00:00The Rockets fall to the Los Angeles Lakers.
00:03What was the final there?
00:05101-94 was the final.
00:07Who gives a damn about the final score?
00:09Yeah, the final score was a loss.
00:11And Kevin Durant did play in this one, right?
00:13You get Kevin Durant here.
00:14He scores 23 points.
00:16One off of what my prediction was.
00:17But I didn't think that it would look the way that it ultimately did
00:20because no minutes restriction for him.
00:2241 minutes of basketball for Kevin Durant.
00:25And that was not sufficient.
00:26It wasn't even close to sufficient for this game.
00:28And I don't know how, in fact, I don't think very much of that was Kevin Durant's fault.
00:31A lot of the issues that you saw in game one rose up in game two.
00:34How would you describe what this game was in total, John Lopez?
00:39In total, let's put it all, let's funnel it all into one thing.
00:45Ime Adoka got cooked, fleeced, undressed, stripped, exposed.
00:53I wonder what's on your mind right now.
00:54No, no, no.
00:55We have been hoodwinked, bamboozled, let astray, run amok, and flat out to sea.
01:02That's right.
01:03In every single way, this is the most revealing moment in Ime Adoka's coaching career.
01:12Cooked.
01:14Cooked.
01:15I mean, you said it.
01:17Kevin Durant played.
01:20Wasn't his fault.
01:21Adoka had no answers.
01:23Even some of the Kevin Durant of this, because Kevin Durant scored, what was it?
01:26He scored a whole bunch in the first, was it 18 in the first half?
01:29Three in the second.
01:30And he just, second half, he was not there.
01:33And I think that also, you could point that to various different places, but I think Ime Adoka
01:37also deserves some blame, I was going to say credit, but obviously that has a positive
01:43undertone, and that's not what we're going for here today, ladies and gentlemen.
01:45No, because I'm watching this game and I'm going, okay, the Lakers do the smart thing
01:49where they go, Kevin Durant, he's getting his buckets.
01:51Remember, we talked about this.
01:53If they decide to allow him to go one-on-one, he will get to his spots, he will raise
01:56up,
01:56he'll knock that down.
01:57I saw that early.
01:57I'll say, hey, buddy.
01:59All right.
01:59We're here.
02:00I wrote it in my notes.
02:01Offense is back.
02:01Not quite, big dog, because they start blitzing Kevin Durant, and he's passing out of it early
02:06as he should.
02:06And then.
02:07And late.
02:08And then, yes, and late.
02:10And we knew that he was capable of doing that from time to time.
02:13Was it five turnovers?
02:13Nine turnovers.
02:14Yeah, yeah.
02:16For him, they really did pile up late.
02:18But when the ball went to someone else, they either didn't knock down shots, or they didn't
02:22do the thing that I was like, you know this is allowed.
02:24You can pass it back to Kevin Durant.
02:26Yeah.
02:26It does not have to, once he passes it away, go, well, you're done.
02:29For the possession.
02:30No.
02:30It can make its way back to your best player, and it never did that.
02:33And it feels like there's so many little points like that that add up to big points.
02:36Yes.
02:36Where you go, Emeo Doak as a coach did not have his fellas prepped properly to know
02:41what the situation was.
02:43Hell, they didn't even feel like they were playing a playoff game.
02:45They felt like they were playing with the intensity of a regular season game, which,
02:48of all the things, we never thought Emeo Doak was a statistician.
02:51We thought that you could get your guys up for a game, though.
02:54Here's one of the things, one of the observations I made.
02:56I didn't do a classic passing thoughts, per se, but I wrote down a couple of things,
03:01and it speaks to what you just said.
03:03Then I want to get to something else here.
03:05My biggest overarching observation, kind of what you just said, and I think it's very
03:09damning on Emeo Doak and the Rockets.
03:11The Lakers seemed to be playing with a lot of joy.
03:15The Rockets seemed to be playing laborious.
03:18Like, it was work.
03:20Like, it was difficult.
03:21Like, they had to do these things.
03:22Like, oh, man, I got to punch the clock.
03:24I got to do this.
03:26It said the Lakers were free-flowing, had fun, seemed to be playing, you know, loose.
03:33That speaks to the other big point that I took away from this game.
03:38J.J. Reddick didn't just embarrass Emeo Doak and the Rockets.
03:42He had zero respect for them.
03:44And let me explain that.
03:45We talked.
03:46All right, go ahead and get in your coach bag then.
03:47Do you need a whiteboard?
03:49No, I could use one.
03:50But I mentioned yesterday, I would take my chances early, maybe with LeBron, Marcus Smart,
03:55whatever, you know, and see what the offense could or couldn't do without him.
03:59But then he mixed everything up.
04:01He was blitzing them.
04:03He was pressuring them in the backcourt sometimes, you know, bodying them up, being very physical.
04:08Then he'd blitz them as soon as he crossed the midcourt line.
04:11Then a double team.
04:12Did you ever really know where the double team was coming from?
04:15I didn't.
04:15No, they flipped.
04:16They switched it sometimes.
04:17And some of that was the chess match because I will say.
04:19But that's J.J.
04:19Reddick just disrespecting Emeo Doak.
04:21I'm not going to say that Emeo Doak and his staff made zero adjustments, but they didn't
04:25make big enough ones and they didn't make effective enough ones, which ultimately sometimes we're
04:29just going to have to play the result on this.
04:30Yeah.
04:31But they did make an adjustment for the very short amount of time that Reed Shepard was
04:34on the floor.
04:35Yeah.
04:35They had him one pass away from the ball, which that changes the way that you have to double.
04:40And they go, all right, well, let's double from a different place.
04:41Yeah.
04:42And change the way it changed the look.
04:43But they did a backcourt.
04:43They did a midcourt.
04:44They did it.
04:45Correct.
04:45They let him.
04:46Sometimes, I don't know if you picked up on this.
04:47I'm sure you did.
04:49Don't give me all that credit.
04:50I'm saying it in a general sense.
04:52They would start out with one man on him, let him start to drive, pressuring him, and
04:58let him start to drive, and then the double would come from the lane or from the side.
05:02And he was just confused.
05:03I mean, not his fault.
05:06Like, he didn't have any idea where they were coming from.
05:08I think sometimes, especially as you saw early in the game, and I know Kevin Durant has done
05:12a better job of not showing, wearing his emotions on his face.
05:15I think some of the times he looked up and was like, I'm making the right decision and
05:19nobody else is doing things.
05:20And I think that this is a more mature Kevin Durant than other portions in his career where
05:24he was like, okay, I think I need to handle this.
05:26I might need to make some of these things go.
05:28And that also is a place that you don't want to have to be.
05:31And you should not have to be with the amount of talent here.
05:34The 703 on the text line, and I'll give you the opportunity to do your little victory
05:37lap, but only with the caveat here.
05:39Quote, Reggie, I told you yesterday that the Rockets were going to get capital S, capital
05:43M, capital, you get the point, smoked.
05:45Yeah.
05:46And they did, but they didn't.
05:48There was a long period of time all through the second half at the very least where the
05:52Rockets were two possessions away and they were in a place where they could make it happen.
05:56They would get stops and then they turn the ball over or they get a look at a shot and
05:59they just miss a wide open look, whether that was from three or at the basket.
06:03It was a deeply unserious game.
06:05And it's one of the weird things in that if I wanted to be positive about this, which
06:12I recognize off the jump, ain't nobody trying to hear that, right?
06:15That's a premise that I believe in.
06:16It's a truism.
06:16Ain't nobody trying to hear that sometimes.
06:18And I know nobody's trying to hear that.
06:19If I want to make that point, I can point to the fact that in playoff series, the kind
06:24of mantra is role players play well at home.
06:28You saw a couple of really good games for some role players for the Lakers that maybe
06:31that swings a little bit when you go home.
06:33But my thing about it is the lack of seriousness in the way that I'll talk about it, whether
06:37or not the role players played better at home for the Rockets, you got a whole bunch of
06:42role players minus Kevin Durant.
06:43Like that is the only dude who's not a role player.
06:45And that was not what we were talking about.
06:46We were talking about Alperin Shangoon being a star player.
06:49We were talking about Amman Thompson maybe being a star player.
06:52Both those who look like flat out role players and you don't have home court advantage.
06:55So unless you're planning on going seven and stealing one somewhere, I don't care if the
06:59role players play better at home, which I think is quite possible in the series.
07:02It still puts you in a really bad way.
07:04And I don't think you're going to get an advantage.
07:05You're not getting an advantage when it comes to playing like you're in the playoffs.
07:08You're not getting advantage with coaching.
07:10And I do wonder where does that advantage actually ever show up in this?
07:13Well, again, he's getting fleeced.
07:16It's not even funny.
07:17Whether it's what we just talked about, you know, with how they're coming at Durant with all
07:21these other things.
07:21They don't have a secondary facilitator at all right now.
07:24And then credit to JJ Redick and his staff again, because they clearly limited that Alperin
07:31Shangoon is lost, absolutely lost.
07:34Reed Shepard played just 11 minutes.
07:36I get it.
07:37You know, as we often say, he can be a liability.
07:40But he was food.
07:40No, no.
07:41I get it.
07:41You remember the play where he just gets flat out lost and Marcus Smart, who he eventually
07:46should pick up, is just there.
07:47I know that this was a big stage.
07:49He's done that a number of times during the season.
07:51And that's the thing that gets me.
07:52And I will say, even with saying that, ain't no way he should play 11 minutes.
07:56Well, who wants to tell Eme Adoka?
07:58Did you see the quote after the game?
08:00Let me read it.
08:00Please do.
08:01They asked him about Reed Shepard playing just 11 minutes.
08:04And he said, you know, if he should have played more, we'll play more.
08:07He said, no, we're guarding well enough.
08:10Holding them to 101 is good enough.
08:12We just didn't score.
08:13Who wants to tell him?
08:15Who wants to tell him that Reed Shepard is a scorer?
08:20He played 11 minutes.
08:21That's not enough.
08:23I'm with you.
08:24I agree here.
08:25We need to score.
08:26I'm in a real uncomfortable place here.
08:28I wonder who could be in there that could score.
08:29Right.
08:30I'm in a real uncomfortable place here because one thing is, I don't think you're holding
08:33a one-on-one if Reed plays more minutes.
08:35Maybe not.
08:36But I do think that some of these open looks that you had, I think you can knock down.
08:39Now, he didn't knock down the couple that he took, but he also played such short bursts
08:43that it felt like he was pressing, and he wasn't in the flow of some of the basketball.
08:46So, I think there's kind of an up-and-down portion of that.
08:50But me personally, if I was in some level of decision-making, which honestly, I'm glad
08:54that I'm not, because I also would get pants, but at least I'm willing to go with, in a game
08:59where they're daring you to shoot threes, you're missing, I'm going to pull out my best
09:02three-point shooter and see if I can get him to go somewhere.
09:04We just didn't score?
09:05We just didn't score.
09:07Huh.
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