GAME 3 REACTIONS: Jokic & Murray lead Nuggets over SGA’s Thunder + Cavs smoke Pacers in big response

GAME 3 REACTIONS: Jokic & Murray lead Nuggets over SGA’s Thunder + Cavs smoke Pacers in big response

The NBA 82 game grind is done and now the real fun begins. The NBA playoffs are here and it’s time for all the high stakes drama, clutch moments, and jaw-dropping plays. I can’t wait. If you’re looking to make the playoffs even more exciting, DraftKings Sportsbook has you covered as an official sports betting partner of the NBA. From the playin games all the way through to the finals, now’s the time to back your favorite players and teams as they chase glory. All season long, DraftKings has been the go-to spot for NBA player props. And that does not stop now. Want to make your playoff experience even more intense? Try placing a bet on your favorite players performance. Will they drop 30 points, 40, or more? It’s your call. Ready to place your first bet? Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app now. So, lock in your bets. Let’s make this playoff run unforgettable. Here’s something special for first timers. New DraftKings customers bet $5 to get $200 in bonus bets instantly. Make it a playoff run to remember with DraftKings. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app and use code hoops. That’s H O Ps. That’s code hoops for new customers to get $200 in bonus bets when you bet just five bucks. Only on DraftKings. The crown is yours. Hey, hey, hey. [Music] All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the volume. Happy Friday everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great start to your weekend. The NBA playoffs have been very good to us this year as we continue to just get incredible night of hoops after incredible night of hoops. The Cleveland Cavaliers go into Indiana and look like the Cleveland Cavaliers for the first time in this series. We’re going to be breaking that game down at the tail end of the show, but we’re going to be starting with yet another classic between the Denver Nuggets and the Oklahoma City Thunder. Uh we were joking, the guys and I were joking before we started the show. The Nuggets have now won probably the best game I’ve ever seen Joic play and the worst game I’ve ever seen Jokic play in the same series, which was super fascinating. So many different angles to get into. Bunch of guys for Denver stepped up. Some really exciting stuff for Oklahoma City in their future. But then some of the classic concerns surrounding the team coming to the surface late in the game as their offense generates just 21 points in the last 17 minutes of the game. A lot of really ugly high ISO stuff. We’re going to be breaking that down. We’ll get into both of those games from the perspective of both teams. At the tail end of the show, we’ll take about 10 minutes of questions from the chat. So, make sure you guys in uh in the stream here uh subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel. Drop your questions in there. We’ll get to the chat at the tail end. And then when we are done here tonight, we’ll be heading over to playback for our after show. We have the link in the description here. It’s just playback.tv/hoops. Tonight, we’ll be hanging out there for an extra half hour, 45 minutes or so, taking some questions. We can take callers. We’ll watch some film. They can do a bunch of stuff in the after show. You guys know the drill. Before we get started, subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don’t miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter_Jason so you guys don’t miss show announcements. Don’t forget about our podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight, it’s also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Don’t forget about our social media feeds, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or Jackson’s releasing content throughout the year. Make sure you guys uh subscribe or excuse me, follow us there. Then last but not least, keep dropping those mailbag questions for the chat at the tail end of the show. So, that was probably the worst Jokic game I’ve ever seen. uh shades of the the Minnesota Timberwolves series last year where his jump shot completely leaves him. You know, I I thought Joic made a concerted effort early in this game to try to hunt scoring opportunities. It kind of like became one of those things where at first he was hunting scoring because he knew that was what his team needed. And then it became almost like a come hell or high water, I’m finding a way to make a jump shot. And he just he just couldn’t get one to go. And and it was he was also just struggling making reads. OKC was bringing some baseline doubles and um doing a good job gapping on the weak side in the two-on-one. And so Joic was turning the ball over and getting himself into some trouble. He was struggling to finish around the rim. Smoked several shots at like point blank range right at the front of the rim. And yet here we are, Denver’s up 2-1 in this series and in a really strong position when you consider the fact that it’s highly likely that Nicole Joic has a massive bounceback type of game in game four, a very, very important game of this series. My guess is that whoever wins game four will win this series. And if Denver is going to win, they’re going to need a much better effort from Joic. That’s it. I want to give Joic some credit. He won some defensive battles late. He won some rebounding battles late. and he did get two big buckets in OT. But I want to focus on a couple of other nuggets that I thought stepped up in a big way down the stretch of this game. First of all, Jamal Murray. As it became obvious that Joic was not able to generate a quality look for himself, at least not one that he could knock down the stretch of this game. Jamal Murray had to really hit the gas as a scorer. And it wasn’t always pretty. Again, like people when you’re playing against a defense like this, especially as a guard, it’s not going to be pretty. It’s not going to be super efficient. It’s going to be a chore. Jamal Murray missed more shots than he made tonight. There were some ugly ones. He had a couple shots around the rim. He had an airball layup. He had a spinning like he tried to like shoot a 360 layup in traffic that he kind of just threw into the bottom of the rim. They were difficult shots because there were a lot of late clock situations where he had to generate something. But then there were also situations where he was able to make something happen. a little step back over Isaiah Hartenstein along the left baseline. Big threes at a couple of points in this game. He would just found a way to generate offense. He’s been always a very gifted finisher in traffic, too. A couple of nifty finishes right at the front of the rim. And then Aaron Gordon, there are so many players in the league this year that have just uh in this playoff run that have just been consistently great in the clutch over and over again. Tyresese Hallebertton, Jaylen Brunson, Aaron Gordon again, he’s already had two game winners in this postseason run. Hits the three that sends this to overtime and extends the game. I want to shout out Aaron Gordon defensively as well. He got cooked a little bit by JDub at various points in the fourth quarter, but he was playing good defense to his credit. He was hitting some tough contested shots and then he got several stops late when he needed to. And then I also have to shine the light on Christian Brown. I thought Christian Brown, you know, it’s been interesting. There have been two stretches of this series where I feel like he’s played good defense on Shay Gildas Alexander. Crunch time of game one, crunch time of game three. Now, I think there’s kind of a overarching theme there involving slow down half court basketball, and we’ll dive further into that concept a little bit later on in the show, but there was a stretch there in that third quarter where I’m like, he’s just not doing a good enough job on Shay or JDub. was just getting beat to the spot over and over again at the point of attack. A lot of times he wasn’t even offering any sort of physical contact or resistance until Sheay or or or Jade were in the lane. He just wasn’t doing a good enough job there in crunch time over and over again beating Shay to the spot on multiple occasions actually forcing Shay into trying to grift for fouls which obviously wasn’t going to work in this type of game late. Christian Brown, to his credit, I talk about all the time, the the playoffs are about solving puzzles. And while he struggled in the meat and potatoes of this series, there have been two pivotal stretches where he’s been able to get multiple stops against Jay Gilders Alexander solving the puzzle in that sort of situation. And honestly, guys, like if we zoom out on this series, it’s a whole lot of OKC outplaying Denver and Denver just pulling these games out late. And there’s two different ways to look at that, right? There’s the obvious fact that Oklahoma City is very, very good and that they’re going to be very difficult to put out of their misery. This is not a, oh, you’re up 2-1, you’re in control. This is they win game four, that thing’s going back to Oklahoma City. You’re probably not winning this series. So, like everything still hangs in the balance. But the flip side to look at that is there’s a lot of opportunity for Denver to play better. I thought Oklahoma City outworked Denver tonight. I thought they played with more force throughout the game tonight. They got Denver got demolished on the glass again, giving up 18 offensive rebounds. If you They only got five offensive rebounds. And if we go back cuz even further back into uh into game two, they didn’t have much success on the offensive glass relative to game one in that game either. They had more rebounds offensively in game one than they did in game two and game three combined. And so OKC has like completely flipped the script on the whole Jokic dominating inside dynamic. They’ve flipped the script on the whole offensive rebounding dynamic. They’ve taken the two arguably the two biggest advantages that Denver has in this series and they’ve flipped them in their direction as Joic has been pretty bad the last two games and they haven’t been able to do much damage on the offensive glass. And so again, there’s two ways to look at that. There’s OKC has clear advantages that they’re showing and and then there’s this obvious fact that Denver can play much better. Denver is capable of doing more physical damage on the glass than they’ve been doing. Jokic is obviously capable of playing a lot better. I talked about this after game two. The advantages for the two teams are pretty clear, right? Like for OKC, it’s dribble penetration. They are they are dominating these games in the meat and potatoes just in those semi-transition pushes with Shay and JDub quickly within like the first you know seven to 10 seconds of the shot clock getting deep dribble penetration and then everything really cascading from there all of a sudden you’re drawing tons of helpers which is putting your defense in rotation. OKC it outside of crunch time in this series has passed the ball very well. They’re moving the ball out of those dribble penetration situations as Denver’s rotating. OKC is getting offensive rebounds because guys aren’t matched up to box out because they’re in rotation. There is a lot of damage that Oklahoma City is doing early in uh early in possessions with their dribble penetration that is trickling down to all of these other elements of the game. And for Denver, their advantage is very clearly the size with Joic on the interior and their ability to contend on the offensive glass. And what’s crazy is for the most part throughout this series, OKC has done a better job of leveraging their advantages. But Denver over and over again, as long as they’re within striking distance late, has been the better half court team. And that’s where we got to dig into it a little bit deeper. So JDub had a beautiful game tonight. I I thought he was in command of the floor. Uh moved the ball well on ball and offball scoring, good on ball playmaking. JDub had a great game, but once again, when things got slowed down, when things really slowed down late in the game, those semi-transition opportunities aren’t there, the I’ve got a head of steam because I started my drive out 50 feet from the basket and Christian Brown’s picking me up at the foul line, that’s not there anymore. It’s slow down. It’s a knockdown, dragout, halfcourt fight. And in those situations, in both games, in game one and game two, it’s turned into a lot of high ISOs. A lot of high ISOs for JDub, a lot of high ISOs for Shay. A lot of tough intra contested shots in the middle of the floor. Not a lot of kickouts. How many times did you see a kickout out of those clutch situations for the Thunder? They’re not there. So, similarly to game one, Denver was consistently able to offer late help there. A lot of these shots are being shot over double teams, over late secondary contests, just a lot of traffic in the middle of the floor. Whereas with Denver, there’s like a solid twoman game taking place in the middle of the floor where you don’t know where it’s going to go. It might be Jamal running action and looking for something from the three-point line, something in the mid-range. It might be Jokic in the pocket. It might be Joic in the post. Oh, you overplayed Joic on a roll and left Aaron Gordon wide open in the left corner. He’s going to hit a three to burn you and tie the game. There’s more variety. There’s more consistency. There is a better, more reliable clutch offense for Denver in this series. And so, that’s really where this is going to swing. I think if it’s close in game four late, Denver’s going to win and they’re probably going to win the series. Oklahoma City does have a pathway though with their speed, with their defense to build margin against this team. It’s kind of similar to the way I felt about the Clippers series. There’s just not a team in the league that’s going to be able to execute the way Denver does in the half court late in games. They’re just the very best at it. You know, I I used to uh you know, I I have a lot of like random basketball debates with my friends who cover different teams around the league. And I remember Sam Fondiari who covers the Warriors. He uh texted me once after the Lakers uh lost that regular season game, the late regular season game. Um the first Luca Donic game against the Warriors. And he goes he just said to me, he goes like, “I love it when teams go small ball against the Warriors because just no one’s ever going to play small ball as well as we do.” And it’s such a simple idea, but it’s so true because the Warriors have been doing the Draymond at center thing literally since 2014. like that. They’ve been doing it over a decade. They have every detail of that style of game down pat. Same thing goes for Denver. You’re just not going to beat them in the clutch. When you do, it’s bizarre. What was the the game they lost to the Clippers? You had Aaron Gordon missed a wideopen dunk right under the rim. I can’t remember what mistake Joic made, but Joic made a big mistake down the stretch of that game. They just that was like the exception. every other time you end up in these close games against Denver. I’ve been on I’ve been on the wrong side of this guys. I’ve rooted for the Lakers the last couple of years. So like they are just completely indomitable in a tie game with five minutes left. It’s it’s one of the crazier things I’ve seen in my time following the league and they just got it done again tonight against Oklahoma City. And like there’s obvious the the main thing if you’re looking at it from OKC’s standpoint and the way that they can try to avoid that slow down environment. Can’t change the way you play. Can’t change the way you play just because it slows down late, especially when you’re going against Denver. You got to keep pushing in transition. You got to attack early in possessions. You got to move the ball. A good semi-transition drive that kicks leads to an advantage. Yeah, you’re right. You’re going to have to count on somebody like a loud Dort to drive a close out, but you’re going to start the engine. And your speed is such an advantage when you’re in motion, when there’s ball in player movement against this team. But when you just stare down Jamal Murray in an ISO at the top of the key and you can gap into driving lanes, it’s just an easier thing for Denver to deal with. You’re playing into their style of game. And so that’s going to be the main thing that they’re going to have to flip. Again, moving forward in the series. I left game two feeling coin flip slight edge OKC. Now at game three, I’m coin flip slight edge Denver. Denver will be likely I’m not even sure what the line is in game four. I haven’t looked yet, but I give Denver a slightly better than a coin flip chance of winning game four at home. And if they win that game, I think they’re going to win the series because all of a sudden OKC has to win three games in a row and Denver just has the best player in the world on the team. And it can go either way. But I mean, you gotta be kicking yourself if you’re a Thunder fan because you played well enough to win all three of these games and you’re down 2-1 in this series. And like, I’ve gotten into this argument a lot with a bunch of people. And like, I want to be clear, this series is not over. I would not be the slightest bit surprised if Oklahoma City won this series. And with the way Boston’s playing, guys, you could talk me into Oklahoma City right now being the most likely team to win the championship. So, this is not some sort of big sweeping Oklahoma City’s bad kind of take. But I’ve been I’ve been preaching this all year. The team full of early 20 year olds that’s going to play way harder than everybody in the regular season that’s going to put up dramatic statistical markers that are going to do things like uh Jackson, what was the odds before it was minus 600 uh after 800. Oh, 600 after game. After game one when Denver won, OKC was minus 600 to win the series. like the odds are being fed by these numbers and it’s everyone it’s breaking everybody’s brain greatest net rating in in in NBA history and all this kind of stuff and all year long I’ve said yeah they’re they’re awesome but young basketball players I’ve been preaching this for years what are young basketball players what is the behavior of young basketball players they struggle to have success and then replicate it and they struggle to have failure identify it and avoid it veteran Basketball teams have succeeded and failed so many times that when they identify success, they hammer it. And when they see failure, they quickly identify it and they remove it from their diet. They trim the fat. That is the difference between grown ass men playing basketball and dudes in their early 20s. And again, that does not mean OKC can’t win the series. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if they won game four, won game five, won game six, beat the out of Minnesota, went into the finals and beat Boston or New York or Indiana or Cleveland or whoever it is that comes out. I would not be surprised, but they are vulnerable. And they are vulnerable because when they get into these situations, they are young and inexperienced and the veteran older team who’s been here a million times is very comfortable in these settings. and they have lost two games that they should have won in this series. And so like that’s the that’s that is why like the next time this happens, the next time we see a team full of early 20-year-olds that wins 60some games and dominates in the regular season, that is why I bring this talking point up. It is not a attempting to prevent them from getting the shine they deserve. It is simply just something I’ve learned from a long time watching basketball. The older veteran teams are just way more comfortable in adversity than the younger basketball teams. And maybe this will be the lesson. Maybe this will be the one that triggers it. And maybe they beat the Thunder six times in this series or maybe they beat the Nuggets six times in the series. But I just think it’s a really fascinating concept. The Thunder were torching the Nuggets with a high variety attack, moving the ball, driving kick, hitting cutters, hitting shooters, and then they went brain dead late in the game and played high ISO because that’s the kind of thing that can happen with a young basketball team in those sorts of settings. All right, let’s move on to Cavs Pacers. Donovan Mitchell just logged back-to-back 40point games in the playoffs for the Cleveland Cavaliers for the first time since LeBron James did so in the 2016 NBA Finals. Finally got his three-point shot going a little bit. He was two for 18 in the first two games, but he got several clean catch and shoot looks that helped him build that rhythm. He got one on the left wing in transition, a couple ones on like other transition sequences. Just those easy catch and shoot threes are great ways to build rhythm as a three-point shooter. He actually hit five in this game and he was able to go to one of his patented stepbacks after the Pacers cut the lead down to 11 in the early fourth quarter. It was kind of like it felt like one of those Pacers runs was coming. He hit a huge step back three that kind of styied them. Brought it back to 14. They never got that close again. just that that that three-point shot is a big piece of it because especially when you’re in a high volume offensive role like he was before Garland got in the series and even now with Garland being in kind of a smaller role, he’s just leaned on for so much offensively and if you can step into threes and knock him down, it’s such a great way to provide scoring without having to like really exert yourself physically. But we got to emphasize the job he was doing athletically. Donovan’s moving probably like he’s always been an elite athlete, but it looks to me like he’s moving as well as ever. And he’s having these insane contact finishes in this series where he’s like, it’s almost like he gets that first angle and then he just pops off the ground and just improvises. Like he pops off the ground and then the ball just starts windmilling around at all these different angles and then he finds a finishing angle to get a shot off. Whether it’s like below the rim scoop or it’s he shoots like a really soft almost like floater layup that he’ll get a lot of really good rolls on right at the front of the rim. I just thought he was fantastic tonight as he goes for a second consecutive 40point game. Stress had his second consecutive 20point game. Little bit of everything. Open catch and shoot jump shots, contested catch-oot jump shots, cutting, driving, closeouts, running second side action, you know, big transition dunk there in the fourth quarter. Darius Garland came back and like he was a little rusty. Uh, but you can just tell how much it greases the wheels for the offense. They brings the ball up with pace, hits some sort of action early in the possession, and usually will get the defense in rotation. And again, look beyond the box score. The Cavs logged a 135 offensive rating tonight when Darius Garland was on the floor. But what I want to zoom in on tonight is the defensive end for the Cavs because this is what I thought was the ultimate like kind of revealing thing that came out of this game. We knew that the Cavs could score in this matchup. Donovan’s been pretty comfortable all series. Obviously, even down bodies, they were in position to win game two. But one of the things we talked about after game two is like their defense got cut to pieces in game one. And yeah, they came out in the first quarter of game two and they held the Pacers down, but then for three straight quarters after that, they gave up at least 34 points. They hadn’t had any sort of sustained success defensively against Indiana. Tonight, they finally did. They held him to just 38 points total in the second and fourth quarters combined when they built the first big lead and when they put the game away. So, another way of looking at it is this was the first time the Cavs had some defensive success against the Pacers. So, let’s talk about how there’s three concepts that I want to get into. One, the denial of Tyresese Hallebertton. Two, the zone defense that worked tonight. And then three, the job that Evan Mobley and Jared Allen did on the back line tonight. So, the denial of Hallebertton. This has been the Cavs game plan the entire series. Started in game one with Sam Merrill. They just uh in the early part of that game didn’t take the ball out of the net enough times for them to be able to do it as effectively. But basically, what they’re doing is just trying to prevent Tyresese Hallebertton from ever having the basketball. So any made basket or defensive rebound, whoever is closest to Hallebertton will just run up and basically hug him, like position themselves directly between Hallebertton and the ball and just not let him go get it. Then on any ball screen action, they’re coming up super aggressive and high to get him to get rid of the ball if he ever does get the ball. So like Tyrese will just sometimes like just do a little shove off move. He’ll get the ball, they’ll run a ball screen, they’ll just immediately get the ball out of his hands. And it’s worked to varying degrees in this series. In game one, they tried Merrill on him and how he still got into a rhythm and he was still great. Game two, they switched Strus onto him and it worked much better, but then they lost control of Hallebertton late in the game. Uh, you could tell the difference between Strus and Merryill. Strus when he’s kind of like bear hug denying Hallebertton. He’s just stronger. So when Hallebertton tries to shed him through that offball contact, he’s just having a harder time than he did on Sam Merrill. But it succeeded in a big way tonight in game three. and it succeeded in that it just killed his aggression. After taking 15 shots in game one, he’s taken just 19 shots total in the last two games. Took only eight shots tonight. Finished with just four points and five assists. Couple things. You can tell that even when he has the ball, he’s rushing. He’s missing reads that he doesn’t usually miss. And he’s not looking to be aggressive to score. So, the game plan is working. It’s psyching Hallebertton out. We’ll talk about Hallebertton and how he can adjust to that later. But that’s the first piece of how the Cavs are finally getting some defensive success against Indiana, denying Tyres Hallebertton the basketball whenever they can. The second piece of it was his own defense we saw tonight. In the second quarter, with about 11 minutes left, the game was tied at 34. The Cavs ran 15 possessions of a 3-2 zone. We’ll get into that concept here in a minute. The Pacers scored just seven points on those 15 possessions of zone. By the end of the of the second quarter, the Cavs were up by 21 points. So, from a tie game to a blowout in large part because the Pacers couldn’t score against the zone. Now, a 3-2 zone is very different from a two-3 zone. A two-3 zone is built around taking away the rim and usually if you move the ball well against it, you’ll get wide open catch and shoot threes. Essentially, you have the middleman whose responsibility it is to cover the basket and depending on the scheme up to the elbows. So, like anybody who catches in the middle, sometimes the middle guy will cover that. Sometimes different zones will use different guys to cover that when they want to keep someone at the basket. Like we saw Houston in games when they weren’t playing Steph Curry, they would have Stephen Adams just sit right underneath the basket in their zone. But a 3-2 zone is very different because in a two-3 zone, the other four guys are splitting the remainder of the three-point line, right? But in a 3-2 zone, both of the bottom guys, so again, there’s three guys up top, guy on the top, guy on the wings, two guys that are on the bottom. Both of those bottom guys are actually responsible for the corner. So as a result, all five players have responsibility at the three-point line. And with the way that the Cavs were doing it too, it it’s kind of similar to what Houston was doing in the sense that like as ball and player movement would occur, guys would be willing to change spots to make the whole thing function. But there are opportunities against a 3-2 zone in the interior that are not there against the outside and it just flumxed Indiana early in the game. They did do much better in the second half. They scored 11 points in just nine possessions against the 3-2. They did have some success there. The main thing they started doing is two things. One, high ball screens. They started just screening the top man and having that man roll into the middle of the floor. So, they were able to get some pocket passes into the middle of the floor. They also got like a deep seal for Thomas Bryant on a play where they had a shooter in one corner that occupied one of the low men and then they had Thomas Bryant just seal the other low man. So, it created a very big passing window. They were able to throw him the ball and he got a big dunk. So, they kind of figured it out in the second half and I don’t think we’re going to see a ton of that zone moving forward. But I think we’ll see it a little bit here and there. But again, as I often talk about, zone defenses are not meant to like permanently flumx NBA teams. If they do, you stick with it. And we’ll see that from time to time. Like you’ll see long stretches of it. Like you saw it a lot today. You’ll see it, you know, like in what was it game six against the the Warriors when the Rockets ran a bunch of their zone, but like it’s primarily its primary purpose is to just disrupt rhythm. Oh, you’re used to playing this way. well, how about we just, you know, throw a giant wrench in things and make you play a very different style of basketball. And it worked for 15 possessions in the second quarter. It threw the Pacers out of whack. Yeah, they eventually figured it out, but it didn’t matter because they were already down 21 at that point. So, like just uh this is why like when I talk about with coaches mixing up coverages, like you can’t just run the same damn thing every time. You got to do something that just kind of disrupts the flow. It’s like you can’t just, you know, run high drop 10 possessions in a row, then low drop 10 possessions in a row in a in an adjustment. A lot of time, the best coaches will mix in various different coverages multiple times in the same quarter just to keep a an offensive player or an entire offense off balance. The third piece of it, Evan Mobley and Jared Allen, multiple efforts at the rim defensively. Those two guys were pretty rough in game one and they’ve had their playoff moments where they haven’t been very good defensively over the years, but I thought they were amazing tonight. This Indiana Pacers team applies so much rim pressure with their speed and they’re just in a lot of positions in a lot of times they’re expected to be in multiple places at once, step up and contest a driver, then recover to someone at the basket. They forced a bunch of misses at the rim or near the rim for the Pacers tonight with their activity. All three of those guys just did a really or excuse me, all three of those factors, I should say. Moan Allen on the back line, the zone defense, the denial of Hallebertton finally had some sustained success slowing down Indiana’s offense, which I thought was the main takeaway from tonight’s game. And then for the Pacers moving forward, Tyrus Halurn’s got to find a way to get involved. The opportunities are still there. when he is aggressive to the ball, he can still get a catch. He can shed the deny. Then once they get up the floor, he’s rushing against the blitzes. He’s usually so comfortable. He’s like rushing that pass and not putting it in a place where they can quickly compromise the defense. He missed two floaters early in the game. One where he got blocked and one where he missed it long. And on both of them there were kickout reads, but he’s like rushed. You can tell like this is legitimately just kind of getting him out of sorts. And so some of this is like Hallebertton just needs to take a deep breath, understand the coverage and what it’s doing and find a way to be impactful anyway, meaning like overcome that circumstance. We talked about shedding the shedding the deny and still looking to be aggressive making the proper reads. There’s also when you’re being faceguarded, that guy is most likely not going to help as a SC on a screening action. I would like to see Carile really be aggressive with Hallebertton as a screener in game four to try to just generate some openings for him there. If he sets good screens, Strus will have no choice but to help. If Strus doesn’t help if he sets a good screen, then there’s an opportunity for someone to drive downhill. Just I would just run a bunch of Seiakum Hallebertton inverted pick and roll and just try to get uh Seiakum going downhill or get Streus off of Hallebertton with a slower defender on Hallebertton so that he can get going with the with the dribble. But your offense is predicated on Tyrese and his advantage creation and right now he’s all out of whack and you got to find a way to get that right. All right, for about 10 minutes before we get out of here, we’re going to take some questions from the chat. We’re gonna bring Jackson up on stage. Let’s do it. First question is about Shay Gillig Alexander who also had a bit of a stinker tonight. Do you believe that SJ can solve the puzzles against elite/smart defenses slash what is he actually struggling with so far? You know, it’s interesting because I feel like JDub has been more the player that has been like the get the defense and rotation guy. He’s bringing a lot of downhill force. He’s moving the ball quickly through action and it feels like Sheay is more leaning on his shot making in this series. That said, I did think there were sequences in this game where he passed the ball. Well, it was mostly in that late game sequence where he just completely went away from the player movement. Also, secondarily, I thought that he and you know, Jackson, you and I were talking about this uh texting while the game was still going, but he kind of got into like the foul batty thing late against Christian Brown and like that just wasn’t the right approach in that sort of situation, especially since like he hit some shots like there was a Shay and JDub kind of had a nice shotmaking fourth quarter there. There were like five or six like pretty tough jump shots that those dudes hit. But in general, the two of them, you know, we we talked about this a lot on the show, like there’s a flow of the game piece that comes from a ball handler. Like you’ve got to be in charge of the flow of the game. And when you’ve got Chad Homegrren on the floor, you got to find a way to keep him involved in those late game sequences when like you like you’ve just got to keep that flow, keep that motion late in games. And that’s the main thing is in both of these games that they’ve lost, Shay has kind of hijacked things into a slow, high ISO attack and I just don’t think it’s been the right move. Yeah, I agree. It does feel like they’re in they’re choosing to to drag the pace of it down at the end of the those possessions at the end of the game. Why Why are they doing that? They don’t need to do that. It’s not where they have advantages. Why are you let why why iso Sheay against Christian Brown who you know who isn’t a perfect defender but is their best defender for Shay? Why not involve Jokic in the pick and roll? Why not try to do something on the second side? It’s it seems like from a strategic standpoint whether it’s coaching or Shay they’re they’re it seems like they’re intentionally putting themselves in tough response. No, they absolutely are. It’s a uh there’s a very difficult way to play basketball. Trust me, I figured this out with the uh with the Lakers this year. uh you know like that everyone keeps wondering like what’s going on like why is it that Golden State is causing so many more problems for Minnesota and it’s like here’s the thing I’ve watched Luca before do this spam heliocentric thing and I’ve seen it work but it hasn’t worked in a championship context and really the only player ever in NBA history that’s won a championship with a heliocentric style is LeBron James and even then he became a very good offball player played off of Kyrie Irving and that sort of thing and he’s probably the most conditioned athlete in the history of the sport. So like there that’s an exception. The truth is that’s just a really hard way to play basketball. It’s a really hard way to play basketball to hunt matchups in the middle of the floor especially against these elite defenses that and and that’s the thing like even Denver a weaker defense that doesn’t have elite defensive personnel can have success when you become predictable with the way that you attack especially when the physicality is allowed. And so it’s like ultimately the way they need to approach these late game situations is through the sca through the scope of advantage creation. So if they’re just going to switch any action with Shay and JDub and or or Dort for instance, bring up Joic into the screening action, find a way to get the defense in rotation and play the drive and kick style that was actually h giving you the success you were having throughout the rest of the game. Yeah, 100%. Sort of on this note, can you evaluate the question is, can you evaluate Mark Dagenol after fouling early uh in the game in in game one and then tonight he had the weird challenge. He didn’t call timeout at the end of the fourth quarter and then he started overtime uh with chat on the bench. Where how do you feel like he’s handled the situation? I don’t necessarily have an issue with the the lack of the timeout there because JDub, it’s kind of a similar concept to what uh what you do with Tatum on that uh game-winning attempt in the second Knicks game. In that situation, you’re going high ISO. Obviously, that’s the game plan. That’s what they were doing. And there’s something to be said about like Dol needs to do a better job of kind of like orchestrating the offense from the sideline and being like, “Hey guys, if we do this, we’re playing directly into their hands.” But like I thought where they went wrong on that possession is they gave the ball to JDub on the inbound and then JDub gave the ball to Shay. And like even though Shay hit a couple of shots in that stretch, I thought JDub had a better matchup and was in better rhythm. And so that was where it got weird. But, you know, in a lot of these situation, you know how it is with me, guys. Like, when it comes to onc court decision-m, I primarily focus on the players, right? The um the challenge piece, the uh the chat home piece, Chad wasn’t involved in the offense at all at that point in the game. So, like I I kind of see where he’s he’s probably just thinking, I want to get an extra like perimeter defender on the floor in that situation, especially since Jamal Murray was attacking the way that he was attacking at that point in the game. I’m just not going to be as on the coach for the decisions the players are making on the floor, if that makes sense. But yeah, Mark does need to do a good job in the off day here of expressing to his team how they need to change their approach when they end up in these late game situations for sure. Next question. What does Minnesota have that OKC is seemingly unable to replicate against Denver? It seems like OKC has more weapons and talent and skill almost across the board. Is it just go bear? What’s the why why does Minnesota seem to have this number compared to Minnesota is substantially bigger than Oklahoma City? Substantially bigger. It was like Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. and all these guys. All of their individual matchups are several inches taller than than what you would have in OKC matchup. It’s just there’s also a frontline depth piece like it’s all Hartinstein and Cadet. You had a steady diet of Carl Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobear and Nas Reed in that series. They were just cycling bigs in to just beat the out of Jokic. But like I mean the other thing too is like the there is a little bit of a rim pressure piece with Ant that is very different than the rim pressure piece you get from even Shay and JDub. Like Ant cut Denver to pieces in that series. And like even in game seven when he wasn’t putting up the big numbers necessarily like efficiency-wise in that second half he was in attack mode and he was getting that defense in rotation consistently and like there’s a little bit of like when this game slowed down it’s like oh wait JDub is an elite athlete but he’s not like ant athlete and Shay’s an elite athlete but he’s not like ant athlete and they can actually kind of manage that dynamic a little bit better but I just the simple answer to your question is just that Minnesota’s defense is substantially bigger than Oklahoma City for sure. Let’s do one more question and then we’ll go over to playback for a bit. Aaron Gordon has now hit obviously the game-winning three in game one hit a very very clutch three again tonight. Have you ever seen a shooting turnaround this drastic? Okay, let’s have some fun here. Jackson, what are examples of guys in our lives that we can remember that sucked at shooting and then became good at it? Kawhi Leonard. Kawhi Leonard is a great example. Um I don’t know statistically whether if it’s as drastic, but he pops. Yeah, I’m trying to think like um Jason Kid towards the tail end of his career. Um who’s the big uh Brook Lopez? I don’t think Kawhai is even the best example. Kawhai’s shockingly good three-point percentage early on in his career. He I don’t know if he’s even the best example. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah. Well, Kawhi was like weird touch. just wasn’t a volume shooter until later in his career. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um I remember that was the name of Kawhai. Everyone was like in his pre-draft workout, he made like 85% of his free throws or something and everyone was like, “Oh, this means he can shoot.” Right. Right. Right. But Right. Right. Right. One that came to mind for me is uh not as obvious one, but just as I watched it a lot is Derrick White. Okay. the season that he he not that he was as bad of a shooter as Aaron Gordon was, but he was like low 30s, 31% 30% and then in that finals year that they lost to the Warriors, it was like we’re going to just let him shoot it in the corner and he missed a bunch of shots and now he’s like 30. That’s a good one. Now, Dererick White’s a good one there. Yeah, this is a this is a good question. But Aaron Gordon is one of the classic ones in the sense that it wasn’t like typical player development. Like I mean you could be like you could go to like LeBron became a better shooter over the course of his career, but it’s like he never was that bad, you know, he just got more consistent. Aaron Gordon was a guy that like that you would just leave completely wide open and now he’s become a guy that like legitimately is a knockdown three-point shooter. And I feel like it’s going to go in every time. Sneaky guy on this list too is Russell Westbrook at this point in his career is like suddenly becoming a guy that like he hit a big three out of the left corner or was it out of the right corner in tonight’s game? But that’s a very good question. Uh, all right guys, we’re going to head over to Playback again. playback.tv/hoops tonight. We’re going to go a little bit shorter tonight, just for about a half hour, 45 minutes. But, uh, we’ll meet you guys over there in just a few minutes. We’ll take some callers. We’ll, uh, take some questions from the chat. We may watch a we may watch a little bit of film. Again, I always appreciate you guys for rocking with us and walking rocking, uh, with the show. We will see you guys over on playback.

Jason reacts live after the Denver Nuggets win a pivotal Game 3 against the Oklahoma City Thunder. He discusses another fantastic performance from Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray to outlast Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Then he discusses the Cleveland Cavaliers controlling Game 3 in a win over the Indiana Pacers behind another monster game from Donovan Mitchell.

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