Rudy Gobert, Jordan Poole, Billy Donovan discussed on The NBA Show
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5 year old victory laps. No, but no, but that team, I remember they were setting records on defense. That San Antonio team, they were historically incredible. That's what I most remember about that tea by like January. I think they had like a 91 defensive rating, which even then was just like, what the fuck is going on? Pistons, 2004 level exactly. And I'll just say the caveat here is like offense is down across the board, so like we'll see if this continues, but it's pretty incredible even for a quarter of a season considering the way teams are shooting at these days. And again, it's not one of those things where we're Phoenix. They have all of this fucking wing depth. They have 8 in that center. They have all of this defensive talent, this link, quickness, athleticism, continuity, as far as understanding the system and the scheme, they have all of these things like Golden State, don't got that. You know, like, nobody's like staff Jordan Poole and you know Gary Payton's kid. Want toscano Anderson. Nobody's like, oh, these are the most incredible defenders we've ever seen. Like, bro is draymond green, man. It's crazy. What they do have is draymond and he has the built in familiarity with the staffs and the Andre Iguodala. I mean, just so much nonverbal communication going on during games with them. And then you have him pulling aside the Jordan pools and basically coaching them in the middle of games, telling him where they need to be and what they need to do. And why things aren't going the way they should. It's just an invaluable thing to have when you're trying to operate at a championship level. So who else is on this ballot? I have Rudy Gobert and Mikhail bridges. I think you could flip them to two. One could be two, one could be three. I don't really have strong feelings about that. But is there anybody else or is that the list? I think we got to get Giannis in here. They're basically surviving by their defense at this point. And that's without brook Lopez. That's with drew holiday and Chris Middleton out for big chunks of the season. Milwaukee's been 14 points better on defense with the honest on the floor, not exactly a surprise, but he's been he's been incredible. And he's a big reason why they can vary up their coverages, why they can switch and show and drop and jumble between those things in the middle of games in the way that they weren't doing two years ago. That's the key. They're no longer doing the cookie cutter, pick and roll defense. They're like, wow, we have a 7 foot dynamo. Why don't we make him guard everybody? Why don't we do that? And they're doing it and Yanis is stepping up to the task. It's probably worth noting to here on the Rudy Gobert front in the eternal drop defense debate, they've started putting him on some different guys, even with teams that have traditional centers. Like they were playing Cleveland, they'll have Rudy Gobert garde Isaac and have boja Bogdanovich try to front Jared Allen. Instead, so Rudy can just kind of hang in the paint. I think there's some ways that with Gobert. I mean, he's been challenging shots, defensive rebounding at an unbelievable level. There are ways you can kind of change things up to keep him in the mix more often. All right, do we need to do 6 man? Tyler hero, right? Yeah, must we? Yeah, Tyler hero. Congratulations. 6 man is a worthless award. Coach of the year. Anyone. It's Billy Donovan to me. Just because of the amount of roster turnover and what it takes to make all of that work like the counter example being the Lakers who are much more talented team. But they completely disbanded their roster, right? And they're having a hard time making that whole thing work right now. The fact that the bulls had all of this turnover, all of this upheaval and they played like a team, you gotta give Billy Donovan his props. He just had a vision for how that team needs to play. And they've carried it out from day one, all the pieces to fit together, even with Nikola vujovic missing a quarter of the season and not even being that great when he's played, and it just hasn't mattered, because they found rotation guys. They found other places of minutes. They were both not that great. Not what I said. Are you a boosh non believer? I'm a truth. Yeah, come on. Give me a break. That's gonna get scary in a playoffs. Teams don't do it like it's one of those things where teams aren't that ruthless in the regular season about those kinds of defensive things. But he is so damn slow footed and has no hops whatsoever. Scare and he's not that big. Yo kitch is huge, right? That's the one thing his one defensive acid. He doesn't have quick feet to keep Bailey jump over a textbook, but he's huge. He's tall. He's long. If he gets in the way, that's a deterrent. This is not that big for real. He's quickly become like the big lead for the Balkans. We're just going to take down the comparing. His brother was remember, I said nice things about him. He always have let the record show, I actually think vuit has been pretty solid on defense this season. But neither here nor there, Billy Donovan, I think a great pick for coach of the year. And since we kind of glossed over 6 man while we're talking bulls, I think Alex Caruso has a chance to get on some ballots on the back end of that. I can't believe they allowed that man to leave crypto dot com arena. They're going to rue the day that they let him go from there. I also had Monty Williams on my coach of the year ballot at Steve Kerr. Anybody else that they're out there? Oklahoma City Thunder coach whose name I can't even remember even though. Dagney I feel like that was like a cat saying his name. Take me. Is this a bit now? No, I just like, I have a tough time saying names, I guess. Chris Finch, I think it's in that conversation. Wes unsell JB Vickers stuff. That overperformed. Yeah. But it's gonna be tough to crack those top three. We're having to do a big corrective slash apology to Steve Kerr because even when we were talking about last season as a whole, maybe we were taking too narrow of you because I don't know that Jordan Poole and Juan toscano Anderson and Damien Lee, all these guys are they as comfortable in the way the warriors play right now if they didn't do it last year. I don't think they are. All right, anybody else was? I guess you could throw out James borrego too. Yeah, man. I'm a big fan of. He's one of my favorite guys in the league. I think he's always doing smart shit on the floor. And people underestimate how young the team really is. And to get these kind of results from guys that young, you know, I love James riggle. I don't think he gets enough credit. Obviously, he's not like, you know, supposed to Carlisle is something. He obviously doesn't has a proven it at the highest level as far as playoffs and executing against the most insane opponents. But I'm a bureau guy. Yeah. He's a fellow beer, bro, so respect. Don't see a lot of that in India. All right, let's wrap it there. Thank you to everyone for joining us. Thank you to Jonathan kerma big current for stepping in on production. We'll be back next week when we will be talking about some trades because it's fast becoming trade season around bees here parts. See.