Lakers lose to Blazers, Jokic's MVP case builds, Warriors beat Wizards _ Hoops Tonight

All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight presented by FanDuel here at The Volume. Happy Monday, everybody. I hope all of you guys have had a great weekend. We have a jam-packed show tonight. Four games that we're getting into. Lakers Blazers, Nuggets Heat, Wizards Warriors, and Grizzlies Celtics. 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 shows and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish, don't forget you can find them wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight. And last but not least, you guys have heard me talk about GameTime, the fastest-growing ticketing app in the United States. 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Again, enter your email and the code HOOPS, that's H-O-O-P-S, for $20 off. Download GameTime today. Last-minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. All right, so the Blazers beat the crap out of the Los Angeles Lakers again tonight, and I wanted to talk a little bit about Darvin Ham and his game plan, because we spent a lot of time in our last show talking about Darvin Ham's genius game plan against the Golden State Warriors when he was top-locking on all of the off-ball actions and ignoring all the non-shooters and trying to funnel all of Golden State's back cuts into rim protection. Well, tonight you got to see the other side of that, which is kind of a stubborn ideology from the Mike Budenholzer coaching tree, which is where Darvin Ham came from, and that is running drop coverage against absurdly good pull-up jump shooters, which is going to end a lot like what you saw tonight with Damian Lillard lighting the Lakers on fire for 30 points in the first half. Now again, with drop coverage, when it's run properly, it works. When the guard is chasing over the top of the screen and applying back pressure, and the big man is up higher to contain against those pull-up floaters and mid-range shots and is the type of athlete that Anthony Davis is that can get back and protect the rim or the way that Brooke Lopez is for the Milwaukee Bucks, when it works, when it's done properly, it's really effective. The problem is that it's nearly impossible to run properly, especially over some sort of large sample size. I mean, tonight was another great example of that. You see the Lakers do a really nice job on Dame for a few minutes. It's one thing to do it once. It's another thing to do it twice. It's another thing to do it three times. It's a whole different animal when you have to do it 40 to 50 times in a game. And I've just seen this way too often in recent NBA history, where these really, really good pull-up jump shooting guards, they don't have any issue getting separation from the guard going over the ball screen. And so then all of a sudden your big man is in this awkward position where if he's not high enough, it's just pull-up jump shot city. And if he is high, it's an easy pocket pass to the big man rolling down the lane. We look at Boston versus Golden State in the finals last year. This was a major topic of discussion for us as we were breaking down that series. Just in general, I wanted Boston to switch and try to force Steph Curry and Jordan Poole and Klay Thompson and all them to iso them all game long. But instead, he ran drop coverage and Emu Udoka did. And as a result, they got burned. In game four, Steph Curry lit them on fire and they lost a series that they probably should have won in retrospect. At least they had the talent to. And you know, again, like if you're Steph Curry and you see that coverage, are you uncomfortable or are you comfortable? You're salivating at that coverage. Look at the difference between that genius game plan against Golden State in the Lakers game the other night where you're actively making guys who don't want to shoot in Draymond Green and Jonathan Kaminga and Kevon Looney take wide open shots. And then you're making the guards who want to shoot jump shots try to finish over length around the rim. That's a game plan that makes them do something that they're uncomfortable doing. And so as a result, that led to positive results. But when your game plan actively plays into the strengths of the other team's best player, that's what's going to happen. You're going to give up 30 points to Damian Lillard and you're going to get your butt kicked. The problem with guys that are so beholden to drop coverage, guys like Mike Budenholzer, guys like Emei Yudoka, guys like Darvin Ham, a lot of coaches around. I don't want to be overly critical of them because it is kind of a common thing that we see around the NBA. The problem is that when guys start making shots, they look at it as an execution problem instead of a flaw in the coverage. So for instance, one of the big reasons why Darvin Ham starts with Dennis Schroeder as opposed to playing an off-ball player that complements the other starters in that lineup better is he thinks of him as like, hey, I can trust Dennis to chase him over the top of the screen. And like I said, he did at first, but that's a really tough job. And over the course of the game, he started to get fooled by Dame as Dame started to get him to lean one way over the screen and then reject the screen and go the other way or get him to go over the screen, but then completely pull back and go the other way. Now he's trapped on the wrong side of the screen or just in general getting caught on the screen. It's just a really, really difficult job to do and inevitably over the course of time, guys will get caught on those screens. That's why if you look at Dennis's first shift, it looked great, but then the rest of the game, he was getting barbecued by Dame. But from Darvin sitting on the sideline, he's looking at that and he's going, we aren't executing it right. As opposed to acknowledging that like, there's nobody in the league that can execute that right against a great pull-up jump shooter for that large sample size. Marcus Smart and Derek White are much better defensive guards than the guard core of the Lakers and they were getting barbecued and dropped coverage in the finals. You know, Al Horford and Robert Williams were coming pretty damn high up to the level of the screen. They were getting barbecued. Anthony Davis was coming pretty damn high. He was getting barbecued. It's just extremely difficult to do. It's one thing against guys that can make pull-up jump shots, but when you're going against the top tier guys in the league, if it's Dame Lillard, if it's Steph Curry, if it's Kyrie Irving, you cannot run that coverage. They work so hard on those shots every day of their life that they are comfortable in that setting. I mean, Dame was coming down early shot clock, 20, 21 seconds on the shot clock, just right over the ball screen, stop and pop from like 26 feet, bucket. He just works too hard on that. Again, you want to target your game plan towards what makes teams uncomfortable. So for instance, if you trap Dame or you aggressively switch, now the shots that Dame has to take, he has to get separation with a live dribble. He's going to hit some of those. He had a really tough step back over Austin Reeves at the end of the first half, a hard step back that broke Austin off and knocked it down. That's a much tougher shot than him coming off of a ball screen. You might have to help and rotate out of it. That's correct. But wouldn't you rather give up shots to lesser shooters on the back end than one of the greatest pull-up jump shooters to ever play the game of basketball? That's the way I look at it, is you've got to target your game plan towards what makes the other team uncomfortable. Dame wants to score. If you turn them into a pass or all game long and you make role players make shots, I think you have a better chance. And so I thought that was an interesting kind of back and forth example of how a game plan can go right against the Warriors and then how a game plan can go wrong against the Blazers. And the really unfortunate part of it is, yeah, did they shoot better than usual? Yeah. Okay. But if they make four or five less of those threes, it's still, I mean, they were up by 20-25 most of the second half. It just puts yourself in a position where it was really difficult to win that game. And unfortunately, because of where you are in the standings, you know, a hot shooting game like this is, you know, if Boston loses in a hot shooting environment, they can go like, oh, it is what it is. We have 41 wins. You have 26 wins. You don't have time to lose because of shooting variants. The last thing I want to talk about in this game was Anthony Davis. Again, he had 19 points and 20 rebounds tonight. One of the weirdest things about covering this Lakers team over the last few years has been Anthony Davis and LeBron James can put up box score numbers every single night. But there's always a huge difference between what their box score says and what their real impact was. Like AD grabbed a lot of uncontested rebounds in this game, particularly in the first half where guys weren't even crashing the glass. They're just running back in transition defense and AD is just grabbing an uncontested rebound. So that's a really easy way to fill up the stat sheet. Anthony Davis took 18 shots in 31 minutes. So you see 19 and 20, you're like, oh, he's one point shy of a 20-20 game. No, no, no. He was on a basketball court with a Portland Trailblazers team where every single player on that team was physically incapable of even coming close to handling him, even with help and double teams, which Portland, when they did double, it was sloppy. And a lot of times they left him on an island. This was not Golden State swarming Anthony Davis. This was a sloppy defensive Portland team that was leaving Anthony Davis on an island a lot. He took 18 shots and only got 19 points out of them. Now again, there is the foot injury and I do have some pause there. I personally had a stress fracture before one of my seasons playing in college and it's funny because in the first half of the season was terrible. At one point I got pulled into the coach's office and the coach basically was like, hey, I gave you this full ride scholarship. What's the deal, man? And they actually pulled me from the starting lineup for, I think, two games. And I had just come off of this foot injury and I wasn't playing well. He had every right to feel that way. But then in the second half of the season, I started to trust my foot again and I played really well and I made an all-conference team in the second half of the season. So like part of me wants to be like, you know, maybe it's just his foot. But the reality is they don't have the time. Like they cannot afford for AD to ease his way into this. And if he does need another month to get things right with his foot, then this Lakers team has no ceiling. And it's been one of the more sad subplots of this LeBron Anthony Davis era, with the exception of the 2020 season when they won the title, Anthony Davis has been incapable of remaining at his ceiling. We've seen bits and pieces of it. You saw him dominate the Suns for two games in the playoffs. You saw him earlier this season, and that was two years ago, but you saw him earlier this season put together like a 10-15 game stretch where he looked like he might be the best player in the world. Drops 50 in Washington and then leaves early the next game because he's sick. Then gets in foul trouble against Joel Embiid and shortly after that he's hurt and we haven't seen the same AD since. And it's just really unfortunate because his inability to remain at that ceiling has put the entire franchise at a disadvantage. Again, like I always say this, but when you have LeBron James and Anthony Davis on the roster, to be as bad as they've been the last two years, you need a lot of things to go wrong. It's not just one thing. It wasn't just Russ not playing well. It wasn't just the role players that they sent out in the Russ trade. It was also LeBron getting hurt a lot. Anthony Davis getting hurt even more. And when LeBron's been able to play, he's been MVP level. When Anthony Davis has been on the floor, it's been somewhere between Clint Capella and top-tier AD, a little closer to Clint Capella than we're comfortable admitting. And that's just really unfortunate because, I mean, I don't even know how you plan as a team for this kind of thing when it's like, okay, AD's going to be out for a month. But when he comes back, we got this other month where he's a shell of himself. And then maybe if we're lucky, he'll hit that top tier again and we might get 10, 15 games where he looks really good. And at that point, it's just fingers crossed and hope that he stays healthy. I just feel really bad for him. And it makes it really hard to kind of judge where this Lakers team is going moving forward. All right, let's move on to Nuggets Heat. So this is an example. We just talked a lot about drop coverage and how I prefer switching, but tonight's Nuggets Heat game was a great example of when switching doesn't work. So Miami is one of my favorite teams to watch in general because they have a very, very modern approach to the game. And one of the things that they do on defense is they do a ton of switching. And it works really well because of their personnel. They've got, as a team, obviously from the culture standpoint, everyone's in great shape. Everyone competes. You don't play if you don't defend. But also Bayonetta Bio gives you the ability to switch out onto any perimeter player that allows you to switch pick and roll, which is something you can't do if you have a different type of defensive center. And then they also just help and rotate out of that kind of stuff extremely well. Jimmy Butler's one of the best players in the league at hawking passing lanes on the back end and making it look like he's not a threat, but then suddenly jumping in and getting a pick six going the other way. And that's a big part of why Miami is fifth in the NBA in defense this year. But the problem is for specifically Denver, Nikola Jokic is so, so good at when he gets that switch, quick diving to quick post position, catching and finishing quickly around the rim. And so in order to survive that, you need a certain amount of size and athleticism to allow yourself to scheme around those switches, whether that's doubling and recovering out of it or fronting or whatever it is that you do. And this is where the heat are in a personnel predicament. So they actually threw a graphic up on the screen in the national broadcast I was watching today on NBA TV, but I can't remember the exact number. It was somewhere between seven and nine undrafted players on the roster. A significant chunk of their rotation are guys that are undrafted players. Now, to be clear, undrafted does not mean not an NBA player. Those guys that are playing for the heat are bona fide NBA players. But when you're dealing with undrafted players, they usually are compensating for a lack of blue-chip NBA talent with crazy work ethic, a developed skill set, high basketball IQ, commitment to the defensive end. They grind out those areas to find a spot in the NBA. But the truth is, if you're a 6'8'' wing that can run and jump and has a 6'11'' wingspan, you're not going to be an undrafted free agent. You're going to be a first-round pick. A lot of the guys on that roster are short and thin and physically overmatched in a lot of these matchups. One of the really unfortunate things about this Miami Heat season is we thought for sure, I thought for sure at this deadline, that they would make a move to bolster the frontcourt and they just didn't. Especially in the frontcourt, everyone not named Bam Edobayo and Jimmy Butler is a fringe NBA player at best. So they're just completely overmatched in these physical areas of the game. So one of the things that was happening in this game is Jokic is just bringing the ball up the floor, running a quick inverted pick and roll, getting that switch, and then just passing the ball back to the guard, diving down to whoever it is that he can get that switch again against, catching and just turning and finishing every time. We talked about this a lot in the Sixers series last year, but Miami in post-matches and just in general, but they were treating it the same with Bam. But in post-matches, what Miami will do is they'll front and back. So it's like a bracket coverage, but basically whoever's guarding the post will try to get out in front of Nikola Jokic, squat down low and put his hands up to force a pass over the top. That over-the-top pass has to be kind of a lob to get over Bam or whoever it is that's fronting. So then you offer backside help to take that pass away. But the problem is every Heat player is so short that even when they bracket properly, they just throw that high pass and Jokic can turn and just hold the ball up high and pick them apart with that over-the-top pass. And that's where that overall lack of size becomes so much of a problem. Like normally, I'd be like, you know, blitz him or double him and just try to apply as much ball pressure as possible so that those passes don't come out clean so that you can rotate out. But the passes are coming out clean because you've got undrafted free agents trying to bracket him. It's just a personnel limitation. I mean, in some of this, like, some of this is you just got to tip the cap to Jokic because even on the plays where Bam managed to avoid a switch and remain on Jokic and suddenly there's seven seconds on the shot clock, Jokic was just walking him down to the rim and just beating him with pump fakes and pivots and every conceivable post move known to mankind. He scored on him straight up in the post four times in this game. So, I mean, some of it's just personnel, but like, as a roster, they had absolutely no chance. Like, think of how bad this loss is. This is a top five defense in the league, a Miami Heat team that's well over 500. You're, you know, aside from Kyle Lowry, you're healthy. You're playing against a Nuggets team that is down Jamal Murray and down Aaron Gordon. Probably their second and third best players. You have to win that game, but they couldn't because they were at such a significant personnel disadvantage and Nikol Jokic just picked them apart. So, that's a really bad loss. One last note on this game for Nuggets fans, Thomas Bryant, who they picked up at the trade deadline for Devon Reed. So, obviously, I've covered the Lakers pretty closely this year, so I just wanted to give Nuggets fans a little breakdown of Thomas Bryant. I actually thought he was a really nice pickup. You know, the Nuggets went with DeAndre Jordan as their backup center for the first chunk of the year. They kind of went away from that and went smaller as of late, but like, they needed a legit backup center. And, you know, I think Thomas Bryant's about as good as you're going to get for that type of position. He plays his ass off. He runs the floor extremely well when the game is up and down. He has amazing hands rolling to the rim. He's got, he's like, vacuums everything in. He finishes at the rim extremely well. He's a great offensive rebounder. Shooting the laces off the basketball from the perimeter this year, too. He's just a really poor defensive player. He struggles in pick and roll and in isolation. You even saw, you saw a play today where like, bam, just in transition, just dropped his shoulder, just went right through Thomas Bryant to the rim and got an and one. He's going to give up a lot defensively, but he is a very, very good offensive pick. And what does that mean? That means that's a perfectly fine bench pick. The really tough decisions there are going to be, you know, in a playoff series. If Thomas doesn't have it going offensively, Mike Malone might have to pull the plug on him a little bit quicker and go small in those cases. Just because if you're not getting the offense from Thomas Bryant, then the tradeoff is just not worth it there. All right, moving on to Warriors-Wizards. Just going to hit on this game quickly because we're going to talk a lot of Warriors tomorrow. The Warriors won 135-126. They went from down 15 to up 20 in just about a quarter and a half. They weathered a ridiculous barrage of scoring from Bradley Beal and Chris Apsporzingas. They combined for almost 70. And this Wizards team is pretty good. They were 14-8 coming into tonight since December 23rd, which was the sixth best record in the league in that span. So it's a quality win. The Wizards, we think of them as a bad team, but they've been dealing with a lot of injuries throughout the season like anybody else. But when they're healthy, it's a good amount of talent that's on that floor. There's two things that I wanted to hit from this game on the Warriors front. First of all, it was good to see Andrew Wiggins get going. Since coming back from his injury, he had been just 27% from three. A big part of that is his shot is pretty flat. And when your shot is flat, you just don't have a lot of margin for error. So you really have to be dialed in to be knocking that shot down and kind of got it going a little bit tonight. He was three for six from three. But the big thing that stood out to me is you can really see the leg strength coming back. I've always talked about Andrew Wiggins as a power wing. I talked about this a lot in the playoffs last year. The ability, when he's drawing good matchups, because teams are throwing really good defensive players at step and clay, he's got the ability to just rip through against thinner, like physically overmatched defenders, to get easy shots just driving to his right without having to do anything complicated. Not having to put the ball on the floor and hit a dribble combination. Just catch and rip through, especially with the closeout opportunities that he was getting. I thought there was a play at his first basket in this game, about halfway through the first quarter. He just ripped through and body-checked Christoph Porzingis with his left shoulder and shoved him back and made a little pop shot in the lane. I was like, okay, you're not doing that if you don't have your leg strength. That's a good sign that Wiggins is starting to get it back. He was just living around the rim tonight. And that's what you want from Andrew Wiggins. You're going to depend on him when he's dialed in to knock down threes. He's shown that he can do that. But that real ceiling of Andrew Wiggins' game with this team is when he's also ripping through and getting closeout attacks to the basket. And then the second thing I wanted to hit on was Michael Green. When he was out last end of December, early January with that injury, we were all concerned about Golden State's depth. In particular, we were looking at them getting somebody in that frontcourt to bolster them in the bench groups. And Jonathan Kamiga kind of exploded during that time, which was a good thing. But the reality is, if Michael Green is going to play this well, they don't need a backup big. Now, they might still want to look to get one just simply for the sake of depth. But even then, Steve Kerr doesn't really like playing traditional bigs. There was actually a quote that was going around today of Bob Myers discussing the buyout market. And he basically said, it's not just about who I think the team needs. He's like, it's about who the coach will play. It was basically a reference to the fact that Steve Kerr does not like to play centers, which is just the truth. But if they don't end up getting anybody in the buyout market, as long as Michael Green is healthy and playing like this, they're going to be fine. He was 4 for 4 from 3 tonight. He's 13 for 24 from 3 since returning from the injury. He also is just like that natural Golden State fit from a ball movement standpoint. Ball doesn't stop with him. He makes quick and easy reads. He knows when to cut, when to stay in the corner. He's just got that natural basketball IQ that fits really well with the Golden State system. So at this point, I'm like, just get Gary Payton healthy. And if you got Gary Payton healthy, and you've got a bench group that involves Jordan Poole and Dante DiVincenzo and Jonathan Kaminga and Jamichael Green, that's 9 really good players. And I really like the Warriors' chances. As long as they can get to the playoffs with that 9 guys healthy, they're going to be in pretty good shape. They do have a really tough game against the Clippers tomorrow night. We are going to be covering that game on Wednesday morning. Our last game of the night is Memphis-Boston. This actually from yesterday, but shortly before the Super Bowl. But it's a good game, and I wanted to cover it. Also, one last note here. Actually, I'll just save that and hit that at the start of next show. We've had some people complaining about too much Lakers and Warriors lately. I just want people to understand that we have to hit those kinds of things. But at the same time, we're going to hit other teams and other games around the league constantly. You just have to sort through some of the Lakers and Warriors stuff to get to it. But we'll talk about that later. Boston won the game 119-109. Memphis honestly played pretty well. They butchered Boston in the paint. They won points in the paint 60-34. Dylan Brooks did a really nice job again just denying Jason Tatum off the ball to disrupt his rhythm and using a ton of ball pressure and physicality to help Tatum to 3-16 from the field. Dylan Brooks had another dirty play the other night where he just straight up swung and threw a punch at Mike Conley. Half of my brain is like, I'm so sick and tired of this guy because he just shouldn't be on a basketball court when he's just trying to hurt people. But then I've got this other side of my brain that's like, it's kind of impressive the defensive job that he's done on superstars all year long. But down the stretch of this game, they trapped Memphis in the half court. They sagged way off of John Morant. Got a bunch of stops. Held them to just nine points from the 7.5-minute mark to the 1.5-minute mark of the fourth quarter. And then on the other end, they were getting crazy dribble penetration with Derek White. They just could not keep Derek White getting downhill. And that started Boston's driving kick. And then everyone was making good reads out of that. And they hit a bunch of important threes. And then when they couldn't contain Derek White, they started sending that big up higher. And what always happens when you have to send that big up higher, that's where that pocket pass opens up. They actually got two wide open threes on slips. Went from Robert Williams and Jason Tatum slipping after ball screens that ended up starting that driving kick. Again, when it comes to driving kick basketball, you need that initial advantage. And that initial advantage can be anything. It could be a post up that leads to a double team. It could be a transition run out. It can be a ball screen. It can be an isolation beat my man off the dribble. It can also be I draw a second defender on the ball screen and float a little pass over the top to the screen or rolling to the rim. It doesn't matter how you get that initial advantage. But once you get there, it's just making good reads out of that. All in all, it was an 18-9 run in the fourth quarter that put the game away. Memphis is now 16-15 against teams that are at least 500 or better. Now, there are six teams in the league right now that have at least 34 wins. All of them are at least six games above 500 against teams that are 500 or better. Except for two. The Memphis Grizzlies and the Cleveland Cavaliers. And I don't think it's a coincidence that those two teams are teams that I've said have fatal flaws. Again, the other four teams are just beating everybody and the good teams. Well over 500 against the good teams. Memphis and Cleveland, not so much. And this is where I want to talk about entry points on defense. Because both of these teams are excellent defenses. Cleveland's number one in the league in defensive rating. Memphis is number three in the league in defensive rating. But neither of these teams can get stops against the good teams, especially at games. That's the thing that I wanted to dive into a little bit. So for example, we see teams often in NBA history that defend really well in the regular season, but cannot defend in the postseason. My favorite example of this is the 2021 Utah Jazz. They were third in defensive rating in the regular season, allowing just 107.5 points per 100 possessions. Then they lost to the Clippers without Kawhi Leonard, and in that series gave up 128 points per 100 possessions. And the reason why is in those core Jazz lineups, you had Mike Conley and Donovan Mitchell. Two really poor defensive players in the backcourt. In a regular season, you have a base defensive concept. And if it's executed well, and you've got somebody like a Rudy Gobert, or a Jared Allen, or a Jaron Jackson, you can put forth the facsimile of a great defense. But when you get into that playoff setting, and there's plenty of time to figure out that base defensive scheme, suddenly it becomes more about personnel. They're going to find your weak points, those entry points, and how to exploit them. In that game, Boston was cooking Memphis just by getting dribble penetration at the beginning of possessions. In the first half of the fourth quarter, it was Tyus Jones. In the second half of the fourth quarter, it was John Moran. Every single time down the floor, attacking those two guys. Then they had to bring the bigs up to the level of the screen to help, which opened up those slips I was talking about. But then you go over to the other side of the floor, Boston doesn't have good entry points. Marcus Martin and Jaylen Brown did not play in this game. That's two excellent defenders in the starting lineup, but they were still able to close with Jason Tatum, Derek White, Grant Williams, Al Horford, and Robert Williams. Where's the entry point? Who's the guy there that you're like, I like my chances here. And then from an offensive standpoint, John Moran is really the only guy in that closing group for Memphis that can create his own shot. So you've got one guy who can create his own shot against five great defensive players, so there's no good entry point. Oh, and they're just sitting back and saying, go ahead and shoot, John. And he's 0 for 4 from 3, and he was way off on his last couple. There are a lot of teams in the league that can have success with their base scheme in the regular season, but when you get to against the good teams, and in a situation where scouting and scheming becomes more of an issue in the playoffs, that's where you see those limitations become a problem. So for instance, they're third in defense in the regular season, but they are 24th in clutch defense. They allow 119 points per 100 possessions when the game is within five points inside of five minutes. Why? It's attacking jaw every single time to get the defense in rotation. I always say clutch basketball mimics playoff basketball. And then on the other end of the floor, if you trap them in the half court so that they can't run, Memphis is a bottom 10 half court offense. So they've won a lot of games this year. They're in great shape in the standings, but the reality is, is against good teams when the game slows down, they can't score, and the other team doesn't seem to have much trouble scoring. And that's a big part of why I haven't got on the Memphis bandwagon yet. And then the reason why I lumped the Cavs in there, and I'm not going to dive into it right now, but it's the same concept. Mitchell and Garland, number one defense in the regular season by defensive rating, 16th in clutch defense. When they play the top 10 teams in the league, according to Cleaning the Glass, Cleveland's defensive rating drops from 109 to 114. Because again, they're attacking those entry points every time down the floor. It's just something I've learned in my time watching the NBA in recent years. Quick notes on the Celtics, they've now won six out of seven. Despite Marcus Smart missing all those games, Jalen Brown's missed three of those games. Rob Williams and Al Horford have missed two of those games each. But this is the advantage of depth. Like I said, you're down two starters, and you can still put out a group of five with Derek White, Jason Tatum, Grant Williams, Robert Williams, and Al Horford. That just gives you the ability to close the game against a really good team down two starters. How many teams in the league can say that? Now, they've had some stretches this year where they've let their foot off the gas, but even with that, they're still in control of that number one overall seed. They've never given it up, and I think that bodes well for them in the playoffs. Again, 2-2 series last year, they had to go to San Francisco. If they can hold on to that one seed, that team will be coming to Boston. That kind of thing matters. It buys you margin for error in the playoffs. One last thing that's kind of irritating me is Jason Tatum apparently is going to sit out Thursday against Milwaukee. Again, I've been talking about this forever, but everyone wants to stick with the 82 game season for the sake of revenue, but the reality is drop the games by 20% if the stars play in them all, because there's no back-to-backs, and you play three times a week at most, and everybody's well-rested for every single game, so you have fewer injuries. Do you think there's going to be 20% fewer people watching Grant Williams versus Giannis instead of Jason Tatum versus Giannis? I think so. That's the thing that I don't think is getting properly factored into those decisions. If you shorten the season, guys will play more. If they play more, there will be more urgency, and the quality of the product will be better because the stars will be playing. I think it's just better for the league. All right, guys. That is all I have for tonight. As always, I sincerely appreciate your support. We're going to be back tomorrow night immediately after Buck Celtics, and then again in the morning covering the late slate. I will see you guys tomorrow night.