Dan Hurley and Potential NBA Coaching

This is an iHeartPodcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, I'm Lindsay. Hydrogenitis super ativa, HS, caused bumps and abscesses that made me feel embarrassed. I talked to my dermatologist and started a treatment that works for me, Cosentix. I found relief. Cosentix Secukenumab is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe hydrodenitis suprativa , HS. Don't use if allergic to cosentics. Get checked for TB before starting. Increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. Like TB or other serious bacterial, fungal, or viral infections, some were fatal. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, like fevers, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or cough, had a vaccine or plan to, or if IBD symptoms develop or worsen. Serious allergic reactions and severe eczema-like skin reactions may occur . Learn more at 1-844-COSentics or cosentics.com You're stronger than HS. Ask your dermatologist about cosentics. This message is brought to you by AppleCard. 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You won't see the engineer that slams the Nissan Rogue's door 13,9 20 times, or the corrosive chamber that simulates 15 years of life in five months. Or the rogue heat baked for over 300 combined hours. What you will see is a vehicle that can take punch after punch and keep rolling. Nissan, number one in new vehicle quality among mainstream brands by JD Power. We put it through the worst, so you get its best . For JD Power 2025 US Initial Quality Study Award information visit JD Power.com slash awards. Awards based on 2025 model year newer models may be shown. The volume All right, welcome to Hoops tonight here at the volume. Happy Monday, everybody. Hope all of you guys had an incredible weekend. We had an insane weekend of basketball. A bunch of entertaining and interesting NBA stuff going on. And my Arizona Wildcats are going to the Final Four for the first time since I was 10 years old. I'm very, very excited. I am very scared or worried, or at least I have the appropriate fear of Michigan. We're gonna talk about that later on in the show. But I've kind of liked this format when we've had these crazy weekends. I wanna go through 10 big takeaways from a wild weekend of basketball. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops and Night YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Make sure you like this video and sign up for post notifications. That helps us a lot. And last but not least, if you guys want to get mailbag questions into our weekly mailbags, drop them in the YouTube comments underneath these videos. Right, mailbag colon, write your question. We'll get to them in our weekly mailbags throughout the remainder of the season. All right, we're gonna start MBA. Our first big takeaway from the weekend. Shea Gilders Alexander got out of his bizarre slump just in time to save the Thunder against the New York Knicks. Shea has been in a very rare slump over the last couple of games. At one point in the fourth quarter yesterday, he missed 25 of his previous 35 shots. Jay is generally immune to these types of stretches compared to most perimeter players because he's relatively low volume from three and he's lethally efficient from mid-range. For example, that eight for 24 performance against Chicago was just the third time this season that he's missed at least two-thirds of his shots. I saw a lot of Luca fans talking about how you know Shea had this bad stretch. And for the record, it was a bad stretch. And what it was be deeper than just the shooting. I thought it affected his all-around game. He was really trying to force his way out of the shump, taking a lot of uh out of the slump by taking a lot of bad shots over the two games. I didn't think he was at his best defensively yesterday either. He was making some mistakes off the ball, getting back cut, missing on offensive rebounds. Now, again, like it's important to call that stuff out, but I just don't think it's something that is uh a general negative in like Shay's MVP case, for example, because he's just been way less prone to these stretches than his peers around the league. For example, Luca has had twice as many games this year where he's missed at least two thirds of his shots. And his true shooting percentage is dramatically lower because he does lean on the three-point shot more. And that leads to more volatility on a game-by-game basis. But he did get out of it with a brilliant stretch to close out the Knicks yesterday. The Knicks bench group ended up closing the gap midway through the fourth quarter. Carl Anthony Towns continues to be very effective in this matchup for a variety of reasons. He's just way too big for Oklahoma City around the rim. Can really do damage attacking matchups and especially on the offensive glass. And then on defense, the Knicks kind of just load up and pick and roll behind him. And that can play Oklahoma City into some of their worst tendencies, like some bad process where they force issue, uh force the issue in the lane a little bit, or they can have, you know, they got some guys that can go cold from three. And so they actually did defend pick and roll really well, especially for the first three quarters, uh, when they uh when the Thunder were trying to attack Carl Anthony Towns. But then Shea comes in halfway through the fourth quarter and was absolutely brilliant down the stretch. Found a way to get his rhythm at the foul line. He did a low gather move on a little drive off of the right wing where he just caught Mikhail Bridges on a dig down, just raked him across the arm. That got him to the foul line. Get a couple free throws. You find your rhythm, right? He attacks Josh Hart in a switch. Hits a tough little um uh right-handed step back around the right elbow area. Then he starts going at Carl Anthony Towns with much more success in pick and roll. With about four minutes left, New York had a really bad rep where they didn't . It was a double drag at the top of the key. Carl Anthony Towns is in uh his deep drop coverage. You have Chet Holmgren in the right corner, AJ Mitchell in the left corner. And all game long, the Knicks had just been loading up in that situation, but they did not, in this case, no help off of the corners. That left cat by himself in a drop. Shea was able to go right at him and get a left-handed layup. Then he finally gets a pull-up three to go, another kind of deep drop look along the left wing. They were kind of allowing Shea to get to those tougher threes if he could get separation off the ball screen. Like Cat wasn't high. And Shea ends up getting a pretty clean look off of the left wing, knocks down a three. After getting just zero point nine points per possession, including passes and pick and roll in the first three quarters . They got 14 points on 10 ball screens in the fourth quarter. So Oklahoma City explodes in pick and roll in that fourth quarter, thanks to Shea. Next thing you know, the Knicks are hard doubling Shea 30 feet from the rim to get the ball out of his hands , and the game is over. So that slump for Shea was short-lived and he blew that game open and led his team to victory against the Knicks last night. Also, Jay Dub finally has a pretty much his best game since coming back from his hamstring injury. We've talked about this concept a lot, but there's like a conditioning element when you first come back. You're back, you have your leg strength, you may even have some of your athletic pop, but then you start running up and down the court a couple times, you just get gassed out, and then it starts to affect every part of your game. You're finishing that little extra bit of burst, the lift you have on your jump shot, things along those lines. J Dub was awesome. Twenty-two points on just 11 shots, was attacking the rim like crazy, which is always when he's been at his best. He had this transition driving layup in the second half where he went coast to coast through four Knicks and just bulldozed through all of them and got all the way to the rim for his right-handed layup. And I was like, that's a hamstring play. Anybody who's ever been a transition player knows when you start taking those big long steps in traffic, every time you pound that leg into the ground, you feel it in your hammy. So I thought that that was a good sign for how J Dub is feeling athletically. Really nice win for the Thunder. Number two, we got another look at a potential 2-7 matchup between the Charlotte Hornets and the Boston Celtics. And this time, Boston got their revenge. A month or so ago, the Hornets went into Boston and crushed the Celtics on their home floor. I was actually really excited to watch yesterday's game because I think there's a decent chance that these two teams see each other in the first round. I think Charlotte's capable of passing Orlando in the standings before the end of the season. Those back-to-back losses didn't help the losses to Boston and to Philly. And that has hurt their chances slightly, but they're only one game back in the loss column, and they have the tiebreaker there. So they only have to make up one game between now and the end of the se ason and they'll pass Orlando to get up into that eight seed. Do I think Charlotte can go into Philly and win a play-in game? Yeah. Do I think they can go into Atlanta and win a play play-in game? Absolutely. So like this Celtics matchup is at least worth looking at closely because I think there's a pretty substantial chance, maybe less than 50%, but certainly a lot more than zero chance that we're going to see Boston versus Charlotte in that first round ser ies. And Boston just dominated them, uh dominated them in this game from the start, even without Jalen Brown and without Derek White. I've long thought that Charlotte's biggest weakness right now is just big physical ball pressure. That's not some sort of indictment on the long-term future of Charlotte or anything. Every young up-and-coming team has a demon they have to conquer, whether it's like Oklahoma City in years past conquering shooting. I feel like that's going to be what San Antonio has to deal with this year and in the coming years. Like being able to consistently knock down open catch and shoot jump shots and their ball handlers being able to handle some coverages that concede jump shots. That's going to be a big part of those teams' developments, right? Denver, the Denver Nuggets for a while there was like, are they going to be able to figure out what they need to do defensively to reach their goals? And all the Oklahoma City and Denver obviously figured those things out. I think San Antonio will eventually figure those things out. For Charlotte, they really only have two guys that can handle the ball at a high level, two now, thanks to the addition of Kobe White, right? The rest of their guys, they kind of prefer to score in the flow of the offense, like Khan or Brandon or they're play finishers, right? So that's why the on off numbers are so crazy with Lamelo. They need Lamello to break the defense down. To be clear, I think Charlotte's gonna be fine in the long run. Khan has shown plenty of on-ball chops this year in a relatively small sample. I'm sure that will continue to grow. Miles Bridges has been showing some upside as like a matchup attacker, a guy that can take smaller guards down to the post as like a different type of bully ball attack for them. Brandon Miller will continue to get better. So again, I don't think this is going to be a long-term issue. I just think it's probably how Charlotte loses this year. Some team will get physical up into LaMelo, throw him off as g ame. They'll rotate well enough to rush their shooters a little bit. Their shot quality will tank and they'll lose to somebody, either in the play-in or in the first round. Again, that's just what I view as like Charlotte's short-term like th barrier between where they're at where they are now and sustained playoff success. And Boston showed that formula last night. Jordan Walsh got the start, obviously with the injuries, and he just did an awesome job on Lamello right away. We've seen several examples of this this year when when Jordan goes against more of the upright, skinnier skill guards or skill players in the league, he's just bigger, faster, and stronger and plays so insanely hard that he's so good at staying attached, he can cause problems for them. And I thought he did an amazing job from the start of this game, viciously fighting over screens and staying attached over the top, which works really well alongside Nimi Keda and drop coverage. We talk about this all the time. Drop coverage is a bracket. And yeah, like if the guy's getting caught up on the screen all the time and the big is too far back, there's all sorts of comfortable space in the middle there for the guard to operate. But if you're staying attached, you can funnel into the size, right? And that can cause all sorts of problems. Or if you have some crazy rangey big that can get up to the level and protect the rim, that can fix the bracket on the other side of the coverage, right? And I thought Jordan Walsh just did an amazing job on the ball, on the mellow, and immediately played him into a pretty rough night. Just he had some over-penetration possessions where once again the bracket forced him into the paint, into some tough shots. He started taking some bad threes. Baylor Shireman came in. I thought he did some good work on Lamelo as well. Just Lamelo had a rough game. And then as a team, the Celtics showed that aggregate perimeter speed, communication in and out of action, overall effort and intensity and rotation getting out to shooters. It sped the Hornets up off the catch. They shot poorly. They generally struggled to score. The Celtics held them under a hundred points. And the Celtics controlled this game from start to finish. Jason Tatum had his first 30-point game of the season. He had a couple of big drives early in the game. A dunk where he kind of split a ball screen, went up and dunked it with two hands. Another one where he went all the way to the rim on Calkbrenner, finished through contact at the rim with his right hand. Both of those were really strong signs of strength from him and his conditioning starting to come around. That same concept we were talking about earlier, right ? It was funny, Bri Brian Scalabrini was getting super hyped on the broadcast early because he could just he could tell as someone who's obviously watching the Celtics every single night that there was another gear to Jason athletically in that game that I think is a strong sign for him. He got his ISO three-point shot going early in the game. The dead giveaway is he, I think it was Lamello. He got him to bite on a pump fake and he was able to get to the foul line. But like when Tatum's got his three-point shot going, guys start to play up on him more, and that can unlock both the foul drawing, but also the drive. And then he had his usual excellent floor game, just reading late double teams like oh I'm attacking at the elbow and there here comes a player from behind there's Peyton Pritchard on the left wing pitch it back wide open three or just like simple coverage stuff like oh Keda comes in sets a screen two on the ball for a second, flip it over the top Takato or a guard slipping out of an inverted screen. He ended up having eight assists to just zero turnovers. Just a really encouraging performance from Jason Tatum. I talked about this when, if you guys remember when LeBron went out and everyone was like, oh my gosh, look at Austin, he's playing way better without LeBron. Austin and LeBron were always capable of playing well together. Just when Austin was coming back from an injury, the building rhythm process took a long time. And so taking LeBron out for a couple of games just kind of forced a bunch of additional reps onto Austin, which accelerated that process. And that's the thing. Like Tatum would have eventually found his rhythm even if J S Jalen Brown didn't this have Achilles tendonitis that he's been dealing with, but the Achilles tendinitis just kind of gave Jason Tatum a bunch of extra reps that are helping accelerate the process of him building his conditioning and his rhythm as an on-ball handler . Peyton Pritchard and Nimi Keda had, I thought they had a great game attacking the uh Koch Brenner drop coverage. Obviously, there's a two-man element to that, the vertical spacing from Nimi Keda. I thought Nimi was great on the offensive glass in this game as well, just kind of attacking loose balls and going up with physicality after you get 'em. Peyton obviously the drop coverage scoring and passing. Pritchard and Tatum combined for sixty points in this game. The Celtics are really rounding into form as a top tier championship contender. I don't think Charlotte has much of an upset chance there. The Celtics are basically just a more developed and experienced version of that Charlotte Hornets team. I still like the Hornets in the long run, way more than I did to start this year for sure, but I think they're more likely to upset someone like Detroit. So we'll see if they end up uh landing in the 1-8 or the 2-7. That could end up being a big part of whether or not they could get a long first-round series in there. Number three . Sometimes you just need to play better. And that's how Alper and Shangoon is saving the Rockets. The Rockets dominated the Pelicans in New Orleans yesterday. And that Pelicans team is actually pretty feisty now that they're healthy, although Trey Murphy was out in yesterday's game. But the story of the game was Alperin Shangun, who had 36 points, 13 rebounds, and seven assists with zero turnovers and six stocks. A couple of the steals were just the ball kind of landing in his hands as someone lost it. But still, he had several really good defensive rotations at the rim where he either stripped the ball or blocked somebody up top. And look, his defensive inconsistency is super frustrating. Like that Wolves game was the classic example. He's like amazing at the tail end of regulation and like almost single-handedly, just as a wrecking ball on both ends of the floor, brings his team back in the game. And then in overtime, he just like lets his foot off the gas and is straight up terrible on defense for five minutes and it costs his team the game. But when he's engaged defensively, he has the physical tools to be very impactful. He had several help side rotations yesterday where he's anticipating the driver the cut before it happens, getting there athletically in time, and he's able to blow up a play at the rim. It's all about engagement and anticipation for Shangun. And when he is locked in in those areas , he actually can be a very impactful defender, which I think is going to be a major swing factor for the Rockets in the postseason this year. And he's really starting to put it all together on offense right now. That was his third 30-point game in the last four and his third seven assist game in the last four. I talk about this concept all the time. But more often than not, the answer to your team's problems is just play better . I've noticed this just especially uh around the league in NBA media, but like we always feel the need to identify some sort of magical adjustment. And to be clear, adjustments matter, tactics matter, strategy does help win basketball games. We talk about tactics and strategy and adjustments on the show all the time. But usually, the biggest difference between where you are as a player or as a team and where you want to go as a player and as a team is just play better . As a team, maybe you need to just play with more physical force to help you win all of the battles on the floor. Containing at the point of attack. We talked about that shoulder battle, sliding your feet, anticipating ang les, and then not getting that shoulder blown through. Just playing with more force at the point of attack makes everything way easier for your team. Box out, those are physical confrontations that you either win or lose on a possession-to-possession basis. Loose balls, whether it's crashing the offensive glass or just any general loose ball that happens on the floor, whether or not you beat the other team there can make a huge difference and whether or not you're winning the game. That's a physical force piece. When you're on the ball, are you attacking the paint and using the jump shot as a counter or are you settling without putting any pressure on the defense? These are all examples of things that aren't necessarily tied to tactics, but that can swing basketball games far more often than any sort of tactical adjustment will. And it's literally just a a measure of whether or not you're bringing the requisite force to win all of those little physical battles on the floor. Even individually as a basketball player, like you're you're having a uh a stretch where you're not playing well. Maybe it's you get in better shape, you improve your conditioning. I found that with me. Like I had a I had a while back at a slump that was um causing me some issues on the court. And I was like repping all this stuff off the floor, like uh jump shoot, jump shooting, getting all these reps in, and it wasn't helping. And then finally I was like, I need to get in better shape. And I like worked on my conditioning, and all of a sudden I went back to the gym and I just wasn't getting tired on the court, which was all of a sudden helping me in every phase of the game. Next thing you know, I'm making shots and everything starts to come around. Like there's there's all these like little things that you can do individually as a basketball player that can turn things around for you. And more often than not, whether it's you individually or as a team, just playing better can go a long way to fixing your problems. As an Arizona fan, I saw that in the Purdue game. Like, yeah, there was an adjustment. They went from having Karchen kov guard uh Braden Smith to start the uh uh the first half, where he was just kind of bigger and and uh he's just a uh a much larger human being that's not as fast. And he was getting caught up on screens too much. And so Braden Smith was just able to comfortably operate in drop coverage and either hit shots or get uh um get Kriv os to commit, which would then open up the pocket pass and other little things that were breaking them down. And then yeah, Tommy Lloyd made an adjustment in the second half. He put um Jaden Bradley on Braden Smith and he's just a smaller, quicker player who was able to get over the top of screens more and stay more attached to Braden Smith, which was allowing Krievos to stay closer to the paint and closer to the role man. And yeah, that really helped them. It was an adjustment that absolutely helped the team. But if you watch that game as an Arizona fan, there was a gigantic difference in the overall physical intensity of the entire team in that second half. Krivos had been losing battles to Clough around the basket, just physical intensity battles, getting to loose balls, like efforts at the rim, that he suddenly started winning in the second half. And so like again, like this is why you see so many coaches in post-game interviews talk about effort and energy and intensity and that sort of thing rather than stepping up and being like, oh, I made this magical adjustment in the second half. It's because the coaches know. The coaches know that yeah, they can give you a strategy that gives you your best chance to win. And it's certainly a part of how teams win and lose games. But more often than not, it's just about playing better. Your individual stars playing better, your team collectively bringing more force to bear in every phase of the game and how that helps you win all these little battles. That's how you win and lose basketball games. And when Alper and Sh angun is playing at the level of a superstar, the Rockets are just a much better basketball team. Too often this year, Shangun was playing well below that level. Shangun had gone for thirty points just once in his previous twenty games before going for thirty-three of the last four games. When he plays better, that does a lot to help the Rockets on both ends of the floor . I know it's such a simple kind of like reductive thing, but it it it makes a huge difference in whether basketball teams can reach their goals. Today's show is brought to you by presenting sponsor Hard Rock Bet, Florida's Sportsbook. The biggest weekend in college basketball is almost here. The round of four is set, and a national champion is just days away from cutting down the net. Now's the time to step up your game with daily dance and boosts on Hard Rock Bet. You'll get a live profit boost and a parlay profit boost for the games. More ways to shoot your shot, more ways to cash in with boosted odds when the stakes are at their highest. And those heart-stopping zero-on-the clock moments we've all seen in the tournament, they still pay on hard rock bet. 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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now. Indeed.com slash podc ast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. You won't see the engineer that slams the Nissan Rogues door thirteen thousand nine hundred twenty times. Or the corrosive chamber that simulates 15 years of life in five months. Or the rogue heatbaked for over 300 combined hours. What you will see is a vehicle that can take punch after punch and keep rolling. Nissan, number one in new vehicle quality among mainstream brands by JD Power. We put it through the worst, so you get its best. For JD Power 2025 U.S. Initial Quality Study Award Information, visit JD Power.com slash awards. Awards based on 2025 model year newer models may be shown. Number four. Paul George and Joel Embiid are both back. They both look great. And suddenly the Eastern Conference looks like it has the deepest playoff field in years. I had basically written off the Sixers as they had been resting all their three best players for such a large chunk of time. Now, there was reporting that the Sixers were gonna try to bring everybody back and make a run at some point, but you know how that goes with guys like Joel and Beat and Paul George. You're always just like, yeah, okay, but we'll believe it when we see it, right? But here they all are. Paul George and Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxie are all back . They all look great . And Bede is averaging 32 points per game in his first two games back. Paul George is averaging 27 points per game in his first two games back. Both guys are shooting the shit out of the ball from three. Both guys made huge plays down the stretch in the win in Charlotte. Paul George hits basically the game winner coming off of a uh a sideline out of bounds there towards the left corner. Really tough movement three that he just strokes. It was like perfect. Jolan Bede's making a defensive rotation in the left corner, blocking his shot. The benches all fired up. There's like an energy around the Sixers now. That win in Charlotte was massive. That was right after they hung 157 points on the Bulls a couple of nights prior. Tyrese Maxie came back from his long absence and looked like Tyrese Maxie. And all of a sudden the Sixers looked like a legit threat in the Eastern Conference. Now we look at the East, and this is the deepest Eastern Conference playoff field that I can remember in a very, very long time . For many years there, a decade ago, the East was basically just Cleveland, and then like one or two teams that would have strong regular seasons before they'd get dominated by LeBron, and then the rest of the conference was terrible. Then we had that recent stretch where it was like the last half decade or so, where it was like the top three or four teams would be awesome, but then there'd be a massive drop-off. The first round was always bad, and the bottom of the conference was terrible. It felt like a JV conference. Now I look at the field and I think we're gonna have six or seven really good Eastern Conference playoff teams. Obviously we have our top four Detroit, Boston, New York, and Cleveland. But Philly could be really dangerous. Charlotte could be really dangerous. And between that, like Toronto, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando tier, they're all super inconsistent and super flawed, but like one of those teams is gonna pop and give somebody a run for their money. And so we're probably gonna get like three really good first-round series in the Eastern Conference. We're gonna get like a really good Eastern Conference playoff from start to finish, which really hasn't been a thing, basically in my entire adult life . So it's a good sign for the NBA that the East has popped in the way that it has this year. And obviously, we're gonna get a return of a team like Indiana into that field next year. Charlotte is gonna continue to get better. Who knows what we'll get from Washington with Trey Young and Anthony Davis. Like the East is on the way up. By the way, this year the West was just two hundred and twenty and two oh four in head to head games against the East, which is a far better performance from the East than we had in the previous two seasons . Number five. Friday night was an absolute travesty, but I do have an idea for how to fix tanking. So we had this kind of like consistent theme on Friday night from several teams, mainly the Clippers, the Lakers, and the Nuggets. You have a really good team who plays a really bad team, plays really bad basketball just because they they have no real interest in being there. And then the really bad team benches all their best players in the fourth quarter, and the really good team ends up getting the win, satisfying the tanking needs of those teams. And all I could think while I was watching is why are these teams even playing each other? It's terrible for everyone involved. Like for the great teams, they just are practicing playing bad basketball. Why? Because they don't want to be there. As competitors, they're just completely disengaged . I know as a Lakers fan, I've been worried about this stretch because the Lakers need to win because they have Denver hot on their heels, and Denver's probably gonna win out. They have basically one tough game left on the schedule. That's that Spurs game. And like if the Spurs and the Thunder bench their stars for those final couple games of the season, like Denver's gonna win out. And so the Lakers need to win. And so I'm scared of this like Cleveland game on Tuesday and this Oklahoma City game on Thursday. And it worries me that they're playing Indiana, Brooklyn, Washington back to back to back right before those games. Why? Because it builds bad habits. They don't want to be there. They go out on the court and they practice playing bad basketball. And then what happens is you run into a Cleveland and it's like a buzzsaw that chews you up and spits you out because you're just not ready for that level of competition. It's bad for the good teams, it's bad for the bad teams because you have these good competitive young players on the teams that actually are playing well, and then their competitive nature just gets jammed down in the mud as they get pulled out and they don't even get an opportunity to try to win. And then it's bad for us because it's objectively a terrible basketball produ ct . Like, it's hard to watch those games. The basketball's not good . And so as I'm sitting there watching, like, look, I know I don't think tanking is as big of a deal as people make it sound. I saw some numbers going around. Like, there's just as big of a problem in the NFL as uh with teams like intentionally losing to try to get high draft position. And generally speaking, I think the league is in a really good spot. There's all these young stars on the rise. The obviously the social media part of the game is still exploding. It's arguably the best social media sport in the world right now. You have TV ratings up. Like things are good for the NBA. I just generally think it's always a good idea to be trying to improve and to try to make things better. And there are way too many games in this final third of the season that are absolute garbage because you have good teams that don't want to be there and bad teams And so I had an idea. I I've been thinking about this for a few weeks, and like, look, I don't think the league's gonna do much of anything, and if they do, it'll just be more flattening of the lottery odds and all and all likelihood, and it's just gonna continue to lead to similar problems. And look, tanking is what it is, and teams are gonna try to be bad to get to the top of the draft. I understand that as a reality. No matter what the league does, a franchise altering talent that you get at the top of the draft is still the best pathway between point A and point B. Point A being bad and point B being consistently good. So teams are going to do that no matter what. My thing is like, cool, why are we having them play the good teams ? And so what I would do is I would split the schedule into two portions from the beginning of the season to the all-star break. Have everybody play ever ybody. Normal schedule, just like we've had for years and years. Obviously, you'd have to do some tweaks to make sure everybody plays everybody in that span. So you'd have less repeat opponents and more, you know, variety as you play all twenty nine other teams at some point in that stretch. But then when I get to the all-star break, I would cut a new schedule . And I'd have the top ten teams in both conferences, so the top twenty teams in the league separate and continue to play each other as they jockey for position and tune up for the postseason. They're always playing a serious team that's trying to win. And then I would take the bottom ten teams, so the bottom five in each conference, just have them play each other . Then what you get, and it like whether or not you want to what you want to do with the odds, that's up to Adam Silver. If he wants to flatten them completely and give everybody, you know, so I'd have the teams that lose the play in, obviously end up in the same lottery in some capacity. So like whether you want to flatten the odds and have all of them get the same, or you want to uh tweak the odds so that the worst team does get the best uh uh draft odds and you do have teams tanking, at least let them tank against each other. So we don't have to watch . And there would be incentive. If you're on the cusp, it now becomes more complicated. If you're in that right around the 21st, 22nd best record, or you're right outside the top 10 in your conference, you're sitting there as an owner and you're like, man, like, do I want to be playing against the best teams in the league over the final third of the season, or do I want to be playing against the bad teams in the final third of the season? There's a revenue conversation there that might drive teams to be like, let's try to win here, right? I think at the end, what you'd end up getting is a much better thing for a much better deal for the broadcast partners because now the broadcasters just get a a plethora of awesome games to choose from because all the good teams are playing against each other. And all the bad teams, like at least if they're tanking against each other, they have an opportunity to build some semblance of a winning culture as all the young talent that's just trying to get reps is playing against the other young talent trying to get reps. It would essentially function as like a temporary relegation, not a full season relegation, but like, hey, I don't want the Denver N uggets playing the Utah Jazz who are intentionally trying to lose when we get to late March. It's utterly pointless. During that first two-thirds of the season, everybody plays everybody, everybody gets their shot. At the all-star break, you have a full week to put together a new schedule. In that new schedule, have all the good teams play against each other, have all the bad teams play against each other . And I've heard people say, like, oh, well, well how do you do this with this? They they found a way to add a bunch of games to the schedules surrounding the play-in tournament. Or excuse me, the in-season tournament. And like, oh, if you make it or you don't make it, we populate all these new games. Yes, the concert schedules are complicated. Things are complicated. The league could absolutely do this. They could absolutely build a schedule in a week towards the tail end of the season. I just think they gotta try something. Because I was watching and look again, like the league, there's a reason why all those games were on Friday night. It's because the NCAA tournament. The NBA knew not many people would be watching. But ultimately, why are we doing anything that's a complete waste of everybody's time? Even though the league is healthy, even though things are trending in the right direction, why not make a tweak to try to again, tanking is tanking is tanking. Teams are going to tank. They want to get the stars. But there's no reason in the world to have a team that is intentionally losing pla,ying against a team that is trying to win. That should never happen. In the first two-thirds of the season, there's a certain amount of that you can't avoid, but it always is especially egregious in the tail end of the season. Because why in the first chunk of the season, the young teams are like, hey, let's see what we got. Let's play our guys and like identify where we're at in this process. Then they go, oh, we suck. Okay, let's shut it down and let's see if we can't try to get a high draft pick. That the best chance for the bad teams to see their uh young talent actually perform and play hard is in that first two thirds of the season. All these games at the tail end are trash. And by the way, the owners still get satisfied. LeBron James still comes to town. You still you still get your stars into your arenas. You still get the high profile matchups in that first two thirds of the season. I just don't see any point post-all-star break in having the Washington Wizards play the Los Angeles Lakers. It's a huge waste of time for everybody involved . Number six . The MVP discourse is completely off the rails. But I actually think the top five is pretty clear at this point, barring some weirdness to end the season. The MVP discussion has become incredibly toxic. I think it mainly stems from stand culture because you you can't make a point about one player having an advantage over another for one reason or another without that player's fans becoming outraged that you would ever be nitpicky about the highest standard of basketball individual greatness in the world. And I will freely admit that the media doesn't do itself any favors here. I've seen plenty of ridiculous reasoning get thrown around by actual MBA awards voters. I get on I understand that that throws everybody into consternation . You have the discussion about Wemby . As people have pointed out, and this is factually accurate, he just hasn't played as much as the other guys. And that's certainly a factor . But it also lacks context. Yes, Wemby hasn't played as many minutes as the other stars in the NBA this year. But he's literally second in the league in Raw plus minus despite being a hundred and third in total minutes played . That means nobody in the NBA is doing more to impact winning per minute than MB, than Wemby . Everybody gets caught up in these cherry-picked stats, like, oh, he's only averaging 24 points and three assists, or he's been a bad isolation defender this year. Something we've actually talked about on the show. But even in the context of those numbers, his overall impact is so overwhelming, it cannot be ignored . We've talked about it before, but he's way better offensively than his numbers look . Because his vertical spacing and his role gravity and how it consistently breaks the defense at the rim consistently generates open threes for the Spurs. They generate the most corner threes in the history of the NBA. Even with the bad isolation defense, the Spurs with Wemby off the floor have a 118 defensive rating, which is terrible. And they have a 104.5 with him on, which is awesome. So yeah, some social media dude for the NBA posted a stupid tweet of Torian Prince passing up on a mid-range jumper because he's under a directive to market an up-and-coming star. It was a dumb tweet. It doesn't change the fact that Wemby is already the most impactful defender in the history of the NBA . And for all the talk about Wemby's minutes, as a team, they're plus six hundred and thirty when he's on the floor this year, which is second in the NBA. And they're minus 28 when he's off the floor in a massive sample because his minutes are so low . So they're like actually legitimately threatening for the number one overall seed in the entire NBA , literally because of how earth-shatteringly dominant Wemby has been when he's been on the floor . And the thing is, there's some precedent for this with Giannis in 2020. He only played 30 minutes a game that that year. And what's funny is like I actually thought Giannis shouldn't have won MVP that year because they were blowing out a terrible Eastern conference. That conference was legitimately terrible. The Lakers were right behind Milwaukee in the standings, with LeBron James being just a better basketball player playing against way better teams every single night. Like I didn't think Giannis should have won that year. But the minute totals are kind of similar to what we're seeing with Wemby . Giannis was playing 30 minutes a game and they were cruising through a week Eastern Conference schedule. Wemby, again, his team is losing the minutes when he's off the floor, and he is so incredibly dominant when he's on the floor that in the brutal bloodbath of a Western conference, he legitimately has a shot over the final couple weeks here to get the number one overall seed . I personally have Shea as the MVP right now. And unless he like gets badly outplayed by Lu ca in these next couple of games and he gives up the one seed to San Antonio, I think he I think Shea should win the award. And my reasoning there's simple, because Shay's case is that he's looked like the best player in the world this year and he's on the best team. So like if he had two bad losses to Luca where Luca just looked better, that undercuts his best player in the world case. And if Wemby gets the one seed, that undercuts his um his uh uh his best team in the league case, right? So if that's certainly a chance there, but I don't think that's going to happen. And I think Shea's probably, I think Oklahoma City will probably win at least one, if not both of those games. And Shea will probably look every bit as good as Luca if if not better than Luca in those two games, right? So like I think Shay's gonna win the award. But we would be absolutely foolish to pretend as though Wemby doesn't have an awesome MVP case this year. He does . No one has done more to impact winning on a per minute basis this year than Wemby. And even if you take out all the time he's been off the floor, he's been so incredibly good in those minutes that it's been enough to drive maybe the best team in the league. We'll see over the last couple of weeks . And the Lucas stuff is insane to me. His stance has been the craziest that I've seen because like even saying something simple like, hey, Luca's amazing. He might even be the best player in the world post All-star break. But Wemby and Shea have had better start to finish seasons and have impacted winning more overall. So they should probably be ahead of Luca in the MVP voting. Even if you say something like that to Luca Stans, it's like slanderous . And again, I'll repeat this from earlier. I've heard some really dumb shit from some actual NBA voters about Luka's MVP case over the last few weeks. So they have some reason to be upset. But I'm sorry, guys, Luca has zero shot to win the MVP this year . Like the conversation surrounding the defense. First of all, defensive metrics are super flawed. Even stuff like steals and bloc ks . And like advanced metrics, like the defensive catch-alls are especially flawed. You have to trust your eyes with defense more than any other part of the game . And guess what? Luca has been great on defense post-all-star break . But he was bad on defense pre-all-star break. I don't care what the ISO numbers say . Any objective Lakers fan that was watching the game uh that watching their games every night pre-all-star will tell you the same. Yeah, it wasn't all his fault. The Lakers as a team were a terrible defense, but Luca was a huge part of that problem pre-all-star bre ak . Now the team is playing way better on that end . And Luca has been a big part of that solution. And he's upped his scoring volume and efficiency. And he's turning the ball over less. That's why he might be the best player in the world right now . But MVP is a season long award. It's not who played the best defense in March . And Luca finishing third in MVP isn't gonna affect his standing in the league much . It sure as hell isn't gonna save the Rockets or the Timberwolves from him in late April. No one's gonna care whether or not he has the trophy when they're trying to guard him in psycho scoring mode in game four of a two-one series. Who cares? It's an award. Luke is not going to win it. He shouldn't win it. And it will be okay. Like I said at the start of the segment, the top five to me is pretty clear . Here are the odds right now. And again, all of our lines are provided by a partner, hard rock bet . Shea is the favorite at minus 275. Wemby's in second place at plus two ten. That feels right to me. Shea's the clear number one. But yeah, if Shea gets his butt kicked by Luca twice and loses that best player in the world, Aura, and the Spurs pass the Thunder in the standings. Like we mentioned earlier, Wemby has an awesome case and he'll probably win. I think that line, those lines, minus two seventy-five plus two ten, that strikes me as an accurate representation of the likelihood of those two things happening. More likely than not, that Shea at a very least, at the very least, plays Luca to a draw and wins at least one of those two games. They'll probably keep the one seed. Even if they do get the even if the Spurs do poach the one seed, if Shea still has that aura of best player in the world, he's probably the MVP. Minus 275 kind of reflects that. Wemby, there's this long shot of him getting it. That makes sense. Huge drop off to number three, Luca plus 1500. That makes sense to me . I don't think he has any real shot to win. It would require Luca kicking Shay's ass and Shea being in an awful shooting slump the rest of the season, and Wemby missing games and getting disqualified. That's the shot. That's a long shot. From there, big drop off to Jokic. I think that makes sense. I saw a lot of people have Jokic over Luca in some of the conversations I've seen in the last few weeks. I thoroughly disagree. I think Jokic was clearly better than Luca up to his knee injury, but then he missed a bunch of time with his knee injury, and I don't think Jokic has been nearly as good as Luka post injury. So I think Luka clearly has the edge over Jokic. That makes sense. And then there's another massive drop-off from Jokic at plus six thousand to Jalen Brown at number five at plus twenty -five thousand. That makes sense to me. Maybe Cade gets that if he stays healthy, but he doesn't. Cade's not going to qualify. Here's Jalen Brown. That makes sense to be at number five. And then number six is Donovan Mitchell at plus 50,000, another massive gap. So, like I said, like the toxicity has been insane. There's been so much unreasonable shit getting thrown around by everybody. Everyone's entirely too sensit ive about it. But like the top five feels pretty clear to me. Shea's probably gonna win, slight chance for Wemby. Luka's a clear number three. Jokic is a clear number four. Jalen Brown's a clear number five . Uh that's how I think it's gonna end, and I think that that's right. That's exactly how I would have it . My name is Lily and I've had hydrodenitis suprativa HS for years. I finally found some relief since taking cos entics. Relief means I can show up more . Cosentix Ecu KenU Map is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe hydrogenitis superativa, HS. Don't use if you're allergic to cosentics. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. 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For JD Power 2025 US Initial Quality Study Award Information, visit JD Power.com/slash awards. Awards based on 2025 model year, newer models may be shown. Number seven, some injury weirdness is starting to pop up, and we would do well to remember that most of the time it ends up playing a bigger role in any other than any other thing when it comes to the NBA playoffs . Dalen Brown's has dealing with some Achilles tendonitis. Aaron Gordon missed last night's game with some tightness in his calf . As we look back through NBA history, looking at last year, whether it was Damian Lillard tearing his Achilles in the first round, or it was Jason Tatum tearing his Achilles in the second round, or if it was Aaron Gordon pulling his hamstring in game six of the second round series against the Thunder, whether it was Tyrese Halliburton tearing his Achilles in game seven of the finals when the Pacers were playing really well. Like more often than not, we talk about all this stuff. We talk about matchups, we talk about what teams are good at, what teams are bad at. We would do well to remember that a lot of this is just who wins the war of attrition, who actually has their best players available and at the top of their games when they get to the postseason . Number eight, the assist stat is broken and should probably be replaced with something that actually captures playmaking talent. This was the other big thing that kind of went wildfire, like wildfire around the NBA. There was a game uh that Nikola Jokic had um last week where he had 19 assists . And if you dig into the actual assists, a lot of them were like him throwing a dribble handoff to Jamal Murray and then Jamal Murray like getting into his bag and hitting like multiple dribble, multiple step back combin ation, step back, contested crazy shots that he was making. And you're watching it and you're like, this is silly. This shouldn't be an assist. And of course, it bled right into Stan culture because then every Nicikola Jok fan was like, oh my God, we're trying to undercut Nikola Jokic. And it's like, come on, guys, we can have common sense here for a second. I think Nicole Jokic is the best passer in the NBA. I also think Nicola Jokic is literally the best offensive player I have ever seen. I have said that on this show many times. And those assists were bullshit . It can be both. It's not an indictment of Jokic that some of these assists are ridiculous. By the way, it's a league-wide problem. Way too often, you throw a swing pass to a dude on the wing and he hits a dribble combination to hit a shot and it counts as an assist . I just generally think that it's okay for us to be like, hey, Jokic is the greatest offensive player ever, Jokic is the best passer in the league. Let's let's fix the assist stat. I'd take it a step further. Like, I like because I I saw a lot of Jokic fans be like, oh, well, he has this gravity when he sets his screens. He sets really good screens and then his man stays attached to him and then that gives Jamal Murray an advantage. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It gives Jamal Murray an advantage . You don't think Steph Curry has, through his gravity as a screener, created a million dunks as a screener for the exact same threat that you're talking about with Jokic. How many of those counted as assists for Steph Curry ? I would jet I would tweak it to where anything that involves an action where the player is getting free off of a screen, the person who throws in the pass should not get credited with an assist . The assist stat should be rew orked to specifically reflect a player hitting a player in finishing position. Catch and shoot threes, lob dunks, cuts underneath the basket, uh kick-a-head pass to a guy in transition who's open for a layup. The assist stat should reflect a player identifying a broken defense and making a read to a player in finishing position. A player coming off of a screen in scoring, there's too many moving parts. What happened before the screen? Who's setting the screen? Who's passing to the guy who's coming off of the screen? There's too many moving parts to give one single player the credit for that shot. going in And again, Jokic fans, don't be like the Luca fans. Don't be like stand behavior is literally ruining basketball discourse. I love Nikola Jokic. He's one of my favorite players to watch. When I'm doing my film sessions and I get to watch the Nuggets, I'm stoked. You guys know how I feel about him as a player. Those assists are bullshit. They shouldn't be assists. We should fix the stat. I don't think that that's a hot take. Number nine . Arizona and Michigan are playing for the national championship on Saturday night. We had a crazy weekend of college shoops once again. As an Arizona fan, I was panicking a little bit in that Purdue game. We talked about it earlier. They just came out kind of lacking that intensity. Uh, I thought they forced the issue a lot on offense in that first half, just taking a lot of shots on the first attack that were kind of like sketchy contested twos. The Kar chenkov drop coverage with Kriv os and Awaka and every uh other one of their bigs who played, like they that wasn't working. Um Karchenkov was getting caught on the screens. Krivos and Awaka were struggling in space, so was Ko-a Pete. It just it just wasn't working . The uh Clough was kicking their ass on the offensive glass. They were knocking down threes. Their bench came in and was super active and did a lot of damage in that stretch. It was it was it was tough. Purdue looked like they were in control of that game. And then Arizona just came out and slight adjustment. Jaden Bradley goes on to um goes on to Braden Smith instead of Karchenkov. That puts more speed on the ball, which helped their drop coverage. All of their guys up to their defensive intensity and their rotations and just beating Purdue to the ball on some plays that they weren't beating to the ball. And then I thought Cope Pete really saved their ass on offense. It's been really fascinating to watch Cope Pete this year in the sense that he just had such a brutal offensive season for most of the the middle chunk of the season. And then he's been one of the most reliable players in this NCAA tournament. Just his relentless rim pressure and his ability to either finish on the first attack or follow his own miss because he just like bulldozes to the rim and he'll miss a layup, but he'll bump the dude with the shoulder so hard that he'll like clear out all the space and then he'll just get his own rebound and go back up with it. Krivos has been amazing at stretches. Jaden Bradley continues to just like provide the big shot making in big spots. I thought like in the Utah State game, he had a bunch of big buckets late. He had that crazy like double pump step through lefty soft finish off the glass at the end of the Purdue game. That was insane. Braden Burry's like the dude is just such a knockdown shooter. And he just continues to hit tons of big threes as a team, all the little bits of defensive effort here and there. It was just really fun watching Arizona in that comeback. Now, Michigan scares me. Again, if you looked at the one seeds, it was fascinating. Coming into the tournament, Florida was clearly the weak link. All the other teams were both elite on offense and on defense, statistically speaking. And then you looked at Florida and they just they were like they weren't a very good jump shooting team. It was very clear that they were not quite as good offensively as the other three in one seeds. And so Florida was the most likely one seed to get upset, and they did, right? And then we get into the tournament, and then it obviously looked like Duke was a level below the that Arizona-M ichigan tier. They just they really struggled in their first round game. They uh they struggled in their sweet 16 game. They like they just it was clear that Duke just didn't quite have the juice of the other two teams. And Duke ends up blowing yet another big lead in a tournament game uh yesterday in that wild finish in the Yukon game. I j I was joking with Jackson before the end of that game was absolute chaos because you have obviously you have like okay what are they gonna do? Are they gonna foul after uh after they make this free throw or are they not? And it's like because they were in the one and one, right? So you think like, oh, just foul . Because if he misses the front end, then you get the ball back down too. And it's like, no, Dan Hurley decides not to foul. They end up getting the turnover. You can literally see on the camera that Dan Hurley's calling a timeout, but he doesn't get it, which thank God, because that ended up leading to the Mullins wide open three. Mullins then bombs the three. Then one of the uh the UConn players briefly runs on the floor, which is hilarious. We hear the Duke radio broadcast uh saying, like, oh, that should be a technical, which obviously it shouldn't be. But then, like, Dan Hurley straight up headbutt the ref. Like, straight up headbutt the ref. And I'm watching that and I'm like, oh my God, like that that could have been a technical. Like, if we woke up this morning and Duke and Duke had won that game because Mullins hits the the three and then Dan Hurley headbutts the ref and the ref step backs and steps back and tease him up. We're having a conversation this morning about how Dan Hurley runs too hot and he just cost his team a final four berth because he headbutt a damn ref. Like the kid running on the court, that would have been a travesty if they called that a technical. Dan Hurley is extremely lucky. He did not get called for a technical when he headbutt the damn ref after a guy hit the shot. So UConn had advances that that game was just absolute batshit. That Illinois team is fascinating. They've got like just a bunch of dudes from Europe and they're super skilled and good offensive rebounding team. And uh they ended up just kind of wearing Iowa down over time. But I thought um