Jason Timpf reacts to Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, and the Denver Nuggets' dominant 112-97 Game 5 win over Anthony Edwards, Karl-Anthony Towns, and the Minnesota Timberwolves. Jason breaks down the biggest highlights from the game and shares his main takeaways with the series heading back to Minnesota for Game 6. Is there any way the Wolves can slow down Jokic and Denver? Jason Timpf reacts to Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, and the New York Knicks' dominant 121-91 Game 5 win over Tyrese Haliburton, Pascal Siakam, and the Indiana Pacers to take a 3-2 series lead in their second round matchup of the NBA Playoffs. Jason discusses Jalen Brunson's 44-point performance, Deuce McBride's major impact, and New York turning up the energy back at Madison Square Garden. Will New York close out Indiana in Game 6? #volume #herd
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume.
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All right, well, good HOOPSINAI here at the volume.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Happy Tuesday, everybody.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
We'll ball If you guys are having a great nights,
got a jam pack show for you tonight. We're gonna
be breaking down that big Game five between the Minnesota
Timberwolves and the Denver Nuggets as Denver goes up three two,
one of the better playoff games that we've seen from
Nicole jokicch in his career. We're gonna break it all
down for those of you guys looking for a breakdown
of Knicks Pacers already did it. It's on the YouTube feed.
(02:14):
Just got to go a little bit further back, broke
it down. Did some film in that one too, surrounding
Duce McBride and an action that the Knicks were spamming
at the beginning of that game to take advantage of
Tyres Haliburton in an opening in Indiana's coverage. To make
sure you don't miss that earlier on the feed hit
in Denver, Minnesota in this one, you guys are the
Joe before we get started. Subscribe to our brand of
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(02:35):
Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLT so you guys
don't misshow announcements. Don't forget about a podcast feed wherever
you get your podcasts under hoops tonight, and then keep
dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments. We can keep
hitting them throughout the remainder of the postseason run. All right,
let's talk some basketball. So the story of the game
early on was, I guess Michael Malone just got sick
(02:55):
of watching Anthony Edwards barbecue everybody that was the one
guy that they had no chance to guard. In terms
of the somewhat limited offensive personnel that Minnesota has. Again,
as we look throughout the large sample, they had a
very good offensive stretch through the four games against Phoenix
in the first two games of this series, but over
(03:17):
the large sample this season, this is the team that
has some limited offensive personnel, some guys that can score
when the circumstances are favorable, but when you start to
shut off the easy stuff, their limitations can be exposed,
right And so Michael Malone made a took a gamble
in this game giving some advantages to those players by
throwing extra bodies at Ant, super high drop coverage with
(03:39):
Nikola Jokic, to just make sure that Ant was almost
picking up his dribble every time he come off of
that ball screen or have to immediately take a retreat dribble,
which again, as soon as you take that retreat dribble,
there's no downhill four set play right then, anytime he
got some sort of favorable matchup in a one on
one situation, it was just a straight double team to
get the ball out of his hands. We've seen how
Ant has destroyed this smaller Denver guards throughout the majority
(04:02):
of the series, and at the beginning of the game,
Michael Maloney and the Nuggets paid the price for that, because,
as I talked about last game, Karl Anthony Towns as
like an actual shot creator, has some limitations in terms
of he can't really bully everybody, and then he ends
up exposing the basketball eventually and guys can kind of
(04:22):
swipe at it. We did a film breakdown after game four,
if you guys remember where I showed you guys some
examples of how Cat can kind of become easier to
guard in a static situation against a set defense. But
give him, you know, a guy closing out to him
in the corner, and he can pump bake and Aaron
Gordon can fly by and then take a side step
into a three.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
If Aaron Gordon's didn't help elsewhere and he has an
opportunity to attack a close out, that's good.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Same goes for guys like Nikhil Alexander Walker, right, And
both of them had big bounce back games tonight. Nikile
Alexander Walker had four threes at fourteen points. Carl Town's
had twenty three points on over fifty percent shooting.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
So early on they paid the price for.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Doubling ant as the rest of Minnesota's offensive players benefited
from it and got into a rhythm. Right, And as
a matter of fact, in the early second half, Minnesota
ends up taking a fifty five to fifty three lead, right,
and it starts to feel a little bit more like
Game one of this series.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Right.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
But we get a time out and Denver all postseason
long has just been a really good team. And this
is a testament, in my opinion, to coach Michael Malone,
who I think is starting to rise up the echelon
of NBA coaches. We're gonna have to take a deeper
look at that when we get to the offseason. But
he calls a time out, refocuses the guys. They immediately
come out. Aaron Gordon scores on a post up against
(05:39):
Karl Anthony Towns. They immediately go on eleven to two
run and regain control. The big thing I noticed was defense.
From there, they got their defense set. They were having
some issues in transition where when they didn't score, Minnesota
would push the ball in transition they wouldn't get their
high drop set.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Transition defense principles tell you to take away the rim first.
And Jokich is an excellent transiit big who runs back,
and it's one of the things that it kind of
separates him from so many of the bigs around the
league is he just runs his lane and transition really well,
and he would run back in transition and there would
just be a unset defense for Minnesota to attack and
they'd have some success. Right they started to get some stops,
(06:17):
started to get their defense set. Those first few Minnesota
offensive possessions out of that time out.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Were really ugly.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
There was a Rudy Gobert post up of Nikola Jokic
in there where he ended up throwing a late you know,
basically a late grenade to Knikile Alexander Walker on the
left wing that he missed. There was like a random
Nikil Alexander Walker ball screen where he took a tough
contested mid range jump shot. Again, Minnesota's offensive personnel is
pretty limited, and when Denver really tightens the screws, they
(06:44):
can slow them down. And then they started going out
in transition. Aaron Gordon gets a big transition dunk. Jamal
Murray to cap off the run gets a big transition dunk.
KCP hits a big three above the break in that sequence,
Jamal Murray gets a layup in a two man game
with Nikolea Jokich. It's just classic Denver Nuggets basketball. And
you know, honestly, like that really has been the story
(07:04):
of this entire postseason for Denver. Every time they've run
into a problem or a situation, whether it's Game two
against the Lakers or down twenty, it's boom, timeout, quick adjustment, refocus,
lock in, and go on a run. They've just consistently
been able to do that. As a matter of fact,
that I was pulling the numbers on Synergy earlier, so
this is before tonight. Although they not only did they
(07:24):
score immediately after the timeout in the third quarter, there
was another one in the fourth quarter where Minnesota went
on a little run got it to ten, they immediately
came out of the timeout and scored. According to Synergy,
the Nuggets are scoring one point one seven points per
possession after timeouts, which is the best in the league
in this playoff run among remaining teams. As a matter
of fact, the Boston Celtics are second on that list
(07:46):
at one point zero four points per possession, so literally
a thirteen point per one hundred possession gap between Boston
and Denver at one to two in execution out of timeouts.
It's been a huge part of what has made this
Denver team so good. They can get a little you know,
just like any other basketball team. They can have a
two or three possession stretch where they play some poor basketball,
(08:08):
maybe they don't get back in transition, maybe they take
a couple of bad shots.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Things can get a little ugly.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
It's like, oh, here's a random Michael Porter junior, you know,
twenty seven foot heave pivoting over his left shoulder, right
or something like that.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
But it's like there's always.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Just a timeout, a quick you know, Mike Malone get
on their case a little bit, and then they just
come out and they execute, and they and they do
what they need to do and they regain control of
the game.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
That to me is a is.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
A hallmark of championship basketball, the ability to execute when
you need to regain control of a situation that's slipping
out of your hands. I talk about this a lot,
but it's when things are going south that you tend
to fall back on who your actual core character is
as a basketball team. And so that's a consistent thing
for Denver every time things start to kind of get
a little wacky. They're really good at refocusing and regaining
(08:53):
control and making sure those runs get too much out
of hand. Not enough was made about Denver's defense this year.
I saw a lot of talk I consistently said I
thought this Denver team was better than last year. I
saw a lot of people talking about, you know, the
bench not being as good, not having veterans like Bruce Brown,
or excuse me, like Jeff Green with like a really good,
(09:16):
kind of like sixth starter type of guy like Bruce
Brown coming off the bench. And the big thing that
I think people missed out on was this is a
team that was way more focused defensively from day one
of training camp. This was a top ten defense this year.
And again, like this was a team that wasn't a
top ten defense last year that kind of snapped into form.
They were a switch flipping team when they got into
(09:36):
the postseason. This team came into this year with a
level of focus that is not typical for a defending champion, right,
It's usually the opposite.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
It's usually like the first.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Time you win, you're this top ten defense, and then
maybe you get some leeway as you're more of a
of a fringe defense in following seasons because you become
a switch flipping type of team. It's been very clear
that they've been locked in, honestly, Like I think the
Jamal Murray injury this season and then losing to some
good teams got people off the scent a little bit
(10:07):
of Denver, but I think they've been generally locked in
the majority of the season. I want to talk about
Nicole Yokich iss a score because she just had a
ridiculous scoring game.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Obviously goes for forty points.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Was just every single time he saw Rudy Gobert on
his switch, his eyes just lit up. He saw barbecue
chicken and he immediately went to work. But I think,
you know, I want to talk about the specifics of
what makes Jokic such a good score because we talked
about the touch right, and the touch is obviously a
big part of it. He's got a deadly hook shot
over both shoulders, really really good floater, has a little
bit of a turnaround jumper over both shoulders off of
(10:38):
like kind of funky footwork too, Like if he goes
over his left shoulder, it's like the Somber shuffle right
when it goes over his right shoulder. It's more of
a traditional right shoulder fade like you see from most
guards right where it's just a typical right left plant,
you know, kind of rise up and shoot kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
But what I want to focus on is on his footwork.
You know. I thought it was really interesting.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
There's a quote from Michael Malone after It was actually
before the game, and he was talking about adjustments, right,
and he said, quote, yeah, you make adjustments. Sometimes I
think too much is made of the adjustments. It's not
really what you're doing, it's how you do it. And
to me, you look at us in games one and
two compared to three and four, and our players had
a completely different disposition about themselves. So yes, maybe we
(11:20):
did some different things offensively and defensively, but give our
players credit because they realized what we were doing and
how and how we were doing it wasn't the answer.
So what I thought was really fascinating about that quote
is when we get when we finished game two, if
you guys remember I said, it's not even about basketball anymore,
like it can't be about basketball until you join the fight.
(11:42):
And really, the big thing that stood out to me
on film when we looked at Game three, was they
set better screens, particularly okitch opening tip just rocked Anthony
Edwards with a screen, right, and then Jamal Murray did
a much better job handling ball pressure and setting up
his man for screens, which allowed him to get more
separation from Jada McDaniels and Anthony Edward, which allowed their
offense to start working, and then even extending to the
(12:03):
defensive end of the floor, just like you know, guys
like KCP and Aaron Gordon sending early messages to air
to Karl Anthony Towns that he can't score on them
on an island, and just kind of tightening that defensive
pressure and making what was a mediocre offense all year
long look like the mediocre offense that they are in
a way that they did it in the first two games.
(12:25):
It wasn't some magical adjustment. It's like, yeah, they ran
some more cleared side action, right, Like, there's some little
things that they did that were different, but the majority
of it was they just played better basketball. And what
I find fascinating about that is a lot of times
we focus on the spectacular when it comes to stars,
Right we look at Kyrie, we talked about this crazy
dribble move that he made, right, We talked about Jason Tatum.
(12:46):
Here's this crazy step back three that he hits. We
talked about, you know, Steph Curry. It's this thirty footer
that he hits some transition off the mound. We talked
about Nicol Yokich. It's the Somber shuffle, this incredible fadeaway
jumper that he hits off a one leg leaning away
from the basket.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
But usually the.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Most fundamentally sound players in the league are the best
players in the league. The vast majority of basketball those
are just dessert. The meat and potatoes of what makes
a good basketball player is excellent ball handling, excellent footwork,
you know, understanding of angles and leverage when it comes
to contact situations. All these like really boring concepts that
(13:22):
make a basketball player more reliably great on a possession
by possession basis Jokic the primary driving force of what
makes him so unguardable in the post is that he
can consistently get to a short, easy shot. How do
you consistently get to a short easy shot through footwork?
Footwork is what allows you to weaponize your physical tools.
(13:45):
There are a lot of guys out there that have
a lot of physical tools that can't take advantage of them.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Look at Rudy Gobert.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
There was a play where he should have gotten called
for a travel in the second half where he caught
on the roll in front of Yo Kitch and just
quick shuffled before he made a kickout pass. It's because
he's so un coordinated with his feet that when he
needs to move his large frame into a specific spot
to do something with the basketball, he can't do that.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Footwork is the chain that connects.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Your natural gifts with the ability to actually get to
spots on the floor, and Nicole Jokic has amazing footwork.
When you guard over, when you guard post players that
are bigger than you, it's all about disrupting the base.
I know this from my personal experience. When I played
in college, I was an undersized big I played a
lot of four and five at six six and twenty
(14:32):
five pounds, and so I was usually going against six
nine six ' ten athletes, but I was bigger and
stronger than them, and usually I just push on their
base and essentially, when they would try to get to
a spot and shoot some sort of shot, over the top.
I basically bump them off of that spot and make
it so that their energy transfer from the ground up
to their shot gets disrupted and then they take some
hook shot that they'd miss or something along those lines
(14:54):
that you can't do that with Jokic. His base is
not disruptible. When he goes downhill and he makes a
pivot move, the guy will try to cut him off
and try to bump him, and Yokic bumps you off.
That really is the core of all of it his
and that the ability to maintain your base is a
footwork thing.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
You're constantly playing off two feet right, Your feet are
moving around, and you constantly have to have both your
feet anchored in the ground so that when somebody bumps you,
you don't lose balance. And the only way you're gonna
be able to do that is if you constantly rep
out every single drop step to the left, drop step
to the to the right, every single step through, which
is basically just like a pivot over one shoulder, a
(15:36):
quick plant, and then another pivot towards the basket. Yo
kich is really good at like that kind of spin
move double pivot, where like he'll rotate over his left
shoulder and then duck back underneath and come back over
his left shoulder and finish and the whole time, if
you watch his feet, he quick shuffles and quicks plant,
quick plants, but he's always back on two feet so
that no one can shove him off of his spot.
(15:57):
And so when you got a guy like Rudy Gobert,
he's got some length, right, he's got some height. He
has the ability to meet Jokic up top. But what
Jokic does is he disrupts go Bear's base and gets
him off of his stable foundation where he can jump
and meet Jokic up top. And so as a result,
when Jokic goes to shoot, Phil Bear is groundbound. He's
(16:18):
groundbound because Jokicic just bumped him right at the time
that he would typically jump to try to make a play.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
He is a master of physical leverage in footwork.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
That is such a boring thing that doesn't make highlight reels,
That isn't going to be something that is fun to
work on when you go to the gym, But that
is the kind of thing that will make you unguardable.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
When you have physical tools.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
That is what allows you if you're a young basketball
player out there and you happen to be a big
guard or a big wing or a big center. If
you don't rep out the footwork, you will play smaller
than the size that you bring to the table. And
when you connect that footwork piece with real shot making,
you can become an unstoppable scorer. When you become an
unstoppable score, you will start to bring multiple defenders. When
(17:01):
you bring multiple defenders and you learn to read the floor,
then you become truly unguardable. And Jokics just has that
unique combination of like transcendent physical size, like he's just
so much bigger than everybody that tries to guard him,
incredible detail footwork and fundamental like a fundamental foundation of
(17:21):
his skills, and then outstanding touch within ten fifteen feet
of the rim. Right we talked about Game four, he
was ten for fifteen within five feet and fourteen feet
from the basket. He is deadly in that range. He's
going to knock you off balance, get to a spot,
and get to a shot. It seemed like it was
personal tonight. Every single time he had an opportunity to
(17:42):
go at go bear he did.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
It was just you know, again.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
I talked about this after game two, like, I was
really interested to see how Yo kids would respond to
the adversity. Anthony Edwards straight up made a play for
his spot. He basically was like, you're the best player
in the world. That's great. Me and my team were
punking you. You guys can't guard me. I'm coming for
your spot. And Jokic said, hell, no, you're not, and
(18:05):
he resoundingly reaffirmed his position as the best player in
the league. I think he has the largest chasm between
him and the second best player since Lebron in the
early twenty tens. And you could argue it's even bigger
than that. He like, have you seen anybody play basketball
this year that has been able to reach the level
that Nikol Jokich has been at in the last three games,
(18:27):
Like I would argue this is a higher level than
he's ever been at. And that's the beauty of adversity.
And this is why I love when there's true parody
in the game and you don't see a team just
run rough shot over the league and win fifteen straight
playoff games, because when this team is down to oh
and legacies are on the line and people are talking
shit for three days in the media and all of
(18:47):
that is coming down on you. That is what pushed
Nikole Jokicic to this level. It required adversity to bring
out another level of nikol Jokich that we had not
seen before, and I've thoroughly enjoyed watching it. Last guy
for Denver, I wanted to shout out before we move on,
Contavious Callbo Pope. I thought every single shot he hit
in this you know it's funny. Did you guys remember
(19:09):
that Jada McDaniel's quote about Jamal Murray talking about how
his shots were loud, Like I thought that was the
textbook example of that kind of game from KCP only
sixteen points.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Every shot he hit was loud.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Hit a huge three above that of the above the break
during that eleven to two run after the timeout when
Minnesota went up fifty five to fifty three. Hit two
massive corner threes in the fourth quarter when Minnesota was
trying like hell to get back into the game. He's
been amazing defensively throughout the series, despite being kind of
physically overmatched in his individual matchup. He hasn't really had
(19:40):
many moments in this series. I thought he had a
big moment here in Game five. Last note before before
we kind of go into some closing thoughts I had.
I saw a lot of Celtics fans just kind of
starting to jump on Anthony Edwards's case after he had
a bad game. Here's the thing coming into tonight, the
(20:02):
average thirty two to seven and six on sixty seven
percent tru shooting against outstanding competition on a team that
desperately needs him to score because they are a severely
limited offensive team. He's also twenty two years old. They're
going to be growing pains along the way. Is he
gonna need to figure out how to be more effective
(20:23):
in games when he gets double teamed like this?
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Like, I actually think that Mike Michael Malone looked at
the situation and goes, oh, Mike Conley's not playing. Well,
if Mike Conley's not playing, there's not a like a
really really high IQ offensive player on the floor other
than Anthony Edwards, So like we might as well just
get the ball out of his hands and make these
guys play off of him. I really think that that
was the read that Michael Malone played. It's very possible
(20:48):
we see a different coverage if Mike Conley's out there,
especially given the fact that even though Ant was so
effective in Game three, in Game four, the rest of
the offense for Minnesota was so dead on arrival. Again,
I was talking about and comparing him to Jason Tatum
as it pertains to the future of American basketball basketball players.
I like Jayson Tatum a lot. I have no issues
(21:11):
with him at all whatsoever. I think he's probably somewhere
around the seventh, eighth, ninth best player in the league.
I actually think that he's good enough to win a
title with this Boston Celtics team, considering how much talent
he's surrounded with. All I said is he's not capable
of being better than Nikola Jokic. Anthony Edwards, at age
twenty two, at least has that potential. Anthony Edwards has
(21:32):
more upside, and at this point in his career, I'm
really enjoying watching his development. I'm really enjoying watching his rise.
He's probably my favorite player in the league right now
to watch and cover. I just think I love his personality.
I think he's gonna be so good for our game
for a really long time. I think I think America
desperately needed somebody to kind of take the reins from
(21:52):
that Lebron Steph KD group. And again, like as good
as Jason Tatum is, I just don't think he had
that upside. I don't think that he has that personality either.
And that's all it was. It was more of a
pro ampt thing than an anti Jason Tatum thing. But
at the end of the day, like he had a
rough game, he had a rough game against the defense.
Did you guys hear that interview at the start of
(22:13):
the fourth quarter, Michael Malone straight up came out and said,
our entire defensive game plan is to stop and he
straight up said that he's We're throwing different looks at him,
We're throwing second defenders at it. Like, straight up said that,
what does that tell you? Michael Malone took a gamble tonight.
We're gonna get the ball out of Anthony Everard's hands
and just try to make someone else beat us, and
(22:33):
someone else did and it was fifty five to fifty
three in the second half, when in the two games
in Minnesota they weren't even competitive. So again, Anthony Edwards's
Gigantic Gravitational presence on the court as this unguardable two
guard caused Michael Malone to compromise his own defense, and
it actually allowed Minnesota to be more competitive than they
(22:54):
had been in the previous two games. And yeah, you're right,
I do think he can handle it better, and I
do think he's capable of taking more and more leaps
as a playmaker, more and more leaps. It's kind of
a half court surgeon, like I talked about, right, But
like again, here's what I think is lame jumping on
Anthony Edwards's case and trying to rewrite the rise of
this phase of his career when he averaged thirty two
(23:15):
to seven and six against an entirely different class of
opponent than what Boston has been playing in the first
two rounds out in the Eastern Conference, and on sixty
seven percent true shooting. By the way, Jason Tatum again
last night shot below forty five percent from the field.
He's done it in every single playoff game this year
except for one. So like again, like I don't, it's
not I think it's it's completely ridiculous to just flip
(23:38):
the script and turn on Anthony Edwards in a bad
game that mostly had to do with the game plan.
The reality is, in my opinion, as we look forward
in this series at three two Denver, Minnesota can't score
against Denver's defense when they're really locked in and engaged.
I don't know how they solve that problem. I think
it's really hard to beat a team four times in
(23:59):
a row. So I wouldn't be surprised if Minnesota won
Game six.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
But it's hard for.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Me to imagine Minnesota winning two in a row at
this point. Win for three consecutive games, Denver has basically
rendered their offense useless. I don't know how they go
from there, but I can't count them out obviously, just
really difficult to beat a team four times in a row.
Obviously we're likely to get a bounced back game from
Anthony Edwards. It's going to be a ROCKUS crowd. Elimination
(24:25):
games in general are tough. Denver's been playing with all
the urgency and intensity that is now going to shift
back towards Minnesota at this point. So I do think
it's going to be a tough game, but I'm going
to go with Denver and six. I saw someone on
Twitter refer to it as the Gangster sweep. It's interesting
because it's the sweep, the gentleman sweep, which is when
(24:48):
you win four to one, and I guess the definition
of the gangster sweep is you lose your first two
at home and then you win four straight with three
being on the road. Obviously, they still need to do it,
but that would be pretty epic because I think think
all games have been by double digits. Yeah, they won
by fifteen tonight, and I'm pretty sure Game three and
four were by double digits, So that would be that
(25:08):
would whoever whoever coined that term, I should have I
should have quoted whoever that was, But that I did
think was funny. But hopefully I will see if Denver
can pull off the gangster sweep here in a couple
of days. I don't want to get too far into
the nitty gritty in this game, really, because the last
couple of games, Game four in Indiana and Game five
(25:31):
in New York, were mostly just about effort. In Game four,
the Knicks looked exhausted and the Pacers ran them out
of the gym, and they played limited minutes and came home.
And that was also a much earlier start in the
day On Sunday, if you guys remember, So they got
like a substantially larger amount of rest compared to what
they got between Game three and Game four. They're also
(25:52):
coming home also having lost two in a row. The
desperation shifts heavily towards the Knicks. The Pacers have a
little bit of come knowing that it's two to two
and you've got another game at home, right, and the
Knick's just kind of capitalized on that. You know, there
was a quote that I saw from the pregame presser
from Mike Malone tonight, Michael Malone, head coach of the
(26:13):
Denver Nuggets, and he said, quote, yeah, you make adjustments.
Sometimes I think too much is made of the adjustments.
It's not really what you're doing, it's how you do it.
And to me, you look at us in games one
and two, and compared to games three and four, our
players had a completely different disposition about themselves. So, yes,
maybe we did some things, some different things offensively and defensively,
(26:36):
but give our players credit because they realized what we
were doing and how we were doing it wasn't the answer.
And I thought that was really fascinating because I said
the same thing after Game two of that series, the
one really about basketball, Denver just had not really joined
the series physically, And like we're going to talk about
some specific x's and those things that took place in
today's game, like Duce McBride joining the starting lineup, how
(26:59):
that allowed the the Knicks to attack Tyres Halliburton, you know,
Jalen Brunson kind of getting that early fallon Aaroni Smith,
leading him to Rick Carlisle to shift to Andrew and
Embard on the ball, and some stuff about Tyres Haliburton
being kind of passive. We're going to get into some
of the basketball stuff, but none of that played nearly
as big of a role as just the Knicks brought
(27:21):
a hell of a lot more force tonight. They just
played better basketball, and the Pacers did the same thing
in Game four. We have a tendency and I've noticed
this for a long time in the realm of basketball analysis,
and like, tactics are an important part of basketball analysis,
but I agree with Michael Malone. I think it's leaned
on a lot a lot more than it probably actually
(27:45):
relates to the outcomes of a lot of these games. Say,
for instance, the story of this game is going to
be duce McBride joining the starting lineup, and everything he
did tonight guarding Tyres Halliburton, the attacking Haliburton when he
was hedging and blitzing and deuced me Bride like quickly
kind of like slipping out of those actions. Right, But
here's the thing. They got off to a twenty to
(28:05):
fourteen start. The Pacers were up twenty to fourteen in
this game. So like like in duce McBride still was
playing a lot. We said after I think it was
in game three, I said, now that Ojan and Obi's out,
the best five man group that the Knicks have is
Duce McBride, Dante DiVincenzo, Josh hart Jalen Bronson, and Isaiah Hartenstein.
(28:25):
Like we've already known that was the five best guys.
Like you know, honestly, the Knicks energy didn't even really
start to take over in this game until the middle
to late first quarter. And so again, like it's important
for us to talk about the tactics. I think it's
a really good thing for us all to learn more
about so that we can have a better understanding of
what's taking place on the court. But make no mistake,
(28:46):
generally speaking, the team that wins it has more to
do with who's playing the best basketball and all these
little fundamental areas, who's cutting harder, who's running in transition harder,
who's sliding their feet better on the ball, who's setting
better screens, who's being sharper when they're with their decision making,
who's doing a better job attacking closeouts and making reads
like those are usually the things that determine who wins
(29:09):
the game more so than any sort of tactic, right.
You know, like I literally thought that the Nuggets turned
the Minnesota series around literally just by setting way better
screens and handling ball pressure better. I thought those were
the two things that helped Jamal Murray break free more often,
which allowed Denver's offense to function in a way it
wasn't functioning in the first two games of the series.
(29:31):
And so again I think like these last two games
have been a good example of that. Do you think
Indiana had a magic adjustment in Game four? Do you
think the Knicks had a magic adjustment here in Game five? No,
they just the Pacers played better basketball in Game four
and the Knicks played better basketball in Game five. On
that note, let's talk a little bit about some of
the specific basketball dynamics that took place.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
In this game.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
So Deuce McBride did an amazing job defending Tyris Halliburn
and played him into some of his worst tendencies, which
have to do being passive and not looking to score enough.
We'll talk a little bit more about that in a
little bit when we get to the Pacers. The big
thing that duce McBride was helping with was he was
being guarded by Tyre's Halliburton. And there's two things that
you absolutely have to be able to do when you're
(30:13):
being guarded by a player who that specific player's team
is going to ask him to hedge and recover or
to blitz. Basically meaning when that player comes off the screen,
Tyre's Halliburton is either going to jump out to cut
off the driving lane or jump out to blitz, meaning
leaving duce McBride. You have to be able to hit
(30:34):
threes quickly while sliding your feet out of the screen
and quickly getting set up at the three point line.
And two, you have to be able to make quick
decisions when the defense reacts to you. And duce McBride
just did an amazing job of that in this game,
hitting those threes on the pick and pop out of
the hedge and recover in the blitz, and then also
when the rotation would come to him making that next
pass in the line to the next shooter that might
(30:56):
be open. He just did an incredible job and it
gave Jalen Brunson an action that he could spam to
consistently generate quality shots for the nixt Tonight, Jalen Brunson
was amazing again, another forty plus point night. Was just
cooking in Iso all night long. You could tell that
additional rest really helped him. He just had more lift
than he did in Game four. He got Brick Carlisle
(31:17):
to bail on Aaron Nesmith with about eight minutes and
thirty seconds left in the first quarter after he picked
up a foul on him on an and one. The
Pacers were up twelve to nine at that point and
Brunson had only made one field goal. But I guess
that Rick Carlile was mainly just thinking, let's try to
avoid getting let's try to avoid picking up that second foul,
and we just know Jalen Brunson's really comfortable against Andrew
(31:42):
Nemhard He had an in.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And out dribble on him where he literally like in.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
And outed Hardy nevvrd W was flying off the screen
to the right, and Brunson just had like a wide
open layup, like he's just really comfortable in that matchup.
He got going then even when Niesmith came back on him,
he kind of was a little bit more comfortable and
in rhythm. Like I talked about before, he was really
picking on Tyre's house Burton screens. By the way, I
have four clips of film I'm going to show you
guys at the end of the show to kind of
demonstrate some of the specifics with Duce McBride, you know,
(32:09):
kind of making Tyres Saliburton pay for his hedges and
his blitzes. Tyr's Saliburton's pasivity. So every archetype of basketball player,
in my opinion, has a weakness. Right, There's like pros
and cons that come to every personality type. It's no
different with like than like, I'm a pretty OCD guy, right,
(32:29):
But at the same time, like my obsessive focus on
stuff makes it so that I can be sometimes oblivious
to things that are happening around me. Right, You know
I I have a certain way that I organize a
simple thing. My wife had to borrow my truck to
go to Low's the other day, and I took my
basketball bag out of that truck to take it take
her car instead. Then when I went back into my truck,
(32:51):
I didn't take my basketball bag with me. So the
last two times I went to the gym early, because
I always go to the gym early to do my
shooting workout before I play, I didn't have my basketball bag.
I was like super frustrated. But it's because I'm such
a creature of habit that anytime anything kind of disrupts
my rhythm, my whole life tends to fall apart, you
know what I mean. Like it's a downside of my personality.
But the upside is my OCD leads to me getting
(33:13):
into really good rhythms, and so I'm really good at
like kind of keeping a daily routine which helps me
be a better basketball player. It helps me run a
better show. Like there's upsides and there's downsides, right, same
thing goes with basketball players, Like if you're a high
motor player, usually that helps you bring energy when your
team needs it, and it can you know, invigorate your team.
But at the same time, those guys tend to gamble
(33:34):
a lot, they tend to make mistakes, they tend to
foul too much. That's those are all characteristics of high
motor players because they're always going one hundred miles an hour.
Super emotional guys like they can They can get their
team to kind of meet them at a level emotionally,
which can be a good thing. They can also get
the other team to overreact to things and get caught
up in some of the emotional elements, but as we know,
(33:54):
that can lead to technicals overly physical play getting themselves
ejected or suspended. Right, that's a down side of the
super emotional players. Right assassin minded scorers that are always
looking for their own shot. They can get hot and
they can carry you home, but they can also miss
easy reads and play their teammates out of rhythm. Right
pass first offensive engines like a Tyrese Halliburton, other players
(34:18):
like Nikole jokicch Lebron James when he was in his prime.
Those pass first guys, they can keep everyone in rhythm
and control the offense, and they're usually like offensive engines
that can really lead an offense to a high level,
almost individually, but they sometimes can be too passive. There
were moments in Lebron's career where he needed to look
to shoot, but instead he would make the right play right.
(34:40):
There were times where early in the Timberwolf series where
you're like, why is Nikola Jokic passing out a single
coverage and he's like, but you even hear him after
the game, it's like, maybe we should trust the pass more.
It's like it's programmed into their basketball identity, right. And
with Tyre's Halliburton, he takes nine shots tonight, and take
nine shots on the road in a two to two
game when you're offense is struggling to score. That's part
(35:02):
of your job as the offensive engine. He's been taking
eleven threes a game over the last few weeks and
hitting over forty percent of them, and he only took
four of them tonight. Now, some of that is a
credit to Douce McBride, but again there's a certain part
of that where like tyrese just like Lebron did over
the course of his career, just like Jokic did in
this series, and we know that he's capable of Tyree's
(35:24):
part of his development is going to be understanding that
there are times when he has to be aggressive and
there are going to be times when he has to
look to score. And he's been a little inconsistent, especially
on the road in this playoff run. In that regard
first playoff run really as the leader of his team,
obviously there's going to be some growing pains along the way.
I thought tonight was an example of him being overly passive.
(35:45):
I think the Pacers will probably extend this series to seven,
just because it's a shorthanded mixed team and they're really undersized,
and it's difficult to win on the road when you
have physical disadvantages. Can't count the Knicks out, though they
certainly can win Game six, but I am sticking with
my pick pick for the Knicks to win the series.
I just think they'll probably do it in seven. The
(36:27):
volume
The volume.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
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All right, well, good HOOPSINAI here at the volume.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Happy Tuesday, everybody.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
We'll ball If you guys are having a great nights,
got a jam pack show for you tonight. We're gonna
be breaking down that big Game five between the Minnesota
Timberwolves and the Denver Nuggets as Denver goes up three two,
one of the better playoff games that we've seen from
Nicole jokicch in his career. We're gonna break it all
down for those of you guys looking for a breakdown
of Knicks Pacers already did it. It's on the YouTube feed.
(02:14):
Just got to go a little bit further back, broke
it down. Did some film in that one too, surrounding
Duce McBride and an action that the Knicks were spamming
at the beginning of that game to take advantage of
Tyres Haliburton in an opening in Indiana's coverage. To make
sure you don't miss that earlier on the feed hit
in Denver, Minnesota in this one, you guys are the
Joe before we get started. Subscribe to our brand of
YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos.
(02:35):
Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLT so you guys
don't misshow announcements. Don't forget about a podcast feed wherever
you get your podcasts under hoops tonight, and then keep
dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments. We can keep
hitting them throughout the remainder of the postseason run. All right,
let's talk some basketball. So the story of the game
early on was, I guess Michael Malone just got sick
(02:55):
of watching Anthony Edwards barbecue everybody that was the one
guy that they had no chance to guard. In terms
of the somewhat limited offensive personnel that Minnesota has. Again,
as we look throughout the large sample, they had a
very good offensive stretch through the four games against Phoenix
in the first two games of this series, but over
(03:17):
the large sample this season, this is the team that
has some limited offensive personnel, some guys that can score
when the circumstances are favorable, but when you start to
shut off the easy stuff, their limitations can be exposed,
right And so Michael Malone made a took a gamble
in this game giving some advantages to those players by
throwing extra bodies at Ant, super high drop coverage with
(03:39):
Nikola Jokic, to just make sure that Ant was almost
picking up his dribble every time he come off of
that ball screen or have to immediately take a retreat dribble,
which again, as soon as you take that retreat dribble,
there's no downhill four set play right then, anytime he
got some sort of favorable matchup in a one on
one situation, it was just a straight double team to
get the ball out of his hands. We've seen how
Ant has destroyed this smaller Denver guards throughout the majority
(04:02):
of the series, and at the beginning of the game,
Michael Maloney and the Nuggets paid the price for that, because,
as I talked about last game, Karl Anthony Towns as
like an actual shot creator, has some limitations in terms
of he can't really bully everybody, and then he ends
up exposing the basketball eventually and guys can kind of
(04:22):
swipe at it. We did a film breakdown after game four,
if you guys remember where I showed you guys some
examples of how Cat can kind of become easier to
guard in a static situation against a set defense. But
give him, you know, a guy closing out to him
in the corner, and he can pump bake and Aaron
Gordon can fly by and then take a side step
into a three.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
If Aaron Gordon's didn't help elsewhere and he has an
opportunity to attack a close out, that's good.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Same goes for guys like Nikhil Alexander Walker, right, And
both of them had big bounce back games tonight. Nikile
Alexander Walker had four threes at fourteen points. Carl Town's
had twenty three points on over fifty percent shooting.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
So early on they paid the price for.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Doubling ant as the rest of Minnesota's offensive players benefited
from it and got into a rhythm. Right, And as
a matter of fact, in the early second half, Minnesota
ends up taking a fifty five to fifty three lead, right,
and it starts to feel a little bit more like
Game one of this series.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Right.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
But we get a time out and Denver all postseason
long has just been a really good team. And this
is a testament, in my opinion, to coach Michael Malone,
who I think is starting to rise up the echelon
of NBA coaches. We're gonna have to take a deeper
look at that when we get to the offseason. But
he calls a time out, refocuses the guys. They immediately
come out. Aaron Gordon scores on a post up against
(05:39):
Karl Anthony Towns. They immediately go on eleven to two
run and regain control. The big thing I noticed was defense.
From there, they got their defense set. They were having
some issues in transition where when they didn't score, Minnesota
would push the ball in transition they wouldn't get their
high drop set.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Transition defense principles tell you to take away the rim first.
And Jokich is an excellent transiit big who runs back,
and it's one of the things that it kind of
separates him from so many of the bigs around the
league is he just runs his lane and transition really well,
and he would run back in transition and there would
just be a unset defense for Minnesota to attack and
they'd have some success. Right they started to get some stops,
(06:17):
started to get their defense set. Those first few Minnesota
offensive possessions out of that time out.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Were really ugly.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
There was a Rudy Gobert post up of Nikola Jokic
in there where he ended up throwing a late you know,
basically a late grenade to Knikile Alexander Walker on the
left wing that he missed. There was like a random
Nikil Alexander Walker ball screen where he took a tough
contested mid range jump shot. Again, Minnesota's offensive personnel is
pretty limited, and when Denver really tightens the screws, they
(06:44):
can slow them down. And then they started going out
in transition. Aaron Gordon gets a big transition dunk. Jamal
Murray to cap off the run gets a big transition dunk.
KCP hits a big three above the break in that sequence,
Jamal Murray gets a layup in a two man game
with Nikolea Jokich. It's just classic Denver Nuggets basketball. And
you know, honestly, like that really has been the story
(07:04):
of this entire postseason for Denver. Every time they've run
into a problem or a situation, whether it's Game two
against the Lakers or down twenty, it's boom, timeout, quick adjustment, refocus,
lock in, and go on a run. They've just consistently
been able to do that. As a matter of fact,
that I was pulling the numbers on Synergy earlier, so
this is before tonight. Although they not only did they
(07:24):
score immediately after the timeout in the third quarter, there
was another one in the fourth quarter where Minnesota went
on a little run got it to ten, they immediately
came out of the timeout and scored. According to Synergy,
the Nuggets are scoring one point one seven points per
possession after timeouts, which is the best in the league
in this playoff run among remaining teams. As a matter
of fact, the Boston Celtics are second on that list
(07:46):
at one point zero four points per possession, so literally
a thirteen point per one hundred possession gap between Boston
and Denver at one to two in execution out of timeouts.
It's been a huge part of what has made this
Denver team so good. They can get a little you know,
just like any other basketball team. They can have a
two or three possession stretch where they play some poor basketball,
(08:08):
maybe they don't get back in transition, maybe they take
a couple of bad shots.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Things can get a little ugly.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
It's like, oh, here's a random Michael Porter junior, you know,
twenty seven foot heave pivoting over his left shoulder, right
or something like that.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
But it's like there's always.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Just a timeout, a quick you know, Mike Malone get
on their case a little bit, and then they just
come out and they execute, and they and they do
what they need to do and they regain control of
the game.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
That to me is a is.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
A hallmark of championship basketball, the ability to execute when
you need to regain control of a situation that's slipping
out of your hands. I talk about this a lot,
but it's when things are going south that you tend
to fall back on who your actual core character is
as a basketball team. And so that's a consistent thing
for Denver every time things start to kind of get
a little wacky. They're really good at refocusing and regaining
(08:53):
control and making sure those runs get too much out
of hand. Not enough was made about Denver's defense this year.
I saw a lot of talk I consistently said I
thought this Denver team was better than last year. I
saw a lot of people talking about, you know, the
bench not being as good, not having veterans like Bruce Brown,
or excuse me, like Jeff Green with like a really good,
(09:16):
kind of like sixth starter type of guy like Bruce
Brown coming off the bench. And the big thing that
I think people missed out on was this is a
team that was way more focused defensively from day one
of training camp. This was a top ten defense this year.
And again, like this was a team that wasn't a
top ten defense last year that kind of snapped into form.
They were a switch flipping team when they got into
(09:36):
the postseason. This team came into this year with a
level of focus that is not typical for a defending champion, right,
It's usually the opposite.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
It's usually like the first.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Time you win, you're this top ten defense, and then
maybe you get some leeway as you're more of a
of a fringe defense in following seasons because you become
a switch flipping type of team. It's been very clear
that they've been locked in, honestly, Like I think the
Jamal Murray injury this season and then losing to some
good teams got people off the scent a little bit
(10:07):
of Denver, but I think they've been generally locked in
the majority of the season. I want to talk about
Nicole Yokich iss a score because she just had a
ridiculous scoring game.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Obviously goes for forty points.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Was just every single time he saw Rudy Gobert on
his switch, his eyes just lit up. He saw barbecue
chicken and he immediately went to work. But I think,
you know, I want to talk about the specifics of
what makes Jokic such a good score because we talked
about the touch right, and the touch is obviously a
big part of it. He's got a deadly hook shot
over both shoulders, really really good floater, has a little
bit of a turnaround jumper over both shoulders off of
(10:38):
like kind of funky footwork too, Like if he goes
over his left shoulder, it's like the Somber shuffle right
when it goes over his right shoulder. It's more of
a traditional right shoulder fade like you see from most
guards right where it's just a typical right left plant,
you know, kind of rise up and shoot kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
But what I want to focus on is on his footwork.
You know. I thought it was really interesting.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
There's a quote from Michael Malone after It was actually
before the game, and he was talking about adjustments, right,
and he said, quote, yeah, you make adjustments. Sometimes I
think too much is made of the adjustments. It's not
really what you're doing, it's how you do it. And
to me, you look at us in games one and
two compared to three and four, and our players had
a completely different disposition about themselves. So yes, maybe we
(11:20):
did some different things offensively and defensively, but give our
players credit because they realized what we were doing and
how and how we were doing it wasn't the answer.
So what I thought was really fascinating about that quote
is when we get when we finished game two, if
you guys remember I said, it's not even about basketball anymore,
like it can't be about basketball until you join the fight.
(11:42):
And really, the big thing that stood out to me
on film when we looked at Game three, was they
set better screens, particularly okitch opening tip just rocked Anthony
Edwards with a screen, right, and then Jamal Murray did
a much better job handling ball pressure and setting up
his man for screens, which allowed him to get more
separation from Jada McDaniels and Anthony Edward, which allowed their
offense to start working, and then even extending to the
(12:03):
defensive end of the floor, just like you know, guys
like KCP and Aaron Gordon sending early messages to air
to Karl Anthony Towns that he can't score on them
on an island, and just kind of tightening that defensive
pressure and making what was a mediocre offense all year
long look like the mediocre offense that they are in
a way that they did it in the first two games.
(12:25):
It wasn't some magical adjustment. It's like, yeah, they ran
some more cleared side action, right, Like, there's some little
things that they did that were different, but the majority
of it was they just played better basketball. And what
I find fascinating about that is a lot of times
we focus on the spectacular when it comes to stars,
Right we look at Kyrie, we talked about this crazy
dribble move that he made, right, We talked about Jason Tatum.
(12:46):
Here's this crazy step back three that he hits. We
talked about, you know, Steph Curry. It's this thirty footer
that he hits some transition off the mound. We talked
about Nicol Yokich. It's the Somber shuffle, this incredible fadeaway
jumper that he hits off a one leg leaning away
from the basket.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
But usually the.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Most fundamentally sound players in the league are the best
players in the league. The vast majority of basketball those
are just dessert. The meat and potatoes of what makes
a good basketball player is excellent ball handling, excellent footwork,
you know, understanding of angles and leverage when it comes
to contact situations. All these like really boring concepts that
(13:22):
make a basketball player more reliably great on a possession
by possession basis Jokic the primary driving force of what
makes him so unguardable in the post is that he
can consistently get to a short, easy shot. How do
you consistently get to a short easy shot through footwork?
Footwork is what allows you to weaponize your physical tools.
(13:45):
There are a lot of guys out there that have
a lot of physical tools that can't take advantage of them.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Look at Rudy Gobert.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
There was a play where he should have gotten called
for a travel in the second half where he caught
on the roll in front of Yo Kitch and just
quick shuffled before he made a kickout pass. It's because
he's so un coordinated with his feet that when he
needs to move his large frame into a specific spot
to do something with the basketball, he can't do that.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Footwork is the chain that connects.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Your natural gifts with the ability to actually get to
spots on the floor, and Nicole Jokic has amazing footwork.
When you guard over, when you guard post players that
are bigger than you, it's all about disrupting the base.
I know this from my personal experience. When I played
in college, I was an undersized big I played a
lot of four and five at six six and twenty
(14:32):
five pounds, and so I was usually going against six
nine six ' ten athletes, but I was bigger and
stronger than them, and usually I just push on their
base and essentially, when they would try to get to
a spot and shoot some sort of shot, over the top.
I basically bump them off of that spot and make
it so that their energy transfer from the ground up
to their shot gets disrupted and then they take some
hook shot that they'd miss or something along those lines
(14:54):
that you can't do that with Jokic. His base is
not disruptible. When he goes downhill and he makes a
pivot move, the guy will try to cut him off
and try to bump him, and Yokic bumps you off.
That really is the core of all of it his
and that the ability to maintain your base is a
footwork thing.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
You're constantly playing off two feet right, Your feet are
moving around, and you constantly have to have both your
feet anchored in the ground so that when somebody bumps you,
you don't lose balance. And the only way you're gonna
be able to do that is if you constantly rep
out every single drop step to the left, drop step
to the to the right, every single step through, which
is basically just like a pivot over one shoulder, a
(15:36):
quick plant, and then another pivot towards the basket. Yo
kich is really good at like that kind of spin
move double pivot, where like he'll rotate over his left
shoulder and then duck back underneath and come back over
his left shoulder and finish and the whole time, if
you watch his feet, he quick shuffles and quicks plant,
quick plants, but he's always back on two feet so
that no one can shove him off of his spot.
(15:57):
And so when you got a guy like Rudy Gobert,
he's got some length, right, he's got some height. He
has the ability to meet Jokic up top. But what
Jokic does is he disrupts go Bear's base and gets
him off of his stable foundation where he can jump
and meet Jokic up top. And so as a result,
when Jokic goes to shoot, Phil Bear is groundbound. He's
(16:18):
groundbound because Jokicic just bumped him right at the time
that he would typically jump to try to make a play.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
He is a master of physical leverage in footwork.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
That is such a boring thing that doesn't make highlight reels,
That isn't going to be something that is fun to
work on when you go to the gym, But that
is the kind of thing that will make you unguardable.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
When you have physical tools.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
That is what allows you if you're a young basketball
player out there and you happen to be a big
guard or a big wing or a big center. If
you don't rep out the footwork, you will play smaller
than the size that you bring to the table. And
when you connect that footwork piece with real shot making,
you can become an unstoppable scorer. When you become an
unstoppable score, you will start to bring multiple defenders. When
(17:01):
you bring multiple defenders and you learn to read the floor,
then you become truly unguardable. And Jokics just has that
unique combination of like transcendent physical size, like he's just
so much bigger than everybody that tries to guard him,
incredible detail footwork and fundamental like a fundamental foundation of
(17:21):
his skills, and then outstanding touch within ten fifteen feet
of the rim. Right we talked about Game four, he
was ten for fifteen within five feet and fourteen feet
from the basket. He is deadly in that range. He's
going to knock you off balance, get to a spot,
and get to a shot. It seemed like it was
personal tonight. Every single time he had an opportunity to
(17:42):
go at go bear he did.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
It was just you know, again.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
I talked about this after game two, like, I was
really interested to see how Yo kids would respond to
the adversity. Anthony Edwards straight up made a play for
his spot. He basically was like, you're the best player
in the world. That's great. Me and my team were
punking you. You guys can't guard me. I'm coming for
your spot. And Jokic said, hell, no, you're not, and
(18:05):
he resoundingly reaffirmed his position as the best player in
the league. I think he has the largest chasm between
him and the second best player since Lebron in the
early twenty tens. And you could argue it's even bigger
than that. He like, have you seen anybody play basketball
this year that has been able to reach the level
that Nikol Jokich has been at in the last three games,
(18:27):
Like I would argue this is a higher level than
he's ever been at. And that's the beauty of adversity.
And this is why I love when there's true parody
in the game and you don't see a team just
run rough shot over the league and win fifteen straight
playoff games, because when this team is down to oh
and legacies are on the line and people are talking
shit for three days in the media and all of
(18:47):
that is coming down on you. That is what pushed
Nikole Jokicic to this level. It required adversity to bring
out another level of nikol Jokich that we had not
seen before, and I've thoroughly enjoyed watching it. Last guy
for Denver, I wanted to shout out before we move on,
Contavious Callbo Pope. I thought every single shot he hit
in this you know it's funny. Did you guys remember
(19:09):
that Jada McDaniel's quote about Jamal Murray talking about how
his shots were loud, Like I thought that was the
textbook example of that kind of game from KCP only
sixteen points.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Every shot he hit was loud.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Hit a huge three above that of the above the break
during that eleven to two run after the timeout when
Minnesota went up fifty five to fifty three. Hit two
massive corner threes in the fourth quarter when Minnesota was
trying like hell to get back into the game. He's
been amazing defensively throughout the series, despite being kind of
physically overmatched in his individual matchup. He hasn't really had
(19:40):
many moments in this series. I thought he had a
big moment here in Game five. Last note before before
we kind of go into some closing thoughts I had.
I saw a lot of Celtics fans just kind of
starting to jump on Anthony Edwards's case after he had
a bad game. Here's the thing coming into tonight, the
(20:02):
average thirty two to seven and six on sixty seven
percent tru shooting against outstanding competition on a team that
desperately needs him to score because they are a severely
limited offensive team. He's also twenty two years old. They're
going to be growing pains along the way. Is he
gonna need to figure out how to be more effective
(20:23):
in games when he gets double teamed like this?
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Like, I actually think that Mike Michael Malone looked at
the situation and goes, oh, Mike Conley's not playing. Well,
if Mike Conley's not playing, there's not a like a
really really high IQ offensive player on the floor other
than Anthony Edwards, So like we might as well just
get the ball out of his hands and make these
guys play off of him. I really think that that
was the read that Michael Malone played. It's very possible
(20:48):
we see a different coverage if Mike Conley's out there,
especially given the fact that even though Ant was so
effective in Game three, in Game four, the rest of
the offense for Minnesota was so dead on arrival. Again,
I was talking about and comparing him to Jason Tatum
as it pertains to the future of American basketball basketball players.
I like Jayson Tatum a lot. I have no issues
(21:11):
with him at all whatsoever. I think he's probably somewhere
around the seventh, eighth, ninth best player in the league.
I actually think that he's good enough to win a
title with this Boston Celtics team, considering how much talent
he's surrounded with. All I said is he's not capable
of being better than Nikola Jokic. Anthony Edwards, at age
twenty two, at least has that potential. Anthony Edwards has
(21:32):
more upside, and at this point in his career, I'm
really enjoying watching his development. I'm really enjoying watching his rise.
He's probably my favorite player in the league right now
to watch and cover. I just think I love his personality.
I think he's gonna be so good for our game
for a really long time. I think I think America
desperately needed somebody to kind of take the reins from
(21:52):
that Lebron Steph KD group. And again, like as good
as Jason Tatum is, I just don't think he had
that upside. I don't think that he has that personality either.
And that's all it was. It was more of a
pro ampt thing than an anti Jason Tatum thing. But
at the end of the day, like he had a
rough game, he had a rough game against the defense.
Did you guys hear that interview at the start of
(22:13):
the fourth quarter, Michael Malone straight up came out and said,
our entire defensive game plan is to stop and he
straight up said that he's We're throwing different looks at him,
We're throwing second defenders at it. Like, straight up said that,
what does that tell you? Michael Malone took a gamble tonight.
We're gonna get the ball out of Anthony Everard's hands
and just try to make someone else beat us, and
(22:33):
someone else did and it was fifty five to fifty
three in the second half, when in the two games
in Minnesota they weren't even competitive. So again, Anthony Edwards's
Gigantic Gravitational presence on the court as this unguardable two
guard caused Michael Malone to compromise his own defense, and
it actually allowed Minnesota to be more competitive than they
(22:54):
had been in the previous two games. And yeah, you're right,
I do think he can handle it better, and I
do think he's capable of taking more and more leaps
as a playmaker, more and more leaps. It's kind of
a half court surgeon, like I talked about, right, But
like again, here's what I think is lame jumping on
Anthony Edwards's case and trying to rewrite the rise of
this phase of his career when he averaged thirty two
(23:15):
to seven and six against an entirely different class of
opponent than what Boston has been playing in the first
two rounds out in the Eastern Conference, and on sixty
seven percent true shooting. By the way, Jason Tatum again
last night shot below forty five percent from the field.
He's done it in every single playoff game this year
except for one. So like again, like I don't, it's
not I think it's it's completely ridiculous to just flip
(23:38):
the script and turn on Anthony Edwards in a bad
game that mostly had to do with the game plan.
The reality is, in my opinion, as we look forward
in this series at three two Denver, Minnesota can't score
against Denver's defense when they're really locked in and engaged.
I don't know how they solve that problem. I think
it's really hard to beat a team four times in
(23:59):
a row. So I wouldn't be surprised if Minnesota won
Game six.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
But it's hard for.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Me to imagine Minnesota winning two in a row at
this point. Win for three consecutive games, Denver has basically
rendered their offense useless. I don't know how they go
from there, but I can't count them out obviously, just
really difficult to beat a team four times in a row.
Obviously we're likely to get a bounced back game from
Anthony Edwards. It's going to be a ROCKUS crowd. Elimination
(24:25):
games in general are tough. Denver's been playing with all
the urgency and intensity that is now going to shift
back towards Minnesota at this point. So I do think
it's going to be a tough game, but I'm going
to go with Denver and six. I saw someone on
Twitter refer to it as the Gangster sweep. It's interesting
because it's the sweep, the gentleman sweep, which is when
(24:48):
you win four to one, and I guess the definition
of the gangster sweep is you lose your first two
at home and then you win four straight with three
being on the road. Obviously, they still need to do it,
but that would be pretty epic because I think think
all games have been by double digits. Yeah, they won
by fifteen tonight, and I'm pretty sure Game three and
four were by double digits, So that would be that
(25:08):
would whoever whoever coined that term, I should have I
should have quoted whoever that was, But that I did
think was funny. But hopefully I will see if Denver
can pull off the gangster sweep here in a couple
of days. I don't want to get too far into
the nitty gritty in this game, really, because the last
couple of games, Game four in Indiana and Game five
(25:31):
in New York, were mostly just about effort. In Game four,
the Knicks looked exhausted and the Pacers ran them out
of the gym, and they played limited minutes and came home.
And that was also a much earlier start in the
day On Sunday, if you guys remember, So they got
like a substantially larger amount of rest compared to what
they got between Game three and Game four. They're also
(25:52):
coming home also having lost two in a row. The
desperation shifts heavily towards the Knicks. The Pacers have a
little bit of come knowing that it's two to two
and you've got another game at home, right, and the
Knick's just kind of capitalized on that. You know, there
was a quote that I saw from the pregame presser
from Mike Malone tonight, Michael Malone, head coach of the
(26:13):
Denver Nuggets, and he said, quote, yeah, you make adjustments.
Sometimes I think too much is made of the adjustments.
It's not really what you're doing, it's how you do it.
And to me, you look at us in games one
and two, and compared to games three and four, our
players had a completely different disposition about themselves. So, yes,
maybe we did some things, some different things offensively and defensively,
(26:36):
but give our players credit because they realized what we
were doing and how we were doing it wasn't the answer.
And I thought that was really fascinating because I said
the same thing after Game two of that series, the
one really about basketball, Denver just had not really joined
the series physically, And like we're going to talk about
some specific x's and those things that took place in
today's game, like Duce McBride joining the starting lineup, how
(26:59):
that allowed the the Knicks to attack Tyres Halliburton, you know,
Jalen Brunson kind of getting that early fallon Aaroni Smith,
leading him to Rick Carlisle to shift to Andrew and
Embard on the ball, and some stuff about Tyres Haliburton
being kind of passive. We're going to get into some
of the basketball stuff, but none of that played nearly
as big of a role as just the Knicks brought
(27:21):
a hell of a lot more force tonight. They just
played better basketball, and the Pacers did the same thing
in Game four. We have a tendency and I've noticed
this for a long time in the realm of basketball analysis,
and like, tactics are an important part of basketball analysis,
but I agree with Michael Malone. I think it's leaned
on a lot a lot more than it probably actually
(27:45):
relates to the outcomes of a lot of these games. Say,
for instance, the story of this game is going to
be duce McBride joining the starting lineup, and everything he
did tonight guarding Tyres Halliburton, the attacking Haliburton when he
was hedging and blitzing and deuced me Bride like quickly
kind of like slipping out of those actions. Right, But
here's the thing. They got off to a twenty to
(28:05):
fourteen start. The Pacers were up twenty to fourteen in
this game. So like like in duce McBride still was
playing a lot. We said after I think it was
in game three, I said, now that Ojan and Obi's out,
the best five man group that the Knicks have is
Duce McBride, Dante DiVincenzo, Josh hart Jalen Bronson, and Isaiah Hartenstein.
(28:25):
Like we've already known that was the five best guys.
Like you know, honestly, the Knicks energy didn't even really
start to take over in this game until the middle
to late first quarter. And so again, like it's important
for us to talk about the tactics. I think it's
a really good thing for us all to learn more
about so that we can have a better understanding of
what's taking place on the court. But make no mistake,
(28:46):
generally speaking, the team that wins it has more to
do with who's playing the best basketball and all these
little fundamental areas, who's cutting harder, who's running in transition harder,
who's sliding their feet better on the ball, who's setting
better screens, who's being sharper when they're with their decision making,
who's doing a better job attacking closeouts and making reads
like those are usually the things that determine who wins
(29:09):
the game more so than any sort of tactic, right.
You know, like I literally thought that the Nuggets turned
the Minnesota series around literally just by setting way better
screens and handling ball pressure better. I thought those were
the two things that helped Jamal Murray break free more often,
which allowed Denver's offense to function in a way it
wasn't functioning in the first two games of the series.
(29:31):
And so again I think like these last two games
have been a good example of that. Do you think
Indiana had a magic adjustment in Game four? Do you
think the Knicks had a magic adjustment here in Game five? No,
they just the Pacers played better basketball in Game four
and the Knicks played better basketball in Game five. On
that note, let's talk a little bit about some of
the specific basketball dynamics that took place.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
In this game.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
So Deuce McBride did an amazing job defending Tyris Halliburn
and played him into some of his worst tendencies, which
have to do being passive and not looking to score enough.
We'll talk a little bit more about that in a
little bit when we get to the Pacers. The big
thing that duce McBride was helping with was he was
being guarded by Tyre's Halliburton. And there's two things that
you absolutely have to be able to do when you're
(30:13):
being guarded by a player who that specific player's team
is going to ask him to hedge and recover or
to blitz. Basically meaning when that player comes off the screen,
Tyre's Halliburton is either going to jump out to cut
off the driving lane or jump out to blitz, meaning
leaving duce McBride. You have to be able to hit
(30:34):
threes quickly while sliding your feet out of the screen
and quickly getting set up at the three point line.
And two, you have to be able to make quick
decisions when the defense reacts to you. And duce McBride
just did an amazing job of that in this game,
hitting those threes on the pick and pop out of
the hedge and recover in the blitz, and then also
when the rotation would come to him making that next
pass in the line to the next shooter that might
(30:56):
be open. He just did an incredible job and it
gave Jalen Brunson an action that he could spam to
consistently generate quality shots for the nixt Tonight, Jalen Brunson
was amazing again, another forty plus point night. Was just
cooking in Iso all night long. You could tell that
additional rest really helped him. He just had more lift
than he did in Game four. He got Brick Carlisle
(31:17):
to bail on Aaron Nesmith with about eight minutes and
thirty seconds left in the first quarter after he picked
up a foul on him on an and one. The
Pacers were up twelve to nine at that point and
Brunson had only made one field goal. But I guess
that Rick Carlile was mainly just thinking, let's try to
avoid getting let's try to avoid picking up that second foul,
and we just know Jalen Brunson's really comfortable against Andrew
(31:42):
Nemhard He had an in.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And out dribble on him where he literally like in.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
And outed Hardy nevvrd W was flying off the screen
to the right, and Brunson just had like a wide
open layup, like he's just really comfortable in that matchup.
He got going then even when Niesmith came back on him,
he kind of was a little bit more comfortable and
in rhythm. Like I talked about before, he was really
picking on Tyre's house Burton screens. By the way, I
have four clips of film I'm going to show you
guys at the end of the show to kind of
demonstrate some of the specifics with Duce McBride, you know,
(32:09):
kind of making Tyres Saliburton pay for his hedges and
his blitzes. Tyr's Saliburton's pasivity. So every archetype of basketball player,
in my opinion, has a weakness. Right, There's like pros
and cons that come to every personality type. It's no
different with like than like, I'm a pretty OCD guy, right,
(32:29):
But at the same time, like my obsessive focus on
stuff makes it so that I can be sometimes oblivious
to things that are happening around me. Right, You know
I I have a certain way that I organize a
simple thing. My wife had to borrow my truck to
go to Low's the other day, and I took my
basketball bag out of that truck to take it take
her car instead. Then when I went back into my truck,
(32:51):
I didn't take my basketball bag with me. So the
last two times I went to the gym early, because
I always go to the gym early to do my
shooting workout before I play, I didn't have my basketball bag.
I was like super frustrated. But it's because I'm such
a creature of habit that anytime anything kind of disrupts
my rhythm, my whole life tends to fall apart, you
know what I mean. Like it's a downside of my personality.
But the upside is my OCD leads to me getting
(33:13):
into really good rhythms, and so I'm really good at
like kind of keeping a daily routine which helps me
be a better basketball player. It helps me run a
better show. Like there's upsides and there's downsides, right, same
thing goes with basketball players, Like if you're a high
motor player, usually that helps you bring energy when your
team needs it, and it can you know, invigorate your team.
But at the same time, those guys tend to gamble
(33:34):
a lot, they tend to make mistakes, they tend to
foul too much. That's those are all characteristics of high
motor players because they're always going one hundred miles an hour.
Super emotional guys like they can They can get their
team to kind of meet them at a level emotionally,
which can be a good thing. They can also get
the other team to overreact to things and get caught
up in some of the emotional elements, but as we know,
(33:54):
that can lead to technicals overly physical play getting themselves
ejected or suspended. Right, that's a down side of the
super emotional players. Right assassin minded scorers that are always
looking for their own shot. They can get hot and
they can carry you home, but they can also miss
easy reads and play their teammates out of rhythm. Right
pass first offensive engines like a Tyrese Halliburton, other players
(34:18):
like Nikole jokicch Lebron James when he was in his prime.
Those pass first guys, they can keep everyone in rhythm
and control the offense, and they're usually like offensive engines
that can really lead an offense to a high level,
almost individually, but they sometimes can be too passive. There
were moments in Lebron's career where he needed to look
to shoot, but instead he would make the right play right.
(34:40):
There were times where early in the Timberwolf series where
you're like, why is Nikola Jokic passing out a single
coverage and he's like, but you even hear him after
the game, it's like, maybe we should trust the pass more.
It's like it's programmed into their basketball identity, right. And
with Tyre's Halliburton, he takes nine shots tonight, and take
nine shots on the road in a two to two
game when you're offense is struggling to score. That's part
(35:02):
of your job as the offensive engine. He's been taking
eleven threes a game over the last few weeks and
hitting over forty percent of them, and he only took
four of them tonight. Now, some of that is a
credit to Douce McBride, but again there's a certain part
of that where like tyrese just like Lebron did over
the course of his career, just like Jokic did in
this series, and we know that he's capable of Tyree's
(35:24):
part of his development is going to be understanding that
there are times when he has to be aggressive and
there are going to be times when he has to
look to score. And he's been a little inconsistent, especially
on the road in this playoff run. In that regard
first playoff run really as the leader of his team,
obviously there's going to be some growing pains along the way.
I thought tonight was an example of him being overly passive.
(35:45):
I think the Pacers will probably extend this series to seven,
just because it's a shorthanded mixed team and they're really undersized,
and it's difficult to win on the road when you
have physical disadvantages. Can't count the Knicks out, though they
certainly can win Game six, but I am sticking with
my pick pick for the Knicks to win the series.
I just think they'll probably do it in seven. The
(36:27):
volume
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