about it. People were talking about it. He had a three-game stretch from November 25th and then on the 27th and the 28th, three games where he dished out literally 40 assists without turning the ball over. And I went in and I was charting. And this is kind of something I want to ask you about is like him, his identity as a

playmaker, I was just looking at the types of passes that he was making and an overwhelm. And now these are kind of my designations of like the types of passes. There was a really wide variety of actions. Some of them were in transition. There were a lot of kind of Spain actions. And for like people are people who are sort of into basketball or don't know, it's just like screen the screener. Like traditional pick and rolls are two guys. In the NBA, it's become more popular since like you can kind of, the coverages for picking

have become more sophisticated, so they've added a third guy, which it kind of complicates it, and that's what we call when that guy screens the screener, that's a Spain. So they get a lot of mileage out of those, and, you know, like a lot of times their big guys will score on those because they have shooters, but he'll be a really good inbound pass or things like that. But it struck me that a lot of his assists in my charting of them were just kind of simple passes. Like he didn't, He didn't pound the ball. He wasn't overly interested in his own offense. He just kind of was willing to give it up in the rhythm of the offense, right?

He doesn't, do you think that he fits, where do you think my question for you is like, where do you think he fits in like the hierarchy of like truly outstanding virtuosic creative playmakers in the league? Do you think he's in that top tier? That's a really good question. I think he's obviously a great pastor. He's very creative. He's just got great intuition. He's not like, I think a lot of what we're talking about here right now is just

for the game, right? I think that's where he's really off the charts, right? I wouldn't put him on like a John Morant level of creativity with his passing, right? I think the beauty of his game is actually more in its simplicity. It's more in just like not necessarily trying to make the million dollar play. I think what you're asking is whether the million dollar play is in his bag. And I'm actually, I'm, you know, I think, I think probably not. I don't think he's a million dollar play type of player. I think he's obviously like the play, the one pass that I think is going to be kind of

the past in everybody's mind is the one that he made to Andrew Nemhart to win the game for the Lakers. And I think that kind of demonstrates what's so effective about Halliburton. He has a really good knack for finding the open guy and he's really quick with his decision making. He's always, if you watch him play, his eyes are darting all over the court.

if you watch him on an inbound, like it's just he sees, he sees everything. And then I think he kind of distills it down to not only what the most effective play is, because I think there are guys who are really good at doing that, but they don't, but they also kind of, they kind of let perfect be the enemy of good in a way. And I think that that's the beauty of Hallibur. And he doesn't necessarily get in his own way. And he doesn't get in the way of the offense by trying to search for like the incredible home run pass or trying to run a pick and roll three times. over like you'll see Tray Young or Luca Donchich do in order to kind of see the coverage over

and over again and then throw a perfect lob. And that's a very efficient style of basketball, but it doesn't have a lot of efficiency of movement, which is kind of what I think is going to be the sort of next frontier of team building in the NBA. Yeah. Like it's, I think we're kind of coming to at the end of an era with with heliocentrism. I think if you look at, right?

Man, like how did Luca become boring to watch? It's right. I'm torn because it's like, he has his moments. I love to watch him. He's brilliant. But it's like,

I don't know, I'm kind of, I'm glad we're moving out of it. I am. Are you? Yeah, I am. Let me rephrase that.

How did a Maverick's game become boring to watch? I think that's really the thing. It's not that, you know, if you throw on Luca and it's just going to be him, It's like, it's Luke, it's still magic, but it's also like, man, it's kind of just mathematical too at this point.

Like, it just gets a little bit boring to watch. And you also look at those guys and they're like, they're looking around. Every time like, after an offensive rebound, it's like, just shoot the ball, man. You don't always have to just like look for, you know, look for the main playmaker. But that's also like, you know, these systems kind of then lend themselves towards changing the habits of all the players that are surrounding the lead guy. right? And that's kind of just like, it goes back to your question of, hey, when you don't get seen for the cut, you're going to stop making the cut.

Now, Luca will find you for the cut. So maybe that's a little unfair. I think maybe the guy I want to focus a little bit more on is like Tray Young, right? Yeah. But even, even, I think the best example of heliocentrism kind of being out of fashion is probably the Sixers right now. And just the fact that, you know, even James Harden wants to move away from this, right? They came into the season and Hardin was like, yeah, I want to move the ball off the ball more quickly. And I want to also like play with more pace, like get my teammates involved.

And there he's, he's back. We talked about that earlier in the season. I think that's probably worth talking about again in February. He got hurt. So we haven't really had a chance to see how that would actually work. He's back now. So that'll be, that'll be kind of interesting. But that's, you know, like Hardin, like basically like the king of like heliocentric, like just

plod and like just basically dribble a hole into the center of the floor player is now like, hey, I don't really want to be doing this anymore because at the end of the day, yes, it's very efficient to play like that, but you also wear yourself down, right? Like I think at the end of the day, if you look at that Hawks playoff run, Young wore himself down. And if you also then go and look at how they kind of like they had problems the next year, right? Like everyone was talking about how Atlanta didn't like have. They had too many cooks.

They had too many cooks in the kitchen. Maybe that's true, right? And I think they had some systemic issues that I think we should get into as well. It'll probably be relevant to this conversation. But what if Trey Young just shot five less times per game, right? Yeah. Like then does the too many cooks issue sort of go away? Like does the John Collins being unhappy in his role and they need to trade him thing go away?

Because ultimately what you need to win a championship is not just efficient possession by possession basketball, but you need versatility within your offense and you need a lot of guys that can attack. You need to be able to attack from multiple fronts essentially, right? And that means basically, you know, you have 24 seconds in the shot clock, right? And if one guy is taken up like 11 seconds of that, then everybody else has to basically scramble for the other half of it. And that just doesn't really make for good basketball for the rest of those guys. Like they're going to naturally through the course of a season, what they're able to do is going to naturally flatten itself out.

And I think if you look at the Warriors, right, but like most potent offense in the league of the decade, that has also had a lot of luck in player development as well because it's a type of offense that allows other guys to get touches. That's kind of the model, right? Or if you look at, you know, the Nuggets, That's another great team where, you know, if we can get, if we can just get Michael Porter Jr. and Jamal Marie to be healthy at the same time, I think, you know, that that offense would be historic too.

And I think, and I think we're going to talk about the Miami Heat offense as well, just, you know, Tyler Hero's development within it, biomed biobio's development within it. All those things kind of are contingent on players actually getting touches within the offense and being able to balance, you know, having an 11, you know, electric star that can pretty much score at will in any moment with the fact that this is still a five-man game at the end of the day. Anyway, I just talked a lot. So I just took over to this podcast. I just James Harden. I just Tray Young this podcast. No, you just like outlined a lot of the kind of core themes of this. I mean, you were talking about the nuggets are an interesting kind of touch time in general is interesting like as an indicator. But you can see opposite sides of the spectrum. You see somebody touch the ball 68.7 times a game like Luca and dribble the most and hold the

ball the most in the whole NBA. And he's brilliant, six and a half seconds per game per touch, which is a long time. And he's dribbling a lot. And Trey and John Morana right up there too. Yokic, on the other hand, touches the ball 2.6 seconds per game, a full four seconds shorter per touch and still is that efficient. Now, granted, dribbling eats up a lot of time. He's also dribbling. A lot of his sequences, he's not bringing the ball up. That's a lot of dribbles per touch. I always try to like filter for half court touches and things like that because those can kind of mislead you. But I think that those guys both also both like pursue their own offense more than Halliburton is. And that's kind of a balance, I think, where if you can kind of balance both, like say Darius Garland is a good example.

He's a guy that has like star level scoring potential and like scoring creation and things like that in the calves, intentionally told him, we want you to hunt your dribble pull up three more because it's going to have defenses respect to you and that's going to have a bigger kind of ripple effect within our offense. I was curious just to ask you, I think Halliburton has kind of maxed out. I could be wrong on this. I think he's kind of maxed out what like a deferring point guard can do in terms of efficiency because you were talking about like home run passes. I think those, if you were going to define what those are, a lot of those are the result of a player's threat to score the ball.

Like, those are created by, like, the only reason we see those crazy passes is because of the gravity of those individual scores, wouldn't you say? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the one place you can definitely criticize him a little bit for sure. Like, he leaves, especially that pull-up three or like the off-screen three, he leaves it on the floor a lot. He leaves it on the table. He's got a great pull-up.

So he should definitely be shooting it more. Yeah. And that's kind of the other side of it, right? Like, certain players will be a little too passive and a little too deferential as well. Bam out of bio who we're going to be talking about. Also, by the way, on that topic, Caitlin Cooper actually wrote about that this week.

And it was a really great article. You're her agent, which justifiably. I basically am in his body. You can't, it's a Halliburton podcast. It's like it's kind of impossible not to, you know what I mean? She's got to be mentioned for sure. No, I mean, it's, it's been fun to read the work that Indy Cornerals has done on Halliburton. Haliburton is just a fascinating player, but in general, I kind of, I also noticed something to,

Shea and Halliburton shoot alike. Have you ever noticed that? They like, they have like a similar, like weird energy transfer, straight arm kind of a shot. I just was, like, thinking about this this morning. They kind of do. But they're opposite into the spectrum. Shea is like, I'm going to, like, shove this drive down your fucking throat. And Halliburton's like, no, I just found that with like an interesting polarity between those two players.

Similar size. I don't know. But. Yeah, yeah, it's true. They're both kind of like that tall point guard. And, like, Shea is just sort of making his, he kind of just makes like these kind of, I don't know, like, what the word. what the word is for it. But you know how?

Okay, you're going to have to find the word for me. But basically, like he just kind of goes north-south. Yeah. In a way of just like he's not going to let you stop him from getting to the rim. And it's not in this explosive John Morant type of way. It's more in this like,

okay, I've now, I've now gained like one foot of ground. And I'm not going to concede that. I'm going to make another move to get like another foot of ground and another one. And I'm just, I'm just going to be patient. And I'm not going to, it's just, I'm not going to relent at all.

I've talked about this, that, like, he has, like, an arrhythmic style that I think is harder than guarding somebody who is just really fast or just really strong because it's more linear. Like, you know, you know, Morant, Morant, nobody's staying in front of Morant, but it's just very different. Like, somebody that's really fast, you'll see, like, a slower player be able to, like, predict what they're going to do or, like, you know, anticipate their angle and stop them. Shay is like moving in these like micro movement start stop things where you're like it's just you can't anticipate him number one it's harder to anticipate him. Herb did the other night pretty brilliantly but I think that's part of the reason and that like I think that's part of the reason why it's so

hard to stay in front of him which I think is a natural segue to something like really simple about basketball that I was pondering um the purpose of a dribble which is sort of like the center kind of is a central theme to all of this. Like, we were talking about like dribbling becoming prominent. It wasn't a thing early in the early days of basketball. It became prominent as like the ABA kind of merge with the NBA and like self-creation, kind of changed up through the 80s. And we reached this point where it was like pounding the ball and like an isolation score

creating their shot was like great. But I think it evolved to an ugly point. And now we're back to this point of like dribbling efficiency. I told you to like look at like I was jarred by this. If you go back, like, you look at the touch leaders in 2020-23, and it's these, like, efficient, even the guys who are inefficient or efficient by the standards that we're going to pull up here. If you go back to 2013, the guys who were, like, getting the most touches per game, like, back to 2014, it's like some pretty jarring names, like Will Bynum, Austin Rivers, Ray McCollum, Isaiah Thomas, DJ Augustine, Russell Westbrook. it's a lot of guys I mean it's just a lot of like non-shooting point guards basically it's kind of interesting how the league has shifted just in that like eight years right yeah this is kind of like the heyday of the microwave scoring barred right like the six men coming off the bench tripling the crap out of the ball and then like finding a pull-up like the Jamal crawford offense that the clippers basically ran whenever Chris Paul wasn't on the court um and I mean it worked for a little while but we we've we've come a long way We've come a long way in basketball.

We have in a good way, I think. I think we're headed in a good direction. Overall, though, back to the dribbling question here. I wrote down these, and you, like, add to this, if you can think of it. Like, the purpose of the dribble, I think, has been kind of honed, honestly. Like, I think, like, we're heading a good spot. Like, so the initial, like, obvious idea is, like, seizing open space, like, driving and putting pressure on the rim. That's the first thing.

Advancing the ball up the core, getting it into the half court. Just moving simply. Something that Halliburton is really good is like biding his time as an action unfolds. Like you'll watch him like in a possession. He'll just be like maybe two dribbles to sort of wait for a screen angle to be set. And then he'll like take two more dribbles to get in the middle of the floor and then make a simple play. And then the last one is just like using your dribble to create your own jump shot. And that's how we see like guys like Trey.

We see guys like Garland. We see guys like Lucas. to sort of amplify their dribble numbers. Is there anything else that you can think of that's relevant in terms of how to use your dribble? Oh, the other one was like in an isolation, like what I call the temperature dribble, where they take one and then see how the defense responds.

That's the only other one I can think of. I think those are like the basic like five ways to use it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I can think of more uses for it, but I think one thing that's interesting is how much it's, I think on the attack, right? Dribbling basically used to be, its functionality used to be basically what we were talking about was Shay.

Like just get closer and closer to the rim. And I think the step back and variations of the step back have been a really interesting wrinkle in the modern era where you actually go backwards to find space, A, because three is more than two, you get behind the three-point line, you take a three-pointer, but also because that's where you get space and some players would rather have an open shot from farther away

than a contested shot from, you know, closer. One guy who I think is absolutely crushing it with his dribble efficiency and kind of like that just only going north way that that Shea does is Zion. Yeah. 2.5, 2.6 dribbles per possession. And also just a guy who gets off the ball really quickly as well. Like he is one of the quick, we talked about Zion last game. So we won't last podcast last game.

Last game. Yeah, it was game. You know, 48 minutes. Call it our every pot of game. It took me a second to realize what you were. saying. I was like, oh my God. Jesus. Even a pun master like me was. But yeah, another guy who's just really quick with his decisions. As soon as he catches a ball, he knows what he's doing with it. I think that's smart to, it's harder to load up on him and to like, you know, I think that's a smart move, like to sort of cloak and dagger Zion's like physicality. Do you want to

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All right, so last night we're recording this on Tuesday, the 13th of December, the day after my father's birthday. Happy birthday, Dad. Damn, happy birthday. The heat and the pacer squared off last night at Gainbridge. Capricorn King. Okay, sorry. Fieldhouse.

You just were looking for any chance to segue that to astrology. I really was. You should have heard these two stargazers talking about all that stuff. Chris says yes in all camps. Last night, the heat. We're going to read your birth chart for the next episode. So get ready. People will be riveted by that.

I think, well, the he played the pastures last night and took them down in a really lot, like a slug fest, just a slog. They took all that sort of rhythm that the Pacers had been playing with. and really drag them into the mud. Haliburton didn't have his best game. What have you been noticing about the player development for the Miami Heat as it is relevant to what we're talking about here, like getting on and off the ball as it pertains to the Heat's offense in general?

I think a big conversation about where the heat could have improved over the last two years or just, you know, as Jimmy Butler ages, as Kyle Lowry ages, you know, just get a little bit more production is in the development of Bamatabio. And I've always kind of had the question of whether his somewhat, I feel like his offense development has been a little bit slower than people expected it to be. And this season, it's all coming together. And I think if you look at the playoffs, so, you know, last year against the Celtics, I think obviously the Celtics had basically a murderer's role of defenders on him,

a lot of different versatile types of looks that they give him from Al Horford to Robert Williams to Grant Williams. But at the same time, it felt like he was also deferential at times. And the heat offense was a little too perimeter oriented as a result of that too. They didn't really do a great job of getting easy buckets. And that's really changed this year. And the kind of Stunkin actually wrote a really good article about this for basketball news, where he detailed the increases in Bam, Adibio's touches. And, you know, we were just looking at the numbers.

It's, you know, his touches have increased. His touch time has increased. He has always been an incredible facilitator. He's basically, you know, he makes that dribble handoff offense just go, right? Like, he can, he can find you on the cut if you go back door. He's just an incredible screen setter. And, you know, obviously just, you know, hand the ball off too. And he has really, but just like honed his own offensive game this season.

And the heat have also just done a better job. of putting him in positions where he knows that that's what he's doing. Like when you have, it's kind of like the Halliburton thing, right? Like when you're put in a position where you are going to be the decision maker and you're more naturally inclined to be a passer, there are things that you will pass up. And he's just not leaving as much on the floor anymore, right? Like his, and his, he's fourth in the NBA, I think, in point scoring,

although those numbers might have changed, but just suffice it to say he's scoring incredibly, incredibly well in the paint. Spaint scoring, you mean? Yeah. They said point scoring. I was like, I don't think he's worth in points. But yeah, he definitely like, he loves that.

You're smiling really big. I mean, he loves that like little, would you say that? I mean, that's his main thing that he's kind of focused on. That's a shot that he can hit. I know earlier in the year we talked about like where, that was a conversation about Hero, who we'll talk about in a second. And Bam was like, you want to get them more involved offensively so that the heat don't have these dry spells.

that they can kind of continue to manufacture offense and find something they're comfortable with. And then their shooting can kind of ripple out from that. But it seems like he really, he kind of had it going last night, that little tuck the ball, shoot the, shoot the like 15 footer kind of. That's that's, that's his bread and butter, wouldn't you say? Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think that from the Kaiser's article, since Thanksgiving from six to nine feet, he's been 50% on those shots. And I imagine after yesterday that number probably went up. like by the way we're talking about him doing this to miles turner by the way who has

probably about four inches on him and is one of the most dynamic defenders in the NBA too and bam pretty much just had his way with him however he wanted he you know he faced up and they get him in the post on on the right side and they isolate him now which is I think something that they didn't do as much last year like oftentimes when he had the ball last year it was also like he's kind of put to another decision and this year it's more like he gets the ball, he makes a decision. And, you know, one thing that Spos noted is that he's not necessarily getting doubled in the catch yet, which we might see down the line, but he gets, he gets doubled more often when he puts the ball on the floor.

And then he can make a decision from there. But he's also just his ball handling, just kind of year by year, has really improved as well. So he's really turning into a pretty, like, just dynamic offensive player. He's obviously is averaging a career high. I think he'll be an All-Star this year and all that stuff. But he's slowly done it within the framework of a Miami Heat offense. While you can definitely criticize how much they've given him through the last few years, you also have to give him credit for finding a place that he could be productive for the offense

with the skills that he already had while also building out on the things that they're going to need him to do down the line that will also make him into a more dynamic player as well. And I think that kind of gets back to what we've been talking about, right? Like it's really good. They've always been like this, but it's really good to have a player like Kyle Lowry who is like the eyes on the floor and can be a really good organizer for an offense that has a lot of weapons.

It can also be a weapon unto himself as well. And it's really good to have Jimmy Butler, who is just a really, like kind of in the ilk of Zion, not as dramatic, but like it's just a really quick decision. who's not going to hold on to the ball for two too long. And also just having the playmaking of Tyler Hero, who has also benefited from this system too. Yeah, Tyler Hero has had,

we've been doing a lot of research this past month, really, about the top players in the league. And it's kind of given me a chance to circle back and pay attention to Tyler Hero and his development. This is a guy. I was like throwing a fit all the transparency. I was kind of as I pulled up some of these numbers about like usage and play type usage going back to college,

kind of pissed me off because I thought Tyler, Tyler Hero should have played point guard at Kentucky. And I bitched about this constantly. And if you look at his numbers, I was like, yeah, did he change like miraculously within like eight months where he was like his pick and roll load, like went to the moon after he left Kentucky and just like,

Cal, like what the hell are you doing with that one? So anyway, but I was paying attention, ran over there. I was paying attention to like how his role has changed. Now, when he comes, he did, he did pick up some more pick and roll when he came in initially with the heat. He was a guy that hit the ground running with Miami. He was immediately involved. And we know that like early on, he and Duncan Robinson, this is kind of regressed lately as Tyler's grown and as Duncan has regressed in his in his role on the team. But Tyler's like

action off ball has kind of dipped as his on ball production has gone up. But what's really fascinating that I was pointing out to you is that his assist per touch talking about touch have gone up. He's a guy, long story short, who has taken on that facilitator role and balanced the threat of pursuing his own scoring without being inefficient, basically. Like we're seeing him get on and off the ball quicker, and I think it's unfolding in a way that is ideal, frankly. First of all, we got to get John Wall on this podcast, so you guys can just go back and forth and do this over and over again.

He just kind of criticized the way Cal uses point guards. Cal has, you know, I don't want to get too negative about this, but, you know, he has a five foot seven point guard right now that can't shoot. I would argue you never signed that person to begin with. But let's talk about Tyler Hero. I just think that he's, it's fascinating that we've seen him gradually do that, even, you know, because he still has all those kind of scoring facets in his game. Like he's still a movement shooter.

He still has. And he's shown. glimpses of this, I think, from the very beginning. Like, I think this has kind of been a predictable evolution. My, like, way that I would circle back and kind of put a bow on this is to ask you the question, Miami, if we were to take the temperature on them, do we think that they're going to round into form? How seriously are you taking Miami in a playoff series? Oh, man, I don't know.

I don't know. They're a different team every single time I watch them. That's so true. Actually, it reminds me a little bit of the Raptors. Now, I've been kind of looking into the Raptors just mediocre start this season, right? And a lot of the fans have been, you know, positing whether the sort of downside has to do with the fact that we're going on a bunch of years of this really just chaotic system that Nick Nurse likes to run on defense where, you know, it's kind of like reen react in a lot of ways.

and, you know, guys are just kind of flying all over the court. There's just there's a lot of, there's a lot of help defense set in situations where I think now fans are starting to think like, hey, do you need to send that help and just create so many scramble situations? The Rafters. You think it's wearing guys down basically? Yeah.

You think guys don't want to play that style for a whole season, basically? I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's a want to or can't, or just like can't, right? Like, but at the same time, like, I don't know how true that. is the Raptors problems are on offense. They're the worst half-court offense in the NBA. They are still getting a ton of transition points or getting a ton of offensive rebounds, and that kind of brings them up to average. But it's just that that has to make up for the fact that they just don't get anything

going in the half-court outside of those things. And they're the ninth-ranked defense in the NBA. But one thing I was looking at is that they have four players in the top 25 on distance traveled on defense this year. And that's the highest in the NBA. No other team has four, but a team that has three is Miami. And they're getting a little bit older too, right? Like, they're weird.

Like, they've got that Golden State Warriors thing of, like, a bunch of guys that are, like, vets and some championship pedigree with, like, a bunch of guys that are young, and you kind of hope that everyone comes into their own at the right time. Like, right? And I don't, like, I don't know if that's going to happen. I think it could. I think when you look at how well bad him is playing,

And I think one thing with one thing that actually could be the sort of key to this. And I don't know how I don't know how you feel about this. But I feel and I haven't looked at the numbers. This is purely just from watching. I feel like Tyler Heroes really improved his defender this year. Yeah, I think he's holding up. And if he isn't going to be a turn style and you can actually like play him really heavy minutes when it matters in the playoffs, that can make a world of a difference. Is then then Kyle Lowry, he's not supposed to do it.

everything anymore. It just, it just really, like, when Hero is on, it really just reorganizes everything on that team in a way that makes sense for the rest of the players on that team. Like Kyle can look for his spots and then Jimmy can basically just be like,

you know, mismatch hunting, driving to the rim and then just waiting like for the fourth quarter to just close it out and do his Jimmy Bucket's thing, right? And then bam, if he can continue doing what he's doing, I think they just suffered from not having like consistent paint offense.

Maybe they could. And, but this is kind of coming off them, really just beating the brakes off the Pacers. And like, I got to tell you, there are other games this season where it just doesn't look like that at all. Yeah. It seems like they're a bad matchup for Indiana just because of their physicality. Indiana has a lot of like skinny guys, has a lot of like skills, skinny guys. And they're younger too. I feel like that trapping I noticed a few different times last night where it was just like the Pacers just look like they kind of wilted a little bit under that pressure.

Yeah. And the question about like wearing teams, wearing guys down, do they want to play a certain style? I was telling you, I'm always amused by like how Frank Nick Nurse is in his public comments about guys. You know, it's like he wears him down physically. And then he's just like, he's like, well, if you can't hold up, I mean, you'll be out of here basically. It just has a real, I don't know, it has a real kind of college vibe to it. I just think taking it back to like the touch time thing, if we're going to stay on theme here. this is one thing on nick it's just it's really funny sometimes to like hear him say these things in press conferences because he says it all with like this awesthug's type of voice but then like you transcribe that and put that in an article and it sounds like holy shit dude whoa yeah doesn't come across doesn't come across i know i was laughing about like his uh malachi flynn and precious achua quotes like i think uh a year or so ago when he was uh they asked him about it and he was just like nope nope nope he just like grills people like a college coach i don't know i

just always find it really amusing, that he is the job security, because you just don't see coaches do that, like, a lot of times. Like, they're always kind of like picking their spots to be subtle. Nurse is just like, nope, this is the way it is. This is the way that we defend and you either buy. And I guess a championship will afford you some of that, you know, yeah, I think nurse is also just kind of like a seat of his pants sort of thinker. I think he'd be a great podcaster because you ask him a question. He's like, oh, what do I think about that? And then he'll just give you a two minute answer on that and won't necessarily like do the thing. A lot of coaches are always like, you know, hedging their responses for a lot of

different reasons, right? Circling back to like the whole conversation about like the evolution of the game. I love, I love tracking these kind of like broad picture kind of trends within the game of like what's in vogue, what's in fashion. We were kind of saying that like the pod that Ben Taylor and I did a couple weeks ago, he did a really cool video that was after that. I'm just talking about like the evolution of low touch time offenses in the league. I hope it's a trend that continues just because it's so fun to watch and the ball is moving and it's it's just infectious we you know we're seeing the league moncassons we're seeing the herder the herder upward swing and things like that

i feel like halberton is squarely in that trend um to the point where it's like i don't think he the eccentricism is going to have like no place i just think it's going to become a wrinkle you know we saw we saw darrell we were joking about darrell moore i'd love to like pick his brain about this specifically because the numbers showed a certain thing if you have this type of player you can spam it. But we're sort of moving in a direction where... Come on the podcast, dear Amori. Answer for your sins.

Come on, come on. They came close, man. They came super close. They don't go 0 for 27. But I think it's going in a promising direction. And I think that like Halliburton, we could talk about his own individual offense another day. But he's an example of somebody who's just sort of a

a citizen of this movement or just sort of like a disciple of this movement in a really promising way and I've enjoyed watching him. Me too. Me too. Here's here's to just moving away from plotting basketball, you know, here's to passing the ball back and forth. I think we we've done a good job passing the ball back and forth to each other today. What do you think? I think so. I think so. We've got more of a Halliburton Benedict Matherin dynamic as opposed to maybe like a Tray Young Deontay. Yeah, type of dynamic, which, you know, I think that's great.

I think it lends itself to better basketball. And, you know, we brought, we brought Chris in today, right? We got, we're starting to add a third store. Who's Chris in this metaphor? Who's hornet like? Chris, would you rather be Miles Turner or Betty Healed? Or you could be Andrew Nammar. You could be Peret.

You could be wherever you want to be. It's up to you. You reserve the right to self-deaf edition. Well, you know, I always wanted to be Nate Robinson. in a dynamic, you know. Nothing could have prepared me for that. I was not ready for that. Like the little guy that dazzles, like just out of the blue,

and then he disappears. What? Oh my God. The little guy that dazzles. I just love it. That's great. I need a little bit more on that. Didn't he play for the Blazers at one point?

I think so. No, I'm thinking of a name. I remember the Knicks and the Celtics. That's the only thing I wrote. He probably played for other teams. I'm sure he was a journeyman, right? Yeah, yeah. He played for every team.

but the Blazers. Yeah, I don't think he was a blazer. Anyway, I think that's a good spot. I think that's a good spot to wrap it. Yes. Thank you, Kyle. Would you, are you the Halliburton or the Benedict? Well, I was wondering.

I think, I feel like I'm probably the math they're in, but I don't know. I don't know. I don't know that that metaphor totally fits us. We're, Syriot, to be honest, we're probably more hard than C.B.3, Deontate Tray than we are. You think so? I think so. Let's ask the listeners, which, which do are we?

By the way, does it have to be, do we have to be like a guard? duo can we be like colby and shack or should we be in our ambitious are we actually like jordan and pippin are we the jordan and pippin of the podcasting game i think we both lean scoring a little bit more i think that's the that's fair that's fair which is fine we have some playmaking in there too that's fair that's fair points get scored that's all that matters well thank you thank you kyle for for standing around while i take every shot in that's known to man uh thank you Chris for producing us. And thank you everyone else for listening and showing up.

Appreciate it. Have a good week. Love you guys. Send your questions. Questioning the answer.