WARRIORS-ROCKETS REACTION: Steph Curry and Warriors DEFEAT Houston Rockets in Game 7 Showdown

WARRIORS-ROCKETS REACTION: Steph Curry and Warriors DEFEAT Houston Rockets in Game 7 Showdown

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 highstakes 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 is 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. [Music] Hey, hey. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the volume. Happy Sunday everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great night. Very excited to break down game seven of the Warriors and the Rockets as the Warriors advance. We also got game one of Cavs Pacers. A very interesting game where the Pacers threw a great punch. Sorry for the delay getting over here tonight. I had to work with Mr. Colin Coward tonight. He’s the boss man, so you never say no. Uh, but I broke down a bunch of stuff with him about the first round on his show that you guys will see on the volumes feed later. But I really wanted to take some time to get into the nitty-gritty of what happened tonight. So, we’re going to do that on today’s show. After we hit the two games at the tail end, I’m going to go through each of the eight first round series and talk about the biggest thing that I learned through those series. When we finish up here tonight, after we get through those three segments, we’re going to head over to playback. over on playback. We’re going to start talking about Minnesota vers Golden State first round. We’re going to go through some film. We’re going to take questions from you guys. You’re going to get to come up on the stage. So, if you’re not already set up on playback, make sure you guys get set up over there on the Hoops Tonight channel as soon as we wrap up here live on YouTube. We’re heading over. Hope you guys will come hang out for another 45 minutes as we do some more stuff to talk some hoops and watch some film. So, 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 at_jasonlt 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 on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook where we’re making content throughout the remainder of the season. Follow us there. Then last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments. So after game six, I talked about two things that would need to go right in order for the Warriors to win game seven. One, they would need to get Alpern Shenun and Fred Vanble under control. Those guys went for an efficient 50 points in game six. And two, they would need to get Steph going as a scorer because even though he can create advantages, because Houston can tighten the screws the way they do, he’s really the only guy who can save them when Houston’s really in that type of groove defensively. We talked about this a lot after game six. You can’t point to Moses Moody to save you. can’t point to Brandon Pajki to save you. Even like with Buddy Heield’s hot shooting in the first half, in that third quarter, it ultimately came down to Steph and his ability to generate offense against an elite momentous attack from Houston. They took the first piece. They took care of that first piece right away. Right. Draymond had his best defensive game of the series in my opinion. He had Shangon in jail. His attempts close to the rim looked super disrupted. He had some bad misses there. He was beating Shangon to spot so cleanly in the second half that he kept settling for that stupid oneleg fadeaway that he was either shooting way over the back of the rim or way short of the front of the rim. Draymond had him completely flustered defensively in that game. I want to give Cavon Looney some credit there too. Cavon Looney’s been great. But Draymond again, this has been a tough offensive series for him. If you look at the way that the floor is set up, because they put Fran Van Vleet on Draymond so that they can switch the Steph Draymond pick and roll, that took away Draymond’s best piece of offensive utility for this team, which is connective playmaking, leading those four threes out of Steph Curry traps. But because they’re just switching any screen with Draymond, it put him into a position where he was more of a spot-up shooter, which by the way, he did hit a couple of big threes early in this game. But Draymond was in a tough position offensively in the series. And so it wasn’t going to be a big box score series. I saw a lot of Warriors fans saying like, “Oh, we’re going to, you know, take a look at Draymond after this series cuz he’s not producing.” It’s like this was never going to be the series where he produced offensively because of the way Houston matched up. They kept their three switchiest defenders on Draymond, Jimmy, and Steph to try to neutralize any twoman game with those two so that you’d have to play two game two game with whoever else was on the floor. But Draymond did an amazing job defensively in the series and gained control over one of the biggest problems they were having, which was Shangon. Over the course of the series, all of their guards did a fantastic job on Fred Van Vleet. Those guys held uh they held Fred and Shangon together to 38 points on 36 shots. So very inefficient, lower volume, and most of the damage that those two did was in the fourth quarter after Golden State had already taken control of the game. And that really ultimately was why I never flipped my pick away from Golden State in this series. I just felt like Golden State could strangle this offense if they ever needed to. I just figured they would have done it on Friday. I I’m sure I’m sure in the Warriors locker room they’re like, “We should have done this on Friday, you know, and give themselves a little bit of extra time.” But they brought the requisite intensity and energy defensively tonight and they strangled Houston and that bought them quite a bit of margin for error. on Steph’s scoring. Steph goes scoreless for almost the entire first half, but it didn’t matter because Buddy Heield was incredible. Now, those of you guys who were on playback with me after game six, we talked about this specific thing. Uh Steve Ker leaned heavily into Gary Payton in game six, and I I think it might have had something to do with foul trouble for Buddy Heield, but he just went away from Buddy Heal. His minutes were super low, and they really really struggled offensively in that game, right? But in this particular game, and maybe it was Gary Payeyton being sick, maybe it was an adjustment from Steve Cerr, but we talked in the playback after game six, the numbers clearly showed in this series that the Warriors were substantially better with Buddy Heel on the floor as a complimentary offensive piece than Gary Payton as a complimentary defensive piece. I’m a huge Gary Payton fan. I just think this was a tough matchup for him. I was texting with Jackson earlier today. Uh Jackson made a very interesting point. He was talking about how like in this matchup because you’re not as worried about Houston’s guards doing a ton of damage just with like unbelievable star level talent, he doesn’t have as much upside defensively in the series and then the offensive limitations are still there. Gary Payeyton had moments in the series. He won a game in this series slipping out of ball screens, right? As we talked about, I think that was game four if I it was either game three or game four. I can’t remember. One of the two in Golden State. But overall in this series, the team fared better with Buddy Heield on the floor. They leaned more into him tonight. It’s that complimentary scoring. Like if Steph’s going to get face guarded and double teamed off of ball screens, there’s a lot of space to operate, but he got a lot of clean looks and he was able to benefit off that. He had 33 points on 15 shots. But Houston made a run. They made a run that started in the late second half, extended into the excuse me, late first half, and extended into the early second half. Houston cut the lead down to three and they tightened the screws and Buddy wasn’t getting open and Jimmy wasn’t getting open and and Steph was really the only guy who was going to be able to save them in that spot and right when they needed him to he got going. He had 22 points but that’s underelling it because almost all well all of that came over the final two quarters and change. He had a little pull up three, a deep pull-up three in the late first half, but all of those 22 points came basically over the last, you know, roughly 25 26 minutes of the game. He started working primarily on the ball instead of running through offball action. It was a lot of high pick and roll, a lot of high ISO. And those of us who have been following the Warriors over the last decade, we know that’s the break glass in case of emergency approach for the Warriors when things get really tough on offense. And it’s just the advantage with Steph. Steph can default into high ball screen attack when he needs to. And he did an amazing job of it down the stretch. Attacked Jabari Smith in an ISO and was able to shake him and get downhill all the way to the basket for a layup. Take that little piece and file it away from the Minnesota matchup because Steph is definitely more comfortable against taller athletes than he is against the low to the ground athletes, which is something to keep in mind. But he was the shot making was there. He was getting to the rim consistently. Steph just completely took over the game and Houston was never able to recover from it. Like guys, this is why I hold stars to that standard, especially when it’s their role on that team. I knew Steph was capable of this. This is what he does better than just about anybody in the world. And it wasn’t going to be Moses Moody saving them. It wasn’t going to be Brandon Pajki saving them. It was going to be Steph. It had to be Steph. And Steph took that responsibility seriously and came through for his team. Especially when that’s your role. Like, you know, it’s like I You want to know why I was really critical of LeBron after game seven or excuse me, game five of their first round series? Because he wasn’t rebounding. I wasn’t as critical of him in the game four uh uh loss because he only took two shots in the fourth quarter. His job wasn’t to score on that team. It was Luca’s job. Luca wasn’t doing his job. In game five, the Wolves kicked the out of the Lakers on the glass. LeBron’s the one guy who was capable of anchoring them on the defensive glass. And it was him that I was seeing that was letting go of the rope and not doing his job. He’s the star. He has the superpower. He’s the one guy who could save them in that spot and he couldn’t do it. that Luca in that game four, he’s the one guy who can create the offense against that elite defense and save the day. This is why I always look at stars before coaches, stars before role players. This is a unique sport in that in this sport, your superpower is your superpower is your superstars. They are the one being entity on the court that can circumvent the surrounding circumstances. And when all hell broke loose tonight and Houston was making their run and Amend Thompson’s getting downhill to the rim every single time Steph Curry took over the game. And when he took over the game, everyone else was helpless and the Warriors immediately pulled away. They immediately pulled away. And so those two dynamics that needed to flip, the defense on Fred and Alberin and then the scoring for Steph Curry, they flip. Warriors are able to flip the dynamic that took place over the other two games. I thought Jimmy was great again tonight. He hit a lot of stabilizing shots. He went on a little solo run in the fourth quarter that helped stiff arm the Rockets. I want to shout out Steve Kerr. I thought he coached a great series and I thought he played every right card in game seven. Increasing Buddy Heield’s minutes like we talked about, although that might have had something to do with Gary Payeyton being sick. He played Kavon Looney instead of Quinton Post, which I thought was a really smart move after how they just got bludgeoned on the glass in game six. You needed to lean more towards rebounding. That was a really smart decision. Looney also had some really good defensive possessions on Shangon. He had some adjustments for the zone. We talked about that after game six. Like they really struggled against the zone in the fourth quarter. They they just had some innovative stuff. You know, there was a possession. Did you guys see the possession where Jimmy got the layup because him and Steph both broke open on a back cut at the same time. They kind of almost ran into each other, but Jimmy got the layup. What they were doing in that sequence, which I thought was really smart, is they were triggering switches and then back cutting. Steph is got Shangon on him. He’s running out like he’s going to go to the wing. Shangon passes him off to the next guy. Steph’s watching Alpin. As soon as he passes him off, he back cuts because as soon as he passes him off, he relaxes. Steph was able to get back cut right to the rim. He was actually wide open. Jimmy ended up getting the ball. Same sort of thing from Jimmy. Triggered a switch, back cut out of it. They got a wideopen three for Buddy Heel on a really smart play design where they had Steph flash to the high post to occupy a defender right as Jimmy was racking to the right off of his man which occupied the two top guys in the zone and Buddy relocated across the top of the key wide open for three. The cur the Kerr and his staff took the time to look through some specific details for ways they could get openings against that zone defense. I thought the Warriors championship pedigree showed in a big way tonight as they got the win in game in game seven. Looking forward to Minnesota. I was Colin asked me tonight. He was like, you know, after what we saw from Houston, you know, Minnesota in theory is just a better version of Houston, you know, is Golden State just going to get crushed? And one of the things I told Colin, I don’t know who I’m going to pick yet. I’m I want to watch more film. I want to get more into it, but I am way more on the coin flip side of things than a lot of I I think there’s going to be a lot of Warriors pessimism you guys are going to see on in sports media over the next couple days. I think you’re going to see a lot of they’re going to go get crushed by Minnesota. And here’s the thing, maybe they do. Maybe they go get crushed by Minnesota. I look at it as a fundamentally different matchup than Houston in some good ways and some bad ways. There’s no doubt they’re going to be harder to guard. Yeah, Julius Randall and and Anthony Edwards and Nas Reed, they’re an entirely different animal offensively than what Houston does. That said, the other end of the floor, I do think Golden State’s going to have actually more success scoring against Minnesota than they did against Houston. There’s a big difference between like the speed that Houston has on the ground in the form of Fred Van Vleet and Amen Thompson which were the two defenders who did the best job on Steph and bigger athletes. Steph looked pretty comfortable tonight against Jabari Smith Jr. He looked pretty comfortable tonight against Jabari in the entire series. He looked comfortable against Dylan Brooks on an island in isolation. In those situations, those bigger, taller wings, they have more weight. they struggled to move side to side as quickly as some smaller players do. Like in a weird way, like I am very concerned about Golden State’s ability should they win the next round to compete with a team like Oklahoma City because Oklahoma City has a ton of speed on the ground. They literally are a much better version of Houston who’s really fast on the ground, excellent in rotation. They also have rim protection and also have super high level offensive talent. That’s a tougher matchup for Golden State now in my opinion after what we saw from Houston. But Minnesota, it’s a lot of like Julius Randle is kind of a big upright athlete that you can move side to side on and have success against. Even Jaden McDaniels is a guy that Steph can break free of because he’s a little bit stilty and upright and Steph can move side to side against him. Working against Nas Reed, I think he’s gonna have a good amount of success. like that series. It’s also a fundamentally different defensive type of job than what Minnesota just had against LA. LA two big giant forwards that are just trying to play ISO ball. That plays directly into what Minnesota does well. Those are matchups that Nas Reed and Julius Randall can succeed in that they’re not going to succeed in against Steph. Even just the concept of isolation, Minnesota’s going to have to deal with all of the ball and the player movement as guys are running around. And by the way, if you guys want to see some examples, we’ll go over them in playback after the show. Come hang out with us on playback and I’ll show you guys some film. The last two wins that Golden State had against Minnesota this year, Steph beat them down the stretch with offball movement as guys like Ant and Nas and Julius Randall were not as attentive as they need to be. The job against the Lakers was a physical job. We can hold up on an island against LeBron and Luca in one-on-one. The job against the Warriors is a mental job. It’s about tracking shooters, getting through action, communicating through tons of switches. Totally different job. So, it’s going to be it’s going to be an interesting series. I think I I haven’t seen the um the uh the odds yet. I’ll look them up here in a minute, but I do think that Golden State has the ability through Steph to have a more successful offensive series against Minnesota than they did against Houston, which I think could make it a closer series. is again not going to make a pick tonight, but I’m leaning much closer towards that being a coin flip series than it being some sort of giant advantage towards Minnesota. Uh on the Houston front, I think the answer after tonight is you got to go after Giannis. I think he’s the obvious decision. I think he fits the identity of the team. I think that you put everything on the table but Amend Thompson. If you can combine Giannis as a legitimate shot creator with everything that you have in the size and physicality of this team, you’ll basically be a superstarled version of this Houston Rockets team, which I think could be super exciting, but we will talk more about the Rockets on another day. All right, so we’re going to hit Pacers Cavs for a little bit and then I’m going to go over my takeaways from each of the eight first round series and then after that we will head over to playback for the rest of the night. So, I thought the Pacers just completely caught the Cavs off guard today. The Pacers offense is built around the ability of all five players on the floor to be able to both score and playmake out of every spot, right? So, like knock down catch and shoot threes, but also to hit off the dribble threes out of combinations. You’ll see Siakan Turner even hit the occasional off the dribble three, right? All five guys can score in the mid-range. All five guys can score at the rim. All five guys can pass and play m play playm make out of any of those spots, right? None of the guys are super highlevel offensive players, but they all can be super effective if they have an advantage, meaning a defender running at them versus sitting stationary in front of them. And Tyres Hallebertton is the most relentless advantage hunter I have ever seen. If you turn your head and a guy relocates or cuts behind you, Tyrese’s going to hit him every single time. you sink too far into nail help off the top of the off of the wing, like he’s going to throw that swing pass and burn you every single time you get caught with a foot in the paint on the weak side, he’s going to burn you with that skip pass every single time. And I thought the Cavs came out the gates today super undisiplined and unfocused in their offball defense. Early in the game was a lot of Max Strus and Jared Allen. Those were the two guys that were consistently getting burned, just getting caught sinking into the lane and help or just not paying attention as their man is relocating or cutting around them. DeAndre Hunter when he was in the game, he was brutal. I counted about a half dozen different mistakes that he made that directly led to good opportunities for the Pacers. Really, the Pacers offense operated at peak efficiency all night. Here’s some crazy stats for you. They generated 17 unguarded catch-and shoot threes compared to just 10 for Cleveland. They got better looks. They had a 117 offensive rating in the half court. That’s insane. 97 for Cleveland in this game. 27 spot up opportunities for Indiana that they converted at a rate of 1.56 points per possession. They got over 1.3 points per jump shot overall. They shot extremely well. All their play types worked. They had a 117 offensive rating on post ups including passes, a 136 offensive rating and pick and rolls including passes. a 111 offensive rating on isolations including passes. They just picked the Cavs apart tonight. And then in crunch time, like Donovan Mitchell goes on a run in that third quarter, gets downhill a bunch. It turns into a back and forth game in the fourth quarter. And in crunch time, Indiana was able to take control again. And it came down to Tyrese Hallebertton beating Jared Allen in switches. We talked a lot about this in the series preview. inevitably as things grind down, especially late in games, Cleveland is and Cleveland does a lot of switching with their bigs in general, but they did run a good amount of uh you know, traditional kind of pick and like uh like uh like high drop type of looks where they tried not to switch Moy and Allen onto guards earlier in the game if they could avoid it. But Jared Allen throughout the game at various points, a few times in the first half and then a bunch of times down the stretch was switching on to Tyrese Hallebertton in screening action. And that’s where the difference is between Tyrese when he’s at a near MVP level versus the guy that we saw for most of the end of last year when he wasn’t very explosive. He’s such a smart player that if you run drop coverage or traditional at the level coverage or any sort of traditional pick and roll coverage, he just passes the ball too well. You’ll get picked apart as a passer. But if you can shut down those openings by switching, you could put the onus on Tyres Hallebertton to beat you as an isolation player. And when he had his hamstring injury, he just wasn’t quick enough with that first step to like consistently beat people off the dribble and make some good stuff happen there. He beat uh Jared Allen on a switch six times in this game for either a bucket or a kick out to somebody else for a bucket. three times in crunch time. The sequence in crunch time hits a step back three at the top of the key, gets down into the painted area and takes a dramatic step back up to the top, knocks it down. On the second one on the switch, Donovan Mitchell follows Miles Turner down the lane as Miles Turner is rolling. So Hallebertton’s sitting against Allen up top on the switch. On the other side of the floor, DeAndre Hunter comes over to try to scam to try to scram Donovan Mitchell out of the switch. meaning he’s going over to Donovan and being like, “You get out to my man over here on the wing.” I think it was Neahard. Uh and and I will take Miles Turner so that I can battle with him on the glass. Meaning an interchange, right? So Mitchell’s on Turner. DeAndre Hunter’s coming over to scram him out of the switch. There’s a little miscommunication. Donovan Mitchell’s not paying attention. Donovan Mitchell had a really bad game on both ends of the floor in my opinion. We’ll talk about that in a minute, but especially on defense. Donovan’s not paying attention. So Nemhard’s wide open just for a second. Nemhard’s wide open and Hallebertton just throws the easy swing pass like he does every single time you make that kind of mistake and Nemhard knocks down the three and then he beats him to the basket. Takes a a series of moves towards the right elbow against Jared Allen and then beats him with a step through moves and and banks it in. And so like even when Cleveland took a lead and the game slowed down and they got into half court, Indie was able to reassert control just by being a better half court team than Cleveland was. And I thought Tyrese Hallebertton was the best player in the uh in-game one. I thought he pretty significantly outplayed Donovan Mitchell really on both ends of the floor. And like Indie just came in and threw a great punch. I thought as a team they were great defensively, making everything hard on Donovan Mitchell. I think it’s going to be a pretty significant wakeup call for the Cavs on a bunch of levels. Like if you’re not familiar with what the Indiana Pacers do, what a great game one just as a crash course in what makes them such a scary team. And like Tyrese Hallebertton’s sneaky playing pretty close to that superstar level over the course of the last few games and he’s like cooking everybody in every which way and he’s got that offense humming at about as high a level as you’ll see an offense operate in the NBA playoffs. Really impressive game one from Indiana. On the Cavs front, the attentiveness off ball is the big one. There are so many situations, especially in the early parts of the game where Cleveland would like, you know, their guy would give up the ball and they would go relocate to somewhere else on the floor and you would see Cavs defenders off ball just relax. And when they relaxed, they just would get burned every single time with the pass. Simple example, there’s a play where I think it was Nes Smith. N Smith’s on the right wing and I think he was being guarded by Max Truce was the guy guarding him, but I’m pretty sure it was Nes Smith on the right wing and Hallebertton gets Jared Allen on a switch and he’s dancing with the ball and Max Truce just relaxes and he kind of like sits back down towards the left elbow like 10 feet off of Nesmith. Not even helping on the drive. Jared Allen’s not even compromised. Just easy swing pass over to the right wing. There’s a wide openen catch and shoot three from Nmith that he knocks down. And it’s like I know Max Truce can be a better more attentive defender. He lost Andrew uh Aaron Nesmith on the first possession of the game. Same sort of thing sinking into nailhelp staring over at the ball at Tyrus Hallebertton swing pass. N Smith beats him off the dribble attacking a close out and gets a little banking him. DeAndre Hunter Jared Allen lost Pascal Seakum a bunch of times early in the game. like they’re just as a team they need to really be more mentally engaged defensively off the ball against this Indiana Pacers team. You cannot make those types of mistakes. You will get burned. And then Donovan Mitchell, I thought he just did a really poor job of managing that game. He tried to solve all of his problems by scoring. I was watch I rewatched the entire game uh uh during the Warriors game and I rewatched every single Cavs offensive possession and there are just a lot of situations where Donovan’s getting into the middle of the floor and there are kickout opportunities there and he’s not taking them. He’s taking contested floaters and steps and euros and things along those lines and he ends up taking 30 shots to get to, you know, the 30 whatever points that he had in the game. Super inefficient. He burned out all of his energy so that he had nothing for the defensive end of the floor and was getting cooked in a bunch of different ways on that end. Like I just thought he tried to solve all of his problems by scoring and I thought it was a mistake. Remember Cleveland is at their best when the ball is popping around. They are a team that can generate a lot more in the way of catch and shoot threes than they demonstrated today. They they they played a an old-fashioned Cavs game from years past as a shot creation uh as a shot creation team. And and I thought they came down to Donovan Mitchell. that he got outplayed by Tyrese Hallebertton tonight pretty substantially. And like here’s the thing, the Garland news is pretty sketchy. We’re hearing that his foot is a lot more serious than we thought. Obviously, I thought he was going to play today. He didn’t play today. That that’s going to be a factor in this series. But even if Darius Garland isn’t at 100%. He should be able to help the flow of this offense. He should be able to at least like get the ball moving from side to side a little bit more. So, even if he’s not ready to go like at the level he was earlier in the season, I think getting him out there will be super helpful. And my guess is that we end up seeing him in game two. But, you know, if they have to go without game two, it’s about the management of the flow of the game for Donovan. And what that what that means is like he’s going to have to shoot more than he typically does. Like you probably want him around 22 24 shot attempts in a situation like this with Garland out, but he needs to make a lot more swing passes, a lot more kickout passes on the drive, understanding that even if he has an opportunity to take a semi-contested shot in the lane. It’s about taking it easy on his legs. It’s about getting the rhythm of his teammates going. It’s about the engine of the offense. Again, Tyresese Hallebertton didn’t have a massive scoring night tonight, but the Pacers scored a million points and it was based on his advantage creation. That’s the game flow piece of it. It’s about understanding these little bits and pieces of time. Like, here’s a little threeminut stretch where like I really need to be looking to score the ball. Here’s a stretch of the game where we got a lot of offensive talent on the fe on the court. I would actually be be better served making these sort of kickout passes. Like there was a stretch where Isaac Aoro is on the floor with him for a while. And it’s like I can kind of see why on some of those he’s not kicking to Isaac. He’s looking to be aggressive, but like there are a lot of situations where Sam Merrill or Dean Wade are like standing in catch and shoot situations and the ball’s just not getting sprayed around because Donovan’s trying to smash his head through a brick wall instead of taking the easy stuff that’s available for him. So in in short, Indiana threw their best punch tonight and the Cavs threw a really shitty one. Um I think the Cavs can play a hell of a lot better. But I also, as I mentioned in the series preview, I predicted Cavs in six in large part because I do think the Pacers will have extended stretch of the series where they look really good and they definitely showed that in game one. And here’s the thing, if Darius Garland isn’t going to be ready or if he’s going to be far from 100%, this instantly becomes much more of a coin flip type of series that the Pacers absolutely can win. All right, before we head over to playback, I wanted to take uh we finished our first round, right? I out of the eight series only got five of them, right? So, not a great prediction first round for me, but what I wanted to do is go through the specific series one by one and talk a little bit about what I learned in each of those series. So, Cleveland Miami, really simple, just how high of a level Cleveland’s offense is operating at. Uh, in the half court in that series, they were at like a 118 offensive rating. They uh uh in their overall offensive rating, it was like astronomical, off the charts. the destructive blowouts, the Ty Jerome incredible shotmaking, the Donovan Mitchell incredible shotmaking, Max Truce and DeAndre Hunter hitting all those contested threes. Like the Cavs offense was just operating at such an insanely high level in round one, which was a big thing that stood out to me from that series. Obviously, not a great round two opener, but that was my big takeaway from that specific series. Magic Celtics. I talked a lot last year after the Celtics won the title about how one of the things that I was most excited about for Celtics fans was the simple idea that Tatum in that entire playoff run operated like a second tier superstar, a very versatile player who was intricately valuable to the way that they won the title. That he wasn’t bringing the scoring necessary to be a true top tier superstar type of talent. In that first round series against Orlando, I thought Tatum showed clearly that he’s just playing at a much higher level than he did last year. There’s some other issues for the Celtics. Some other guys not playing as well. Christophs Porzingis isn’t playing super well. Couple guys aren’t shooting the ball from three as well as they typically are. But Tatum’s playing a lot better and that makes up a lot of the ground in that specific spot. Pistons Knicks. Uh the Pistons are closer than we thought, right? Kate Cunningham. I think even though he showed a lot of warts over the tail end of each of those games, I thought we saw pretty clearly the type of consistent type of playoff weapon that Cade can be in the big picture. We also just saw that experience matters time and time again down the stretch. The more experienced veteran team was able to make the necessary plays to win the game. the Pacers Bucks series just that Tyrese Hallebertton is back to the form that he was at before he got hurt last year, which fundamentally alters the ceiling of this Pacers team. The way he was attacking Giannis and switches, the way he was going blow forblow with Gary Trent Jr. down the stretch of game five, that was just a really, really impressive series from Tyrese that I think showed a different level of upside for Indiana than we originally thought. Oklahoma City, Memphis, really Oklahoma City’s passing is what stood out to me in that series. I really liked the way that they moved the ball through the middle of the floor to highquality uh closeout opportunities, high quality cutting opportunities along the baseline. That was something they struggled with last year against Dallas. And Memphis is not a very good team, but Memphis does play a style of defense that tests your ability to make the extra pass. And I thought we saw some of OKC’s better passing games of the season in that series, which I think bodess well for them for future matchups. Not just Denver, but should they face a Minnesota or a Golden State in the conference finals, should they face a Boston uh in the NBA finals, that processing speed is going to have to be really uh uh like locked in for them. And I thought it looked good in the Warriors Rocket Series. Series went exactly as I expected except for that we got that extra game and it was just one of multiple examples. And I’m going to wrap in the Lakers and the the Timberwolves here for a second. Physicality matters. Like one of the biggest takeaways I had from the first round is like if you’re just a bunch of big strong athletes, it just makes everything so much easier. And so I think there are certain teams like the Lakers for instance. Like if I saw this exact same Lakers roster more or less going to the playoffs next year, I would discount them as a substantial threat because I thought Minnesota exposed them as a team that is just nowhere near physical enough to be able to thrive in the postseason. the Lakers are going to have to make substantial changes to their roster to be able to hang in this setting. Like I I thought it looked a lot like I thought it looked a lot closer to what happened at Phoenix, you know, than some of the tougher series that we saw over the course of Minnesota’s playoff run last year. And so like that that piece and then looking at the Golden State series similarly all those different things panned out like Steph was able to find a way to score against them. um you know, their defense was able to strangle Houston, but the big thing that stood that stood out there was like Houston’s size and athleticism was a problem and Golden State didn’t really conquer that problem until about, you know, halfway through that third quarter there in game seven. So, just a lot of takeaways for me in that first round about how important uh that physicality and athleticism piece is. Last note on the Lakers piece, just the importance of uh of conditioning for your top tier players like Ant and Julius just consistently outperforming Luca Lebron and Austin down the clutch stretches of those games. Nas Reed doing a ton of damage in those situations. Lots of lessons to be learned uh there. And then for Denver, the clip Denver versus the Clippers, you know, I’ve heard a lot of talk about how depth is so important these days. Again, as I have always said, depth is absolutely important, but I still think superstars decide outcomes. And Nicole Joic was far and away better than Harden and Kawhai in that first round series. Don’t read the box score. It was a much tougher series for him in terms of efficiency and volume because he was dealing with a bigger center in Zubat. But the offense for Denver hummed at an extremely high level when Jokic was on the floor down the tail end of the series. And I thought he was the difference in all those different ways. And you can even apply that same concept to all these other series. Brunson badly outplayed Cade down the stretch of games. That’s why they won. Ant badly outplayed Luca down the stretch of games. That’s why they won. Like Hallebertton even in the Pacers series. Jason Tatum outplaying Paulo and Fron. It’s the superstars. Steph Curry outplaying Fred Van Vleet in a game seven when it mattered. Like ultimately superstars still determine the outcomes of these games. But happy to have the first round in the book. That’s all we have for our YouTube live show tonight. We are headed over to playback right now. So again, click the link that’s in the description of this video. Head over to playback. We’ll get started there in just a couple of minutes and we’ll take some questions from you guys. We’ll let you guys come on stage. We’ll watch some film. Lots of interesting stuff to get into. I will see you guys over there in just a few minutes.

Jason reacts live after the Golden State Warriors defeat the Houston Rockets in Game 7. Jason also reacts to the Indiana Pacers Game 1 road win vs the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference 2nd round. Jason wraps up by recapping his 1st round series predictions and discusses what he’s learned so far in the NBA playoffs.

Follow the show on Playback for future “Aftershow” content: https://www.playback.tv/hoopstonight

Follow Jason Timpf on social:
Tweets by _JasonLT
https://www.instagram.com/jtimpf15/

Follow us on social media:
https://www.instagram.com/hoopstonight/
https://x.com/hoopstonite
https://www.facebook.com/hoopstonight/

@hoopstonightjasontimpf

Learn more about the Volume:
https://www.thevolume.com

GAMBLING PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-GAMBLER, (800) 327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org (MA). Call 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY).

Please Gamble Responsibly. 888-789-7777/visit ccpg.org (CT), or visit www.mdgamblinghelp.org (MD).

21+ and present in most states. (18+ DC/KY/NH/WY). Void in ONT/OR/NH. Eligibility restrictions apply. On behalf of Boot Hill Casino & Resort (KS).1 per new customer. $5+ first-time bet req. Max. $150 issued as non-withdrawable Bonus Bets that expire in 7 days (168 hours). Stake removed from payout. Terms: sportsbook.draftkings.com/promos. Ends 3/16/25 at 11:59 PM ET. Sponsored by DK.

#nba #nbaplayoffs #nbafinals #nbahighlights #nbabasketball #basketball #sports #reaction #warriors #goldenstatewarriors #stephcurry #stephencurry #jimmybutler #alperensengun #amenthompson #fredvanvleet