Jokic & Nuggets upset by Kings, De’Aaron Fox becoming a superstar + NBA Mailbag | Hoops Tonight

Jokic & Nuggets upset by Kings, De’Aaron Fox becoming a superstar + NBA Mailbag | Hoops Tonight

All right welcome to Hoops tonight here at the volume happy Thursday everybody hope all of you guys are having a great week I know I say sometimes like we’re going to do a quick show and then I end up rambling for 40 45 minutes but today’s actually going to be a quick

Show because I have somewhere I got to be in about 20 minutes all we’re going to do is we’re going to hit Kings nuggets and then after that I’m going to hit some mailbag questions from last night’s show big win for the Kings relying on their defense late in the

Game and then dear and fox with a bunch of Superstar plays down the stretch you guys know the before we get started subscribe to our brand new YouTube channel mean a lot to me if you guys will take a second to scroll down and hit that subscribe button don’t forget

About our podcast feed wherever you get your podcast under Hoops tonight it’s also really helpful for us if you leave a rating and a review on that front don’t forget about my Twitter feed _ jlt that’s where I put film threads like the film thread I did this morning on the

Kings Nuggets game and then also that’s where I put show announcements and last but not least keep dropping mail back questions in the YouTube comments so we can keep hitting them throughout the season all right let’s talk some basketball so those of you guys who remember when we talked King’s Sons the

Other night I talked a lot about Sacramento’s defensive potential and the fact that like you know are they ever going to be some top tier defense no because NBA history tells us to have a top tier defense you have to have a strong defensive front line and what

That means is like your four and your five typically need to be long athletes that can do a good job of cleaning up messes on the backline it’s kind of like a foundational part of Defense but the second chunk of that is perimeter speed perimeter athleticism the ability to

Cover ground in short order and like those are the two biggest elements and there are some teams that struggle with both they tend to be the terrible defenses around the league but and if you have both you have the opportunity to be truly exceptional on defense teams like the Minnesota Timberwolves right or

Like the Oklahoma City Thunder or another team great combination of perimeter speed and athleticism with guys like Chad hren on the backline that can kind of clean things up uh but like when you have one of those those two things you should still be able to put

Out a really good defense like if you’re a team like the Lakers that doesn’t have a ton of perimeter speed and athleticism but has a ton of length and size on the backline good defensive players on the backline they should be a better defense right same thing with a team like the

Sacramento Kings they may not have much in the way of length on the backline between sabonis and Harrison Barnes but they have a ton of perimeter speed and last night just their ability to double team Nicole yic in the post or double team or guard uh uh screen and roll

Actions three on Two And to rotate out of it without giving up high quality shots on the back end was basically the story of this game I said in that show after the uh Suns game they were 12 and three after that game when they allow

Fewer than 110 points I give you guys all the breakdowns of the different kind of scoring thresholds and how well the Kings play and after last night once again now they’re 13 and three when they hold opponents opponents below 110 points it is a huge part of what makes the Kings successful

You need to you have advantages when you go on the basketball court and if you only use your advantage that’s fun for you whether that’s playing offense or running up and down the floor transition or whatever you’re leaving meat on the bone your perimeter athleticism is a

Weapon you can use to be a a a successful defense and they used it in a big way against the Nuggets last night now obviously nuggets down their back court and there were several sequences where they were doubling and recovering but it’s a little different chasing a Colin Gillespie off of the three-point

Line chasing a Christian Brown off the three-point line chasing a pton Watson off the three-point line right and you even saw that with with Aaron Gordon doing a lot more off the bounce trying to make stuff happen and Michael Porter Junior being more aggressive just simply because they’re trying to pick up the

Slack of their two back cour Partners the guys that they’re running most of these dribble handoffs for those guys just Wen weren’t in the game right and so that’s certainly a part of it there but Nicole yic is the best player in the world and these are players off of him

That have the ability to capitalize on that and they just did a much much better job than they’ve been doing of late of engaging themselves on the perimeter and then from there the big match up on the other side of the floor the Nuggets had an absolute hell of a

Time trying to contain dear and Fox at the point of attack and one of the consistent things that the uh that the kings were doing was they were bringing Michael Porter Jr’s man into the action now one time it shouldn’t happen it was a complete accident where there was a a

Miss three and the Kings go up the floor and it’s not even really a transition push but for whatever reason Michael Porter Jr just picks up Deon Fox and this was the play where the Kings took the lead late Michael Porter Jr is just guarding Darren fox in a transition

Cross Match that probably should not have been a transition Cross Match that means guys are sprting back back in transition and just grabbing the nearest player rather than grabbing their matchup that’s what ends up causing a cross match and on this possession Daren fox has the right side of the floor against

Michael Porter Jr the Kings just clear the side out and he just takes Michael Porter Jr off the bounce and makes a left-handed layup off the glass no help on the weak side just not good defense right so then the final two possessions that Darren Fox scores they try they

Start with Aaron Gordon and when Aaron Gordon’s on Darren Fox the kings bring up uh uh Michael Porter Jr into the action and Michael Porter Jr attempts to hch this is a big thing that a lot of teams do when teams bring a weak Defender into a ball screen action

Rather than switching to give that uh defensive player a huge mismatch right or blitzing and giving up a rotation what they’ll do is they’ll hedge and recover what that means is the guy’s going to come out above the level of the screen and basically cut off the driving

Lane the idea there is now Darren fox has to take kind of a banana route away from the basket to get around the Hedge that buys time for the on ball Defender to get around to the other side and meet deer and Fox on the other side of the

Screen in that situation there can sometimes be an opening where the screener slips out and then Michael Porter Jr might have to close out on on whoever the screener is and we’ve seen Denver have some issues with that in the past but in this case never even got to

That point because Aaron Gordon even though there was a hedge waiting was jumping way up on the high side of the screen and just giving dearen Fox a driving lane on this play the specific one of talking about so Kings go up one off of the dear and fox layup on Michael

Porter Jr they go down the other end I think the very next possession was a Michael Porter junor catch and shoot three off of a yage double team that he just missed and they go they go back down again Aaron Gordon’s guarding Fox they set the screen with mpj’s man mpj

Hedges out on the right side of the floor taking away that drive to the the right but Aaron Gordon sits way up on Daren Fox’s right hand side now you can Envision if you’ve got the the hedger on the right hand side and the on ball guy

On the right hand side what’s happening for Darren Fox one of the fastest left-handed players in the world boom right down in the lane Nicole yic is is sitting at The Rim but Darren Fox just stops right in front of the rim and Pops in a floater Now They’re Up by

Three then after that uh uh the the Nuggets call a timeout and they run a sequence for Reggie Jackson coming off of an action with joic and like literally Darren fox makes this unbelievable defensive play where he lunges in and swipes the ball for he picks him clean goes down the other end

And dunks it now they’re up by five and then after pton Watson misses a little transition layup we end up in the exact same configuration except for this time Payton Watson is on dearen Fox and Daren Fox is looking to go to the left this time Michael Porter Jr Hedges on the

Left left but Payton Watson sits way up on his leftand side just creating an easy driving lane for dearen Fox who just goes to the right kind of snakes across the middle of the lane sabonis throws like a nice little pick on on joic so that he can’t help and then he

Sinks a little easy bank shot off the glass and you know it’s funny because like Daran fox has gone up a huge level this year in his scoring volume and effic uh his efficiency is not taken too much of a hand I think he’s still around 57% true shooting which is really nice

He’s added pullup three-point shot that has been really reliable for him this year he’s added like a little bit of a back to the basket game like Daren fox has taken Elite before her eyes and in my opinion like he’s he’s encroaching on that Superstar tier in a real way but

You know I talk about this a lot on the show like you know the the really impressive shots the really high level shot making stuff that is only a small part of what makes a superstar superstar like Darren Fox hit a like a In-N-Out cross back between his legs at the top

Of the key in the middle of the fourth quarter on Colin Gillespie Colin Gillespie was like damn near out of the frame as he did the pullback dribble and hit the three at the top of the key it was disgusting it was a nasty move but

Like that’s just one small part of being a star that hopefully only makes up three or four possessions for you in a game ideally what a superstar does is what joic does which is just surgical Precision finding of the easy shots that take place in the game what was

Interesting about that is Deen Fox won the game there was a his Superstar play was the steel him lunging into the lane and swiping or lunging in front of Reggie Jackson and swiping the ball free and going down the other way for a dunk all of those other three shots they were

Just really smart easy basketball oh Michael Porter Jr is gonna guard me here in transition I’m going right by his ass and I’m getting into the basket right oh Aaron Gordon really good Defender but he’s just giving me a lane to the right hand side okay I look there how about I

Just hit H the Jets for a second stop short before I get to jic make this little floater in the lane beautiful right when uh when they tried the same thing with pton Watson and the right-handed drive driving lane is open uses it to get into the lane likes to

Get back to his strong hand right and he also knows that he has pton Watson trailing him and snaking the ball screen back over to the other side is a great way to create additional separation between you and the on ball Defender gets into the lane gets to his sweet

Spot with that little left-handed blank shot and makes it nothing exceptional there no highlight plays from dear and Fox on the offensive end there aside from like I said the steel and dunk that to me is that next phase of superstardom the guys that are consistently productive and efficient it is a

Combination of highle shot making but two-thirds of it or more is typically locating and identifying the easy opportunities that are there in the basketball game really really impressive performance from deer and fox just in general really really impressive performance from the Sacramento Kings especially on the defensive end of the

Floor the mold is there like I said it’s not so much about what the Kings can do on the high the high end of their potential it’s about can they string together an extended stretch for a month and a half of really good defense that

They can lean back on when they get to the later phases of the postseason to me that’s a like I said it’s a it’s a check that it’s a box that you have to check if you want to be serious about making a late playoff run we’re going to be

Keeping an eye on their defense here down the stretch um on the Nuggets front really the the two things that I I would draw attention to are again the the bad defense down the stretch just some poor configurations that didn’t make a ton of

Sense like so to to put it simply if I know that there’s a hedge I don’t need to deny the ball screen because even if he drives into the ball screen he’s driving right into Michael Porter Jr or has to take a banana route around him

Right so my one job there is not to cut off that screening angle it’s to meet Daren Fox on the other side after he goes around Michael Porter Jr you can actually go underneath the pick in that situation because you don’t have to worry about Daren Fox rising up and

Taking a pull-up jump shot because he’s running right into Michael Porter Jr so in both of those cases what Payton Watson and Aaron Gordon should have done is actually sat back a little bit knowing that mpj is there in the Hedge and if Daren fox goes in the direction

Of the screen you duck under the pick and meet him on the other side if he doesn’t use the screen and he comes at you you’re sitting there waiting for him and so some poor defensive configuration down the stretch uh some some switches in in transition cross matches that they

Probably didn’t need to give up uh a lot another thing that was causing some problems for the nuggets in this game was the pocket pass to to demonus sabonis where they weren’t tagging the roller because they were staying home some of that’s what the Kings do to you

They’ll put you know Kevin herder in one corner and Keegan Murray in the other and it’s like those are the guys you need to tag the roller with and there’s like this hesitancy to leave a good shooter in the corner to tag the roller

But if joic is going to be up at the level of the screen you have no choice but to have somebody in the lane because that pocket pass is going to hit sabonis and he’s just going to have too much of a head of steem and sabonis got a bunch

Of easy baskets on the roll where the backside uh defense wasn’t there and maybe you have to rotate to that corner shooter rather than again anything’s better than a wide open dunk for a sabonis going down the lane or when he has too much I mean sabonis is not as

Big as yic but he’s strong enough that if he gets a little bit of an angle he can kind of bump him and get enough of an angle to finish a shot and then lastly I thought it was another example of something I’ve talked about all year

Which is like the nuggets are my Championship favorite they have the best player in the world but just like anybody else they can’t really afford an injury to one of their top five players because when you go from kcp and Jamal Murray to Colin Gillespie or Reggie

Jackson uh and Christian Brown it’s just a big drop off an offensive skill and you can really see that in some of those double team situations with y where those pop around passes that are taking place on the weak side they’re just a little bit slow they’re not as sharp the

You need a really good look for the guy to take a shot instead of like a slightly contested look which you know that Jamaal Murray and Casey P will rise up and knock down they both are better at the one dribble pull-up stuff like just going that going down a level in

Weak side offense makes it so that you can throw multiple bodies at yic and get away with it and so it’s just something to keep an eye on like just just like anybody else the Nuggets can’t afford a significant injury get on the action with draftking Sportsbook an official

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Improving with more minutes this season what would your fiveman lineup be for the Lakers I like ruy offensively alongside the starters but defensively the team looks mismatched on positions one through three with Reeves being forced to be the point of attack Defender DLo being a bad Defender overall and ruy struggling to guard

Quicker Wings love the show and also who is your favorite under 25 player to watch this season um okay so when it comes to the Lakers everything’s got to be matchup dependent because they don’t have a traditional you know three and D type of guy on the wing that they can

Throw at the other team’s best player at the opening tip and he can coherently function in the offense everything has to be matchup dependent and so there will be matchups where it’s like okay we can’t get away with ruy at the three because we’re playing you know Dallas

And we need someone to throw at Kyrie Irving or we’re playing Golden State we need someone to throw at Steph Curry or we’re playing Sacramento we need someone to throw Daren Fox we need a quicker guard that can defend on the perimeter okay now that might be Max Christie

Right or this is a bigger lineup that uh doesn’t run a ton of off ball screening action and that three spot is going to be more in help in recover situation okay ruy makes a ton of sense here or like okay this particular team we’re really struggling with their defense we

Need to find a way to space them out a little bit a little bit better and we feel like on the offensive end of the four maybe we can do more switching and just kind of contain the basketball okay maybe Spencer dwy is our option here at

The three it it all has to be matchup based and that’s where it’s a lot of it comes down to Darin ham and what specifically scares me on that front is like he just has a default option to go to Toran Prince and we saw that at the end of the first half

Yesterday against the Jazz when he takes ruy out of the game goes to Toran at the four alongside three guards and the Lakers immediately give up a run so do I trust Darvin to kind of tow that line properly no not really uh but you know it it’s it’s something that he’s

Gonna have to figure out to to for lack of a better term and honestly like this is where the Jared Vanderbilt injury is just going to be the biggest swing factor for the Lakers this year I don’t think they have any chance to win the title unless uh unless they can get

Jared vandu belt back into the lineup and moving as well as he was before the injury uh don’t have a ton of time so on the under 25 player to watch this season I’ll say for me personally Anthony Edwards He’s just been a ton of fun to

Uh to watch as he’s kind of figured out in uh not just how to play in this league at his position but also just some of the confident stuff that we’re seeing from him hi Jason greetings from Australia you have the best NBA content keep it up thank you for the kind words

Who is your MVP if you had a vote as of now I feel like Giannis is getting over overlooked the season due to the coaching change and distractions going on at the bucks he is on Pace to be the first player to average over 30 points

Per game on 60% field goals while also averaging over one Steel in block per game so I saw the uh I saw the straw pull the other day that had joic weigh in the lead and for the record I don’t think there’s a gap there I think that

Giannis and and Nicole joic have been the two best players in the regular season and I don’t think there’s a wrong answer either way I would probably leave Yannis because I think Giannis has been cleaning up more messes this year and I think Giannis has brought more consistent effort this year than Nicole

Yic and I haven’t really thought too much about MVP this year but I see your point and I would probably lean slightly toward Giannis but I do think that joic is every bit as much in that equation and there’s one thing I saw on Twitter yesterday that I do think is true which

Is like someone said something along the lines of like the media or joic has the media and a stronghold and there’s some truth there like I love Nicole joic I think he’s the best player in the world by like a comfortable margin I think he’s significantly better at basketball

Than Janis Santana kmo personally even though even though I think Giannis may be having a better regular season um but there’s no doubt that in large part because a large portion of the media relies on Advanced metrics like these catchall metrics like they actually believe that to be like a significant

Element in these kinds of discussions I personally disagree but they do and so between that and just a lot of the uh a lot of the the momentum that was behind joic when he was kind of rising in 2019 2020 there’s just a ton of media support

For Nicole yic it’s just a fact and it’s very possible that he kind of racks up a an unprecedented amount of MVPs because of that he’s just he’s just the perfect type of guy to sway the modern MVP voter but to me it’s kind of a tossup lean

Slightly towards Giannis at this point in time next question who do you think is the perfect starting lineup you could build around wemi kind of like how Denver built for yish so wem’s a a little bit on the thin side so I kind of lean towards a big strong forward

Similar to what I’ve been talking about for the Thunder as well so just imagine a Aaron Gordon Lori marinin type of archetype at the four and then from there I think having a legitimate ball handling on the perimeter that can put wemi into spots as a screen and pop

Screen and roll guy is huge and so for instance like you know I’m not the biggest Trey young fan in the world but like it actually does make some sense to partner him in San Antonio with Victor wanyama Tre still relatively young he’s the ideal screen and roll partner uh you

Can imagine in a switching scheme he would just be able to beat those a lot easier than the pick and roll partners that Trey young has had over the years and then if I wanted to craft a an achievable defensive role for Trey young it would be in a system where Victor

Wama is on the backline so that’s where I’d lean in that direction next question what do you think was the key to the transformation of the Timberwolves this season giving that their personnel was similar to last season how did Chris Finch unlock the Rudy and Cat pairing so

Couple different things continu big part of it just sticking with the same lineup for a lot a long time the Wolves were actually kind of picking up steam towards the end of last season I thought they were one of the most impressive teams over the final third on the

Defensive end of the floor uh now not all of that was with both bigs on the floor but there was a lot of that in there as well then I thought they gave a good fight to the Lakers in the playin game then they what who did they kick

The out of it was the thunder right and then they had an impressive showing against the Nugget so I think some of this did start last year but then like I think the second big piece of it that that just needs to be acknowledged is Edwards is just getting better Anthony

Edwards is a future superstar that is on the rise in the league and he’s just a lot better than he was at this point in the season last year and that goes a long way towards elevating the ceiling of this Timberwolves team and I I think just in general there’s been a really

Good commitment to like a championship level commitment to the details from day one of training camp few more um hey Jason you may have already answered this in the past but do you see yourself getting to a production point where you’ll have some of these plays you

Speak about playing in the corner while you talk about them and when you talk about these stats having a top five list pop up Etc I love the show by the way haven’t learned so much and in completely and completely changed how much or how I watch basketball in the

Best way again thank you so much for the kind words and for supporting the show I have told my superiors many times that that is a goal of mine to have uh more uh play uh animations on the Screen Graphics things along those lines we are working on it it’s just the volume’s

Growing really fast and we’re still figuring out some of that stuff behind the scenes I promise you it will eventually happen we just kind of have to figure it out there is a to give you an idea to have plays on the screen it’s a lot more labor intensive than you

Would think and so we are going to figure that out it’s just taking some time and again every time I have an opportunity to kind of pitch that to the higher ups I do so so in time again like I’m sure this show will look markedly different from a production standpoint

When we get you know a few years into the future and we’ll see when we get there next question hey Jason love your videos I was wondering if you could explain the warrior struggles with maintaining leads throughout the season I’m not sure if this is a warrior

Specific issue as it happens a lot around the league but seems especially prevalent with golden state throughout the season how or why is it that Golden State can never seem to protect a lead thank you for all you do and keep up the great work again thanks for supporting

The show I really really appreciate you guys and as I’ve said with all the negativity that I see in the comments sometimes like this stuff just outweighs it every single time and and every single time I I I read through the comments it’s always a overwhelmingly positive experience because of people

Like you uh so what’s interesting is the it test would tell you like oh when step can’t make hero shots they just don’t have a another option they can go to to score but the reality is Steph has been making so many of the hero shots that they’ve still been pretty good

Offensively they’ve been they’ve been okay offensively in the clutch they’ve been okay offensively in the uh in the halfcourt setting according to cleaning the glass or hovering around that like 10 Mark in both of those areas but um in general fourth quarter off offense I think they’re like sixth which is pretty

Good so like the offense actually by by points per possession has been pretty solid it’s been the defense they’re the very worst fourth quarter defense in the league like they’re just the very worst they give up over 120 points per 100 possessions and so for whatever reason

Just like we saw last night against the Clippers their point of attack defense falls apart they end up in rotation and they just can’t get stops when it matters that that’s been the big one that has been very clearly uh evident in the numbers as we

Um um as we get to the end of these games all right two more and then we’re out of here this was just a funny comment from a Celtics fan waxed the Nets by 50 and not a peep as expected I literally just covered the last two Celtics wins against the Hawks and

Against the Heat I didn’t cover the Nets because the Nets are garbage and they just traded away some guys at the deadline they’re just not very good anymore so uh yeah like I wouldn’t cover the Celtics beating the nets for the same reason I wouldn’t cover the Celtics

Beating the Pistons but I did just we’ve done a just a just a ton of Celtics content over the last week and so I encourage you Celtics fans to go back and look through the channel and you’ll see it there if you look all right last question what’s the win- loss record

When Steph is pushing and playing herob ball and putting up over 30 shots curious because it seems like they lose more than they win in those situations seem Steph is trying to get clutch player of the year so I looked earlier I think they’re 0 and three when he takes

At least 30 shots they were three and eight when he takes 24 or more shots but I don’t think that has anything to do with Steph Curry and chasing clutch player of the year or anything like that like they need him to shoot they do not have reliable offense down the stretch

Of these games like kaminga is you know kinga’s got the sky the limit for kaminga but he he’s not a halfcourt surgeon yet Andrew Wiggins is super inconsistent Klay Thompson is super inconsistent Baron pmsk is a rookie they don’t have a guy that they can really go

To as a secondary option it’s the main reason why I don’t think this Warriors team has like a a a big Championship opportunity they have a small Championship opportunity they’re long shot just like the Lakers but I don’t view them as like a significant Championship threat because they lack

That secondary shot creation and um again like to me I I I think Steph putting up a ton of shots is the formula and as I’ve talked about uh in the in the earlier mailbag question it’s not the offensive end that’s been the problem they’ve been a good offense

Despite the fact that they don’t have secondary shot creation because steep is still one of the very best offense players in the league to me it comes down to that defensive end of the floor all right guys that is all I have for today as always I sincerely appreciate

You guys for supporting the show we’ll be back we’ll be back tomorrow for uh 45 minutes to an hour with the nerd sesh guys and then we’ll get out of here for the weekend and then we have some special stuff planned for the allstar break I will see you guys Tomorrow He

Jason Timpf reacts to De’Aaron Fox and the Sacramento Kings beating Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets. Jason explains how Fox is quickly becoming an NBA superstar as he is carrying this Kings squad past some of the best teams in the league. Jason then answers fan mailbag questions about the hottest topics in the game.

Timeline:
00:00 – Introduction
01:00 – Kings vs. Nuggets
15:18 – Lakers best 5-man lineup
17:34 – Player under 25 to watch
17:49 – Who’s your MVP right now?
19:50 – Perfect starting lineup around Wemby
20:46 – Key to Timberwolves turnaround
21:47 – Will game film come to Hoops Tonight?
22:53 – Warriors struggles with leads
24:32 – Celtics blow out Nets
25:04 – Steph shooting too much?

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