- 2 days ago
ITL breaks down the biggest takeaways from Houston’s playoff opener and what matters most going forward.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Early on in this game, you know, one of the things that I threw up as a question,
00:05and, you know, very much especially between our relationship talking about the Rockets,
00:09there's one thing that we don't always see eye to eye on, and that's Reed Shepard's defense.
00:13And so I was very intrigued to see because I think that he's going to be,
00:16he has the possibility to be an X-Factor, but he's got to be on the court.
00:19And so the possibility of him being on the court really depends on can he be enough on offense
00:24and how much on defense will this matter?
00:26And I'm going to be honest, I saw this as them attacking the hell out of Reed Shepard early.
00:31But it wasn't in quite the way that you would imagine.
00:34It wasn't just we're going to attack him to be able to score off of him.
00:36They attacked him because they knew that the Rockets would collapse to try and protect him.
00:40Right, which is what we talked about Friday.
00:42And that created so many opportunities for the league.
00:44When you talk about them scoring early, that was a significant portion of it was them being able to go,
00:51we're going to attack Reed as the button that collapses your defense,
00:54and then boom, here's Jake LaRavia, here's, well, there was a lot of Luke Kennard getting his opportunities.
00:58That happened a ton.
00:59And I was like, ugh, that hurts because it makes me wonder if, one, E-May is going to have
01:04a counter
01:05and, two, if Reed is going to be able to play out here enough for him to get going
01:08and be an impactful offensive player for you.
01:11No, I saw the same thing.
01:12I think you're absolutely right.
01:13In fact, I was practically drawing up the defense on Friday,
01:16and I thought they tried to help a lot and they tried to collapse, et cetera, as you're talking about.
01:21But Reed Shepard was a problem defensively, but he wasn't the only problem.
01:25He wasn't.
01:26You know, the kickouts, and by the way, they just made a lot of shots that I thought were challenged
01:30adequately,
01:31but they just made a lot of shots.
01:33You know, I mentioned earlier in a weird way when you think about a team making 60%
01:38that I thought there was actually adequate defense to win that game,
01:42but he wasn't alone by any stretch.
01:46He wasn't.
01:47The question I will ask you here is I want you to revisit for the series, right,
01:51the Reed Shepard role.
01:52What did game one do for your mindset?
01:54Because I don't think that he's one of those where you have to cut him out of the rotation.
01:57That would be absurd.
01:58But he also did not shoot as well as you would need him to in this game.
02:03He did give you some flurries, though.
02:05I will say, like, there were some instances.
02:07Some deep threes, too.
02:07He gave you some flurries.
02:08Five of 14, though.
02:09And so, you know, obviously he knocks down five, but it took a lot.
02:12Are you just hoping for a better game for him so you don't end up with a minus seven again?
02:18Well, I think what you have to hope for is, you know, that's more because that's what's going to keep
02:23him on the floor.
02:24You know, it ties in with Reed Shepard.
02:26It wasn't just him.
02:28I thought the Lakers, I mean, they were turning the corner easy, whether it was a man.
02:33Yes.
02:33I mean, they would turn the corner on a man, and I'm like, wow, where did that come from?
02:37And that's the problem.
02:39That is my next confession here.
02:41One of the things that we've talked about in little moments, but I haven't honed in on,
02:45it felt like J.J. Redick did the capital P playoff thing, which is, I know a weakness that you
02:51have,
02:52and I'm just going to attack the hell out of it.
02:53And it wasn't actually just Reed Shepard, or it wasn't Reed Shepard as the circle.
02:57It was your team, even though you're long, you've got some lanky guys here, you're not great at navigating screens.
03:03If we set a screen, you're not always good about getting around that screen and getting back in front of
03:06your defender quickly.
03:07And so they just pinned down after pinned down after pinned down.
03:11And that let Luke Kennard, of all dudes, have what was the game of a lifetime, literally a career high
03:17scoring for Luke Kennard,
03:19who is, I mean, he is a solid shooter in the league, but he should not be a guy that
03:24is taxing your ass for 27 points in a playoff game,
03:28in a round, a game one.
03:29And I think that there's one part of it which I want to talk to is, how did you feel
03:34about the screen navigation and that portion of the defense?
03:36Does that feel like a thing that they keep doing that they can react to?
03:39But then also, we've got to talk about the matchup, the head coach matchup, because I thought that that was
03:44where I saw it.
03:45J.J. Redick clearly making a point to attack weakness in a way that I don't think the Rockets did.
03:49Well, let's start with the matchup, because we mentioned this going into the weekend as well.
03:54J.J. Redick, I felt and feel even more so now, has a distinct coaching advantage over Ime Adoka.
04:00And that's illustrating it right there.
04:02The other thing, I thought Hachimura was going to be the guy, if one of these guys got hot,
04:07I thought it was more likely to be him because he's prone to maybe pop up with a 20-something
04:11point game and some shots from the outside.
04:14He had a decent game.
04:15What did he have, 13, something like that?
04:17I mean, everybody had a decent game.
04:18He had 14.
04:18Literally, the entire starting lineup for the Lakers scored in double digits, including Marcus Meyer.
04:22Yeah, Rui Hachimura had 14 points on 6 of 10 shooting.
04:25Luke Kennard had 27 on 9 of 13.
04:28It ended up being Kennard.
04:29And I thought some of his looks were way too easy, especially on some of the kickouts, etc.
04:34But some of them were not easy.
04:36Some of them were off balance, going to his right, the guy closing and still making the shot.
04:41So, number one, I think, clearly, Redick outcoached Emei, and that's got to be a concern going into game two.
04:49Secondly, the only way the Lakers win is if some guy like that, in all due respect, whether it was
04:56Hachimura or Kennard, going off, and he went off.
05:00I mean, there's not a lot you can do about that.
05:03He literally didn't miss a three-pointer.
05:05But you could have done more.
05:06You could have done more.
05:07He literally did not miss a three-pointer in this game.
05:11Luke Kennard.
05:12Yeah.
05:13We ain't have his name circled.
05:14We did not.
05:15We did not.
05:17This is why I ain't coaching nobody's basketball team.
05:19I'll tell you that for damn sure.
05:20Also, another reason why I'm not coaching anybody's basketball team.
05:25LeBron James with, in a weird way, just 19 points in this game.
05:29LeBron, this was a very interesting way that he was used.
05:33It was very smart, understanding that, yes, he is an aged guy in this league.
05:40Yes, he has the experience, and maybe he could just try and turn this up to 11, but that
05:44would not be a smart way to go about this.
05:46He really didn't get into scoring back for a minute.
05:48He had 10 rebounds before, 10, rather, assists before he got anywhere near 10 points.
05:53Seven rebounds, nine rebounds, something like that.
05:54Eight rebounds as well.
05:55So he ended up 19, 13, and eight in this game.
05:59Efficiency, man.
06:00Yeah.
06:00It's just playing smart.
06:01It's just efficiency.
06:02He ended up just being a hub.
06:04Yeah.
06:04Setting up other guys before he even got to his own.
06:07One, what do you think the counter should be for Emi Odoka?
06:11Is it, hey, now do we need to guard him one-on-one and really focus on these other guys?
06:16No.
06:16God, no.
06:17Okay.
06:17You think it's still most important to take him out of the game?
06:20You do not do that.
06:21No, I think you still continue to do.
06:23This was a tip of the cap to the shot makers and a tip of the cap to LeBron and
06:28J.J. Redick.
06:29Like, they beat you with the things that they knew how to do.
06:34You do not change, I don't think, very much with LeBron James.
06:39What you can do is try to defend the other shooters.
06:42Try to stop Luke Kennard.
06:43Yes.
06:44Yes.
06:45That's what you do.
06:46And by the way, we have spent a lot of times, like a lot of people, sort of mocking might
06:53be a little bit strong,
06:53but having some fun with Bronny on the floor.
06:57I'm telling you, that was actually very cool.
06:59It was very cool watching LeBron James.
07:00Oh, just the narrative portion of it?
07:02It was really, I got to admit, I was like, that's kind of neat.
07:06I mean, playoff game, family in the stands.
07:09LeBron's looking at him like, oh, no, you do this and this, and Bronny's on the floor.
07:13I thought that was pretty damn cool.
07:15I really did.
07:16Yeah.
07:16Yeah, especially when they showed the side-by-side of Bronny being a baby at the playoff game.
07:23And now he's in there with his dad at a playoff game.
07:26Yeah, that would have been one of my passing thoughts, but these are yours.
07:28I appreciate it.
07:29No, it was cool.
07:30And allow me to get to something that is a little bit less of a schematic passing thought.
07:37But is E-mail Doka's, is his go-to adjustment just calling somebody a B-word?
07:43B-word uncalled for, didn't help.
07:48This is him.
07:48He does too much of that.
07:50He does a lot of it.
07:51He does too much of that.
07:52And calling out players on the other bench and pointing at them and talking to them on the floor.
07:58Hey, he's that one dude at the rec, man, that always calls people soft, calling people out their names.
08:04You know what he is?
08:04What you going to do about it?
08:05He's the dude that we got to stop the run for to argue what point is for like five minutes
08:11before we start playing again.
08:12No, no, just check up, man.
08:13Let's go.
08:14And honestly, it's too much.
08:16It is, especially because you have all these schematic things that we need to be doing.
08:20I don't think you've got time to be out here arguing with, even if it's arguing with the ref.
08:24I don't think you have as much time to be doing all of that portion of this as your boys
08:29are constantly scrapping to try and stay within range of this game.
08:35Yeah, I thought the same thing.
08:36I'm glad you brought that up because it's kind of like those people like he should be in his playbook,
08:41you know,
08:41instead of out, whatever, at a charity event.
08:44No, he should be focused on a lot more important things than that.
08:50Yeah.
08:50He really should.
08:51It didn't feel like it did enough for what you wanted.
08:55Also, we talked about the non-LeBron minutes, what that was going to do, how the Rockets were fair.
09:03Now, of course, there's no KD here, so that changes a lot of this.
09:05Buddy, the non-LeBron minutes looked terrible.
09:08And they're fewer and further between there early on.
09:10He was getting, like, three-minute spins, you know, sit-downs.
09:15And so you needed to make something happen in those three minutes, and they just did not do that.
09:19No, they didn't.
09:20And we often talked about, you know, it's not so much the non-LeBron minutes from the Lakers,
09:27which were significant, as we've talked about here.
09:29But what you're doing and what you're doing was looking lost offensively, you know,
09:34in terms of your minutes when LeBron is on the bench.
09:36And another thing Redick did quite well is situationally bring in LeBron at the ends of quarters,
09:42you know, offensively, just to put some more pressure on the Rockets.
09:46And I thought that was big, too.
09:47Yeah, so I'm interested.
09:48I'm wondering how many more times LeBron can play that many minutes,
09:52if that's just the game plan for him to play.
09:54As you mentioned, 38 minutes.
09:55There it was in that game.
09:57Isn't that what we said?
09:58Yeah, that was the line.
09:59That was the line that you put up there.
10:00And boom, there it was there.
10:03Another thing, bringing back to something we talked about a little bit earlier,
10:06Alper and Shang-Goon, they need to do more.
10:09I know that he has to be a focal point.
10:11You have to start it in different places.
10:13There's way too much Alper and Shang-Goon on the perimeter with the basketball.
10:16There needs to be more post-ups where you're getting into the ball,
10:19where he can be efficient and he doesn't have to work to that spot before he can go.
10:23That felt like that was very evident,
10:25and it left everybody just standing and watching in a way that was really important.
10:28And it's almost to the point where, you know, this is your best option,
10:32using him as the hub inside, high post, whatever it may be.
10:35And it's almost like, what's the use of him out there right now?
10:38You know?
10:39I just didn't quite sense it.
10:41No.
10:42And then, hey, man.
10:45What was it?
10:45No, I already talked about the LeBron rest.
10:47Oh, yeah, but to give Reed credit, he created really well, though.
10:52He just couldn't do it to the extent that they needed him to.
10:55I actually do feel good about that once KD is back,
10:58him having some of those minutes where he can create,
11:01because I think that that might help you in those LeBron-less minutes, too.
11:03I think, you know, offensively, you kind of got what you want.
11:07He got enough shots.
11:08You know, you would have liked to have seen him make some more,
11:10and that's how he's going to stay on the floor.
11:12But I agree.
11:13Offensively, when Durant gets back on the floor, we can presume.
11:16By the way, they're practicing today.
11:17We may get an update during our show.
11:20But, you know, when he gets back on the floor, and we would expect it.
11:22I do.
11:23Do you?
11:24Yeah, I'm 100%.
11:25Him going through his pregame workouts,
11:27that's maybe another pass of thought here.
11:29I was convinced just watching the pregame workouts
11:31that he was going to give it a shot.
11:32Now, I did see him grimace a little, like, every once in a while,
11:35and I was like, ooh, okay, maybe.
11:37And that ultimately ended up being the place where he didn't.
11:38But he was knocking down shots in a way that made me go,
11:40all right, he was going to give it a shot.
11:42So I feel like he will definitely play in game, too.
11:44But back to your point on Reed Shepard,
11:46that is going to benefit him immensely, you know, if he gets back on the floor.
11:50Like, it will everybody.
11:52I feel like you should never hit the side of a backboard in a playoff game.
11:56Who was that?
11:57Jabari Smith Jr.
11:57That's right.
11:57It was Jabari.
11:59Like, I just feel like that shouldn't happen.
12:01Let's try this.
12:02I feel like it can't be doing that, man.
12:06It happens, though.
12:08I mean, you're trying to force up a shot.
12:09You get pushed out of your position.
12:11You're back behind the backboard, and boom, there you go, hitting the side.
12:14I just, that was when I, I let go of the rope on that one.
12:18I was like, all right, well, this is be it.
12:21When did you let go of the rope for real?
12:22That?
12:24I'm having a hard time remembering specifically.
12:26But, I mean, once it was very clear, and it probably was in the third quarter,
12:29once it was abundantly clear that, hey, man, no offense is going to be found.
12:32The way that I described it to somebody this weekend was,
12:35if the offense looked like they were rooting around on the couch looking for it.
12:39You know what I mean?
12:39Like, you know how you might go and say, dang, I need 75 cents.
12:42Is there something to change in the corners of this sofa?
12:46That's how it looked like they were looking for offense.
12:49That's just not going to be sufficient.
12:50I thought, and you probably will remember,
12:54because I don't have the play-by-play in front of me,
12:55there was a moment early in the fourth quarter, maybe late in the third,
13:00when the Rockets actually did knock down a big three
13:03and got it down to 11 or 9, I believe.
13:09And then the Lakers answered with another three right away,
13:11and I think it was Kennard.
13:12That's when I'm like, okay, they don't have the offense.
13:13They can't come back from this.
13:15You know, to knock out an 11, 13-point lead at that point,
13:20I thought, okay, so much for this one.
13:23Who was the bench guy that you were most excited to see on the court
13:27when you did see them?
13:29Tari.
13:31Okay.
13:31Outside of Tari.
13:32Outside of Tari?
13:35I don't know.
13:36Uncle Jeff at this point.
13:37I guess.
13:38I think for me it was Aaron Holiday.
13:40It might have been.
13:41I think it was Aaron Holiday, although he did miss all of his shots.
13:45So, like, again, we know this when it comes to the depth.
13:48They might just need to tighten this rotation even more is a thought that I had.
13:51Now it's early to do that.
13:52You still need to feel some things out.
13:55They might get to that.
13:56Well, the six would be small.
13:57I think seven would be the place where it's the starting five that you know.
14:02And then, I guess, let's put Josh Kogan in the starting five here just because we know
14:05who Imei is, right?
14:06With Kevin Durant back.
14:08Reed and Tari.
14:09And that, like, they might get to a place where they're running that thin.
14:12Well, no, they might.
14:12They'd still need to put a big in here.
14:14Like, they'd still need to put a little bit of...
14:15Hey, do they?
14:18A man airballed Denny.
14:20Yes, also, that's a great point.
14:21And I'll wrap up with this.
14:23Hey, man, the forcing of some of these three-point shots, I don't know if that helped.
14:27Like, a man forced up a three-pointer that ultimately he airballed on.
14:30Reed forced up a three-pointer that, if I remember correctly, he airballed on.
14:34Now, of course, that's just...
14:35Which I don't mind.
14:36They're not finding easy shots.
14:37But once Kevin Durant's back, I feel like that pressure is not something that I want to see.
14:42The fact that they get to a place where they just have to hoist some really ugly shots up.
14:47I'm really hoping that that does not continue because that's not helpful,
14:51especially once that ball gets got by the Lakers.
14:54They get that rebound, hit it ahead real quick, and here we go, Trans.
14:56Yeah.
Comments