Jason Timpf, Hoops Tonight – How Do the Kings Stack Up Out West?
I just Jo of my favorite people to talk basketball with Jason Tim host of Hoops tonight that is on the volume atore Jason LT a must follow on Twitter if you like basketball even a little bit Jason thanks for making time man really appreciate you of course and the kings
Are playing some better basketball it’s a good timing yeah so I let’s let’s hey let’s start there um there the number seven seed they’re a half game behind Phoenix everything in the west is is a huge mess we talk about it every single day here on the Insiders do you feel
Like the kings are in the right spot or do you think they should be lower you think they should be higher are they kind of Landing in the standings about how they’re playing you know it’s funny they kind of strike me as like the the expected next phase of Team development
In the sense where like last year they were so much more locked in on a night in Night Out basis just simply because it was new and it was exciting and there was this kind of like uh like obvious goal in front of them of the postseason
That was kind of a new and UNF familiar thing and this is what it’s like when you go into the next season and you realize like actually there’s like another level we have to reach when we get to April and you know this 82
Stretch can kind of be a little bit of a grind and like you know one of the the the nice things was is I think last year’s postseason series with the Warriors exposed like a clear pathway for them in the sense that they’re a team that like actually is really fast
On the perimeter it can like not just beat teams with dribble penetration but also can guard and and like even when you look into this season when they have defended they’ve won this I I think last year they kind of viewed themselves more as a team that outscored people and I
Think this year has been a pretty clear inclination that that’s not what their identity is they’re a team that is more Brute Force they they need to defend and then rely on just their Supreme athletic gifts at the guard position to create quality shots and so I’m not I I’ve
Never been a a believer in overreacting to regular season results some of the uneven performances this year are to be expected coming off of a great regular season last year it really just comes down to whether not they can defend like they have at stretches this year when
They get to um when they get to April honestly that Lakers game was the best example like everyone’s talking about Monk and fox and don’t get me wrong I saw that one coming a mile away because it’s such a bad matchup for the Lakers but what happens is is like when they
Get kind of cooking on offense they get energetic and then they start defending they only allowed 20 points in that second quarter run uh against the Lakers and like to me that’s that’s going to be the key and I know Mike Brown always preaches it it’s just about whether or
Not they can embrace it in terms of their character as a team yeah Jason that you bring up sort of like the inconsistency of the Kings but it kind of feels like that’s the league right now where 20-point leads mean nothing where the just the game is all over the
Place and you know the Kings get roasted quite often here in Sacramento specifically but around the league for like oh here we go another 20 point blown lead but you know we watched it with the Clippers this weekend we watch like almost every team in the league has
Lost just in the last week a game that they shouldn’t have lost to a team that was missing a star or two and they lost egregiously and it’s it’s kind of like it feels like the trend of this season there are a bunch of teams that are just
Kind of in the same basket you feel that oh 100% did you guys see that stat after the Sou game last night they’re 33 and seven against the East but they’re 15- s against the West I thought that was I thought that was such a great example of
Something I’ve been preaching this for years ever since the uh uh uh like I even as a guy who roots for LeBron like I think it’s completely legitimate to be like yeah like the the multiple trips to the finals a factor there was just the weakness of the Eastern Conference it’s
Def different now in the sense that like the top of the East is actually really good it’s more the the bottom of the East but for about like four or five years now that bottom six or seven teams in the East is like free win territory
And you play 52 of your 82 games against your own conference and so you can really pile up you know that that’s where you get the crazy net rating numbers and the crazy like individual metrics and all these different things and like the West is just an absolute
Bloodbath and really when you look at the standings in the Western Conference it’s like Denver’s near the top but they’re the best team in the league in my opinion so like they obviously are just better than everybody you know Minnesota like they were in a bunch of
Momentum at the end of last year they kind of remind me of Phoenix in 2021 coming out of the bubble where it’s like they just have a lot of talent and this is the first year where they’re really kind of putting it all together and so they’re more or less where Sacramento
Was last year where they just have attacked the regular season a lot Clippers same sort of thing they took a team that kind of struggled with regular season focus and they added one of the best regular season players in the league in James Harden to come in and
Just kind of like float that ship and then the Thunder are your textbook Young super talented just energetic machine everybody after that is a really good team that’s dealing with the classic regular season stuff and they’re all beating up each other it’s like the Pelicans are good the suns are good the
Kings are good the Mavs are good the Warriors are good the Lakers are good they’re all just beating each other up and the the reason why the Lakers and and warriors kind of dropped to the bottom of that stretch was Draymond got suspended for most of the year right and
Then on the Lakers front they had that three and 10 stretch after the inseason tournament that just dug them a massive hole in the standings and had some really bad losses in that stretch but all of those teams are relatively close to each other and you’re right it’s
Really just about who’s the more desperate team on that particular night who you know who’s the team that like just that that brings their best punch on that specific night relative to their opponent any anybody in that group is capable of losing to anybody on any given night talking with Jason Tim host
Of Hoops tonight on the volume um how would you feel you just talked about just kind of the the M mishmash of teams up there at the top of the West if Sacramento were land in the number six seed how would you rank their matchups in order of most favorable to least
Favorable uh between Minnesota OKC and Denver Minnesota’s a tough match up for them um Oklahoma City even without Carl Anthony towns just because it’s that combination of elite perimeter defense and rim protection like that that to me is the thing they have the athletes to hang with Malik and dearen on the
Perimeter while also having the interior like like Rudy go bear is just an awesome bracket for that type of coverage and again like that’s just Sacramento’s biggest offensive advantage in my opinion obviously Minnesota has some things to figure out and last night KY Kyle Anderson at the four at the end
Of the game was like an abject disaster and if it wasn’t and if it wasn’t for if it wasn’t for Mike Conley and ant making four consecutive pull-up jump shots down the stretch of that game they lose like that that’s how much of a disaster Kyle
Anderson at the four was so they got some stuff to figure out but like Minnesota just has better defensive Personnel Oklahoma City I actually think that they have some real speed advantages against and and then Chad just with I I think that sabonis could do some real damage to CAD underneath
The basket the Nuggets obviously are always tough because they’re they’re just they’re just so big and strong on the interior and and I just don’t think they have the defensive Personnel to hang with them at all underneath the rim um the Clippers it’s just so hard to
Tell because it just really comes down to are you going to be able to play sabonis or excuse me zubot off the floor because if you can play zubot off the floor and you make them go small they actually are much smaller as a small ball team than they were in years past
And they can really struggle with defensive rebounding which is an area where sabonis can have a ton of success and so I would probably list them in order like i’ definitely want to play the Thunder most I’d probably want to play the Clippers second most Minesota third and then Denver last interesting
All right um I I got a question for you about sabonis like we watch sabonis every day and and you know like I had the joy of watching Demarcus cover uh cousins covering him for six and a half years and just appreciating just the the unique player that he was the
Personality is a whole different question but the player he was and then you’re watching sabonis and the stats are just incredible 20 points you know 13.5 rebounds leaving the league 8.4 assists why is it that you don’t think he’s being recognized for just the the Workman like the the quality that he’s
Putting up each and every night uh for the Kings it just comes down to last year’s postseason and some of the taste that that left in people’s mouths like like sabonis is the one thing with sabonis is he kind of falls into a tier of players we’ve seen this before like I
Think I think Julius Randall’s a bit of this kind of guy I think that Kevin Love was a bit of this kind of guy in Cleveland where it’s like the full like the big uh like power under the basket you know Center who’s like a little bit
Smaller than some of the bigger centers in the league not a great like vertical crazy athlete but relies on bully ball they end up eventually running into another guy who’s as big and strong as them and then like that’s kind of what cavon Looney and Draymond Green were
Last year they were guys that just kind of could hold up against that big shoulder when it hits them in the middle of the chest you know what I mean and so I think that was just like sabonis really struggled to finish around the rim and on the rooll in that series and
I think I think that just left a bad taste in in a lot of people’s mouths and and again a lot of it is matchup dependent because like you take a guy like Anthony Davis who has a much higher center of gravity and he destroyed him the other night like it was honestly
Embarrassing for Anthony Davis how bad sabonis outplayed him the other night and a big part of that is like sabonis actually against a lot of specific types of centers can have a ton of success like against Anthony Davis I think he’d eat CAD holgren alive it’s just a
Question of whether or not he’d be able to to play that style against some of the bigger players in the league when he gets to later postseason rounds and unfortunately it’s just it’s just the way the NBA kind of news cycle Works where like it doesn’t matter what you do
After you have an ugly postseason moment people are just going to wait for you to do it in the postseason it’s just it’s just the natural Order of Things unfortunately like even LeBron like LeBron came out of that 2011 collapse and was amazing all season long won MVP
And then had a bad game five against the Celtics and everyone was ready to write the dude off and then he went crazy and won it now the rest is history so like at at a certain point it’s just you got to put your money where your mouth is
When you get to the postseason and I think that is the ne I think that’s the next you know like like barrier he has to break through is like what is he going to do when he has a guy that can meet his level of physicality underneath
The rim that’s Jason T you can listen to him uh on hoops at Hoops tonight on the volume you can check him out on YouTube does a ton of great stuff there and _ Jason LT on Twitter he is a must follow Jason thanks so much for hanging out
With us man we really thanks guys this was fun looking forward to next time no doubt
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