00:00I am coming with frustration right off the bat because probably my favorite team when I was a youngster,
00:08and I think I have not fully shed it working in this sports business.
00:11You know, I think it robs you of a little bit of the edge of your fandoms if they even
00:16still remain.
00:17I had a frustration once I heard the final whistle on this game, and this is what it sounded like
00:22last night.
00:23An inspiring performance by the Warriors, one of their better wins of the season.
00:28They come into H-Town and come away with a 1-15, 1-13 victory.
00:35Thank you, Michael Grady. I'm not actually mad at you.
00:37That's an evergreen final call.
00:39That's right.
00:40What game was that again?
00:43Rockets with a 2016 for all we know.
00:45That's a great point, and that's part of the frustration.
00:48I'm skipping to the end here, but the Warriors end up beating the Rockets.
00:52The Warriors, mind you, did not have Steph Curry, did not have Jimmy Butler.
00:56How many other players of consequence did they not have?
00:58They had Guy Santos, whoopie-ass.
01:00They had one of them Spencer boys.
01:01I don't even remember which one of them getting after you.
01:03Was it Pat?
01:04Is it Cam Pat?
01:05They had L.J. Cryer out there.
01:07L.J. Cryer was giving the team.
01:09Had his career high, didn't he?
01:10Yeah, man.
01:11He barely played for them.
01:12He just now got into the – he was undrafted.
01:15I know who I think it is.
01:17And then after the game, you got Draymond Green talking big about how, oh, man,
01:21we always come through in these circumstances against this team and all that.
01:25Man, I don't want to hear none of that.
01:26What I want to talk about is how the hell do the Rockets end up putting themselves
01:31in such a frustrating place?
01:33I remember talking about this game before, and I was like, yeah,
01:34they got the Warriors, not a particularly good team.
01:36Did not matter.
01:37These Rockets struggled yesterday.
01:39They struggled, and a lot of times it's a crutch for fans, and really us as well,
01:45just anybody who follows their particular teams.
01:48You go, ah, coaching.
01:50Ah, blame the coach.
01:52You know, the coach did this or didn't do that or whatever.
01:55I'm here to tell you, Ime Adoka, I think we're reaching the point of coaching
02:02malpractice at this point.
02:03That's one of the worst things you can say about a head coach in any sport
02:06at any level, coaching malpractice.
02:08What he did with, now he played a lot of minutes ultimately,
02:13but not starting Reed Shepard.
02:1537 to be exact.
02:15Yeah, yeah.
02:1637 minutes for Reed Shepard, who, by the way.
02:18How did he play, by the way?
02:20Flamethrower last night.
02:2130 of them things, I believe, was the number,
02:23as I'm trying to get the box score directly in front of me.
02:26But I remember 37 minutes because Reed Shepard, in the course of the regular,
02:30like the actual regulation before we got to overtime, yes,
02:33you had to go to overtime with the Golden State Warriors, oddly enough.
02:36Reed Shepard had two stints of playing on the floor of, like, 16 minutes straight.
02:41Yeah.
02:41How is that the way that you handled this?
02:43Coaching malpractice.
02:44You know, I...
02:45That felt like a here-damn if I ever saw it.
02:47Oh, y'all want Reed to play?
02:47That's exactly what it is.
02:48Oh, y'all know what y'all doing.
02:50Y'all want more Reed?
02:51Yeah.
02:51All right.
02:52And what happened?
02:54That's exactly...
02:54It was malicious compliance.
02:55That's exactly...
02:56You know when...
02:57I'm not taking them out the game.
02:58Actually, I'm pretty sure Lopez has done this with his wife,
03:00where she's like, I need you to do something.
03:02And so he does it, but he does it in the most annoying way.
03:05I bet you've done that.
03:06Like, oh, take out the trash.
03:07And so, you know, you only take out...
03:09Or you take out the trash, you make sure to not put the bag back,
03:11so she's mad still.
03:12Well, I took out the trash.
03:13That was...
03:14That felt like, oh, we'll play Reed starters-level minutes,
03:17but he's going to play 16 minutes at a time.
03:19Yeah, but again, you know, you don't start him.
03:22They go down by 11.
03:23You put him in the game, they get their back in the game.
03:25Then, obviously, he played those, you know, those long stretches.
03:28It did take the whole long stretch for them to get back in the game,
03:30though, which was odd.
03:31But, nevertheless, I don't understand.
03:33And, oh, by the way, I went to the old defensive rating thing,
03:38which is one of your deals.
03:40It is!
03:41With Reed Shepard on the bench, their defensive rating was 153.8.
03:46Is that good?
03:47That is not good.
03:48Okay.
03:48With him on the floor, 97.6.
03:51Oh, but he can't play defense.
03:53Oh, but he can't play defense.
03:55Buddy, I don't know if that was the game where I make this argument, man.
03:58Pat Spencer was getting on his ass.
03:59Guy Santos was giving him the defense.
04:00Did you not hear what I just said?
04:02Buddy, I was watching that game, brother.
04:04Did you not hear what I just said?
04:05I heard you.
04:06I was watching that game, brother.
04:07153 to 97?
04:07Buddy, that doesn't mean it was good.
04:09Yes, it does.
04:11Yes, it does.
04:12That means it was really bad before that.
04:13I'll tell you that for damn sure.
04:14Yeah.
04:15Man, his defensive deficiency absolutely hurts the structural integrity of what that team does.
04:21153 and 97.
04:22I hear you.
04:23Also, one thing that you have to consider, he was playing a lot with the twos as well.
04:27And when you look at a team like the Warriors right now, how depleted they are, when they get to
04:31the twos, they're putting G-leaguers out there as well.
04:35I think qualitatively, if you watch that game, you don't got to lie to kick it.
04:40Like, this was literally in my game notes.
04:43You don't have to lie to kick it.
04:44Now, he absolutely, he was like a plus 11 in the game.
04:47Yeah, that too.
04:47And it felt deceptive because there were long stretches where he was getting buckets, literally, flamethrower style, and they were
04:54not actually chipping away at the lead.
04:57There were long stretches there.
04:58They got to runs and things of that nature that were good.
05:00But I think that structurally, especially if we're talking about Reid as starter, and I feel bad because now I'm
05:04doing the Reid thing when it's not, Reid is not the problem with this game.
05:07But structurally, we could talk about Reid as being a starter, Reid getting all these minutes, and I'm with you
05:13here.
05:13We don't got to lie to kick it, though, because you get into the playoffs, and it's about, in my
05:17mind, what you don't do well, and what you don't do well is have Reid Shepard as the dude that
05:22teams attack.
05:23They were out there.
05:23They were hunting Reid Shepard, and they were getting buckets behind it.
05:26Again, I say all that, and I have to acknowledge openly that he is not even close to reason number
05:33two, three, four that you lost this basketball game.
05:36The thing that was deeply frustrating to me, ultimately, when I wrote this down, this is a dysfunctional, good basketball
05:42team.
05:43Because this team still has a lot of the things to be good, but they are so dysfunctional, they don't
05:49have steady communication on the floor.
05:51Eme Odoka was talking about that after the game.
05:53I think, actually, Kevin Durant tried to respond to this, and I was trying to give him the benefit of
05:57the doubt, but it felt like it rang hollow.
05:59This was Kevin Durant talking about their defensive communication on the floor.
06:02Our communication is not bad, but it could be better.
06:07It's not bad at all.
06:08I mean, I feel like it definitely could be better, especially against teams like this who move a lot, who
06:13get a lot of off-ball actions.
06:15We're going to have to communicate more.
06:18But it could be better for sure.
06:19I'm not going to sit here and say we don't talk to each other at all, but we definitely can
06:24be communicating a little bit more.
06:33And Eme said that he was actually communicating more than the players on the floor.
06:37Yeah, he said he could hear himself over the dudes on the floor.
06:41And I think KD is right in that the particular way that the Warriors play, the motion that they have
06:46off-ball and on-ball even,
06:48makes it so that you need to be even more locked in to communicate defensively.
06:52But there was too many times in this game, and honestly, we've seen it in some of the other games
06:57where guys will be caught flat-footed
07:00because there's not that communication.
07:02Sometimes they'll be able to switch, and it happens sometimes, but it can't be a sometimes proposition if you want
07:07to be the team that you want to be.
07:09Look, I just feel as if there are a lot of things that you can point to.
07:15Well, maybe this and maybe that defensively.
07:18Maybe this and maybe that with communication.
07:21Ultimately, what we saw on the floor does not lie.
07:25What we've seen on the floor repeatedly does not lie.
07:27They're a better team when Reed Shepard's on the floor and starts.
07:30And the hard-headedness, it had me asking myself after the game, can Eme even overcome this?
07:36Can Eme even overcome the fact that he's so hard-headed about this that it's hurting the team?
07:44And, oh, by the way, you also talk about, you know, trust your eyes and the feel of what you're
07:49seeing on the floor.
07:50I mean, Jabari Smith was awful.
07:52That's another thing.
07:53Awful.
07:53Jabari Smith was awful.
07:54Alper and Shane Goon was not that good.
07:56We have to have a larger conversation about Alper.
07:58And maybe you can say with Jabari, because this was a questionable thing where he had to go through his
08:02warm-up to determine whether he would play.
08:05Maybe that's some part of how much you factor this in.
08:08But it feels night and day when Jabari Smith Jr. has a good day and a bad day on what
08:13it does for this team.
08:14When Jabari Smith Jr. is good, he functionally matters so much to so many of the things that you do
08:18with his help defense, some of the ways in which he can knock down shots.
08:22But also, he's got some bad habits in there where, you know, he'll get the ball in that mid-range,
08:27and you know he's putting it up because, you know, he just really wants to get that shot up.
08:31A man has a little bit of this, too, which is more an annoyance for me than it actually is
08:35an issue with the team at large, where he's fallen in love.
08:39A lot of these dudes have fallen in love with, like, not efficient shots.
08:42A man has fallen in love with that turnaround fadeaway 7 to 8 to 10-footer.
08:47And it's just like, yeah, you knock that down sometimes, but also when you don't, it feels like a wasted
08:52possession at times.
08:54There's so many things within this team that are slightly dysfunctional.
08:58And outside of just starting Reed Shepard, it makes me wonder if your staff can hone all these things in,
09:06or if the guys themselves, because not all of it is just Emei.
09:09Now, of course, it all falls, the buck stops with him, but there's so many little things that show up
09:13in a night like this.
09:14And you know what maybe the most annoying thing is, is I've already rattled off a few of them.
09:19It was on national TV.
09:21You're embarrassing yourself in front of the hoes, man.
09:23Like, this is one of those things where a bad team national TV, you should be able to put your
09:26best foot forward.
09:27You should not be talking about effort and energy.
09:29You should not be talking about the details of communications.
09:33These are things that you should be able to get yourself up for on the front side of a back
09:36-to-back, mind you, and they didn't.
09:38That's severely disconcerting.
09:39It's severely disconcerting, and I just feel that this team right now, all the things you talked about with Emei,
09:45excuse me, with Amen, and those things,
09:49they weren't as prevalent when Shepard was on the floor.
09:52I mean, how does this happen?
09:54How do you not see that?
09:56I don't think that it's fair to Reed to paint him as a panacea, and I think that's what you're
10:00doing, is if, oh, he gets out there and he fixes everything.
10:02He gives a lot of huge benefits.
10:04The offense is night and day better when he's on the floor.
10:07That's a panacea.
10:08No.
10:09No, it's not, because he doesn't fix everything.
10:11There's definitely still issues that are out there.
10:13No, he doesn't fix anything, but they're that much better.
10:15I'm very much trying to be cautious, for Reed's benefit, for us to do the thing where you just play
10:20Reed more and it fixes all of it, because that's not it either.
10:23I think there's more insidious things happening.
10:24I'm with you that he needs to play more, but if you do that, there's still things to fix.
10:29That's the thing that I ultimately want to be front and center with this.
10:31But that was just one of those games where regardless of the issues that you have that are small, there's
10:35a lot of teams that have issues in sports.
10:37That's the nature of it, right?
10:38The problem is, it should not ever look like that against a team that's been this bad as the Warriors
10:44recently, that is also that hurt on a national TV game when you should be able to get up at
10:49home, mind you.
10:50All those things should not show up in that way, and that was very, very problematic from the Rockets.
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