Miami finally wins, Cooper Flagg’s rise, impact rookies & league-wide injury woes with Steve Jones | The Kevin O'Connor Show

Kevin O'Connor (0:00)

Coming up, we get Steve Jones from The Dunker Spot discussing everything going on this week in the NBA. All right, now joining me to discuss the NBA this week from The Dunker Spot, Steve Jones. Steve, what's up?

Steve Jones (0:15)

Ah, not much. Happy to be here. Ready to talk some hoops.

It's been a fun start to the regular season. A lot of injuries, but I'm having fun kind of learning where these teams are at and where they're going.

Kevin O'Connor (0:27)

You say not much as if you're not juggling W Finals, starting NBA regular season. Not much going on. There's a lot going on in the world of Steve Jones. Happy you can make some time to join me this morning. Let's start off with the Miami Heat got their first win, 129-117. The Heat defeated the Atlanta Hawks. In this game, Steve, what stood out most to me was before the game, there was the photo of Spoh sitting on the court with Bam in a bio. The Heat social team posted it. We're going to figure it out. Well, they looked a little different to me against the Atlanta Hawks. In the game, they ran 57 pick and rolls as a team. In each game this season, it's been 24-12, 23-35, then 57 in the fourth quarter. They opened up with Pell Larson running pick and roll after pick and roll. Giannis, per game, as the screener, went from five pick and rolls set as the screener to four, to four, to 10, to 24 against the Atlanta Hawks. Giannis set more screens against the Hawks than he did in all four other games combined. And that felt like the Miami Heat and Eric Spohls for their coaching staff saying, OK, it's time to integrate some of the on-ball screening that we don't really want to do, but we know we can do at any moment. What did you see in this game?

Steve Jones (1:41)

Well, I think the fun for me is just kind of watching Spoh, who's known for getting the most out of his roster, have a player like Giannis who can draw so much attention off a year where you had so much drive and kick where they had to put pressure on teams in certain ways, so they had to adapt that.

How was it all going to come together? Because Spoh is not traditionally just the, I'm going to do this conventional thing to get wins. But we get to this point and it's like, well, you have Giannis, you can run more pick and roll. One for him, inverted pick and roll, and him as a screener as you said.

But now if we just do more of this on top of what we do normally with our flow, with our drive and kick, with our attack, does that enhance our offense? And I think Miami kind of looking at what they did at the start of the season. Because we saw in the preseason, moments in the regular season, the blend of, okay, Giannis draws attention, defenses have to figure things out, Miami can play out of it, great flow, we're good to go. We also saw they're not making shots, transition defense is bad, they're getting dinged in the half court, it's no good. Stabilize one end of the floor was where I was at with Miami. When it felt like everything was falling down, disappointment was all around, stabilize either the defense raises its level up or offensively you do something to where you're scoring, you're set, team's got to figure it out. So getting them more pick and roll was good. Because if you have Yannis, you have Bam Moore of a comfort zone, you just have more of a feel. So I think it's going to be fun to see how they adapt and how much they integrate it. I don't think they're going to be a whole, we're just going to spam pick and roll team, but the looming threat that we can hit you in different ways and how they grow into that is where I'm really intrigued with Miami. Because this is something where we've seen pieces of the formula, it's going to be fun.

Kevin O'Connor (3:18)

I think that's spot on, Steve. It has to be one thing at a time with the because there's too many things, too many issues to resolve all at once overnight for the Miami Heat. And with Yanis, I do think having that blend did make sense in that game against Atlanta. That said, it's a 129-117 win from the Miami Heat. They still give up 117

Their defensive rating is still 25th in the NBA. They're still hemorrhaging points. This is a team that myself included a lot of people across the sports media industry and fans across the NBA thought the Miami Heat would have a top 10 defense. What's wrong with this Heat defense so far?