00:00The Rockets are in trouble right now. They're down 1-0 to the Lakers in their first round series
00:04in the NBA playoffs. The offense without Kevin Durant was not great on Saturday night. They
00:11didn't shoot well. They didn't shoot well from anywhere. They didn't shoot well from three.
00:14They didn't shoot well in the paint. They didn't shoot well at the rim. They were bad all night
00:18long shooting the basketball. This is Charles Barkley on inside the NBA after the game saying,
00:22man, this Rockets offense is brutal. That's where they play offense. They just play one-on-one
00:27basketball. It's better when it's Kevin Durant and Sangoon, but they don't run plays. It's
00:34like everybody goes one-on-one. You look at that game, you're like, what are they doing?
00:37They just, whoever gets it, shoots it. But if you look at them through the entire regular
00:42season, we said they don't have a point guard, but they didn't have Kevin Durant to cover up
00:47all their flaws. I have no idea what kind of offense they're running. Whoever gets it
00:52just jacks it up anywhere, anytime. Everybody's got a green light. And Shaq and Kenny know
00:58everybody on the team don't have no damn green light. I mean, there's one, maybe two guys on
01:04the NBA team like, you shoot it whenever you want to. The rest of the guys are like, okay,
01:08you can have some shots. But like, there's no reason what they were doing out there tonight.
01:12It was awful to watch offensively.
01:14Yeah. I guess the hard part for me is that I do think that they've made a lot of progress
01:19in not looking like just such an ISO team in the last few weeks. And then we just get tired
01:26of saying it, but we said it all year long. All right. They're adjusting to not having Fred
01:31Van Vliet. And then of course, even Adams. But now I can't hold them to the same standard
01:35when Kevin Durant is injured as well. So it was a really frustrating game to watch. But if we stack
01:41it up, you know, to, okay, this year versus the playoffs last year, are they a better or worse
01:47team? Well, they don't, they don't look, obviously they don't have Jalen green, but that was supposed
01:51to be swapped out for Kevin Durant. And like, that's a big difference when you don't have Kevin
01:57Durant out there. Obviously they don't have Fred Van Vliet. Uh, like it's just, it's hard for me to,
02:02it's hard for me to get as I rate over the version of offense that they showed
02:07based on not having Kevin Durant out there. It's like, I gotta, I just desperately need
02:12Kevin Durant to be playing in this next game tomorrow. I'm more worried than I am angry.
02:16You know, for the reasons you're talking about Seth, like, look, they went and got Kevin Durant.
02:20What were the issues at the end of the playoffs last year? They sucked in the half court. They
02:23can't get baskets in the half court. So what do they do? They go out and get maybe the best
02:27half
02:27court player in the, in this, in this century, in the recent history of the game. And Kevin Durant,
02:33a guy who can just go get a bucket anytime you want to. And even when they were playing good
02:37basketball as a team, there were still plenty of times in those games that it was just KD time.
02:42And he goes and makes a shot that only he can make. And you get a basket on a possession
02:46where
02:46last year and without Kevin Durant, you're not getting those baskets. Well, now you don't have
02:51Kevin Durant and you don't have this guy that can just erase the first 18 bad seconds of a possession
02:56by backing a guy down and hitting that unstoppable fadeaway jumper or whatever. They're taking the guy to
03:02the rim, whatever it may be. So yeah, I'm more worried than I am angry. I'm really worried
03:07because Kevin Durant always plays. He always plays and he didn't play on Saturday. And that's,
03:13that's really concerning for this game coming up. I guess if it is just a contusion, I mean,
03:20the, the, the fear would be okay. If you're not a hundred percent better and you go out there
03:25and all of a sudden this becomes something that lingers on through seven games, potentially,
03:29that's a big deal. And that maybe it was as simple as that, that you're just, it's, it's just being
03:37cautious and knowing that you've got potentially seven games to play. Let's be sure we've got them
03:41for at least six of them. Um, that's where like without any reports of soft, you know, tendon or
03:48ligament damage or cartilage damage or anything, then I'm not, I'm not going to be overly worried about
03:52it, but it is also something that could extend on into a second game. If they're being, if they're being
03:58conservative with it, then conceivably, yeah, you might miss the second. And yet I still feel like
04:01they've got enough talent on the team where they should be able to split against the team. That's
04:05missing two of their three best players. And the one that's remaining is 41 years old. Granted,
04:10he's the best player of the, you know, this generation of this century, at least. Um, but
04:15still, you know, it's him and a bunch of other dudes. I don't think Luke Kennard is going to go
04:19off
04:19in game two, like he did in game one. Um, he was five for five. I would imagine there'll be
04:24some
04:24regression to the mean, I hope both ways with the Rockets and with the, you know,
04:28Rockets to the good Lakers to the bad Reggie Atatula, John Lopez, they are in the loop and
04:33they're jumping in here. I just said to Seth, I am less angry and more worried about the Rockets
04:38right now. Where are you? Where are you guys on this? I think that's fair situation. I think
04:42that's fair. I think I might be the other way. Okay. I'm less worried, more angry, less worried,
04:47more angry. Okay. Explain. Yeah. Okay. So I felt like, and we'll talk more about this. This game one
04:53felt like it was less about what this series will be, especially because Kevin Durant was not on the,
04:57on the floor. Uh, but I'm angry because when you went and acquired Kevin Durant, it was supposed
05:02to be some level of accelerator for you. And it feels like it has become a crutch. Your team is
05:07Kevin Durant based as opposed to, um, finding the development to allow some of these guys to not
05:12be so damn context dependent, that context being Kevin Durant now. So Kevin Durant wasn't there.
05:17And a men Thompson, who we were talking about, can he become an all NBA player without context?
05:22He looked very dependent. Alperen Shangoon, who is supposed to be, who is supposed to be trying
05:27to push into that place recently right now. Oh, he's an all-star before Durant guy. Correct. Yeah.
05:31He looked very context dependent, right? And talk less of Jabari Smith jr. Not having a good day,
05:36right? All Reed Shepard looked like he was pretty average or pedestrian. Yeah. All those things that
05:42you were looking at, hopefully before you acquired Kevin Durant in game one, did not look very good
05:47on this stage outside of Kevin Durant. So I was angry about that. Everything he said,
05:51I agree with, but to me, that's more worried because of the leadership, because of the direction,
05:56you know, I think you can look at it both ways in that same thing.
05:59Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah. Because of, because of the lack of an actual defined offense too,
06:03that when you lose a cog, that's as important as Kevin Durant is obviously you'd still like to be
06:08able to show something like, not just that it looks like they lost a wheel on a, on a four
06:13wheel vehicle,
06:14you know, it just, it's just not going to operate at all when you're, when, when you lose that one
06:20big part of it. Yeah. Especially because all of that was foreseeable right now, of course,
06:25when you have a dude who plays 78 games and then randomly gets a knee contusion, knee bumps knees
06:30with somebody that was not necessarily foreseeable, but the idea that if, if you would lose a Kevin
06:35Durant, it was very obvious that you do not have a offensive system outside. I mean, they've been
06:40talking about this as a read and react, you know, the whole year, it's very obvious that you have
06:44not had an offensive system that can help you get things. If you do not have somebody else that
06:49very much forces things to, to appear in Kevin Durant, they should have been able to see something
06:54like this happen. So that was that that's the anger part of it, but I still think that they're
06:57very much in play to win this series. Yeah, I do too. I, and I think they, I, they can
07:01win a game
07:02without Kevin Durant in LA against this group of Lakers. I've absolutely, they have enough talent to do it.
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