NBA Mailbag: Lakers fatal flaw, Warriors championship formula, Anthony Edwards rise | Hoops Tonight

NBA Mailbag: Lakers fatal flaw, Warriors championship formula, Anthony Edwards rise | Hoops Tonight

What’s up everybody thanks as always for supporting the show it would mean a lot to me if you would take a second to scroll down and hit that subscribe button to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel and then follow me on social media on Tik Tok Instagram and Twitter

So you guys don’t miss any of our content over the course of this season all right let’s talk some basketball before we get out of here let’s get to these mailbag questions first question with ruy 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 matched up 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 at Darren 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 a helping 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 Flor 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 tan Prince and we saw that at the end of the first half yesterday against the jazs when he takes

Ruy out of the game goes to tan 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 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 Vanderbilt 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 and 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 overlooked this 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 jic 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 lean Giannis because I think Giannis has been cleaning up more mess 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 yic I think he’s the best player in the world by like a comfortable margin I think he’s signic iFly better at basketball

Than Giannis Onan kmbo 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 jokic 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 yic so W’s 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 marinan 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 s Antonio with Victor women yam Tre still relatively young he’s the ideal screen enroll partner uh you 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 an system where Victor wanyama 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 continuity is a 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 Nuggets 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 Anthony 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 been 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 and 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 Elite 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 that I would tell you like oh when Steph can’t make hero shots they just don’t have a another option they can go to to score but the reality is the 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 half court setting according to cleaning the glass or hovering around that like 10 Mark in both of those areas but um in general fourth quarter 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 uh this was just a funny comment from a Celtics fan wax the net 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 hero ball and putting up over 30 shots curious because it seems like they lose more than they win in those situations seems 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’re 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 anything like that like they need him to shoot they do not have reliable offense down the stretch of

These games like kaminga is it 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 pmy 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 a 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 uh 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 Steph is still one of the very best offensive players in the league to me it comes down to that defensive end of the For

Jason Timpf answers mailbag questions regarding the hottest topics around the NBA. Jason explains how even though both LeBron’s Lakers and Steph Curry’s Warriors have struggled, they still have championship DNA that will make them tough outs for anybody in the Western Conference.

Timeline:
00:00 – Lakers best 5-man lineup
02:31 – Player under 25 to watch
02:48 – Who’s your MVP right now?
04:48 – Perfect starting lineup around Wemby
05:45 – Key to Timberwolves turnaround
06:47 – Will game film come to Hoops Tonight?
07:53 – Warriors struggles with leads
09:31 – Celtics blow out Nets
10:03 – Steph shooting too much?

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