Luka Doncic and the Los Angeles Lakers won their 8th straight by beating Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks in overtime. Dave DuFour and Es Baraheni discuss the Luka and LeBron James’ power as a duo, Steph Curry’s connection with Jimmy Butler, and ponder whether Orlando has lost its magic. Then, Benjy Ritholtz from Knicks Film School stops by to breakdown the Knicks-Lakers thriller, Jalen Brunson’s importance, and how the Knicks fix their problems before the playoffs.Host: Dave DuFourWith: Es Baraheni & Benjy RitholtzExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio Producer: Grayson Moody Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What happened in the Lakers vs. Knicks game?
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily. Coming up, the Lakers are hot, winning their eighth straight. And we're going to talk to Benji Ritholtz from Nick's Film School about the Knicks side of that game last night after the break. And the Warriors win another one with Jimmy Butler thanks to 40 from Steph Curry. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, S. Morning.
Another awesome night in the NBA. Actually, we had one really great game to end the night. That's all you need. That's all you really need. It's true.
Yeah.
I mean, we're going to manufacture other things to talk about, but... Man, what a game at the end of the night. The Lakers won their eighth straight game by beating the Knicks in overtime. And we got to say, Luka and LeBron, what a duo, man. Their numbers in this game, pretty incredible. You get two guys with this level of playmaking. And this level of scoring.
And then you've got Luka Doncic grabbing all these rebounds. And you've got LeBron with, what did he have, 10 assists or 12 assists? No, excuse me, 8 assists last night. Luka had 12 assists. LeBron grabs 12 rebounds. Luka had 7 rebounds. You basically have two guys... who are a threat for a triple double in every single game. And that just doesn't feel fair.
They are two versions of the same thing, right? Which is like just these heliocentric offenses that can run everything through them. And LeBron has now added the cool wrinkle of being able to be excellent off of the ball. The catch and shoot three point shooter. Yeah. The catch and shoot stuff like he hit two massive threes in that fourth quarter to help the Lakers get that lead back.
There's a lot of screening stuff that they do where they'll have LeBron in the short roll and he'll make a bunch of plays out of that. They'll throw him in the post. So LeBron versatility aside, these are two guys that can generate offense at such a high level for the Lakers that they can go on these runs. And we saw we were texting it, you know, while the game was going on.
Second quarter, Lakers were bad. Like there was no one else that could hit a shot. Austin Reeves, I thought, struggled throughout this game, just wasn't himself offensively coming back from that injury. But they found a way to still get things going in that second half. Part of that. was Dalton connect.
I thought he hit some huge shots, finishing that third quarter, entering the fourth quarter, just being a release valve for the Lakers offense. And that's what LeBron and Luca need, right? They can be all creators in the world, be the best creators they can possibly be, but they need guys on the other end to hit shots. Gabe Vincent did that tonight. Dalton connected that tonight and LeBron himself.
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Chapter 2: How are Luka Doncic and LeBron James performing together?
down the hallway yeah i would i think it goes back to a theme that we've actually seen all year long uh but it's been exacerbated i'd say of late and as josh hart has gotten less confident shooting the basketball as the season's gone on teams have been more emboldened to stick their centers on him and put their best wing defender or largest wing defender on carl anthony towns and i think what we're seeing is and we saw it down the stretch for sure
Cat is basically frozen out of the offense because if you screen with him, it's just an easy switch. Josh Hart's the one that screens over and over again, and it just becomes a lot of Josh Hart. And Josh Hart does a lot of great things. There's a lot of record scratching when he catches the ball because he's not willing to shoot.
And I just think the Knicks need to find a way to tilt the offense more towards the guy they just traded for to be their second best player, and that's Carl Anthony Towns, who barely touched it in the fourth quarter. I think that, to me, is the biggest takeaway.
What's the solution to that? What do you think is the way that they can fix that with the current version of this roster? That's a great question.
It's a great question. And I'm actually not even sure there's a solution with this lineup unless Josh Hart decides to become a much better shooter in the offseason. And he's so far into his career, this has always been a thing with him. That's hard to imagine that being the fix. I think they could...
Do some things the way they initiate possessions to get cat touches, even if it's just like an elbow entry, because they'll go to this offense with the second unit when campaign plays with cat where it's like enter the ball to cat and run some split cut action. Cat's a really good passer out of there.
And maybe we can get him involved as opposed to just like a pure spacer, which is really what he was in that fourth quarter. I think that's one possibility just to get him involved a little bit.
But at the end of the day, if you want to free up Brunson, which is the priority, and he saw why, the guy's exceptionally good in these scenarios, you're going to want to screen with whoever the center's guarding, and that is Josh Hart. So I don't know if there's a great solution. I don't know if you guys have any opinion on it.
He's getting Robertson'd right now. Right. And come playoff time, that's going to be a big problem. I don't think teams will guard him much at all. They're going to they're going to make him prove he's willing to shoot. The thing is that he goes through these stretches where you feel like he gains confidence and it just it waxes and wanes. And I think it depends on touches.
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