The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Knicks beat Cavaliers, Hawks upset Celtics, Nuggets roll Timberwolves

Episode Date: April 22, 2023

Jason Timpf reacts to 3 game 3's in the NBA on Friday night. First, he discusses Jalen Brunson & the New York Knicks taking a 2-1 series lead over Donovan Mitchell & the Cleveland Cavaliers. Later, he discusses Trae Young and the Atlanta Hawks upsetting Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics. Finally, he breaks down Nikola Jokic & the Denver Nuggets beating the Minnesota Timberwolves to take a commanding 3-0 series lead. #volume #herdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.

Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Robert from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. Joe and I are both lifelong Star Wars fan, so we're celebrating May the 4th with a brand new week of fun, thought-provoking Star Wars-related episodes. Join us as we tackle science and culture topics from a galaxy far, far away, such as the biology of tauntons and wampas on the ice planet hot, or the practicality and corporate business sense of the Sith rule. of two. Listen to Stuff to Bole Your Mind on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. The Volume. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at The Volume. Happy Saturday, everybody. I hope all of you guys had a great week. Round one coverage of the NBA playoffs here at Hoops tonight is brought to you by Chase Freedom Unlimited. How do you cash back? This is our last show from Portland. I'm flying home today. So tonight, when we go live after Lakers Grizzlies. I'll be back in the studio. I appreciate you guys bearing with me with a little bit of a weird travel schedule this week. We're just going to be breaking down all three games from last night.

As the Knicks take a 2-1 lead over the Cavs, the Atlanta Hawks get a game from Boston now that they trail 2 to 1, and then the Nuggets take a 3-0 lead over the Minnesota Timberwolves. You guys know the show before we get started to subscribe to the volumes YouTube channels so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason LT so you guys don't miss any show announcements. And if for whatever reason you guys missed one of these shows and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish, don't forget you can find them wherever you get your podcasts under hoops tonight. All right, let's talk some basketball. So this was an absolute defensive slug fest in Madison Square Garden between the Knicks and the Cavs.

You know, it's funny. I talk a lot about how like when you see the same defensive matchup time and time and time again, how defenders tend to start to pick up on your cues. The example I always used to use is like playing against your little brother, your older brother, or your older sister, younger sister. When you're playing against a sibling every single day in your front yard, even if you're better than them, sometimes just because they play against you every day,

then kind of pick up on your moves and figure out how to guard you, you know what I mean? And like that kind of dynamic takes place in the playoff series to a certain extent. You know, in the random comings and goings of the regular season, you bump into a guy once, you're not going to be necessarily ready to guard him to the best of your ability. But man, come game three, come game four, come game five of a playoff series.

You know all of his moves. You've picked up on everything. You're going to do a much better job. And everybody in this series is struggling with their core matchups. Like both Quentin Grimes and Josh Hart have been giving Donovan Mitchell some problems, just chasing over the top of screens and forcing him into difficult pull-up jump shots. Jalen Brunson and Emmanuel quickly have both done a great job on Darius Garland. You can see that R.J. Barrett has had some success guarding Karris Levert.

On the other end of the floor, Karas Levert and Isaac Akoro have both been giving Jalen Brunson some issues, just with their length and athleticism. He's been doing better when he's trying to get off of those guys, but in his core matchup, he's struggling to get good shots against them. And then after game one, Evan Mowgli struggled with Julius Randall, he's actually starting to have a lot of success with Julius Randall defensively. So all these guys are starting to kind of figure out their defensive matchups, and the result was just this super low-scoring, super ugly basketball game in MSG.

I was actually messaging a buddy of mine that I was talking about this particular series with, and I told him, I was like, if Jalen Brunson and Julius Randall don't figure it out soon, they could be in some trouble. Because Donovan Mitchell was still kind of playing a little bit better than those other guys there in the beginning of this particular game. And right there in the second quarter with about six minutes left, Jalen Brunson finally started to find his groove. And I don't think it's a coincidence because I talked about this a lot before the series,

but Jalen Brunson has a much more methodical approach to the way he attacks defenses, and I think he's smarter. It's textbook like, works smarter, not harder kind of thing. Donovan Mitchell is unquestionably a better player that is capable of generating more separation and making tougher shots. He's got all of the talent in the world, but sometimes he makes it so difficult on himself in a way that's not necessarily needed under the circumstances. Jalen Brunson, you'll notice in this series,

he's not isolating Karas Levert or Isaac Akoro unless he absolutely has to. Like if it's a late, like there was a play in the second quarter, he calls up Donovan Mitchell to try to get Donovan Mitchell on a switch and a screen. Mitchell's doing this like hedging recover thing and he can't get Mitchell on the switch. And suddenly there's like five seconds left and he's at the top of the key and he's got Karas Levert, so he's got to take him to work. And he actually scored on this one with like a really nice up and under move. But he's not doing that unless he has to.

There's no point in taking that super difficult shot until the end of the shot clock when you've tried everything else. And around that, he's finding smart ways to attack. Early in that shift in the mid-second quarter, he calls up Darius Garland into the screen, rejects the screen, gets downhill, gets Jared Allen to step up, drops it off to Isaiah Hartnstein, he gets a dunk. Then we have that play that I told you guys about where it isolates Karris Leverg. Very next possession, he calls up Donovan Mitchell again and knows that he's going to hedge because he just had tried that same hedge and recover move twice on the previous possession and a Jalen Brunsner couldn't actually get him on the switch.

So he calls him up again and he knows that if he stunts to one side, he's going to be able to get Donovan Mitchell to hedge out to that side, which is going to create an opening. So he does this hard in and out dribble with his left hand to the right side. and Donovan Mitchell hedges out to that right side, and Jalen Brunson just goes back to the left instead. I think R.J. Barrett was setting the screen. R.J. Barrett gets a really good screen on Karrislevert. Suddenly Jalen Brunson is completely downhill, engages Mowbly, makes a really nice kickout pass to Julius Randall in the corner. He knocks down the three. Then Chetty Osmond checks into the game, and immediately Jailen Brunson calls Chetty Osmond into the screen, gets him on a switch, hits him with this nasty, like, double between the legs crossover move and gets all the game.

the way to the rim and lays it in. Like, again, everyone is struggling, but it makes sense to me that Jalen Brunson was the first guy to kind of figure it out, so to speak. He's just a little bit smarter in his approach, a little bit more versatile in the way that he attacks. You know, one of the things that stood out to me in a big way in this particular game, and really in this series overall so far, it's just how much more comfortable the Knicks are playing multiple different styles offensively.

Like, obviously the Knicks can run pick and roll, and they're going to run a lot of pick and roll, but they are way more comfortable attacking matchups in isolation. As a matter of fact, the Cavs have only run 16 ISOs in this entire series. The Knicks have run 40, so more than twice as much, and they're scoring it just under a point per possession in those ISOs. And that's because they're just more comfortable with guys like Julius Randall, Jalen Brunson, and R.J. Barrett attacking specific matchups that they like. It gives them more versatility in their offense, and it's a big part of why I pick them to win this series. RJ Barrett finally got it going in this game.

I thought he generated a couple wide open threes, courtesy of his teammates, that he knocked down early in the game. And you could just tell it was like the weight of the world got lifted off his shoulders. He played much more comfortable and relaxed the rest of the game. But really, the Knicks' defense was the story of this game. They held the Cavs at just 79 points. That's the lowest scoring performance from any team in the NBA this season. This was where the damage was done in pick and roll.

The Cavs ran 45 pick and rolls in this game and scored just 25 points on them. That's including passes. So that's 0.56 points per possession in pick and roll. That's almost half what you would hope for in that type of play type. The most concerning part in general from Cleveland coming out of this series so far through three games is their offensive struggles primarily have to do with their two best guards with Garland and Mitchell. You know, it's funny. Coming into the series, we thought it would be the opposite of that problem. We thought it would be the inability of the role players to convert spot-up possessions and

role-man possessions into points. We thought that would be the issue. That has not been the issue at all. The Cavs role players have played really well in spot-up situations. In fact, they're averaging well over a point per possession in those situations. The role players are doing their jobs. They're shooting well, that's not the issue. The issue is Darius Garland can't make a shot, shooting 37% in the series.

and Donovan Mitchell, despite having a little bit better statistical series than you would think, he's just not managing games well and he's not making very good decisions. And so there's not very much rhythm and flow in their offense. He forces it sometimes when they shouldn't. The one time he played advantage creation basketball in game two and really focused on just creating that initial advantage to get the defense and rotation to help his team, that was the time the Cavs won. And again, like, you know, the same buddy I was texting earlier, he made a really interesting point.

He goes, it kind of feels like, Julius, or in fact, it kind of feels like Donovan Mitchell's trying to have a moment in the garden. And yeah, like probably, but not a good idea under the circumstances, especially since, like, the team plays their best when they have more flow offensively from Donovan Mitchell acting as an advantage creator. As of right now, I feel pretty good about my prediction, about with the Knicks winning in six. My guess is they win game four, lose game five, and then win game six to win the series. All right, moving on to Celtics Hawks. This was a bizarre game. The Celtics were like disgustingly hot from three in the first half. And none of the Hawks starters were playing particularly well. They were kind of playing a little bit off at Dejante Murray and trying to bait him into some longer contested jump shots and making him a little bit hesitant on how to attack. The guy who really broke things open for Atlanta in the first half was Bogdan McDonovitch who got hot. I think he had like 16 in the first half or something like that. That was a huge part of Atlanta getting going offensively. But what I want to focus on in this particular game, because I don't think it has a huge impact on the series.

Like, the Celtics let go with the rope several times defensively in this game. They had a handful of bad decisions in the fourth quarter. But really, this is just kind of the natural ebb and flow of playoff basketball, especially when you're playing against a good team. And say what you want about the Sox team. They're playing better basketball ever since Quinn Snyder came on board. And at home, they're like 24 and 17 this year. So that's a tough place to win.

You're up 2-0 in the series. you're still in control. I expect the Celtics to win this series in five. But I did want to make a shout out to Trey Young. He struggled mightily in this series in the first two games. And I thought he was masterful in this particular game, particularly in the fourth quarter, in just the really smart way that he was attacking and pick and roll.

So it started things in the fourth quarter getting downhill and making like a little floater over Al Horford. And so the Celtics made a simple adjustment. They put Jason Tatum on Anyeka Kangwu and put Al Horford on D'Andre Hunter so that when Trey Young calls Anya Kango up for the pick and roll, they could just switch it. And they do that, you know, the idea there is like when you call for a ball screen, you want a role man is capable of making a certain type of play, right? Like Trey Young loves to throw lobs in pick and roll. So he wants

to call Anya into the screen so that he has a lob threat, right? But now when he does, it's just a switch and Tate him on Trey Young isn't exactly a great matchup for them. But Trey made a really interesting adjustment himself. He just had both of them come set of screen. So he'd have have like Anya set the first screen and then DeAndre Hunter set the second screen and he kind of just methodically pulled over to the side and waited for Al Horford to step over too far and then he hit DeAndre Hunter for the layup. And then, you know, they started switching with Al Horford as well towards the end of the quarter and it was funny because Al Horford switches on to Trey Young and Trey doesn't want to ISO Al Horford. So he sprints over and hands the ball to Dijonte Murray at the

end of the clock and says you go ISO. DeJante ends up actually hit like a little short step jumper on the left wing. But later in the game, with I believe just under two minutes left, he gets Horford on his switch again, and there's not enough time on the shot clock for him to get it to Dejante Murray. So he has to go try to make a play. And he takes like this impossible step back three in the corner and sinks it. You could tell Trey was just feeling himself at that moment, which is kind of cool because after how bad he struggled in the first two games, it's cool to see him having real winning impact on the series. That three was a massive shot. A couple possessions later, just under a minute left. I want to say it was like a three-point game at this point or four-point

game at this point. Derek White's pressuring him in the back court. And Trey, like most great point cards do, leverages that ball pressure to get Derek White on his backside and kind of pins him on his backside. He gets downhill and makes a floater that ends up icing the game. Again, like we could talk all we want about Trey and there's a lot of bad that comes with Trey. But at the end of the day, he's an outstanding passer, an outstanding high pick-and-roll decision maker that's got a great deal of offensive skill. He's still a guy who can help basketball teams. He just has some limitations that you have to account for, especially when you're considering him the best player on a team that has real championship aspirations. Like I said, I still feel good about the Celtics and five,

though, at this point. All right, moving on to Nuggets Wolves. This was an extremely impressive and dominant win from Denver, in my opinion. I am pretty high on this Timberwolves team, especially on the defensive end of the four. But, you know, once again, they keep running into the same problem. With Carl Towns, they have more freedom offensively. They have more driving lanes when he's at center with Rudy Gobert. They have a higher defensive ceiling, obviously, although they have not defended better with Rudy in this particular series. But they have a higher defensive ceiling with Rudy Gober, but he junks things up for them offensively. The big thing that stood out to me in this game was the Nuggets started with Yokic, especially in the Conley,

the Conley-Go Bear pick and rolls. They'd have Yokich basically just do like a soft trap, where he's ignoring Gobert and stepping out all the way to the three-point line. Just basically conceding that short roll pass to Gobert. And what really janked up the Timberwolves offense in this game is Gobert is incapable of doing anything out of that short roll position. There's a hilarious play in the first half of this game where he catches on the short roll with the head of steam going to the rim. And Jamal Murray is the guy who is from the low man position tagging over on the roller.

And Gobert does like every other big in the entire league ends up shooting the house. that, you know, and Gobert just kind of like takes a hard step towards Jamal Murray and then panics and then makes like a kickout pass to Nikiel Alexander Walker on the perimeter, right? And now the possession is dead on arrival, even though you drew a double team out at the perimeter. And, you know, he'd catch it on the roll and try to do like a Euro step and fumble it out of bounds or just find some way to blow it at the rim. Then there was a huge play at the end of the game. He finally draws a foul. I think it was one as 10598. Finally managed just to draw a foul on the short roll and then goes the line and misses both free throws. And so at the end of the day,

like, you know, I've always said even back when Gobert was with the jazz, because Rudy's not the same defensive player now that he was in Utah. But in Utah, I thought a lot of the stuff said about him defensively wasn't necessarily true. He was being looped in with all of this criticism surrounding what really was problems with the perimeter players defensively that Rudy was catching flack for. That said, all of the criticism of Rudy Gobert on the offensive end of the floor is real. I don't care what people say about how good of his screener he is. I don't care what people say about how good of an offensive rebounder he is when you've got a player that even with his physical advantages cannot score or make a play in a four on three when he is being completely unguarded.

That is a problem. All these other guys we talk about that can't shoot, Draymond Green, that dude can make plays rolling down the floor in that short roll position. You have to to be able to at least do something coherent offensively, even if you can't score, and Rudy Gobert can't score and he can't pass out of that specific position, and that's what really janks things up for them. On the Nuggets front, Yokic was his typical dominant self, 20 points, 11, rebounds, 12 assists. I've always amazed by how easily he can dislodge Rudy Gobert from post position. I've talked about this before, but, you know, on the perimeter, you want to move your feet as little as possible because it's about efficiency of movement in lateral.

space like you don't want to take negative steps right but in the post like yokic keeps his feet chopping all the time and each time he does that he allows him to reset his center of gravity and hit gobert again and so a lot of times gober will absorb the first piece of contact but then when he gets dislodged yokic has already reset himself and is hitting him again and it's like that second or third bump that'll send gobert way out of position and then he's getting the shot that he wants I thought Michael Porter Jr. did a really nice job attacking the rim early in this game that kind of set a tone. Then he hit a huge three early in the fourth quarter when the wolves were to run. They got it down to like five. And then the wolves went to his own possession. And he had a really nice relocation, three to the right corner.

Then he knocked down to put him back up eight. And then Christian Brown was the other guy I wanted to shout out. He made three really big athletic plays to start the fourth quarter on a play where Gobert was guarding him and stepped up into help. He cut out of the baseline. Jumped into Gobert. locked the shot and he powered through him with his left hand and just kind of like feathered it into the basket. Then he had another play running in transition where he made a left-handed layup, and then a couple of plays later, he's on the left wing step for step with Anthony Edwards, one of the best athletes in the league. And he takes off and makes a really nice left-handed finish over the top of Anthony Edwards during a Nuggets run. His athleticism, I thought, was really

impressive. This series is headed quickly towards a sweep. And I'll tell you right now, Like I said, I'm not going to say anything until the end of the first round. But as of right now, where we stand here on Saturday morning, I think Denver has been the most impressive team in the Western Conference so far. And if things stay this way through the end of the first round, I'm going to be tempted to adjust my pick of who's coming out of the Western Conference. Obviously, though, the Lakers and Warriors have plenty of time to get things together over the end of their series.

And the Suns, it's just really hard to tell when they're playing a Clippers team without Kauai and Paul George. All right, guys, that's all I have for today. like I said, flying back to Tucson, so I will see you guys from the studio later tonight after Lakers Grizzlies. I appreciate you guys for rocking with us and supporting the show. See you later today. The volume. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite.

Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged.

It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, this is Robert from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. Joe and I are both lifelong Star Wars fan, so we're celebrating May the 4th with a brand new week of fun, thought-provoking Star Wars-related episodes. Join us as we tackle science and culture topics from a galaxy far, far away, such as the biology of taun tons and wampas on the ice planet hot, or the practicality and corporate business sense of the Sith rule of two. Listen to stuff to blow your mind on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.