OKC Takes Down Orlando. Plus, Checking In With the Other Top West Teams | The Ryen Russillo Podcast

OKC Takes Down Orlando. Plus, Checking In With the Other Top West Teams | The Ryen Russillo Podcast

We start today’s podcast little NBA Tales from the couch we’ll be sprinkling this in a little bit more all right we start with really a tale from Monday night’s game and that’s Minnesota’s win at the Clippers we’ll have John krinski on obviously later to go a little bit

Deeper into this so a little bit of an overlap and some of the thoughts I have here that I’ll ask him about um they’ve gotten La twice now uh when you go back and look at the season series you have to double check and be like who was

Playing who wasn’t playing clippers for the most part were healthy in both these games the length on the perimeter is a real thing when you look at McDaniels is assigned defensively to kawhai you’ve got ant on Paul George Alexander Walker’s been a better defensive player like you’re not going to have like

Perfect matchups throughout all of it then you can put one of the tall guys if you want to on Harden um there’s just a nice nice set of guys and then on top everything else you know you just have length and bodies and there’s value to

Just being big at times because when the Clippers are rolling and they’re getting their side to side action and then all of a sudden it feels like the pain is just there for him and kawhai doesn’t even need that much room cuz he’s so much stronger and how well he’s played

This year you know kawhai gets that shoulder into you and then does the little step back and it just goes in every single time you could tell it was like oh wait this is going to be a lot harder so I thought that was was incredible as far as that win how

Dominate it was and you know that kind of happens throughout the course of the games it’s like oh wait I thought everybody liked the Clippers it’s like all right well they lost they lost a game to what looks like a pretty good team here in Minnesota so some of the

Things I was looking for I actually watched tylo’s press conference after because I thought like is this one of those matchups is this one of those matchups for as great as the Clippers have been where it’s like man if they actually have to play Minnesota earlier in the playoffs or in the Western

Conference Finals like do you have to pick Minnesota in the matchup so we know that the Clippers don’t pass uh they’re last in the NBA in passes per game uh they’re eight less passes per game than Dallas touches per game their last which this is a correlation of the passes

Anyway which you’d expect there’s 370 touches per game by the Clippers sacrament just a little comparison to number one in the NBA with 432 but in the two gam specifically against Minnesota kawai’s 227 and3 47 and 50% shooting splits we’re talking from the floor overall in threes but

Paul George is 175 and three 29 and 29% again small sample of just two games then you’ve got Harden at 16 one and a half boards seven assists 33 from the floor 29% on threes you also have the Westbrook part of this his energy in this role now that he’s accepted it now

That he had to go to a million different teams in a very short amount of time um you know some of this Lakers stuff with Westbrook that still gets brought up at least out here constantly on like whose fault is it uh look you know you

Sometimes you have to get it kicked in a few times before you accept kind of where you’re at and if Westbrook had been more accepting of who he was at that point the Lakers maybe it all works out a little bit better and maybe the LeBron stuff was really tough for him to

Deal with and I could even be sympathetic to Westbrook on part of that but you’ve seen through this run that Westbrook’s energy has these moments despite look I’m never going to love his game so we can just put that one to bed but he’ll have these moments where just

The other team can’t match his energy even at a later stage of his career like you never you can never question Westbrook for how hard he wants to try in a game and the way they’ve they’ve filtered him in where he’s actually played with like the other really

Players I feels like a little bit more and more on some of the rotation patterns but against Minnesota what you’re trying to do is find a way to have go bear play against a small lineup which we’ve seen be borderline disastrous in some playoff series but

Yet what you have is then all of a sudden it’s like well nobody’s going to guard him they’re just not going to guard him so now you have five defending four and they’ll live with Westbrook who who’s played 29 minutes a game in both games against Minnesota who shot 32%

Overall from the floor he’s actually hit threes at a really nice clip at 43% but if it’s three and a half attempts per game Minnesota can live with that so the question we have after these two games is like wait does Minnesota kind of kill that small lineup kind of you know the

Clippers seem to go to it a lot look they should go to it a lot when you have the three guys with Norman Powell or if you want to go with coffee and however you want to align Westbrook with the starters or only of the other starters like the Clippers should definitely

Unveil that but if that’s one of their hey something’s going wrong here I’ve seen it with Phoenix hey we don’t really like how we are right now you know what let’s try to they try to go to to close small against Atlanta when they’d lost down there uh we’ll get to the Phoenix

Lineup against Sacramento here in a bit but they went with KD at the five you’ll see teams go to it and then of course we crush it when it doesn’t work but I wonder if Minnesota is like cool go small and go small with Westbrook and

You guys can do whatever you want want but we’re not going to change we’re not going to be worried about it and now on top of everything else you’re going to go small and everything’s going to be clogged up because we’re going to absolutely ignore Westbrook in the small

Lineups so that might be something tyou has to look at uh the other side of the going small against Rudy gobear teams has been that it’s not necessarily what happens to him defensively with a smart point guard or just an Unstoppable point guard and switch and look Rudy’s had so

Many switches this year against small Premier players where he holds up and you’re just like God that is so impressive and how how much better he is this year defensively but the problem was you weren’t getting the benefit of him being big against your small lineup on the

Other side because you just didn’t really trust him all that much with the ball and I don’t I don’t I think he’s one of the worst players in the league with the ball in his hands but against the Clippers it’s not about post moves and dribble drop step and all that stuff

It’s man I don’t there’s nobody here for me to worry about you’re not going to get a play run for him necessarily neily but he’s 16 and 14 in those two games an is 288 and 7even 53% shooting from the floor he hasn’t hit many threes but an

Gets to the free throw line against the Clippers more than he does over the course of the season nine against the Clippers six and a half which feels kind of low for an um look and I also love that Minnesota brought it in the fourth quarter last night against Portland it

Was kind of a weird game it’s kind of one of those scheduled losses you beat La in La backto back you go up to Portland you don’t take them seriously you know you’re you’re still feeling yourself after beating the Clippers which has been the best team in the NBA

For two months and then they put it on Portland on the fourth quarter 37 points and ant goes for 41 and I’m telling you they subbed him out right after like he got down in a defensive stance up 19 with like three plus minutes to go where

You would have thought the game was tied against Boston you know what I mean like you would have thought okay this possession means everything right now defensively we need to stop it’s like no you don’t you’re up 19 I love that from him by the way little love for scoot

14-9 he’d missed a week um maybe you know maybe some things slowing down for him a little bit felt a little bit better about him didn’t love the uh Banton isos when cook or excuse me when it felt like scoot was cooking a bit

More it kind of worked for him he had 10 free throw attempts but my God can you imagine being like Anthony Simons going what we brought this dude in who doesn’t really play anywhere and now he’s going to initiate a ton of offensive possessions let’s go to Phoenix they out

Last Sacramento last night it was supposed to be and it technically still is Booker Beal and KD’s 22nd game playing all together um but Beal played five minutes left with a hamstring he’s out tonight everybody’s optimistic they’re always optimistic in the beginning a lot like relationship Sacramento’s up 8785 in the third Booker

Had an awful start to this game two of 11 for seven points when he stepped to the free throw line then he started to go off sabonis the numbers are incredible I mean he just keeps stacking these ridiculous numbers third straight triple double 3518 and 12 Sacramento’s killing Phoenix in the paint getting

Deep at The Rim whenever they want and then vogle had the Duran at the five nerkish decision where later in the fourth quarter like he tried to ride it out without nerkish for a while Phoenix hits a three-point barrage that also had a weird stretch where herder was getting

Yelled at by Mike Brown around 10 minutes left to go in the game because of being late on whatever defensively they wanted to do I think it was just as simple as showing or staying with the screener and I don’t think he didn’t even come back into the game so anyway

Phoenix is hunting herder first then Monk and then bringing sabonis out in switches Durant was definitely looking to do that more which leads to the other side of the sabonis coin but then sabonis on the other side is just destroying everybody just camped out at The Rim offensive rebounds off of Misses

Great assist his pass like his numbers you almost feel guilty being like yeah he’s pretty good like man the numbers make this guy a Hall of Famer and when you look at them all um Royce O’Neal coming over has a huge three late Booker over the stretch of closing this

Game out after the slow start he had three ISO mid-range pull-ups I don’t know what to do with Booker when he has it like that he’s one of my favorite players in the league that ISO mid-range pull-up thing when he gets to his spot it’s it’s basically Unstoppable then

Durant throws in a few of those so Phoenix is pulling away here late they despite a weird turnover from Durant where he didn’t pay any attention to what was happening behind him Fox knocks it Loose they get a three now it’s a onepoint game when they were up on The

Possession and score um but ultimately the O’Neal 3 was such a big shot so basically we’re looking at like free throws and they’re trying to stop the clock and and get guys to the line something happened last night that does not happen very often Booker’s fouled by

Sabonis on an inbounds and sabonis or excuse me Booker loses the basketball so live it’s like oh wait a minute was it even a foul or book Booker turn it over like let’s challenge it sabonis looked at the bench and was shaking his head going don’t challenge it don’t and as we

Saw in the replay he clearly hacks Booker’s arm we don’t see that very often where the player is telling his own bench in a huge spot he’s don’t don’t even do it don’t challenge it they didn’t offensive rebound on a misf free throw and that’s game Phoenix has won 13

Of 17 now we have a Beal question again who’s missed basically half the season Sacramento 23 and 14 to start the year 7- n in their last 16 games Phoenix is the five seed but five or excuse me four behind Denver um and that’s kind of

Where we’re at right now with them let’s talk about Boston and Brooklyn they beat the Nets in Brooklyn last night up 16 to start the fourth quarter this game got to 111 105 with 249 left Derek white hit basically like the biggest three after this big Nets run Tatum had 31 at the

Half he finished with 41 so the late Celtic stuff I hear about it all the time I’m borderline obsessed trying to figure out what it is or what it isn’t I know what my eyes tell me then I look at the numbers and I go there’s just not as

Much in there as you would think unless you want to talk about settling so let’s run over some stuff because we get a lot here fourth quarter net rating for Boston it’s third best in the NBA it can be a little weird at times Utah is second um you could also have blowouts

Where you know the other team comes back and then it screws up your net rating in the fourth quarter but if that were the case then they wouldn’t have the third best in the NBA the offense in the clutch for Boston right you’re thinking oh it probably dips down there a little bit

You know don’t love what I see all the time they have the fourth best clutch offense in the NBA okay there too many isolations is it that whoa wait they have the fourth most isolations run over the course of a game I don’t know that I always love the isolation tracking

Number based on the totals but this number exists for all 30 teams so how does Boston match up fourth most are they efficient on those well they’re seventh and point for possession on the isos what about drives this is something else I’ve looked at do they settle a little bit too

Much maybe we have something here finally they’re 27th in drives per game and they’re 20th on free throw attempts per game for a team right in the NBA so are we getting closer to trying to figure something out let’s look at the shot charts 40% of their shots are

Threes it’s the most in the league but they’re seventh in three-point percentage in the fourth quarter 47% of their shots in the fourth quarter are threes right that’s number one in the league it dips down to 10th but it’s not necessarily disastrous from three points so now when I start looking at it

I go let’s look at their free throw frequency let’s look at the free throw rate on some of the stuff if you just go pick and roll ball handler ball ends up with the ball handler they have the third worst free throw frequency of any

Team you’re going to be running a lot of high or just any pick and roll in the NBA you’re going to be running a lot of that especially with guys like Tatum and everybody that can initiate kind of their own offense keep the ball wait they’re not getting to the free throw

Line very much does that mean they’re just taking a lot of Threes off of that there could be the correlation to that so when I started looking at threes they have the most shots from 25 to 29 ft and the fourth fewest shots at The Rim so

That’s why we have less free throws but here’s what I thought was M maybe the most informative part of trying to figure this all out like are they not taking enough free throws in games overall or late in games and that’s what’s leading To just something we don’t like feeling like they’re not aggressive enough feeling like they’re settling how about this number if you look at isolation possessions in the NBA top five players it’s Luca MB Tatum SGA and ant all right ranging from Luca having 7.3 isolations again this just ends up

Being like a purest definition of isolation not necessarily like I mean clearly Luca has more than seven possessions a game but by this standard Lucas first his free throw frequency is is 18.5% embiid’s is 17.6 sga’s at 21 ant who everybody thinks doesn’t get any calls is at 13.5 Tatum is last at

11.7 so he’s third in these isolation possessions in the NBA for player and he’s not even close to these other guys in free throw frequency so I guess what I’m saying here is that we’re we just need him to flop more he needs to to cheat the game a

Little bit more because we start baking all these numbers together and you’re like yep and there’s still winning 75% of the games so it may be these moments some lingering playoff stuff that isn’t accurate but there aren’t these staggering numbers yet they settle for a few too many threes which leads to not

Getting enough free throws and that’s fine but if you look at this number in comparison to their number one option all the time he just doesn’t get to the free throw line enough and maybe that’s part of a solution to what is still kind of a minor problem on the scale of problems

For teams in the League this year we close with Oklahoma City’s win at Orlando sha on the call with Stan Van Gundy which is kind of funny if you think about the history there um but it’s cool older guys end up working out everything here’s the point uh younger

Teams both teams looking ahead to the Future Oklahoma City obviously better this year a little bit more of a sense of who they are so it’s still early for the magic but it’s 127 113 uh SG had eight points at the half and only two free throw attempts for like he was

Three of 11 so you’re like man they’re down and that’s what’s happening with SGA but Jay Williams the good one uh Jaylen Williams excuse me he had 33 over the course of game stepped up when SJ struggled by the way SJ was fine he ended up with uh an absurd final tally

On this one because he went off in the second half so really this kind of comes down to something that’s really really easy to look at it’s just a three-point shooting like Oklahoma City shot it better from three they were 41% Orlando was 31% Orlando’s 29th in the league

Three-point percentage it’s a massive problem for team that I think a lot of us really enjoy watching because of the players on it um and there’s another part with Oklahoma City that I just love I love what their staff I I just I love what they represent which is so rare for

A young team and that’s just kind of understanding how to get open looks and sga’s the anchor of it it because you’re worried about him in this mini Giannis wall defensive thing that you have to deal with with how good he is on his drives and how good he is getting the

Free throw line and on top of everything else he can shoot but if you watch them on drives the off ball offensive players are really good at moving around and just resetting their positioning and it’s my favorite thing it’s the easiest thing to do at every level of basketball

Everybody should be doing it just because somebody else has the ball and they’re driving doesn’t mean that now the position is over for you and I actually think it’s a great Habit to get into and it also is going to lead to open shots in the playoffs instead of

Some of these teams that still even in playoff games like oh I don’t have the ball I’m just a stretch three now and I’m going to stand here in the corner and never ever just reset left or right 10 ft you know make the defensive player

Have to move a little bit maybe you’re bringing him further away from a potential offensive rebound chance and Oklahoma City for a young team watch them they they do this really well He

Ryen Russillo runs through some games he’s watched recently in the NBA, including Timberwolves-Clippers, Kings-Suns, and Thunder-Magic.

Check out the Bill Simmons YouTube channel: youtube.com/billsimmons

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