Jason Timpf shares his predictions for Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving, and the Dallas Mavericks' Western Conference Finals matchup with Anthony Edwards, Karl-Anthony Towns, and the Minnesota Timberwolves. Jason discusses the series' most critical matchups, breaks down key strategies during a film study, and shares his prediction for who will advance to the NBA Finals. #volume #herd
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume. We're this close to crowning a new NBA champ,
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here at the Volume. Happy Tuesday, everybody up. All you
guys are having a great start to your week. We're
doing our second series preview for the Western Conference Finals,
the Dallas Mavericks taking on the Minnesota Timberwolves. Going to
get into all the details of that series, you guys
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Speaker 2 (02:45):
Throughout the rest of the postseason.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
All right, Last, but not least, before we get started,
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minute ticket gets lowest price guaranteed. All right, let's talk
some basketball. So the season series between the Wolves and
the MAVs almost useless for us in terms of results
at least Minnesota one three to one. But I think
(04:15):
Kyrie and Luca only played in one of the games
and it happened to be the one that Dallas won.
The two of the games Luca and Kyrie missed entirely
none of the games involved PJ. Washington or Daniel Gafford.
So not really anything to look at in terms of
the results or the number. As a matter of fact,
as I've done with some of the other series, I'm
not even going to list some of the numbers. There's
(04:35):
just no point when two of the games that are
basically poisoning the data didn't involve either of Dallas's stars, right,
So not going to get into that. I think Kyrie
missed three of the four games, so we're not going
to go through the numbers. But there was a lot
of interesting stuff in the film. I have twelve clips
of film We're going to go over at the tail
end of this video to kind of demonstrate some of
(04:56):
the coverage concepts that I'm talking about when we get
in to the matchups. On the gambling front. According to DraftKings,
Minnesota is currently favored at minus one seventy. That's pretty substantial.
They're viewing them as a clearly discernibly better team at
least going into the series. Not hard to imagine why
after they impressively take down the defending champs on the
(05:18):
road in Game seven and at many points made them
look like they were really, really struggling.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
We went into extensive detail in a film session yesterday
about what Minnesota did to shake Denver's foundation. In case
you guys missed that, you can find that a little
bit further back on our feet. So let's start with
Minnesota on offense. Early in the season, there was a
lot of Josh Green on Ant, but for the most
part it was Derrek Jones Junior. And I think that's
the matchup we'll see to start this series. I think
(05:45):
Kyrie will guard Mike Conley, Luca will probably guard Jaden McDaniels,
and then we'll see PJ. Washington on Karl Anthony Towns,
and then obviously Daniel Gafford or Derek Lively on Rudy Gobert.
Very different challenge for the Wolves than what Denver was, right,
because Denver obviously is very fundamentally sound defense, and they
(06:07):
have a lot of big bodies and a lot of length,
but they're not a particularly athletic team, and they're not
a good rim protection team. Dallas is much more athletic
on the perimeter and much more athletic at the rim.
Derek Jones Junior is a longer and better athlete than KCP.
You could make a case that KCP is a better
perimeter defender depending on who you ask, the very different types.
(06:28):
But Derek Jones Junior has been an excellent perimeter defender
this season and most of this postseason, and I more
or less view him on that same tier. And I
think he's got a little bit more length than athleticism.
His weakness is he's a little thin, right, and that'll
manifest in some different ways with Anthony Edwards, which we'll
get to in a minute. But Derek Jones Junior is
a much better athlete on the perimeter than most of
(06:48):
the guys that Anthony Edwards has been going against in
this postseason run. Also, Derek Lively and Daniel Gafford represent
a rim protection element and we saw that in a
big way in the Oklahoma City Series flat out cause
problems for the Thunder. And so when we look back
at the Denver team, you know, not only is are
there a weak rim protection team under any circumstances, and
(07:10):
Yokic had a bad defensive playoff run, so not anywhere
near the same level of rim protection. You can see
that in the stats. By the way, Dallas has allowed
just forty two points in the paint per game in
this postseason run. Denver has allowed fifty. So it's another
level of rim protection, another level of perimeter athleticism. I
do think that's going to present some challenges for the Timberwolves.
(07:33):
Now let's take a look at the individual matchup of
Derek Jones on Ant to start, So again, I think
his length will be more of a factor in ball
screens than it will in ISO situations. One of the
things with ISO situations for Derek Jones, and I noticed
this on the film, He's a little thin, so when
Ant gets angles on him. You know, we talk a
(07:53):
lot about these leverage battles those are you guys who
watched the show yesterday will remember I demonstrated a couple
of plays where At drove by Jokic, and there was
one at the top of the key where Kat Pump
faked and then ripped to the right and then Jokic
slid and took the contact more or less on his
left shoulder. But kat won that battle and blew through
Jokic's left shoulder and got all the way to the
(08:15):
rim and drew a foul on Aaron Gordon. That's that
leverage battle. It doesn't matter how quick Derek Jones Jr.
Is to beat Anthony Edwards to a spot if he
doesn't cleanly get his shoulder in the center of his sternum,
if it's anywhere off to that side, and it will
just blow through that shoulder because he's so damn strong
and has so much downhill force that he brings to
the equation right. So like in ISO situations, I more
(08:38):
or less think it'll look like what it looked with KCP,
which is he's just too small to handle all of
that downhill force. But I do think Derek Jones his
length will be a factor in ball screen. So when
A's running, let's just say a traditional pick and roll
with Gobert and go, Bear's rolling hard and Ant's coming
over the top of the screen. In those situations, Derek
(08:59):
Jones being able to stay relatively attached over the top
his long arms and his ability to get contests from
behind can be a factor on ANT in ball screens.
I'm actually really curious to see how often ANT avoids
ball screens altogether for that specific reason, because of that
bracket that they can bring into the equation. In terms
(09:19):
of coverages, they ran a lot of ice, which means
they tried to deny Ant the use of the screen
and funnel him away from the screen, particularly towards the sideline,
and then a lot of deep drop, but there was
some high drop mixed in. Now where that becomes different.
That's very different than the aggressive high drop trapping that
we saw from Denver.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Denverhead Yokic up at.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
The level to start the series, and over the course
of the series brought him even further out to try
to get Ant to get rid of the basketball. There
were traps and then in io situations they were straight
up doubling him. Now, this is where the difference. This
is a difference between personnel. Right, Jokic's strength on defense
is he's got high IQ and he's with his hands.
So it actually makes sense to bring him up to
(10:02):
the level because he's gonna be more disruptive there than
he could ever be at the rim because he's not
a vertical athlete, right, Derek Jones or excuse me, Daniel
Gafford and Derek Lively. They are vertical athletes, so they
actually can be more impactful back at the rim than
they can be up at the level. And so I
do think we'll see, at least to start the series,
(10:23):
a deep drop coverage icing side ball screens, trying to
force him towards away from the screen and towards the sideline.
But we'll see, similar to what happened with Michael Malone,
if Aunt gets going in some sort of serious way,
we could see kid mix things up and be more
aggressive again. The challenge there for Aunt is, do you
guys remember the Milwaukee Bucks game earlier this year where
(10:45):
the Bucks ran deep drop the entire game and then
Aunt and Mike Connley couldn't score enough in the mid range,
couldn't hit enough pull up jumpers. That's kind of the
nature of that coverage. It allows you to defend things
too onto. The main reason why is when you're in
a deep drop coverage, you keep the roller and the
ball handler in front of you, and when the roller
and the ball handler are in front of you, you
(11:07):
don't have to bring that third guy in to tag
the roller, which allows you to defend the action two
on two and stay home off the ball right in
a high drop. As soon as go Bear rolls, you
have to tag from the weak side, which essentially is
defending the action three on two, which leaves openings for
the skip pass right. And so that deep drop could
(11:29):
make actually force Mike Conley and Anthony Ewards to beat
the coverage by scoring and again driving into rimp protection.
That can be a problem, as we saw for Oklahoma
City in the last round. So I think they'll start
with a deep drop coverage and then if Ant just
gets cooking and starts averaging, you know, thirty seven to
thirty eight a game in the early portion of the series,
that's where I think we could see them get a
(11:50):
little bit a little bit more aggressive in their coverages
for Karl Anthony Towns. We didn't get to see PJ
Washington with Dallas against Minnesota this year, but it's a
similar challenge to what Aaron Gordon faced, right, and Pj's
a similar type of athlete. You got to flatten out
cats drives, beat him to spots with physicality, and force
him to make shots over the top. Because when it
(12:11):
comes time to make shots over the top. Cat can
be somewhat inconsistent. That's what breeds is inconsistency. But we've
seen Kats won that battle a lot over the years
over this playoff run. I should say specifically in game seven,
like he beat Christian Brown to the basket, he beat
Reggie Jackson too the basket, he beat Jokic to the
basket twice, like he was slashing a lot in Game seven,
(12:33):
And so if you lose control of that situation, that
can go south for you.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
But PJ.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Washington's challenge is going to be to contain that. I
think a big story of this series is going to
be in the event that Ant runs into some issues
with the rim protection and Derek Jones Jr. One of
the other advantages Denver Dallas has. Excuse me, Minnesota, I'm
getting all my teams confused. One of the advantages of
Minnesota has is they've got Cat and nasried to attack
(12:57):
size mismatches, and they're just a lot more size mismatches
for Minnesota to attack in this series than they had
in the Denver series. So that'll be a different direction
for them to go. Keys for both teams on the
Dallas front again, I think you start with deep drop,
try to keep the bracket tight around Ant. That means
back pressure from Derek Jones, the drop coverage, just offering
those contests on those mid range shots, right. I think
(13:20):
you start there and just wait to see if Aunt
can burn you consistently with the straight ISOs when Aunt
wants to try to attack Derek Jones just in like
a slashing situation without a screen. That's where you're going
to have your rim protectors sitting off of Gobert, just
sitting in the paint. It's more or less the same
type of coverage situation, right, and it's going to have
to beat people off the dribble and then make contested
(13:41):
mid range jump shots, flatten out Karl Anthony Town's drives
like we talked about. And then lastly, this kind of
is connection between both ends of the floor. But offensive
process for Dallas is going to be huge in this series.
They have struggled to turnovers at times during this postseason run,
and if you do that against Minnesota, that's a death
sentence just like it was against Okay.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
See, because they can get.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Out and transition so well on the Minnesota front, don't
fall for the trap that Oklahoma City fell for, don't
drive and repeatedly try to finish over their rim protection.
We'll see maybe Aunt is just such a superior athlete
that he just cooks those guys at the rim all series.
Maybe that's what he does. But if early in the
series it becomes clear that you can't relative like regularly
(14:20):
finish over the rim protection, that's where rim decisions will
become a huge factor. Once you get into that spot,
making the right kickout passes and not falling for the
trap that Oklahoma City ran into, repeatedly challenging the rim protectors.
Rim protectors catenance shot making, and I'm gonna throw Conley
in here too. Elite rim protection calls for more mid
(14:41):
range shot making. That's just kind of the natural kind
of order of things, right, Like Jason Kid's gonna do
everything he can to keep that length directly under the
basket and to make things difficult for you around the rim,
so over the top shot making will be key. And then, lastly, similarly,
similarly to what we talked about with Dallas transition opportunities,
so Minnesota needs to look to run as much as
possible to avoid that loaded up rim protection.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Moving to Dallas.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
On offense, I think we'll see Jade McDaniels on Luca,
Anthony Edwards on Kyrie Irving, Mike Conley will probably guard
Derek Jones Junior, Carl Anthony Towns will likely guard PJ. Washington,
and then obviously go bear on Gafford or Lively. Let's
talk about go bear ball screens first. So one of
the things I noticed on film they were a little
(15:27):
bit more aggressive with Gobert than I was expecting. There
was some high drop, some trapping, some low drop, but
mostly against Kyrie. Then I noticed in the film Luca,
though for the most part, didn't look to target Gobert,
he was mostly going after Carl Anthony Towns in ball screens,
and in those situations, at first they were doing a
lot of switching, but Luca was just easily getting to
(15:48):
a step back jump shot on Cat and then they
started hedging, and then when they got to the hedging,
they would just basically drive. Luca would drive past Cat
and then try to turn the corner and try to
kind of keep that head of same going against Jaden,
which obviously opens up things in the slip as well.
And I think that's gonna be kind of the direction
this series goes is a lot of attacking Conley and
(16:09):
attacking Cat, those guys hedging and then guys like PJ.
Washington and Derek Jones slipping out of that and them
trying to play four on three against Minnesota and rotation.
So the rotations are going to be the key of
the series defensively for Dallas. Let's get to those keys.
So with Dallas, hunt the entry points again if you
(16:30):
similar to what we were talking about with Minnesota on offense,
if you play into their bracket, meaning if you just
keep attacking go Beart and Jada McDaniels and Anthony Edwards
all series long, I think you're gonna run into some issues.
I do think you want to attack ant for a
reason we're going to talk about in a minute. But
if you attack their best defensive players, especially in the
biggest moments when they're really really engaged, I think that
(16:51):
could go south pretty quickly. So attacking Conley and Kat,
they're gonna hedge or trap. So that's where you're gonna
get your four on threes by slipping out of those,
and then it's gonna be about decision about decision making
and shot making in those four on threes. The second
piece put Anthony Edwards in screens. He has a lot
of offensive responsibility for this team, right, and as we've
(17:12):
seen throughout this playoff run, when he gets tired, his
screen navigation tends to suck.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
You can get a lot of switches that way where
Ant will die on the screen and then you end
up having to put you know, a Karl Anthony Towns
or somebody like that on the ball, which is where
Kyrie and Luca can look to go to work, so
especially in lower leverage moments, because we know what Ant
can do when the high leverage moments are there. As
bad as Ant was navigating screens early in the series,
(17:40):
like in Game three and four, in particular, in Game
six and seven, An was just an absolute menace on
the ball, And like we talked about in that video yesterday,
straight up removed Jamal Murray from the game by chasing
him over the top of screens and funneling him into
their size. So like, I don't see that as an
issue when the shit hits the fan, I don't see
that as an issue in the big, high leverage moments.
(18:01):
But during the meat and potatoes of the series. Put
it in a bunch of screens, because if he dies
on screens, that'll generate some openings for you on offense.
And then last, take care of the basketball. If you
start turning the basketball over, it will be a problem. Again,
Dallas was the highest turnover percentage team of the remaining
four teams that we have in the conference finals. Use
(18:23):
your length, use your athleticism, you can cause some problems there. Right,
So Dallas has to take care of the ball. On
the Minnesota front game playing discipline for Conlee and Kat Again,
what that means is good hedges that cut off the
driving lanes. If you throw a good hedge, you will
cut off the drive and force them to quickly pass
from there. It's just rotation basketball. That's like being on
(18:44):
a string, every guy knowing what their next rotation is
and just getting back into your spots out of it,
which is something I think that Minnesota has demonstrated they
can do, especially through all their double teams of Jokic.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Over the course of the last round.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Dallas showed some vulnera vulnerability to turnovers like I talked
about earlier. So just using your length and athleticism to
get out in transition, and then lastly, physical ball pressure
on Luca, like we saw last last round with Loudort.
If you just like just beat the hell out of
Luca all series long, He's going to have moments, especially
when he's missing shots, where he gets super frustrated. He
starts focusing on the refs, he starts to like kind
(19:20):
of his body linguage, starts to overly emphasize what's going
on with his knee. He just he just kind of
loses focus on the game hand. We saw that a
couple of times in the last round, and so try
to play Luca into those tendencies by being physical, by
trying to frustrate him, kind of similar to what we
saw from Jamal Murray in game two in the last round.
Like they can you can fluster a team, you can
(19:42):
fluster a player with extensive ball pressure. My predictions, again,
I viewed this as a very different type of series
than the last round because Dallas is just an entirely
different type of athletic matchup for for Minnesota. Dallas, again,
we don't think of them as an elite defense because
of some of their metrics from the regular season, but
(20:03):
they were an elite defense to end the season. They
were elite defense in the first round against the Clippers,
and they were an elite defense in the last round
against Oklahoma City. We have to start thinking of them
as one of those top tier defenses in the league,
and it all stems around elite point of attack defense
from Derrek Jones and PJ. Washington and Josh Green when
he's in the game, and rim protection from Daniel Gafford
(20:24):
and Derek g Liively. I think it's a very different challenge,
and I do think they will play Minnesota into some
really bad offensive stretches, which is why I'm picking Minnesota.
But in six games, I do think that Dallas is
going to get some wins against Minnesota by playing their
offense into bad stretches. That said, I think the overwhelming
physical assault of Minnesota, just like we saw with Denver,
(20:47):
has the ability to rattle the foundation of an offense.
They can go through some stretches where they absolutely strangle
even truly elite offenses. Denver again has that has been
one of the best half court execution teams of the
last five years, and there were stretches where Minnesota didn't
just slow them down but made them lose composure. That
(21:09):
is the ability that Minnesota has to break your foundation.
And I do believe that in the aggregate of this
series they will have more wins against Dallas's offense than
Dallas's defense does against Minnesota's offense. The last kind of
piece to look at here is Anthony Edwards versus Luca.
I did a thing with the Nerd SESSH guys on Friday,
(21:30):
I think last week was after Game six of Minnesota Denver,
and in that stretch, if you guys remember, I talked
about how like for me, Anthony Edwards is like fast
on the rise, the like I would probably take a
healthy Luca over him at number two right now. I
just think he's a little bit better as like a
half court surgeon.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
But the problem is is Luca's knee has been messed
up and he hasn't been nearly as consistently good as
he's been in previous playoff runs, right, And so with
the knee injury kind of being factored in, I think
that ant is more or less like kind of on
the same level as Luca and has a chance to
outplay him here. And that's the thing is like if
you were trying to if you were trying to put
(22:10):
together a pathway for Dallas to win the series, it's
pretty simple. Darre Jones Junior in rim protection, stifle Minnesota's offense,
and Luca gets back to that like consistent, top tier,
superstar level that he just hasn't been at in this
postseason run. So like that's the thing, is, like he
wasn't able to get there against Oklahoma City often, he
wasn't able to get there often against the Clippers. He
(22:31):
had moments, but it was not the same consistently great
Luca that we're accustomed to seeing in the playoffs for
the most part. Right, So what makes you think he's
gonna suddenly figure it out against Minnesota? Right, Minnesota is
just a better defense than any of these other defenses
that he's faced. That said, Luca conquering that challenge is
the pathway. If he can conquer that challenge, I do
(22:52):
believe Dallas's defense will slow Minnesota down for extensive stretches.
So if Luca can solve this Minnesota defense consistently, that
is Dallas's pathway to win the series. That said, I
am picking Minnesota in six. I'm super excited for this series.
Lots of interesting basketball, kind of chess pieces moving around,
tons of star power between Anthony Edwards, Kyrie Irving, Luca,
(23:15):
and I think we got to include Karl Anthony Towns
in there now after how he's been playing in this
postseason run. Can't wait to get into it live on
YouTube after the final buzzer of Game one on Wednesday night.
So I want to be clear picking Minnesota. Absolutely think
Dallas can win the series. They have advantages that they
can go to, particularly on the defensive end of the floor,
and if Luca plays well enough, they can do it.
But I think this Minnesota team is playing on a
(23:37):
special level right now, so I do believe they will win.
Our guests, that is all I have for today. I
will see you guys tonight after the final buzzer of
Celtics Pacers, and then again tomorrow morning for a film
session on that game before we get to Game one
of this series on Wednesday night. The volume
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here at the Volume. Happy Tuesday, everybody up. All you
guys are having a great start to your week. We're
doing our second series preview for the Western Conference Finals,
the Dallas Mavericks taking on the Minnesota Timberwolves. Going to
get into all the details of that series, you guys
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(02:39):
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Speaker 2 (02:45):
Throughout the rest of the postseason.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
All right, Last, but not least, before we get started,
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Hoops for twenty dollars off. Download Game Time today. Last
minute ticket gets lowest price guaranteed. All right, let's talk
some basketball. So the season series between the Wolves and
the MAVs almost useless for us in terms of results
at least Minnesota one three to one. But I think
(04:15):
Kyrie and Luca only played in one of the games
and it happened to be the one that Dallas won.
The two of the games Luca and Kyrie missed entirely
none of the games involved PJ. Washington or Daniel Gafford.
So not really anything to look at in terms of
the results or the number. As a matter of fact,
as I've done with some of the other series, I'm
not even going to list some of the numbers. There's
(04:35):
just no point when two of the games that are
basically poisoning the data didn't involve either of Dallas's stars, right,
So not going to get into that. I think Kyrie
missed three of the four games, so we're not going
to go through the numbers. But there was a lot
of interesting stuff in the film. I have twelve clips
of film We're going to go over at the tail
end of this video to kind of demonstrate some of
(04:56):
the coverage concepts that I'm talking about when we get
in to the matchups. On the gambling front. According to DraftKings,
Minnesota is currently favored at minus one seventy. That's pretty substantial.
They're viewing them as a clearly discernibly better team at
least going into the series. Not hard to imagine why
after they impressively take down the defending champs on the
(05:18):
road in Game seven and at many points made them
look like they were really, really struggling.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
We went into extensive detail in a film session yesterday
about what Minnesota did to shake Denver's foundation. In case
you guys missed that, you can find that a little
bit further back on our feet. So let's start with
Minnesota on offense. Early in the season, there was a
lot of Josh Green on Ant, but for the most
part it was Derrek Jones Junior. And I think that's
the matchup we'll see to start this series. I think
(05:45):
Kyrie will guard Mike Conley, Luca will probably guard Jaden McDaniels,
and then we'll see PJ. Washington on Karl Anthony Towns,
and then obviously Daniel Gafford or Derek Lively on Rudy Gobert.
Very different challenge for the Wolves than what Denver was, right,
because Denver obviously is very fundamentally sound defense, and they
(06:07):
have a lot of big bodies and a lot of length,
but they're not a particularly athletic team, and they're not
a good rim protection team. Dallas is much more athletic
on the perimeter and much more athletic at the rim.
Derek Jones Junior is a longer and better athlete than KCP.
You could make a case that KCP is a better
perimeter defender depending on who you ask, the very different types.
(06:28):
But Derek Jones Junior has been an excellent perimeter defender
this season and most of this postseason, and I more
or less view him on that same tier. And I
think he's got a little bit more length than athleticism.
His weakness is he's a little thin, right, and that'll
manifest in some different ways with Anthony Edwards, which we'll
get to in a minute. But Derek Jones Junior is
a much better athlete on the perimeter than most of
(06:48):
the guys that Anthony Edwards has been going against in
this postseason run. Also, Derek Lively and Daniel Gafford represent
a rim protection element and we saw that in a
big way in the Oklahoma City Series flat out cause
problems for the Thunder. And so when we look back
at the Denver team, you know, not only is are
there a weak rim protection team under any circumstances, and
(07:10):
Yokic had a bad defensive playoff run, so not anywhere
near the same level of rim protection. You can see
that in the stats. By the way, Dallas has allowed
just forty two points in the paint per game in
this postseason run. Denver has allowed fifty. So it's another
level of rim protection, another level of perimeter athleticism. I
do think that's going to present some challenges for the Timberwolves.
(07:33):
Now let's take a look at the individual matchup of
Derek Jones on Ant to start, So again, I think
his length will be more of a factor in ball
screens than it will in ISO situations. One of the
things with ISO situations for Derek Jones, and I noticed
this on the film, He's a little thin, so when
Ant gets angles on him. You know, we talk a
(07:53):
lot about these leverage battles those are you guys who
watched the show yesterday will remember I demonstrated a couple
of plays where At drove by Jokic, and there was
one at the top of the key where Kat Pump
faked and then ripped to the right and then Jokic
slid and took the contact more or less on his
left shoulder. But kat won that battle and blew through
Jokic's left shoulder and got all the way to the
(08:15):
rim and drew a foul on Aaron Gordon. That's that
leverage battle. It doesn't matter how quick Derek Jones Jr.
Is to beat Anthony Edwards to a spot if he
doesn't cleanly get his shoulder in the center of his sternum,
if it's anywhere off to that side, and it will
just blow through that shoulder because he's so damn strong
and has so much downhill force that he brings to
the equation right. So like in ISO situations, I more
(08:38):
or less think it'll look like what it looked with KCP,
which is he's just too small to handle all of
that downhill force. But I do think Derek Jones his
length will be a factor in ball screen. So when
A's running, let's just say a traditional pick and roll
with Gobert and go, Bear's rolling hard and Ant's coming
over the top of the screen. In those situations, Derek
(08:59):
Jones being able to stay relatively attached over the top
his long arms and his ability to get contests from
behind can be a factor on ANT in ball screens.
I'm actually really curious to see how often ANT avoids
ball screens altogether for that specific reason, because of that
bracket that they can bring into the equation. In terms
(09:19):
of coverages, they ran a lot of ice, which means
they tried to deny Ant the use of the screen
and funnel him away from the screen, particularly towards the sideline,
and then a lot of deep drop, but there was
some high drop mixed in. Now where that becomes different.
That's very different than the aggressive high drop trapping that
we saw from Denver.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Denverhead Yokic up at.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
The level to start the series, and over the course
of the series brought him even further out to try
to get Ant to get rid of the basketball. There
were traps and then in io situations they were straight
up doubling him. Now, this is where the difference. This
is a difference between personnel. Right, Jokic's strength on defense
is he's got high IQ and he's with his hands.
So it actually makes sense to bring him up to
(10:02):
the level because he's gonna be more disruptive there than
he could ever be at the rim because he's not
a vertical athlete, right, Derek Jones or excuse me, Daniel
Gafford and Derek Lively. They are vertical athletes, so they
actually can be more impactful back at the rim than
they can be up at the level. And so I
do think we'll see, at least to start the series,
(10:23):
a deep drop coverage icing side ball screens, trying to
force him towards away from the screen and towards the sideline.
But we'll see, similar to what happened with Michael Malone,
if Aunt gets going in some sort of serious way,
we could see kid mix things up and be more
aggressive again. The challenge there for Aunt is, do you
guys remember the Milwaukee Bucks game earlier this year where
(10:45):
the Bucks ran deep drop the entire game and then
Aunt and Mike Connley couldn't score enough in the mid range,
couldn't hit enough pull up jumpers. That's kind of the
nature of that coverage. It allows you to defend things
too onto. The main reason why is when you're in
a deep drop coverage, you keep the roller and the
ball handler in front of you, and when the roller
and the ball handler are in front of you, you
(11:07):
don't have to bring that third guy in to tag
the roller, which allows you to defend the action two
on two and stay home off the ball right in
a high drop. As soon as go Bear rolls, you
have to tag from the weak side, which essentially is
defending the action three on two, which leaves openings for
the skip pass right. And so that deep drop could
(11:29):
make actually force Mike Conley and Anthony Ewards to beat
the coverage by scoring and again driving into rimp protection.
That can be a problem, as we saw for Oklahoma
City in the last round. So I think they'll start
with a deep drop coverage and then if Ant just
gets cooking and starts averaging, you know, thirty seven to
thirty eight a game in the early portion of the series,
that's where I think we could see them get a
(11:50):
little bit a little bit more aggressive in their coverages
for Karl Anthony Towns. We didn't get to see PJ
Washington with Dallas against Minnesota this year, but it's a
similar challenge to what Aaron Gordon faced, right, and Pj's
a similar type of athlete. You got to flatten out
cats drives, beat him to spots with physicality, and force
him to make shots over the top. Because when it
(12:11):
comes time to make shots over the top. Cat can
be somewhat inconsistent. That's what breeds is inconsistency. But we've
seen Kats won that battle a lot over the years
over this playoff run. I should say specifically in game seven,
like he beat Christian Brown to the basket, he beat
Reggie Jackson too the basket, he beat Jokic to the
basket twice, like he was slashing a lot in Game seven,
(12:33):
And so if you lose control of that situation, that
can go south for you.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
But PJ.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Washington's challenge is going to be to contain that. I
think a big story of this series is going to
be in the event that Ant runs into some issues
with the rim protection and Derek Jones Jr. One of
the other advantages Denver Dallas has. Excuse me, Minnesota, I'm
getting all my teams confused. One of the advantages of
Minnesota has is they've got Cat and nasried to attack
(12:57):
size mismatches, and they're just a lot more size mismatches
for Minnesota to attack in this series than they had
in the Denver series. So that'll be a different direction
for them to go. Keys for both teams on the
Dallas front again, I think you start with deep drop,
try to keep the bracket tight around Ant. That means
back pressure from Derek Jones, the drop coverage, just offering
those contests on those mid range shots, right. I think
(13:20):
you start there and just wait to see if Aunt
can burn you consistently with the straight ISOs when Aunt
wants to try to attack Derek Jones just in like
a slashing situation without a screen. That's where you're going
to have your rim protectors sitting off of Gobert, just
sitting in the paint. It's more or less the same
type of coverage situation, right, and it's going to have
to beat people off the dribble and then make contested
(13:41):
mid range jump shots, flatten out Karl Anthony Town's drives
like we talked about. And then lastly, this kind of
is connection between both ends of the floor. But offensive
process for Dallas is going to be huge in this series.
They have struggled to turnovers at times during this postseason run,
and if you do that against Minnesota, that's a death
sentence just like it was against Okay.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
See, because they can get.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Out and transition so well on the Minnesota front, don't
fall for the trap that Oklahoma City fell for, don't
drive and repeatedly try to finish over their rim protection.
We'll see maybe Aunt is just such a superior athlete
that he just cooks those guys at the rim all series.
Maybe that's what he does. But if early in the
series it becomes clear that you can't relative like regularly
(14:20):
finish over the rim protection, that's where rim decisions will
become a huge factor. Once you get into that spot,
making the right kickout passes and not falling for the
trap that Oklahoma City ran into, repeatedly challenging the rim protectors.
Rim protectors catenance shot making, and I'm gonna throw Conley
in here too. Elite rim protection calls for more mid
(14:41):
range shot making. That's just kind of the natural kind
of order of things, right, Like Jason Kid's gonna do
everything he can to keep that length directly under the
basket and to make things difficult for you around the rim,
so over the top shot making will be key. And then, lastly, similarly,
similarly to what we talked about with Dallas transition opportunities,
so Minnesota needs to look to run as much as
possible to avoid that loaded up rim protection.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Moving to Dallas.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
On offense, I think we'll see Jade McDaniels on Luca,
Anthony Edwards on Kyrie Irving, Mike Conley will probably guard
Derek Jones Junior, Carl Anthony Towns will likely guard PJ. Washington,
and then obviously go bear on Gafford or Lively. Let's
talk about go bear ball screens first. So one of
the things I noticed on film they were a little
(15:27):
bit more aggressive with Gobert than I was expecting. There
was some high drop, some trapping, some low drop, but
mostly against Kyrie. Then I noticed in the film Luca,
though for the most part, didn't look to target Gobert,
he was mostly going after Carl Anthony Towns in ball screens,
and in those situations, at first they were doing a
lot of switching, but Luca was just easily getting to
(15:48):
a step back jump shot on Cat and then they
started hedging, and then when they got to the hedging,
they would just basically drive. Luca would drive past Cat
and then try to turn the corner and try to
kind of keep that head of same going against Jaden,
which obviously opens up things in the slip as well.
And I think that's gonna be kind of the direction
this series goes is a lot of attacking Conley and
(16:09):
attacking Cat, those guys hedging and then guys like PJ.
Washington and Derek Jones slipping out of that and them
trying to play four on three against Minnesota and rotation.
So the rotations are going to be the key of
the series defensively for Dallas. Let's get to those keys.
So with Dallas, hunt the entry points again if you
(16:30):
similar to what we were talking about with Minnesota on offense,
if you play into their bracket, meaning if you just
keep attacking go Beart and Jada McDaniels and Anthony Edwards
all series long, I think you're gonna run into some issues.
I do think you want to attack ant for a
reason we're going to talk about in a minute. But
if you attack their best defensive players, especially in the
biggest moments when they're really really engaged, I think that
(16:51):
could go south pretty quickly. So attacking Conley and Kat,
they're gonna hedge or trap. So that's where you're gonna
get your four on threes by slipping out of those,
and then it's gonna be about decision about decision making
and shot making in those four on threes. The second
piece put Anthony Edwards in screens. He has a lot
of offensive responsibility for this team, right, and as we've
(17:12):
seen throughout this playoff run, when he gets tired, his
screen navigation tends to suck.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
You can get a lot of switches that way where
Ant will die on the screen and then you end
up having to put you know, a Karl Anthony Towns
or somebody like that on the ball, which is where
Kyrie and Luca can look to go to work, so
especially in lower leverage moments, because we know what Ant
can do when the high leverage moments are there. As
bad as Ant was navigating screens early in the series,
(17:40):
like in Game three and four, in particular, in Game
six and seven, An was just an absolute menace on
the ball, And like we talked about in that video yesterday,
straight up removed Jamal Murray from the game by chasing
him over the top of screens and funneling him into
their size. So like, I don't see that as an
issue when the shit hits the fan, I don't see
that as an issue in the big, high leverage moments.
(18:01):
But during the meat and potatoes of the series. Put
it in a bunch of screens, because if he dies
on screens, that'll generate some openings for you on offense.
And then last, take care of the basketball. If you
start turning the basketball over, it will be a problem. Again,
Dallas was the highest turnover percentage team of the remaining
four teams that we have in the conference finals. Use
(18:23):
your length, use your athleticism, you can cause some problems there. Right,
So Dallas has to take care of the ball. On
the Minnesota front game playing discipline for Conlee and Kat Again,
what that means is good hedges that cut off the
driving lanes. If you throw a good hedge, you will
cut off the drive and force them to quickly pass
from there. It's just rotation basketball. That's like being on
(18:44):
a string, every guy knowing what their next rotation is
and just getting back into your spots out of it,
which is something I think that Minnesota has demonstrated they
can do, especially through all their double teams of Jokic.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Over the course of the last round.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Dallas showed some vulnera vulnerability to turnovers like I talked
about earlier. So just using your length and athleticism to
get out in transition, and then lastly, physical ball pressure
on Luca, like we saw last last round with Loudort.
If you just like just beat the hell out of
Luca all series long, He's going to have moments, especially
when he's missing shots, where he gets super frustrated. He
starts focusing on the refs, he starts to like kind
(19:20):
of his body linguage, starts to overly emphasize what's going
on with his knee. He just he just kind of
loses focus on the game hand. We saw that a
couple of times in the last round, and so try
to play Luca into those tendencies by being physical, by
trying to frustrate him, kind of similar to what we
saw from Jamal Murray in game two in the last round.
Like they can you can fluster a team, you can
(19:42):
fluster a player with extensive ball pressure. My predictions, again,
I viewed this as a very different type of series
than the last round because Dallas is just an entirely
different type of athletic matchup for for Minnesota. Dallas, again,
we don't think of them as an elite defense because
of some of their metrics from the regular season, but
(20:03):
they were an elite defense to end the season. They
were elite defense in the first round against the Clippers,
and they were an elite defense in the last round
against Oklahoma City. We have to start thinking of them
as one of those top tier defenses in the league,
and it all stems around elite point of attack defense
from Derrek Jones and PJ. Washington and Josh Green when
he's in the game, and rim protection from Daniel Gafford
(20:24):
and Derek g Liively. I think it's a very different challenge,
and I do think they will play Minnesota into some
really bad offensive stretches, which is why I'm picking Minnesota.
But in six games, I do think that Dallas is
going to get some wins against Minnesota by playing their
offense into bad stretches. That said, I think the overwhelming
physical assault of Minnesota, just like we saw with Denver,
(20:47):
has the ability to rattle the foundation of an offense.
They can go through some stretches where they absolutely strangle
even truly elite offenses. Denver again has that has been
one of the best half court execution teams of the
last five years, and there were stretches where Minnesota didn't
just slow them down but made them lose composure. That
(21:09):
is the ability that Minnesota has to break your foundation.
And I do believe that in the aggregate of this
series they will have more wins against Dallas's offense than
Dallas's defense does against Minnesota's offense. The last kind of
piece to look at here is Anthony Edwards versus Luca.
I did a thing with the Nerd SESSH guys on Friday,
(21:30):
I think last week was after Game six of Minnesota Denver,
and in that stretch, if you guys remember, I talked
about how like for me, Anthony Edwards is like fast
on the rise, the like I would probably take a
healthy Luca over him at number two right now. I
just think he's a little bit better as like a
half court surgeon.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
But the problem is is Luca's knee has been messed
up and he hasn't been nearly as consistently good as
he's been in previous playoff runs, right, And so with
the knee injury kind of being factored in, I think
that ant is more or less like kind of on
the same level as Luca and has a chance to
outplay him here. And that's the thing is like if
you were trying to if you were trying to put
(22:10):
together a pathway for Dallas to win the series, it's
pretty simple. Darre Jones Junior in rim protection, stifle Minnesota's offense,
and Luca gets back to that like consistent, top tier,
superstar level that he just hasn't been at in this
postseason run. So like that's the thing, is, like he
wasn't able to get there against Oklahoma City often, he
wasn't able to get there often against the Clippers. He
(22:31):
had moments, but it was not the same consistently great
Luca that we're accustomed to seeing in the playoffs for
the most part. Right, So what makes you think he's
gonna suddenly figure it out against Minnesota? Right, Minnesota is
just a better defense than any of these other defenses
that he's faced. That said, Luca conquering that challenge is
the pathway. If he can conquer that challenge, I do
(22:52):
believe Dallas's defense will slow Minnesota down for extensive stretches.
So if Luca can solve this Minnesota defense consistently, that
is Dallas's pathway to win the series. That said, I
am picking Minnesota in six. I'm super excited for this series.
Lots of interesting basketball, kind of chess pieces moving around,
tons of star power between Anthony Edwards, Kyrie Irving, Luca,
(23:15):
and I think we got to include Karl Anthony Towns
in there now after how he's been playing in this
postseason run. Can't wait to get into it live on
YouTube after the final buzzer of Game one on Wednesday night.
So I want to be clear picking Minnesota. Absolutely think
Dallas can win the series. They have advantages that they
can go to, particularly on the defensive end of the floor,
and if Luca plays well enough, they can do it.
But I think this Minnesota team is playing on a
(23:37):
special level right now, so I do believe they will win.
Our guests, that is all I have for today. I
will see you guys tonight after the final buzzer of
Celtics Pacers, and then again tomorrow morning for a film
session on that game before we get to Game one
of this series on Wednesday night. The volume
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