The 76ers and Lakers, league sources say, both registered two-way contract interest in Pete Nance after Milwaukee released the 26-year-old last weekend.

But the Bucks, as The Stein Line reported last Sunday, believed they could get Nance to stay in Brewtown on a two-way with them and were proven correct. Nance is still a Buck.

https://marcstein.substack.com/p/the-latest-late-night-nba-intel-eb6?r=1m9zg&utm_medium=ios

This is my site, I just made it. Feedback's appreciated. This is not AI, it's natural language processing.

https://hoopvisionlab.com/build?ask=Lakers%20vs%20Jazz%20October%2025%202026&ref=reddit-lakers

He showed respect and class to us when our guys were down. Even though OKC fans had zero compassion for Luka and AR, lets show class.

It seems personal now between JJ and Vando. Adou has been out every game, Jake missed last game, Looney is a disaster in his 5 minutes every game, and we just got killed on the boards by Utah with them exposing our lack of size and physicality at forward and center. Kessler has an off game and we literally have nobody. Still not a single Vando minute across the first three games.

It’s getting to the point where I think JJ has to swallow his pride and play Vando here and there. Some matchups may not be for Vando, but you’re telling me he deserves 0 minutes when JJ can barely field a big man rotation? It’s getting ridiculous

Idk but it seems to me that Kessler lost his aggressiveness when guarded by Clingan and Timelord. He sets good screens but can't position himself well off of them. He's back down to earth I guess.

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I believe this was Luka’s one-legged 3 pt attempt lol only attempt he missed in the 4th quarter.

Even Jazz fans knew they were watching greatness today 🔥

We have been so spoiled by the Stu and Bill combo that the drop in quality with Danny, is just so apparent. Hopefully they can come up with a better replacement by the time Stu officially hangs it up, because I don’t wanna deal with Danny for long.

Off night for the big man. Perhaps he's still dealing with conditioning issues, perhaps he stayed up a little too late the night prior, maybe he had jitters making his return to the team that drafted him, maybe the Jazz game planned to neutralize Kessler. I don't know, I wasn't there. But let it go and prepare for another big matchup against Clingan in Portland.

I hate to get hyperbolic but watching Luka has me feeling like a kid watching Kobe again. Absolute killer on the court. How lucky are we as fans to got to witness Kobe then Bron now Luka Magic 🙏🙏🙏

With the Jazz sending 2, sometimes even 3 bodies in the paint to ensure that Kessler does not get a lob dunk, put back or rebound, it created 14 wide open 3s for Ziaire and Matisse, who were exceptional shooting the ball tonight.

While I do think Kessler could have done a bit more on the offensive and defensive glass, getting bear hugged by 2 big men on your first game in your old city isn't always easy.

...And how much data from the series do you need to collect before you adjust/change scheme?

The instance that comes to mind is back in the 2024 first round Playoff series against the Timberwolves where 3 player shot well above their season average from 3 and it ultimately sunk us in that series:

• Julius Randle
  • Regular season 3FG = 34.4%
  • Playoff series 3FG = 39.3%
• Jaden McDaniels
  • Regular season 3FG = 33.0%
  • Playoff series 3FG = 37.5%
• Naz Reid
  • Regular season 3FG = 37.9%
  • Playoff series 3FG = 50.0%

Of these three players above, only one would actually be considered a shooter and that's Naz Reid. Clearly the scheme was to send help off McDaniels to double Ant on the perimeter and force him to make PG decisions and it didn't seem to work as well as hoped, Ant averaged 6.2 ASTs in the series and only committed 6 TOVs in the series. If Ant drove into the paint, the scheme was to pack the paint with the "Center" and Power Forward (since Jax got played off the court, the two to pack the paint ended up being Rui and DFS) and Rui would leave Randle open.

In Game 1 where the Lakers got blown out, Randle went 4/6 from 3, McDaniels went 3/3 from 3, and Naz Reid went 6/9 from 3.

In Game 2, the lone game the Lakers won, Randle went 2/4 from 3, McDaniels went 0/3 from 3, and Naz Reid went 1/3 from 3 and I noticed the Lakers made an effort to run Naz Reid off the 3, but they still more or less let Randle and McDaniels let fly in the hope that Game 1 was an aberration.

In the elimination game the Lakers lost, the Randle/McDaniels/Reid trio went a combined 1/9 from 3, Ant himself went 0/11 and Minnesota shot an abysmal 14.9% from 3, and yet the Lakers still lost.

All the above is to essentially ask this question, do you buy into the idea of leaving poor shooters wide open from 3 in order to take away something else that is potentially more dangerous, in the above case the Lakers didn't want Ant to get into the paint and wanted to force him into make quick decisions upon the blitz? Does a 7 game series not provide enough data to do this because of small sample size variance, AKA, a bad shooter could just get hot from 3 in a series which happened in the above example, Randle shot almost 5% better than his season average?

The other reason I ask is that I see so many people asking, "well why is so and so wide open, that's terrible defense!" and there is a difference between a blown rotation/blown assignment leaving a shooter open or leaving a shooter open by design to either do a hard double team/blitz, pack the paint etc. To use another painful example....there's a reason Russell Westbrook was left wide open from 3, that wasn't bad defense, that was the opposing coach scheming. Now we never got a playoff series with Russ to see if small sample size variance came into play, but I'm just wondering what people's thoughts are regarding this particular scheme since JJ seems to really believe in it and it's such a hot topic given the prevalence of 3 point shooting in today's game.

A few things surprised me, but overall it matches the eye test. This is a cohesive roster whose players mostly fit the main guys.

Jake on the top of the list when paired to each player of the top 3 players isn't really a big surprise, the team seens to always make a run when he is on the floor since the preseason. He failed to hit his shots tonight, but his impact was huge again.

Matisse above Ziaire, Grimes and Mamu when paired to each of the top guys somewhat surprised me, his playmaking on defense is clearly impacting the results. The most important here is that every rotation forward has been clicking with the main guys.

I'm not going to judge Sexton since it is only his 2nd game after missing the preseason and he has been sharing the floor with Looney impacting his numbers. By the way Looney by himself is impacting the numbers of most players coming of the bench, the same happens to Grimes and Mamu.

The only clear need is really a good backup C that fits the main guys, Looney minutes has been brutal, he has been absolutely unplayable outside garbage time. The starting four hole has been filled with a great deal of success by the combinations of the players we have available.

The eventual development of Carr and Adou have potential to make this a really, really deep roster.