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Welcome to Lighthears.

Tommy, I'm back.

What is the game?

What matters and I'm back.

That is what matters.

Absolutely.

Welcome back, Sam.

Look, I enjoyed hosting for an episode, but it's good to have the rifle host back in his seat.

So I'm going to take a step back and get back into my rifle seat.

You know what I mean?

Warriors win. Would you call that wire-to-wire comfortably? Yes. Atlanta Hawks tonight? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you know, first quarter was close for maybe a couple minutes and they kind of blew it open. And, you know, the really nice thing about this team is because they defend so well, it is hard for teams to sustain runs against them. Essentially, from what I've seen early in this season, what average to bad teams will have to do to beat this Warriors team is shoot the three ball incredibly well. And Atlanta didn't do that tonight. And so you're just not going to, you're just not going to generate enough easy shots at the rim to beat the Warriors. And you also have to be incredibly disciplined defensively to stop them on O because their half court pacing is so quick and they move so well without the ball that if you're not a disciplined team in the half court defensive, you're going to give up a ton of easy buckets to these warriors, this Warriors team. So yeah, It was pretty easy i mean it got shaky in the third quarter there for a minute but like never truly concerning yeah i was i was kind of looking forward to this game because the hawks have a couple interesting players jalen johnson's really good uh dyson danno's been kind of a breakout player around the league you know the hipster and me wear my where my flannel shirt right now you know i was just like ooh this would be a fun one and it wasn't a fun one it was kind of like they didn't bring the requisite energy they were not shooting the ball well and to your point if you don't do those two things you're not going to beat this warriors team um it it had a little bit of a pickup hoop feel it had a little bit of just like pickup hoop for a lot of the game it was just like it felt like what the hawks have felt like the last five years to me i in my head i thought they're

a little different this year they're you know starting to establish a little more of a defensive

identity and like no no not at all maybe maybe some nights but definitely not tonight um what i was going to say

is to your point i mean i don't know if he's the coach of the year it we're not even 15 games in

but this is this is like a quintessential steve cur team in my opinion right now where they're just

they're so organized on

both ends. And there's going to be nights like Monday against the Clippers where some of the

talent flaws show through and like the inability to create offense if it's not Steph is obvious

against a team that can switch everything. But more often than not, they're just going to win a lot of games because they defend as a unit. They share the ball on offense. They shoot high percentage shots, a lot of threes, get to the rim a little bit. They're not taking bad shots. And tonight was one of those games. They played what? Atlanta is what, a mediocre team? media I think I mean coming into the night they were they were fifth in the wet or the east but you know that doesn't mean anything yeah I think they're I think they were seven and eight that's like 12th in the west yeah exactly I think they were seven and eight coming into the night but I mean they're not terrible they're that's not Washington that's not Utah you know it's not that level of bad. And they can be disrupted defensively because, I mean, the, the broadcast was showing the stats during the game. Dyson Daniels has like 35 more deflections than the second leading guy. And he did he did an admirable job on Steph tonight, especially when Steph had the ball, but Steph's off ball movement, you know, messed him up a little bit. He's not used to seeing that.

I don't think that level of activity from a primary creator like Steph. But yeah, I mean, you just have to be, you have to be so disciplined against this Warriors team to beat them. And not only discipline, but you have to have the talent to go with it, you know, and like the clippers can mess them up because they're a little bit older. They're disciplined. they play super, super hard.

And they have enough talent to get it done.

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