Reflecting on 25 Years of NBA Evolution With Ben Taylor | Ringer NBA

The Ringer’s J. Kyle Mann is joined by Ben Taylor, author of ‘Thinking Basketball’ and creator of the Thinking Basketball YouTube channel to reflect back on the last 25 years of basketball, how the game has evolved since 2000, as well as the new series on Ben’s YouTube channel, “21st Century Peaks”. They also discuss unique skill sets of players like Jason Kidd and James Harden while also speculating on the future of the game, including innovative offensive strategies and defensive adaptations.

(00:00) Welcome to The Ringer NBA Show!
(03:13) Ben’s YouTube series, “21st Century Peaks”
(09:02) Reflecting on Jason Kidd’s career
(20:03) Issues when discussing James Harden
(28:45) Tracy McGrady’s decisive ranking
(33:20) What made the 2008 Celtics team special on defense
(41:00) Explaining how the Grizzlies were trying to set up their offense last season with Noah LaRoche
(45:47) Are screen assists important now?
(50:18) Will teams look to copy Tyrese Haliburton and the Pacers’ style of offense?
(01:00:40) Franz Wagner’s importance to unlocking the Magic’s full potential
(01:05:29) How will the 2024-25 Thunder be remembered 20 years from now?

Host: J. Kyle Mann
Guest: Ben Taylor
Producer: Jessie Lopez
Additional Production Support: Ben Cruz
Social: Keith Fujimoto

Check out the Bill Simmons YouTube channel: youtube.com/billsimmons

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[Music] [Applause] How y’all doing? What’s crackalacking? My name is Jay Kyle man and this is the Ringer NBA Show. We’re coming to you with another offseason episode. As the sand in the offseason hourglass slowly trickles down and disappears, basketball is no longer in the rear view. It’s on the horizon, but it’s blurry. It’s not quite here yet. So, that means that we have some time to do one of my favorite things, which just to ponder the higher mysteries, to put on the maester robe here. Not that I’m qualified to do it, but this guy is the guy who’s on the other end of the line, one of my favorite people to talk about the higher mysteries and just not whatever it is, doesn’t matter. He’s the author of the book Thinking Basketball. He’s the founder of the YouTube channel Thinking Basketball. He’s the host of the very successful, very fun podcast called Thinking Basketball. It’s Ben Taylor. Good to see you, Ben. Kyle, did you write that or did you just come up with that off the top of the dome? Improvised it, man. I’m just You You bring out the passion for the art, the craft in me, Ben, and I just got excited. And uh that was amazing. Also, probably the most formal exchange we’ve ever had in the six or seven years we’ve been podcasting together. That was I’m like, man, should I just get really like pres like clean with my presentation today? I don’t know. Maybe you set the tone. I wanted to give you your proper respect. I did have your credits written out here. So, I kind of I teed myself up on that, but like I even needed to write your credits down. And I was thinking about It’s funny that it’s funny for me to go from I remember when you made your first video because I noticed it. I was so face close to the canvas on YouTube that I knew what everybody was doing at every moment, you know, when you’re locked in. And I was like, “What is going on here?” And I saw it. I was like, “Oh, this is wow. Who is this?” And we’ve gone from there to the other day I called Ben and it went straight to voicemail. It did did one of those like, you know, the person did it. I was like, “What the hell is this?” And then Ben calls me back and goes, “Sorry, I was talking to Steve Nash.” Come on. That just is a thing that happens sometimes. And I love that, let’s talk basketball. You’re making you’re you’re embarrassing me. Well, I just love that in this I like, you know, you get to like meet people and you get to be in proximity to people and players at times. you’re like, “Oh, okay.” And Steve Nash still elicits that response for me. I got really excited. So, very excited about what you have coming with him. Don’t want to spoil it. I brought Ben on because I want to talk like big picture where the league is going, where we’ve come from. These are always the kind of things that we gravitate towards. But, uh, I want to start here with you’ve been working on a series with your co-host Cody. Great team of people over there at Thinking Basketball, Mike Dear Rosa, apparently a ball himself. Uh, but uh, you’ve been doing a really cool Mike’s apparently really good. Have you heard Mike? Mike will Mike has Instagram highlight reels where he cooks people. If you haven’t seen them, they exist. Yes, I don’t want to be a part of that. So, but uh, anyway, I’ll pass to him. I am I am unequivocally the worst player at this point in time on the Thinking Basketball team. If there’s any debate about that. Yeah, we’ll have to get you guys a Drew League team just to see how that goes. Uh, but uh, explain what you guys have been doing over there on your uh, on the series that you’ve been doing. Well, we noticed at some point that it was the, you know, 25th year of the century and we, you know, people like to celebrate random round number years where they do historical retrospectives and create arbitrary content around it. So instead of the, you know, we’ve done the greatest careers and the greatest peaks and postmerger stuff and going back in time and honestly when we came up with the idea, I don’t think we realized how much basketball has been played this century in in the 25 years. I think both Cody and I thought, well, this will be our chance to talk about the lesser discussed players, the Kyle Lowry’s of the world, Al Horford, the players that didn’t quite get the shine at the MVP level discussion. And we just started doing the project and we were like, “No, no, no, no. This is this is all wrong. There are so many good players this century that people are going to be mad when we list the first player and they’re going to be like, what do you mean he’s 25th? What do you mean there’s 25 players better than this guy in this century?” So the the real conceit once we start doing a project like this, Kyle, is to use the players as a vehicle to discuss concepts, to discuss changes in the game and value relative to your era and the things that are happening in uh a conceptual sense that go beyond just the classic box score or some narrative about rings or you know this guy never get out of the first round or something like that. So honestly at this point I don’t like ranking players at all but the vehicle to get into the discussion is where the value is and where the meat is. Yeah. You said I mean I’m kind of amused that you you saw that there was 25 years of basketball but you still didn’t seem to you you still were unable to wrap your mind around about how much. Um was it just that how did just talk me through how that happened. I mean, where where was the point where you were like, I went in looking for this thing and then this other thing presented itself to me? I mean, is it just you you just felt like you’d overlooked a lot of players? No, no, no. Cody wanted to do it and I said, “Okay.” Um, I you know, I was in full offseason mode and I said, “Okay, I’ll start doing something and watching historical games or whatever.” And then I said, “That’s a fun idea. We actually have some other ideas for sort of celebrating the 25th anniversary of the century and we’re just not going to get to too many of them because we just became completely entrenched in this series. And that moment you’re asking for is like when I went to start sketching out just not even any deep dive just like on my phone like okay I know these 10 guys off the top. Oh don’t forget about those five guys. Wait oh no he he was in the 21st century too. Then I was like oh my god I think I texted Cody and I was like we have 38 players to discuss. Yeah. What I mean aside from the obvious I think the the the place that people go I mean maybe the biggest and this will sort of bridge into some of the other conversations that we’re going to have about where the NBA has come and where where it’s going. I mean what was there any kind of phenomenon that or trend that you feel like maybe you didn’t index correctly for going into it and you have like re-calibrated or reappreciated? um because you’re going all the way back to 2000, there was a very very different landscape. What what kind of lessons or kind how how have you sort of felt yourself get remolded in the way that you’re looking at those those concepts that were going on now as they apply to winning? Well, one of the themes of the series that we keep coming back to is sort of the different ways players impact offense when they’re on the court. And so kind of like the effect you might have on your team’s turnovers as an example, if you have the ball a lot, you make a ton of decisions, you kind of offload a lot of those responsibilities in many cases. And so what you’ll see is you’ll see in the classic box score, which we’re stuck, Kyle, we’re stuck in the classic box score, and I’m trying to get us beyond the classic box score at all times. You’ll go check the box score and you’ll be like, you mentioned Steve Nash. You’ll be like, that’s Steve Nash. He committed a lot of turnovers. But then when you look at what happens when his when Steve Nash goes to the bench, his teammates commit more turnovers because he’s not out there to take up all of those hard decisions and pressure the defense in a much more effective way where like the end of the play, you’re not committing a turnover, you’re getting a good shot, right? So, we’ve done that with so many different things, but I think the big ones for me are not just turnovers, but looking at pressure at the rim and what happens to a team’s shot profile at the basket when a player is on versus off the floor and then even the three-point line or outside shots. These are kind of like the big areas. And I think what has helped me in terms of era stuff or something that’s a little new or clearer, I got a little more clarity is going All right. I know the game changed a lot between 2005 and 2015 and 2025, but if you’re a player and you go out on the court and you’re constantly having this signal where you’re like, “Team shot quality is spiking.” Um, that’s timeless. That’s the that’s literally the thing we’re after when we talk about how good a basketball player is. And so, traditionally, we’re wired to be like, “Ah, he he scored 30 on, you know, 60% true shooting and he had five.” The one we used in one of the episodes is like Demar D Roz and he’s like 26 points, six rebounds, six assists. But that’s so different than Steph Curry’s 26, six rebounds, six assists. And the only way you can really understand how different it is is to look at the whole team when they’re on the court. Look at the whole team when they’re off the court and look at these subfactors of how an offense attacks a defense. I was really struck by your your episode where you were talking about Jason Kid. Um because Jason Kidd I feel like is time comes for us all obviously and I feel like time has come for his the rhetoric around his career in an interesting way where I think you know as the league pass accessibility sort of skyrocketed was distinctly in his like he’s he was a micro fracture guy right I mean I feel like that was sort of the that was sort of the Mason Dixon line in his career um if I’m not mistaken where he just kind of became a different player um granted he started to shoot the ball a little better there at the end like um but you all talking about him his willingness to take shots and just what he played like and what his superpowers were. Um that one thing I wanted to add on was um every episode you all do a thing where you say like what’s this guy’s superpower? Um I I I kind of come at it where I almost feel like the convergence of two things is is a player superpower at times. Like I mean you all will talk about like a player is like Shay you all were talking about that was his balance was his superpower whatever it is like for Jason kid I feel like you know we talk about court mapping just overall you all you all brought up that I think it was like a Nike it was like that Nike Zoom commercial whatever it was where he has the eyes in the back of his head and whatever it is I feel like kids combination of court mapping and the accuracy of his hands like his not even with the shooting for a lot of guys when you talk about hand eye coordination. I feel like you end up talking about tough shot making or movement shooting or things like that. Skills that are put to the test by speed and things like that. But I feel like kid in particular um I we were joking about his assist his he has this kind of I I told you I thought he was going to he would be like a supercharged Alex Caruso if he played today. Um I’ll I’ll throw that to you in a second for your comment, but I feel like that that that convergence to me is his superpower. I I don’t always necessarily put it on like one trait rather than just like an interesting convergence of two things. I’m glad you brought this up because I think we realized each episode as we kept trying to think of superpowers that we started to almost change our idea of what had to be a superpower. And at a certain point I was like the the key thing that makes these players so great and when we say they have an outlying skill, it’s really what you’re talking about. It’s the convergence of things. So the classic example is when people say Steph Curry’s the greatest shooter ever and it’s like you’re you’re missing everything if you think that summarizes Steph Curry because it’s the combination of that with his movement and his ball handling and etc etc and that applies in so many ways right so kid can have eyes in the back of his head but you have to combine that with something else and in his case it’s probably speed at his size and um you know so it’s usually when we get to superpowers it’s usually multiple traits with these great players when we get to this level. And to your point, it’s often the intersection. It’s often the combination of balance, speed, size, power, skill, vision, shooting, movement, whatever it is that unlocks something. And this is this honestly is like to me the most interesting part about basketball, maybe full stop, is all the different ways that you can do it. Um, I I there’s an expression all the different ways to skin the cat, but Cody has banned me from saying that. Is he a cat guy? Is that why he No, he’s just become a feline advocate or something, and I don’t blame him. It’s a very old violent expression, but there’s there’s there’s there’s so many different ways to do it to the point where if you were to ask me like about the future of basketball, um, I mean, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, some of the shooting stuff was in this sense lower hanging fruit. It was right there to be taken. And I I wrote about it in thinking basketball the book a very long time ago. But we you and I couldn’t necessarily predict the next new way to be awesome because there is really no constraint on that. It could be something that we’ve just never thought of. And I feel like this is part of what pushes basketball forward. Like this guy’s a great post player. Okay. So therefore the next great post player in the 60s or 70s has to do it the same way. No, he doesn’t even have to be a post player. Okay. So to be a good outside player, you have to be like Michael Jordan or David Thompson. No, you could do it. There’s just so many different ways to be great. And this is where that the kid, you know, starting with kid, he’s one of the players that I was higher on through this pass, getting a better lens, getting more data. We have more data than ever, Kyle. More technology than ever. I’ve been doing this for years. I have more tools than ever, more video tools, more access to coaches, more access to players. and you go through something like this and you’re like, man, yeah, Jason Kid couldn’t shoot very well. So, he may have been one of the least efficient shooters on his team, but man, when he’s on the floor, everyone else shoots really well. And that’s the dynamic we want to get after ultimately when we talk about like what’s driving offense. And that’s a totally different way to drive offense than Shaq or Steph Curry or LeBron James. Are you handtracking anything when you’re going back? I know you’re a big hand tracking guy with analytics and you know obviously they’re not available to us past a certain I guess 2014 is sort of the advent of tracking data or the second spectrum tracking data. Synergy has some back all the way to 2005 I think 2005. Yeah. And then um but it’s spotty. I mean a lot of times you’ll it’s because it hadn’t been fully embraced yet. How much hand tracking are you going on doing when you’re when you’re watching some of these old games? I used to always hand I used to always handtrack. So, I still have my old notebook of hand tracking that I sometimes cross reference, but for this particular series we’re doing, it’s it’s no handtracking. It’s taking all the technology we have, and like you said, Synergy goes back almost to the beginning of the century. We have play-by-play data that goes back uh back into the 90s. We’ve got cameras back to 2014. So, it’s just taking a lot of new information and synthesizing. Yeah. One of my favorite things, I was teasing Ben about this was um you guys get into these nerdy laughing lathers sometimes about certain things and they be like they just get really wound up and I found myself laughing as I was walking my dog listening. But uh one thing that you all talked about and I think I mentioned how I thought that like supercharged Caruso I I I just think in the finals in particular I mean there was one stretch of I forget which game it was. is it might have been game five at was it game five in Indie? I’m I’m blanking on it, but there was a game where Caruso basically shut down the middle third of the floor like a like he was like Ed Reed basically they they couldn’t do anything. He was obviously playing like highly highly physically. Um, I kind of feel like Kid in particular, I’m not trying to make this specifically exclusively about Kid, but for the young people that listen to this show, I think you should probably go and educate yourself on younger Jason Kid because he was such an interesting player. But I I felt like he would land somewhere between a Caruso type, probably a better scorer. Three-point efficiency and effectiveness might change who he is in today’s game. And on a spectrum in between that and a guy that when you alluded to it on the show, I said as I was walking my dog, maybe somebody overheard me randomly say Draymond Green really loud to myself with in headphones, but I knew you were going to say that because that’s kind of that’s kind of uh where where my mind is. Do you think that’s insane that spectrum I laid out there or what do you think? No, I think we we have to be careful not to minimize Kid’s offense u for for younger viewers that aren’t sort of familiar with him relative to someone like Caruso and the way Caruso plays today. kid came into the league as a offensive first guy who had these incredible defensive skills that were just kind of there that I don’t know how much they were talked about in the 90s when he was coming up and um was really really uh big in Cal but left early and you I think when you play on the west coast sometimes you don’t get the you don’t get the east coast media three 3.8 8 steals his freshman year, 3.1 his second year. Can you imagine? I was talking about convergences though. I mean, like that’s why I think when I looked at Caruso’s college stats, they have an interesting sort of parallel there where he had really high assist numbers and really high steel numbers and it’s just, you know, producing stewarding offense and also stewarding it away from the from the from the the the you know, on the defensive end. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the interesting thing what makes what makes Draymond so unique is that he he’s so great defensively. So, when you kind of use him as a de facto point guard or a playmaker or you run sets where he’s initiating not to score necessarily, but to feed the offense and make a decision, you come back on the other end, you just get like one of the best defenders ever. Kid’s a great defender, but you can’t do that with a quote unquote center. you can’t play kid at quote unquote center in your lineup probably. I think so. What does that mean for like being a guard in today’s game? Um, how many guards can come into today’s game and not be primary scoring threats, not have good pull-up shooting, not have I mean, he we talked about it. He was actually a slightly better outside shooter than I think people realize because of his nickname, but what does it mean? I mean, just what does it mean if you have a prospect coming in now and you you think about this throughout the year and you can go under his high high ball screen and there isn’t a real threat. The defense is going to be happy if you start launching pullup threes because he doesn’t shoot him at 34 to 37%. I think this is a this is Cody on the episode said he’s gone by the way of the dinosaur this archetype probably because of this kind of stuff. So that’s probably the big question and when you try to connect that to Caruso, Caruso is a pretty good connective tissue passer and that kind of player, but I mean just as you said, he’s on one end of the spectrum because he doesn’t he doesn’t provide a lot of pressure on the ball offensively when he has it initiating offense. Well, yeah, Draymond, same kind of thing. Unless Draymond’s doing the Magic Johnson thing, he can do some live ball kind of manipulation. But so much of it is like, you know, going take taking this energy here and and rerouting it here at a high level, right? And Kid did have a lot of that transition stuff. I mean, you think about somebody like a Josh Giddy. Granted, Josh Giddy, I’m trying to think about it, but he’s not the defender that Kid was. Um, Lonzo has had Lonzo has had he’s the closest. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I think Lonzo’s and a lot of that was said around the draft, around the time. I’ve always really liked Lonzo’s game for that reason. And, you know, I I guess just in today’s game, those guys shift a little bit more from the there is room and tolerance for them to be the to be the, as Cody was saying, like the archetypical archetypical in the way that they they would be a primary. Today, that that archetype has it’s still out there. It’s just repurposed a little bit. is who’s who has gotten the most uh who’s incited the most rage? I know we all you always you’re always at war with the real hooper crowd and I’m always just sitting back either laughing or or just patting you on the back and saying it’s okay or who have you been waring the most with? I think there’s a group of people that have lost their mind about our assessment of James Harden. How how in 2025 could that be true? The data is I don’t I don’t know. I don’t know. Yeah. What do you think? What do you think in particular gets misunderstood about him while we’re on this peak thing? Yeah. I shouldn’t say I don’t know. I mean, it’s clearly because he puts up a lot of points and assists and it’s it used to be we used to have sort of a telescoping I think as a community on the slash line in the box score. So that 255 thing, right? like that’s how we would describe players and reduce everything they did down on the court to their individual quote unquote production line. I think the next stage of evolution for that, which has sort of become a trap to get stuck in if you’re a quote unquote stats driven kind of anal analytical fan or analyst, is okay, well, let me look at something a little more polished like his scoring rates and his efficiency, his true shooting percentage. I’ll take into account his threes and his twos, and James Hart gets to the free throw line a lot. Then the other thing that’s paired commonly with this is the team’s offensive ratings. So, okay. So, I look at the Rockets and they have good offensive ratings and it’s like James Harden’s doing everything because he has like 30 points and 10 assists and good offensive ratings. Airgo, how can James Harden be behind players that have lesser stats? Now, I’m simplifying, but I think that’s where the impulse comes from. And for me, as as we talked about, I thought extensively in his episode, but I guess not. I guess I guess our mics were muted and that didn’t come out. Um, you mean to the public or I I was saying I was rhetorically asking you, Ben, I want you I wanted you to present it again. But saying people should go, I’m just saying you were taking a shot at me. I was like, you No, I’m saying I’m saying I Here’s the thing, Kyle. I don’t like being negative about the great players. So So part of our show is we talk about weaknesses and contexts a ton to the point where for just about every fan base, we’re a wet blanket. I mean, I don’t know if you know this, but there was a period in time where Steph Curry’s fan base hated me. Unthinkable. Yeah. I just want to point out that we have been a wet blanket for every single fan base probably at one point in time. And it’s because we spend a good amount of time either contextualizing or trying to balance strengths and weaknesses or trying to balance good situations and bad situations. And that people can be very sensitive to that. I understand that. It’s not as fun as purely championing or or purely cheerleading or things like that. And I think that’s why it feels really fun when we get underdised, underrated players who we get to spend a lot more time explaining why they’re better than you think they are. The inverse of that is when you have players like Adrien Dantley historically who have the unbelievable stat lines and you kind of have to be the wet blanket and be like, well, I’ll tell you why I don’t value that stat line because I’m not focusing on that stat line. I’m focusing on all these other things and here what we here’s what we see with all those other things. So in the case of Harden the biggest single thing is the difference between the regular season and the playoffs and I don’t know why at this point there’s resistance to that given that we have a lot of years of data of things being different between the regular season and the playoffs. But as I said many times on the episode if we’re talking regular season only uh I think he is one of the great regular season offensive players of the century. Yeah, I mean it’s funny you’ve talked we’ve joked about what if sports.com I think before where it’s like Dantley was one of those guys that just be like that’s my starting three and you just get the raw box numbers and be like yeah it blew you out 170 to to 72. Um, now Harden, Harden is the big thing for Harden is you you talk about noisiness in statistics. Obviously, that’s a, you know, a phrase that is used on all fronts, not just basketball. But it’s interesting that the noise of the the there is noise in the preparation. I think that doesn’t necessarily read in the only way it really reads is when you compare playoffs to regular season, right? where we talked about how Harden leaned into this, you know, back in 2013, 2014. We have all these things converging like the analytics movements, the style of play of like, okay, the game’s becoming a lot more three-point footwork. a lot of these things are sort of coming together to produce this style that he naturally was really good at that he had these abilities this ability to draw fouls in the paint that he that he had these tendencies that you know on a nightight basis in terms of the turnaround of your preparation let’s say you’re playing San Antonio on you know Sunday night and then you’re going to you’re like oh [ __ ] I got to start looking at film for you know and it’s it’s in February and you’re like we’re seeing the Rockets on on Tuesday night I got start focusing on James Harden or whatever it is. And it’s like when you’re in that kind of turnaround, the types of things that he did um were just and a lot of the Helio guys are like this whenever you’re not looking at them in like a compact sequential situation of like, okay, he got me Tuesday, now I got to play him again Thursday. That sort of flow of data is where you just start to like the you can the constraints just sort of come in on Harden. It’s also, you know, super well documented um at this point. So, I’m not going to begrudge you for where you had. I thought you gave him a bunch of uh praise. And I think on the on the wet blanket thing, I think whenever you’re like pursuing a hierarchical hierarchy, whatever of can you say that word? Um a hierarchy of all the best things in one place naturally you’re going to have to through comparison. It’s gonna happen. I mean, and I and some of the things that I wanted to talk to you about inter like Well, go ahead. Go comment on that. Well, I was going to say this is the this is the part of rankings at this point that I just loathe because especially in basketball culture, there’s so much sort of religiosity attached to each player or each team that even if something’s like some of these players that we get more complex about are really interesting players. And I don’t think either Cody or myself really care where they rank at the end of the day. We’re more interested in like actually did you know this guy that averages 50 points a game isn’t like twice as good as a guy that averages 25 points a game. That’s the thing that’s interesting. But what’s not fun is that while we’re having that conversation about the two people that happen to average 50 points a game. Someone in the audience is going this guy hates Will Chamberlain. I got to get him. Like it’s not about Will Chamberlain. about the fact that Wilt Chamberlain happened to play this way at a certain point in time or James Harden is the one that went to the Rockets and ended up giving us this like hey what if you just did everything on all the possessions um and then you would get all the points but I think if there’s a single stat to summarize sort of everything we’ve talked about for the last half an hour and the sort of apex of this conversation it’s something along the lines of Harden’s teams at his peak when he was in Houston, his teammates true shooting percentage when he was on the court always went up about two to three percentage points, which is good, which is good. But the best players ever will get you over 5%. And so as as an example, when we compare that to like what happens in 2002 and 2003 with Tracy McGrady when he’s on the court versus off the court for Orlando, his teammates true shooting percentage goes up like five and a half points. And so when you take into account the fact that Harden is generally a little bit more efficient himself and McGrady can be a little less efficient, the overall team change is similar. But I want to understand, Kyle, like, okay, how much of that is from you taking all the shots? What effect are you having on the system? How much easier are you making it for not only just your teammates, but different types of teammates? Teammates who cut to the rim, who get to the basket, who f spot-up shooters, how much easier are you making it for them? And we when we stack that up, it’s those kinds of numbers that I’m interested at the end of the day because as I said, regardless of your era and regardless of your box score stats, some guys can improve their teammates shooting percentages by four percentage points by doing it one way and some guys can do it the other way and they’ll have totally different stats. And that’s what I’m after. Like what is the overall lift? Yeah, you said something in particular about I mean the I’m not trying to make it specifically about the McGrady thing, but you all talked about him. Um he he gets people are shocked by the way that he was in the top 25 which I thought was really weird because I thought Yeah would have been the opposite because people thought people lionize him in a really interesting way. Yes. I thought we were too low on him and and Cody reads more comments than I do. I try to I try to not read too many comments but um you know he’s like this idea that people are mad at I’m like well which way are they mad? Are they mad because we’re too high or too low? And that’s the other thing about rankings that’s so weird. you’re just trying to go through and talk about the process really and analyze what you’re seeing and share not only the extra film time that we get to put in because we now do this all the time but uh the extra data that we have and I was I was kind of stunned that there are people who think Tracy there are people just don’t think Tracy McGrady is very good. I think he’s I think he’s been um subsumed by some of the this efficiency mindset that I was talking about where you focus heavily on the players individual true shooting percentage and that’s sort of that here here’s another way to look at it. There are some players and we’ll get to them later in in our series. Um, but there are a lot of players who you go into the playoffs and their true shooting percentage goes down like three percentage points and fans go, “Ah, you see, he played much worse.” And you’re like, “But that’s just his shots. What about his screens and his cuts and his passes and his decisions and his defense, which is half the game. And then we also have the context of those shots in a very small sample in the playoffs. And then we have the opponent, which is different than the regular season. So these are the things we’re trying to figure out. But if you reduce the game to just how many shots someone took, you’re going to fall into that trap of just it’s almost like turning it into baseball where you think people are just taking at bats in an isolated manner and that’s what determines how well someone played basketball. Yeah. Yel brought up something interesting about his footwork in particular before we move on that I thought was about he had an odd finishing repertoire when he would get around the basket and you were trying to account for what what what is up with this distance between the gracefulness of him as an athlete and the explosive dunks big runway athlete that was a big term in the in in the spring with the draft stuff that was going on but um and then the odd uh it wasn’t quite where you all thought it would would be in terms of the rim finishing and and you all were talking about that that the footwork was playing a role in that. I think it’s I also think it’s this the just the era and the spacing the the rules rules of the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We didn’t have the gather step. What one of the most fun things about rewatching games in the 21st century is sort of the the very gray ambiguous bridging of the gather step and how big of a deal that actually is for on ball finishing skills. Because at this point it seems that young players, they’re already natives. They’ve been trained to come in and, you know, like I think of someone like Brandon Pajki a couple years ago, like you’re going to have the Euro step, the Pinoy step, you’re going to this the pause step where you’re decelerating and like Kyle Anderson pausing his steps and going to absolute zero speed with the last foot hanging in the air. And so what that means is, you know, in advance, you’re going to be able to play a game without dribbling a basketball. Whereas the spirit of the rules 30 or 40 years ago were almost everything is about dribbling the basketball except the very end of the movement. And there’s a there’s a bridging in this century where some plays are two and a half steps, some plays are three steps, some plays some plays in some years broadcasters are like that’s a travel. Sometimes it’s called a travel. Sometimes the players argue, sometimes the players don’t argue. And then you get to the 2010s and the 20, you know, twelves and start to see the gather. And then one day James Harden’s forcing the league to codify the gather by being like, “No, no, no. The dribble doesn’t start until you put two hands on it.” And now because when I put two hands on it, then I get two steps of any like I could jump to Mars if I had the ability any direction I want to go also. Yeah. So that’s that’s a really fun thing. And it jumps out. It jumps off the screen when you watch McGrady because he’s doing it this old way despite being like 69 with these huge long steps and this crazy vertical pop. And I honestly that might be one of the reasons why he had so many reverse layups. Um because you combine that with the traffic and he’s just got to get in there and just has to leave his feet. Yeah. He just gets gets to a chasm and has to jump. Um, I wanted to, um, I wanted to kind of talk to you a little bit about obviously the where we came from is going to be an interesting place to start going into this now, which is where we’re going. Um, you know, finding an edge is something, you know, where where are the edges? Because in the flow of data, I feel like, you know, there have been these little milestones where people have found lowhanging fruit to them, uh, or just found new ways to to exploit. And you’ll see people have um can you think can you think of like an obvious edge that somebody thought of in terms of data and and or scheme that like really disrupted the league back then? Because I feel like the I feel like the analytics one gets talked about so much that we don’t hear as much about um during that first 25 years. Was there an edge there that really stood out to you defensively or offensively in your research? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, I I think the ’08 Celtics were the team that represented sort of a tactical counter, a tactical jump forward where it’s like there was a period of time where the defense was ahead of the offense in terms of shot selection, skill, who’s on the court. We understand how to clog up the paint. You don’t have shooters. We understand how to rotate and take powerful or valuable stuff away. The offense started to get going a little bit in the 2000s, but Tom Tom Thibido and just this idea of like, hey, there’s no more zone defense anymore, so we’re just going to constantly shrink the court, overload the side, push the ball to the sideline, all these things that became common place in the following years. That was a huge one that, you know, you could argue how much analytics is driving that because you have to give up something defensively. But when they put when the Celtics put that, I mean, other teams did it, but when the Celtics really codified it and made it the base of their defense in 2008, they had an advantage, I think, over offenses at the time. You talking about pushing the ball towards the sideline? What are you What specifically are you talking about? Be really clear and simple about it. Yeah. Well, the I think the two biggest things they did conceptually on defense were to bring extra defenders over to the ball side. So, if we have a pick and roll with two guys and we try to artificially go create space by sending the other three guys to the other side of the court, now we have a lot of room to work with. The Celtics are like, “You can’t do that. We’re just going to bring a third defender over and park them right in the lane, and then we’re going to zone up the weak side with our other two guys, and then we’ll recover.” And like I said, that’s that was not a novel tactic. They weren’t the first team to implement. It’s not like you were watching the game and you’re like, “What are you doing? You’re break.” They just did it all the time. They just did it all the time and they had it totally dialed in. And then they paired that with a coverages that again became common place for defending the screen. They didn’t invent it. It existed before. But if you’re on one side of the court and you’re setting this ball screen, they’re going to push the the ball handler to the sideline and force him to stay on the sideline. And those were probably the two biggest things. Again, just an X’s and O’s jump defensively. That’s probably not really we, like you said, we talk about the analytics side of it, but there’s there was stuff happening defensively um as well, I think, during this period that was that drove the game forward. It’s a cat. It’s a It’s an arms race that just keeps keeps escalating. It’s incredible. Do you uh you know, fast forwarding to now, I think I know the answer to this, but do you still think who do you think is ahead right now, offense or defense? I think the offense is still ahead. I think the offense is still ahead. A lot of the work we talked about this year, especially with like looking at what the Thunder are doing, is how can the defense combat some of the offensive advantages that they’ve created by putting more skill on the court, understanding the value of shooting, stuff like that. As an aside, it’s always cracked me up back in the day it was so hard for me to sell people at how valuable shooting was and I’m just like, but the back in the day when are we talking now? Oh, I’m talking like 15 years ago. Okay. Yeah. 10 10 to 15 years ago before it really took hold you would you would talk about like yeah shooting is a really important skill and people would be like yeah I don’t know about that it just it’s it’s amazing how deep it now to sell stuff I’m so I mean yeah I mean that you the NBA on you know the TNT crew you know the jump shooting team that was a major example yeah yeah like you know cartoon shaking their head moment in I mean it’s hard to imagine it before. But yeah, that’s that’s that’s funny. The TNT guys, a lot of them from the 80s and 90s, right? I mean, yes. One of the one of the biggest things that the the Bulls won six championships in the ’90s and they kind of took this strangle hold on the culture to the point where there’s still some of it in the air today about like back in my day and blah blah blah. Well, one, the triangle and Phil Jackson emphasized spacing and trying to create space for players and the right advantages based on space. It just wasn’t driven by the three-pointer. But two, a key development in Michael Jordan’s sort of uh, you know, golden arc, the the hero’s journey story from a X’s and O’s standpoint is they got better players that could shoot off of his on ball gravity and his ability to collapse the defense. So, it’s like you go back and you watch the really early Bulls and, you know, no shade on these people, but you’re like, man, Brad Sers, he’s just they’re gonna leave him open every time, right? And then you change that into, oh, Horus Grant can make the jumper from 18 ft. That’s kind of like his money shot. John Paxton, uh, Craig Hodes, uh, BJ Armstrong, then Steve Kerr, that Steve Kerr guy out there like this, this was a huge theme of putting shooters around these players. So these ideas, and that’s honestly part and parcel with most of the basketball history, there’s some shell or germ of something that would become evolutionarily more dominant that just wasn’t fully actualized or realized. So it’s always funny to me when the old heads get like crank. They’re like, “Dude, like Barkley, you’re like, you want shooters. You you played in Phoenix. Your MVP year in particular do.” Yeah. Well, your MVP year in Phoenix was literally let’s take more threes. Let’s unlock Dan Marley so I can have more uh space in the post and kick the ball out. So, it’s been there. It’s been there forever in a sense. I think Marley texted him during that time. I was like, “Hey, man.” If I if I were if I were Marley, I would have just I would have just sent him an audio note like an an audio message and just said, “Hey, man.” And just left that hang and let him figure it out. Um, no. I mean, what you mean when you send me those messages? Just, “Hey, man.” I love sending an audio note. That’s one of my favorites. Uh, you know, you’re really my friend when I get like an impassion when you get an impassioned audio note from me. Uh, usually Danny was on that team, man. I mean, come on. Come on. Um, that team was that team was full of shooters. That that uh 93 Suns team. That 93 Suns team made over a thousand threes. They might have been the first team in NBA history to make over a thousand threes. I’m not Someone can look that up. Fact check. We have an internet. You can look stuff up now. We have an internet. We do. We have several internets. Uh, it’s it’s fun though. I mean, talking about the modern thing, I mean, you go and you look about you you talked about the inkling of something that would the shell of something that would evolve and and expand into something else, something small. And it’s interesting to me that it’s like sometimes it’s a full-blown philosophy that didn’t quite expand to the extent that it could have. Like, you know, the Suns get brought up a lot as like a touch point or the concepts with the Celtics. Um, one of the more interesting ones that got talked about this year in particular, let’s bring it to the present, hardcore to the present here. Um, Memphis this past year hires now that we’ve lost all the all the young viewers of the 93 Suns. Yes. Well, you know, the the Grizzlies, it was it was documented in the basketball sense that, you know, Memphis hires Noah Lar Ro, this really innovative player development guy who comes in and wants to in incorporate this new, you know, you made a great video about this. Coach Daniel made a really good video about this about their Well, just why don’t you why don’t you go ahead and explain the basic premise of what Memphis was doing and then we can kind of jump off from there. Well, they’re creating a ton of space to essentially allow players to isolate more where the game has become, you know, if I’m in trouble, someone come and set a ball screen. If I have the ball, someone bring up a second player and we’re going to play the pick and roll game. We’re going to try to create advantage with that screen. Teams have used pick and roll for a long time, but they realize, you know, over the last decade or something that, man, what an advantage to always just be able to bring up a second player to the screen and try to create these two ones or four versus threes downhill or things like that. Memphis kind of zigged when everyone or zagged when everyone was zigging in the sense that they will push players away from the ball to create more space. And I think that’s the biggest hallmark of of what they did that makes it unique. There’s some stuff about um respacing and rotations. Well, that’s the most interesting part. The entire the the entire offball setting sort of I’m you know it it rotates like a wheel. It Yeah. I mean like the if if your guy Well, just as an example, if your guy drives towards the right slot, like drives towards the right elbow, um the guy in the right corner would he is he in the short corner or in the corner? I think if he’s he’s in the corner usually and he’s going to then cut to the baseline. Yes. And then the guy on the guy on the wing is going to cut to the corner and fill that space and that allows space for the ball. And um the other thing that’s doing is it’s trying to mess with to help defense. So all that movement behind the play. Yeah. It’s a huge part of it. It’s trying to take advantage of the fact that defenses have tried to catch up by saying, “Okay, we know your pick and roll tricks, Luca. We understand like you’re going to come off. We got to worry about the pull-up shot. We got to worry about you getting downhill. We got to worry about the roll pass. We got to worry about you spraying to the shooters systematically, one pass away or skipping it to the corner. And when that is the sort of stationary position of the offense, the defense then can go, okay, we might be at a disadvantage, but at least we know where everyone is. Exactly. We’re zone that away from you. Basically, I mentioned zoning up the weak side with two players. That’s a heck of a lot harder to do when the three players behind you are moving, cutting, and screening. And so that is the other big part of the Memphis uh component. I’ll add one more thing that’s a little less like drawing X’s and O’s on the radio kind of stuff. The game of basketball is an invasion sport. You’re trying to get as close to the hoop as possible in most cases, right? So creating that space and asking the defense like, “All right, are you going to let John Morant just play one-on-one 40t away?” or the guy they the guy who I thought had it helped a ton was Jiren Jackson Jr. because he would come down court and he’s a big handling against other bigs and he’s starting to get that Giannis runway like 40 50 feet away and the amount of space unless you’re going to build a wall the amount of space that you then put your defensive big man in to try to guard like 35 or 40 how’s that Kyle you grow up one day you want to play in the NBA you get to 610 7 feet you want to go to the gym you put on some muscle you’re turning 50 lbs you make it to the NBA, you work on your shot and then they go, “Go guard this guy by yourself 40 feet away as he comes downhill.” Well, I heard some NBA development coach talk about one time that there is a pretty clear line of delineation where that separates some guys the the great the Evan Moys and the the Kevin Garnett types, the Anthony Davises who can’t put together more I think he said two lateral steps. They can’t fire their hip laterally more than twice in a row. So you’re asking somebody and you’re you’re positioning against like Jiren gets in the paint and gets those little push shots, those little Yeah, that’s one of his breadandbut shots. But yeah, I mean I think you’re you’re just kind of you’re putting I think putting bigs in this has been a big thing. People talk a lot about you know scheme versatility with like what a big is able to do out there at the level of the screen. But I think in that sense having players that can stress you know stress them. I mean, that’s why Chad, I think, is going to be uh Chad is so effective with that stuff is that he’s able to beat so many other bigs. Uh you were talking about um them stylistically. Screen assist this played out. We’ll kind of jump to the ending of how this experiment went and then go forward even more, but uh yeah, screen assists here, like Indiana was at 6.9 screen assists per game and Memphis was at 5.1. So, pretty big gap down there at the bottom. Uh they weren’t defending on screens. Um, but I my question for you is that like is that applicable? Is that a full-blown philosophy? If there’s any coaches out there, they’re probably like hitting the steering wheel right now. Jesus, no. Uh, is it is this a full-blown philosophy or is this is this an inkling of a sh a shell of something that could expand and be, you know, added to a Luke and roll pick a Luca pick and roll uh philosophy? You’re grinning really big, I guess. We’ll find out why. But is this something that you can apply to a star player? And I if we have time, I want to talk a little bit about star player philosophy and how to use them and things like that. Or is this something that could be applied in that sense if it’s not a full-blown philosophy? I love that you I love the 50-minute mark that you think the coaches are the first people banging their steering wheel in this podcast based on some of the things in before that. They were in all the way. Yeah. Uh the coaches were the last group we had to alienate. What? Sorry. What was is this a full-blown philosophy? Uh, look at Cleveland. Cleveland added a lot of movement to their offense. And in fact, one of the things Cleveland did specifically in the pick and roll game, we did a really fun video in collaboration with the NBA on the NBA channel with their associate head coach Johnny Bryant talking about this. If you run the pick and roll and the ball is moving toward that side that we talked about earlier with a guy on the wing and a guy in the corner, Cleveland right out of the gate this year was like, “We’re going to cut the guy in the corner baseline and we’re going to slide that guy in the wing down to the corner and we’re going to do that to mess with those stationary principles, those health principles on defense.” And we talked about it became a subplot on our pod like how effective is this going to be in the playoffs when you get to see it a lot. And you know the the jury is still out on that to some degree in terms of like how effective is it for the 2025 or 2026 version of the Cavs offense. But what we did see was other teams adopting this tactic. So to answer your question, going all the way in the other direction all the time the way Memphis essentially did might not be viable because you’re leaning you become predictable. You lean too much into one thing and then you can find a counter to plug it up. And what you really want, which I think is what made the Golden State Dynasty so effective, is you want built-in counters. You want reads, read and react options on the play that say, “Well, if the defense takes this away, we go in this direction.” And that’s what’s interesting about just this Memphis concept in general. If you use it a little bit here and here and there, hey, we’re not going to screen, we’re going to play in space, or we’re going to move or we’re going to cut, we’re going to cut multiple players when they used to stand still, that’s when I think we’re going to see something that will stick going forward. The only reason why these things don’t stick for a long time, Kyle, is because if the defense gets to a place where they just learn how to really take it away and defend it super well, then you just see offenses run less and less and less because they start searching for better ways to create an advantage. But I do think that’s where we’re going to see it. I do think we’re going to see more movement that we’ve continued to see away from the ball and these kinds of cuts to mess with tags um help defense. And then I really like having some possessions where hey instead of just every time we set a ball screen like we’re going to space or play off ball differently and that’s what the Pacers did and we it’s a shame we’ve made it 54 minutes and haven’t talked about the Pacers because they were one of the great offensive teams in league history. They were one of the great stories in league history. They have one of the great runs in league history and they embody a lot of these principles offensively for countering these kinds of things. And maybe to me the finals were a possible sneak peak of a sneak preview of what basketball might look more like in three to five years. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, I’m glad you said that. I mean, that’s a What you talking about? I mean, what are Well, you said, and I’m going to think I’m going to tee you up for for where you’re going with this. What do you mean what am I talking about? Oh, it’s all I’m just I’m trying to set the table for the master here. I’m trying to let Mozart play here. Uh, you said something to me in the finals. Boris Dia is not here. I don’t see him anywhere. Um, you said something to me in the finals when we were talking about Hallebertton and you said he’s trying to be a.5 guard, not a.5. And I this is well documented. um his style of play, his his eagerness to to willingness and eagerness both uh to get off the ball quickly to sort of feed into I always think it of as you know you’re you’re obviously looking to create an advantage and Tyrese is like I’m going to create an advantage at the beginning of this rope. There’s a there’s a there’s a slack and I’m going to pass it to you and you know it just kind of goes on down the line. And I was I thought about this when I was writing down. I was sitting outside this uh this coffee shop one day and uh lightning struck a light pole near where I was sitting. It was loud as [ __ ] Seriously? Yes. And I watched I was on in position to watch this string of light poles down the street on Breen Ridge Street in Louisville if there’s a reference a local reference for the for the Louisville people. and it just went down the street and I just watched the energy start there and kind of go down and I was kind of like the most fun offenses are the ones that go that way where they they’re like okay we got this offense and it goes this direction. Is there something about is there something about the Pacers play in that sense in the in the in the fact that they have a.5 primary? Is that what it is? Or is there something else unique about them other than I mean they also just play hard? I think that was pretty funny how Carl was talking about that’s a separate thing. We’ll get to that. Is does it have something to do with them having a 0.5 primary or is it something else? There’s a great podcast with Caitlyn Cooper. Yeah. And Carlilele uh talking about random offense. And so I’ll start with that plug in the sense that I think the jury is probably out with a sample size of one. I I don’t think we can give a strong answer with just the Pacers team because there’s a couple different things going on there. One of them is the personnel that they have, their their system, and this ability to uh quote unquote play randomly where it’s not a set. They’re getting down and they’re saying, “Okay, here are some principles we want to follow.” And those principles are like a lot of ghost screens or blur screens coming up to the ball and acting like you’re going to set a screen and then streaking across the middle of the court. The thing that we talked about in the big video we did on their offense in the playoffs was how much they use the space between like the foul line and say the logo at half court. You know, we’ve heard about the logo three where Trey Young’s feet are on the edge of the logo. That 15 foot band of space is they’re it’s like air traffic control. They’re just running guys back and forth across there and playing horizontally. Pipe. It’s like a It seriously is like a halfpipe that they jump onto like a skateboarder and they’re like, “Here we go.” You know, it’s it’s But no, I mean it’s uh every But everything’s live, too. That’s another thing. If everything’s live and you’re utilizing that space on the court, then you become is and I mean that sounds like something. Yeah. But that’s where the 0.5 part comes in because when you’re connected to the whole system like that, having a a guy at the the the centralized, you know, the guy bringing it up more often than not, being able to say, “Okay, here’s here’s the start of a smaller advantage that could cascade into a bigger advantage.” And just constantly playing like that at incredible pace. Um, you know, Knicks fans were tortured by uh T TJ McConnell coming down the wing and running these like quick little hurry up two man and three man and go run the baseline, come back across the lane, go and then how does how does TJ McConnell score 12 points in a row in three minutes when he does this and it’s like because this is this is the offense. This is what happens. And if you don’t react, John Mlany, everybody’s live. Yeah. Yeah. So So uh you know I think it was the Knicks game. There was this one of the Knicks games in the playoffs in Madison Square Garden, maybe game one or game two where he comes down, they run the same set as they like to do, really hurry up, get getting a ball out of the basket or off a make, off a miss, I mean, and like Andrew Nesmith just sprints right in front of him and it’s like, what the hell is he doing? Is he going to set a screen? Is he cutting to the corner? And what that does is it creates a moment of indecision for the defense. And if the defenders miscommunicate, boom, there’s your micro advantage that you’ve created. And now if you have enough space, if no one comes and helps, TJ is going to get a layup or he’s going to get into the paint. If someone comes and helps, then you kick it to the next guy. And if he’s got the three, he takes it. If not, he’s attacking a bigger now a more scrambled defense. And to your point, there’s been some some great offenses like this. you know, the beautiful game Spurs of 2014. They didn’t create the biggest advantage ever off the first screen, but all they needed to do off the first screen was create a small advantage and then start moving the ball around the court, spacing everyone. Similar concept in terms of getting that that that bolt of lightning hitting that tower outside your coffee shop and just let’s go. You got to have the right poles to keep it. Yeah. I mean, if Yeah, exactly. And I was just kind of fascinated though when you you were talking about this. This is something that I kind of look at the frontier of where basketball could go. And I think it kind of touches on um you know criticizing things that are already good and just in in the in the sense of could they become great or even historically great because I think OKC is an interesting example of this where if they let’s start with Shay. So Shay’s the MVP of the league obviously. Another thing that Carile said on that pod that got me thinking about this is about how many like catch and hold players there are in the league now. And he mentioned how Kobe was still such a huge influence. That’s another pod. Maybe I’ll have to do another away game on your pod so we can do another one of our future players things that we love to do. But I think in terms of style, you look at him and you all mentioned how he plays so much like Embiid and it’s like Sheay has such a down an implied downhill game that you can forgive him holding the ball and staying in the middle because even though he’s not spraying the ball with the first advantage and getting off it quickly and seeing the energy build momentum as it goes around OKC’s offense, he’s so incredible at staying in that spot, getting off it when he needs to or, you know, great finisher obviously great with his mid-range. game, but also the foul, you know, generating the fouls. He and Embiid kind of have these things in common where I’m like, you’re smiling already, but I mean for OKC in particular during that finals, I got thinking about this and I was talking to Rob Mahoney about this when it happened. I was like, the fact that they have a player like Jaylen Williams who could mature into a full-blown first action guy who could create an advantage on his own, you can see a world where they could repurpose their [ __ ] MVP in a way that is going to level him up. Uh because they have the luxury of this other guy that could create a huge advantage and go in a more point five direction. But I’m just kind of wondering how much of the league is going to adopt that then when you have these guys that have such implied downhill pressure like your Giannis’s, your Zions, your Lucas. Is this something that you see becoming ubiquitous or what did you mean by that when you were talking about the league going this direction? Did I say the league’s going in that direction? I don’t Well, you said you could see it go. You did say that. Check the tape. Jesse said that. All right. You said I said it. I I believe you. Comment. I I I guess just kind of weigh in on what you’re what you’re thinking about. Yeah. Yeah. In terms of how primaries are used because I think that’s a fascinating thing. Well, I mean coming off the Pacers offense and going to the Thunder offense is a totally different offense. Yeah. And of course sometimes I think fans forget that offenses are built around the ingredients that you have. You can’t you can’t cook a fish stew if someone brings home beef. It’s just not going to happen no matter what you do to the recipe. I guess maybe now you can do some Tyrese can’t and Tyrese can’t choose to play like Shay. He plays like that because not even close. Yeah, he plays more like Curry, honestly. Yeah, just just not even close. So, the the lineups that they usually construct and the talent that they have and Sha’s talent, um I think it makes sense that they’ve structured the offense the way they have. That’s important to say as a starter because I think the answer to your question, Kyle, is probably something like it depends on the other skills that the players have. And this is why Cody and I spend so much time talking about diversity of skill and on ball and off ball. And ironically, like you mentioned Kobe and and you know, some people talking about his influence. I think people do the same thing with Curry. They think, well, I should shoot from 40 feet. And it’s like, well, if you really were to imitate him, you should become like an endurance athlete and just learn how to run and you study Jerry Rice, right? Like that would be the way to to mimic him. And similarly with Kobe, Kobe gets known, I mean, certainly out here in LA, like for decades when you throw a little thing in the trash can, people yell Kobe, which I always thought was really funny because they always miss. And I was like, it’s when I moved here, I didn’t quite get it because it’s very hard for people in offices to make the little rolled up pieces of paper shot. But my point is they mimic Kobe shooting a lot. And it’s like the thing to mimic with Kobe is like how active he was off ball and the ge the geometry of his game and the fact that he actually had a lot of gravity. He just didn’t stand around. So that’s the answer to your Shay question. You can only do that if the player A is willing to do that and B has those skills. Um, I don’t, it’s certainly not a knock to say that the floor has been sh set up to activate Sha’s best assets as an offensive player, but I do think we have to be, and this is where we’re the wet blanket, like we have to be sober and realize you can’t just assume that that means then you could run Shay off 20 baseline actions a game and [ __ ] [ __ ] the defense that way or that he can um, you know, run into movement threes constantly and he’s a he’s a catch and shoot weapon. 28 ft away or something like that. The player has to have skills that allow you to then say, “Okay, Jaylen Williams can’t run around and do all these things, but Jaylen Williams is actually really good with the ball as well. So maybe we can start to push the offense forward and get something even more if Shay’s off ball more and JDub is running more pick and roll.” I mean, I’m just being hypothetical at this point, but that’s the direction you’d have to go in. I postulated to you though that the magic were another one that came to mind for me where I was like is there a world where you know if he has to do you’re sorry checking your head but I mean if Fron moves into more of a a credible on ball role I could see a world a world where the Magic the highest version of the Magic’s offense which you think about them you’re just like all right let’s get shooting and spacing around Paulo but there’s so much writing on whether or not Fron can make that leap because if you think about if He’s an advantage drawing player. Granted, it it hinges on Paulo being able to like shoot catch and shoot threes and things like that and playing off the ball, which he hasn’t really done a ton. But if he’s able to do that and then you bring in this incredible downhill force of Paulo, maybe instead of at like the 18sec mark on the shot clock, you bring it in at the 11sec. Everything happened so quickly in the NBA. It sounds like no time at all, but these skilled players, that’s another thing that gets underrated. You watch college and you watch the NBA, it’s wild what they do with the time. But I mean, you made me watch college and that was the first I was like, what are they doing? What’s what’s going on? There’s a lot of kicking. It’s like the difference between a movie in the 70s and the and a movie now. You’re like, there’s Why is this movie three hours? Don’t do this. We don’t need this. Don’t do this. So, no, but I just think that’s an interesting example. But you’re you’re absolutely right because um I mean Tatum’s another guy, though. I mean, there’s a lot of players that I think could be optimized in this way. Um, if but you got to have the luxury of having the right personnel like you were saying with the we we have to go. So, I don’t want to get in too much trouble, but if you’re suggesting that the Magic centralize and run more stuff through Fron Fron Vagner, I I 100% endorse this. Yes. Okay. I didn’t know that was one of your stances. Um, all right, man. Well, other than that, I mean, yeah, with the edges, though, I mean, that’s that was the other thing I was thinking. Let’s see. The other thing was the homogyny in the NBA. We were kind of hitting on that. We hit with the with the styles and things like that. The emulative ripple I have written down here. The Kobe thing just fascinated me. The fact that he said that I was I was doing the math because the average age in the league right now is 26 and a half. And I was asking a a co a friend of mine that coaches. I was like, when can you realistically implement and emulate an NBA player? And I felt like it was in that like 13 to 16 17 age range where you’re like big enough and strong enough. And I was like, “Okay, Kobe was in the league for the last time he was in the league was 2016.” Like everyone, you know, I’m just doing the and but he’s had such like an interesting lasting impact even after he retired, right? In a way that players don’t normally I just felt like the bell resonated for a little longer than it normally does. Well, maybe culturally, but I feel like I feel like that’s what drives it, man. It’s not basketball. That’s always culturally because if they’re emulating if they’re emulating the best basketball thing, people will be just watching Jokic all the time or watch or just emulating stuff. Yeah. Yeah. But um the thing with Kobe specifically is I mean he left the game right at the precipice of the most radical change we’ve seen since at least the shot clock, if not earlier. So that’s the that’s the counteracting force where even with someone like Jason Tatum um I mean I remember Kobe did the detail video on him and then he just started taking a bunch of long twos for like the next two weeks, right? And so it’s like that style is there’s so many other forces influencing skill and style and things like that that you’re not necessarily going to get. Players aren’t even really given the, you know, the green light. only a select number of stars are given the green light to say, “Go give us that third level in the mid-range. Go take hard shots. Go explore the studio space, if you will.” So, I always Well, I always have to be careful because I know I’ll get some kind of like DM or something saying, “I hate Kobe.” It’s totally not that. It’s more what you were talking about is that like that mindset the way that it and and the way that you’re that you’re saying that about him leaving the game. I don’t know if I’d really thought a ton about that is that there is a sort of lionization of him that is juxtaposed with the the way the league changed where people can like see that line of like man I liked that better than I like what we’re doing now or just this you know mono immano at the slot that’s more basketball than what we’re seeing now. Um yeah any any other kind of broad thoughts about the about the the the edges or anything like that? That’s it. I’ve I’ve gotten myself in enough trouble for one day. The coaches are hitting the coaches were hitting the steering wheel earlier in this episode that you got the Magic fans. There’s a lot. I don’t think if the Magic got in this position where they had two superstars and they were both kind of setting each other up. I mean, I don’t I don’t think they’re going to be mad about that. I don’t if their path to success if they get to success and it and it and you know, Paulo is in a different role. I think they just want to get to success, you know? I don’t know that the Magic are just like it has to be Paulo. I think they just want to win. Um, yeah. Oh, last thing I want to ask you about defense and then we’ll go. You mentioned how the 20 242 Thunder, this is more of a future looking forward thing kind of thing too. They were next door neighbors with the 04 Pistons in terms of relative defensive rating per 100 as you said. Right next door to them was the 64 Celtics. Those teams relative to their Huh. That’s a good company. Yeah. Well, relative to their era, um, you know, those teams were dominant in similar ways, but they were, you mentioned how they were radically different in their process. 20 years from now, you know, that that Pistons team was 21 years ago. 21 years from now, how do you envision, if I forced you to make a prediction, Ben, how do you see the team, the next dominant defensive team 21 years from now being radically different from the one we have now? radically different because this one’s radically different than the Pistons. I mean, rule rules are going to drive it most likely, right? I mean, that’d be the place to start if it if they change to that extent. Yep. Well, rules are definitely going to be one of the factors. The other big factor is going to be the offensive strategies that continue to move forward in the arms race we mentioned. So, with that said, I think you’re going to see Oklahoma City’s horizontal components and the speed components, but I would imagine that you also probably need length and size and um maybe it’s too hard to do with really smaller players or maybe the maybe the players get smaller. I don’t know. One of the secrets to Oklahoma City’s success, it was the first video all year we did on them back in November, October, whatever at the beginning of the year was these guys are listed at 6’2, 63, 6’4, but they all have 7 foot wingspan. It’s ridiculous. So, you get the best of both worlds because you get a combination of incredible speed in these smaller agile bodies. Horizontal length, which is what you want. Gap closing. Yeah. Yep. Gap closing. Exactly. And then you get enough verticality from I mean from all of them in a sense. Jaylen Williams is a really good rim protector for his size and his position. Lou Dort has a little bit of it. Alex Caruso has a little bit of it. Sheay has some of it. And if you can put the lineups where they put an actual rim protector on the back stop, Chad Homegrren or Isaiah Hartinstein, those were the lineups that had started to put up the cartoonish defensive numbers. So, yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard to really look 20 years in the in the future and say, will it be some big tactical change? My guess is we’re going to see more hybrid zone man kind of stuff where they’re bleeding together. Um, so it’s not a pure zone, but it’s not a pure man. And I also think the other thing that’s coming 20 years in the future is what I guess I’ll just describe as disguised coverages. So in football over the years, you know, you you come out of the huddle, so it’s a different sport, but you want to disguise what you’re doing. You want to make it look like a blitz when it’s a zone or vice versa. And I think basketball hasn’t tapped into that where defensively dummy action on offense is very much a thing. But but but here’s what happens defensively. Um there’s a free throw and the coach on the sideline yells, you know, zone and then everyone goes in zone. And if the offensive players aren’t paying attention, they come down the court and they go, “Ah, they’re in zone.” And there’s like five seconds where they’re like, “Ah, we’re gonna we got to zone. We got to set up our zone offense.” And then the second time down, they they just saw the zone. So, they know it’s a zone. And they know it’s a zone every time from then on out until they destroy the zone. And then the coach is like, “We’ve had enough zone for those four or six or eight possessions.” But if you can have different zones, different rules, one, two, two traps, all kinds of different stuff, and you just are disguising these and you have signals, or you start in a possession in a way it looks like a zone, and it’s a man, that element of psychological confusion, I think, has not been tapped into with defenses, and I would expect to see that in a cutting edge defense in 15 or 20 years. Well, I told you I think there there’s going to be a rebound back the other direction where I think we’re going to have playmaking screeners. That’s what like I think we’re going to have guys who were so intuitive off ball that are going to be able to process those things at a high level. Granted on like a Draymond level or I mean I don’t know. I mean we already have kind of the like the one first pass whatever it is. This triggers us to go back to this. I guess that’s sort of disguising it. You see some of that stuff the college level. Um but yeah, it’s all uh yeah. All right. Well, Ben, I’ve taken up enough of your time. uh go over and check out the the 20 it’s 21st Century Peaks, right? Is that what you are calling it? 21st Century Peaks. Yes. Yes. In addition to all the other great video work that Ben is doing on his channel and on the NBA’s official channel. You do you have a Are you allowed to speak of the project that I alluded to when I mentioned Steve Nash or do you want to keep that a secret? It’s not a secret anymore. Well, you’ve let you without my uh signage have just let the cat out of the bag. We will have a uh watch along as part of our historical watch along series with Steve commenting on the game we’re watching on. It’ll be Yes, it’ll be fun. Some things that blew your mind that you told me about. Yep. So, that’s all very exciting. Steve Nash. Uh my mind has been blown. That’s why any any complaints about this podcast appearance, you can blame on that. Bonafide genius. Uh Steve Nash on the court. Ben, thank you for Thanks for coming, man. Appreciate it. Thanks, Kyle. It’s always fun.