LeBron & Lakers win 4th straight, Kevin Durant goes off, Nuggets West Favorites_ _ Hoops Tonight

All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight presented by FanDuel here at The Volume. Happy Saturday, everybody. Congrats on making it to the weekend, although I'm technically recording this late in the night on Friday. We had a jam-packed, highly entertaining NBA slate tonight, and I caught bits and pieces of eight different games tonight, so we're gonna be touching on all of them. That's gonna be Hawks-Lakers, Cavs-Nuggets, Nets-Pelicans, Knicks-Raptors, Hornets-Bucks, Sixers-Bulls, Blazers-Pacers, and Heat-Suns. So a lot we're gonna get into. Just gonna go rapid fire through all those games. You guys know the drill. Before we get started, subscribe to The Volume's YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JasonLT so you guys don't miss any show announcements. And if for whatever reason you guys miss one of these videos and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish, remember you can find them wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight. Last but not least, January is going to be a jam-packed sports month. Obviously, we got the college football national championship game right around the corner, the NFL playoffs are right around the corner, and then college basketball and the NBA are heating up as we head towards the tournament and the NBA playoffs, which I love so much. What does that mean? That means lots of good games for us to watch. Or better yet, how about we go to some of these games? And where's the best place to get tickets? I want you guys to check out Game Time. This is the fastest-growing ticketing app in the United States. Game Time offers amazing last-minute deals on tickets to all of your favorite NBA, NFL, NHL, and NCAA teams. And on top of that, they sell last-minute concert tickets and comedy show tickets. So if you're in Texas and you want to see the Dallas Mavericks, Game Time has you covered. If you're in Arizona and you want to see the Suns, Game Time has you covered. Or if you just want to go see John Mayer serenade you on the electric guitar, Game Time has you covered. Download the Game Time app, create an account, and redeem code HOOPS for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account and enter code HOOPS, that's H-O-O-P-S, for $20 off. Download Game Time today, last-minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Lakers win again against the Hawks, 130 to 114. I believe that's their fourth consecutive win. Atlanta looked like they were just about ready to quit in the first half of this game. We'll get to them here in just a second. Then the Lakers kind of came out in that third quarter, didn't play a whole lot of defense. Atlanta kind of got back into it. I think they got as close as 10, but they were never truly threatened. Thomas Bryant was a monster again, 19 points and 13 rebounds. I wanted to shout out Dennis Schroeder, Patrick Beverly, and Russell Westbrook because we talked about them briefly in our last show. But the job that those three are doing on the perimeter is massively alleviating the concerns of losing Anthony Davis as a rim protector. All three of them, but I wanted to shout out specifically Russ tonight, who had one of his best games as a Laker in this particular game. Just violently chasing over the top of screens and bothering guys like Trey Young and Boyan Bogdanovich and Dejounte Murray as they were coming over the top of these screens. Again, this is a steady pick and roll offense that Atlanta runs and these guys love to feel comfortable in that mid-range. You kind of saw the feel of that game early on. First few possessions, Dejounte Murray was comfortable coming off and he was hitting those shots. Then they got a little bit better with that back pressure and they started to force some misses. All three of those guys also hit massive shots on the other end of the floor from three. So big time game from the Lakers backcourt. Kendrick Nunn used the Trey Young assignment to finally break out of his slump. LeBron was great again, 25-7-10. We all have our basketball philosophies, our core basketball philosophies. Those of you guys who have been listening to the show for a long time have heard me break down my specific philosophies. One of the ones that I feel very passionately about is slotting. If you ask me, how is it that this Lakers supporting cast that is so undermanned, particularly on the wing, and then we find out that Lonnie Walker's out for at least two weeks and we find out that Austin Reeves is out for at least two weeks and Troy Brown Jr. just had a quad strain. He'll probably be out for a little while. And they're still winning. And the reason why is because of what LeBron James brings to the table as a superstar. Obviously in other settings, like you catch the heat in a game without LeBron and AD not bringing their best effort, you get a win. This Atlanta Hawks team kind of has the vibe of a quitting basketball team. So it buys you a little extra margin for error there. But over the course of this stretch without Anthony Davis, they're seven and five and they have some impressive wins, including beating that Denver Nuggets team that is so incredibly good. And so what I wanted to drive home here is that point about slotting. When you have a superstar, a true superstar like LeBron James, he removes so many responsibilities from the table by generating quality shots. And then the stuff he does on the defensive end of the floor, particularly grabbing contested rebounds, which is something LeBron has been fantastic at over the course of this season, or just general backline help. When you take all that stuff off the table, that creates small, achievable roles that even limited players that aren't as good as other role players around the league can thrive and succeed in those roles. And the Lakers have two of those guys between LeBron James and Anthony Davis. You're seeing the benefits of slotting right here with one superstar. You can imagine what it looks like when LeBron and AD are together playing at that level. I know we haven't seen a lot of it over the last two years, but in the two years before that, we did see it and you saw the way that that trickled down the roster to achievable roles for role players. This is why I've been hammering home the idea of the Lakers trying to go after a legit tall wing like a Kyle Kuzma or a Boyan Bogdanovich, because that even further slots some of the role players into even smaller roles. And you're seeing right now, I mean the Lakers, guys, this is insane. The Lakers are now two games back of the sixth seed. Two games back from being out of the play-in. Two. That's how good of a position they're in despite the horrific start to the season. I truly believe that with LeBron playing at this level and with Anthony Davis coming back and hopefully getting back to the away from being a legit contender in the Western Conference. Again, I would say that the only duo in the league that is certainly better than LeBron James and Anthony Davis in terms of consistency and availability is Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum, and I would argue when LeBron and AD are available, they're actually better than those guys. That's the advantage the Lakers have over the rest of the league. Their big disadvantage is the supporting players, particularly on the wing. When you actually look at the roster, because of Thomas Bryant coming out as such a viable weapon for the Lakers, they're great at center, they're great at the power forward with LeBron's minutes, and they're pretty solid in the backcourt because of how well Dennis Schroeder's playing. Patrick Beverly's starting to hit shots, so his defensive presence is starting to be more noticeable. And then Austin Reeves and Lonnie Walker, those are two decent shooting guards in this league. So the area of weakness is the wing. That's the one spot on the roster that desperately needs attention, and if they address that, suddenly this is a well-rounded basketball team that will have potentially the two best players on the floor in most playoff series against everybody but a handful of teams around the league. There's real reason for optimism there. And then lastly on the Hawks, we've been talking, this has been a theme of the show over the last couple of weeks, you either fight for your season or you don't. And Atlanta looks like a team that's not fighting for their season. I would not be surprised if we hear about Nick McMillan either stepping down or being fired in the next couple of days. They need a new voice in the locker room. They're not even coming out with an intensity like they believe they can win games. All right, moving on to Cleveland-Denver. We're going to start to kind of move a little quicker here. Denver wins 121-108. Donovan Mitchell missed this game. Jokic finished with 28-15-10. He's averaging 29-12-10 in his last 15 games. Denver is playing very much like the best team in the league right now. They're 12-3 in their last 15 games. They completely embarrassed the Clippers last night. Like one of the most embarrassing beatdowns I can remember seeing from a real marquee matchup of two heavyweights in any conference. At one point, the Nuggets were beating the Clippers 84-41. And one note on the Clippers, they lost again tonight to Minnesota. Kawhi and Paul George left the game at halftime in that Denver game and then skipped the back end of the back-to-back against Minnesota tonight. Those guys are just never available. I don't even know what to make of it. It makes them extremely difficult to evaluate, which is precisely why I dropped the Clippers off of my top tier of contenders. Denver's racking up some impressive wins. Just in the last 10 games, they've beat the Cavs, the Clippers, the Celtics, the Heat, the Kings, the Suns, the Blazers, and the Grizzlies. That's all super impressive wins. I don't necessarily trust their defense enough. I think they're still 22nd in defense or something like that. I don't trust their defense enough to put them in the top tier of contenders, but I'd have them at the top of that second tier, right below that top tier of contenders. Alright, moving on to Brooklyn and the New Orleans Pelicans. This was a super fun game. I watched most of this one. The Pelicans were without Zion and Brandon Ingram, but they really battled in this game. Both KD and Kyrie had uncharacteristic bad shooting nights on pretty high shot quality. They were missing some easy looks. KD, I think, started 0-5. Four of his first five shots that he missed were pretty damn good looks that you are accustomed to seeing KD knock down. Between the competing Pelicans at home and KD and Kyrie having a rough night, you ended up having a close game. Najee Marshall was really good in this game, stepping into a more aggressive role. He had 23 points. With what I do for a living, I'm always watching these games, and I'm watching them on a clip-by-clip basis. I'm really diving in to try to see specifics about how one guy does chasing over screens, or how one guy does attacking closeouts, or how one big does pick and roll coverage. I'm always trying to evaluate players. Najee Marshall is one of those guys, all season, when I've watched the Pelicans, where I've always felt like he's had a little bit more in his dribble package than what he's needed to do with the Pelicans on a game-by-game basis. We have roles that stack up on a basketball court, and when you're playing for a team like the Pelicans, and it's like Brandon Ingram's out there, and Zion Williamson's out there, and CJ McCollum's out there, and Jose Alvarado's out there, they have a lot of ball handling. You're not going to get a lot of on-ball touches if you're in a supporting role on that team, but a lot of guys in the NBA slot into roles like that, despite having skill sets that go above and beyond. One of the things I noticed, I actually tweeted out a clip the other day from a different Pelicans game, where Najee Marshall hit Dylan Brooks with a double crossover and buckled him over at a random possession at the top of the key just to beat some ball pressure, and I'm sitting there and I'm like, whoa, that's a highly advanced dribble move from a guy that we think of as just kind of like a dirty work role player on the wing, and you saw tonight what it looks like when you have an opportunity to fill in in a more aggressive role. Brandon Ingram's out, Zion's out, you need somebody that's going to be more aggressive, and Najee Marshall stepped right up into that role. In the second half, though, the Nets really just locked in on defense. They held the Pelicans at just 38 points, and then Kyrie, after a rough shooting night, made a bunch of big plays in the fourth quarter, including hitting the dagger on a swing pass from KD at the top of the key, and the Nets are back on track. They're now 17-2 in their last 19 games. All right, moving on to the Knicks and the Raptors. The Knicks win 112-108. Julius Randle came out guns blazing from three in the first quarter of this game. He cooled off a bit, but he finished with 32-11. Toronto had several stretches where they sped the game up and got out in transition and got it close. They had a 19-3 fast break point advantage. You kind of see as, over the season, we start to really familiarize ourselves with these teams. There's a consistent way that each team likes to win, and then there's a consistent weakness that most of these teams have. For Toronto, it's always when they can get up and down, they can thrive, but when they get trapped in the half court, they can really struggle to score, and that's what happened. Every single time they got the game close, the Knicks would strangle the pace again, keep them in the half court, and close the deal. The Knicks have won four straight. I cursed them, unfortunately. During their eight-game winning streak, right at the end, I did back-to-back deep dive videos on them, and then they immediately lost five straight. But then they've won four straight since, so it's been this weird stretch where they won eight in a row, then they lost five in a row, then they won four in a row. Complete roller coaster. But still, like I said in our deep dive breakdowns, it's the good teams that give them trouble. They're 15-5 against below-500 teams, and 7-13 against teams that are 500 or better. At the end of the day, they just don't have the top-tier shot creators to consistently score in the half court against the best teams in the league. All right, moving on to Charlotte, Milwaukee. Charlotte came in and hung 51 points on the Bucs in the first quarter, and just completely blew them out in their own building in Milwaukee. Terry Rozier, LaMelo Ball, and P.J. Washington combined for 18 made threes and 86 points. And all I have to say about this game, because I didn't see much of it, is this just happens sometimes. You know, I've been watching the NBA for a long time, and one of the things that I've consistently seen over the years is right around from mid-December to the All-Star break, which I believe is mid-February. But during that two-month period, there's this heavy malaise that kind of sets in across the league, because that initial excitement of the first month of basketball passes. You know, during that first month, everyone's playing hard every night because everyone thinks they're going to make a deep playoff run, and everyone's so excited. But then you get to the point where you've played 20, 30 games, and everyone just kind of falls into that funk, and you start to see some truly bizarre outcomes. And you know, in the modern NBA, I remember at the beginning of the season when I called it an unforgiving league, like, Terry Rozier and LaMelo Ball are two really skilled guards. And so if you come into a game and you don't bring it defensively, and they get going from three, like, you can get your butt kicked. And that's what happened. I mean, the Bucks basically had everyone in their rotation available except for Chris Middleton. They had won three of their last four games coming in. Giannis was averaging 39-15 in his last eight games, and he just had nine points tonight. So again, don't try to make any sense of it. We'll see a half-dozen more games like this before the trade deadline where you're like, what in the world? The Detroit Pistons went into Golden State and beat the Warriors? You know, you're going to see stuff like that just non-stop over the course of the next month or a month and a half or so until we get to the All-Star break. So for the Bucks, you just got to kind of flush it away and move on. All right, Bulls, Sixers. How about the Bulls, man? 126-116 infieldly over the Sixers, although they did not have Joel Embiid. Zach Levine was awesome in this game, 11-13 from three, finished with 41. The Bulls have now won seven out of ten games, and some impressive wins in that stretch. They beat the Heat, they beat the Knicks back when they were red-hot, they beat the Milwaukee Bucks in that crazy comeback game, they beat the Nets to bust their 12-game winning streak, and now they beat the Sixers. This recent run to save their season, so to speak, has put them just three and a half games out of the sixth seed, so not entirely lost. The one guy I wanted to specifically shout out here was Patrick Williams. He had 18 against, and I had 22 two nights ago in Brooklyn. He's made at least two threes in four of the last five games for the Bulls. He kind of brings that 3-and-D element that they so desperately need because this is a team that doesn't have a lot of shooting, and that their stars don't really like to play defense, and so having a guy that's kind of thriving in that role is so vitally important to them. But the big thing that I've noticed in the last few games, and something that I've been keeping my eye on with Patrick Williams ever since this summer, is the stuff that he's able to do off the dribble. And again, it's not high-level creation. It's all low volume, but this is a guy that has clearly put in a lot of time over the offseason to build out his ball handling and shooting, and you could see it. I noticed it a lot in his summer workouts and some of the videos he was sharing. There's real fluidity in his ability to dribble the basketball, which only comes through relentless hard work, so it's cool to see him have a couple of big scoring games. Again, we'll see if any of this lasts for Chicago. Nothing is super encouraging. They're still 22nd in defense over this 10-game stretch, so they're basically just outscoring teams. They're fourth in offense, and their stars are super hot, especially with their jump shots. I don't want to rain on the parade, but obviously they're going to need to defend better to have any chance of having consistent success. But here's the glass-half-full way of looking at it. Winning games leads to buy-in, and you've won 7 out of 10. When you guys have buy-in, guys get committed to all of the details, because that's part of what buy-in entails, is doing what the coaching staff asks you to do. And when you have buy-in and then you have commitment to details, that's when the defense could follow. And if the defense follows with the way they're scoring the ball, they could really go on a run. Alright, Portland, Indiana. The Pacers won 108-99. This was tied at 99 late, and then Aaron Neesmith broke the tie. And then Buddy Heal picked off Anfernee Simons for a pick-six. That put him up four. And then Tyrese Halliburton hit a step-back three. That was basically the dagger. The Pacers closed this game on a 9-0 run. What I wanted to focus on with the Pacers is their four-guard lineup. So tonight, they closed with Halliburton, Heald, Andrew Nebhard, Miles Turner, and Aaron Neesmith. Against the Sixers, they went with a similar lineup, but they swapped out Neesmith for Ben Matherin. And Neesmith's a little bit bigger. He's like 6'5". But they've been doing a lot of this over the course of the last few weeks, where it's like four guards and Miles Turner. And it's fun to watch because they have tons and tons of speed, and they're competing on defense. So they're getting up into ball handlers and pressuring, switching a lot of screens, but at the same time flying around in rotation with all the foot speed they have. And then they have Miles Turner protecting the rim. And then on the other end of the floor, it's so much ball handling and shooting with the four guards. And then Miles Turner is a guy that can knock down shots and make plays off the dribble. So they just have a really unselfish, you know, move the ball around, that extra drive and kick, that extra pass to get high-quality shots. They're honestly really, really fun to watch, and Pacers fans should be very excited. I wanted to go through some lineup data with you guys really quick. So when they have Buddy Heald, Ben Matherin, excuse me, Buddy Heald, Tyrese Halliburton, Andrew Nembhard, Miles Turner, and Aaron Neesmith. That lineup they closed with tonight, not great so far this season. Minus 10 net in 413 possessions, but they went, it went really well tonight. So we'll see how that skews the data a little bit. And then in the Sixers game, they closed with Matherin. That lineup, so Tyrese Halliburton, Buddy Heald, Andrew Nembhard, Ben Matherin, and Miles Turner, that group is plus 14 net in 208 possessions. So the four-guard lineups, particularly with Ben Matherin, are really working, and it's just a really fun to watch brand of basketball. They're becoming one of my favorite league pass teams. All right, lastly, before we get out of here, Miami Phoenix. Miami wins 104-96. This was my bet of the week for FanDuel, for those of you guys who listen on the podcast feed where you see the FanDuel ads. Miami was favored by one and a half, but they had just a disappointing game to the Lakers, and the Suns really can't score without Devin Booker. So I had a feeling that he would win, which they did. The Suns, this stuff with them not being able to score without Booker is pretty insane. This was their third straight game where they failed to score 100 points. They're averaging just 104.5 points in their last six games, which is dead last in the NBA. And their schedule doesn't get any easier from here. This is crazy. Check this out. Next eight games. Cavs, Warriors, Nuggets. The Timberwolves is the easiest game in the stretch, and the Timberwolves have won three games in a row because they're starting to defend like crazy, and Anthony Edwards is getting going. Then they play the Grizzlies. Then they play the Brooklyn Nets. Then they play that Pacers team we just talked about. Then they play the Memphis Grizzlies again. So, you know, they're already on a five-game losing streak. A 13-game losing streak is legitimately on the table here. They're going to be underdogs in all eight of those games. Now, I expect them to win one or two of them, but things are looking really bleak for Phoenix, and I expect them to consider completely blowing things up at the deadline. I mean, they've got some stuff to really cling to. Like, I really like Devin Booker. You know, Mikael Bridges is a great foundational piece. I like Cam Johnson a lot. DeAndre Ayton needs to go because he doesn't even like being there, and their defense as a team has fallen off a cliff as well. And obviously, DeAndre Ayton hasn't been good enough to carry that. So, I would expect potentially them to consider being super aggressive with, like, Chris Paul and DeAndre Ayton and, you know, Jay Crowder, and just try to get back as much as they can to just kind of shuffle the deck and reset the culture in that locker room. The Miami Heat are now nine and four in their last 13 games. They're now just one game back of sixth in the East to get out of the play-in, and Bam Adebayo was awesome again tonight, 21-11. Eight of those 21 points were in post-ups or isos. Like we talked about in our last show, he's on a 10-game stretch where he's averaging about five additional points per game in post-ups and isos. So, hit that mark again tonight with eight. It's really cool, honestly, as a basketball fan to see Bam starting to get his confidence as a scorer because it's really a thing that builds momentum. He's always had the talent. Now that you're seeing the confidence come with it, he's starting to hunt his shot more, and now he's taking and making higher-difficulty shots, which just continues to feed that confidence. And again, having Bam as that sort of legit high-volume scorer is the thing that could be the ultimate ceiling raiser for the Miami Heat. Wow. Okay. That was intense. That was fun. But that's all I have for tonight. Here's the plan. We're taking the rest of the weekend off, and next week's going to be really interesting. We're only going to take a break from instant reactions or game breakdowns, and we're going to do one game breakdown next week. That's going to be on Thursday night. I can't remember exactly what the matchup is off the top of my head, but there's a big-time nationally televised game on Thursday that will break down. But the rest of the week, we're going to do our midseason grades. So, my plan for that is I'm going to try to do, we'll see how it works out, because I'm actually leaving for my first ski trip on Friday of next week. But we're going to do, I think we're going to do four or five videos, and we're going to hit on four or five teams per video. But we're basically going to do deep dives into each of those teams as basically just like a, you know, establishing the state of the Pistons, or the state of the Warriors, or the state of the Lakers. And we're going to just kind of recap the first half of their season for each of those teams. So, it's going to be a little bit more of a zoom-out week next week before we get back into our groove the following week. As always, I sincerely appreciate your guys' support, and I will see you on Monday.